Page 153 - Solution, the values of the Qurʼan

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) 151

continent as a whole. Meanwhile in North America, the indigenous
peoples were brutally slaughtered. In brief, in the second half of the 19th
Century, western empires plundered civilizations in other parts of the
world. They seized power, to which they were by no means entitled, in
other countries by force and terror and confiscated their natural
resources. Yet, westerners felt deeply the necessity of legitimizing their
illegitimate practices. At this stage, Darwinism offered a great
opportunity to imperialists. With this theory, it became possible to
provide a "so-called" scientific foundation to the idea that the exploited
people were simply "animal species."
Darwin made his views about the origins of human beings clear in his

book The Descent of Man, published in 1871. In this book, he boldly
commented that man evolved from ape-like ancestors. He went further
and said that existing human races were located at different rungs of the
"evolutionary ladder", that the European races were the most "advanced"
of all, and that many other races still bore "simian" features.

Not only to the British, but also to other imperialists and racists from other nations,
Social Darwinism constituted an ideological foundation. That is why, it flourished
so rapidly. One prominent adherent of Darwinism was Theodore Roosevelt, the US
President who carried out ethnic cleansing against the indigenous peoples of the
Americas.