Islamic Creationist Sentenced: Adnan Oktar AKA Harun Yahya Gets Three Years
Leading Islamic Creationist Adnan Oktar, also known as Harun Yahya, has been sentenced to three years in prison. The author of the Atlas of Creation was convicted of charges that sound very much like the equivalent of racketeering under American law. With this latest distinction, art school dropout Oktar joins other noted Creationists in achieving a criminal record. Perhaps he and Kent Hovind can start a pen pal relationship and swap tips on how to keep their cell mates happy.
Turkish Islamic author given 3-year jail sentenceThe National Center for Science Education has also released a brief article about this on its website.
Controversial Turkish Islamic author Adnan Oktar was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday for creating an illegal organization for personal gain, state-run Anatolian news agency said...
In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case...
Oktar, born in 1956, is the driving force behind a richly funded movement based in Turkey that champions creationism, the belief that God literally created the world in six days as told in the Bible and the Koran.
Istanbul-based Oktar, who writes under the pen name Harun Yahya, has created waves in the past few years by sending out thousands of unsolicited texts advocating Islamic creationism to schools in several European countries...
Oktar's teachings echo those of Christian fundamentalists in the United States. He has publicly denounced Darwinism and Freemasonry in high-profile attacks...
...He has a wide following in the Muslim world...
Of course, the sentencing of Harun Yahya doesn't put a dent in the Islamic Creationist movement anymore than the sentencing of Kent Hovind did for Christian Creationism. Anti-science ideology is a strong component of fundamentalism bred of any religion because new knowledge by definition calls into question old stories made up as covers for ignorance and so defies the principle of scriptural inerrancy that lies at the heart of all fundamentalisms. For instance, a meeting of "Islamic scientists" in Doha recently declared that there was empirical proof that Mecca is the center of the world and is in "perfect alignment" with the magnetic north pole.
Despite our being in the 21st century, it's sometimes easy to forget that it isn't the 12th anymore.
