Re-Creating France

"An article in yesterday's edition of Le Figaro, the conservative French daily, brings news that a new book written from an Islamic Creationist perspective, ""L'Atlas de la Création" (cover, right) is making waves in France. According to the newspaper, dozens of thousands of free copies of this diatribe against Darwinism were sent from Turkey and Germany to nearly all French schools and universities. The article does not say who paid for this expensive, lavishly-illustrated, 770-page anti-intellectual propaganda tome to be so massively distributed (although it asks the question.). Nor how whomever sent it was able to get a list of the "dozens of thousands" in educational establishments to whom it was individually addressed.

The French Education Ministry reacted by advising all educational establishments that the book does not conform to the national science-based curriculum and "should not be included in the centers of documentation and information in scholarly establishments," and commissioned a dissection and refutation of the book.

The book's pseudonymous author, a Turk named Harun Yahya ( photo left -- real name: Adnan Oktar), makes a number of astonishing claims -- including that Charles Darwin is "the real source of terrorism." For example, a photo of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers carries a caption reading, "Those who perpetuate terror in the world are in reality the Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy which validates and encourages conflict." Yahya also pretends to portray "the secret links between Darwinism and the bloody ideologies of fascism and communism."" [ Re-creating France in the image of the Prophet Mohammed that is... -ed. ]