Is this justice....?: Challenging Tahir-ul-Qadri and all Medievalist Muslim Preachers to Debate regarding the Facts of Evolution

Challenging Tahir-ul-Qadri and all Medievalist Muslim Preachers to Debate regarding the Facts of Evolution

Epigraph:

"O ye people! fear your Lord, Who created you from a single being and created from her (mother unicellular organism) her mate , and from them twain spread many men and women; and fear Allah, in Whose name you appeal to one another, and fear Him particularly respecting ties of relationship. Indeed, Allah watches over you." (Al Quran 4:2)

Western Lowland Gorilla portrait: Reflecting not only the facts of evolution but also the ferocity of my arguments that the preachers are up against

By Zia H Shah MD
I issue a challenge to all the popular preachers of Islam, who do not believe that humans are genetically related to apes and descended from them, in a manner of speaking, for a written debate.
I am not arguing the details of the history or how all the life forms came about, whether there was subtle guidance by a Creator or not, I am only stating the fact that we are related to chimpanzees and gorillas.
At some point in our earth history we share parents with not only chimpanzees and gorillas but also with monkeys. Be my guest! Come and debate with me rather than confusing the masses and winning cheap popularity.
The popular preachers like Tahir ul Qadri, Zakir Naik, Yusuf Estes and Harun Yahya try to make fun of Sir Charles Darwin, a great visionary in my opinion. I do not have to agree with every thing that he said to think that he was a great scientist and a figure of enormous stature, much taller than those who choose to ridicule him.
All these preachers, presented here have a few things in common. They are all fairly popular among their circles. They dogmatically deny the evidence of links between different animals, including the human beings, without any in depth study, banking on the ignorance of their followers.
I will show the position of these preachers in a few short video clips and a quote and then proceed with showing my hand.
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri (born 19 February 1951) is a Pakistani politician, former law professor and a Sufi scholar. He was a former professor of international constitutional law at the University of the Punjab. Qadri is also the founder and Chairman of Minhaj-ul-Quran International. In March 2012 he was described by CNN-IBN as an 'International Peace Ambassador.'
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Adnan Oktar (born 1956), also known as Harun Yahya, is a Turkish author referred to as "the biggest propagator of ijaz literature" as well as an Islamic creationist. In 2007, he sent thousands of unsolicited copies of his book, Atlas of Creation, which advocates Islamic creationism, to American scientists, members of Congress, and science museums. Oktar runs two organizations of which he is also the Honorary President: Bilim Arastirma Vakfi ("Science Research Foundation", BAV, established 1990), which promotes creationism and Milli Degerleri Koruma Vakfi ("Foundation to Protect National Values", established 1995) which claimed to promote Turkish nationalism. In the last two decades, Oktar has been involved in a number of legal cases, both as defendant and plaintiff.
Harun Yahya in his otherwise useful book titled, the Creation of the Universe, commits the error of denying evolution of apes into humans, which in light of latest findings in molecular biology and genetics is being increasingly recognized as a fact in scientific circles.
Harun Yahya writes:

The subject most often brought up by advocates of the theory of evolution is the subject of the origin of man. The Darwinist claim holds that man evolved from so called ape-like creatures. During this alleged volutionary process, which is supposed to have started 4-5 million years ago, some "transitional forms" between man and his imaginary ancestors are supposed to have existed. According to this completely imaginary scenario, four basic "categories" are listed:
1. Australopithecus
2. Homo habilis
3. Homo erectus
4. Homo sapiens
Evolutionists call man's so-called first ape-like ancestors Australopithecus, which means "South African ape." These living beings are actually nothing but an old ape species that has become extinct. Extensive research done on various Australopithecus specimens by two world famous anatomists from England and the USA, namely, Lord Solly Zuckerman and Prof. Charles Oxnard, shows that these apes belonged to an ordinary ape species that became extinct and bore no resemblance to humans.

Yahya's book is available online free, on his websites.
Yahya's dogmatic denial of relationship between apes and human beings exposes only his ignorance, specifically in the domain of genetics and molecular biology.
All the proofs that creationists offer for the improbabilities that have gone into making our universe biophyllic or in the creation of individual life forms or organs can serve only as argument for guided evolution, once the similarities are shown in genetic materials of closely related animals including apes and human beings.
These similarities not only exist in the genome but extend to proteins and all other constituents of life that have been examined so far. Chimpanzee genome is 98-99% similar to human genome and for even greater resemblance among the two, see my article, Molecular Biology: A Checkmate to Creationism.
When any of these preachers speak or write, they create an aura as if they know what they are talking about. Do they?
Would any of the above four or their cronies dare to engage in a written debate with me on this issue. We can negotiate the details of the debate. Writings of both parties will be precisely reproduced here in the Muslim Times and in their websites of their choosing.
Watch the video clips and read further in the Muslim Times.