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An Islamic author said Thursday to a crowd at the University of Wisconsin that creationism and evolution do not necessarily contradict one another, and that the Quran reflects this.

T.O. Shanavas cited medical evidence for his support of evolution, namely the vestigial organs such as the appendix that are present in the human body.

“There is no way I can accept that God created everything in my body,” Shanavas said. “You have to explain all the structures in my body and your bodies. The only way you can explain these, [is that] man must have evolved … from other species.”

To reconcile the Muslim faith with evolution, Shanavas turned to language in the Quran. He emphasized a verse which says humans were “created in successive stages.”

Another part of the Quran says mankind was created from the “seeds of an earlier people,” and to Shanavas, this is another way of saying we evolved from earlier humans.

“If creation is genotype, evolution is phenotype. Creation is the process. Evolution is the human observation of that process,” he said.

Shanavas also argued Muslims were the original scholars of evolution, as works of the eighth century include components such as natural selection. Islam’s geographic reach in Darwin’s time would have made it very unlikely for him to have not read Islamic works, he said.

Shanavas went on to say Muslim evolutionary theories did not spread to the rest of the world because of a lack of freedom of the press, illiteracy and a suppression of nontraditional views in the Muslim world.

At one point, Shanavas showed a map of evolution that included a direct link between the modern human and ancient ape.

While this is a major component of evolutionary theory, it directly contradicts the Islamic belief of the story of Adam and Eve.

“There are a lot of components of evolution that I can see that fit with the religion,” UW sophomore Dewaa Ali said. “Adaptation, natural selection, those are things that make sense. But the underlying theme that humans come from apes? No, I feel like that is unacceptable. There is a middle ground but he did not take it. He took the incomplete one and simplified it.”

Muslim Student Association President Tarek Elgindi agreed that the question of Adam and Eve “could have been addressed a little bit better.”

He added the disparities could be solved by the distinction between body and soul that is present in Abrahamic states, as this allows for evolution of body but continuity of the human soul.

Elgindi noted the point of the speech was not necessarily to agree with Shanavas.

“There were some people who were very, very happy to hear what he was saying, and there were other people who were not so happy but then again understood where he was coming from,” Elgindi said. “He could have approached the issue much more traditionally, much more sensitively, but the important thing is that everyone learned something.”