A growing number of Muslims seem to accept the idea of a very old planet but reject human evolution, international academics said at a recent conference. From the New York Times:
For many Muslims, even evolution and the notion that life flourished without the intervening hand of Allah is largely compatible with their religion. What many find unacceptable is human evolution, the idea that humans evolved from primitive primates. The Koran states that Allah created Adam, the first man, separately out of clay.
Pervez A. Hoodbhoy, a prominent atomic physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan, said that when he gave lectures covering the sweep of cosmological history from the Big Bang to the evolution of life on Earth, the audience listened without objection to most of it. “Everything is O.K. until the apes stand up,” Dr. Hoodbhoy said.
Mentioning human evolution led to near riots, and he had to be escorted out. “That’s the one thing that will never be possible to bridge,” he said. “Your lineage is what determines your worth.”
Biology education, even in places like Pakistan that otherwise teach evolution, largely omits the question of where humans came from. More:
In Time, Camille Agon on Jabbar the Powerful’s global mission
Like other kids the world over, Middle Eastern children have long fantasized about superheroes battling injustice in American cities or fighting beasts in Japan. Five years ago, they got some champions of their own to cheer on when Kuwait-born businessman Naif Al-Mutawa created a new breed of superheroes endowed with Muslim traits and virtues. Now Mutawa is on an even greater mission: taking those same Islamic characters around the world.
The 99, a comic-book series based on characters that each personify one of the 99 qualities that the Koran attributes to God, met early resistance in places like Saudi Arabia. Local authorities worried that the series might mock Islam. But after Mutawa guaranteed that he would remain respectful of religion and won backing from a major Islamic bank, the series took off around the Gulf. Initially given away for free with Arabic versions of Marvel comics (the license for which Mutawa owns in the region), The 99 is now a stand-alone success, with some 500,000 copies given away and sold across the region in the past two years.
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Right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders wanted to provoke an international scandal with his anti-Islam film “Fitna.” He succeeded. Here he talks to SPIEGEL about his crusade against Islam.
SPIEGEL: Last Thursday, you released a long-awaited film that rails against the Koran. Heads of government across the EU are already discussing it and in Afghanistan Dutch flags are going up in flames. Have you achieved your goal: to provoke?
Wilders: The political elite has demonstrated with astonishing clarity that it learned nothing from the debate over the Muhammad cartoons. It bows to the Islamists. For example, our government has developed evacuation plans for our diplomatic missions abroad. That’s just an invitation to militant Muslims.
SPIEGEL: You invoke the right to freedom of opinion but you demand a prohibition of the Koran. Does that not contravene the principle of religious tolerance?
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[Pic: In Karachi, a Wilders effigy is burned by angry crowds. DPA]
In the American Enterprise Institute, author of Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says Fitna is an embarrassment to the Dutch Cabinet
The central thesis of Fitna is: the Koran commands Muslims to spread their faith throughout the entire world, by means of jihad and indoctrination. To show that some Muslims take these edicts literally, viewers are shown images of terror attacks in New York and Madrid. In the movie, you hear excerpts of sermons filled with hatred and Muslim crowds that cheer on the preachers.
In one scene, a girl of three is taught by rote that the Koran reveals that Jews are pigs and monkeys. At the end of the movie, suddenly one hears the sound of a page being ripped from a book followed by a message that this is a page from a telephone book, not the Qur’an, and that it is up to Muslims to deal with the intolerance in their Holy Book.
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