Mustafa Akyol

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Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish Muslim writer, who argues both against Islamic extremism and extreme secularism and is an outspoken promoter of intelligent design.

Akyol was born in Ankara in 1972 and had his early education there. He later graduated from the Istanbul British High School and the International Relations Department of Bosphorus University. He earned his masters in the History Department of the same university.

Since the mid 1990s he has been working with several modernist Islamic foundations of Turkey, especially with those focused on explaining modern science from a theistic point of view. The same focus put him in touch and cooperation with the Discovery Institute, based in Seattle, which shares his views [1] on intelligent design, a form of creationism. Akyol has identified himself as a spokesman for Bilim Arastirma Vakfi, a group whose name means "Science Research Foundation" and has been accused of intimidating university professors in a campaign to limit academic freedom as part of a creationist movement and other misdeeds. [2]

He is currently working as a columnist in Turkish daily newspaper and is also the director of international relations at the Intercultural Dialogue Platform [3], a subsidiary of the 'Journalists and Writers Foundation', founded by Fethullah Gülen.

In the past years he has given seminars in several universities in the U.S. and the UK on issues of faith, science, religious tolerance or inter-faith dialogue.

Mustafa Akyol's articles on Islamic issues, in which he mostly argues against Islamic extremism and terrorism from a Muslim point of view and defends the Islamic faith, have appeared in publications like The Weekly Standard, The Washington Times, The American Enterprise, National Review, FrontPage Magazine and Islam Online. He lives in Istanbul and is currently working on a book titled An Islamic Case for Liberty, which he plans to have published in 2006.