Online Salafi Reflections on the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

Online Salafi reflections on the theory of evolution by natural selection

Mémoire

Jean-François Létourneau

Maîtrise en science politique - avec mémoire Maître ès arts (M.A.)

Québec, Canada

Online Salafi reflections on the theory of evolution by natural selection

Mémoire

Jean-François Létourneau

Sous la direction de :

Francesco Cavatorta

Résumé

Ce mémoire explore la manière dont la communauté Salafiste en ligne perçoit la théorie de l’évolution par la sélection naturelle. Les sources consultées sont deux essais ainsi que de multiples courts textes et fatwas.

Abstract

This thesis explore how online Salafis perceive the theory of evolution by natural selection. The sources used include two essays as well as multiples short texts and fatwas.

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Table of contents

(Résumé) ...... ii Abstract ...... iii Table of contents ...... iv List of figures ...... v epigraph…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….vi

(Remerciements) ...... vii Introduction ...... 1 Chapter 1 - Saleh As-Saleh ...... 20 Chapter 2 - Abu Iyaad and his response to Usama Hasan ...... 42 Chapter 3 - fatwas and short texts……………………………………………………………………………………...77

Conclusion ...... 83 Bibliography ...... 86 Appendix A ...... 89

List of figures

Fig 1. Letter (p. 72)

Pour mes parents, François et Christiane

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.”

William Churchill, The River War

“The Western world realizes that Western civilization is unable to present any healthy values for the guidance of mankind. It knows that it does not possess anything which will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence.”

Sayyid Qutb, Milestones

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Remerciements

Je remercie ma femme, Julie Grenier, pour son soutient durant la rédaction de mon mémoire. De plus, sans l’aide et la patience de mon directeur, Francesco Cavatorta, il m’aurait été presque impossible de produire ce document.

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Introduction

Scientific discoveries are often benign in their effects on religion. Indeed, in some cases, models of scientific inquiry have been readily adopted or approved by religions. A notable example is that of Aristotelian thought, which Jewish, Islamic and Christian traditions adopted as an intellectual scaffold to understand and systemize the world. However, some scientific discoveries have conflicted with religions. A widely known example is the heliocentric model of the planetary system Copernicus developed in the 16th century. Although mostly ignored by protestant and catholic authorities during his lifetime, Copernicus’ theory came to the attention of the Church when Galileo re-formulated it in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems published in 1632. The heliocentric model, in which the sun was in the center of the planetary system, was a break from the hitherto dominant geocentric model, in which the Earth was situated in the center. Eventually, the heliocentric model of the planetary system became mainstream science and today, only a small number of eccentric “flat Earth” organizations contest it.1 A far more controversial scientific discovery was that of Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution by natural selection, first published in his On the Origin of Species in 1859. In his theory, Darwin posited that species evolve under environmental pressures, and that those differences in hereditary traits that lead to an increased probability of procreation in a given environment provide a comparative edge to those individual beings bearing them. This theory also implies that all species, including Homo sapiens, have one common ancestor. For many individuals and institutions, especially religious ones, this theory was thought to be not only wrong, but dangerous, for if God (or some other conscious being) were not the creator of all things living, no values or sense to life, it was said, could be given any credence, and individuals could act without the restraints of the moral principles bequeathed

1 It must be mentioned that the prominent Saudi Salafi scholar Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz did defend the geocentric model from 1966 until 1985, when Saudi prince Sultan bin Salman convinced him that the heliocentric model was correct.

to mankind by God. Opposition to Darwin’s theory2 would remain strong in the 20th century, as the famous State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes trial (better known as the Scopes Monkey Trial) and the attempt to force the teaching of creationism and, later, intelligent design in the United States have demonstrated.3 Less known to the scholarly community is the reception of the theory of evolution in Muslim societies. Although there have been a few studies on the reception of evolution by Muslims –both Sunni and Shia- in various regions4, little attention has been paid to the reception of evolution by Islamist groups. For this reason, there remains a significant vacuum in the study of the reception of the theory of evolution in Muslim societies. It is important to understand the underlying ideology, the basic beliefs, of a group to comprehend its motives, objectives, and potential policy preferences, including those concerning education. During the last two decades, scholars of Islamist movements have enriched the political science literature with a bountiful harvest of new data and interpretations concerning matters such as their participation in politics, terrorist networks, education curricula and social movements.5 The issue of their reception of the theory of evolution, however, has yet to be explored. This thesis is an attempt to understand the reception of the theory of evolution by a sub-group of Islamists, the religious creed, social movement, and in some cases, political ideology, of Salafis. That the idea of evolution by natural selection is known in at least some Salafi circles is made quite clear in a stunning passage in the infamous Islamic State magazine Dabiq, in an article entitled “Why we hate you”: We hate you and wage war against you because you disbelieve in the existence of your Lord and Creator. You witness the extraordinarily complex makeup of created beings, and the astonishing and inexplicably precise physical laws that govern the entire universe, but insist that they all came about through randomness and that one should be faulted, mocked, and ostracized for recognizing that the astonishing signs we witness day after day are the creation of the Wise, All-Knowing

2 It should be noted that Darwin’s theory has not remained static. As will be shown further, the theory has been refined several times and has become a powerful explanatory factor in life sciences, from abiogenesis to zoology. 3 Forrest (2010), p. 171 4 Cf. Riexinger (2009), Bigliardi (2014) and Jalalel (2014) 5 Cf. Cavatorta & Merone [Ed.] (2016), Rougier [Ed.] (2008), Lauzière (2015), & Adraoui (2013)

Creator and not the result of accidental occurrence. “Or were they created by nothing, or were they the creators [of themselves]?”6 This research is important as an addition to the knowledge about Salafis. Indeed, the Salafi Weltanschauung demands that one see reality not in its current historical context, but rather through the eternal truths contained in God’s revelation (the Qur’an) and the examples set forth by the prophet (the hadith) as well as the customs of early Muslims.7 Salafis are spread across the world, from Arab states to Western democracies. As the Salafi “movement” is so widespread and increasingly attractive to youths,8 it is vital that political scientists enhance their comprehension of the Salafi ideology. We now know much about Salafi beliefs, but their confrontation with what is arguably one of the pillars of modern science, the theory of evolution, has yet to be explored. Indeed, understanding the manner in which Salafis treat the question of the theory of evolution, especially the rhetoric mobilized to discredit the theory, can shed more light on how they view the world, modernity, and more specifically, the West. But this research can also be important for policy makers. The Bush Freedom Agenda, despite its stated intention of bringing to the Middle East prepackaged “governments-in-a- box” to replace authoritarian states with flourishing democracies, has been a political failure. Indeed, no Jeffersonian democracies have sprouted up in the Middle East because of the Freedom Agenda. One of the reasons behind this failure was that, in their neoconservative enthusiasm, policy makers forgot to examine and understand vital elements in the region, namely culture, religion, and history. A knowledge of religious tenets held by Salafis, for instance, could have translated into better policy choices. Indeed, had U.S. policy makers been more aware of these factors, the transition to democracy in Iraq might have been more feasible, or perhaps they would have realized that it was nearly impossible to impose western democratic standards on the country. Hence, this research could serve, as part of a much larger body of scientific research, to better understand the Muslim world and act accordingly. The following paragraphs constitute an introduction to the ideas which will be explored throughout this thesis: the first three will familiarize the reader with Salafism, the theory of evolution by natural selection, and the reactions to this theory up to this day. Furthermore,

6 Dabiq (2016), 15 7 Duderija (2007), p. 350 8 Wagemakers (2018) [online text]

the reader will be introduced to the research question, as well as the methodology and sources used in this thesis.

What is Salafism? As Meijer explains, “Salafism is difficult to define because of its ambiguity and fragmented nature, [moreover] it does have characteristics that can be identified, but it remains heterogeneous”. 9 Salafis claim that they represent the purest form of Islam and that they alone understand and can spread this purified version of Islam because, among other things, they strive to emulate the prophet and the “pious ancestors” of the early Muslim communities. In order to correctly interpret the Qur’an, they scrutinize the Sunna, or the deeds and sayings of the prophet Muhammad as conserved in the literature known as the hadith. Indeed, for Salafis, everything in the Qur’an needs to be seen through the lens of the hadith in order to grasp the true meaning in the holy book. For instance, the Qur’an prescribes daily prayers to the faithful, but only by following the example of how the Prophet himself prayed can the true believer, in this case the Salafi, pray the correct way. Another example of the Salafi approach can be seen in their consideration of things not mentioned by the Qur’an. In these cases, the hadith provide the understanding necessary to act as a true (Salafi) Muslim.10

Salafi beliefs There is a general sentiment in Sunni Islam that those individuals closest to the Prophet, both spatially and temporally, practiced a purer form of Islam.11 With their strong emphasis on doing the actual work of directly interpreting the Qu’ran and the Hadith (ijtihad), Salafis are not like most Sunni Muslims, who rely on interpretations developed by numerous medieval schools of thought and scholars across the ages, and therefore have more flexible, ready to use interpretations of Islam (for example, the four Islamic schools of jurisprudence, or fiqh). Hence, Salafis do away with the scholastic nature of interpretations and claim to justify their beliefs and acts by going back to the original scripture, allowing them to claim furthermore that their understanding of Islam is the only correct one. Moreover,

9 Meijer (2013) 10 Rougier (2008) 11 Meijer (2013)

they believe that human reason, logic, or subjectivity can only serve to corrupt the original message of Islam.12 As Duderija states, “this attitude towards tradition (Turath) is solely concerned with the ‘imitation of the original, the preservation of the original requirements and prohibition of going against the original”.13 For Salafis, belief and action go hand in hand. Hence, one cannot claim to be a Muslim in belief, but to act in un-Islamic ways, nor can a true Muslim only act like one, but have doubts about his beliefs. Based on this interpretation, some Salafis are willing to resort to excommunication (Takfir) against those who they deem to be untrue Muslims.14 Indeed, “there is a constant tension in Salafism between those who propose to spread true Islam by Dawa (proselytism) and those who cannot accept a political power that disregards Sharia.”15 Not only do the Salafis believe themselves to be the only true practitioners of Islam, but they also believe, in accordance with one hadith, that they will be the only ones to be saved and therefore live in Paradise after death. Salafis are first and foremost reformists centered on theology. It is from this source that emanates all of their individual, social, economic and political actions. Thus, Salafism is a “marker of a distinctive form of engagement with the world”16. Indeed, one can easily identify a Salafi by the way he dresses, prays and talks. Moreover, the Arab language is of vital importance to Salafis, since only through the understanding of Arabic can they study the Qu’ran and the Hadith in their original form.17 The theology of Salafis can be boiled down to a few major components: 1) the belief that it is necessary to emulate the creed, habits and actions of the so called “first three generations” of Muslims, a period which is generally understood to start with the first revelation given to the Prophet and end with the fiqh scholar Ibn Hanbal’s death (610-855); 2) the importance of understanding and accepting the “oneness” (tawhid) of God. This comprises three components, which, if accepted, are equated with belief: the oneness of godship, the oneness of God’s lordship, and the oneness of God’s names and attributes; 3) the necessity of fighting unbelief and corruptions of belief, the most important of which is the attribution of the powers of God to things or human beings (which is linked with the aforementioned ‘oneness’ of God); 4) the claim that the only sources of

12 Meijer (2013) 13 Duderija (2007), p. 351 14 Duderija (2007), p. 351 15 Duderija (2007), p. 351 16 Haykel (2009) 17 Meijer (2013)

authority in Islam are the Qur’an, the hadith and the consensus of the pious ancestors; 5) the necessity of expunging innovations of all kinds in the practice and beliefs of Muslims, such as the use of reason to interpret the Qur’an or the acceptance of allegorical messages in the Qur’an; and 6) the understanding that, to guide all Muslims, a strict literalist interpretation of the Qu’ran and the hadith is essential.18 Despite their common belief that subjective interpretations of the Qur’an and Sunna only serve to corrupt the true message of Islam, Salafis often hold different interpretations on how to act when it comes to the relationship between their beliefs and politics. This is what makes it often difficult to precisely define Salafism, as it can be heterogeneous. Since the publication of Wiktorowicz’s 2006 article, Salafis are habitually divided in three groups: 1) Purists prefer to focus on non-violent means of propagation, education and expunging innovations and wish to spread Salafism through a bottom-up reformation of society by preaching (Dawa); 2) Politicos prefer to emphasize their Salafi beliefs in the political arena, which they view as highly important because of its impact on society and the necessity of establishing sharia, by decrying the un-Islamic nature of “supposedly” Muslim states (such as Saudi Arabia); and 3) Jihadis consider that the current context calls for more violent means, including revolutions and terrorism, in order to bring about a new Caliphate.19 Despite talks about a “postmodern Islam”,20 the Salafi Weltanschauung is resolutely pre-modern, or at the very least virulently anti-modernist. Indeed, modernism is associated with scientific explanations, the preponderant place of reason, and a decline of the importance of religion in society which, as previously noted, Salafis eschew in favor of a relatively monolithic religious outlook on reality based on the Qur’an and the Hadith.

Salafis on the Internet Although Salafis eschew modernity proper, they have been quick to embrace modern technology to propagate their views. Indeed, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by US and coalition forces, there have been an ever-growing number of Internet sites dedicated to propagating and teaching the Salafi creed. Members of an online Salafi forum will tend to cluster around a knowledgeable imam, who is proficient in his knowledge of the Sunna, to

18 Meijer (2013), p. 38-9 19 Wiktorowicz (2006), pp. 207-239 20 Ismail (2008)

ask him questions on both praxis and beliefs. This is important to Salafis as they strive to maintain what they believe is a pure form of Islam and to avoid any action or belief that would corrupt this purity. These active imams can issue fatwas to which their followers are expected to adhere. For instance, as a response to a Salafi seeking guidance because he is enrolled in a university course, which, he suspects, promotes atheist theories, an Imam can provide answers, such as to avoid such a course at all costs. Moreover, Salafi groups abroad (in Europe, for instance), can often benefit from the financial largess of Saudi Arabia, which promotes the quietist Salafi worldview across the globe, thus facilitating the growth and expansion of Salafi material on the Web.21 It is interesting to note that there appears to be a manifest paucity of contemporary Salafi online literature concerning evolutionary theory. Thus, the subject is novel for Salafis themselves, although it might very well be because of “the lack of awareness among many ulama”22. Of course, in order to understand what the Salafi discourse on evolutionary biology is, it will be necessary to examine the basics of evolutionary theory, that is to say, how it works and its implications for science and, possibly, epistemology.

The theory of evolution by natural selection The contemporary theory of evolution is actually quite different from the ideas developed by Charles Darwin in the mid-19th century. Indeed, it “would seem strange to Darwin, because it is couched in terms of genetic information and how it is stored, transmitted and translated.”23 While it is not our purpose here to offer a thorough and in-depth presentation of the biological theory of evolution, it will be necessary later for the reader to understand at least some basic notions of the theory so as to comprehend how it has been received in the Salafi community. Some if not all ideas and examples used to explain evolution are simplified. Before jumping to the next topic, it is important for the reader to understand the central role of evolution in biology. Indeed, the US National Academy of Sciences states that Evolution pervades all biological phenomena. To ignore that it occurred or to classify it as a form of dogma is to deprive the student of the most

21 Thomas (2009). 22 Riexingler (2009). 23 Deamer & Szostak [Eds] (2010), p. 3

fundamental organizational concept in the biological sciences. No other biological concept has been more extensively tested and more thoroughly corroborated than the evolutionary history of organisms.24

Basic outline of the theory of evolution by natural selection The theory of evolution by natural selection has two core elements: evolution and natural selection. Evolution is the changing of species over time and the apparition, from ancestors, of new species (speciation). In other words, it is descent with modifications. A population of creatures is usually deemed a species when it will not or cannot reproduce with another close species. Hence, Canis familiaris, the dog, will not normally reproduce with Canis lupus, the wolf, even if they still are biologically capable of interbreeding. Evolution of species can be seen in three different manners: 1) by studying fossils, one will see species change in their form over long spans of time. Some ancestor species will give birth to two or more new species, whereas other species will die out, leaving no descendants; 2) by studying the genetic similarities between species, one will see to what extent species are related and be able to estimate the date of their last common ancestor; lastly, 3) by studying populations in the field for long spans of time, one may observe small systemic morphological changes in a population’s phenotype, which are manifestations of changes in its genotype. Natural selection, on the other hand, is similar to an algorithm that tends to favor, in a given environment, some traits over others. Indeed, natural selection can be summed up in the phrase “differential reproductive success”. It acts like a filter to evolution whereby traits that give an individual an edge in reproductive success in a given environment are favored, as they are more likely to be transmitted to the offspring of parents bearing such traits. For example: a trait that allows a predator to more accurately pinpoint its prey will tend to be “selected” more often, as the trait will allow the predator to secure the resources needed for its offspring. It is important to understand that the environment is a critical factor in natural selection. A trait that gives a creature a comparative advantage in one environment may hinder it in another. For example, a trait bequeathing to a creature the capacity to camouflage itself in the rainforest will most likely be useless (or even worst, a drain on precious resources) in the steppes.

24 Cited in Scott (1997), p. 264

The theory of evolution by natural selection is anchored in a gene-centric viewpoint. That is to say, the units that are “selected” are, fundamentally, genes, not individuals nor groups. In most eukaryote-based creatures, such as animals, fungi and plants, there are two copies of one gene. These variants, called alleles are each a copy inherited from a different parent. For instance, a creature can inherit the gene C from its father, and the variant C1 from its mother, and both copies will be present in its genome, or the sum of its genes. In a population of a given species, there are habitually many variants of one gene (alleles); moreover, gametes sometimes contain a newly mutated version of a gene, which are mostly neutral in their effect, but in some cases are deleterious and in even rarer cases are beneficial in a given environment. The combination of the preexisting variety of genes and the introduction of new variants by mutations translate into a diversity of genes in the population of a given species. Now, the genotype of an individual is translated into the phenotype, or physical manifestation, of a living being. Therefore, the variety in genotypes manifests itself in the variety of phenotypes in a given population. Natural selection occurs when a gene, or a set of genes, translate into a phenotype that is more likely to have a higher rate of reproduction in a given environment. For instance, if a variant of a gene translates into a better camouflage for an individual phenotype in its environment and thus offers it better protection against its natural predator, this variant will be more likely to be passed on to a further generation and to the one after that and so on. Hence, in the long run, this variant will tend to be more present in the population. Paleontology has only confirmed the theory of evolution. It is the study of fossilized remains of creatures trapped between various sedimentary levels. The result of more than 200 years of scientific study, paleontological records show that life has become more diversified, has colonized an increasing number of environments, and in doing so has become more specialized. The discovery of transitional forms, creatures that appeared to be morphologically somewhere between an older species and a newer one, only confirmed the theory of evolution. Paleontologists may disagree on minute details of the mechanisms of speciation, but all accept evolution by natural selection as the only unifying theory capable of explaining the patterns of change in fossils over time.

It is important to understand that there is no pre-ordained endpoint (or telos) or intention in evolution. Changes in genes (mutations leading to new variants), and therefore in individuals and populations, do not occur in anticipation of a certain problem in a given environment. Rather, evolution is a matter of randomness filtered by the process of natural selection. Only gene variants offering an immediate advantage to a creature, in a given environment, will tend to be selected.

The gene-centric viewpoint In eukaryote-based creatures, almost each cell contains a copy of the genotype in the form of a long double helix molecule composed of nucleic acids. These molecules are known as deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA and are grouped in chromosomes. Genes of variable lengths are found on this long molecule of DNA. In the cell, an elaborate biochemical process “translates” genes into various proteins, which act as the building blocks of life, securing the internal structure of cells, building the lipid-based border surrounding cells, catalyzing chemical reactions and acting as chemical messengers and trigger points; on a macro-level, these proteins will translate themselves into the phenotype of a creature. As mentioned earlier, most creatures contain two copies of each gene and these copies can be different. Each copy, called an allele, is inherited by one of the creature’s parents. There is a specific dynamic involving alleles, in the sense that each one can be either recessive or dominant. An allele that is dominant will overshadow a repressive allele to the point where only the effects of the dominant allele are visible in the phenotype. For instance, if, in a variant of Canis familiaris, or the dog, the dominant allele A’ translates into brown fur whereas the recessive allele A translates into white fur, an individual with alleles A’ and A or A’ and A’ will have brown fur whilst an individual with alleles A and A will have white fur. In a given population, natural selection can favor a gene that is already in the gene pool. This will usually happen when there occurs a change in the environment. For instance, in a population of butterflies which has a an equal amount of genes A and genes A1, which translate into respectively light brown and dark brown wings, gene A1 will tend to be selected more often if the trees in which live the population are increasingly colonized by a dark

brown fungus, as this will give creatures who have this gene a better camouflage protection, and hence a higher rate of reproductive success. Selection can also occur with the introduction of a new mutation in the gene pool. The following example shall illustrate this. In a species of predators whose hunting ground is in a jungle, if a mutated variant of a gene, C’, slightly raises visual acuity in the jungle. Creatures with this mutated gene may tend to be better at hunting their prey and hence better at having and providing for offspring. As the variant C’ confers an advantage to creatures that have it in their genome, C’ will tend to spread in the population and eventually largely replace the original variant C.

Evolution’s potential effects on epistemology Both Western enlightenment thinkers and Salafis believed the first cause of the universe to be some form of a deity. More specifically, they took for granted that ‘thought’ was a prerequisite of matter and living beings. Hence, the theory of evolution by natural selection represents a serious threat to this understanding of the world, as it replaces this assumption with a theory explaining how matter could eventually lead to thought. As Daniel Dennett puts it: Darwin’s idea had been born as an answer to questions in biology, but it threatened to leak out, offering answers –welcome or not- to questions in cosmology (going in one direction) and psychology (going in the other direction. […] Much of the controversy and anxiety that has enveloped Darwin’s idea […] can be understood as a series of failed campaigns in the struggle to contain Darwin’s idea within some acceptable “safe” and merely partial revolution.25 Dennett views the theory of evolution as some form of ‘universal acid’ because it can “eat through” every traditional concept, leaving behind something altogether different, new ideas which can easily lead to the conclusion that the very idea of a deity is unnecessary to explain the world.26 Indeed, it is easy to imagine how the fundamental building blocks of life began by amino acids (which are present in nature) amalgamating and forming a rudimentary form of life separated from its immediate environment by a ‘lipidic bubble’ (the study of the origins of life is called abiogenesis). This putative formation of living creatures, coupled with

25 Daniel Dennett (1995) p. 63 26 Daniel Dennett (1995) p. 63

the astrophysical theory of the Big Bang, constitutes a solid intellectual foundation for atheism. The following paragraphs will explore the opposition to Darwin’s ideas since the publication of his On the Origin of Species in 1859.

The struggle to contain Darwin’s ideas Opposition to Darwin’s theory and, later, to the modern synthesis of evolution used today, took on several forms. The following will explore the evolution of Darwin’s thought and its implications.

Before Darwin Since the middle of the 17th century, it became increasingly apparent in the West that scientific enquiry could and would peek into the hitherto sacred (i.e. biblical) areas of knowledge. All was not lost for religious beliefs – far from it – as naturalists mostly expected their observations and discoveries to strengthen the premise that God was the origin of all things. Indeed, more than often they presumed that through their rational study of the natural world they could come to a better understanding of God.27 Already, however, some theologians began expressing fears that these explorations in materialism anchored in scientific methodologies could, in one way or another, harm the certainties surrounding the revealed knowledge in the sacred texts and, hence, God’s revelation.28 Darwin himself began his studies in this intellectual environment. At the time, the most successful synthesis of Christianity and natural sciences was exemplified in William Paley’s Natural Theology: or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearance of Nature, which held the strongest argument for the theory of divine creation of living beings. Paley argues that, just as a watch – a complex arrangement of interconnected parts all calibrated to fulfill its function – necessarily had to be designed by a watchmaker, so too living beings – highly complex organisms that could easily perish should a part of them by removed – were the result of divine design.29

Darwin and his critics in the 19th century

27 Thomson (2005), p. xi-xii 28 Thomson (2005), p. xi-xii 29 Thomson (2005), p. 10

What seemed to many as a major threat to Paley’s arguments took form in Darwin’s first published book regarding evolution and natural selection, his On the Origin of Species. Indeed, Darwin himself considered his book to be “one long argument against miraculous divine creation.”30 Although he did not wish to offend those who believed in God – and stressed that the origins of life remained a mystery – there were many who were indeed offended by Darwin’s ideas or saw errors in his approach to the natural world. It is important to review these objections to Darwin’s theory as some of them will be salvaged by more sophisticated Salafis in order to criticize it.

Religious opposition Darwin’s theory seemed to contradict the Christian notion that man had been tainted by the original sin. Indeed, according to this theory, one could believe that man had grown, not fallen. Furthermore, to many, the very idea that mankind had ape ancestors seemed to be an affront to human dignity, even more so to individuals who accepted the Bible as the literal truth.31 Indeed, Darwin’s theory, if correct, meant that human beings were no different from animals, and if this was the case, would not humans begin to behave as amoral animals? Knowledge of the Christian God was thought to come from two distinct sources: revelation and natural reason. But Darwin’s central idea could easily be interpreted as a refutation of God by natural reason. For Charles Hodge, the author of What is Darwinism, “Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, through its emasculation of design, amounted to atheism”.32 Indeed, most of England’s clergy were offended by Darwin’s theory, as they claimed (with some justification) that evolution denied the biblical account of creation, and therefore threatened the moral authority of the church, and hence its political and spiritual force.33 The pinnacle of the clergy’s angst and its position on Darwin’s theory was in a symbolic fashion demonstrated in the famous debate opposing the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and two of Darwin’s supporters, Joseph Hooker and Thomas Huxley. Throughout the debate, Wilberforce based his argumentation on appeals to emotions and the putative moral

30 Stefoff (1996), p. 88 31 Brooke (2003), p. 192 32 Brooke (2003), p. 195 33 Stefoff (1996), p. 91

consequences of Darwin’s theory whereas Huxley, having demonstrated that his opponent knew nothing of science, was therefore generally recognized as the victor.34

Opposition by natural philosophers In mid-19th century Great Britain, hypotheses were often viewed with suspicion, whereas the empirical-inductive method was generally considered to be the most virtuous path to scientific truths.35 However, scientists appeared to be gradually and cautiously accepting the merits of the hypothetical model. For instance, in the field of optics, the strongly hypothetical undulatory theory was generally recognized as superior to the light particle theory as the former proved superior in its predictive potency.36 Although Darwin believed he had adhered to the methodological principles espoused by the polymath John Herschel, the latter strongly opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution, arguing that We can no longer accept the principle of arbitrary and casual variation and natural selection as a sufficient account, per se, of the past and present organic world, than we can receive the Laputan method of composing books (pushed à l’outrance) as a sufficient one of Shakespeare and the Principia. Equally in either case, an intelligence, guided by a purpose, must be continually in action to bias the directions of change – to regulate their amount – to limit their divergence – and to continue them in a definite course.37 Indeed, Herschel was arguing that the idea of historical variations of species could not be explained by randomness, suggesting that the principle of natural selection was a poor attempt to explain such variation. Indeed, the very idea that there could be no intelligent guiding force behind the variation of species seemed impossible to him. Moreover, Herschel accused Darwin of speculating on the actions or intentions of God (which he did not do), arguing that such ratiocinations were not the domain of the natural philosopher.38 Another critic of Darwin’s theory, Adam Sedgwick, his former geology teacher, found putative faults in his methodology:

34 Stefoff (1996), p. 92 35 Hull (2003), p. 175 36 Hull (2003), p. 171 37 Herschel, cited in Hull (2003), p. 182 38 Hull (2003), p. 182

Darwin’s theory is not inductive, - nor based on a series of acknowledged facts pointing to a general conclusion, - not a proposition evolved out of the facts, logically, and of course including them.39 Here Sedgwick’s criticism mirrors the general suspicion towards building knowledge of the natural world through hypotheses, a widespread suspicion in Victorian England. Interestingly, Sedgwick believed that the undulatory theory of optics – which was based on a hypothesis and not on inductive reasoning – was superior to the light particle theory, which suggests that there might have been another aspect of Darwin’s theory with which he disagreed. The polymath William Whewell also saw faults in Darwin’s theory. Indeed, Whewell suggested that Darwin’s variations of species was akin to the Greek philosopher Democritus’ (putatively ridiculous) thesis that matter came into existence through the random encounters of atoms. For Whewell, “the mere possibility of imagining the transition of one organ into another”40 was ludicrous and, in any case, he argued, the amount of time necessary for such morphological changes was insufficient. Whewell added that Darwin could not support his hypothesis with a single example of a species ‘turning’ into another one, since no one had actually seen such a process take place.41 As for John Stuart Mill, he did not object to the methodology used by Darwin, arguing that “he [had] opened a path of enquiry full of promise, the results of which none could foresee”.42 However, Mill later reconsidered his enthusiasm for Darwin’s theory, arguing that the complexities of the human eye was a major stumbling block, as the eye was so complex that there was probably an ‘intelligent will’ behind its creation.43

Critics of Darwin in the late 20th and early 21th centuries in America The institute for creation science (ICR) has been the main supporter of creationism since it was founded in 1972, as a reaction to the growing evolution content in high school textbooks. It presents itself as a research and educational institute. Creationism is the idea that all events described in the Bible have scientific foundations. The founders of the ICR

39 Hull (2003), p. 168 40 Hull (2003), p. 184 41 Hull (2003), p. 184 42 Mill, cited in in Hodge & Radick (2003), p. 186 43 Hull (2003), p.187

believed that presenting creation science to the scientific community could result in it being considered a bona fide science and that, therefore, creationism could be taught in schools. However, scientists either ignored creation science or simply dismissed it as non-scientific. The institute was and still is present in Anglophone countries, particularly the U.S. and offers workshops, lectures, radio programs and movies defending the idea of creationism.44 Recognizing the failure of its outreach to scientists, the ICR pivoted and began encouraging grassroots movements to demand that creation science be taught alongside evolution in schools, arguing that the teaching of evolution undermined Christian beliefs and was therefore not a “neutral subject”. In doing this, these movements sought to “balance” the teaching of the origin of species with a more Christian-friendly theory (with dubious scientific foundations). The ICR also proposed new legislation that would make creation science a mandatory subject in high schools.45 After several state laws mandating that creationism should be taught alongside evolution were defeated in federal courts, the matter was taken up by the Supreme Court in 1987, which ruled that creationism was a religious doctrine and that to teach it in schools violated the Establishment clause of the 1st amendment of the constitution.46 Following the demise of creation science, antievolutionists sought to present an alternative to evolution that was not so blatantly theological. This is how “intelligent design” (ID) came about. A few authors, notably the biologist Michael Behe, argued that life was “irreducibly complex” and that its emergence could only be explained by the actions of a higher intelligence. Once again, scientists either ignored the theory or criticized it as non- scientific. Attempts to introduce ID in high school textbooks were struck down by federal courts and ID is now generally recognized as creationism with a pseudo-scientific façade.

Islamic opposition to Darwin in the 19th and 20th centuries Throughout the 19th century, Muslims were increasingly exposed to Western ideas and thought. In the second half of the century, some Muslim scholars and intellectuals

44 Scott (2004), p. 101 45 Scott (2004), p. 106 46 Scott (2004), p. 109

became aware of the theory of evolution by natural selection, which “challenged the core of their religious belief”.47 Indeed, as Kamal has noted, for Muslims: Darwin’s theory of evolution is not only antagonistic to the religious doctrine of creation, but the implications of the theory impact on an understanding of [their] place and the purpose of [their] existence in the world. It is loaded with scientific, theological as well as philosophical repercussions in determining the meaning and origin of life.48 It was no surprise then that the reaction to Darwin’s theory was mostly antagonistic. However, no Islamic intellectual or scientist has credibly sought to refute the theory of evolution on scientific grounds. The vast majority of these refutations were anchored in theology, supported by the injunctions of the Qur’an. There were, and still are, however, very few Muslim scholars who write on the matter of Islam and evolution.49 According to Kamal, opponents of the theory of evolution were (and still are) divided into two camps. The first refuses to accept evolution, whereas the second is more accommodating. The first camp is itself separated into two groups. In the first camp, one group categorically refuses any attempt to understand reality that is not grounded in the Qur’an, which is close to the Salafi Weltanschauung, whilst the second group recognizes the value of science and reason, but abhors the materialistic viewpoint espoused by evolution (i.e. that God is unnecessary to explain the origins of life), a view which takes its origins in the Islamic modernism movement of Ahmed Khan and Jamal al-Din Afghani.50 The latter wrote a book refuting the theory of evolution, arguing that accepting the theory led to denying the role of the creator, and thus to atheism.51 The other camp, more accommodating of Darwin’s idea, sought to reconcile evolution with the truths found in the Qur’an, arguing that some passages could be interpreted as metaphors describing the process of evolution. However, as this camp’s worldview would be deemed heretical by Salafis, it is of little importance in the context of this thesis. The following sections will briefly cover the research question, sources, and the methodology.

47 Kamal (2009), p. 68 48 Kamal (2009), p. 69 49 Guessoum (2016), p. 2 50 Kamal, (2009), p. 70-71 51 The book, published in 1881, is entitled ‘The Refutation of the Materialists’

Research question and hypothesis Since this thesis constitutes the first attempt, to the author’s knowledge, to understand the reception of the theory of evolution by Salafis, it would appear more prudent to try to map the relevant discourse. The answers sought in this thesis will therefore be those to the questions “what is being said?” and a tentative “why it is being said?” As noted before, there is a strong emphasis on the purity of praxis and thought in the Salafi movement, which can only lead to a conflict with the reality that “of all scientific theories, the theory of evolution arguably poses the greatest challenge to theistic religions because it threatens to undermine teleology and the central position of mankind in nature”52. This thesis will attempt to map some of the reactions amongst Salafis concerning the theory of evolution in the hope that future scholars will find this area more accessible. It is easy to imagine a scholar using this study as a starting point to research the mobilization of arguments against the theory of evolution on Arabic Salafi website or even amongst Salafi communities in situ, both in the West, the Arab world or southeastern Asia, in order, for instance, to better comprehend the Salafi worldview.

Sources53 The sources used in this thesis are threefold. The author discovered all three by searching more than 50 open access anglophone Salafi websites. The first two sources are essays intended to refute the theory of evolution for a Salafi audience. The first, bearing the title The Purpose of Creation & The Return to the Creator, is shorter than the second. It is intended as a ‘guide’ to accept Islam in a world of “spiritual vacuum” (purportedly caused by, among other things, Darwinism). Its author is (the now deceased) Saleh As-Saleh, a Salafi scholar who had been the student of Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen, a prominent Salafi scholar himself. The second essay, Usamah Hasan, Darwinism, Evolutionary Forces and the Creation of Man, is a polemic reaction to the comments made in the London Leyton Mosque by the aforementioned Hasan in which the latter claimed that the theory of evolution was

52 Riexinger (2009), p. 212 53 Note that all the texts examined in this thesis have been stored in an online archive in case one of them disappears from the Web. The texts can be consulted here: https://mega.nz/#F!A0M03AYL!6KCE- lmfn3iyrDe8aqXQCA or https://tinyurl.com/10arch

compatible with the teachings of Islam.54 The author uses the penname ‘Abu Lyaad’ and attempts to refute all of Hasan’s arguments. The third source consists of a series of comments and fatwas found in Salafi Web Forums, some from more or less independent Salafi Imams and others from ‘official’ sources, such as the collections of fatwas issued by recognized Salafi scholars in Saudi Arabia. Ideally, these sources will act as starting points to a greater comprehension of Salafi thought, especially concerning the manner in which it is situated resolutely outside the boundaries of modernity, that is “the belief in the freedom of human beings – natural and inalienable, as many philosophers presumed – and in the human capacity to reason, combined with the intelligibility of the world, that is, its amenability to human reason.”55 The paucity of online Salafi texts related to evolution suggests that this matter is not often discussed in-length in online Salafi communities.

Methodology As this is a novel subject, the texts shall be examined so as to form a preliminary ‘map’ of Salafi thought concerning evolution, similar to the methodology used by Martin Riexinger in his study on Muslim reactions to the theory of evolution by natural selection in southern Asia.56 As such, the texts will be examined and annotated, allowing for a direct identification of the concepts found therein. One must begin with detecting and grouping key concepts identified in the sources. Thereafter, one must examine the identified concepts and comment on them, attempting to weave a greater synthetic comprehension of the texts afterwards. Textual analysis of this sort is a very adequate methodology for processing the data in this thesis as it allows the researcher to build a panorama of the subject under scrutiny, an ideal technique for the limited data available.

54 BBC News 55 Wagner (2012), p. 4 56 Riexinger (2009), p. 212

Chapter 1 – Saleh As-Saleh

This first chapter is an analysis of a text57 written by Saleh As-Saleh58, a student of the prominent Salafi scholar Shaykh Ibn ul-Uthaymeen. As-Saleh had apparently obtained a PhD in medical biochemistry59 and resided in Saudi Arabia, where he was very active in Salafi communities online, especially on his own website (http://understand-islam.net), which is now maintained by his son. Despite residing in Saudi Arabia, As-Saleh published much of his material in English and even gave classes in English at Qaasim University.60 The text authored by As-Saleh is 39 pages61 long and is entitled ‘Man & Nature’ It fits the category of anti-evolution pamphlets. Published on numerous Salafi websites, the essay appears to be intended for an audience of recent converts to Salafism, those Salafis who might be tempted to believe elements of the theory of evolution, and other Sunni Muslims seeking guidance on the issue of evolution. It is most likely not a text meant to convert non-Muslims as the author makes no implicit or explicit reference to this and the text is littered with quotes from the Qur’an which would, to a non-Muslim, appear quite esoteric and not very convincing. The text can be separated into three parts: 1) An introduction with an emotional appeal to the reader; 2) a corpus containing refutations of the theory of evolution based in both ‘common sense’ and quotations from the Qur’an; and 3) a conclusion reminding the reader of the events which occurred in the Garden of Eden.

“Man & Nature”: Introduction As-Saleh begins his polemic essay by reminding his readers that they know little about themselves and take much for granted. He then sketches an image of the development of man, from his very beginning as a fertilized egg to the attainment of adulthood. Without first addressing the problem of evil in the world, such as Leibniz and Aquinas had done (perhaps because of the pamphlet style’s necessary brevity), As-Saleh asks, on ten occasions, who is

57 https://abdurrahman.org/2016/08/02/creation-versus-evolution-darwins-theory/ 58 Saleh As-Saleh passed away in 2008. See https://muslimmatters.org/2008/02/08/dr-saleh-as-saleh- passes-away/ [link active on 15/07/2019] 59 His knowledge of biochemistry appears to be very rudimentary in his texts on evolution. 60 See https://abdurrahman.org/audio/audio-saleh-as-saleh/ [link active on 15/07/2019] 61 39 pages long in the default font size of his text in html.

behind the delicate process which constitutes the development of a human being, with the implicit assumption that this process is perfect. For instance, his first question is Who took care of me with utmost care and graciousness when I was a tiny seed settled on the wall of the uterine (sic) with three layers of darkness surrounding me? The idea here is to mobilize scientific knowledge of embryology to show the “miraculous” nature of childbearing, implying that such a “miracle” could only have been authored by God. Here, As-Saleh is at the very beginning of his text divorcing his explanations from rational and evidence-based arguments. It indicates an unwillingness to engage evolutionary theory on its own terms (i.e. science) and a direct appeal to the Qur’an and Sunna as ultimate sources of truth. This, of course, is more than common in the Salafi Weltanschauung. Furthermore, he asks such questions as who “commanded the milk to flow”, who “put into your mouth the cutting and grinding ‘tools’ ” (teeth), and “who adorned the face of the growing man with the distinctive beauty of the beard”. To a biologist, all of these questions (with “who” being replaced by “what”) have scientific answers rooted in physiology, genetics and, ultimately, evolution, but for As-Saleh, these questions are meant to remind Salafis and other Sunni Muslims that only Allaah can create things and creatures in the world, and that those who pretend otherwise are liars. Indeed, by asking these questions, he seeks to guide his readers to reflect on their ultimate origins and the conditions that allowed them to exist as human beings. Thereafter, he slowly raises the specter of Darwin’s theory, which, he claims, denies the existence of God.62 As-Saleh presents the theory of Darwin with the layman’s definition of “theory”, that is to say, an assumption that has yet to (or cannot) be verified. A proper scientific theory is built slowly by accumulating evidence and by seeking to disprove its premises and conclusions, until it can be used a “system” that can explain natural phenomena. One must always remember that a scientific theory may always be changed or even rendered obsolete with the addition of new evidence. Moreover, As-Saleh appears to deliberately associate the entire theory of evolution with its pioneer, Charles Darwin. This is a common argument among anti-evolutionists, who seek to narrow down evolutionary theory to Darwin’s Victorian-era

62 Like all sciences, biology does not consider supernatural phenomena as causal explanations; however, the theory of evolution can (and has) been mobilized by some to advance the idea that the very notion of a god is superfluous.

publications, so as to not address the ever-accumulating mountain of evidence in favor of evolutionary theory that continues to this day. Thus, As-Saleh omits mentioning that it is an established theory in modern biology and that, furthermore, it is a central theory that holds together all other biological theories.63 As As-Saleh claims to have a PhD in medical biochemistry, and should in principle know what constitutes a scientific theory and the role of the theory of evolution in biology, it would appear that he is either willingly obfuscating his readers by omitting critically important information or (oddly) did not learn these notions during his studies. Further in the text (but still in the introduction) As-Saleh attempts to ridicule a straw man version of evolution (again, this version of evolution may or may not be what As-Saleh truly believes it is) by degrading it further and calling it a mere “assumption” and that this “assumption” is believed by some to be sufficient to consider it “scientific evidence to support their arguments against creation”. This is once again a manifestation of his unwillingness to address evolutionary theory as “true” science. Here, As-Saleh identifies the existential threat the theory of evolution poses as he views it not merely as a faulty practice of science, but especially as a threat to the Qur’anic description of the creation of man and other living beings. An interesting hypothesis proposed by Tracy (2011) is that, especially for non-scientifically literate individuals “[evolutionary theory] may be a conceptual obstacle to a search for greater meaning in life, so rejecting or denying [evolutionary theory’s] veracity may be a means of regulating existential anxiety”64. This may be the psychological mechanism behind As-Saleh’s immediate refusal of evolutionary theory’s epistemic basis, but also the same mechanism the author is expecting to reach in his readers. An interesting alternative here is whether As-Saleh is misguiding his readers by distorting his presentation of evolution. If this is correct, which his PhD in medical biochemistry might suggest, could it be that he (and presumably others) is attempting to act as a gatekeeper of dangerous ideas, by deforming evolutionary theory into easily refuted strawmen? It would be impossible to answer such a question in the scope of this thesis, but scholars ready to push further on this issue could presumably interview ex-Salafi intellectuals with a knowledge of evolutionary theory in order to get a better understanding of the situation.

63 Scott. (1997), p. 264 64 Tracy et al. (2011)

Using “common sense” to refute evolution, As-Saleh describes the theory as proposing that “the origin of life lies in a single small animal that was ‘developed’ on its own from water”.65 This, of course, is an oversimplification of abiogenesis, but does no concern evolution per se. Moreover, As-Saleh claims that evolution states that animals were developed in accordance to the environment and in time produced more ‘advanced’ creatures until it begot the highest form: man. It seems as though, even in his criticism of evolutionary theory, As-Saleh does not deviate from the idea of a telos (i.e. the creation of man), but of course evolution has no direction: it is but an opportunistic algorithm operating in a sea of random changes. Thus, the story here woven by As-Saleh does not reflect the scientific theory of evolution. Near the end of his introduction, As-Saleh described the objectives of his essay, a segment that is worth repeating here: a) Examine the basics of the theory and the evidence supporting them. b) Provide the essential facts that disprove the validity of the theory’s assumption. c) Discuss the influence of the theory on the life of this world. d) Relate man to his Creator and hence to the purpose of our creation.

These objectives are meant to guide men towards the proper worship of Allaah, once again demonstrating that As-Saleh’s essay does not primarily concern itself with refuting evolution per se (the path to truth is already known: by studying the Qur’an and the Sunna), but rather seeks to protect the believer from its corrupting effects.

As-Saleh’s description of the theory of evolution This section is critical to As-Saleh’s essay, as he “explains” the theory of evolution that he later intends to refute which he does through a dual approach: 1) arguments rooted mostly in “common sense” (sprinkled with references to Allaah here and there) which gradually morph into 2) arguments rooted mostly in religion. As stated in his objectives, As-Saleh begins by describing the theory of evolution itself in six points. Again, As-Saleh attempts to build a straw man version (willingly or not) of the theory that can easily be refuted later in his text. First, As-Saleh claims that the ‘archeological’ findings of Darwin’s lifetime are an important pillar of the theory and that

65 As noted before, the study of the apparition of life is called abiogenesis and is distinct from the theory of evolution proper.

these suggest that “old” layers in the ground contained fossils of “primitive” life forms, whereas “more recent” layers contain those of more “advanced” creatures. It is by observing this, he claims, that Darwin concluded that “advanced” creatures evolved from “primitive” ones. Second, As-Saleh claims (with some basis in reality) that, during Darwin’s lifetime, it was believed that all animal embryos looked very much alike, which made natural philosophers presume that “evolution on earth occurred in the same way it occurred inside the womb of living beings”. Although it is true that some representations of embryological development in the 19th century did sometimes portrait early embryos of various species as almost identical (exaggeratedly so), they remain strikingly similar. Third, As-Saleh claims that evolution “cites the differences in the roles of the appendix in man in comparison to that in monkeys”. There is some truth to this, but the author’s lack of precise terminology appears to betray some ignorance on the matter: the theory of evolution has shown that Man’s appendix is an atrophied form of an organ that had an important physiological role in Man’s and modern Apes’ common ancestor. Again, this is a straw man argument that can be refuted with “common sense”. Fourth, the author writes that the “natural selection” element of the theory of evolution is a “process in which there are elimination factors that can abolish the weak while the strong ones are kept”. But these “elimination factors” are but the environment. As we have seen in the preceding section on evolution, natural selection favors those creatures that are the most adapted to having viable offspring in their current environment. The notion of the “elimination of the weak”, however, carries with it a moral idea which is understandably cruel and is often used by anti-evolutionists. As we shall see, As-Saleh will use this moral idea in an attempt to discredit evolution. Fifth, As-Saleh introduces the notion of sexual selection and describes it as a “process by which there is a tendency of the male and female to mate with the strong and best members of both sexes” in which the characteristics of the former will be passed on to their progeny, while the “weak” are eliminated because the former’s “lack of tendency and/or interest to mate (sic) the weak”. The notion of sexual selection is often misunderstood in evolution. It is not necessarily those who are fit that are in an advantageous position, but rather those who can convince their potential mate(s) that they are indeed the fittest. A common example is that of the peacock: all of the creature’s elaborate and beautiful feathers have no other function than to convince (some would say “deceive”) their potential mates that they are fit, for a considerable part of

the peacock’s food intake is necessary to grow and maintain the feathers, which act as “proof” that the bearer appears be fit since he has so much energy to spare. The reader can surely imagine such phenomena in humans where the extended phenotype is taken into consideration (e.g. wealth, possessions, songs, poems, knowledge). As-Saleh’s explanation of sexual selection is similar to his description of natural selection in that it appears cruel and immoral. Sixth, As-Saleh claims that “whenever a new characteristic is evolved it is inherited in the offspring”. Such a mistake in the fundamentals of biology puts into question the value of As-Saleh’s PhD or his willingness to be intellectually honest. As we have seen, in diploid (such as us humans) beings that reproduce sexually, there is only a probability that an allele will be inherited. In sum, As-Saleh’s bullet-point description of evolution is seriously flawed, potentially misinformed and misleading. Notably, there are no references to the cellular mechanisms that read DNA and translate the resulting RNA into proteins, which is central to explain the variations which can lead to adaptation and speciation. This, however, does not appear to be of much importance, as the essay is clearly not meant for a scientifically literate reader. Rather, the essay builds a straw man version of evolution that can appear convincing to recently converted Salafis with little knowledge of biology, but who live in a world where evolution is considered a scientific theory just as valid as the heliocentric model of the solar system and are hence constantly bombarded with notions they feel inadequately prepared to refute, at least in their own minds. It would be interesting to ponder the consequences of As-Saleh’s criticism of evolution if such ideas where once translated into educational policy. In a state dominated by Salafi ideology in which As-Saleh’s idea were used as prolegomena to biology, there could be no meaningful research in biology. How would professors explain to their students the evolution of bacteria in petri dishes or viable and manifest mutations in fruit flies bombarded with radiation, for instance? How could graduate students explore the epidemiology of viruses and other contagion vectors? And how could researchers and entrepreneurs employ induced evolution in the field of synthetic biological engineering? An As-Saleh-approved curriculum would render such a putative state incapable of harnessing the emerging fields of synthetic biology, genome-centered therapy, genetically modified organisms and more. Moreover, it would make such a state extremely vulnerable to bioterrorism and foreign

biological attacks. A hostile attitude towards biology could, moreover, leak into other fields and hamper even more research and development. Indeed, such a state would be a partially blind and weak laggard on the world scene.

As-Saleh’s refutation of evolution through (mostly) ‘common sense’ As-Saleh boldly titles this section of his essay “Reality vs. Theory”, highlighting his desire to prove that evolution is a mere erroneous assumption than can easily be refuted by facts and elements of the Qur’an. As the reader shall see, As-Saleh does not appear to master the facts and seems to pull (non-religious) “proof” out of thin air. Again, this does not mean his arguments cannot be persuasive to a Salafi with little knowledge of biology but haunted by questions about the science because of the society in which he lives. First, As-Saleh addresses the question of ‘archeology’66, claiming, correctly so, that its discoveries are far from complete. The idea of using “God as a stopgap for the incompleteness of our knowledge”67, commonly known as a “God of the gaps” argument, has been identified as such at least since Friedrich Nietzsche’s publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (although the philosopher was mocking the idea)68 and is often used in Christian creationist/intelligent design circles, taking the form of the following syllogism: 1. X is some (typically complex, functional) feature of the world. 2. There are only two possible explanations of X: natural (e.g. evolution) or transcendent (intelligent design[/creationism]). 3. Science has (in principle) no natural explanation of X. 4. Thus, a transcendent intelligent designer (God) designed/created X69

Although As-Saleh does not explicitly use this whole reasoning here, he strongly implies it by using some of its constituent points. Following this argument, As-Saleh suggests that perhaps the lower layers of “lower” creatures and the higher layers of “higher” creatures are “evidence for organized existence of these beings (in any form) at times when the environment is suitable for that (sic)”, apparently unaware that his reasoning appears to be a

66 Again, he is probably referring to the science of palaeontology. 67 D. Bonhoeffer, cited in R.H Bube (1971), p. 4 68 Speaking of priests, Nietzsche writes: “Verily, they themselves have never walked on the carpets of knowledge. Of gaps was the spirit of these redeemers made up; but into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God.” in W. Kaufmann (1982), p. 204 69 Pennock, R. T. (2007), p. 323

crude support for evolution. Furthermore, As-Saleh claims that ‘archeology’ in Darwin’s time estimated Man’s appearance in circa 600 000 B.C., whereas today, the science estimates that Man appeared in circa 10 000 000 B.C. Although these estimates are not based in any actual science (contemporary or Victorian), As-Saleh’s intent is (presumably) to demonstrate that scientific knowledge is constantly in flux and cannot be relied upon to produce facts, whereas the Qur’an and Sunna are the repository of the truth. As-Saleh finishes his first point by claiming, falsely, that ‘archeology’70 has shown no transitional forms linking single-cell organisms to multiple-cell ones and wonders why there are no transitory forms linking amphibians and birds (as we have seen, this is not how evolution works). Although mostly false and misleading, As-Saleh’s arguments may succeed, at least in the eyes of one who knows little of biology, in destroying the straw man version of the “archeological” evidence he put forth in the former section of his essay. Second, As-Saleh addresses the issue of the likeness of various early-form embryos in different species. His statement is worth repeating here as it is partially correct: [This was a wrong conclusion] because of the microscopy present at Darwin’s time. Today’s technology demonstrates that there are fine differences between the structure, build up and organization of animal embryos. Comparative embryology is still today considered further proof that evolution is correct, but, as in the section on “archeology”, As-Saleh seeks to reduce the theory of evolution to Darwin’s thinking, therefore implying that it is old and that contemporary data can disprove it. This theme underlies As-Saleh’s essay and is also a common argumentative technique Christian creationists employ.71 Third, As-Saleh examines the issue of the appendix; more specifically, why it does not appear to have a physiological role (other than potentially pathological) in humans. It is interesting here that As-Saleh temporarily abandons ‘secular common sense’ in favor of an explanation found in the Qur’an. He states that “…its presence is inherited from the grand- man who depended upon vegetation as a source of food to help him digest it (sic)”. It is not clear from As-Saleh what exactly the appendix’ role was in the grand-man, but he is

70 Palaeontology 71 Scott & Branch, (2009), p. 90

presumably referring either to the Ad and Thamud72 or to the supposed colossal size of Adam and his immediate descendants73. It is somewhat odd that As-Saleh writes of an organ which used to have a role in our ancestors, but has no function today, as it resembles the logic of evolution. Why, once could ask, the sudden use of religious arguments? One cannot say for sure, but what is real is that As-Saleh’s arguments, starting from here, slowly morph into mostly the religious-based kind. As-Saleh wraps up his section on the appendix by adding an apparently contradictory argument (but which can nonetheless appear convincing): “In addition, there could be other important functions for the appendix that are not discovered yet”. Fourth, As-Saleh attempts to refute the idea of “natural selectivity” by arguing that it is Allaah that decides when an organism is meant to die74. As-Saleh accuses evolutionists of only taking into account “elimination factors” while ignoring the “life factors”, that is to say the “…means which Allaah has provided: sun, seas, wind, rain, plants, gravity, etc.”. Here, As-Saleh presents a worldview in which these two different sets of factors are essential to the comprehension of life on Earth, implying that evolutionists are not practicing science, because “When scientists try to formulate theories to explain certain matters in the outside world, they take into account all factors of influence”. This is a less-than subtle call for scientists to consider the “evidence” in the Qur’an. Thus, not only is As-Saleh unwilling to consider the scientific merits of evolutionary theory, but he appears to attack the premises of Science itself by demanding that it consider supernatural phenomena as causal mechanisms. It is a brilliant destruction of the straw man version of “natural selectivity” and, although scientifically irrelevant, is no doubt a powerful argument for the scientifically illiterate. In his second section on “natural selectivity”, As-Saleh appears (erroneously) to identify the fuzzy idea of “Mother Earth”75 as some sort of tenet held by all evolutionists. “Mother nature” he claims, is what evolutionists believe is the “ ‘source’ that provides and supports the ‘natural selectivity’”. In a typical Salafi fashion, As-Saleh implicitly identifies the “worship” of this “Mother Earth” as the sin of Shirk, the unpardonable worship of false gods. This premise established, he then goes on to refute the idea that “Mother Nature” exists

72 Qur’an 41:15 & 89:6-9 73 Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:543 74 Presumably a reference to al-A‘raaf 7:34 75 The kind found in new age circles and popular conceptions such as in the movie “The Lion King”.

in two sections. Firstly, Mother Nature (which, as we have seen, is considered here as one of many ‘false idols’ which Salafis seek to purge from Islam)76, he writes, “lacks wisdom, power, self-coordination, will, and knowledge”. This, of course, is in stark contrast to Allaah, who possesses all of these attributes. In nature, there are numerous violent elements and phenomena (e.g. storms, severe cold). How then, he asks, “could these conditions explain the beauty of the creation and its fine course of establishment and coordination?”. In a Western context, his argument is akin to the “watchman analogy” that Christian creationists often use. The idea originates from William Paley’s Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802) in which the author explains that, finding an intricate and beautiful watch, he must assume that there is a watchmaker and that, likewise, looking at the beautiful and seemingly flawless universe, he must assume that there is a creator.77 In this iteration, of course, As-Saleh only uses the second part of Paley’s argument, whilst the first part is implicit. Interestingly, As-Saleh attempts to further to his argument by asking “How could the minute elements in the egg of a bird ‘know’ that the egg must appear in the form of a bird and thus it has to break its own shell to survive?” Without delving into the obvious genetic and embryological reasons for this phenomenon, one can see here that As-Saleh is referring to the ultimate cause: the omnipotent and unknowable Allaah. Pivoting to another area of concern, As-Saleh notes that “people” often refer to “Mother Nature” as a causal explanation because they “they like to look ‘normal and advanced’ and not ‘strange and backwards’ in front of others”, the idea here being that acolytes of the false deity of “mother nature” are widespread and constitute the norm. The use of the “mother nature” prosopopoeia suggests that As-Saleh is on more comfortable intellectual terrain when combating false deities and shirk. This appears to be an exhortation, especially to recent Salafi converts in Western countries, to not be ashamed of their beliefs before more secular-minded individuals. Indeed, he adds that “The idea of ‘how people will look at me’ overshadows that God (Allaah) is more important than people.” Significantly, As-Saleh explains what, according to him, is one of the main consequences of the spread of

76 Indeed, As-Saleh later states that “…we see that many who arrogantly deny Allaah’s existence try to divert the attention of the people to worship this ‘new’ deity called ‘Mother Nature’” 77 The idea is recapitulated on a page published online by Lander University’s faculty of philosophy. See https://tinyurl.com/lander56 or https://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/paley.shtml

Darwin’s idea: “It is a reflection of psychological defeat in front of secularism, which itself is the major fruit of Darwin’s theory (emphasis mine)”. By choosing the word ‘defeat’, As- Saleh is referring the Christian/Western world: it has been “defeated” by the ideology of Darwinism and no longer believes in God. Indeed, in the Salafi perspective, the West is often viewed as “soft, sickly, and sweet, a decadent civilization addicted to pleasure”78 which has alienated itself from spirituality and God. Moreover, evolutionary theory is often viewed as “existentially bleak”79 and incompatible with a sense of purpose in life. As-Saleh enjoins Salafis not to be thusly contaminated by the soulless West, to cleanse their souls, and to avoid the pitfalls of hell80: A believer in Allaah would not fear saying the Name of his Creator […] He knows that those around him will one day die, but Allaah is the Everliving. So, who must count first? […] This is the benefit of worship of Allaah: liberation from the slavery to anything and (or) anyone but Allaah.

As-Saleh’s Salafi Weltanschauung (or perhaps the view he hopes to instill in his readers) appears to instinctively shape the argument concerning evolution as one of false deity vs. true god. To even begin to examine the science of evolutionary theory, it seems, is to begin to be a slave to it, and, to be a true Muslim, one must be a slave to Allaah alone. In his third section on ‘natural selectivity’, As-Saleh goes further to illustrate his point that ‘Mother Nature’, now clearly identified as the false idol of the “darwinist ideology”, cannot truly exist. Man, he explains, has senses, reason, and can learn, whereas ‘Mother Nature’ has none of these things: “How could man then be ‘more advanced’ than a ‘creator’ known as ‘Mother Nature’?” Again, As-Saleh seeks to fit evolutionary theory in the mold of a religion, one that is manifestly false. To emphasize this point, As-Saleh quotes the Qur’an: How do you worship besides Allaah something which has no power either to harm or benefit you? But it is Allaah, Who is the All-Hearer, the All- Knower. (Qur’an 5:76)

78 Buruma, I. & A. Margalit (2004), p. 49 79 J. Tracy et al. (2011), p. 2 80 For a Salafi, who is obliged to take the Qur’an literally, the idea of death is closely associated with that of hell, or Jahannam, which can be quite terrifying as the Qur’an contains numerous graphic descriptions of what hell-dwellers must endure for eternity. See, for example 4:56, 22:19-22 or 14:16

Moreover, he adds, Allaah clearly states that nature, ultimately under the control of Himself, is also meant to be under man’s service: See you not (O men) that Allaah has subjected for you whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth, and has perfected His graces upon you (both) apparent and hidden? [...] (Qur’an 31:20) This passage could be interpreted as a “permission” from God for humans to engage in genetic engineering, but As-Saleh avoids the topic, perhaps because God’s creatures are meant to be perfect and not to be tampered with. Furthermore, As-Saleh identifies an additional error in the reasoning of evolutionists: they purportedly believe in a ‘Mother Nature’ god, but, “with the progress of technology”, think they can control this nature. How then could they control a god? Of course, one would surely find it difficult to discover biologists who worship “Mother Nature” as a deity. As-Saleh then quotes a passage in the Qur’an, claiming that God foresaw this. At this point, the typical educated Western layman could easily start to think that As-Saleh is rambling and that his arguments have nothing to do with the theory of evolution, but it is important, in order to understand the Salafi objections to evolution and, perhaps, the reasons behind this rejection, to understand As-Saleh’s reasoning up to here. First, evolution is but a flawed attempt at science, stuck in the 19th century, and it has been disproven by contemporary science. Second, those who adhere to this ‘darwinist’ ideology in reality worship a god, ‘Mother Nature’. Third, this supposed god is in reality a false deity, which has no real power. Fourth, only the existence of Allaah can explain the world as it is. Checkmate: evolution is false. In his fourth section on ‘natural selectivity’, As-Saleh examines the ‘laws of nature’. There exist ‘natural laws’ in our universe, but “some consider that ‘Nature’ represents the ‘Laws’ that govern the universe”. In so doing, they cannot answer the questions “Who created this universe? [and] Who put the ‘laws’ into effect?” As-Saleh sees a logical error in the devotees of Darwinism’s cosmology: they posit a god, but that god only explains “how things occur”, and not who is at the origin of all things. This leads them to live with a twisted conscious with two contradictory beliefs. They believe that nature can explain phenomena, but surely understand that there must be a creator. Indeed, he adds, “under dangerous circumstances, you hear them calling ‘Oh my God!’ or ‘God help me!’ ”. Thus, As-Saleh purportedly explores the psychology of those who worship “mother nature”: their psyche is

twisted by doublethink as, surely, they cannot conquer the nature inclination in humans to recognize a creator of the world, but they nonetheless persist in being enslaved to a manifestly false deity. Only when they fear for their lives does the truth pierce through to their conscience: there is a creator, and they desperately ask for his help. Through this argument, As-Saleh adds some measure of relief to the recent Salafi convert: although he may live in a secular society and be constantly bombarded with secular ideas, even the secularists secretly know there is a god and long for him to protect them. As-Saleh then elaborates his point on natural laws, writing that we now know much about natural phenomena, but “scientists do not tell us how did these realities become laws” and, for instance, they know not why natural laws allow “birds to fly in the air, fishes to live in the water, and man to live on earth”. Of course, scientists, in examining the natural world, eschew the question “who?” because this implies that a supernatural force is somehow responsible for a phenomenon. The scientific edifice is not built upon superstition, but rather empirical data, mathematical models and theories that have survived multiple attempts to falsify them. The “who?” in these circumstances is obviously, for As-Saleh, Allaah. Indeed, he shows practically no interest in the natural laws except for a brief and incomplete enumeration of them. He then quotes the Qur’an six times to illustrate this point (13:16, 87:2-3, 67:3-4, 13:2, 31:10, and 50:38). Interestingly, the last quote from the Qur’an is accompanied by a foot note which explains why “we” is used to refer to Allaah: The “We” refers to Allaah himself. It is common with Semitic languages for any monarch to use the “We” and “Us” when referring to himself81 […] When Allaah says: “We” or “Us”, no one who is familiar with the Arabic lexicology understands that this refers to “more than one God united in one!” Allaah is One and Unique… In this passage, As-Saleh attempts to explain some of the intricacies of the Arabic language. This adds weight to the argument that As-Saleh’s essay is intended for recent converts in non-Arabic majority countries. Making sure that the matter has been sufficiently emphasized, As-Saleh, in his fifth section on ‘natural selectivity’, quotes the Qur’an five times to illustrate the point that there is no other god than Allaah (27:61, 27:60, 27:63, 27:64, and 6:46). The quotes demonstrate,

81 As-Saleh is apparently unaware that this was and still is the case for numerous European monarchs.

according to As-Saleh, that only Allaah can be the author of the world, as it is he who, for instance, placed rivers, creates rain, makes trees grow, and creates wind. Of course, this has consequences not only for the field of biology, but also those of geology and climatology. Should As-Saleh’s curriculum be used as a model to teach these two latter fields, causal explanations of geological formations and climate would be narrowed down to one single answer: “Allaah did it”. One could hardly imagine scientists working on these fields if only ultimately only one answer was permitted. Indeed, what would be the point? In universities, one can assume that all of these scientific fields of inquiry would become subfields of theology. This section seeks only to prove the Oneness of god and does not touch evolution at all. In the following sixth section, seemingly temporarily abandoning his polemic against evolution, As-Saleh quotes the Qur’an ten times (10:18, 12:40, 31:11, 35:40, 22:73, 7:191, 7:192, 13:16, 7:194, and 57:9) to illustrate the point that “Buddha, ‘Eesa (Jesus), Saints, Monks, Musa (Moses), Prophets, Places, Rivers, Cows, Temples, etc.” are not gods despite what some people may say. One could be forgiven for thinking that As-Saleh is veering off- topic, but it is important for him, and for any Salafi scholar, to show he can mobilize his knowledge of the Qur’an. This is in essence what As-Saleh is doing in the fifth and sixth sections of his argument on ‘natural selectivity’: showing that he can ‘destroy’ arguments against the oneness of god and for the existence of other gods thanks to his knowledge of the Qur’an. For the reader, As-Saleh’s jump into religious argumentation can easily lead to the conclusion that evolutionary theory is indeed a religion, as As-Saleh insists it is so and attacks it as such. In his sixth section on ‘natural selectivity’, entitled “The point about ‘Sexual Selection’ ”, As-Saleh, returning to a more ‘common sense’ approach, appears to confound the discredited Lamarckian theory (the idea that changes in a living being during its lifetime will be transmitted to its offspring – As-Saleh does not identify it as Lamarck’s idea, but rather implies that it was Darwin’s) with that of Darwin’s initial theory, for instance, arguing that “The muscles of a strong athlete will not be inherited in his offspring”. This allows him to claim, correctly, that modern genetics has disproved the notion that traits acquired during a creature’s lifetime are inheritable.82 Indeed, for Salafis, “those scientific findings which do

82 A recent notion in genetics which has a superficial similarity to Lamarck’s theory is that of epigenetics, but we will abstain from exploring this matter as it would take us beyond the scope of this thesis.

not challenge basic concepts of Islam [are] presented as proof for the existence of a benevolent creator.”83 Thus, As-Saleh continues to weave a false narrative “proving” that “Darwinism” is an obsolete idea disproven by modern science. It is worth asking here if As- Saleh truly believed Lamarckism to be a part of evolutionary theory. Perhaps he willingly intertwined the two in order to claim that scientists had indeed debunked a “part” of Darwin’s ideas. In any case, it shows that, at least in this case, the Salafi criticism of evolution is either build on scientific ignorance or is a willing attempt to deceive its audience. In his seventh and final section on ‘natural selectivity’, entitled “Under-developed Theory”, As-Saleh presents yet another easily ridiculed straw man argument. For him, evolutionary theory holds a doctrine according to which “primitive” organisms eventually evolve into “advanced” organisms (As we have seen, this is far from being a principle of evolutionary theory). Why, then, he asks has “no monkey transformed into a man even after hundred (sic) years or so [?]”. He then proceeds to question the very idea of “advanced”: for instance, are birds more advanced than man because they can fly? For a Salafi, this idea would obviously be preposterous, as it is Man to which Allaah has “lent” nature. Although his reasoning is faulty, As-Saleh can once again claim victory, and add, triumphantly: Scientists have called Darwin’s study a “Theory” and clearly there is a difference between theory and reality. A theory is by definition falsifiable. It thus seems clear, from what As-Saleh writes, that “reality” is to be found in the Qur’an, whilst “theories” can only be correct if they corroborate this “reality”: if they fail to do so, they are obviously false. Indeed, as As-Saleh and many other thinkers indicate, for Salafis, the entirety of reality is encompassed in the Qur’an and the Sunna. If a claim is considered incompatible with this dogma, be it a simple affirmation or a time-tested scientific theory, it is necessarily false. This, to say the least, constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to rational thinking, as there can be no intellectual enquiry which does not end with an answer already found in a limited and rigid sphere of dogmatic thought. Thus, if a hypothetical state truly based all of its policies on Salafi dogma, it would be severely restrained in its options and would definitely shatter the realist assumptions of international relations.84 It could be argued that this is indeed what happened in the case of the Islamic state’s short-lived caliphate.

83 Riexinger (2009) 84 For instance, a truly Salafi state would not presume that other international actors were acting in their own self-interest, but would probably assign “evil” motives to them.

Indeed, as Haykel (2016) claims, Salafis believe that Muslim countries have become weaker than Western states not because of their poor performance in economics, technology or science, but rather “because many of its members, and certainly all of its political leaders, have abandoned the “authentic” teachings of the Qur’an”85. The following chapter in As-Saleh’s essay, entitled “Dangerous consequences”, is arguably one of the most important in the sense that it purports to demonstrate how “Darwin’s ideology” constitutes a major threat not only for Islam, but for mankind. In this chapter, As- Saleh describes “Darwinism” as a tool used by the elites in the West to debase mankind and transform men and women into soulless creatures living in an existential void and constantly desperate to fit into the latest fad or to obtain the latest fashionable gadget. In the beginning of this chapter, As-Saleh writes how “Darwinism” gave the European powers the ideal pretext to believe they were meant to dominate other regions of the world: They feel that they are entitled to certain practices of domination according to the idea of “survival is for the best!” This is well manifested in the colonial expansions, racism, and in many practices by many of the so-called “democratic nations” who practice the principle of supremacy: “Might is Right”.86 What As-Saleh is presumably referring to here is the ideology of Social Darwinism, a term coined by Hebert Spencer and whose ideas were “linked by their use of quasi-biological or organicist explanations of social evolution, class division and poverty, and racial and national stages of development”87 Indeed, Spencer appropriated terms and concepts invented by Darwin and applied them to a pseudo-scientific sociology. Whether As-Saleh was aware of the difference between Social Darwinism and evolution is a mystery. Using this rhetorical tour de force, he demonstrates the “moral corruption” and racism of the West and provides recent converts with reasons to distance themselves from and perhaps despise their previous identity of “Westerners”, thus making relapses less of a problem. Oddly enough, the idea that the West represents a “might is right” approach coexists with the image of the West as a sickly and decadent civilization, devoid of values and principles. The following section of the chapter is somewhat curious because of its apparent idiosyncratic nature. In it, As-Saleh

85 Haykel. (2016), p. 72 86 Haykel. (2016), p. 28 87 Claeys (2000), p. 228

explains how “development” and “environment” are applied in Western materialistic society, thus demonstrating that “Darwinism” has spread far from its “pseudo-scientific” roots to influence society at large. Indeed, he claims, “this idea (environment) is very well used in our times to support the materialistic life of the modern world”. “Development”, he claims, is the idea at the origin of mass-consumerism and the reason why things that were once “secondary” are now “necessary” (e.g. trinkets, gadgets, electronics, etc.). If one does not follow the flow, one risks being rejected or labeled “different”. The example used by As- Saleh is that of a woman’s dresser: “Open a woman’s dresser today and see the latest ‘fashion’ dresses and shoes. Come next month and you will find ‘new’ ones. She has to ‘fit’ into the ‘environment’ around her”. According to these accusations, As-Saleh appears to believe that the acceptance of “Darwinism” has moral and societal consequences. This phenomenon was identified by the philosopher Daniel Dennet, who wrote that “Darwin's idea had been born as an answer to questions in biology, but it threatened to leak out”88 into other fields. Indeed, by implicitly rendering the idea of a god-creator redundant, evolutionary theory may have had effects that are broader in scope than its answers in biology, but As- Saleh seems to pin it as one of the purported sources of the rot corrupting Western mores. Not only does it fit in his wider narrative of “Darwinism as a false religion”, but it also confirms the idea that no explanation can come from outside Salafi dogma: if the West is decadent, it is because it does not embrace Allaah and willingly become his slave. As stated earlier, As-Saleh blames a cabal of elites for imposing these “Darwinian” modes of thinking, but, strangely, does not ask the question: Cui bono? Who are these nefarious elites and what do they want? The answer may not be forthcoming, but such conspiratorial thinking is common in Salafi circles and, as Wiktorowicz states, In this battle, Salafi publications eschew human systems of argumentation, preferring instead to make a point and follow it with a series of direct quotes from the Qur’an and sound hadith collections.89 The materialistic environment encouraged by this Darwinian mode of thinking often drives people away from Allaah, As-Saleh claims, but, he adds, “many are discovering the truth regarding the very essence of the purpose of existence”. This truth, of course, is the Salafi

88 Dennet (1995), p. 63 89 Wiktorowicz (2006), p. 212

dogma. As-Saleh thus encourages converts by claiming that they are heading in the right direction. It would appear from his exhortations that living as a Salafi comes with some hardships and As-Saleh must be aware of the phenomenon of the “Salafi burnout” in which former zealots suddenly lose their faith.90 Thus, he encourages recent converts and gives them further reasons to stay the course. As-Saleh ends his chapter with a quote from the Qur’an: “…Truly, my prayer, my sacrifice, my living, and my dying are for Allaah…”91 As-Saleh then seeks to explain how “Darwinism” spread in the following chapter, appropriately entitled “Why did the ‘theory’ spread?” According to As-Saleh, the theory was used as a weapon by Western scientists in their war against “the church and many of its corrupted doctrines”. Thus, As-Saleh understands Darwinism to be a tool that is now obsolete, since the secularists have “won” the contest with the Church in the West. Indeed, he states this explicitly: This [Darwinism] played a role in the spread of secular thoughts in many parts of the world. For many, it helped promote a stand against church oppression, and when it served its purpose it was transformed to serve the purpose of influence and secularism. Moreover, he adds, the theory was maliciously introduced in the curricula of schools in colonized Muslim countries, where it “caused a great deal of negative influence on many generations”. The theory was even used, through its notion of “selectivity”, to justify colonization of the “weak” people. Thus, As-Saleh is again associating “Darwinism” with the colonial and imperialistic past of the West, adding weight to his argument that the West has no credible moral authority.

As-Saleh’s refutation of evolution through (mostly) religious arguments As-Saleh’s penultimate chapter is titled “The Qur’an and the ‘Theory’” which consists of commented passages of the Qur’an. In this chapter, As-Saleh again seeks to demonstrate his mastery of the Qur’an and to give, so to speak, the final blow to Darwinism. For instance, he argues that the argument about evolution is ultimately irrelevant, because “whatever man knows is nothing compared to what Allaah […] Knows” (Qur’an 2:216). This

90 S. Hamid (2008), “The Development of British Salafism”, ISIM review, 21:1, p. 11 91 Qur’an 6:162

confirms once again the notion than there can be no truth outside of the Salafi dogma and that, for Salafis, rational evidence-based argumentation is off limits. Interestingly, As-Saleh also reveals the core purpose of containing the spread of Darwinism when he claims that “without the reality of creation, there is no purpose for man’s existence”, (probably) unwittingly veering close to the Dostoevskyan notion that without God existence is ultimately futile. This is akin to saying “X cannot be true, for if it was, life would have no meaning”. Although logically fallacious, the argument indicates the fear that surrounds Darwin’s “dangerous idea”, for if it were to spread in the Muslim and particularly the Salafi community, it could infect minds, make individuals lose their faith and their sense of purpose. It is a disease that must be quarantined, a disease that represents an existential threat to both Islam and Mankind. As-Saleh argues that Allaah describes how he created man, that this knowledge is sufficient, and quotes numerous passages from the Qur’an to illustrate his point. As for the details of this creation, man was not meant to know them. An interesting element in this chapter is a footnote (#7) on page 33. In it, As-Saleh expands a passage of the Qur’an by quoting from the hadith, and then adds that a collection of the hadith is available from a certain publisher in both English and Arabic, thereby encouraging recent converts to develop their knowledge of the Sunna and the Arabic language. This is further proof that he wrote his polemic mostly for anglophone converts. The conclusion to As-Saleh’s “Man & Nature” is titled “The test”. In it, he describes Adam and his wife’s fall from heaven following their eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. As-Saleh adds that “they disobeyed Allaah by eating from it and Allaah sent them down to earth to live with their prosperity, that He may test their obedience and submission to Him”, thus stressing the importance of one’s beliefs: converts must purge themselves from “forbidden” ideas such as Darwinism and totally submit themselves to Salafi beliefs and its lifestyle elements. As-Saleh adds: “This is the true origin of man: an honored being above that of the cockroach or a mouse!”, implying that evolutionary theory degrades the status of humans by suggesting that humans, mice and cockroaches have a common ancestor. Man, he says, must be grateful to his creator and “dissociate himself from any form of worship to other than his Creator, Allaah”.

Concluding thoughts on “Man & Nature”

Having read As-Saleh’s essay, one can easily conclude that the author did not appear to have a proper understanding of the theory of evolution or even biology, although it is possible that he deliberately “dumbed down” and mischaracterized the subject so as to consciously use straw man versions of evolution to easily demolish them. As-Saleh’s knowledge of the subject or his possible absence of intellectual honesty in presenting it is however of relatively minor importance, as his essay is not intended to convince scientifically literate secularists or even non-Muslims. His text appears to be intended as a tool for Salafi centers in English- speaking countries, such as the U.K., Canada and the United States. For individuals in those countries who have recently submitted to the Salafi creed, it is likely that As-Saleh’s text can serve as a confidence booster and a perhaps a confirmation of their views on evolutionary theory, thus fortifying their burgeoning new faith. The Salafi dogma’s radical incompatibility with rational thought has already been highlighted. The Salafi dogma, as shown in As-Saleh’s text, may be attractive and perhaps existentially fulfilling to many individuals, but as a set of premises on which to build a society and a polity, it would be handicapped in many ways from a competitive perspective. Indeed, as Duderija (2007) states, “[The Salafi] approach […] proved to be hopelessly simplistic and naïve [as] it was impossible to return to Qur'an and Sunna in a vacuum”92. Although Salafis eagerly embrace modern technology, for instance, to facilitate the spread of their ideas and, in the case of Salafi Jihadists, to wage war against their perceived enemies, the Salafi creed is fundamentally opposed to innovation, scientific enquiry and basic logic. Ceteris paribus, a state anchored in the Salafi dogma would be hopelessly outclassed by other states that accepted the value of science and secular reasoning. As stated earlier, an As-Saleh approved curriculum for university studies would invariably produce graduate students and researchers with no knowledge of biology, geology and climatology. Moreover, it would seem likely that this hostility to science would spill over to other scientific disciplines. Indeed, under such a curriculum it would not be difficult to imagine universities being under the supervision of Salafi Ulama constantly scrutinizing learning material for elements incompatible with Salafi Manhaj and Sharia. Let us here consider a few of the potential consequences such a policy

92 Duderija (2007), p. 348

might lead to. How could such a Salafi state deal with a crisis such as those of SARS or MERS?93 Indeed, to acknowledge the very existence of these diseases would be to recognize the evolution of the viruses that lead to them. According to As-Saleh’s reasoning, these diseases should not even exist. Another potential problem would be hydroelectricity. As- Saleh states that the rivers were placed there by Allaah. Would building a hydroelectric dam and the ensuing reservoir constitute a violation of God’s plan? Moreover, how could such a Salafi state hope to remain competitive when evolutionary algorithms are used to build and enhance artificial intelligence? Of course, as the criticism of evolutionary theory appears to be a novel phenomenon on online Salafi communities, there remains the possibility that these inconvenient incongruities have yet to be properly addressed, but it does not seem likely, at least given As-Saleh’s arguments, that any significant reconciliation with science and reason is possible. As-Saleh’s Dostoevskian argument concerning the meaningless of existence without a creator is curious, as the very idea of a world devoid of a creator deity would appear to be incompatible with the Salafi intellectual toolkit. Indeed, when criticizing evolution, As-Saleh identifies it as a false deity surrounded by a false religion. There does not appear to be any overt references to Western creationism and/or intelligent design in As-Saleh’s text, albeit it is possible that he borrowed at least some arguments without referencing them. Indeed, there are many websites devoted to creationism and/or intelligent design. As we have stressed before, As-Saleh makes no effort to confront evolutionary theory as a science, but rather seeks to disassociate it from the scientific enterprise altogether by, for instance, claiming that it is but a theory, but not reality. Despite not associating himself with the efforts of Western creationists, As-Saleh’s goals in his polemic text are practically the same. As Barnes et al. (2017) state, [C]reationist activities involve a great deal of communication aimed at members of sympathetic religious groups and very few attempts at engaging scientists in scientific journals or at scientific conferences. In general, the goals of creationists (including neo-creationists such as the group that self-identifies as proponents of intelligent design (I.D.)) are cultural, moral, political, and theistic.94

93 Severe acute respiratory syndrome & Middle East respiratory syndrome 94 Barnes (2017), p. 28

This is indeed what As-Saleh endeavors to accomplish in his polemic essay. His audience is not composed of scientifically literate individuals and he is definitely not “engaging scientists in scientific journals”. He seeks to point out the potential cultural and moral hazards of evolutionary theory and to contain them, while simultaneously promoting his theistic agenda as the only source of truth and salvation.

Chapter 2 - Abu Iyaad and his response to Usama Hasan

Usama Hasan is a British astronomer and a Muslim intellectual public figure. He is currently a senior researcher for the Quilliam Foundation, a UK think tank on Islamic extremism. In 2008, Hasan argued in a Guardian article that the Qur’an was compatible with the theory of evolution. Indeed, he claimed that most Muslims had a “children’s madrassa- level understanding” of Islam and that Muslims needed to take science, especially the theory of evolution, more seriously.95 Following this, he was harassed by elements of the Salafi community in the UK and also received numerous death threats.96 Hasan attempted to clear up the matter at the (Salafi)97 Didsbury Mosque, where his father is an Imam, but his attempt only infuriated more Salafis, with some of them asking sarcastically if Adam’s parents were monkeys, since Hasan claimed Adam was the first true human and the result of billions of years of natural selection. Although most Salafis angered by his arguments went no further than calling him an apostate (or, in some cases, calling for his execution as an apostate), to this author’s knowledge, no Salafi took it upon himself to systematically refute Hasan’s arguments about evolution, that is, no one except for Abu Iyaad Amjad Rafiq, an extremely active member of the Salafi community in the UK. One can find numerous essays written by him on various Salafi websites.98 Moreover, he has translated numerous Arabic Salafi texts into English, written two books, maintains an active Twitter account, and contributed to several podcasts (see Appendix 1). In a series of posts99 on the Salafi website Aqidah.com, Abu Iyaad (as he signs his texts) analyzes and refutes Hasan’s arguments on the compatibility of the Qur’an and the theory of evolution. Abu Iyaad is no As-Saleh. Whereas the former has a scattershot and disorganized approach, the latter systematically undermines his adversary’s

95 https://tinyurl.com/hasguar1 or https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/sep/11/religion.darwinbicentenary 96 https://tinyurl.com/usama32 or https://web.archive.org/web/20121019132039/http://www.standard.co.uk/news/imam-fears-nutters- could-kill-him-for-preaching-evolution-6574985.html 97 See https://www.voanews.com/europe/manchester-bombers-mosque-comes-under-scrutiny and https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/595akz/the-manchester-bomber-grew-up-in-a-neighborhood- struggling-with-extremism 98 See, for instance, www.aqidah.com or www.dajjaal.com . 99 http://www.aqidah.com/creed/articles/eyiig-usamah-hasan-suhaib-hasan-darwinism-and-the-creation-of- man.cfm

arguments in a fiercely eloquent prose. Moreover, his style suggests that he is writing for newly converted Anglophone Salafis, as he takes great pain to introduce Salafi theological notions and give them a proper English translation. Abu Iyaad’s style can be acerbic and he does not hesitate to use devastating ad personam and ad hominem attacks. His refutation of Usamah Hasan’s claim that the theory of evolution is compatible with the Qur’an takes the form of eight essays written in quick succession, almost like political pamphlets. Some even contain comments on events which occurred since the last essay was published.

The essays: Usamah Hasan, Darwinism, Evolutionary Forces and the Creation of Man

Part 1 – General Observations Abu Iyaad’s first essay (General Observations) is divided in eight parts, most of which address a quote from Usamah Hasan’s aforementioned Guardian article. The author purports to do an overview of Hasan’s position on the putative compatibility of “Darwinism” with the Qur’an. Abu Iyyad seeks to introduce the matter and to address the issue from a wide perspective whilst still refuting the subjects he touches upon. Abu Iyaad explains that Usama Hasan has attempted to merge Darwinism with the Qur’an, that is to say, to make the two compatible with each other. There are, Abu Iyaad notes, historical antecedents to this, such as when the Mu’tazilah school, and the Ismaili faith sought to incorporate elements of Greek philosophy in Islam. Also, among the examples is the “deformed” creed of Sufism. The author indicates that his essays will address numerous claims Hasan has made over the years. The aim in his first essay is to “expose exactly how and where Usama Hasan is “positioning” himself in a broader context.” However, Abu Iyaad’s essay is laden with sarcasm, mockery and outrage, and its purpose is not only to refute Usama Hasan’s argument, but also to destroy his character. Abu Iyaad first addresses the title of Hasan’s Guardian article: “Knowledge regained”. In the said article, Hasan claims that “Another irony in this whole debate [about evolution and the Qur’an] is that several medieval Islamic thinkers had ideas that were broadly similar to the theory of evolution.”100 Abu Iyaad explains, in a typical Salafi fashion

100 https://tinyurl.com/usama32 or https://web.archive.org/web/20121019132039/http://www.standard.co.uk/news/imam-fears-nutters- could-kill-him-for-preaching-evolution-6574985.html

that only the knowledge in the Qur’an is inherently beneficial, whereas “worldly” knowledge is neither “inherently praiseworthy” nor “inherently beneficial”, and that, moreover, such knowledge can be harmful in certain contexts. This argument is very typical in Salafi circles, as the only true knowledge is said to be contained in the Qur’an and the Sunna. Indeed, orthodox Muslims (Salafis), adds Abu Iyaad, know how to “put this knowledge in its proper place”, that is to say that it is not knowledge that can be used for any “religious call, reformative or otherwise”. Thus, in one fast blow of theological hermeneutic, Abu Iyaad seeks to discredit Hasan’s arguments in the eyes of the Salafi community. At the very beginning of his polemic against Hasan, Abu Iyaad states that science and/or reason will not constitute the basis of his argumentation. All that is truly needed to combat Hasan’s ideas are already in the rigid Salafi Weltanschauung. Hence, any arguments outside of this scope will be contingent. The author goes further into the territory of pathos and attempts to mobilize the disgust of Salafis by graphically illustrating the consequences of Hasan’s theory. More specifically, he states that, according to him, Allaah chose to create Adam (alayhis salaam) through the result of generations upon generations of the sexual activity of the “common ancestors” of apes and men… The mobilization of disgust is used in social conservative communities to induce a prophylactic set of behavior patterns, for instance, to send a message that individuals who hold certain ideas or practice certain behaviors should be avoided just as diseases are.101 Moreover, it has been shown that the feeling of disgust, and the fear of “contamination”, are strong features of the Salafi mindset when considering the “other”.102 Hence, Abu Iyaad is using an argumentative technique that is not only common in Salafi communities, but also very effective. Allaah, adds Abu Iyaad, has not given additional details on the creation of Adam. If he had felt it was necessary to describe the process in detail, he would have done so. This, again, is a typical Salafi hermeneutic: it is futile to search for answers that are outside of the Qur’an and Sunna, as any answers incompatible with those found inside would necessarily be false. Therefore, such speculation is unnecessary and suggests, claims Abu Iyaad, that Hasan must have an ulterior motive, that of calling to “falsafah” (philosophy), a

101 Terrizzi (2013), p. 99 102 Svensson (2012), p. 193

form of reasoning that is radically incompatible with the Salafi Weltanschauung. This opening volley by Abu Iyaad appears to be an attempt to isolate both Usama Hasan’s person and arguments from “orthodox” Salafi thought. Indeed, it is as though Abu Iyaad seeks to put Hasan in quarantine, but this is not uncommon for Salafis, who have strong ideological and ultimately psychological motives from protecting the purity of their dogma from the “pollution” of unorthodox thought.103 Responding to a second snippet of Hasan’s Guardian article in which the former acknowledges the criticism of biologist and public figure Richard Dawkins that Muslims are mostly taught creationism and the need for a debate on evolution amongst Muslims, Abu Iyaad answers that fitrah, the faculties with which children are born and which makes them naturally Muslims (only to be potentially corrupted by parents of a different religion)104, cannot but recognize that any mudath (originated thing) has an muhdith (originator). Thus, anyone who’s fitrah is intact knows “that Darwinian Evolution is falsehood”, since it makes no place for either mudath or muhdith. Abu Iyaad thus highlights the Salafi obstacles to any reasoned argument against evolution: if an individual’s fitrah, and innate disposition according to Salafi dogma, is uncorrupted, then he will necessarily recognize the truth that there exists a creator-God. However, if an individual adheres to a theory that does not recognize the necessity of a creator-God to explain the apparition and evolution of life, then it is that his fitrah is necessarily corrupted. There exists no middle ground on which Salafis can consider evolutionary theory on its own scientific merits: the Salafi ideology is airtight and, in principle, immune to arguments grounded in science and reason. Indeed, Darwinism does not recognize the necessity of a creator and, for this reason, Hasan’s very call to debate the compatibility of the Qur’an and the theory of evolution must be, from the Salafi vantage point, either a mistake born of a corrupted fitrah or, worst, a conscious call to corrupt fitrah, therefore an attack on all Muslims. The Qur’an explicitly states that “there be no change in Allaah’s creation”, which Abu Iyaad takes as meaning that there should not be any deviancy from orthodox Islamic monotheism. This injunction comes atop the notion of fitrah and serves as a reinforcement to Salafi opposition to reason. The author then mocks Usama Hassan, claiming that his strange ideas must come from a mutation in the germinal cells of

103 Svensson (2012), p. 94 104 MacDonald (2010)

his father, an Imam at Didsbury Mosque who, Abu Iyaad claims, once sat on a platform next to Sufis, whom, in the eyes of Salafis, are always guilty of deviant innovations, or Shirk and thus play an active role in attempting to corrupt the purity of Salafi dogma. The matter of fitrah is a keystone for Abu Iyaad’s arguments throughout his essays (and more generally speaking, Salafi ideology), as it makes “true” knowledge inaccessible to non-Muslims and explains why they are blind to this “obvious” truth. Indeed, all children, according to this idea, are born with an innate and correct (indeed, the only correct) divinely provided Weltanschauung. This Weltanschauung can remain pure and correct as long as a person, during his life, remains or becomes a true Muslim (Salafi). If a Salafi errs in his judgment, such as is putatively the case for Usama Hasan, it is that his God-given Weltanschauung has become corrupt and that he can no longer see the plain truth before him. This argument, a central tenet of the Salafi dogma, by itself renders all further proofs of the falsehood of Darwinism, in a sense, superfluous. Hence, Salafi thought, according to Abu Iyaad, is impervious to rational thought and evidence-based arguments. The truth is only to be found in the Qur’an and the Sunna. Moreover, one cannot simply understand Salafi dogma to grasp reality, as one must, at the very least, adhere to the Salafi creed in order to even begin to understand God’s message of truth. The implications for Salafism’s attitude non- Salafis are manifest: there can be no meaningful argument with the latter, as they cannot even hope to understand the basic tenets leading to a true understanding of the world. Indeed, most of Abu Iyaad’s arguments are implicitly made with the supposedly good faith caveat that suspends, for the purpose of the argument, the “fact” that anyone with an intact fitrah already knows the correct answer. In his second essay (see below), Abu Iyaad writes that The Messenger said “Is there any doubt concerning Allaah, the Originator of the heavens and earth?” (14:10), and this is argument through pure fitrah, by invoking the fitrah of the people, their natural innate disposition, which when it is uncorrupted, will allow a person to recognize what is true from what is false. Abu Iyaad then addresses the next section of Usama Hassan’s article, in which the former claims that science should not be feared by Muslims. For the author, this is yet another potential corruption of fitrah. To support this argument, he quotes a statement made by Richard Dawkins in which the biologist says that Darwin provided a solid and hitherto absent intellectual foundation for atheism and that understanding evolution “certainly constitutes a

giant step in that direction (i.e. atheism)”. It is not, Abu Iyaad claims, a matter of Muslims being afraid of losing their faith, but rather a question of innate disposition (fitrah), reason (aql)105, revelation (naql) and introspection (nahdar), which all inevitably lead to the conclusion that “Darwinian Evolution is a scientific con”. Again, this argument reveals the Salafi tenet that pure, uncorrupted, natural dispositions are all that are needed to dismiss evolutionary theory. In a hypothetical Salafi state anchored in the tenets described by Abu Iyaad, the state would hound not only researchers in biology, but presumably all science that suggested answers incompatible with the contents of the Qur’an and Sunna. Feeble scientific enterprises would most likely be supervised by Ulama ready to shut everything down should inconvenient answers arise and perhaps even persecute scientists for purportedly attempting to corrupt fitrah. Moreover, writes Abu Iyaad, the belief in “Darwinism” is driven by psychological needs, since it is the only alternative that atheists can offer to fitrah. Here, scientists and atheists are bundled in the same group, and the notion that the latter are desperate to find an intellectual justification for their corrupted fitrah is introduced. For Salafis, anyone who recognizes the validity of evolutionary theory is not only wrong, but also suspect. Indeed, what could possibly move them to “invent” justifications for their corrupted innate disposition? Abu Iyaad does not here explore possible motives, but only hints at them. Additionally, the author continues, “Darwinists” must prove that complex genetic material appeared by its own and that research in the field of abiogenesis remains speculative (the latter is not false). Hence, the problem with Usama Hassan is that, because he is embarrassed that Muslims do not believe in “sophisticated” scientific ideas, which had led him to develop an inferiority complex, he wishes to merge Darwinism and the Qur’an. Thus, a motive for Usama Hasan is “discovered”: he has spent too much time with corrupted infidels and has become ashamed that Salafi dogma cannot be reconciliated with science. This, claims Abu Iyaad, is “not a ‘science’ thing, its (sic) actually more of a personal, psychological thing, which Usamah Hasan is ‘externalizing’ on to the Muslims.” Abu Iyaad states that, because Muslims accept causality, they believe that God placed in each creature the capacity to adapt to his environment. He is quick, however, to limit this

105 Aql does not refer to what typical Western philosophy considers “independent rational thought”, but rather an “independent thought” that is constrained by the limits of fitrah.

capacity to “microevolution”, which, for him means minor “change and transformation within a species (emphasis mine)”. This does not appear to be even a minor concession, as it is, for As-Saleh, apparently compatible with Salafi dogma. Hence, Abu Iyaad recognizes the scientific reality of mutations in the genetic code, which has been scientifically demonstrated and is acceptable to Salafi orthodoxy, but rejects the idea that this process may lead to speciation (i.e. the apparition of new species), which has also been scientifically demonstrated, but is wholly incompatible with the same orthodoxy. It is here, again, that one can appreciate the epistemological “filter” of Salafi thought. Both phenomena are based on sound scientific evidence and testing, but only one of the two can be accepted as true, for the other is incompatible with the Qur’an and Sunna. Interestingly, Abu Iyaad does not even attempt to explain how mutations in the genome are “blocked” from leading to speciation, even though this hypothetical biological mechanism, or something akin to it, must be posited if mutations can only lead to minor intra-species differences. In a Salafi state, it seems likely that biology would be put in an ideological straitjacket, something akin to the pseudo-science of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union where, in 1948, 3000 scientists were incarcerated for accepting evidence-based, rather than ideologically derived, science.106 Usama Hasan, Abu Iyaad claims, is seeking to move Islam into the realm of speculation by asserting that Adam is the product of evolution, a process which discarded endless forms of unfit creatures to arrive at the “perfection” of the human being. A debate on these matters should not be feared, writes Hasan, for science can neither “prove nor disprove God”. For Abu Iyaad, this claim is absurd, for if science cannot prove God, “whose existence is the most plainest (sic) and obvious of truths”, then how can it be used as a tool to answer more complex questions? Abu Iyaad goes further and seeks to make the implications of the theory of evolution utterly revolting to his fellow Salafis when he adds To call Muslims backwards and child-like for not using this same science […] to arrive at the certain conclusion that Aadam […] was preceded by generations upon generations of the sexual activity of baboons and apes (and that is a lot of baboons and apes) [makes it clear] that this buffoon [Hasan] is not operating upon either reason or scientific enquiry, and his attacks on Muslims are but the ravings of a lunatic.

106 Birstein (2004), [ebook]

The use of disgust, again, as a mechanism to label someone and his ideas as corrupted and potentially contagious, indicates that it is indeed a powerful tool in the rhetorical arsenal of Salafis. In this case, it’s use is akin to a prolegomenon to the further examination of Hasan’s ideas. For Abu Iyaad, evolutionary theory is but a theory (thus confusing the layman’s definition of theory from the scientific notion of a theory)107, and, far from being anchored in aql, it is a manifestation of deviancy (hawaa)108, which, in the purity-obsessed Salafi community, is a serious accusation. The argument further elucidates the Salafi Weltanschauung, in that it adds to the “innate disposition” of fitrah a further criterion, aql. If, then, an assertation cannot fit into aql, it is be necessity false, and probably deviant to boot. Abu Iyaad then proceeds to describe what science really is. Contrary to the science espoused in the West, the Qur’an uses a far superior method, he claims, for it is similar to forensic science109 and allows one to trace phenomena back their originators (unsurprisingly, this is always Allaah). Abu Iyaad’s preference for forensics over hard sciences is not surprising, as the former seeks to ultimately answer the question “who did it?”. Since forensics is a quest to find the author of deeds, it can be accepted in the Salafi ideology, which recognizes a priori that the author of all things is Allaah. It is a pro forma recognition of the prestige of “science” and an attempt to demonstrate how this “science” is already found in the Qur’an. Thus, if one does not employ sound fitrah and aql, the “true” science, which seeks to answer the question “who?”, will remain obfuscated. Besides, adds Abu Iyaad, the Western notion of science operates through a “rigged definition” of science “that excludes what can be arrived at through sound reason”. Western science, Abu Iyaad claims, is “merely a tool, and it is such that anyone can prove anything with it, if they so wish”. Although the state of Saudi Arabia, which is built upon the Salafi ideology, bans the teaching of evolution110, its prosperity largely depends on a mass-scale extraction of hydrocarbons and the military protection offered by the United States. What would be the education curriculum of a Salafi state pioneered by Abu Iyaad? Would universities offer B.Scs with the caveat that

107 For scientists, a theory can be established when it can explain phenomena and when numerous scientific studies have confirmed its explicative force. For the layman, a theory is more akin to an assertation that has yet to be proven (e.g. the theory that a certain plan will achieve its objectives). 108 Goldziher (2010) 109 Forensic science is here understood as the science used in criminal investigations to determine who is the culprit responsible for a crime. 110 Nielson (2016)

scientists can “prove anything”, and that the teaching material amounts to little more than sophistry? How could such a state prosper while despising the sciences that have led to a better understanding of the world, genial engineering projects and advanced technologies? Since Salafis appear to see no contradiction in harnessing technology to pursue their goals, such as state would presumably be wholly dependent on “pro-science” states for technological innovation and advanced engineering. In any case, Abu Iyaad, in a single sentence appears to reduce the whole scientific enterprise to a form of sophistry. No doubt this is a warning to Muslims, and especially Salafis, to not fall in the “trap” of the erroneous western science, with its claims of objectivity and access to the understandings of reality, and concomitant rejection of fitrah and aql. Abu Iyaad then turns his attention to Hasan’s views on Islamic creationists present on the Internet. Although he cannot, he claims, agree with the aforementioned creationists before studying them, he presents only two possible paths for Hasan to follow (despite avoiding the dilemma himself). Either he can encourage Muslims to fight atheism by supporting creationism or he can encourage atheism’s corrupting influence towards Islam, adding acerbically that Usamah should know that a single Muslim who refutes Darwinism because of its atheistic element has more aql (reason) than a thousand apes like him. This is an interesting point, for, while Abu Iyaad admits that he cannot vouch for these other Islamic creationists, he still supports them. Indeed, what he is saying is that it is better for a Muslim to defend against “Darwinism” with potentially fallacious arguments than to take into consideration Hasan’s arguments. This suggests that Salafis are conscious that, when criticizing evolutionary theory, they are not willing to have an honest intellectual debate, as they will potentially encourage any Muslim who attacks “Darwinism”, regardless if their arguments are sound or not. Abu Iyaad then claims that when Hasan states that Muslims have a “children’s madrasa-level understanding” of Islam, not only is he insulting Muslims, but he is also reviling the Qur’an itself, for he is mocking the words of Allaah. This is a manifestation of the Salafi obsession with purity: Hasan is suggesting that Muslims consider certain passages of the Qur’an figuratively, which is an unpardonable offense for Salafis, who eschew any interpretation of the Qur’an that is not literalist. Thus, for Abu Iyaad, the image of Muslims progressing beyond the “madrassa-level understanding” of Islam (i.e a

literalist understanding of the Qur’an) is welcoming the corrupting influences of Darwinism. Indeed, according to this Salafi logic, proceeding to understanding the Qur’an figuratively would corrupt the innate and natural dispositions of humans. In his first essay, Abu Iyaad attacks Usama Hasan on multiple fronts. Some of these seek to destroy Hasan’s character and credibility, while others outline the contingent nature of his search for knowledge beyond that which is present the Qur’an and his motives for doing so. Most of all, Abu Iyaad seeks to contain the idea of “Darwinism” by clever arguments and by reducing it to a more easily condemnable straw man version of itself which has fragile epistemological foundations and its “disgusting” (for the conservative Salafi) implications, more specifically, the mental image of throngs of baboons having sex with each other. For a scientifically literate person, all of this presumably sounds like bunkum, but for a Salafi with little knowledge of science, especially a new convert already imbibed in a Western secular tradition, it could very well be persuasive and dissuade him or her from pursuing more speculative knowledge.

Part two – Analyzing the Merger Between Darwinism and the Qur’an Abu Iyaad’s second essay is, according to him, an attempt to demonstrate the errors (or the invalidity) of evolutionary theory and Usama Hasan’s claim that it can be merged with the Qur’an. After glossing over the matter that Darwin might have been an atheist (which Abu Iyaad then dismisses as not important), he purports to analyze evolutionary “forces”, which he (correctly) identifies as natural selection, genetic mutations, genetic drift, and gene flow. He stresses the fact that “Darwinists” consider that these forces combine to make and evolve life through an undirected process. Albeit his descriptions of these evolutionary forces are generally correct, Abu Iyaad erroneously and implicitly identifies “genetic drift” as another form of natural selection. He then concedes that genetic drift and gene flow are actual phenomena, that “traits and characteristics are passed on generation after generation” via a genetic mechanism and that adaption to an environment is real. The limits to the acceptance of these phenomena become clear, however, when Abu Iyaad claims that this “dynamic capacity” is something that Allaah put into each of his creations. It is interesting that this Salafi understanding of “adaptation” recognizes the scientifically demonstrated biological mechanism by which DNA is altered over generations, but proceeds

to quarantine the also scientifically demonstrated phenomenon of speciation. Indeed, Abu Iyaad then (falsely) claims that modern genetics has disproven that idea that speciation exists. He does not explain how a biological process such as the reading of DNA, which inherently produces errors, has built-in and presumably divinely inspired safeguard mechanisms which forbid speciation, however. Albeit this “divine mechanism” has never been identified and massive evidence indicates it does not exist, that does not appear to be problematic in Salafi logic: speciation cannot exist because the very idea contradicts the Qur’an. The capacity to understand the natural world is severely hampered by insurmountable barriers in the Salafi Weltanschauung: no amount of evidence will break its resolve that, ultimately, all true answers lie in the Qur’an and Sunna, and that any alternative answer must be incorrect. In any case, in the matter of speciation, Abu Iyaad is, of course, incorrect. Paleontologists have verified genetic-based hypotheses by finding vast quantities of intermediate forms. Moreover, speciation has been observed in nature and induced speciation in laboratories has been occurring for some time now.111 Abu Iyaad does seem somewhat knowledgeable in evolutionary theory and it seems clear that he has actually read good faith explanations of it, unlike As-Saleh, who apparently only read poorly argued refutations of the theory of evolution. Hence, it would seem odd that he was unaware that of the scientific consensus that modern genetics (as well as paleontology) has actually proven (not disproven, as he claims) that speciation does occur. As he has presumably aware of the scientific consensus, it seems odd that he did not at least attempt to mount an argument to criticize it. Indeed, rather than recognize this consensus, he appears to simply have lied. Could this be a valid technique amongst Salafis endeavoring to contain shirk? The limited evidence available seems to support the idea that, in certain circumstances, Salafis believe that reason is, as Martin Luther so famously put it “the devil’s whore”112. Abu Iyaad then proceeds to the issue of abiogenesis. Darwinism, he writes, “hinges on the prior existence of complex genetic information”. He gleefully points out that scientists do not know how life originated (although there is some speculation on the subject). The issue of abiogenesis, he claims, is “kept out of public view and shows that atheists are not

111 See https://aem.asm.org/content/61/5/2020.long , https://www.nature.com/articles/ismej20133 , and https://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.abstract , for examples (these three links are accessible without a subscription). 112 Cited from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [https://www.iep.utm.edu/luther/]

really following true ‘scientific enquiry’ ”. The “narrative about supposed Western conspiracies”113 is widespread in Muslim majority countries, but conspiratorial thinking has not been thoroughly investigated as a part of the Salafi Weltanschauung. Abu Iyaad’s claim suggest that they are powerful explanatory forces and can be used in numerous circumstances. His narrative suggests that there are shadowy forces at play which seek to hide the truth from the public. In this case, there is purportedly a conspiracy to obfuscate abiogenesis’ lack of success in understanding how life appeared on Earth. A quick review of evolutionary biology textbooks would show that the matter is abiogenesis, far from being hidden, is usually presented at the very beginning, but in the Salafi logic, the notion of a conspiracy is too seducing, it appears, to warrant further investigation. It would seem that conspiratorial thinking is another obstacle to rational thought in the Salafi worldview. Abu Iyaad claims that atheists, because of psychological and philosophical reasons, have apparently found that “Darwinism” is the only alternative to fitrah and aql. The idea that Muslims, more specifically Salafis, are fighting an epic battle against atheists on such obscure (for a Westerner) matters as aql and fitrah would surely come as a surprise for the vast majority of Western atheists, or Westerners as a whole, but for Abu Iyaad, it appears that this is indeed what is occurring. This suggests that Salafis believe that, for Westerners, the need for a replacement for God is a constant and futile struggle, that they desperately seek to find substitutes for their corrupted innate disposition (fitrah and aql) but are left with artificial and fallacious notions, such as science. This truth is, of course, the Salafi dogma. The overarching narrative here is that Salafis are keepers of the truth and that, ultimately, Westerners are ripe for conversion. Abu Iyaad then opens a digression to write that scientists cannot really accept the explanation that life originated from “pure chance” (which is not exactly what abiogenesis researchers claim, as they have several hypothetical models of how life could have arisen from naturally occurring complex organic molecules). Rather, these same scientists recognize “laws of nature”, which, Abu Iyaad claims, are so fine-tuned that only Allaah could have created them. Of course, the laws of nature are but universal constants (such as the speed of light or Planck’s constant) which have been discovered through scientific inquiry, but for Salafis, it appears that as long as a scientific discovery is somehow compatible with

113 Alvi (2014), p. 48

their doctrine, it can be mobilized as “proof” of God’s existence. The “laws of nature”, which would not have been discovered without the scientific enterprise, are lauded as manifest examples of Allaah’s omniscience and omnipotence. The notion that “scientific miracles” are found in the Qur’an is widespread amongst mainstream Sunni Muslims114, but the subject has not been studied amongst Salafis. It would appear, however, that Salafis are not immune from claiming scientific discoveries as further proof of the veracity of the claims. However, Abu Iyaad goes further and claims that scientists, in their arrogance and their denial of the obvious divine origin of natural laws, have also created the multiverse theory (which is actually an ensemble of highly speculative hypotheses in physics). Thus, he increasingly widens the divide between true Muslims (Salafis) who accept “truth”, and “arrogant” scientists, who must constantly bend over backward to “invent” new arguments against the plain and obvious “truth” found through fitrah and aql, and once again frames the situation as an epic struggle between true Muslims and (supposedly atheist) scientists, desperate to uphold the “doctrine” of “Darwinism” through any means necessary. This notion fits with Abu Iyaad’s claim that scientists can “prove” anything if they so desire. It would appears that, in the Salafi worldview, “arrogant” scientists are in a constant and futile struggle to dig themselves out of a hole they have dug themselves in, in the sense that every false “proof” they dig up must be corroborated by a new false “proof” that resides further down in the earth. In different times, writes Abu Iyaad, “plain truths and sound reasoning can be made obscure and ridiculed” to the point where the fitrah and aql of people become thoroughly corrupted. This, he claims, is what is happening today: “mass media” and “propaganda” hammer in the idea that “Darwinism” is correct. This is a reinforcement of the purported conspiracy theory about shadowy forces furtively promoting the ideology of Darwinism and further evidence that it is used as an explanatory factor in Salafi logic. Abu Iyaad’s narrative on truth being ridiculed is better put into a historical perspective. Salafis view themselves as close imitators of the prophet Muhammad’s companions. Muhammad himself was derided by his fellow Meccans before eventually militarily conquering Mecca with his disciples and imposing his “plain truth”. Later, Islamic schools of thought, such as the Muʿtazilites, questioned the literal “plain truth” and sought deeper, semi-rational explanations. Abu

114 Bigliardi (2017)

Iyaad’s comments suggest that Salafis think of their struggle as a historical one, one that appeared with the prophet Muhammad himself, and that struggle is to preserve the “purity” of Islamic dogma, which today is under assault from multiple fronts. Moreover, Abu Iyaad is warning fellow Salafis that the potential corruption of fitrah lurks everywhere. Thus, Salafis must constantly be on their guard Abu Iyaad then proceeds to directly criticize Usama Hassan’s idea that belief in evolutionary theory can be merged with belief in Allaah, an idea which he sarcastically refers to as “Usamah’s “Missing Link””. The idea of mixing Islamic religious precepts with elements of modernity is not a novel phenomenon. There has long been a debate amongst scholars concerning the compatibility of Islam and democracy, for instance.115 In some measure, the platform adopted by the Ennahda Party in Tunisia shows that Islam appears to be compatible with democracy, as its founder recently stated that the party would no longer be involved in the cultural scene, but would rather focus “only on politics”. Moreover, Ennahda has, according to its founder, morphed from an Islamist political party to a party of Muslim democracy, akin to the Christian democrat parties found in continental Europe.116 Whether Islam can be successfully merged with a scientific theory, however, is an altogether different issue. As science eschews supernatural (and thus unfalsifiable) explanations, neither Christian, nor Muslim, nor Jewish religious precepts could provide sufficient explanatory potential for any proper scientific theory. There is no reason why this would not apply to Hasan’s curious mishmash of evolutionary theory and Salafi dogma. If there is any truth to be found in Abu Iyaad’s essays, it is that the notion of mixing the two are simply impossible from a scientific standpoint. In a surprise move, the author recognizes the phenomena of not only two of the four “evolutionary forces”, but this time of the whole four. Indeed, he stresses, oddly enough, that it “is no longer a scientific dispute anymore” but does not either explain how these forces are “restrained” by Allaah so that they do not err into speciation or offer any proof that the DNA transcription enzymes are inherently “speciation proof” (even if we suspend the fact that speciation has already been observed). In any case, Abu Iyaad suggests that the scientific question is settled, but that the problem arises when one attempts to use it to buttress a “religious claim”, which is exactly what Usama Hasan has attempted to do.

115 Hefner (2001), p. 491 116 R. Ghannouchi, (2016) [online]

Indeed, how can the accumulated mutations which led to the perfect human being that was Adam truly be “random mutations” if, ultimately, they were guided by Allaah? Abu Iyaad accuses Hasan of supporting his idea with “generalized verses” in the Qur’an, “mostly obscure (shaadh) opinions”, and statements of Muslim thinkers that are either taken out of context or come from heterodox sources. Apparently unaware of the irony, Abu Iyaad accuses Hasan of “picking and choosing in order to enable an opinion […] to appear legitimate” and restates that Hasan’s motives are to be found in psychological factors, not with uncorrupted aql and naql. This suggests that Salafis believe that all who criticize the purity of their doctrine either have nefarious ulterior motives or have corrupted innate faculties that, should they be pristine, would allow them to recognize the simple “truth” of the Salafi dogma. In order to examine the validity of Hasan’s idea, he proposes to look into the Qur’an and see how the heavens, the Earth and Mankind were created. The Qur’an indicates that Allaah took a mixture of dust and water and then created Adam from the resulting clay in his own form to finally breathe a spirit into him, thus making him alive. Allaah then created Eve from Adam and let them live in paradise, while warning them both about the fallen angel (Iblis), “their enemy”. Once Adam and Eve had, pushed by Iblis, disobeyed Allaah by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, they were cast out of paradise. Allaah then “brought forth mankind” and affirmed that Man would be created from sperm and the “fluids” of the female. How then, asks Abu Iyaad, could this story be compatible with “Darwinism”, such as Usama Hasan suggests? Indeed, that is a valid question and it appears obvious that the two are wholly incompatible. He claims that, in the remaining pages of his second essay, he will refute Hasan’s idea, point by point. In point one, Abu Iyaad argues, sarcastically, that Muslims, being “dumb commoners”, are unable to understand Usamah Hasan’s sophisticated arguments. Abu Iyaad notes, disapprovingly, the similarities between Hasan’s approach and that of the Mu’tazili who, having studies Greek philosophy, misguidedly sought to make it compatible with the Qur’an. Abu Iyaad, in an attempt to make a reductio ad absurdum argument, then examines the implications of Hasan’s idea of the compatibility between evolution and the Qur’an: if the evolutionary process began when Allaah proclaimed “I am going to create a man from clay”, then the angels, which according to the Qur’an prostrated during this process, would have knelt for “billions and billions of years” until evolution finally produced the first man.

In point two, Abu Iyaad stresses that the Qur’an clearly states that Adam is the first human and that Allaah and that him and Eve were the parents of Mankind. How then could Adam have had parents of his own? In point three, Abu Iyaad reminds us that, according to the Qur’an, the Angels questioned Allaah’s decision to place humans on Earth because they would “commit mischief and shed blood”. The argument goes that the Angels presumably would not have said that had there already been human creatures already, but of course, Abu Iyaad appears to miss the point that the Angels might have displayed their concern because of their knowledge of human-like beings already present on Earth, following the arguments set forth by Hasan. In point four, Abu Iyaad claims that language can only be taught, not invented. It is, according to him and the Qur’an, Allaah who taught language to Adam, which he then taught to his children, who taught it to their children and so on. There is, according to him, language has but one origin, and this is further proof that Adam was created by Allaah. Of course, this idea is not accepted by linguists, who have found many cases of isolate languages which appear to bear no relation to other languages (e.g. Basque). Moreover, there is the issue of cryptophasia, the nearly undecipherable language sometimes invented by twins. From what has been inferred from Abu Iyaad’s discourse up to know, it would not appear that the field of linguistics and its evidence would have any persuasion power at all on Salafis, as it is irreconcilable with their dogma. In point five, Abu Iyaad points out that in the Qur’an, Eve is made from Adam, which is indeed hard to reconcile with evolutionary theory. In point six, he reminds his readers that, according to the Qur’an, Adam was created and given life by Allaah, and that “the best of forms, the best of statures is ascribed to mankind (insaan) at the actual point of creation (emphasis mine)”. In point seven, Abu Iyaad states that the Qur’an clearly distinguishes between the creation of Adam and that of his offspring, with the former being created ex nihilo by Allaah and the latter arising from an extract of “despised fluid” followed by a gestation period of nine months. Abu Iyaad claims that, since a human can be created in nine months according to rules set forth by Allaah, it would be insulting (to Allaah) to claim that it took billions of years of evolution to create Adam. In point eight, he reminds his readers that Hasan once argued that since it is accepted that Jesus was created, without the need of a father, by a natural process (the nine month gestation period), it is only logical to assume that Adam was created by a natural process as well. For Abu Iyaad, this is a ridiculous argument as both Jesus and Adam, according to the

Qur’an, were created in a relatively short period. This means that Hasan is using an argument against himself, since he claims that Adam was created during billions of years. These points are further manifestations of the Salafis’ drive for maintaining the purity of their belief system. Hasan’s arguments are thought of as shirk, or innovation, and they cannot fit into the literalist interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunna espoused by the Salafi ideology. Indeed, not only are Hasan’s arguments false, they are also “insulting” to Allaah, an additional manifestation of the “disgust” factor utilized by Salafis as a substitute for an argument. Point ten is more interesting than the preceding ones because here Abu Iyaad delves once more into the genetic mechanisms that allow adaptation to a species’ environment. After preemptively boosting his argument with four hadith, he argues that Allaah created every creature, every species and gave it its form, shape, guidance and mode, and put within all things’ capacities (in their genetic information, genotypes, phenotypes, etc.). and once again obfuscates the matter of genetic mutations by claiming that DNA will insure both that creatures will remain as they are and that they can adapt to their environment without there ever occurring a case of speciation. This is a scientific claim, one that is erroneous, but Abu Iyaad, who likely knows that this claim is not accepted by the scientific community, continues to press it forward and offer it as a proof of Allaah’s wisdom. Indeed, if one accepts the Salafi creed, it appears that it is possible to accept evolution, but on the strict condition that it does not lead to speciation. Why then, does Abu Iyaad even concede some ground to evolution? Presumably, one part of the explanation is that he wishes to appear scientifically literate and capable of engaging Usama Hasan on his own turf. Another reason, as we (and Abu Iyaad himself) have indicated before, is that giving any more ground to evolutionary theory, and accepting that speciation does occur (as it has been scientifically demonstrated) would open the door to a corruption of the fitrah and aql in Salafi communities because it would contradict the Qur’an. In any case, Abu Iyaad cunningly disallowed speciation to be a possibility (see his first essay) because of the only correct God-given Weltanschauung (the fitrah) that Salafis can have, which insures that one is trapped in the grammatical tautology “everything created must have a creator”, where “created” automatically applies to living creatures.

Abu Iyaad then goes on to criticize Hasan’s choice of arguments supporting his idea. Hasan, he claims, does nothing else but cherry-pick small and out-of-context passages in the Qur’an (a claim which is hard to argue against) and then offer them up as “proof” that the Qur’an is compatible with evolutionary theory. To add mockery to criticism, Abu Iyaad displays a graphic of the classic human evolution chart and asks his readers to choose in which stage Usama Hasan is. He then compares Hasan to the character of Dr. Cornelius in the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, a learned ape who began to doubt the validity of his sacred scrolls. In his two closing paragraphs, Abu Iyaad, before adding a few more insults, states that Hasan’s idea of the compatibility of the Qur’an and evolutionary theory is both false and insulting, and that he is attempting to do something which has already lead to failure (e.g. the Mu’tazilah), which is a case of struggling to fit naql (revelation) into corrupted reason (aql). It is interesting here to note here that, for Salafis, the “reason” of aql must be compatible with the internal logic of both the Qur’an and hadith. That is, Salafi reason can not be extended outward from its rigid dogma. Indeed, the “innate” disposition of fitrah does, according to the Salafi logic, renders the extension of reason to any subject incompatible with dogma futile. If aql is corrupted (or leads outside of the dogma), then no truth can be found. This would appear to be a powerful psychological mechanism for Salafis, which makes any temptation to aspire to “human” reason result in a logical short circuit, thus rendering the endeavor moot.

Part 3 – Looking at Usamah’s Citations of Evidence Abu Iyaad’s third essay in his series on Usama Hasan and evolution takes the form of a post scriptum of his second essay. In it, he continues to demolish Hasan’s arguments on the compatibility of the Qur’an and evolution, starting at point eleven, but the emphasis here is to show how Hasan’s “supporting evidence” is neither evidence nor does it support his arguments. It appears that Abu Iyaad had initially thought this third essay would be the final one in his series, because he writes that in this essay, he will “make some conclusions to finish off this series inshaa’Allaah”. This was evidently not the case, as he wrote five essays after this third one. This essay contains a series of points (eleventh to nineteenth) in which Abu Iyaad explores the scholars Hasan enlisted in his campaign to make the Qur’an compatible with evolution. At one point in the essay, Abu Iyaad, in a rapacious ad personam,

compares Hasan to a monkey from whom bananas (which represent misleading citations) must be taken away, one by one. As the arguments made by Abu Iyaad tend be structurally very similar and have little to do with evolution (except in the sense that he attempts to make plain that the citations used by Hasan do not refer to evolution), we will present here a generic version of the argument used from point eleven to point nineteen. In most cases, Abu Iyaad quotes a passage used by Hasan in various contexts to support his idea. He then proceeds to strengthen his own counter-argument by relying on quotes from authority figures (ex: “classical exegetes” or Al-Albani) and then “demonstrates” that Hasan misunderstood the citation he chose to employ because it does not actually support the idea of evolution and is actually an argument against his position. In most cases, these citations (ex: from Ibn Khaldun) simply establish a hierarchy of living beings, from the “lowest” form to the “highest” (which is invariably Man). Other citations (ex: by Sufis) are simply discarded as ramblings of incoherent fools. Abu Iyaad’s concluding remarks are interesting in that they show what he believes are the true motives behind Hasan’s idea. Indeed, he writes that Usamah Hasan is not driven by scientific enquiry (nahdar), nor [sic] reason (aql). What we are seeing here is a psychological problem, a plagued and disturbed man, trying to pull himself together in a post 9/11 world and post 7/7 Britain. The propensity of Salafis to attribute nefarious or pathological motives to its perceived critics, at least in the example given by Abu Iyaad, somewhat resembles the attitude of the Church of Scientology towards its perceived enemies. Indeed, Scientology has a policy called “fair game”. This policy encourages members of the cult to attempt to destroy the character of its perceived enemies rather than to confront them with arguments in favor of their belief system.117 In any case, the argument used by Abu Iyaad is a classical ad personam one, but through it Abu Iyaad is attempting to convince his fellow Salafis that, putting arguments aside, only a deranged man could hope to reconcile the Qur’an with evolutionary theory and therefore he should be avoided, for he carries some kind of figurative “plague”. Abu Iyaad also mentions that Hasan has a history of attempting to merge things, such as Sufism with Wahhabism and Islam with modernism. This reinforces the notion that Salafis display

117 Lord (2019), p. 6

intolerance to any attempt to innovate (bida) and is a additional display of Salafi hostility to modernism. Abu Iyaad then repeats his curious claim that he has no problem with “evolution” as long as it does not lead to speciation and specifies that Muslims at large have no need to prove that the Earth is around 6000 years old like Christian creationists do, as the Qur’an does not specify the age of the Earth. This indicates that he has, at the very least, sought out information on young-Earth Christian creationist ideology. Interestingly, young-Earth creationists use an argument very similar to those of Salafis when defending the idea that the Earth cannot be more than 6000 years old, as they point to the Bible, in which the timeline from Adam’s creation up to the contemporary world is less than 6000 years. Because of their religious dogma, they cannot accept the scientific evidence which strongly suggests that the Earth was formed billions of years ago, just as Salafis cannot accept the evidence supporting evolutionary theory because it comes into conflict with their dogma. Abu Iyaad then ends his 3rd essay by writing that Hasan has found no valid proof from any source and that, consequently, he has “only reviled his own aql”. Indeed, a look at the citations provided by Hasan to buttress his idea that Islam is compatible with evolutionary theory does not yield anything very convincing. As noted before, science, by its very definition, does not accept supernatural factors as explanations for any phenomenon. This section shows that Salafis make a very sound argument that evolutionary theory and Salafi dogma are irreconcilable, as their dogma is impervious to “human” reason and Hasan’s arguments to make the dogma fit with science are very poor indeed.

Parts 4 and 5 - Scholars’ verdicts and the limits of Ijtihad Here we take a look at parts 4 and 5 of Abu Iyaad’s series of essays (entitled, respectively, “Scholars [sic] Verdicts on Belief in Darwinism” and “Takdheeb of Allaah and His Messenger Can be excused Through the Angle of Ta’weel and Ijtihaad?”); both are relatively short and have a similar subject, that is, what is to be done by Salafis with Usama Hasan’s idea? In part 4, Abu Iyaad uses the example of the height of Adam at his creation, 30 meters, and the subsequent decline in height amongst his ancestor as proof that “Allaah placed inherent capacities and propensities within mankind through which […] variations […] take place”, and once again hammers in the idea that “evolution” is a capacity placed in creatures by Allaah to adapt, but which cannot lead to speciation (despite the scientific

evidence to the contrary, which, of course, he never mentions). It is fascinating that Abu Iyaad accept the scientifically demonstrated biological mechanism of the replication of DNA, with its ensuing mutations, as a manifestation of Allaah’s greatness, but refuses to accept any further evidence. This shows that, as mentioned before, Salafis are willing to accept scientific facts only when it does not contradict their dogma. When science contradicts their dogma, Salafis raise the shield of fitrah and “intact” aql as sufficient reasons to discard scientific evidence. This raises the question of whether Salafis would be willing to confirm their dogma through science. For instance, the Qur’an states (54:1-2) that Muhammad split the moon in two parts. NASA, in an effort to answer Muslims curious as to whether there is any scientific evidence for this phenomenon, has replied that “No current scientific evidence reports that the Moon was split into two (or more) parts and then reassembled at any point in the past.”118 Would a Salafi state based on the premises of Abu Iyaad concerning science attempt to “prove” that such a phenomenon did indeed occur? Abu Iyaad provides an answer to this and many other potential scientific questions: to speculate any further (that is, to employ aql outside of the Salafi dogma), he claims, would lead to the corruption of aql. He claims that, across the ages, arrogant tyrants have sought to act against what is in their fitrah, and that the situation is similar today, except that the corrupters of fitrah are more sophisticated than ever, thus warning his fellow Salafis of the even greater danger represented today by “scientists” compared to, say, the Mu’tazili of the past. It appears as though, every time Abu Iyaad insists on this notion of the scientists’ corrupted aql, he is implicitly stating that Salafis are under siege by Kufr and Shirk, and that, consequently, they must be hyper-vigilant so as to not let the attackers breach the defenses of sound fitrah. This suggests that this siege-like mentality might be widespread across the Salafi community and that the effort to protect the purity of their dogma from corrupting secular ideas is a constant struggle. Abu Iyaad states that, from what has been demonstrated in his previous essay, it is now clear that Hasan’s idea of the compatibility of the Qur’an and evolution is impossible and that, additionally, his idea represents takdheeb (rejection of the truth) upon Allaah and the Qur’an. To further anchor his arguments in the orthodox Salafi creed, Abu Iyaad cites two fatwas from renowned scholars. The first, by Ibn Baz (former grand mufti of Saudi Arabia), states that “it is obligatory that a servant [of Allaah] believe that the creation of Aadam is other than the

118 NASA (2010)

creation of apes”. The second, by Ibn al Uthaymeen, a towering figure amongst Salafi scholars, states that “…the saying that the origin of man is from apes, however the one speaking with this, he is in reality an ape, deformed in intellect and deformed in vision [and that] saying that the origin of man is from apes is not correct…”. However, these appeals to authority appear to be not much more than a way to add a rhetorical veneer to his arguments, although Abu Iyaad’s mobilization of renowned scholars’ fatwas is meant to show to his readers that he is well read and not alone in condemning Hasan’s idea. The fact that Abu Iyaad left his appeals to authority so far in his series of essays suggest that they have a more limited role in persuasion. Indeed, Wiktorowicz (2006) writes that “[Salafism] is explicitly intended to transcend […] religious authority” and that “Salafis operate as though the Qur’an and hadith are self-explanatory: if the scholar has enough training and knowledge, then the vast majority of derived rulings are clear and indisputable.” 119, hence, the mastery of the Qur’an and the Sunna should be sufficient to make clear religious judgements without the need to mobilize citations from authoritative sources. Abu Iyaad then introduces the idea that Usama Hasan must repent for his “apparent mockery of the Qur’anic treatment of Adam’s creation” and for allying himself with atheists such as Richard Dawkins. Clearly, he adds, Hasan’s has shown he is incapable of presenting religious proofs to support his idea and merely quotes vague parts in the Qur’an and the works of authors that do not pertain to evolution. Abu Iyaad then, in what some could interpret as an implicit call to assassinate Hasan, demands that he be immediately “removed from all tasks and duties to stop creating fitnah [disorder]” in the community. In any case, Abu Iyaad clearly calls for, at the very least, the ostracism of Hasan and states that his fitrah is corrupted. This is manifestly a call for a drastic intellectual quarantine, lest Hasan’s corrupted fitrah spill over and infect other members of the Salafi community. Part 5 of Abu Iyaad’s series is a reaction to a new event which occurred after his release of part 4: Usama Hasan’s father, Suhaib Hasan, introduced his son to the faithful in a Salafi mosque and let him give his talk on Islam and the theory of evolution. The overarching question in part 5 is: can Usama Hasan’s arguments (and Suhaib Hasan’s defense of his son) be excused as manifestations of Ijtihad (independent reasoning) or Ta’weel (interpretation) [which are both intellectual tools used to understand the Qur’an]? This is an important

119 Wiktorowicz (2006), p. 210

question, as Salafis are notable in their use of Ijtihad as a tool used to directly interpret the Sunna, eschewing traditional medieval schools of ready-made interpretations, but, considering what Abu Iyaad has already written on the subject of Hasan’s character and his idea of the compatibility of the Qur’an and evolution, the answer should not surprise the reader. The author distinguishes three important points. First, Hasan has once again affirmed his belief that “Aadam […] was the descendant of apes, and that he was created through Darwinian evolution”. Second, Hasan’s father, Suhaib, defended his son’s right to “make independent Ijtihad” and compared the case of his son to that of the quarrels surrounding the renowned Sheikh Al-Albani, (presumably to one of his most famous fatwas, in which he enjoined Muslims to leave Palestine). Third, Suhaib asserted his right to give his own fatwa because of his authority as “the scholar of the land”. To address these three points, Abu Iyaad mobilizes numerous arguments, all intended to further pulverize the characters of Hasan and his father, the first of which contains a multitude of criticism directed towards Suhaib Hasan, who, it is claimed, is constantly in the company of “deviants and innovators”, including Sufis, those who call for help (istighaathah) from other than Allaah, those who celebrate Milad (the birth of the prophet Muhammad), modernists and others. Indeed, writes Abu Iyaad, Suhaib Hasan has a long history of mingling with Ahl al-Ahwaa (Muslims whose creed is deviant) and trying “to assert [his] authority over Muslims in Britain”. As in the case of Usama Hasan, Abu Iyaad’s arguments against his father are preceded by a character assassination and the mobilization of the “disgust” factor. This is akin to what Ibn al Uthaymeen declared about proponents of the common descent of men and apes, that they themselves “are apes”. It’s use further suggests that it is a widespread factor used to intellectually quarantine individuals suspected of Bida and Shirk. Indeed, Abu Iyaad’s apparent intent is to show that Suhaib is clearly unorthodox and, because his fitrah and aql are corrupted, has the responsibility of following the fatwas of orthodox and more esteemed Salafi scholars since he cannot think for himself. This is an interesting notion: it suggests that in the Salafi community, when a member is thought to insufficiently master the Qur’an and the Sunna, his best option (at least preliminarily), is to yield to the judgement of esteemed Salafi scholars. The other argument then focuses on Usama Hasan: his idea, claims Abu Iyaad, is not a matter of debate in the Ummah and he should know that this is the case

and, just as it is impossible to excuse the heretical Jahmites’120 abuse of ijtihad, it is impossible to excuse that of Hasan. Thus, Abu Iyaad is attempting to preempt the idea that, although Hasan’s ideas are erroneous, he is but using a traditional and legitimate tool to arrive at a different conclusion. Not only is Hasan terribly wrong, but, apart from ignoring the fatwas of orthodox Salafi scholars, he should also know better than to use outlandish perversions of that traditional tool to support Darwinism, which is “the flag-bearing call of atheism in the modern era”. Indeed, Abu Iyaad’s argument suggest that there is a struggle in the Salafi community to determine how ijtihad can be legitimately employed to find religious answers. Since Salafis seek to understand religious matters by their own mastery of the Qur’an and Sunna, it would appear that the use of ijtihad can lead to different answers, a problem inherent in the Salafi ideology. In the concluding section of his 5th essay, Abu Iyaad remarks that, when one becomes accustomed to mingling with deviants and innovators, then “there is no doubt that [one’s] heart loses its awe and veneration of the truth”. This appears to be a warning to his fellow Salafis: the mere proximity with unorthodox Muslims is sometimes enough to corrupt one’s heart. It would follow that it is best not to engage with them at all. It is not clear why this proscription does not apply to Abu Iyaad himself, who is, one could imagine, at greater risk of corrupting his fitrah because of his engagement with Hasan’s idea. Abu Iyaad finishes his essay with the suggestion that the positions of Hasan and his father be evaluated by a major scholar “for a verdict that can be used to ease” those whose beliefs have been put to “tribulation”.

Part 6: Usamah’s Lecture ‘Islam and the Theory of Evolution’ In part 6 of his series of essays, Abu Iyaad reacts to a lecture Usama Hasan gave at the Leyton mosque 2 days prior. Someone at the mosque recorded the event and Abu Iyaad, listening to the audio file, comments on what was said that day. It would be onerous and inefficient to describe most of what Abu Iyaad wrote in this sixth essay, as he mostly repeats the various arguments he has laid out in his former essays to counter Hasan’s theory of the

120 The Jahmites were an early Islamic medieval school of thought who believed in rational interpretation of the Qur’an. Notably, they believed that the Qur’an had been created, an unpardonable offense for Salafis. See M. Alavi, and N. Abbas (2010)

compatibility of the Qur’an and evolution. Some elements, however, do stand out and merit further scrutiny. For instance, Abu Iyaad, who had up to now nudged “Darwinism” to the limits of the pedestal of science, proceeds to whack it off the pedestal entirely when he claims that “Darwinism is nothing but a religion that itself needs metaphysical explanations and blind faith”. This framing of Darwinism allows Abu Iyaad to put in the familiar setting of religion, which makes it easier to dismiss it entirely, as Salafis “know” that their religion is the only valid one, whereas all other religions are false. This rejection of “Darwinism” as a pseudo religion is similar to the approach used by As Saleh. It would appear that Salafis are somewhat uncomfortable with attacking perceived enemies of their doctrine without making the latter fit into the mold of some archetypical pseudo religion. This should not surprise the reader, as Salafis are essentially interested in religious matters and see everywhere shirk and bida, which are all menaces to maintaining the purity of their dogma. Elsewhere, Abu Iyaad appears to begin heeding his own advice on avoiding prolonged contact with deviants when he writes of a claim made by Hasan, but then declines to look up the relevant references “as [he] do[es] not trust Usamah’s citations and his ascription of views to authority”. Could this be a demonstration of an unwillingness to engage further in a debate on religious matters? If so, is there a certain point beyond which Salafis will refuse to go in their arguments for fear of prolonged contact with dangerous ideas? According to Abu Iyaad’s own warnings against the danger of being surrounded by shirk, this would appear to be logical indeed. In any case, his claim concerning Hasan does constitute an ad hominem argument, but, as noted earlier, it weaves into the narrative of the dangers, for Salafis, of being in contact with people who hold unorthodox views and reinforces the idea that such people, especially if they claim to be Salafis themselves, must be quarantined so as to prevent the corruption of fitrah. This idea, however, cannot but impede any efforts to criticize the arguments of such individuals. As if to illustrate this point, Abu Iyaad then writes about the fossil record (the first mention of it in his series of essays) but then dismisses the idea as simply an erroneous attempt to prove a metaphysical belief (presumably Darwinism). This is a manifestation of the Abu Iyaad’s contradictory intentions to both refute Darwinism and limit one’s exposure to Darwinist ideas. It would be interesting to determine if this is a more widespread phenomenon in the Salafi community. It is therefore not surprising that Abu Iyaad’s train of contradictory thoughts lead him to the idea of a

conspiracy. Indeed, he writes that “arrogant atheists” are promoting a “great fraud” and coopting individuals like Hasan in this endeavor. It is worth repeating here the claim he makes in its entirety: As we have said [sic] Darwinism is just a religion disguised as science, and it fits into a much wider scheme of things, because it is a world-view that is essential and ideal for the materialist, socialist and political philosophies that Western nations are being run upon, and hence it is guarded with a vengeance, not upon objective science, but through a carefully arranged framework of layered protection which involves both money and politics. [emphasis mine] Let us examine this reasoning: Western nations need the lie of Darwinism to “run”, which presumably means to operate or to maintain the legitimacy of their policies. Moreover, for this very reason, the fact that Darwinism is a con is a secret guarded by power and money. It is therefore impossible for anybody to prove that Darwinism is a lie with any hope of the message spreading to the general population as the entire system is rigged to maintain the illusion that Darwinism is true. This idea of a (presumably) global conspiracy can only reinforce the siege mentality of Salafis: they remain the last bastion of truth in a world seeped in lies. The idea of a conspiracy also has implications for Dawa (preaching),121 as Salafis must first struggle against the lie potentially embedded in every person in the West. In a later paragraph, Abu Iyaad criticizes Hasan’s idea that the decline of science in Muslim countries has left them less powerful than before. This, Abu Iyaad claims, is not what is taught in the Qur’an. Rather, it teaches that “the rise and fall of nations is not tied to scientific advancement”. Indeed, Hasan’s reasoning, he claims, is the same as that of the Muslim Brotherhood, who seek to put “creedal differences” aside and covet “power, strength and glory”, a belief that is “ikhwani poison”. It would appear as though this is an important difference separating Salafi and Ikhwani ideologies: the correlation between scientific advancement and the “power” of a Muslim state. Needless to say, a hypothetical Salafi state anchored in Abu Iyaad’s precepts might find it difficult to maintain this belief. In any case, this is an occasion for Abu Iyaad to malign both Hasan and the Muslim brotherhood, the latter being an ideological rival to the Salafis in the Muslim world.

121 A somewhat clearer, but more awkward, translation would be “to evangelise”.

Part 7: Fitrah, Aql, Naql, Science and the Origin of the Universe and Man Part 7 of Abu Iyaad’s series of essays is perhaps the most ambitious. As the title might suggest, he proposes to take on science in its entirety. His stated goal here is, as we have indirectly inferred from his previous writings is “to protect and buffer Muslims […] from being poisoned in [their] fitrah” for “it is clear that many Muslims are deceived and hoodwinked by that fake appearance of ‘objective scientific enquiry’ ”. Despite the fact that Abu Iyaad’s arguments here are anchored in misconceptions, clever mischaracterizations and shrewd logical fallacies, this is the essay that is meant (to the eyes of the non-scientific) to show off his intellectual prowess, and to a large extend it does, as he demonstrates a keen ability in rhetoric. Abu Iyyad begins by restating the importance of the fitrah (see part 1), which is the God-given Weltanschauung that includes the idea that every created thing needs a creator and backs up his argument with several citations from Ibn Taymiyyah. Abu Iyaad’s point here is that if someone proposes an idea which contradicts fitrah, then his own fitrah must be corrupted (e.g. proponents of evolutionary theory). Indeed, Abu Iyaad states that “The point we are establishing here then is that as Muslims we include (uncorrupted) fitrah amongst those things that provide certain (sure) knowledge or certain (sure) truths” (emphasis mine), thus stressing that the limits to truth for Salafis are found at the frontiers of their dogma. This, he adds, “is very different to the kaafir122 who, by definition, conceals and buries what the fitrah necessitates”, confirming once again that for Salafis the reason of non- Salafis must be pathological. Oddly enough, what one could characterize as a roadblock to rational thinking strongly resembles the feminist “standpoint theory”, an irrational idea which purports that “knowledge is and should be situated in people’s diverse social locations”123, that is to say that certain categories of knowledge are only accessible to certain individuals. In any case, Abu Iyaad argues that to exclude uncorrupted fitrah from science is pure arrogance (mukaabarah) and states that “today, there is a rightful challenge to the core premise of Darwinism” which argues that the complexities of life cannot be the result of random mutation (he is no doubt referring to the (patently non-scientific) intelligent design movement (see introduction), and more specifically the work of biologist Michael Behe, who

122 unbeliever 123 Mann and Kelley (1997), p. 392

argues that life is “irreducibly complex”, and thus must have been designed)124. He puts “forensic science” on a pedestal and strongly suggests that evolutionary biology adopt its methodology, which is a fancy way of saying that evolutionary biologists not seek the answer to “how did life evolve?”, but rather “who created life?” and presumably arrive to the conclusion that Allaah is responsible for everything.125 The obstacles to this is an unspecified “atheist militancy”, which is manifested by an immense “peer pressure” in academia to adopt “Darwinism” as the truth, which is what putatively led Usama Hasan to his conclusions. Abu Iyaad thus presents the edifice of science as something akin to a totalitarian regime with a rigid atheist ideology: no actual scientific progress is made, and the only function of science is to uphold the lie of Darwinism. It would seem as though this conspiratorial idea is widespread in the Salafi ideology, as both Abu Iyaad and As-Saleh hint to its existence numerous times. As in his previous essays, however, the ultimate answer to the question, “Cui bono?”, is elusive. As Salafis prefer to view their ideological enemies as corrupters of the undeniable truth, this shadowy “pro-darwinism” cabal is presumably believed by Salafis to know that the latter possess the truth, and that the acceptance of this truth would undermine and perhaps destroy their authority. Abu Iyaad then goes on to argue that before the early 19th century, the idea that there might not have been a creator of the universe did not exist (overlooking Democritus, Epicurus, La Mettrie, and numerous pagan cosmologies in which the world is created by multiple beings or forces). Only at that moment, he claims, did a “large-scale assault” upon fitrah begin with thinkers such as Auguste Compte, Karl Marx, and, naturally, Charles Darwin. It is not clear here if Abu Iyaad believes that these thinkers were consciously attacking the Islamic notion of fitrah, as he does not say so specifically. Most likely, he believes that they knowingly uprooted a hitherto immutable epistemological premise that what is created must have a creator. According to Abu Iyaad, it was Darwin himself who proposed a particular methodology that became the foundation for those after him in laying down rules to separate what they claimed was ‘science’

124 See Behe (2006) 125 This brings to mind an episode of The Simpsons in which creationism is allowed to be taught in school. Lisa, one of the show’s main protagonists, complains that the questions in the biology exam all have one identical correct answer: “God did it”.

from ‘non-science’, and it was here that ‘science’ was redefined much more narrowly than it had previously been. From thereon, according to Abu Iyaad, scientists started excluding data that could not be verified by “sensory experience”. This argument is plainly false, as the exclusion of non- measurable data was already a basic starting point of science in Darwin’s time (see introduction), but Darwin, however, did shock many of his contemporaries by suggesting that, ultimately, in explaining the origin of species, the vague idea of God was not necessary. It appears as though there is a Salafi narrative concerning science, which claims that, before the 19th century, science was an authentic quest for truth, but that, by “rigging the system” and denying God as an explanatory factor in the 19th century, scientists corrupted their own enterprise and sealed themselves off from finding some of the plainest of truths. In the following section, Abu Iyaad attempts to do something very bold indeed, as he proposes to refute science entirely. Ironically, he mobilizes the arguments (imagined or not) mustered by Western philosophers and social scientists to criticize the epistemological premises of the natural sciences. In a likely nod to postmodernist critics of science126, he states that “today we find that philosophers of science now affirm that there isn’t any specific set of criteria that can define what is “scientific””. Abu Iyaad then takes us back, oddly, to the 1950s where he claims there was an (unspecified) “crisis of faith” in the scientific method. Perhaps he is referring to nascent post-modernist schools of thought such as the Frankfurt School, although he does not indicate this. He only gives one example: Antony Flew’s “paper”, entitled “Theology and falsification” which purportedly gave scientists a “breath of air and a new cycle of puffed-up arrogance”. Although this narrative does not stand up to scrutiny (there was no apparent “crisis of science” in the scientific community of the 1950s and Flew’s “paper”127 was but two pages of remarks in a symposium in which he argued that the default stance towards reality should be atheism), by now Abu Iyaad has used sufficient subterfuge in his arguments that any reader not keen on scrutinizing them and looking up his sources will most likely accept his statements as true. What Abu Iyaad is doing here is building a genealogy of the modern “corruption” of fitrah in order to show his Salafi brethren when and how it occurred. Moreover, as his multiple references to medieval heretical (by

126 Kuntz. (2012), pp. 885–889 127 See http://www.politik-salon.de/files/theory_of_falsification.pdf

Salafi standards) Islamic groups suggest, he is probably implicitly arguing that this modern corruption of fitrah is an example of a reoccurring phenomenon, one that must be opposed, surely, but also one that has been and therefore can again, be vanquished, all of which fits in the Salafi narrative of a long historical struggle to maintain the purity of their dogma. This allows Abu Iyaad to take the guise of a master erudite of the history of science. Indeed, for his fellow Salafis, he is constructing the framework of when and how the West began its onslaught against a hitherto pure fitrah. Abu Iyaad then notes that scientists are paid to do their work. From there, he shrewdly leaps over to the conclusion that they must do the bidding of “private corporations or governments that toe the same materialistic, naturalistic world-view”. Although it may seem absurd to some that, say, the Airbus corporation is intentionally building commercial jets based on faulty physics because it needs to toe the line of a rigid atheist ideology, it makes perfect sense in the conspiratorial framework built by Abu Iyaad, since science is but arrogant sophistry whose ultimate purpose is to (for some reason) maintain a corrupted fitrah. Indeed, Abu Iyaad then takes on the very laws of physics themselves, noting that they do not “explain” anything, but are rather mere mathematical descriptions. What he means by this is that scientists have yet to understand why these laws are as they are, a gap which Abu Iyaad is ready and willing to plug with Allaah. In essence, his entire critique of science is based on the requirements of the fitrah Weltanschauung: a creator is needed for everything that is created. Of course, he does not explicitly say this here, but has repeatedly primed the pump in his previous essays to make it clear to his readers that this is the only sane way of understanding reality. Ergo, not only do the scientists have it all wrong, but they also bask in an institutionalized arrogance that is an insult to God. Indeed, Abu Iyaad seeks to stress the idea that the scientific enterprise is not a quest for truth, but rather a perpetual rear-guard action to defend against the truth which comes from fitrah. The image he presents to his readers is that of a mass of scientists continually frothing layers of false ideas to cover their previous lies. The parallel universe theory, for instance, is but a way to get out of the conundrum of the suspiciously fine-tuned, but entirely natural laws of physics that allow life in our universe, while the idea that the universe was “self-creating” is but a desperate attempt to deny the existence of Allaah, and the string theory

in physics is just “another attempt to continue that ‘pursuit’ of finding an answer besides the obvious”. Eventually, Abu Iyaad explains the Devil’s role in science, a passage well worth citing here because it encapsulates his idea of science, and to an extension, philosophy: So the con continues and Darwinians, like their physicists and philosophical counterparts from the hosts of Iblees are chasing that elusive universal theory, that equation (that can do away with the “beginning” of the Universe […] All of this is hardcore religion. It is faith in the existence of an answer, this answer is their deity in truth, and it is what they are pursuing and living for.

Part 8: Recommended Letter of Tawbah In his final essay, Abu Iyaad deems that Usama Hasan’s arguments about the compatibility of the Qur’an and the theory of evolution have been thoroughly refuted, but claims that the latter has not sufficiently repented (Tawbah) for his errors and the disorder and harm he has caused in the Salafi community. Indeed, it appears as though Hasan has left a message on the Leyton mosque noticeboard (fig. 1) which can be interpreted in different ways. Does he mean that he no longer defends the thesis that the Qur’an is compatible with Darwinism or does he mean to say that his thesis is compatible with what the Qur’an teaches about the creation of Adam? A BBC news report indicates that Hasan “retracted” his statements about evolution in March of 2011 , but the timestamp on the picture in fig. 1 indicates it was taken in late January 2011, which makes it unclear what Hasan’s stance on the issue was at that time. In any case, Abu Iyaad considers the statement in the picture wholly insufficient and claims, mockingly, that Hasan is akin to a

Fig. 1 (note that the sentence “visit aqidah…” was added to the picture after it was taken) monkey “raging in the cage” and proposes a draft letter which he could sign to repent for his sins. The letter is a short summary of all the criticisms Abu Iyaad directed towards Hasan in his earlier essays. It includes a bullet-point section in which affirmations are made, such as “I’ve realized that Darwinian Evolution is an academic and intellectual con which cannot be conferred ‘scientific status’ …”. The final sentence suggests that, as we have indicated, Abu Iyaad was more concerned about the impact Hasan’s idea could have on the Salafi community rather than its actual veracity: Finally, I repent (and apologize) for all the inconvenience and turmoil I have created for the congregation over the years and I endeavor to start learning true and real knowledge of the deen from its orthodox sources. Abu Iyaad suggests that Hasan sign this letter and distribute it “openly” and “widely”, and that doing so would at least constitute “a start”.

Concluding thoughts on Abu Iyaad’s essays Abu Iyaad’s long refutation of Hasan’s idea of the compatibility of the Qur’an and evolution does manifest interesting ideas that might reflect widespread conceptions inherent in the Salafi ideology. Corroboration of Abu Iyaad’s ideas as manifestation of Salafi ideology can be strengthened by comparing them to those of As Saleh: if both author reach a similar conclusion on a subject, than it is more likely that such a conclusion represents an idea widespread in the Salafi community. In this section, we will examine a few of these ideas.

The urge to establish a cordon sanitaire around ideas incompatible with Salafi dogma, especially evolutionary theory, is a notable feature in Abu Iyaad’s essays. Such ideas must be isolated because they can corrupt the innate dispositions given to man by Allaah, more specifically fitrah and aql, which must be preserved in their purity for they alone can guide men to the truth. As Saleh also appears eager to isolate “dangerous ideas” lest they spread and contaminate the thoughts of his Salafi brethren. From a cultural evolutionary perspective, this idea has numerous advantages for the Salafi communities, the most important of which is that it instills in Salafis an instinctive distrust of ideas absent in their dogma. If they are sufficiently versed in the Qur’an and Sunna, they can themselves verify if the suspicious idea is compatible with their dogma or not. If they feel they need help on how to view a suspicious idea, they can appeal to Salafi Ulama and seek their guidance (this last part constitutes a significant portion of the content on Salafi websites). Because of this reactionary instinct, it would appear as though Salafis are mostly immune to normal “human” logic and that any outsider attempting to engage them in a debate will be viewed as an existential threat to the purity of their dogma. Despite the phenomenon of “Salafi burnout”128, whose extent is not yet known, it would seem that Salafism is well poised to spread, especially in tolerant Western states, as the Salafi will most likely refuse any idea incompatible with his dogma and is therefore difficult to “convert” either to another strain of Islam, another religion, or secular thinking. The notion of fitrah in Salafi dogma is a fascinating concept. It is presented as a natural disposition given to humans by Allaah. Indeed, according to Salafi dogma, all children are born with an intact fitrah: whether it becomes corrupted or not depends on the child’s upbringing (i.e. if the child is raised as a Salafi, his fitrah will most likely remain intact; as for others, they can only purify their fitrah by adhering to the Salafi dogma later in their lives). Through fitrah, according to Salafi dogma, humans can bask in the irrefutable truth that there exists a creator of the world, not only of the heavens and Earth, but also of all living creatures. However, if one’s fitrah is corrupted, it can lead to a search for truth which will yield no true answers, such as evolutionary theory and other natural sciences. This allows Salafis to claim that if an individual does not adhere to their dogma, it is because his God- given natural disposition has been altered and corrupted. Therefore, no additional arguments

128 Hamid (2008), p. 11

are essential to refute the claims of such an individual. For Salafis, fitrah acts both as an epistemic barrier and the ultimate explanation behind the those who refuse to accept the “truth”. Albeit science has demonstrated that evolution is real, and evolution has already been observed both in the wild and in laboratory settings, these findings must be false to Salafis, for they contradict the truth that comes with an intact fitrah. Thus, the notion of fitrah acts as a second line of defense against suspicious ideas: if an ideal is novel, it is de facto suspicious and must be isolated, at least preliminarily, but if the idea contradicts the truth accessible by fitrah only, then it can be discarded. Conspiratorial thinking is present in both As Saleh and Abu Iyaad’s essays. It appears for Salafis to constitute a further explanatory factor behind the perceived resistance encountered by them in their Dawa. Indeed, according to this Salafi narrative, mysterious forces conspire to make the topic of abiogenesis inaccessible to the populace, thus hiding the embarrassing fact that scientists do not know exactly how life appeared on Earth. Moreover, they conspire to make science exclude explanations related to Allaah by excluding supernatural “evidence”. Indeed, Abu Iyaad claims that “Darwinism [is] a world-view that is essential and ideal for the materialist, socialist and political philosophies [of] Western nations”. Why is it so essential? Abu Iyaad does not say, but, presumably, his intended audience must at least suspect the reason. Interestingly, there are no studies (at least to your author’s knowledge) on the conspiratorial worldview of quietist Salafis concerning the West. Such a study would no doubt yield valuable information and allow scholars to better comprehend Salafi ideology. Abu Iyaad’s views on science are particularly harsh. Starting from the premise that only fitrah can allow one to access truth, he claims that science is “rigged” and therefore cannot see the plainest of truths: the existence of Allaah. Natural sciences, he states, should adopt the model of forensic science, where the objective is to determine “who” is responsible for an action. In a hypothetical Salafi state based on Abu Iyaad’s views, scientific researchers in universities could only observe phenomena, with the provision that their theoretical models demonstrate that Allaah is behind every such phenomenon. This would not be science, but rather theology. As noted before, Abu Iyaad believes that as scientists do not see the plain truth before them, they are constantly forced to invent new “lies” to cover up their previous ones. Although As Saleh does not criticize science in this matter, it is possible that Abu

Iyaad’s views on science represent the Salafi worldview. In this worldview, scientists must explain away the seemingly “fine-tuned” natural laws of the universe with a theory which purports that multiple universes exist, and that presumably the “fine-tuned” natural laws of our universe are simply a happy coincidence. Note that Abu Iyaad does not appear to feel the necessity of studying the multiverse hypothesis any further, as it simply cannot be true since there is no mention of this possibility in the Qur’an and Sunna. It does appear as though Salafis, whether they have a state or not, will continue to depend on technology developed by non-Salafis, as a true Salafi believer would likely not accept the scientific premises needed to develop advanced technology.

Chapter 3 – fatwas and short texts

In this section, we shall examine various fatwas and short texts found on Salafi and official Saudi websites which pertain to evolutionary theory. Some of the short texts and all of the fatwas are answers given by Salafi scholars to questions surrounding evolution. As these texts and fatwas are rather short and repetitive, it is more difficult to infer anything from them. Hence, some texts, and especially the fatwas, will be provided here in an effort to be as exhaustive as possible in identification of Salafi material concerning the theory of evolution.

1. Racism: is there a solution? The Salafi website troid.org contains a category of essays entitled “Dangers for New Muslims”. In this category, one can find texts that are meant to instruct new converts on how to protect themselves from and purge themselves from impure ideas. One of these essays bears the title “Racism: Is There a Solution?”129. The definitive “answer”, found in the text’s last sentence (“Islam will still be the ONLY solution for racism.”) will surprise very few scholars of Islamist movements, but there is an interesting section on “Darwinism” that sheds some light on how Salafis perceive this dangerous idea. The anonymous author begins his essay by demonstrating how racism’s ultimate source is in Iblis’ reasoning: he refuses to prostrate himself before man because he is created from fire, whereas man is created from clay. Thus, man learned the belief of superiority of one being over another, and Iblis ensured that this idea would spread throughout mankind. After explaining how Christianity was used as a justification for genocide and slavery, the author veers towards another “source” of racism: “Darwinism”. By the 19th century, the author claims, the Western world had rejected religion and, to replace it, looked towards science for answers. The dominant theory in science, the author adds, was “Darwinism”. Here, the author introduces an interesting conspiracy theory: “Unknown to many, Darwin’s expeditions were only-funded (sic) by the British government so that a scientific base could be used for racist an imperial ambitions.” With this conspiracy theory, not only does the author mix Muslim colonial grievances with “Darwinism” to demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of the West, but he also discredits

129 https://www.troid.org/new-and-basics/dangers-to-new-muslims/123-racism-is-there-a-solution [2020/01/30]

evolutionary theory, by claiming that the “theory” was but a façade, a pseudo-scientific ideology, used to justify colonialism and imperialism. Indeed, the author goes further in his explanation of the theory itself: The theory espoused that man evolved from apes. It then claimed that some people had not fully evolved from their primate forms, and were thus inferior to others. These inferior people were said to be the Non-Europeans, and especially the Africans. Thus, on a mission to civilize these ‘savages’, the Europeans used Darwin’s theory to oppress and destroy many parts of the world. In this explication, the author blends the theory of evolution with various attempts to build a pseudo-scientific theory of race. Although this presentation of “Darwinism” could hardly fool a scientifically literate person, a recent Salafi convert with little knowledge of biology could easily be horrified by reading these words, sufficiently horrified to be repulsed by the very idea of the theory of evolution. In effect, the author’s goal here appears to be to inoculate recent converts against a particularly dangerous and impure idea. The conspiratorial origins of “Darwinism” presented here strengthen your author’s argument that conspiratorial thinking is an important explanatory factor in the Salafi community. Moreover, the text shows that Salafis will not shy away from associating “Darwinism” with the devil.

2. “Our education keeps us from acknowledging our ignorance” In a short essay published on the website albalagh.net130, a certain Khalid Baig discusses the importance of an Islamic education. Indeed, he states that “Seeking knowledge is so important that even during the prosecution of a war, a segment of the society must be engaged in it.” Education, he claims, cannot truly lead to expertise unless one has studied in depth and pondered over the Qur’an and the Sunna. Indeed, most education offered in the contemporary world is to be classified as mubah, or merely permissible. However, he adds, learning social and natural sciences from a “secular perspective” is a dangerous affair, as such fields are but “camouflages for teaching secular philosophy”. Indeed, he adds, “A believer cannot teach that man evolved from apes because Darwin said so and an imported textbook presents it as a fact.” The field of evolutionary theory is thus relegated to a mere

130 https://www.albalagh.net/food_for_thought/ilm2.shtml [2020/01/30]

opinion stated by Darwin. Moreover, this “opinion” is found in a foreign textbook. Baig does not even seek to refute evolutionary theory as it can, apparently, be shrugged off as an obvious falsehood and a matter of little importance. Perhaps this represents a more widespread approach to evolutionary theory than the one found in the essays of As Saleh and Abu Iyaad. In any case, Baig states that even if a Muslim is the best scientist in his field, he remains an ignoramus if he has not had a proper Islamic education. Indeed, he adds, such an individual would be nothing but the “product of colonial education systems”. Thus, in the Salafi perspective, secular education’s importance is minimized and can be associated with the colonial practices of Western powers.

3. On believing in Darwinism On a Salafitalk.net discussion forum, there is a post entitled “Shaykh Salih al- Luhaydaan on Whoever Believes in Darwinism” 131. It is apparently a transcript of a telephone conversation with the aforementioned Shaykh. An anonymous questioner asks what should be the Salafi attitude towards one who accepts “Darwinism”. To this, the Shaykh answers This speech is evil and repulsive. Allaah has informed us that he created Adam from Turaab. He created Adam and then he created his wife from him. So the one who adopts Darwinism, that man evolved from monkey, is a wicked person [Khabeeth] and there is no good in him. As in the short essay by Baig, there is here no attempt to refute “Darwinism”, only an injunction that one who believes in it be considered evil. Notice that the element of “disgust” is mobilized here at the very beginning, just as in Abu Iyaad’s first essay. This would indicate that, in the Salafi ideology, the feeling of disgust is a strong frontline defense against “dangerous ideas”.

131 http://www.salafitalk.net/st/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=8&Topic=12083 [2020/01/30]

4. The return of Usama Hasan In another post in the Salafitalk.net discussion forum132, an anonymous individual asks the Shaykh Muhammad bin Haadee al-Madkhalee his thoughts on Usama Hasan’s belief in the theory of evolution. The aforementioned Shaykh answers: Firstly, whoever says that Aadam (alayhis salaatu was salaam) came to be from two parents is a liar. Secondly, whoever says that the origin of Aadam (alayhis salaatu was salaam) was from apes, then he is a liar, [he] clashes with the text of the Mighty Qur'an in which Allaah, the Sublime, has informed us the how Aadam was created. Thirdly, whoever claims that there was human(s) [in existence] before Aadam and he evolved until Aadam came from him, he is also a liar, because there is no human found before Aadam. Again, the Shaykh does not appear to feel that a refutation of the theory of evolution is needed. Since the theory contradicts the Qur’an, it must therefore be wrong, and those who support it must be liars.

5. Two Salafi fatwas133 The following are two fatwas from Salafi scholars found in Guessoum’s (2016) Islamic Theological Views on Darwinian Evolution in the Oxford research encyclopedias: Religion. The first is from Safar Al-Hawali, who states that For humans, we know everyone descends from Adam and Eve – no discussion! For other organisms, if people say ‘they descend from each other’, that may be fine with us, but if they say ‘they came from nothing’ or other myths, then we respond to them using our scriptures (and any doubting that is tantamount to heresy!) and using scientific proofs that anti-evolutionists in the west have presented. Al-Hawali is rather abrupt: the matter of Adam and Eve is settled, “no discussion!”. It appears that he believes that any discussion on the matter would be futile, a view which appears rather often in this 3rd chapter. Moreover, he clearly states that doubting the scriptures is a form of heresy. This is a manifestation of the Salafi psychological mechanism which rejects any deviancy from the dogma as bida and potential shirk.

132 The post is one the same page as the previous one. 133 All the fatwas cited in this section come from Guessoum (2016)

The second fatwa is from Abdul Aziz ibn Baz, who states that Darwin was wrong: humans did not evolve from other species; they were created in the form they currently have. Adam was perfectly human, but he was 60 cubits in height (27.4 meters), and humans got smaller later … Apes and other animals are distinct species; they will be brought back to God on the Day of Judgement … Muslims who make this claim [of human evolution from ape-like species] while knowing what the scriptures say are heretics! Ibn Baz’ reflex appears to be to directly contradict evolutionary theory with the Qur’anic narrative concerning the creation of Adam. Indeed, it is less an attempt to refute evolutionary theory than simply an ensemble of counter affirmations.

6. Three fatwas from official Saudi sources134 This section examines fatwas issued from official Saudi sources. It can be safe to assume that they reflect Salafi ideology, at least partially, because “as a rule, all Wahhabis are Salafis but not all Salafis are Wahhabis”135. Firstly, in a question addressed to the Saudi General Presidency of Scholarly Research and Ifta (SGPSRI), one anonymous individual asks how a Muslim should react to being taught “falsehoods”, such as the “theory of Darwin”, in foreign countries: are Muslims allowed to study such matters or not? The answer states that “a person who is strong in their religion” and knows the evidence that can refute such falsehoods, they can remain abroad, with the caveat that they not use such sources in their studies (presumably in papers, exams, and theses) without providing additional sources that refute the falsehoods. If the student is incapable of doing this, the fatwa continues, he must come home to Saudi Arabia (and presumably chose another field of study). No reason for the interdiction to study “Darwinism” is given beyond the statement that it is “Haram”. Presumably, this is reason is sufficient for many Salafis. Secondly, in another question addressed to the SGPSRI, a student, who has just encountered the theory of evolution in his studies, says that while he believes that Allaah created the universe, he was surprised to find a book written by a Muslim author who argued

134 The following fatwas were found on Saudi Arabia’s Portal of the General Presidency of Scholarly Research and Ifta (www.alifta.net). 135 Bin Ali et al. (2016), p. 1

that evolutionary theory and the Qur’an are compatible. He asks for guidance in this matter. The answer from the individual representing the SGPSRI corrects the student and states that evolutionary theory is “Darwin’s theory”, one which contradicts the Qur’an and Sunna. The author then states that there are proofs in the Qur’an and the Sunna that Allaah created Adam from the soil. Once again, there is no effort to refute “Darwin’s Theory” and the matter is brushed aside as an obvious falsehood. Thirdly, a subsequent fatwa discusses the implications of Saudi children playing the videogame Pokemon. The game, claims the individual representing the SGPSRI, is anchored in Darwin’s theory, which states that “all species of organisms evolve, and that the origin of man was an ape”. The author deplores the fact that children playing the game frequently use the term “evolution” because one virtual creature often “evolves” into another. Accordingly, the author states that the game is hereby “prohibited”, that all Muslims should be wary about it, and that they should closely monitor their children lest they play the game. In the Salafi worldview, it appears that shadowy forces are attempting to use videogames to push “atheistic” views onto children, as the fatwa also discusses the hidden “masonic” features hidden in the game. Once again, conspiratorial views seem to be a powerful explanatory factor in the Salafi Weltanschauung.

Concluding thoughts on short texts and fatwas The short essays and fatwas examined in this chapter indicate that the “dangerous idea” of evolutionary theory is commonly shrugged off. Although, as Wiktorowicz (2006) puts it, “perhaps the most dangerous challenge to pure Islam, from the Salafi perspective, is the application of human intellect and logic to the original sources”136, Salafi scholars seem to mostly either ignore or condemn “human” logic, since they see their function is simply to “unearth the truth that lies somewhere in the Qur’an and Sunna”137. Indeed, only the first two authors examined in this chapter seek to at the very least contextualize “Darwinism” while the rest merely offer injunctions to avoid it.

136 Wiktorowicz (2006), p. 210 137 Wiktorowicz (2006), p. 210

Conclusion

Although the concluding thoughts concerning the various texts examined in this essay are spread out across the chapters, there are some ideas that are worth mentioning here. The first is that it appears as though As Saleh and Abu Iyaad’s efforts to thoroughly refute evolutionary theory are both novel and unique. While most online Salafis appear to simply shrug off “Darwinism” as an obvious falsehood, the former two attempted to examine evolutionary theory and to refute it more or less systematically. Thus, the nonchalant approach to evolutionary theory amongst Salafis seems to be the mainstream attitude. This conclusion is provisional, however, as the sources examined here were limited to open access Salafi websites. Stefan Bigliardi has shown some great success in studying the perception of science by notable Muslim intellectuals.138 His approach was radically different from the one used in this essay: Bigliardi sought out the aforementioned intellectuals and personally interviewed them. The result was a rich tapestry of (Muslim) ideas concerning the theory of evolution. No doubt interviewing Salafi and ex-Salafi intellectuals on the matter of evolutionary theory would yield some interesting data that could complement and complete the research done in the scope of this essay. The second point is that, despite their pretentions, the As Saleh and Abu Iyaad refutations were not anchored in science. In both cases, evolutionary theory was remolded into some form of worship of a false deity, which suggests that Salafis, because of their narrow Weltanschauung, are incapable of considering arguments outside the scope of theology and are thus impervious to rational and evidence-based thought. Indeed, the only truth they seek has already been found: it lies in the Qur’an, the hadith, and the mores of 7th century Mecca. If a Salafi seeks to settle an issue of faith or praxis, no answer can possibly be found outside these three sources. It appears as though Salafism is a highly efficient and robust non-biological, but contagious, mind parasite: it takes control of the mind, instills a deep sense of purpose into its host and comes with a set of reflexive thoughts that immediately banish all rational thinking. Indeed, one could say that Salafism can display a high degree of fitness in the Western environment, where the slow decay of religious institutions and beliefs has left behind what could arguably be called an existential void

138 Bigliardi (2014)

where purpose and values are sometimes difficult to identify and to obtain. The evidence examined in this thesis adds considerable strength to Witktorowicz’ (2006) assertion that Salafis are oblivious to any rational thought. Indeed, he states that, for Salafis, “any time humans attempt to apply their own logic or methods of reasoning (the scientific method of Sir Francis Bacon or Ibn Khaldun, for example), they open the way to human desire, distortion, and deviancy.”139 This is indeed what has been observed in this essay. Abu Iyaad’s savage eloquence targeted against the scientific enterprise is a sophisticated manifestation of this idea that any thought independent from the Salafi dogma will only lead to error and perversion. Third, this thesis has show that evolutionary theory and Salafi dogma are irreconcilable. No effort to bridge the two could possibly succeed, for Salafis eschew non- literalist interpretations of the Qur’an and Sunna and the very idea of evolution could only be squared with Muslim theology by interpreting key passages of the Qur’an in an allegorical manner. Moreover, the Salafi Weltanschauung’s incapacity of incorporating scientific evidence which contradicts makes the very idea of such a reconciliation moot. Fourth, the evidence gathered in this thesis suggests that, were it to be applied to a state, the Salafi ideology would have severe (negative) consequences in education and research & development.140 Little or no progress could be made in the fields related to biology as evolution through nature selection is a central theory that ultimately holds all life sciences together. Moreover, research in artificial intelligence would be severely hampered as evolutionary models are used to create and perfect artificial intelligence hardware and software. Epidemics would be difficult to contain as they would require the recognition that microbes evolve. Additionally, as we have highlighted before, the hostility towards biology could very well spill into other scientific disciplines. For instance, As-Saleh’s description of how the Planet was formed contradicts geological evidence. Your author hopes that the data examined in this thesis can serve as a starting point for other scholars interested in the Salafi interpretation of evolutionary theory. Indeed, there remains much to be done. Salafi discussion forums which require a registration to view have yet to be scrutinized. Moreover, live interviews with Salafis and ex-Salafis would no doubt

139 Wiktorowicz (2006), p. 210 140 The case of Saudi Arabia is, in some form, an aberration, as its extraction and refinery of hydrocarbons have made it rich and, moreover, it enjoys the military protection of the United States.

yield valuable information on the subject. It would be especially interesting to explore the insights of a former Salafi with some knowledge of evolutionary theory as such an individual could shed some light on the inner workings of the Salafi Weltanschauung and how it is able to so successfully block rational thought.

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Appendix 1 http://www.aqidah.com/creed/articles/nbbpo-kufr-can-occur-without-believing-in- kufr-or-desiring-it.cfm http://www.aqidah.com/creed/articles/ydiou-al-walaa-wal-baraa-allegiance-and- disavowal-for-the-aqidah-in-the-books-of-aqidah.cfm http://www.tawhidfirst.com/monotheism/articles/phcgo-the-definition-pillars-and- conditions-of-worship.cfm http://www.dajjaal.com/liar/articles/xsxpr-the-role-of-television-in-social- engineering-predictive-programming-and-destruction-of-children-and-society.cfm