This is barely worth a mention except that it was published by Al-Jazeera, a Qatari news channel and website. That organization has been recognized as one of the more liberal Arab media outlets, and in fact has been praised for the quality of its journalism. As Wikipedia notes:

In the 2000s, the network was praised by the Index on Censorship for circumventing censorship and contributing to the free exchange of information in the Arab world, and by the Webby Awards, who nominated it as one of the five best news web sites, along with BBC News, National Geographic and The Smoking Gun. It was also voted by Brandchannel readers as the fifth most influential global brand behind Apple, Google, Ikea and Starbucks. In 2011, Salon.com said Al Jazeera’s coverage of the 2011 Egyptian protests was superior to that of the American news media.

This makes it all the more distressing that the organization’s website has published an article by Fida’ Yasir Al-Jindi (an engineer, of course) that is naked, undiluted creationism: “Darwin’s theory: Why do they hold on to it although it has been proven wrong?” by (original article in Arabic here). The article was translated into English by Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar, founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement, Secular Post and the Public Relations director for Global Secular Organizing and Strategy.

Without that translation, we wouldn’t know that such pap was being promulgated by Al-Jazeera. I needn’t give long excerpts: this one will suffice, for it’s the straight Argument from Design, filtered through the eyes of a religious engineer. (At the end there’s a paragraph of praise for the wisdom of Allah). In fact, it’s really The Argument from Falcons:

The Aerospace Engineering in falcons No scientist can deny that the design of the falcon as a creature qualified for flying can never be compared with any flying machine designed by humans in terms of accuracy, elegance, skill and all other aspects. The man-made artificial machines are very different from the magnificence of the falcon (and any other bird), and any comparison made is only an insult to that living creature; for, every single thing in the falcon – starting from the smallest hair in its wing feathers, up to the largest bone in its body, has a role to play to enable it of flying, manoeuvre, take off, and land in ways that cannot be imagined. And if scientists were to explain what the falcon (and any other bird) has of systems, features, and charesteristics that allow it to fly, they would need documents and design plans that are bigger and more detailed that all the documents, designs, and sketches made by Aerospace Engineers so far (and that only to document what we know about falcons, while much remains still undiscovered). Additionally, kind readers, birds do not need airports, maintenance, quality checks, or whatever else humans use to ensure the safety of their airplanes. We have never heard of a falcon spending the morning in its nest going through hundreds of clauses that ensure the safety of its flight, nor have we ever heard of a falcon that has to take off and land in airports, with the help of landing grounds and watch towers. The falcon has a fascinating communication system, and all it needs is to flap its wings to begin flying. A falcon only needs enough space for its feet for landing, no matter what flying speed it reaches. It does not require maintenance, or any part replacements. Despite all that, we have never heard of a falcon who had lost its way or missed its target or was forced to make an emergency landing, or thats communication system had been broken, sending it crashing down to the ground! Now, we ask again: Where are the blueprints of the falcon? Where are its executive designs? Where is its maintenance manual? Its communication system? Where, where, where? I cannot, as an engineer who’s knowledgeable in the phases of construction and manufacturing, knowing what it takes to make one single airplane, to be convinced (not even for 1 in a billion) that the falcon had evolved through millions of years from a reptile to a full bird, without sketches, blueprints, or even a manual, to be as perfect as we see today, unless the people making this claim would provide me with the details of the phases of its production, with full documentation of calculations, sketches and a user-guide manuals!

Well, that‘s really gonna happen! Can’t Al-Jindi just be satisfied with the fossils of feathered dinosaurs? I could ask, as a scientist who’s knowledgeable in the evidence for evolution, for Al-Jindi to convince me that Allah exists, and to do so he’d have to provide me with independent details of how God transmitted the information to Muhammad, and how we know that that information was accurate as opposed to, say, the information in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. I’d like to see all the details of Muslim hell, including how the fire is produced and how the virgins are produced in Heaven.

Al-Jindi winds up with the accusation, one that I still fail to fathom, that all scientists who accept evolution are duplicitous, promoting a theory that we know is false:

I do not understand how scientists deny these facts (and many other facts as well), and run panting after some worn-out half-monkey-skull they find in some African forests, so that they could base tons of fantasies on it in their attempt to prove this theory (which scientists would throw behind had they been honest with themselves).

Well, that’s just nuts, of course (and a tad humorous), but I wonder if such creationists ahve asked themselves, when accusing us of duplicity: what’s in it for the scientists? Why are we hiding the truth? After all, only a third of all scientists are atheists or agnostics, so even if we wanted to lie about the truth of evolution to promote atheism, that doesn’t explain the many religious scientists, like Ken Miller or Francis Collins, who also accept evolution. Have they simply been taken in?

Nor do creationists like Al-Jindi comprehend that any real scientist who had strong evidence against evolution would become famous for overturning the dominant paradigm of biology. After all, who’s gonna get a Nobel Prize for finding yet another bit of evidence that supports evolution?

The curious thing is why Al-Jazeera published this at all. (Note that it’s only on their Arabic page.) Since it’s not a real controversy in the scientific community of the West, and the Argument from Design has long been refuted, I can only assume that they’re catering to the many Muslims who overtly reject evolution.

Proof of The Divine Origin of Falcons: the Egyptian falcon god Horus.