George Gilder Lurks, I can Assure You

Meet Harun Yahya, the leading creationist in the Muslim world. – By Steve Paulson – Slate Magazine — This sort of thing never ends.

The great mystery is where Yahya’s Science Research Foundation gets its money. No one knows, though speculation runs from Saudi donors to wealthy Turks whose children have joined the secretive group. Whoever funds it, the organization seems to have the kind of wealth and influence that Christian creationists can only dream of. Yahya’s teachings aren’t confined to a religious subculture in Turkey. They’re part of the mainstream.

Creationist stories are now popping up in Turkish high-school science textbooks, and some government officials in the AKP, the ruling Islamic party, freely criticize evolution. In Ankara, the government’s point man on religious issues, Mehmet Gormez, told me, “All the holy texts say human beings are created by God. I think evolutionary theory is not scientific, but ideological.”

The Quran doesn’t have a detailed origins story like the six days of creation found in Genesis, but it does say Adam was created out of clay in a heavenly paradise and later banished to earth, along with Eve. Various polls show that many Muslim countries are predominantly creationist, but Turkey has recently emerged as a hub of global opposition to evolution.