The Medieval Religious State of Saudi Arabia has a school called King Abdullah’s University of Science and Technology, which is co-ed (that is an extraordinarily progressive idea for Teh Kingdom) and very science oriented. The idea, obviously, is for Saudi Arabia to maintain it’s old patriarchal relgious-oligarchic ways but at the same time not get mushed by the modern world by including some rational thinking and stuff. But a senior Saudi cleric has called for a vetting of the university’s curriculum in order to remove “alien ideologies.”
Evolution is an alien ideology, apparently.
“The recommendation is to set up sharia committees at this university to oversee these studies and look into what violates the sharia (Islamic law),” Sheikh Saad al-Shithri, a member of a panel of top scholars, was quoted by al-Watan newspaper.
“We are looking at some of the sciences that have included some irregular and alien ideologies, like evolution and such other ideologies,” said Shithri, who is one of several clerics who objected to co-education at the university.
[source]
The school started operation on September 23rd. It did not take long for the Yahoos to show up and try to ruin everything.
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Hard to believe we have Islam to thank for saving so much ancient science and adding so much to some fields of thought a millennia or more ago.
Evolution was invented by aliens?
The idea that evolution is an ideology at all is boggling. It’s not an ideology, dammit, it’s a unifying theory explaining all the evidence we have available to us!
Jason Thibeault #3:
If you’d try translating The Greatest Show On Earth into Arabic and mass market that in Saudi Arabia you’d get slammed down long before you’d be able to say “random mutation and natural selection”.
That’s why we can’t have nice things.
Have you never noticed no-one ever mentions Charles Darwin’s middle name? Or even his initial?
That’s because he was born Charles Reptoid Darwin!.
“The recommendation is to set up sharia committees at this university to oversee these studies and look into what violates the sharia (Islamic law),”…
Great idea! Let’s have a complete catalog from impeccable high-level imams that lays out point-by-point every divergence between Islamic orthodoxy and mainstream science.
At the least, this would save a lot of work for Ibn Warraq.
By US law Charles Darwin is an alien since he was not a US citizen.
I doubt complaining about evolution is going to go anywhere (barring a change at the top of the Saudi government). The Saudi government is intent on making this a modern university (and a rich one with 10 billion dollars in the endowment). Women are allowed to drive on campus, three members of the board of trustees are women, women do not need to wear hijab (I’m not sure this just means non-Muslim women).
Greg, this is important!
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/10/05/king-abdullah-slaps-down-saudi-cleric-criticial-of-co-ed-university/