Those Muslims Must Be As Backwards As Americans

[A_Wanderer]

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Harun Yahya is one of the most widely distributed authors in the Muslim world. He may also be among the most widely criticized Muslim authors in the Western world.

His glossy books and DVDs on religion and science sell in Islamic bookshops around the globe. He gives away thousands of expensive volumes and lets readers download much of his work from his websites for free.

The Council of Europe accuses him of trying to infiltrate schools with religious extremism and French teachers are told to keep his work from their students.

Unknown outside Muslim circles two years ago, Adnan Oktar — the 52-year-old Turk behind the pseudonym Harun Yahya — caught the attention of scientists and teachers in Europe and North America by mass-mailing them his 768-page “Atlas of Creation”. His lavishly illustrated book preaches a Muslim version of creationism, the view scientists usually hear from Christian fundamentalists who say God created all life on earth just as it is today and oppose the teaching of Darwin’s evolution theory.

“Every academic I know says they’ve got one of those,” retired University of Edinburgh natural history professor Aubrey Manning told the Glasgow Herald when “The Atlas” turned up in Scotland early this year. “And it’s peddling an absolute, downright lie.”

But Oktar, whose reclusive ways and opaque business have prompted many rumors about why and how he gives away so many books, brushed off all criticism in a rare interview with Reuters. “This huge impact shows the influence of the book,” the author, stylishly turned out in a white suit, red tie and clipped beard, said through an interpreter.

The controversy stirred up by “The Atlas” has turned the spotlight on a publishing empire that boasts about 260 books in 52 languages, over 80 DVDs and dozens of websites.

Well-illustrated and free of theological jargon, they preach that Islam is the one true faith and Darwinism, by undermining religious belief, has led to the discord, atheism, terrorism and extreme political ideologies plaguing the world. ...

The flood of free books prompted suspicion among baffled Western scientists and teachers that U.S. creationists or Saudi financiers might be helping finance the campaign.

Oktar said the giveaways — he estimated them at about 10,000 out of print runs of over 200,000 — were normal public relations funded by profits from sales of “The Atlas” and other books.

“That seems implausible — this book is expensive,” said Taner Edis, a Turkish-American physicist whose 2007 book “An Illusion of Harmony” analyzed Islam’s approach to science. “And to my knowledge, it’s not selling like hotcakes.”

Edis doubted the rumors of funds from U.S. creationists, saying: “American creationists I talk to basically envy Harun Yahya’s financial resources. If there were any fund flowing, it would be from Adnan Oktar to the creationists.”


Saudi funding also seems unlikely because Oktar's message, while basically Sunni Muslim, mixes in Shi'ite and Sufi elements that clash with the kingdom's austere Wahhabi school of Islam.

"The Saudis don't like that," said an Istanbul Islam expert who asked not to be named because he feared litigation by the Harun Yahya group if quoted criticizing it. He thought Oktar was mostly funded by a small group of affluent young Turks who make up the core group of his supporters.

JESUS RETURNS AS A MUSLIM

Long wary of the media and portrayed as the guru of a sect, Oktar has opened up recently, possibly because of a trial in Istanbul on charges of creating a criminal organization. He was sentenced to three years in May but denies the charges and is appealing the verdict.

Oktar says the "Atlas of Creation" campaign and Harun Yahya publishing empire are part of his religious vision of the end of the world in which he plays a role hinted at in his pseudonym.

Harun is Arabic for Aaron, the brother of Moses. Yahya is Arabic for John -- in this case, John the Baptist, he said.

"Harun was the helper of the prophet Moses. Yahya was also the helper of Jesus Christ," Oktar said. "When Jesus Christ comes to the world, we also would like to be helping him ... You might say this is a prayer for that."

Oktar said Koran verses and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed about the end of the world revealed Jesus would return soon as a Muslim to help Islam's savior, the Mahdi, defeat the Dajjal or Islamic Anti-Christ and establish Islam around the world.

"Our biggest project right now is to lay the grounds for the coming of Jesus Christ," he said. "We understand this is going to be in the next 20 to 25 years."

The idea of Jesus returning as a Muslim is standard Islamic teaching about the end of times. But Muslims normally stress the end times less than evangelical Christians do, and Oktar's focus on this has prompted rumors he thinks he is the Mahdi.

"I do not make such a claim," he said. "Because of parallels in what I have written and the hadith (sayings) of the Prophet Mohammad, some people have thought I could be him... but in Islam it is forbidden for me to make such a claim."

Asked if he planned another enormous book like "The Atlas", Oktar said he would simply continue to turn out anti-Darwin books. "I am preparing a book about skulls," he said. "I show skull fossils as evidence that there was no evolution."

Muslim creationist preaches Islam and awaits Christ | Reuters

Religious levels of stupidity can be funny until someone gets hurt.

[indra]

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

Religious levels of stupidity can be funny until someone gets hurt.

Don't you think that goes for any type of stupidity?


Just shows nutjobs come in all shapes, sizes, nationalities and religions. It just figures that nutjobism would be the one truly universal quality.

[Judah]

Oktar can't be the Mahdi.

The Mahdi's at the bottom of a well outside the Jamkaran Mosque in Jamkaran, Iran. He's been waiting in caves and then this well for over 1,100 years (btw, what is it with my former bretheren and their hiding in caves and holes in the ground?). And, yeah, he's waiting to kick arse alongside Jesus when the time comes.

Um...could happen.

[financeguy]

Nice bait and switch on the day that the Zionist fascists threaten to start WWIII.

[A_Wanderer]

Originally Posted by financeguy

Nice bait and switch on the day that the Zionist fascists threaten to start WWIII.

Have to earn that money somehow.

[financeguy]

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

Have to earn that money somehow.

Because all critics of Israel, are, of course, Jew haters.

When I criticize Zionism it's because - of course - I want to put six million Jews in ovens.

[A_Wanderer]

It just struck me as a non-sequitur of a comment, I was probably asleep when Israel started trying to kick of WW3, I was stuck in yesterday when Iran was photoshopping missile tests. Want to make a point start your own thread.

This thread is about creationists motivated by creationists.

And yes I think that an ironic response to this being called a bait and switch because of fascist zionists is fine.

[financeguy]

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

Want to make a point start your own thread.

Nah, I'm happy enough in this one. If you're going to go on for months and months plucking stories from the internet about alleged wrongs done by Muslims, but never, ever, post a single story that puts Israel in a bad light (of which there are many) then, yep, it's relevant for me to express a differing point of view. It's relevant and apposite to point out your apparent double standard in that regard in this thread.

[A_Wanderer]

You are biased, I am far more anti-Christian

I searched my thread lists

Thread after thread...

Those Muslims Must Be As Backwards As Americans
'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter'
Moon Water
Roman Popery Comes To Oz - anti-Catholic! I oppose 150 million in taxpayer money to fund world youth day
Beware The Gypsy Menace
Israel Wipes Out Saudi Arabia, Iran... - Israeli company claims to have breakthrough in solar technology, implied how such a development would impact oil economies
I would probably have ended up expelled... - Story about kids being given detention over having to do the call to prayer, I maintain it is an issue of secularism, I would have just as much issue with any religious recitation being forced upon children.
HOW DO YOU CHOOSE LIFE!!! - a question of ethic
How to Put the Heat on Mugabe - a neocon article on dealing with Robert Mugabe
It's A Special Birthday - 150th Anniversary of Evolution
Can Not Voting Be Principled?
Administration Shapes Headlines
Trinity Church: The Gift That Keeps Giving - More horrors from a Christian religious institution
Viking DNA
The Regulatory State
Fkuc Dignity - Pinker article opposed to religious influence on
Illegal Research in the UK - A story about a Muslim student detained because he was researching Al Qaeda for his degree, I support academic freedom
As We Might Be?
10 Books That Screwed Up the World
Special Protection for a Religion - A kid gets detained for calling scientology a cult, I oppose such special protections, I made the slippery slope argument when it's Muslims pushing and I maintain opposition when other groups do.
Positive Sexism
Would You Love This Rapist?
At Least They Weren't Shot
Albert Hoffman Dead
Government Protects Virtue
Holy War Not Good For Faith - Young Iraqis turning away from faith because of the violence.
Why Is Gay Marriage Wrong?
Goodbye Freewill, Goodbye Christianity? - Experiments about a neural determinism may make free will irrelevent, scientific tests of theological principles.
Mandatory Niceness - Ezra Levant is dragged before a human rights tribunal in Canada for publishing Mohammed cartoons, I also have posted threads against anti-Holocaust denial laws and have supported free speech for fascists.
Biological Predisposition To Faith?
A Theocrat In The Illinois House State Government Administration Committee - A Christian who rallies against atheists not being real citizens and anti-atheist bigotry.
Faith School In America With Taxpayer Money? - An Islamic college recieving taxpayer money, seems to go against secular governance.
King Abdullah Embraces Inter-Faith Project - An outreach program by Saudi King to Jews and Christians for a united front, against atheism.
Freedom of Speech Not a Universal Human Right - Arab league pushed resolution that makes the UN Human Rights Council a body to investigate hate speech, human rights watch also condemned it. I maintained that at least they cant enforce it.
Generating Bad Intelligence
Religion is Good For You - OMG I entertain the possibility that being religious could have fringe benefits for your health and mental wellbeing.
Why Feminism Harms Women
Ignorance In Education Leads To Stupid Sex
Better Than An ASBO
Fight Islamophobia - Lock Up Unbelievers!- OIC tells western nations to have blasphemy laws
When Does It Become A State Sponser of Terrorism? - Saudi Arabia threatened to loosen its actions against terrorism unless the BAE investigation was dropped
Chalk This Up On The Dating Checklist
More Anti-Freedom Religious Leadership - Archbishop of Canterbury wants blasphemy laws, this was before the Sharia comments.
Avoiding Bad Thinking
American Sponsored Theocracy - Criticism of Afghanistan and American backing for a state that enforces blasphemy laws
Breast Thread
Gay Jesus Play Offensive - Who Knew? - Christians acting like wankers over provocative play
Fascist Provokes Fascists - Freedom of Expression at Risk - Geert Wilders anti-Islam video about to be aired.
Happy New Year Australia
Infidel Insults Islam, Gets Arrested - British schoolteacher in Sudan names teddy bear Mohammed, suffers consequences.
Overblown AIDS Figures
Hot New Craze: Bike Sex
Why There Are No Homosexuals In Iran - Execution of gays thread, I referenced mainstream conservative Christian attitudes in the initial post.
Sane Abortion Article To Start Insane Thread
Black people 'less intelligent' scientist claims
It's A Terrorist Party - Bali Bombers given positive incentives to cooperate
Who Does This Discredit? - Bush White House abused information for political gain
Stupidity is International - Creationism in UK schools
Insignificant Minority Wields Influence - Half of UK mosques under sway of fundamentalist elements
Albanian Dwarf Cult Peons Allegedly Abandon Poor Woman - One of Teresa's miracles left abandoned
Three Body Problem Wipes Out Dinosaurs
Australians Loosing Even More Freedom
Organic Food and Global Warming
Illegal Speech - Opposed locking up Muslim protestors for defending their prophet
Observable Natural Selection
Flight of Fancy
Creationism isn't Right
Kevorkian Released
Legal Discrimination
Trusty Ally
Enviro-Scam
Medicate To Normalcy?
Welcome To The (Gender Equal) Working Week
Stickers for Porn Sites
Make a Lot of Money on GW
Taliban Pick Wrong Target - Taliban attacked tranny minstrels and suffered the consequences
Iraq: A Place of Ambivalence
Moral Authority - More MoToon action
The Law of the Land
Evil?
A Diplomatic Victory
It's Good To Run the Weather
First Atheist in US Congress
Space Exploration and Climate Change
Essence of Truthiness
More Respect
The Bush Doctrine at Work
Meaning?
Things The Government Needs To Do
I Will Violate International Law in the Future - lots of states in the UN wanted to make defamation of religion a crime, I think it is a violation of my irreligious liberties and free speech rights.
Internet 2.0
The Truth in Free Speech - Nutbar in Sydney saying that we must all submit to the Caliphate, I make the point that I appreciate having them ranting, it's better for it to be in the open and why he shouldn't be prosecuted.
HDTV Drawback
What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way
Failed Faith Based Initiative Would Have Hurt Mothers and Kids - Opposed to a Christian backed faith based initiative.
Imagine if it was a terror financing probe... - Saudi leaning on UK government over BAE deal
Taking a Stand - Cleric resisting calls to violence
The Demographic Revolutions
You Got Your Church In My State (And Theres Nothing To Be Done) - Catholic hospitals can't refer women to rape centers that supply morning after pills, they get state support here, I have a problem with that.
Political Interference In Science
Sandy Berger's Has A Surprise In His Pants
Save The Environment - Build A Skyscraper
Environazi
Constraints on Reality
Virtuous Religious Leaders - Clerics in Mogadishu institute beheading policy for those that don't pray five times a day
Panspermia
Bad To Worse
Christians, Muslims and Jews Together; The Perfect Storm - A speech about how Secular Fundamentalists are the greatest threat to people, why secularism must be crushed, part of my equal opportunity bigotry
Islamic Progress - Congratulating a fatwa that unequivocally rejects female genital mutilation
If at first you don't succeed - Change the freaking law.
Derivation of Morality
Patriot Act Developments
Effectiveness of Gun Control?
South Park Slams 9/11 Truthers
Supporting Free Speech Is Only for Fervent Rightwingers
What Happens To Islamic Enlightenment? - Cleric promoting separation of church and state in Iran arrested.
Terrorism Victory - German opera closed for depicting Mohammed
On The Appeal of Islam - The way that masculine attitudes inform religious choice, how a religious identity can be built up.
More Jewish Plotting- Sudan accuses zionists of controlling UN
Some Good News
Is Free Speech a Prerequisite for EU Membership? - Turkeys EU membership and the prohibitions on mentioning the Armenian genocide, nothing to do with Islam
A Joke
Carbon Trading Effectiveness?
Intolerant for Tolerance
Root Cause for German Terror Plot Found - MoToons drove train bomb plot, excuses, excuses
I Guess Thats Why It Is Called A Miracle - Idiot priest dies trying to walk on water
Fox Watching The Chicken Coop?
Gay Coercion?
The non-Religious Right
Ambulance Bombing Hoax
I Hate Computer (Models)
Ruining The Fun - Conservatives trying to ban porn in America
Religion > Sexuality - Investigation into gay rights group for publishing a hateful statement attributing religion with homophobia
Terrorists Win - A story about animal rights terrorists threatening a scientist
Root Cause? - German bomb plot, linked to Afghan involvement

That goes all the way back to August 2006, I have more of a problem with secular states enforcing hate speech laws than I do Muslims pushing for them and I maintain that they divide communities. There are a few threads praising progressive Muslims and there are at least as many blasting Christian interference with government.

I think that you have a selective memory, I have produced a good 2 year list of threads that show I am more pro-secular and pro-free speech than anti-Islam. I think that religion is a major problem in the Israel-Palestine conflict, I don't support the settler movement or a single cent of taxpayer money going towards such groups. I think that a two state solution is ideal, I don't think that is possible with religious leadership on either side.

[A_Wanderer]

150 threads about 30 of them in regards to Islam in one way or another over the course of two years, thread after thread indeed.

I have no obligation to give equal time to bashing Israel, the supposed double standard is my preference for liberal democracy.

That state has a right to exist, not a right over Gaza and the West Bank, other than that it is inconsequential. It may cease to exist tomorrow and there would still be innumerable grievances for the faithful to grasp onto.

[A_Wanderer]

And another round of zionist slight of hand

On 4 October 2007 the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly passed Resolution 1580, which issued a stark warning: creationism, the denial of Darwinian evolution, is on the rise in Europe. The resolution focused on the way that creationists across the continent, using the model pioneered in America, have been targeting education, and warned of “a real risk of serious confusion being introduced into our children’s minds between what has to do with convictions, beliefs, ideals of all sorts and what has to do with science”. “An ‘all things are equal’ attitude,” it concludes, “may seem appealing and tolerant, but is in fact dangerous.”

The resolution urged member states to “defend and promote scientific knowledge” and “firmly oppose the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline on an equal footing with the theory of evolution.” But what provoked this European body to issue such an uncharacteristically clear and forthright statement?
The resolution was based on a comprehensive report prepared by the Committee on Culture, Science and Education and delivered to the Assembly by the special rapporteur Guy Lengage on 5 June 2007. This report synthesised research from across the EU citing examples of the rise of creationism in 14 member states, as well as significant non-members Russia, Serbia and Turkey. Examples cited of a growing creationist influence ranged from subtle downgrading of evolution in science education to outright attacks on the validity of Darwinism and the personality of Darwin himself. In Greece, the report found, evolution education was relegated to the very bottom of the science curriculum, which often meant in effect that secondary students learnt nothing about it because of a lack of time. In Switzerland organisations like The European Biblical Centre and the ProGenesis group were devoting considerable resources to promoting creationist education. In Russia a 16-year-old girl launched a court case against the Ministry of Education, backed by the Russian Orthodox Church, challenging the teaching of just one “theory” of biology in school textbooks as a breach of her human rights. In the UK in 2006 the Intelligent Design propagandists Truth in Science sent out a “teaching pack” to every secondary school and sixth-form college in the country.
One of the more bizarre cases cited by the report comes from Poland, where in October 2006 deputy minister of education Miroslaw Orzechowski told the Gazetta Wyborccza that “The theory of evolution is a lie, an error that we have legalised as a common truth.” He further argued that evolution is the “feeble idea of an aged non-believer” and put this error down to the fact that Darwin was “a vegetarian and lacked fire inside him”.

Each of these cases confirms the existence of a strong Christian creationist lobby in Europe, but the report also focused its attention on a new phenomenon – the rise of Muslim creationism. The central figure here is the Turkish Muslim creationist Adnan Oktar, who, writing under the pen name Harun Yahya, has made a career out of attacking Darwinian evolution. Oktar is a figure fairly well known to Darwinists and despite his claims to scientific competence is clearly little more than a crank. However what had changed, according to the report, was the scale and ambition of Oktar’s pseudo-scientific message. Since 2006 copies of a substantial, glossy and smartly packaged book called Atlas of Creation, credited to Harun Yahya, had been arriving at schools and universities across Europe. In Spain, France, Switzerland and Denmark clear evidence of the growing resources and confidence of European Muslim creationism was thudding on to the mat. The book is the first of a projected seven-part series, and parts two and three have already begun arriving at educational institutes Europe-wide.
Clearly, for the assembly, the report amounted to strong evidence that creationists were working strategically across Europe, with the aim of influencing the science curriculum as well as public opinion. Though it does not say so explicitly the implication of the report is that creationists of different denominations and faiths are, or might soon be, working together in a concerted assault on science teaching, in the same way that American creationists have been for the past decade. In response to the call for action from the Assembly, only the Swedish government acted promptly, swiftly issuing a general ban on the teaching of creationism and Intelligent Design in their schools.

...

One thing is clear: creationism has indeed come to Europe and unfortunately, therefore, we have to take it seriously. We can’t afford to be complacent, or imagine that creationism is just a bizarre and distant American phenomenon. Just as manipulative as the worst of American creationists, European creationists are hard at work and some of them have a lot of money (Oktar also sent his book to many universities in the US). What we have seen so far is just the beginning.
As the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species coincide in 2009, those of us who support science have an excellent opportunity to reclaim the agenda. To be successful we need interdisciplinary collaboration, across all branches of science and the humanities. The issue at stake is not just a question of ideologically motivated attacks on the theory of evolution. At the very heart of the debate lies the question of the standing of academic knowledge in society. We need to take this seriously, both in the humanities and in the sciences. Now more than ever it is time to bridge the gap and together stop the nonsense.

Western front | New Humanist

[financeguy]

....and some more news about the latest actions of those wonderful Zionist 'settlers' (i.e., land thieves to put it in plain, non-PC English)

06 July 2008: Haaretz Report: Israeli settlers tie Palestinian man to pole and beat him in South Hebron Hills | At-Tuwani Online! التواني

Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondent

A group of West Bank settlers on Saturday beat a 31-year-old Palestinian man in the southern Hebron Hills, after having tied him to a telephone pole.

Left-wing activists later videoed a settler kicking Madahat Abu-Kirash, the victim, as he remained tied up and was surrounded by Israeli security forces. The soldiers subsequently removed the settler from the scene.

Hebron police opened an investigation into the incident after Abu-Kirash submitted a complaint, claiming that he had been beaten all over his body.

According to the left-wing organization Ta’ayush, whose members were close to the scene of the assault and witnessed part of it, the incident began when residents of the settlement of Asael accused Abu-Kirash of setting a field alight a few hundred meters away from their homes.

Abu-Kirash, a teacher, told the settlers in response that he had come to perform agricultural work on land he owns. He denied any connection to the fire.

Ta’ayush members said that the Palestinian’s explanation was of no avail, and the settlers proceeded to forcibly take him to the bounds of the settlement, where they tied him up and beat him.

[financeguy]

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

I have no obligation to give equal time to bashing Israel, the supposed double standard is my preference for liberal democracy.

Israel a liberal democracy???

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

It may cease to exist tomorrow and there would still be innumerable grievances for the faithful to grasp onto.

This looks like an unintentionally revealing comment.

Is it your view that Muslims make up invented grievances, and does that imply that all Muslim grievances are made up, and we needn't trouble ourselves with them?

[A_Wanderer]

Originally Posted by financeguy

Israel a liberal democracy???

Are you saying that the occupied territories are part of Israel? Democratically elected government, universal suffrage and free press.

This looks like an unintentionally revealing comment.

Is it your view that Muslims make up invented grievances, and does that imply that all Muslim grievances are made up, and we needn't trouble ourselves with them?

The implication is that Israel has nothing to do with the plight of Pashtuns, that Israel occupying Gaza had nothing to do with bombs going off in Bali and that 7 million Jews on the Mediterranean are not the root cause for the situation of 1.2 billion Muslims.

[A_Wanderer]

More interfaith stupidity

Materialism is the philosophy that argues that matter is all there is. It denies the existence of all spiritual entities, and, of course, God. According to a materialist, the universe is not created by God; it is self-existent. He, therefore, assumes that everything in the universe, including the life within it, is the product of blind, purposeless forces of physics and chemistry. Materialism denies the existence of the human soul, too. According to this view, we are nothing but highly organized molecules, and our ideas, feelings, and emotions are simply chemical reactions inside our brain cells. In short, materialism is the philosophical underpinning of atheism.

Since its beginning, Islam has carried on an intellectual war against materialism. The Qur’an emphasizes the irrationality of men’s denial of God: [How do you deny God when you were dead and He gave you life? Again He will cause you to die and again bring you to life, then you shall be brought back to Him] (2:28).

Yet the sharpest encounter between Islam and materialism occurred when medieval Muslims read the works of the philosophers of ancient Greece and translated them into Arabic. Some of those ancient Greeks were materialists. They argued that the universe had no beginning, that it existed from eternity. This idea seemed attractive to some Muslims of the time. That is why Imam Ghazali, the Muslim equivalent of Thomas Aquinas, wrote extensively against “the philosophers” and their materialism, especially in his monumental work The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Ghazali insisted that the universe was created ex nihilo (from nothingness) and this was evidence for the divine. It is interesting to note that Ghazali’s thesis was confirmed in the 20th century with the commonly accepted big bang theory, which implies a beginning for the material universe.

Ghazali’s powerful authority expelled materialism from Muslim minds for a long time, but it reappeared in the 19th century. Europe of that time was flooded with materialist theories from thinkers like Marx, Darwin, Comte, Durkheim, and Freud. The Westernized intellectuals of Islamic lands, especially of the late Ottoman Empire, were influenced by these theories and became voluntary tools in transferring them to their societies. Atheists or agnostics like Abdullah Cevdet or Suphi Ethem, quoted the works of Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel to argue that man is a mere animal. Muslim thinkers countered their arguments. Ismail Fenni Ertugrul, for example, in his book The Collapse of the School of Materialism argued that the universe is not a self-existing entity as the materialists claim; it was created by God. Ertugrul also explained that the universe and life within it are designed by God and they tell us about His infinite might and knowledge.

...


Intellectual Muslims, fed up with the pathological anti-Western hatred of the radicals who defame Islam by their violent acts, are seeking the right way to express and stand for their faith and identity in the modern world.

Intellectual Christians have already found that way. They encountered materialism before we did, because it grew right in the heart of Christendom. They have been standing against it for several decades. And recently they have initiated a bold movement—a “wedge” as they call it—to split the foundations of materialism.

This “wedge” is the code name for the Intelligent Design Movement, formed in the early 1990s by Christian scientists and intellectuals. The leader of the movement is Phillip E. Johnson, a prominent professor of law from the University of California, Berkeley. During a sabbatical year in London in 1987, Dr. Johnson read about Darwinism and noticed that Darwinian ideologues like Richard Dawkins use deceptive arguments to sell their unsubstantiated story. He decided to dedicate the rest of life to unravel this sophisticated fallacy. His first book, Darwin on Trial (1991), annoyed the Darwinist establishment terribly, but it was just a beginning. In the following years, serious scientists like Michael Behe from Lehigh University, William Dembski from Baylor University, and Paul Nelson from the University of Chicago joined the ranks of the movement.

Today the movement, headed by the Discovery Institute in Seattle and the Intelligent Design Network in Kansas, is leading a great battle first to free school textbooks and then the whole of society from the Darwinist dogma and the materialist philosophy it supports.

Intelligent Design (ID) is a term that implies creation. The universe and life are not products of blind forces of nature, ID holds, but show evidence that they were designed by an intelligence. The ID Movement has deliberately chosen not to specify the identity of the Designer. Through science you can demonstrate convincingly that there is a designer, but you can’t go further without invoking theology. Everybody has the right to believe in a Designer according his own theology. What makes the movement effective is its emphasis on solid scientific evidence.

This non-theological nature of the ID Movement also makes it inter-religious. Whether you are a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, or any other kind of theist, you can identify with the movement. This movement defines the particular paradigm of science we would like to have, and it is science that defines society in the long run.

Muslims should also note the great similarity between the arguments of the Intelligent Design Movement and Islamic sources. Hundreds of verses in the Qur’an call people to examine the natural world and see in it the evidence of God. Great Islamic scholars like Ghazali wrote large volumes about design in animals, plants, and the human body. What Intelligent Design theorists like Behe or Dembski do today is to refine the same argument with the findings of modern science.

In short, Intelligent Design is not alien to Islam. It is very much our cause, and we should do everything we can to support it.

IslamOnline - Contemporary Section

[financeguy]

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

Are you saying that the occupied territories are part of Israel? Democratically elected government, universal suffrage and free press.The implication is that Israel has nothing to do with the plight of Pashtuns, that Israel occupying Gaza had nothing to do with bombs going off in Bali and that 7 million Jews on the Mediterranean are not the root cause for the situation of 1.2 billion Muslims.

The Israeli state may be a nominal democracy but it is also one of the most openly racist and segregated in the world.

If I understand it correctly, any Jew who can prove they are ethnically Jewish (not necessarily religious, they can even be atheist) can emigrate to Israel and receive benefits immediately, whereas Arabs who were forced out when Israel was founded are not even allowed the right of return. The extremist Israel supporters in America are now busy cajoling America to fight Iran for them like they fought Iraq. Hopefully, they will not succeed.

The vast majority of Americans polled said that they are against war with Iran and a majority of American Jews were against the Iraq war. Are they antisemitic or anti-American also?