Controversial Islamist author slams Darwin

By Thomas Grove

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The controversial author of books advocating an Islamic version of creationism claimed on Friday modern science had no monopoly on truth and insisted that his views were gaining ground.

In a bizarre news conference held aboard a luxury yacht off Istanbul's northern Bosphorus shores near the mouth of the Black Sea, Adnan Oktar, also known by his pen-name Harun Yahya, said the evils of the world were a direct result of Darwinism.

"Communism, fascism, and Freemasons stand on the tenets of Darwinism, and the world power of capitalism stands on the same ... Hitler and Mao were both Darwinists," said Oktar, immaculately dressed in an egg-shell white suit, necktie and sporting a trim beard and combed-back hair.

"We will not deceive ourselves that scientists have a monopoly on truth," he said.

Charles Darwin came up with the widely adopted evolutionary theory of natural selection in the 19th century.

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.

His teachings echo those of Christian fundamentalists in the United States, though he said he had no formal ties with them beyond "the exchange of information."

Yahya has triggered controversy in France when his lavishly illustrated "Atlas of Creation," which argues that Darwin's theory of evolution is at the root of global terrorism, was mass-mailed unsolicited to educators and libraries there.