The Real Roots of Terrorism: Darwinism and Materialism

Most people think the theory of evolution was first proposed by Charles Darwin, and rests on scientific evidence, observations and experiments. However, the truth is that Darwin was not its originator, neither does the theory rest on scientific proof. The theory consists of an adaptation to nature of the ancient dogma of materialist philosophy. Although it is not backed up by scientific discoveries, the theory is blindly supported in the name of materialist philosophy. (see Harun Yahya, The Evolution Deceit, Taha Publishers, 1999)

This fanaticism has resulted in all kinds of disasters. Together with the spread of Darwinism and the materialist philosophy it supports, the answer to the question "What is a human being?" has changed. People who used to answer: "Human beings were created by God and have to live according to the beautiful morality He teaches", have now begun to think that "Man came into being by chance, and is an animal who developed by means of the fight for survival." There is a heavy price to pay for this great deception. Violent ideologies such as racism, fascism and communism, and many other barbaric world views based on conflict have all drawn strength from this deception.

This part of the book will examine the disaster Darwinism has visited on the world and reveal its connection with terrorism, one of the most important global problems of our time.

The Darwinist Lie: "Life is Conflict"

Darwin set out with one basic premise when developing his theory: The development of living things depends on the fight for survival. The strong win the struggle. The weak are condemned to defeat and oblivion.

According to Darwin, there is a ruthless struggle for survival and an eternal conflict in nature. The strong always overcome the weak, and this enables development to take place. The subtitle he gave to his book The Origin of Species, "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", encapsulates that view.

Furthermore, Darwin proposed that the "fight for survival" also applied between human racial groups. According to that mythical claim, favoured races were victorious in the struggle. Favoured races, in Darwin's view, were white Europeans. African or Asian races had lagged behind in the struggle for survival. Darwin went further, and suggested that these races would soon lose the struggle for survival entirely, and thus disappear:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.28

The Indian anthropologist Lalita Vidyarthi explains how Darwin's theory of evolution imposed racism on the social sciences:

His (Darwin's) theory of the survival of the fittest was warmly welcomed by the social scientists of the day, and they believed mankind had achieved various levels of evolution culminating in the white man's civilization. By the second half of the nineteenth century racism was accepted as fact by the vast majority of Western scientists.29

Darwin's Source of Inspiration: Malthus's Theory of Ruthlessness

Darwin's source of inspiration on this subject was the British economist Thomas Malthus's book An Essay on the Principle of Population. Left to their own devices, Malthus calculated that the human population increased rapidly. In his view, the main influences that kept populations under control were disasters such as war, famine and disease. In short, according to this brutal claim, some people had to die for others to live. Existence came to mean permanent war.

Thomas Malthus

In the 19th century, Malthus's ideas were widely accepted. European upper class intellectuals in particular supported his cruel ideas. In the article "The Scientific Background of the Nazi "Race Purification" Programme," by Jerry Bergman, the importance 19th century Europe attached to Malthus's views on population is described in this way:

In the opening half of the nineteenth century, throughout Europe, members of the ruling classes gathered to discuss the newly discovered "Population problem" and to devise ways of implementing the Malthusian mandate, to increase the mortality rate of the poor: "Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations," and so forth and so on.30

As a result of this cruel policy, the weak, and those who lost the struggle for survival would be eliminated, and as a result the rapid rise in population would be balanced out. This so-called "oppression of the poor" policy was actually carried out in 19th century Britain. An industrial order was set up in which children of eight and nine were made to work sixteen hours a day in the coal mines and thousands died from the terrible conditions. The struggle for survival demanded by Malthus's theory led to millions of Britons leading lives full of suffering.

The implementation in the 19th century of Malthus's thesis of the necessity of the struggle for life brought misery to the helpless and poor children in England. Religion, however, ensures the protection of children. A life of goodness and virtue, without any misery and suffering, is only possible if the moral teachings of religion are practiced.

Influenced by these ideas, Darwin applied this concept of conflict to all of nature, and proposed that the strong and the fittest emerged victorious from this war of existence. Moreover, he claimed that the so-called struggle for survival was a justified and unchangeable law of nature. On the other hand, he invited people to abandon their religious beliefs by denying the Creation, and thus undermined all ethical values that might prove to be obstacles to the ruthlessness of the struggle for survival.

Humanity has paid a heavy price in the 20th century for the dissemination of these callous views which led people to ruthlessness and cruelty.

The Role of Darwinism in Preparing the Ground for World War I

As Darwinism dominated European culture, the effects of the struggle for survival began to emerge. Colonialist European nations in particular began to portray the nations they colonized as "evolutionary backward na-tions" and looked to Darwinism for justification.

The bloodiest political effect of Darwinism was the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

In his book Europe Since 1870, the well-known British professor of history James Joll explains that one of the factors that prepared the ground for World War I was the belief in Darwinism of European rulers at the time.

…it is important to realise how literally the doctrine of the struggle for existence and of the survival of the fittest was taken by the majority of the leaders of Europe in the years preceding the First World War. The Austro-Hungarian chief of staff for example, Franz Baron Conrad von Hoetzendorff, wrote in his memoirs after the war:

Philanthropic religions, moral teachings and philosophical doctrines may certainly sometimes serve to weaken mankind's struggle for existence in its crudest form, but they will never succeed in removing it as a driving motive of the world… It is in accordance with this great principle that the catastrophe of the world war came about as the result of the motive forces in the lives of states and peoples, like a thunderstorm which must by its nature discharge itself.

Seen against this sort of ideological background, Conrad's insistence on the need for a preventive war in order to preserve the Austro-Hungarian monarchy becomes comprehensible.

We have seen too how these views were not limited to military figures, and that Max Weber for example was deeply concerned with the international struggle for survival. Again Kurt Riezler, the personal assistant and confidant of the German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, wrote in 1914:

Eternal and absolute enmity is fundamentally inherent in relations between peoples; and the hostility which we observe everywhere… is not the result of a perversion of human nature but is the essence of the world and the source of life itself.31

Friedrich von Bernardi, a World War I general, made a similar connection between war and the laws of war in nature. "War" declared Bernhardi "is a biological necessity"; it "is as necessary as the struggle of the elements of nature"; it "gives a biologically just decision, since its decisions rest on the very nature of things."32

European philosophers and political leaders of the first decade of the 20th century were obsessed with the Darwinist notion of "the struggle for existence". Hence their enthusiasm for starting the Great War, a terrible cataclysm that destroyed more than 10 million lives.

As we have seen, World War I broke out because of European thinkers, generals and administrators who saw warfare, bloodshed and suffering as a kind of development, and thought they were an unchanging law of nature. The ideological root that dragged all of that generation to destruction was nothing else than Darwin's concepts of the "struggle for survival" and "favoured races."

World War I left behind it 8 million dead, hundreds of ruined cities, and millions of wounded, crippled, homeless and unemployed.

The basic cause of World War II, which broke out 21 years later and left 55 million dead behind it, was also based on Darwinism.

What "The Law of the Jungle" Led to: Fascism

As Darwinism fed racism in the 19th century, it formed the basis of an ideology that would develop and drown the world in blood in the 20th century: Nazism.

Nazism, a blend of Social Darwinism and neo-paganism, has killed millions and spread horror into the hearts of many others.

A strong Darwinist influence can be seen in Nazi ideologues. When one examines this theory, which was given shape by Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, one comes across such concepts as "natural selection," "selective mating," and "the struggle for survival between the races," which are repeated dozens of time in the works of Darwin. When calling his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler was inspired by the Darwinist struggle for survival and the principle that victory went to the fittest. He particularly talks about the struggle between the races:

History would culminate in a new millennial empire of unparalleled splendour, based on a new racial hierarchy ordained by nature herself.33

In the 1933 Nuremberg party rally, Hitler proclaimed that "a higher race subjects to itself a lower race… a right which we see in nature and which can be regarded as the sole conceivable right". 34

That the Nazis were influenced by Darwinism is a fact that almost all historians who are expert in the matter accept. Peter Chrisp, the author of the book, The Rise of Fascism, expressed this fact as follows:

Charles Darwin's theory that humans had evolved from apes was ridiculed when it was first published, but was later widely accepted. The Nazis distorted Darwin's theories, using them to justify warfare and racism.35

Fascism, which has Darwinist concepts at its heart, caused the death of millions of innocent people. This dreadful ideology drew many countries of the world into a maelstrom of destruction and misery.

The historian Hickman describes Darwinism's influence on Hitler as follows:

(Hitler) was a firm believer and preacher of evolution. Whatever the deeper, profound, complexities of his psychosis, it is certain that [the concept of struggle was important because] … his book, Mein Kampf, clearly set forth a number of evolutionary ideas, particularly those emphasizing struggle, survival of the fittest and the extermination of the weak to produce a better society.36

World War II caused the deaths of 55 million people, leaving many others wounded and homeless, their lives in ruins. The war devastated cities and caused economies to collapse.

Hitler, who emerged with these views, dragged the world to violence that had never before been seen. Many ethnic and political groups, and especially the Jews, were exposed to terrible cruelty and slaughter in the Nazi concentration camps. World War II, which began with the Nazi invasion, cost 55 million lives. What lay behind the greatest tragedy in world history was Darwinism's concept of the "struggle for survival."

The Bloody Alliance: Darwinism and Communism

While fascists are found on the right wing of Social Darwinism, the left wing is occupied by communists. Communists have always been among the fiercest defenders of Darwin's theory.

This relationship between Darwinism and communism goes right back to the founders of both these "isms." Marx and Engels, the founders of communism, read Darwin's The Origin of Species as soon as it came out, and were amazed at its dialectical materialist attitude. The correspondence between Marx and Engels showed that they saw Darwin's theory as "containing the basis in natural history for communism." In his book The Dialectics of Nature, which he wrote under the influence of Darwin, Engels was full of praise for Darwin, and tried to make his own contribution to the theory in the chapter "The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man."

Russian communists who followed in the footsteps of Marx and Engels, such as Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, all agreed with Darwin's theory of evolution. Plekhanov, who is seen as the founder of Russian communism, regarded Marxism as "Darwinism in its application to social science."37

Communist leaders, whose ideas of human society were also based on Darwinism, will go down in history as having caused terrible suffering with their cruel policies.

Trotsky said, "Darwin's discovery is the highest triumph of the dialectic in the whole field of organic matter."38

Darwinist education had a major role in the formation of communist cadres. For instance, historians note the fact that Stalin was religious in his youth, but became an atheist primarily because of Darwin's books.

Mao, who established communist rule in China and killed millions of people, openly stated that "Chinese socialism is founded upon Darwin and the theory of evolution."39

The Harvard University historian James Reeve Pusey goes into great detail regarding Darwinism's effect on Mao and Chinese communism in his research book China and Charles Darwin.

Communism applied the Darwinian idea of conflict to the class conflict, and thus accepted murder and bloodshed as legitimate methods of control.

In short, there is an unbreakable link between the theory of evolution and communism. The theory claims that living things are the product of chance, and provides a so-called scientific support for atheism. Communism, an atheist ideology, is for that reason firmly tied to Darwinism. Moreover, the theory of evolution proposes that development in nature is possible thanks to conflict (in other words "the struggle for survival") and supports the concept of "dialectics" which is fundamental to communism.

If we think of the communist concept of "dialectical conflict," which killed some 120 million people during the 20th century, as a "killing machine", then we can better understand the dimensions of the disaster that Darwinism visited on the planet.

Dialectical Conflict Does Not Foster the Development of Societies, It Destroys Them

As we learned earlier, Darwinism proposed that the struggle between living things is the cause of their development and gained so-called scientific currency for the philosophy of dialectical materialism.

As can be understood from its name, dialectical materialism rests on the idea of "conflict". Karl Marx, the founder of this philosophy, propagated the idea that "if there were no struggle and opposition, everything would stay as it is." In another place he said, "Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one."40 By saying this, he called people to violence, war and bloodshed in order that they could develop.

The first to apply Marx's theory in the realm of politics was Lenin. Fostering the idea that "progress comes about as a result of the conflict of opposites", Lenin advocated that people with opposing ideas should be in constant conflict. Lenin also repeatedly stated that this conflict would require bloodshed, that is, terrorism. A piece by Lenin titled "Guerrilla Warfare" which was first published in Proletary in 1906, eleven years before the Bolshevik Revolution, shows the terrorist methods he had adopted:

The phenomenon in which we are interested is the armed struggle. It is conducted by individuals and by small groups. Some belong to revolutionary organisations, while others (the majority in certain parts of Russia) do not belong to any revolutionary organisation. Armed struggle pursues two different aims, which must be strictly distinguished: in the first place, this struggle aims at assassinating individuals, chiefs and subordinates in the Army and police; in the second place, it aims at the confiscation of monetary funds both from the government and from private persons. The confiscated funds go partly into the treasury of the party, partly for the special purpose of arming and preparing for an uprising, and partly for the maintenance of persons engaged in the struggle we are describing. 41

It is natural that disagreements occur, but they should not be the cause of conflict and wars between people. Mutual respect and tolerance can ensure agreement and co-existence between parties in disagreement. The moral teaching of the Qur'an offers to people a life of contentment and joy, whereas the dialectical struggle always brings unhappiness, destruction and death.

In the twentieth century, one of the most well known ideologies to oppose communism was fascism. The interesting thing is that, although fascism declared itself opposed to communism, it believed just as much as communism in the concept of struggle. Communists believed in the necessity of the class struggle; the fascists simply changed the arena of the struggle concentrating on the idea of the struggle between races and nations. For example, the German historian Heinrich Treitschke, one of the most important sources for Nazi ideas and a prominent racist, wrote, "nations could not prosper without intense competition, like the struggle for survival of Darwin."42 Hitler also said that he had taken inspiration from Darwin's understanding of struggle:

The whole world of Nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness-an eternal victory of the strong over the weak. There would be nothing but decay in the whole of nature if this were not so. He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.43

These two social Darwinist ideologies believed that, for a society to grow strong, struggle and bloodshed are necessary; what they created in the 20th century is well known. Countless numbers of innocent people died; countless others were wounded or maimed; national economies crumbled; money that used to be spent on health, research, technology, education and art was spent on arms, on bandages to bind the wounds caused by those arms and to restore ruined cities. It became evident as time went on that struggle and terror did not to promote human development but rather destruction.

Certainly there are contradictions in the world. Just as in nature there are light and darkness, day and night, hot and cold, so there are also contradictions in putting ideas into practice. But a contradiction in ideas does not necessitate conflict. On the contrary, if contradictions are approached with tolerance, peace, understanding, love, compassion and mercy, good results may be achieved. Everyone who compares his own idea with another's may develop his own or see its deficiencies and remedy them. Those who defend opposing opinions could have an exchange of ideas in conversation or engage in a constructive critique. Only the kind of sincere, forgiving, peaceful and humble person who conforms to the moral teaching of the Qur'an can develop this approach.

To kill a person or do him harm because he has different ideas, believes in a different religion or belongs to a different race is an immense act of cruelty. For this reason only, throughout history and all over the world, sons and daughters of the same fatherland have struggled with one another to the death, murdering one another without pity. Or people of different race or nationality, women and children included, have been indiscriminately slaughtered. The only person who could do such a thing is someone who has no respect for a human being, and who regards the person in front of him just as an intelligent animal; it is someone who does not believe that he will have to give an account to God for what he has done.

The best and truest attitude to have towards opposing ideas is revealed in the Qur'an. Clashes of ideas have arisen throughout history and one of the most well-known examples of this is the opposition between Moses and his contemporary Pharaoh. Despite all Pharaoh's cruelty and aggressiveness, God sent Moses to invite him to God's religion, and He explained the method Moses was to use:

Go to Pharaoh; he has overstepped the bounds. But speak to him with gentle words so that hopefully he will pay heed or show some fear. (Qur'an, 20:43-44)

Moses obeyed God's command and explained true religion to him at great length. In order to stop Pharaoh's denial of God and his cruelty to people, Moses patiently explained every matter. However, Pharaoh showed a hostile attitude toward Moses' noble character and patience, threatening to kill him and those who shared his ideas. But it was not Pharaoh's attitude that prevailed; on the contrary, he and his people were drowned. Moses and his people were victorious.

As this example shows, the victory of an idea or the struggle for development does not come about by hostility or aggression. The meeting between Moses and Pharaoh offers a lesson from history: it is not those on the side of contention and cruelty who are victorious, but those who are on the side of peace and justice. The exercise of fine moral principles receives its reward both in this world and in the hereafter

Darwinism and Terrorism

As we have so far seen, Darwinism is at the root of various ideologies of violence that have spelled disaster to mankind in the 20th century. The fundamental concept behind this understanding and method is "fighting whoever is not one of us." There are different beliefs, worldviews and philosophies in the world. It is very natural that all these diverse ideas have traits opposing one another. However, these different stances can look at each other in one of two ways:

1) They can respect the existence of those who are not like them and try to establish dialogue with them, employing a humane method. Indeed, this method conforms with the morality of the Qur'an.

2) They can choose to fight others, and to try to secure an advantage by damaging them, in other words, to behave like a wild animal. This is a method employed by materialism, that is, irreligion.

The horror we call "terrorism" is nothing other than a statement of the second view.

There may be disagreement between states or societies, but conflict and war can never solve the problems. As the Qur'an teaches, all disagreements must be solved by mutual patience, tolerance, compassion and understanding.

When we consider the difference between these two approaches, we can see that the idea of "man as a fighting animal" which Darwinism has subconsciously imposed on people is particularly influential. Individuals and groups who choose the way of conflict may never have heard of Darwinism and the principles of that ideology. But at the end of the day they agree with a view whose philosophical basis rests on Darwinism. What leads them to believe in the rightness of this view is such Darwinism-based slogans as "In this world, the strong survive," "Big fish swallow little ones," "War is a virtue," and "Man advances by waging war." Take Darwinism away, and these are nothing but empty slogans.

Actually, when Darwinism is taken away, no philosophy of conflict remains. The three divine religions that most people in the world believe in, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, all oppose violence. All three religions wish to bring peace and harmony to the world, and oppose innocent people being killed and suffering cruelty and torture. Conflict and violence violate the morality that God has set out for man, and are abnormal and unwanted concepts. However, Darwinism sees and portrays conflict and violence as natural, justified and correct concepts that have to exist.

The only way for future generations to ensure for themselves a virtuous and contented life is the moral teachings of the Qur'an.

For this reason, if some people commit terrorism using the concepts and symbols of Islam, Christianity or Judaism in the name of those religions, you can be sure that those people are not Muslims, Christians or Jews. They are real Social Darwinists. They hide under a cloak of religion, but they are not genuine believers. Even if they claim to be serving religion, they are actually enemies of religion and of believers. That is because they are ruthlessly committing a crime that religion forbids, and in such a way as to blacken religion in peoples' eyes.

For this reason, the root of the terrorism that plagues our planet is not in any of the divine religions, but in atheism, and the expression of atheism in our times: Darwinism and materialism.

Every Person Who Desires Peace Must Recognise the Danger of Darwinism

The solution in the fight against a particular problem lies in doing away with the ideas this problem fundamentally depends on. For instance, no matter how hard one endeavours to keep the surroundings of a stinking garbage bin clean, the garbage will keep on stinking. All solutions will prove to be short-lived. The real solution lies in a thorough cleaning of the garbage's source, removing the trash altogether. Alternatively, this is like spending years raising poisonous snakes on a farm, then letting them go, wondering why they start to bite people and trying to round them all up again. The important thing is not to breed them in the first place.

Consequently, in the fight against terrorism, searching for terrorists one by one and trying to render them ineffectual does not provide a viable and permanent solution. The only way of totally eradicating the scourge of terrorism from the face of the earth is to identify the basic sources that breed terrorists and remove them. The main source of terrorism, on the other hand, is erroneous ideologies and the education received in the light of these ideologies.

God commands justice and doing good and giving to relatives. And He forbids indecency and doing wrong and tyranny… (Qur'an, 16:90)

In our day, in almost all countries of the world, Darwinism is incorporated into school curricula and is considered to be scientific fact. Young people are not taught that they are created by God, that they are endowed with a spirit, wisdom and conscience. They are not told that they will have to give account of their deeds on the Day of Judgement and accordingly be punished in hell or rewarded with paradise for all eternity. On the contrary, they are taught that they are creatures whose forefathers were animals that somehow came into existence by some random coincidences. Under such indoctrination, they assume themselves to be stray beings who are not answerable to God and see their future - that is their survival - in being victorious through struggle. After this stage, it becomes rather easy to brainwash these people, who have been already indoctrinated all through their school lives, and to turn them into enemies of humanity cruel enough to murder innocent children. Such young people can be readily attracted by any strayed ideology; they can act under the influence of the terrorists' conditioning and engage in inconceivably cruel and violent acts. The communist, fascist and racist terrorist groups that have been in existence since the 19th century are the products of this kind of education system.

The second great harm this education system does is to entirely distance education from religion, thereby limiting the sphere of religion to the world of uneducated people. Thus, while those who have access to education are totally removed from religion thanks to Darwinist-materialist instillation, religion becomes something peculiar to the uneducated. This causes the development of superstitious and erroneous ideas and allows those who put forward ideas totally contrary to religion in the name of religion to take control easily.

The recent events of September 11 are the most obvious examples of this. No one who fears God, loves Him and expects to give an account of his deeds in the hereafter can commit any act that will leave thousands of innocent people dead or wounded and orphan thousands of children. Such a person knows that he will give an account to God for every person he subjected to cruelty and each one of them will become a source of anguish for him in hell.

To conclude, the way to stop acts of terrorism is to put an end to Darwinist-materialist education, to educate young people in accord with a curricula based on true scientific findings and to instil in them the fear of God and the desire to act wisely and scrupulously. The fruits of such an education will be a community made up of peaceable, trustworthy, forgiving and tolerant people.

It is He who sends down Clear Signs to His servant to bring you out of the darkness to the light. (Qur'an, 57:9)