Sacking Little Green Footballs' "Discovery Institute Is in League With Islamist"

Earlier this year, the popular blog Little Green Footballs (LGF) made an outrageous attempt to link Discovery Institute to the Muslim creationist Harun Yahya (a.k.a. Adnan Oktar). Their post claimed, “Discovery Institute is in league with Islamist creationists, a fact that is indisputably true,” specifically referring to Yahya / Oktar. Discovery Institute's president Bruce Chapman dignified their charges with a forceful refutation, but LGF’s reply to Mr. Chapman was basically a string of ad hominem attacks that relied on a tenuous chain of distorted and incomplete facts. If there was any doubt left that Discovery Institute and Islamic creationists are not "in league," consider a recent interview with Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar in Der Spiegel where he expressed his strong dislike for intelligent design (ID):

SPIEGEL ONLINE: To what extent were you influenced by the Christian fundamentalists from American and Europe, from the proponents of so-called Intelligent Design?

Oktar: I find this concept of Intelligent Design somewhat dishonest. One should straightforwardly believe in the existence of Allah, one should stand up for Religion, whether for Islam or Christianity. The concept of Intelligent Design claims that things were somehow created but not by whom. One should clearly say: It was Allah.

I'm really sad about the state of affairs at LGF. I read it all the time before Charles Johnson decided that anyone who had doubts about Darwinism/evolution was to be considered unclean. I found the anti Judeo-Christian religion attitude elitist and insulting, so I stopped going over there.

Charles, you used to have the best blog going on the issue of radical Islam. Too bad you let the Darwinism thing go over the top.

Little Green Footballs used to be a decent site, but in the last year or so, Charles Johnson has completely gone off the deep end. Many, many times he would go on a tirade and ban members for frivolous reasons, especially in the evolution threads. Not long ago he instituted a rating system for the posters. They called it "dinging." You could click on either a plus or minus sign icon, depending upon whether you agreed or disagreed with the post, and you could only ding any given post once. Those that disagreed with the evolution posts were hunted down and banned, and he was very vocal about the procedure, posting his progress regularly to the members as he was tracking down the offenders. I found this quite odd since these supposed offenders were doing nothing different than anyone else who agreed with the evolution agenda and rated the very same posts favorably, so I posted a query to him and I said:

"so let me get this straight, you're banning people for using a system that it was designed for?"

And for that I was banned. Now mind you, in the approximately three years of being a member there, I never once advocated for or against either Evolution or Intelligent Design, nor did I ever use their rating system, but I was accused of abusing both by some of the members. They even questioned, and made rude comments about my military service in the Marines.

There was a time when I went there pretty much every day to read, and make an occasional post, but not anymore. He's lost a lot of good members, some that were there for many years, and who were very supportive of the site.

Charles Johnson and Little Green Footballs can kiss my ass.

PS I’m not sure why the Discovery Institute is reffering to Harun Yayha as an “Islamic radical.” His organization is perhaps the most anti-radical, anti-terrorist Muslim outfit around. Here’s an example of his work:

http://www.harunyahya.com/evolution_specialpreface.php

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