Copies of a strange, enormous, beautiful book arrived unsolicited at Foreign Policy magazine and its publisher, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, last month. The Atlas of Creation uses 759 heavy, glossy pages to illustrate its author's view that the scientific theory of evolution is just plain wrong. The thick, 11-by-15-inch tome, with hologram-like images on its cover, was written by a mysterious Turkish man, Harun Yahya (whose real name is Adnan Oktar). Nearly every page features brilliant color photos of fossils and animals, all which supposedly prove that creationism is correct, and evolution is balderdash.

On page after page, the same formulaic argument appears, which is typified by this quote from a page with a photo of a 150-million-year-old shrimp fossil:

Since shrimp first came into existence, they have always displayed all the same organs and characteristics as they have today and have undergone no changes in all that time. This shrimp fossil shows plainly that evolution is an imaginary scenario. (p. 110)

The book has been mailed unsolicited—at undoubtedly ludicrously high postage costs—to scientists, academics, members of Congress, museums, and now apparently think tanks across the United States. Copies have also turned up in France.

If Yahya wants to do something positive for the world that also promotes Islam as a religion of genuine peace, he might want to mail Muslims and non-Muslims alike copies of his more promisingly titled books (listed at the end of the Atlas of Creation), including Only Love Can Defeat Terrorism and Islam Denounces Terrorism, or direct people to some of his websites such as Islam Denounces Antisemitism and Islam Denounces Terrorism.