Dr. Hasan is a lecturer at Middlesex University in London, and the article he published which started this mess was just an opinion piece in The Guardian. One of the main propositions that Hasan makes in this piece goes as follows:
"Another objection that is sometimes posed is the following: doesn't evolution denigrate and insult all humans, but especially the prophets of God, by insisting that we all originate from apes? I reply that the theory doesn't insult anyone, but does remind us of the humble origins of our created form. This is nothing new or blasphemous, since numerous Qur'anic verses remind us that we are all created from "dust" via sexual discharges: "despised drops of water". Those verses clearly do not insult the prophets. Meanwhile, our spiritual form remains the most exalted, since it is from the spirit of God breathed into Adam: we exist for the most noble purpose of knowing and loving God, freely and after having been given a choice."
For these kinds of statements Dr. Hasan was dismissed as blasphemous, and he says that one man came up to him after a lecture and said, "you are an apostate and should be killed..." It is apparent, and has been stated by Hasan himself, that these kinds of remarks were only given by fanatics and fundamentalists, just as some Christians are known to receive threats after speaking in favor of Darwin and evolution.
Just as I was earlier interested in learning that there are currently problems in universities involving the creationism/evolution debate, I was also interested to learn about the creationism debate in the Muslim community. After I was presented with the article, I of course saw no reason why there wouldn't be a debate within a religion besides Christianity, I simply hadn't dedicated time to think about a particular religion in which this was the case.
I don't know how this affects the Christian creationism/evolution debate, particularly since many extremist Christians believe that Muslims are the root of all evil. How would they react to the knowledge that Islamic extremists are defending the same creationist beliefs that extreme Christians are defending? This is very interesting to me, especially since the similarities between any verision of fundamentalism in any religion seem to have many parallels.
As a comment on Dr. Hasan's quote in the middle of this post, I felt that the way he phrased his understanding of evolution was a lovely way of determining an almost symbolic look at the subject. The beauty that evolution "does remind us of the humble origins of our created form" guides part of the reason for my opinion. It is the idea of being connected to the world around me that humbles me and keeps me from believing in humans as the dominant species. I wish I ate less meat. Regardless, I was frustrated that Hasan, citing parts of the Bible, was still disregarded as being a blasphemous teacher for merely having a different interpretation. As I understand, this is the same is Judism. A vast majority of Orthodox Jewish Rabbis believe in young-earth Creationism, in which the earth is 6,000 years old. I feel as if I have been trying to make a point through my posts and comments that it is common among extreme sects of religion to believe in creationism, but not all religion.
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