Page 512 - Learning from the Qur'an

THE DECEPTION OF EVOLUTION

In the present day, there are people who live in a manner far removed from
Allah, and who even reject faith and deny the existence of Allah for their own
ends. On account of their blindness and mindless fearlessness, they try to
influence others and turn them away from Allah. They have put forward a
whole range of inconsistent ideas and twisted ideologies by which to do this.
One of these is the theory of evolution.

The Ideological Collapse Of Darwinism
The aspect of Darwinism that stops it from being a claim of interest only
to the scientific world and makes it of great importance to society as a whole
is its ideological dimension. The answer it gives to the question of how living
things, including mankind, came into existence makes Darwinism the basis of
a number of philosophies, worldviews and political ideologies.
Here, we shall consider the relationship between Darwinism and
materialist philosophy. Materialist philosophy, or "materialism," is a system
of thought going as far back as ancient Greece. Materialism rests on the
assumption that matter is the only thing that exists. According to materialist
philosophy, matter has always existed, and will continue to do so for all time.
Again according to this philosophy, nothing exists beyond matter.
Naturally, materialism is also reflected in the political arena, with
communism indisputably taking pride of place in this regard. Karl Marx (1818-
83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95), regarded as the founders of communism,
were also the founders of dialectical materialism. In any case, communism is
nothing more than materialist philosophy adapted to the social sciences by
Marx and Engels.
Communism is today regarded as an ideology consigned to the wastes of
history, whereas the fact is that it is still exceedingly influential. The destructive
effects of this ideology can still be felt in many countries.
This is where Darwinism assumes great importance. Since Darwinism, or
the theory of evolution, maintains that living things were not created but came
into being by chance, it has received a wide acceptance among materialist
ideologies, and has been adopted as the "basic foundation" of communism in
particular. All the main communist ideologues have accepted the theory word
for word, and have based their ideologies upon it.
In a letter to Friedrich Engels in 1860, for instance, Karl Marx said of
Darwin's book that "This is the book which contains the basis in natural history
for our view." 15 In another letter the following year, this time to Ferdinand

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