News Brief
Twenty Days On, Pakistani Professor Who Apologised For Teaching Darwin's Theory Is Still Not Speaking To Media
Professor Sher Ali (in green) forced to read an affidavit denouncing theory of evolution.
Various Pakistani publications recently reported a peculiar case from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where an assistant professor of Zoology at a government college was forced to give in writing that he was denouncing Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as the notion that women are equal to men.
The incident reportedly took place in Bannu district. Assistant professor Sher Ali, who holds an MSc degree in Zoology from the University of Peshawar and MPhil’s in human genetics from the Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, currently teaches at the Government Postgraduate Degree College in the province.
As per Dawn, the matter began on 5 October, when Ali addressed a seminar at the college about women’s rights in the light of the Constitution. The event was reportedly in response to growing demands by religious leaders that women should not step out of homes without Hijab.
The clerics in the area staged a protest saying that Ali was “spreading debauchery and speaking against Islam”.
The clerics also demanded that he renounced Darwin’s theory as anti-Islamic in the same affidavit, which contains 11 points.
Ali later took to Facebook, where he has 20,000 followers, and said that he was teaching the theory only because it was published by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board.
Watch his video below:
On his Facebook account, Ali has described himself as "Liberal humanist, bibiliophile, hodophile, aesthete, sport aficianado, loner and gregarious- a combo".
