Islamic Scientific Creationism and its Christian Allies

Even though they are using arguments that ICR has developed and passed on to them, Islamic creationists usually adapt ICR’s arguments to fit their view of Islam or construct their own arguments to meet their own objectives for defeating evolution. So the Islamic creationism of BAV is not merely a carbon copy of ICR’s creationism; it has its own style and format.

Part of the difference between ICR’s and BAV’s versions of creationism relate to their different scriptural bases. The flexible and interpretable text in the Qur’an allows BAV to avoid the issue of the date of creation. In contrast to some of the ICR’s positions, BAV asserts that the Qur’an does not give any date for creation and that the Flood may have been a local, rather than a worldwide, event.

Here are some examples of the basic ideas defended in Harun Yahya’s books, which were also featured in the nationwide conferences (Harun Yahya 1997, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c). There are several points of departure from the creation model commonly promoted by the ICR.

1) Earth and life on earth were created by Allah all at once. There is no evolutionary process. No species has ever evolved into another species. Life was probably created on earth during the Cambrian Explosion.
2) The Qur’an is the best of the religious scriptures, so it does not make mistakes as do the other sacred books, such as estimating the earth’s age as 10 000 years or asserting the occurrence of a worldwide Flood. The Qur’an is the ultimate scientific truth. Nothing can contradict the Qur’an.
3) Matter is an illusion of the mind. In truth, only mind exists; matter does not! The outside world is the illusion of the mind, and mind transforms and determines the reality. (However, they try to use data obtained from that illusory world to prove that evolutionists are making mistakes!)
4) Evolution is the greatest hoax of all centuries. All the scientific data collected during the last 150 years disprove evolution. All the scientific data prove that, from DNA to organisms, everything has a design and purpose, and that everything was created all at once. Science has proved that Allah exists and created the life on earth.
5) Darwinists’ or evolutionists’ tendency to defend evolution is ideological, rather than scientific. They probably defend it because of their communist, materialist, Satanist, or racist ideologies. People who defend evolution are mentally ill, because they continue to defend it against all scientific evidence.
6) Humans are created in the image of Allah, so we cannot have evolved from apes, which are subhuman animals. Science has not found a single clue that apes are relatives of Homo sapiens.
7) Modern secular systems are the traps and deceits of Satan. (They are not against science, they say, but they oppose secular modern science and its cooperation with Satan. They propose the way of the Qur’an and Sharia as the ultimate and ideal way. Their understanding and definition of science are very obscure, especially since they deny that matter exists!)
Evolution is not a fact, because it is not reported in the Qur’an. (When they do not have information or evidence to explain a phenomenon, they cite some surah of the Qur’an and refer to the Qur’an as a scientific source. When they oppose theistic evolutionists, they claim that Allah could have created evolution, if he had wanted to, but since this is not reported in the Qur’an, it cannot be a fact.)