Contesting science for Islam: the media as a source of revisionist knowledge in the lives of young Bangladeshis

Abstract

In our research with young Bangladeshis, we have been repeatedly struck by the popularity of television, DVD and Internet material that offers a modernist, quasi-scientific defence of Islamic knowledge against both ‘western’ scientific criticisms and US fundamentalist Christians. The South Indian doctor Zakir Naik's programmes, broadcast on his own television channel (Peace TV) and also available widely on DVD, are very popular, and admired for their ‘logical’ and apparently even-handed approach. His Islamic Research Foundation propagates his and similar material on the Web. The Turkish scholar ‘Harun Yahya’ (Adnan Oktar) 's diatribes against Darwinism and other western scientific evils are widely available on the Internet as text, audio and video, and often referred to. Full-on conspiracy theory material such as ‘The Arrivals’ series of online videos also finds a ready audience. We ask why these apparently implausible attacks on western knowledge carry conviction among young Muslims, many of them students studying for western-style university degrees in Bangladesh or the United Kingdom. We also ask to what degree the views of men such as Naik and Yahya might provide the basis of an alternative modernity, and what the implications of their wide popularity might be in the political arena.

Keywords:

• Bangladesh
• science
• climate change
• Zakir Naik
• Harun Yahya

Notes

 1. The sample, studied as part of an ESRC-funded research project (‘The Challenge of Islam: Young Bangladeshis, Marriage and Family in Bangladesh and the UK’), included individual interviews, focus groups and informal gatherings, mostly in Dhaka and Sylhet cities. Approximately 60% were women, and most had secondary and some tertiary education. Further data came from participant observation and casual conversation. The project also included research with a similar but smaller sample of British Bangladeshis (the present article does not refer to these).

 2. Posted by hmohdkhan, November 17, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx2QXVi89BI (accessed May 2, 2010).

 3. http://www.irf.net/ (accessed November 14, 2010).

 4. As of 30 April 2010.

 5. Information from Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=78076566516 (accessed April 30, 2010).

 6. There are several versions of Zakir Naik's lecture on Youtube. I have used the Shahadah project version. Part 1 posted by ShahadahProject, October 29, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3vglFjsDgw (accessed May 2, 2010). Similar material is available in a booklet by Zakir Naik of the same name (Naik 2000).

 7. Transcribed from Youtube version posted by ShahadahProject. October 29, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3vglFjsDgw (accessed May 2, 2010).

 8. A distinguished Canadian anatomist and embryologist who worked for some years in Saudi Arabia. He is often cited by Naik.

 9. Youtube videos posted by ShahadahProject, October 29, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C87-go6nhns&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hvEk1UjIk&feature=related (accessed May 2, 2010).

10. Posted by ShahadahProject, October 29, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkZiCT4LOg0 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuGd42AT-98&feature=related (accessed May 2, 2010).

11. For example: Youtube video posted by AllahsCreation, March 24, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvNIgHA7nzQ (accessed May 3, 2010). There are many other Youtube postings of this debate, in whole and part.

12. His credentials in this area, however, appear to be dubious, and criticisms of his role in this regard are frequent on the Internet, particularly from ‘Barelwi’ or Shi'a sources.

13. ‘Dating in Islam’, Youtube video posted by abdus1308, November 29, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkTIw4KQD28&feature=related (accessed May 2, 2010).

14. ‘Are Musical Instruments forbidden (HARAM) is Islam? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9-XR3FIsww&feature=related.

15. December 2, 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxk5AAA5FbI, posted by umer123khan (accessed May 3, 2010).

16. Youtube video posted by uNamed2lyfe, March 29, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwEjtond_Yg (accessed May 3, 2010).

17. http://www.harunyahya.com (accessed November 14, 2010).

18. Harun Yahya's official site: http://www.harunyahya.com/. Harun Yahya's TV channel: http://en.harunyahya.tv/ (accessed May 3, 2010).

19.  http://www.harunyahya.com/theauthor.php (accessed May 3, 2010(.

20. On Gülen see, for example, Yavuz (1999) and Bilici (2006). For Gülen's views on Darwin, which are dismissive but do not extend to conspiracy theory, see http://www.fethullahgulen.org/questions-and-answers.html, No.14 (accessed May 4, 2010).

21. An alleged clandestine secularist and ultra-nationalist organisation accused of responsibility for various anti-State acts in Turkey, including the planning of a military coup that was supposed to have been planned for 2009.

22. Interview. http://us1.harunyahya.com/Detail/T/EDCRFV/productId/23346/EXCERPTS_FROM_THE_PRESS_CONFERENCE_OF_MR._ADNAN_OKTAR,_SEPTEMBER_6TH,_2009 (accessed May 3, 2010).

23. There was some truth in this claim, in that Yahya is referred to several times in a Council of Europe document on `The dangers of creationism in education' (Council of Europe, 2007).

24.  http://www.harunyahya.com/theauthor.php?sayfa_no=2 (accessed May 3, 2010).

25. Harun Yahya's views are presented in detail online: http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/ (accessed May 3, 2010).

26. I have little information on their identity. An audio interview with Achernahr gives some background to his involvement in the series, and can be found online: http://vodpod.com/watch/2525267-wakeupproject-radio-interview-with-achernahr-pt-1 (accessed May 4, 2010). He gives credit to Abdullah Hashem, the US-based creator of an earlier series of ‘revisionist history’ films, as the initial inspiration behind the series.

27.  http://www.wakeupproject.com/ (accessed May 3, 2010). Note that the numbering of episodes is not always consistent between different versions of the series available online.

28. This introductory episode, however, includes an interesting list of sources: ‘What will be shared is an analysis of our world today, based on the books and works of Sheikh Imran N. Hosein, David Icke, William Cooper, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Texe Marrs, as well as analysis of prophecies for the Qur'an, Hadeeth, Bible, and Torah’. http://www.wakeupproject.com/VList.asp?Series=1&Video=91 (accessed May 3, 2010). Sheikh Imran N. Hosein is a Trinidadian Muslim scholar much concerned with the western conspiracy against Islam and with the dajjal or ‘false messiah’; see, for example, his Surah Al-Kahf and the Modern Age, an ‘analytical study of Sūrah al-Kahf of the Qur'an that seeks to explain the reality of a mysterious European Jewish–Christian alliance that is waging unjust war on Islam and oppressing Muslims while pursuing a sinister global agenda on behalf of the Euro-Jewish State of Israel’. http://imranhosein.org/media/books/SKAMA-Inet1428x.pdf (accessed May 3, 2010). Icke, Cooper and Marrs are well-known non-Muslim conspiracy theorists. Sheikh Hamza Yusuf is an American convert to Islam and a relatively mainstream figure in Islamic terms; I am not certain why he is included.

29.  http://www.wakeupproject.com/VList.asp?Series=1&Video=92 (accessed May 3, 2010).

30.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2UDOMXjCtM (accessed May 3, 2010).

31. His apparent endorsement of Bin Laden nevertheless led to his being refused admission to the United Kingdom in June 2010 by the Home Secretary, Theresa May. ‘Indian preacher Zakir Naik is banned from UK’. BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/10349564.stm (accessed June 28, 2010). ‘Home secretary Theresa May bans radical preacher Zakir Naik from entering UK’. Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7836557/Home-secretary-Theresa-May-bans-radical-preacher-Zakir-Naik-from-entering-UK.html (accessed June 28, 2010).

32. At the same time, one can overstate the solidity of much of this conspiracy thinking. Peter Knight puts it nicely in his book Conspiracy Culture: ‘There might well be a subculture of hard-core genuine believers, but for many more people in the mainstream the possibility of conspiracy thinking is always hovering in the background, more a process of endless self-ironizing suspicion than a fixed ideological product’ (Knight 2000, 244)

33. For example, the Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky. See his Google video ‘War and Globalization – The Truth Behind September 11 (9/11)’. http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=3117338213439292490# (accessed June 29, 2010).