Turkish Creationists Turned Away By Israeli Academia
Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 3:00:13 pm PDT
In Israel, Hebrew University canceled a “reconciliation conference” with a group of Turkish Muslim “scholars” when they learned that the Turks planned to include anti-evolution propaganda.
Notice the deceptive tactics, very reminiscent of the work of the Discovery Institute. They don’t mention the name of the Muslim organization, but it sounds very much like the Harun Yahya group, who also collaborate with the US-based Institute for Creation Research.
A group of Muslim religious scholars arriving from Turkey to participate in a reconciliation conference at the Hebrew University claim that the head of the Social Sciences Faculty refused to greenlight the event, calling it off in short notice. Professor Boaz Shamir, Dean of Social Sciences explained his decision citing the lack of proper coordination between the Students’ Union, which was in charge of organizing the event, and the faculty’s secretariat.
However, the correspondence received by Ynet has Prof. Shamir admitting that “we wouldn’t have hosted an event supporting anti-Darwinist propaganda.”
The Turkish lecturers arriving from Istanbul on a joint initiative between the research and scientific foundation they represent and the Interfaith Encounter Association, were planning to speak at the two Jewish-Muslim conferences at the Hebrew University’s campus on Mount Scopus and at Tel Aviv University.
The speakers planned to talk about uniting between the two religions and denouncing Islamic terror – but also against Darwin’s theory about The Origin of Species.
But someone at the university must have not liked the idea of giving the stage to a foundation that is busy spreading Creationism, not to mention the foundation president’s negation of Darwinism in his books. Hence the cancellation notification received by Prof. Shamir a mere few hours before the event. ...
Yehuda Stolov, founder and director of the Interfaith Encounter Association said that “the purpose (of the conference ) was to discuss collaboration between Muslims and Jews for peace and against terror. We had no plans of talking against Darwinism. Unfortunately, the anti-Darwinism made it by mistake into the list of topics on the electronic invitation, which in turn caused the cancellation of the event.”
(Hat tip: Internet Haganah.)
