Dr. Keith Moore and the "Islamic Additions"

Dr. Moore is notable as the only embryologist directly quoted by Islamic sources in an attempt to prove embryology as described in the Qur'an is scientifically correct. In the 1980s he accepted an invitation by the Embryology Committee of King Abdulaziz University to produce a special 3^rd edition of his most successful book "The Developing Human" specifically for use by Muslim students in Islamic Universities. He was financially patronized by the Saudi royal family for the use of his name, and for no real additional work.

The textbook he delivered to the Saudi Universities that commissioned the work is titled, "The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology with Islamic Additions."^[4] The base textbook was work that Moore had completed years before. He did nothing new for this new edition. The “Islamic additions” are actually the work of an Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, so it alternates chapters of standard science with Zindani's "Islamic additions".

The co-writer of Moore's book is a leading militant Islamist named Abdul Majeed al-Zindani. He is the founder and head of the Iman University in Yemen, head of the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood political movement and founder of the Commission on Scientific Signs in the Quran and Sunnah (one of the organizations that spearheaded Bucailleism), based in Saudi Arabia.^[5]

Zindani served as a contact for Ansar al-Islam (Al), a Kurdish-based terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda, has links to John Walker Lindh and Anwar al-Awlaki, and in 2004 the US Treasury Department published a press release stating that the United States had by executive order designated Zindani as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist".^[6]

Interestingly, the Acknowledgments for the book recognize a number of “distinguished scholars” who supported the book with time or money. And number 6 on the list is Saifullah Shaykh Osama bin Laden (Zindani had a long history of working with bin Laden, notably serving as one of his spiritual leaders).^[6]

In 1986 he wrote that "The drop or nutfa [in Surah 23:13] has been interpreted as the sperm or spermatozoon, but a more meaningful interpretation would be the zygote which divides to form a blastocyst which is implanted in the uterus ("a place of rest"),"^[7] but in the 8^th edition of The Developing Human (published 2007), he writes that "Growth of science was slow during the medieval period... human beings [according to the Qur'an] are produced from a mixture of secretions from the male and female. Several references are made to the creation of a human being from a nutfa (small drop). It also states that the resulting organism settles in the womb like a seed, 6 days after its beginning."^[8]

Moore's current CV does not reflect any involvement with Islam, the Qur'an or Islamic embryology. It also omits mentioning the 3^rd edition of The Developing Human and its connections to Islamic terrorists. Nor does he mention his lecture in Saudi Arabia or any of his Islam-related activities in Muslim-majority countries.

In 2002, Moore declined to be interviewed by the Wall Street Journal on the subject of his work on Islam, stating that "it's been ten or eleven years since I was involved in the Qur'an."^[9]

• Embryology - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Embryology
• Books on Islamic Propaganda - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Books on Islamic Propaganda

• Islamic apologetics in the International Journal of Cardiology - PZ Myers, Pharyngula, November 3, 2010
• Abdul Majeed al-Zindani - Wikipedia, accessed July 29, 2013