Clay Burell's personal annotations on this page
Cburell bookmarked
on 2009-11-08
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And of course, no article on Islamic creationism is complete without a mention of Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya. The New York Times even points out, worryingly, that "most of the biology teachers in Indonesia use Mr Yahya's creationist books in their classrooms". While the Boston Globe does point out that Oktar is "easy to lampoon", and does mention the fact that he is currently appealing a conviction in Turkey for running a criminal organisation, both newspapers do seem to present Oktar as someone serious about his creationism, someone who even writes his own books on the subject, as would befit a man with such apparent influence around the world. But, as we know from the major expose of Oktar we ran in our September issue, the creationism is little more than a sideshow. As a former member of Oktar's organisation told us:“There is a group of followers who are commissioned to write the books. For every book, they will take a few key sources written by Christian creationist authors, mostly from the US. They plagiarise the chapters and paragraphs that agree with their creationist approach. Then they add the photos, a few ayat from the Koran, and sometimes a bit of a commentary. None of the ideas belong to Oktar.”
This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 08 Nov 2009, by Clay Burell.
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And of course, no article on Islamic creationism is complete without a mention of Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya. The New York Times even points out, worryingly, that "most of the biology teachers in Indonesia use Mr Yahya's creationist books in their classrooms". While the Boston Globe does point out that Oktar is "easy to lampoon", and does mention the fact that he is currently appealing a conviction in Turkey for running a criminal organisation, both newspapers do seem to present Oktar as someone serious about his creationism, someone who even writes his own books on the subject, as would befit a man with such apparent influence around the world. But, as we know from the major expose of Oktar we ran in our September issue, the creationism is little more than a sideshow. As a former member of Oktar's organisation told us:“There is a group of followers who are commissioned to write the books. For every book, they will take a few key sources written by Christian creationist authors, mostly from the US. They plagiarise the chapters and paragraphs that agree with their creationist approach. Then they add the photos, a few ayat from the Koran, and sometimes a bit of a commentary. None of the ideas belong to Oktar.”
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