Interview of Harun Yahya

Harun Yahya is the pen name of Adnan Oktar, who is one of today's most prominent and widely read Turkish intellectuals. Not only has he taken a strong stand against materialism and Darwinism, but he has also been subjected to false psychiatric imprisonment because of his forceful advocacy both for social reform recognizing Turkey's Islamic spiritual heritage and also for political reform rejecting any role for the sorts of conspiracy that has played far too much of a role in modern Turkish and late Ottoman governance.

In the Turkish context such conspiracies are often called Masonic whereas Eastern European and Russian historians in comparable political situations might refer to radical or revolutionary conspiracy. US political scientists and historians prefer not to discuss conspiracy in the context of American history and politics, but the Israel lobby as described in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt is nothing but a vast political conspiracy of the sort often discussed in Eastern European historiography.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. ADNAN OKTAR BY AL JAZEERA TV (Istanbul - August 6, 2007)

On March 3, prominent Turkish neurosurgeon Oktar Babuna acting on behalf of Harun Yahya at the Pontifical Gregorian University International Conference on "Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories" was prevented from challenging the Vatican's 1996 acceptance of the Theory of Evolution.

Harun Yahya has kindly offered to be interviewed on this blog with regard to Darwinism and related issues. To the first approximation Harun Yahya's concerns are somewhat off-topic for this blog, but because Zionist ideology incorporates a lot of 19th century social Darwinist, biological determinist, and racist concepts, it is worthwhile to look critically at the ideas, which Harun Yahya confronts.

Here are my questions in red. Each question is preceded by context contained within square brackets.

[Context: Darwin's theory was a starting point for the modern scientific thinking about biological diversity. Darwin had no understanding of genetics and tended toward a Lamarckian view of inheritance. Evolutionary biology incorporates modern genetic theory. Evolutionary Psychology is an attempt to apply evolutionary ideas to social groups without the distortions and judgments of Social Darwinism.]

1. Is the criticism of Darwinism meant to refer specifically to:

• Darwin's theory as presented in The Origin of the Species,
• Social Darwinism, which is an inappropriate application of Darwin's ideas to social outcomes,
  
• the Theory of Modern Evolution or the field of Evolutionary Biology, which includes among other subjects microevolution and macroevolution,
  
• Evolutionary Psychology, which attempts to explain mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection, or
  
• any evolutionary ideas applied to humans and to human society?
  

[Context: E. O. Wilson argues Sociobiology that altruism can evolve biologically. It seems to place a limit on God's power to assert that God could not create a universe in which spirit or consciousness could evolve. Philip Roth wrote a short story entitled The Conversion of the Jews, which addresses a false theology that improperly places limits on God.]

2. Is God incapable of creating a world in which the Theory of Modern Evolution is a valid approximate description of the means by which biological diversity originates?

[Context: As I understand Modern Turkish history, in creating the modern Turkish Republic, Atatürk and his associates, did not intend to oppose Islam but were rather convinced that Ottomanism had produced a society

• that had failed in a Social Darwinian sense and
• that was burdened by an un-Islamic Byzantine heritage.

In their desperation to create a modern defensible state that could stand up to European aggression, the original Kemalists cut off modern Turkey both from both its Balkan European/Byzantine heritage and also from its Arabic religious heritage.

As a truly disinterested observer I have the impression

(a) that both the heirs of Kemalism and also today's opponents of Kemalism either no longer remember or understand the original conflict between Kemalism and Ottomanism and

(b) that this amnesia or incomprehension is beginning to cause serious damage to the Turkish political system.]

3. Is the Justice and Development Party (Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AK Parti, or AKP) attempting

• to restore Ottomanism,
• to create a Salafist Islamic State from first principles,
• to build a modern Turkish state in which Islam plays a role comparable to that of Christianity in Europe and N. America or
• to establish some other sort of system?

[In their quest to improve Turkey's geopolitqical situation, secular/Kemalist Turkish parties of the right and left often sought alliance with the Israel Lobby, which can be viewed as a quasi-Masonic conspiracy although its origins lie in the collapse of Commonwealth Poland in the 17th century and not in Freemasonry. The quid pro quo included Turkish recognition of the State of Israel along with military alliance in exchange for political support on Greek- or Armenian-related issues. The deal has begun to fall apart

a) because a segment of the Israel Lobby has begun to use the Armenian issue as part of an effort to scare-monger a false Islamophobic consensus on the Question of Palestine,

b) because disastrous Bushite/Zionist foreign policy decisions have tremendously altered Turkey's geopolitical situation, and

c) because Prime Minister Erdoğan was unable to remain silent during the recent IDF rampage through Gaza.]

4. Does continued Turkish-Israel military alliance make any sense on any basis?

[Context: We do not have a sane discussion of genocide in the USA. Not only are ethnic Ashkenazi Americans, who try to act as the guardians of US genocide discourse in order to control it, at least as much genocide deniers as Turks, but a segment of the organized Jewish community is also trying to use the Armenian genocide and a very selective reading of Ottoman or Turkish history as part of a program to control genocide discourse and to incite Islamophobia.

Under Turkish Rule points to an example of this sort of biased and hate-filled writing from Andrew Bostom.

The Turks are justifiably sensitive to prejudice against Islam and the Ottoman Empire, whose intellectual and political achievements rendered the word Turkish synonymous with Muslim from the 15th until the beginning of the 20th century.

Throughout the 19th century demonization of Islam and the Ottomans justified mass murder and expulsion of Balkan Muslims while during the same time period similar outrages accompanied Russian expansion into Muslim areas of the Caucasus. The victims of Russian genocidalism generally sought and were granted refuge within the Ottoman Empire.

Tel Aviv Uiversity Professor Ehud Toledano remarks in Slavery and Abolition that scholars have generally used terms like forced migration to minimize the crimes of Czarist expansionism.]

5. Will Turks be able to engage in a rational discussion about genocide before Americans and other Westerners show even-handedness through some sort of acknowledgment of the genocide and ethnic cleansing

• of Balkan Muslim populations as the Ottoman Empire retreated and
• of Caucasian Muslims as the Russian Empire expanded?

(Note that Harvard has occasionally exhibited early 20th century Balkan anti-Muslim postcards celebrating the ethnic cleansing or genocide of local Muslims populations.)

[Context: Islamophobes have opened many fronts in their war against Muslims and Islam. One favorite attack focuses on Sura 4:34.

سُوۡرَةُ النِّسَاء

ٱلرِّجَالُ قَوَّٲمُونَ عَلَى ٱلنِّسَآءِ بِمَا فَضَّلَ ٱللَّهُ بَعۡضَهُمۡ عَلَىٰ بَعۡضٍ۬ وَبِمَآ أَنفَقُواْ مِنۡ أَمۡوَٲلِهِمۡ‌ۚ فَٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتُ قَـٰنِتَـٰتٌ حَـٰفِظَـٰتٌ۬ لِّلۡغَيۡبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ ٱللَّهُ‌ۚ وَٱلَّـٰتِى تَخَافُونَ نُشُوزَهُنَّ فَعِظُوهُنَّ وَٱهۡجُرُوهُنَّ فِى ٱلۡمَضَاجِعِ وَٱضۡرِبُوهُنَّ‌ۖ فَإِنۡ أَطَعۡنَڪُمۡ فَلَا تَبۡغُواْ عَلَيۡہِنَّ سَبِيلاً‌ۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيًّ۬ا ڪَبِيرً۬ا

[Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.]

The corresponding verse in the Bible (Genesis 3:16) belongs to the narrative of Adam and Eve.

אֶֽל־הָאִשָּׁ֣ה אָמַ֗ר הַרְבָּ֤ה אַרְבֶּה֙ עִצְּבֹונֵ֣ךְ וְהֵֽרֹנֵ֔ךְ בְּעֶ֖צֶב תֵּֽלְדִ֣י בָנִ֑ים וְאֶל־אִישֵׁךְ֙ תְּשׁ֣וּקָתֵ֔ךְ וְה֖וּא יִמְשָׁל־בָּֽךְ׃ ס

[King James Bible: Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.]

The Quran limits male chastisement of a woman to a beating (and in one possible interpretation does not restrict female chastisement of men at all). In contrast the Hebrew phrase יִמְשָׁל־בָּֽךְ (he shall rule over thee [feminine]) gives a man essentially royal authority to torture, to kill and to do as he pleases with his wife. Thus, the Quran is more sophisticated, nuanced and sympathetic to women than the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.

Likewise the entire Quranic approach to creation is far more subtle than the Biblical Adam-and-Eve narrative, which is so myth-encrusted or superficially allegorical that the preeminent Jewish Biblical commentator RASHI explicitly rejects any literal interpretation of this portion of the Biblical text in his famous commentary.

While the Bible obscures the important issue with blame-shifting on the part of the Biblical Adam, the Quran focuses on free-will (Sura 7: 19-25) in an unadorned description of the first choice that transformed man from an instinctual being into one that could choose between good and evil.

سُوۡرَةُ الاٴعرَاف

وَيَـٰٓـَٔادَمُ ٱسۡكُنۡ أَنتَ وَزَوۡجُكَ ٱلۡجَنَّةَ فَكُلَا مِنۡ حَيۡثُ شِئۡتُمَا وَلَا تَقۡرَبَا هَـٰذِهِ ٱلشَّجَرَةَ فَتَكُونَا مِنَ ٱلظَّـٰلِمِينَ (١٩) فَوَسۡوَسَ لَهُمَا ٱلشَّيۡطَـٰنُ لِيُبۡدِىَ لَهُمَا مَا وُ ۥرِىَ عَنۡہُمَا مِن سَوۡءَٲتِهِمَا وَقَالَ مَا نَہَٮٰكُمَا رَبُّكُمَا عَنۡ هَـٰذِهِ ٱلشَّجَرَةِ إِلَّآ أَن تَكُونَا مَلَكَيۡنِ أَوۡ تَكُونَا مِنَ ٱلۡخَـٰلِدِينَ (٢٠) وَقَاسَمَهُمَآ إِنِّى لَكُمَا لَمِنَ ٱلنَّـٰصِحِينَ (٢١) فَدَلَّٮٰهُمَا بِغُرُورٍ۬‌ۚ فَلَمَّا ذَاقَا ٱلشَّجَرَةَ بَدَتۡ لَهُمَا سَوۡءَٲتُہُمَا وَطَفِقَا يَخۡصِفَانِ عَلَيۡہِمَا مِن وَرَقِ ٱلۡجَنَّةِ‌ۖ وَنَادَٮٰهُمَا رَبُّہُمَآ أَلَمۡ أَنۡہَكُمَا عَن تِلۡكُمَا ٱلشَّجَرَةِ وَأَقُل لَّكُمَآ إِنَّ ٱلشَّيۡطَـٰنَ لَكُمَا عَدُوٌّ۬ مُّبِينٌ۬ (٢٢) قَالَا رَبَّنَا ظَلَمۡنَآ أَنفُسَنَا وَإِن لَّمۡ تَغۡفِرۡ لَنَا وَتَرۡحَمۡنَا لَنَكُونَنَّ مِنَ ٱلۡخَـٰسِرِينَ (٢٣) قَالَ ٱهۡبِطُواْ بَعۡضُكُمۡ لِبَعۡضٍ عَدُوٌّ۬‌ۖ وَلَكُمۡ فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ مُسۡتَقَرٌّ۬ وَمَتَـٰعٌ إِلَىٰ حِينٍ۬ (٢٤) قَالَ فِيہَا تَحۡيَوۡنَ وَفِيهَا تَمُوتُونَ وَمِنۡہَا تُخۡرَجُونَ (٢٥)

[And (unto man): O Adam! Dwell thou and thy wife in the Garden and eat from whence ye will, but come not nigh this tree lest ye become wrong-doers. (19) Then Satan whispered to them that he might manifest unto them that which was hidden from them of their shame, and he said: Your Lord forbade you from this tree only lest ye should become angels or become of the immortals. (20) And he swore unto them (saying): Lo! I am a sincere adviser unto you. (21) Thus did he lead them on with guile. And when they tasted of the tree their shame was manifest to them and they began to hide (by heaping) on themselves some of the leaves of the Garden. And their Lord called them, (saying): Did I not forbid you from that tree and tell you: Lo! Satan is an open enemy to you? (22) They said: Our Lord! We have wronged ourselves. If thou forgive us not and have not mercy on us, surely we are of the lost! (23) He said: Go down (from hence), one of you a foe unto the other. There will be for you on earth a habitation and provision for a while. (24) He said: There shall ye live, and there shall ye die, and thence shall ye be brought forth. (25) ]

From the time that Werner Heisenberg, along with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, set forth the matrix formulation of quantum mechanics in 1925 and ever since Erwin Schrödinger's January 1926 publication in the Annalen der Physik of the paper "Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem" [tr. Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem] on wave mechanics, physicists and philosophers have speculated on the connection between classically perceived reality and the underlying quantum mathematics, which inherently involves indeterminacy. Several (e.g., Roger Penrose in The Emperor's New Mind) have speculated that quantum indeterminacy expresses itself in humans as the ability to choose or as free will, which is the foundation of the mind or consciousness, to wit, the soul.

Yet because there seems to be no way to incorporate mind into quantum theory, which intrinsically depends on the existence of a classical observer/consciousness, the plain meaning of the Quranic text itself seems quite compatible with modern quantum theory, which itself may imply external creation of the human consciousness or soul.]

6. Is the papal position that accepts modern biological evolution and reserves divine creation to the soul really inherently at odds with Quranic revelation?

[Context: Anti-Darwinists often focus on issues of lack of transitional species or the difficulty of evolving complex organs in challenging generic Darwinism, but evolutionary biologists already claim

• to have found evidence of transitional species and
• to have identified mechanisms of complex organ evolution.

Yet the studies of language within the field of evolutionary psychology have identified an issue that is genuinely intractable for modern evolutionary theory. After 16 years of age, humans are unable to fully acquire language. Without immersion in an environment of language, children do not acquire language. There are no examples of incomplete languages (except for certain genetic anomalies that prevent full acquisition of language during childhood).]

7. Whence comes language? Is it the result of external (i.e., divine) intervention? Does opposition to generic Darwinism require rejection of evolution in all situations? Does the existence of human language support the papal position on evolution?

[Context: Fully-formed languages change (evolve), spread, subdivide, combine, or die out. While the original theory of Darwin fails to describe the biological world, not only do Darwin's concepts apply quite well to fully-formed languages, but linguistic evolution may present a greater problem for Islamic theology than biological evolution because Muslims assume that the Quran is uncreated.]

8. Is the Arabic of the Quran uncreated? If the Quran being uncreated lies outside of this space-time, which is created, when it refers to events in the Arabic of this space-time, must such events have taken place in this space-time?

[Context: In a lecture at the Harvard Divinity School two decades ago, Catholic theologian Hans Küng pointed out that Islam provides a true witness to the life of Jesus — not the edited gentile Hellenistic version, but a genuine Semitic tradition that probably preserves the Jamesian perspective that was naturally closest to the reality of Jesus. (James was the brother of Jesus according to some Christian traditions.)

By the 3rd century CE a large part of the peasantry of Palestine were followers of Jesus and practiced a form of Christian Judaism in which Jesus was Messiah but neither God nor son of God. For this reason the Talmud is consistently contemptuous of the humble people, who comprised the am-haaretz, and am-haaretz is a derogatory epithet in Talmudic, Yiddish and Modern Israeli Hebrew idiom.

Nevertheless, we have reason to believe (including one origin story of the Ge'ez or classical Ethiopic translation of the Bible) that the beliefs of Palestinian Christian Judaism spread to Hijaz where they prepared the people for Muhammad's apostleship. When Umar al-Faruq opened Palestine to Islam, the humble people of the land (am haaretz) saw the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus in the religion of Islam, which means humility or meekness and which was a minor variant of the religion that they already practiced. As the Jewish Aramaic prayer says, yekum purqan min shemayya. Salvation shall come from the heavens. Hence the Quran which was brought down from heaven by Jibril/Gabriel is called al-furqan. (Note that Hebrew/Aramaic p becomes f in Arabic.)]

9. Is it legitimate from an Islamic standpoint to view Islam as the culmination of the evolution of Jesus' message of piety toward God and righteousness toward one's fellow man through an intermediate stage of Jamesian Christian Judaism?

[Context: The names of Muhammad (the favored one), Abdallah his father (the servant of God -- a title of James the Just, brother of Jesus), and Abd-ul-Mutallab his grandfather (servant of the chamber or book ) look very much like titles that signified a transfer or blending of authority from immigrant Judeans to Hijazi Arabs.

Umm abiha (mother of her father), which is an occasionally occurring Shiite title for Fatima, also looks like nomenclature preserved from some form of Christian Judaism if the members the Jamesian community used "father" as the title of the community's spiritual leader as Roman Catholics as well as Orthodox and Arab Christians do for their priests to this day.

When I look at the early history of the Sunni Caliphate based on presumptive pious leadership or the similar history of various Shiite Imamates based on a sacred lineage, they look comparable to the chronicles of the kings and the prophets in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. The Biblical history serves as a warning against depending on a temporal-political leader instead of maintaining one's own spiritual rectitude vis-à-vis God.]

10. Is it legitimate to read the early Sunni and Shiite Islamic history as a parable teaching the Muslim community that it must evolve beyond dependence of charismatic political and hereditary leaders into a pious nation, whose members can independently keep their own relationship to God in proper spiritual order?


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