Creationist Adnan Oktar wins ban on Richard Dawkins site

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

A Muslim creationist has succeeded in having Richard Dawkins’s website banned in Turkey, after complaining that its atheist content was blasphemous.

The country’s internet users are now subject to a court order imposed on Turk Telecom that prohibits them from accessing richarddawkins.net.

The court in Istanbul issued its judgment after Adnan Oktar claimed that his book Atlas of Creation, which contests the arguments for evolution, had been defamed on Dawkins’s website.

In July Professor Dawkins wrote on his site: “I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breath-taking inanity of the content.”

Earlier this year Mr Oktar, who uses the pen name Harun Yahya, tried to have Dawkins’s book The God Delusion banned in Turkey but failed. He is also appealing against a three-year prison sentence for creating an illegal organisation for personal gain.

Source: The Times, September 20, 2008