Not sure if he's well known in the Americas. Anyway, creationism in europe is mostly being pushed by islamic fundies, and this guy is probably the most well-known advocate.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - 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.
A spokeswoman for his Science Research Foundation (BAV) confirmed to Reuters that Oktar had been sentenced but said the judge was influenced by political and religious pressure groups.
Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.
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 planned to appeal the sentence, a BAV spokeswoman said. No further details were immediately available.
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.
TENSIONS HIGH
The court decision comes at a time when political tensions in officially secular but predominantly Muslim Turkey are high as the ruling AK Party faces a court case that seeks its closure for alleged Islamist activities, a claim the party denies.
Oktar's teachings echo those of Christian fundamentalists in the United States. He has publicly denounced Darwinism and Freemasonry in high-profile attacks.
Charles Darwin came up with the widely adopted evolutionary theory of natural selection in the 19th century.
Oktar's publishing house has published dozens of books that have been distributed in more than 150 countries and been translated into more than 50 languages. He has a wide following in the Muslim world.
But Turkish commentators say the group's books, numbering more than 200, are probably written by a pool of writers, a charge the author denies.
Maybe he and Kent Hovind can become pen pals [/quote]
Creationist going to jail. This is not surprising. If they are dishonest in their agenda, why wouldn't they be in other regards? That's the wonderful thing about religion: if you twist it enough, you can use it to justify it to anything.
Credo!
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Superman wrote:You mean they turn out to be crooks? I, sir, I am shocked.
I know, my jaw dropped a full meter when I heard a Creationist advocate group turned out to be a crooked money scheme!
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
To help the schadenfreude along, take a look at one of the videos Harun Yahya is responsible for. If you thought Expelled was bad with it's holocaust references, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Zadius wrote:To help the schadenfreude along, take a look at one of the videos Harun Yahya is responsible for. If you thought Expelled was bad with it's holocaust references, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Was that John Lennon I saw in there around 1:30 into the clip?
'After 9/11, it was "You're with us or your with the terrorists." Now its "You're with Straha or you support racism."' ' - The Romulan Republic
'You're a bully putting on an air of civility while saying that everything western and/or capitalistic must be bad, and a lot of other posters (loomer, Stas Bush, Gandalf) are also going along with it for their own personal reasons (Stas in particular is looking through rose colored glasses)' - Darth Yan
Hahah, great! Harun Yahya is the most prolific apologetics movement I know of in Islam. There's some "documentary" out there somewhere by them that rivals any evangelical christian when it comes to hysteria over heavy metal, and I thought it was great how they can't tell Marilyn Manson and Dani Filth apart. They literally thought they were the same person, and they used the inverted pentagram more than most satanists/bands.
EBC|Fucking Metal|Artist|Androgynous Sexfiend|Gozer Kvltist|
Listen to my music! http://www.soundclick.com/nihilanth "America is, now, the most powerful and economically prosperous nation in the country." - Master of Ossus
