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TWO anniversaries will be celebrated this year.One is the birth 200
years ago this month of Charles Darwin, author of modern
evolutionary theory.
The other is the publication 150 years ago in
November of the book that set forth the theory: On the Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of
Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
The evidence in support of evolutionary theory
is overwhelming. It derives from disciplines as diverse as
paleontology, geology, biogeography, ecology, population genetics,
molecular biology, developmental biology and, more recently,
genomics. All this is now subsumed under the heading evolutionary
biology.
Despite the preponderance of evidence there are
still people and organized groups that refuse to accept the validity
and explanatory power of evolutionary theory.
In the US, federal courts have prohibited the
teaching of creationism and intelligent design in biology courses.
But local school boards and legislatures in
about half a dozen American states are continuing the battle to keep
the classrooms open to “views about the scientific strengths and
weaknesses of Darwinian theory.”
The battleground has shifted to academic
freedom, in particular the requirement to explore “the strengths
and weaknesses” of all scientific theories.
A main advocate of this strategism is the
Discovery Institute in Seattle whose director, Stephen Meyer, told
the New York Times on January 23, 2009 that the Institute is not
pushing for a biblical version of creation. Rather, “it is
fighting for academic freedom and against . . . a fanatical loyalty
to Darwin among biologists, akin to a secular religion.”
The twists and turns of this campaign are being
reported in both the local and foreign press but what is not
generally known is that a similar struggle is brewing in Islamic
countries and communities.
In the December 12, 2008 issue of Science,
Salman Hameed published an essay on Islamic creationism in which he
predicted that “the next major battle over evolution is likely to
take place in the Muslim world.” With rising educational standards
and the increasing importance of the biological sciences, a serious
debate on evolution could happen in the coming decade in Muslim
countries.
Like Christianity, Islam is not a monolithic
religion. Its various sects have not yet arrived at a common view of
evolution.
A big step towards this direction was taken with
the publication in 2007 of a beautifully printed 850-page book
called Atlas of Creation by Harun Yahya, the pen name of a wealthy
Muslim creationist, Adnan Oktar, who lives in Turkey.
There are verses in the Koran that talk of the
creation of the universe and of living things, but kept the age of
the universe open to various interpretations including a very old
universe that contrasts with the young-earth creationism of the
Christian faiths.
Adnan Oktar “borrowed” his ideas from the
Institute for Creation Research.
Since Muslims are comfortable with the idea of
an earth that’s billions of years old, they are inclined to accept
random mutations as a mechanism for biological change.
Oktar focuses his opposition on “the social
and cultural threat posed by evolution in the form of materialism
and atheism.”
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of Islamic
studies at George Washington University, thinks that “[t]he theory
of evolution is the peg of the tent of modernism. And therefore it
is kept as an ideology and not as a scientific theory which has been
proven.”
Even a trained biochemist, Muzaffar Iqbal, who
edits the journal Islam & Science: Journal of Islamic
Perspectives on Science wrote in 2006 that “not only does species
preserve [their] characteristics but also receive[s] Divine command
. . . and act[s] accordingly, the Koran tells us. The ant and the
honeybee have always been the ant and the honeybee and will always
remain so.”
Some Islamic scientists, Maurice Bucaille for
one, can accept animal but not human evolution. Animals evolve up to
early hominid forms and then human evolution takes another path.
Surveys of six Muslim countries in 1996 and 2003
showed that only 16 percent of Indonesians, 14 percent of
Pakistanis, 8 percent of Egyptians, 11 percent of Malaysians and 22
percent of Turks agreed that Darwin’s theory is true.
Surprisingly, only 28 percent of Kazakhs thought that evolution is
false. This is much lower than the 40 percent of adult Americans who
told a 2003 survey that evolution is not true.
Biology textbooks in these Muslim countries
teach evolutionary theory as a scientific fact but accompanied with
the relevant Koranic verses on the creation of life.
It would not be amiss for the two major
conferences on Darwin’s bicentenary—the American Association for
the Advancement of Science conference and the Darwin Festival in
Cambridge—to discuss with Muslim scientists alternative ways of
teaching evolutionary biology without offending Islam.
opinion@manilatimes.net
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