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The Complement Between Islam and Science
Dr Elias Zerhouni's story was not so different from many Arab youths, growing up as he did in 1960s Algeria at a time in which his country was struggling for independence from French colonialists. In 1975, at the age of 24, he made his way to the United States where he joined Johns Hopkins University as a resident trainee and worked his way up to the executive vice presidency of the university.
Last week I sat listening to his numerous achievements and scientific breakthroughs in the Ramadan Majlis of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.
It was a rectangular tent, measuring approximately 100 by 50 metres. Six giant screens brought the speaker closer to the public along with details about the scientific terms he was using. The spacious room was decorated with pictures of Sheikh Zayed, the founder of the UAE, and other forefathers from whom Sheikh Mohammed draws inspiration.
Dr Zerhouni's tale was no different from the many thousands of Arabs who left the region during the times of turbulent revolutions, emigrating to the West and attaining recognition and success. But they have not found a forum that embraces them and the wisdom they hold until now.
Every Ramadan, Sheikh Mohammed gathers intellectuals from across the Arab world to personally listen to their success stories and to benefit from their wisdom. Last week he also hosted Al Allamah al Sayed Ali al Amin, a respected Shia professor of religious and philosophical science at universities in Iraq, Qom and Lebanon.
I sat in awe at the energy that reverberated in the tent. Three hundred men and women sat listening to a presentation on the potential that science holds to cure diseases such as obesity and cancer. Present were ministers, dignitaries and government personnel, but possibly the most important attending guests were students, young men and women who will shape the future of this country.
About a minute into the introduction of the visiting guest of honour, a couple of high-level Abu Dhabi government personalities entered the tent, and quietly sat among members of the public even though their front row seats were guaranteed. They were humble but you could also tell how importantly Sheikh Mohammed views these lectures: no interruption please.
It was a perfect marriage of new and old. The sheikhs and guests arrived after performing the Ramadan Taraweeh prayers. Young Emiratis of both genders working in the royal diwan welcomed guests and escorted them to their seats. "Keep your phones on silent please" and "The lecture will be in English, would you require a translation device?" they said to guests with a smile.
Sheikh Mohammed's seat was just like the others, not higher, not closer to the front, not even a different colour. He and the guests listened attentively as Dr Zerhouni spoke about concepts that would be considered taboo any time of year and by some especially during Ramadan.
Dr Zerhouni started by saying, "The creation of human intelligence 150,000 years ago." I looked around in surprise. He repeated references to the Big Bang theory several times, and then added that there were not one but three separate Big Bangs. I cringed. Later he showed a slide from the Economist magazine showing a theory of the evolution of man. I was gobsmacked.
Then it dawned on me, Islam need not fear science; science must be seen as complementary rather than supplementary to religion. As Dr Zerhouni showed a short video of a 50-year-old patient struggling to walk due to Parkinson's and then explained how an implanted microchip he helped design allowed this gentleman to run around with his sons in a park, Sheikh Mohammed smiled. That smile was all I needed to know about our host.
The gathering made me think of the Golden Age of Islam from the 7th to 13th centuries and how Muslim scientists excelled across three continents and were embraced rather than discouraged. Where they were honoured rather than chased out of their countries. And where their freedom to think and create was not tied down to any one person's understanding. In fact Dr Zerhouni noted that the oldest book in the US National Library of Medicine, the largest medical library in the world, was the Islamic scholar Abu Bakr al Razi's The Comprehensive Book on Medicine, dating from 1094, right in the middle of the Golden Age of Islam.
Dr Zerhouni said one thing that resonated most in my mind: "Medical science is an interdisciplinary art. You can't be a good doctor without learning about other fields of life." That is precisely Sheikh Mohammed's philosophy; after all, leading is also an interdisciplinary art, you can't be a good leader without learning about other fields of life. Seeking knowledge is why Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed holds his Majlis.
*This article first appeared on The National on Sunday 30 August 2009
Follow Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sultanalqassemi
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Forgive me: the time period I am referring to is the golden age of science in Islamic countries (from the 7 through 13th centuries). For some reason there was a stagnation after the 13th century. What are hypothetical reasons that caused this stagnation? Of interest, biological sciences were so backward that I have a friend whose grandfather (who lived all of his life in an Islamic country) still believed in spontaneous generation. The Prophet Muhammad did state for his followers to search for knowledge if even unto China.
Premise:One can argue that expansion of knowledge during that time occurred despite the limiting influence of Islam.
The period of knowledge almost precisely coincides with Arabo-Islamic imperialism and absorption of cultures far, far more advanced than the rather primitive Arabic tribes( India, Byzantium). Interestingly, once the arc of conquest slowed so did the rapid advancement of knowledge. And a certain Islamic version of insularity settled in: kind of dark age.
Obenauer,
There is a straightforward reason, IMHO, for Islamic science's post 13th century slowdown: Every civilization goes through it crests and troughs, much like a very long term business cycle. But there are many encouraging signs of a Renaissance. Conflicts represent new awareness and intellectual ferment, and thus portend future progress.
The Prophet Muhammad said to search for knowledge if even to China. What are some hypothetical reasons why scientific investigations and innovations stagnated after this time period? For example, i have a friend from and Islamic country whose grandfather still believed in spontaneous generation, a belief that was debunked in the West centuries ago.
great article . . . . if not for Islam the West would be so poor . . they kept mathematics, science, medicine, etc alive during the Middle Ages . . . so happy to hear about this lecture . . .
Thank you for storing some of the Greek and Roman knowledge for us in receivership until Renaissance . We appreciate it. Too bad you couldn't do much with it :-)
Clever. Perhaps your German high school history books left out several centuries, wherein Islam was the civilizing force on the planet; Baghdad, Andalusia, ringing any bells?; while Europe was trying to push literacy beyond the bounds of what passed for courts around what passed for kings. I don't know where you get your ideas, perhaps "myths familiar to (you) from childhood?"
My hope is that there were many mullahs in attendance. So long as the message from the mosque (or the pulpit) rejects science, it matters little that the intelligentsia embrace science.
Terrible typo....Torah, I mean.
Thank you for your post. There is no conflict between formal science and the pursuit of understanding and religious text. There never was. Religious text is symbolic. When these books --- Koran, Tohra, a new testament, were put into writing literal understanding of text was neither the thinking of the time nor the intention. The world was understood through parable, symbolism and story.
Actually, it is with the emergence of modern sciences (last 500-800 years of so?) that we started taking a written word literally, yet religious text was never written to be understood as such.
The conflict is created by social forces that use religious texts for political gain, to control thought, daily life and a people. (I.e. demands to formally pray five times per day, when prayer can be a way of life, deeds, meditation, etc.,)
Modern sciences, universities and libraries have their roots in Islamic traditions and societies. That the desire for knowledge and education is so great among the large young population of much of the Middle East, speaks well for the future.
First thing -- remove religion as a controlling and repressive force and return it to the home, to the culture and spiritual understanding.
The west continues to struggle to keep religion where it belongs --- in the, heart, home, temple, church or mosque and out of public life.
DC you're projecting modern sensibilites onto these ancient texts. People who wrote Koran and Bible were very, very serious about what they wrote. It is a serious error to assign contemporary pre occupation wtih irony and deconstruction to these text. I assure you. people who wrote contributed to writing these holy books did not take any comparative religions course and didn't read Jung and Joseph Campbell :-)
Now, to us, atheists and people of reason it makes total sense to take these texts in stride and discount factual inacuracies in spirit of amused tolerance. But this is emphatically not the case for modern fundamentalists who consdier every...single... word... of their holy text perfect and immacualte. Doubt it? Read some of the posts here.
The thirst for knowledge is great all around the world. But relgious leaders in Islamic civilization are trying to channell those energies into hopeless rote memorization of texts. (see madrasas opening all over the world).
Fact: One country--India four times more colleges than the entire islamic world! Something to think about,
It's a GIVEN that science and religion are not compatible....ALL religions!!
I would hazard an exception for some parts of Taoism and Zen and Ch''an Buddhism. Accroding to some people way better versed in science than me there are striking parallels between Taoism and most advanced scientific concepts in physic and cosmology. incl. probability, chaos theory, string theory and etc.
Suggested Readings--The venerable "The Tao of Physics" by F. Capra. and "Wu Li Masters."
No, not really. It's often used that way.
Ramadan kareem, yah Sultan. I enjoyed your post.
Do you happen to know what the maximum number of hours one is required to fast? I'm wondering how Muslims in the extreme northern latitudes fulfill their obligations when days can be 20 hours long.
Islam and science...mutually exclusive!!
Wrong! Islam is fully compatible with science, and I say that as a conservative American Muslim. They are indeed mutually inclusive. Science thrived in Islam when it was persecuted elsewhere. Muslims' faith in the Creator is not so weak as to feel threatened by the very knowledge of sciences, math, and learning that he instilled in us.
Instead of indulging in various quasi-scientific gyrations why not just admit that 7th Century cosmology espoused in Koran is in conflict with basic facts about the universe.
No, the universe wasn't created in 6 days,No, Earth is not like a carpet, no, mountains don't act like pegs holding the Earth together. And no, Earth was not created before the stars.
Geo-centric model accepted by people of that era is wrong.
And it doesn't matter whether the Prophet, Plato or anyone else said it.
Surely, your faith is strong enough to reconcile this fact. Or is it?
It seems to me that various Islamic religious leaders are simply trying to stay in control of scientific development. Do they take to heart the lesson the losses Catholic Church sustained during the Scientific Revolution ?
At the time when Creationism and other misconceptions were widely accepted, science which roughly corresponded with the religions of the Book, ( all three) was possible.
Today, science has advanced centuries ( if not millennia) beyond myths embedded in various Holy Books.
And I mean that in the most respectful way possible.
For instance:"
Quran 7: 54 "Your guardian-Lord is Allah who created the heavens and earth in Six Days"
Quran 15: 19 " And the earth We have spread out (like a carpet); set thereon Mountains firm and immovable"
Is it possible in today's Islamic word to admit that certain parts of Koran are factually incorrect?
There is no other way.. Europeans did it during the Scientific Revolution.
One cannot reject scientific method for one field of inquiry while accepting for another one,. Simply because the holy books were silent on the latter.
Or one can simply accept that language is poetic, figurative and oblique. What is a day to a being who is infinite? To ask whether scripture is "factually correct" in the empirical sense is to ask a nonsense question. Science cannot be applied to religion, nor religion to science. That does not mean that they cannot live together in the same heart and mind, however. I am not a religious person, but I do take issue with the continual need of secular culture to attack the foundations of great world cultures simply because their testaments do not, in many places, cohere with what is generally considered scientific fact. I will also remind you that until recently, our understanding of the atom was greatly different than it is today, as is our understanding of evolution.
Well,perhaps to you as a non-believer the language of Koran is poetic and figurative. Straight out of comparative religions undergrad. class.
But to hundreds of millions of Muslims the word of Koran is definitive and beyond dispute.
same is true for other religions, of course. This is a specie of subjective validation fallacy-- perceiving truth of any statement if one's belief demands it to be true.
Quran 7: 54 "Your guardian-Lord is Allah who created the heavens and earth in Six Days"
And I suppose you know definitely how long the big bang took? The way I look at it is from a Muslim perspective is from the outset of the big bang it took six days for our universe to form an existence out of nothing.
And after the creation of our Solar System, it took six days for Earth to take its nascent, budding form.
The verse doesn't imply that it took God six days to create an Earth and life as we know presently as some Biblical teachings say.
Quran 15: 19 " And the earth We have spread out (like a carpet); set thereon Mountains firm and immovable"
Please show me a mountain whose roots in the Earth is not firm and is movable (and I don't mean growing or decreasing ever so slowly by natural forces like shifts in plate tectonics).
And the third quote below about starts. I noticed you chose to ignore it altogether.
Quran 67: 5 "And We have (from of old) adorned the lowest heaven (sky) with lamps, and We have made such (Lamps as) missiles to drive away Satans."
Can we agree that the above statement from Koran is not compatible with the world we know today?
And that the person who wrote this reiterated the myths familiar to him from childhood,... maybe ?
The major hurdle for science in the Islamic world is not Islam, but the monarchies and dictatorships that rule their countries. If those governments embraced free thought and free speech, there would be a resurgence in science.
Your post doesn't conform with historical facts.
There are plenty examples of monarchies and dictatorships who made a startling scientific progress outside of Islamic civilization-- British Empire; 1900--1945 Japan; Taiwan, Soviet Union., modern China. The only thing that unites the above examples-- not being a part of Islamic civilization.
A sobering thought-- neither free speech nor free thought is possible while religious leaders thrive to dominate the cultural landscape of a nation.
Fact: Even in Europe(!!!) it is becoming very dangerous to oppose Islamic orthodoxy.
Think Theo Van Gogh.
I'm not criticizing ALL monarchies and dictatorships for being hostile to science, just the current ones who rule the Middle East.
Great.
What would be even greater is the Muslim, Islamic nations confront the extemists in their own countries who are pusueing death and distruction against their own people and those countries in the world that do not adhere to their religious/political perspective on the world.
That would be much appreciated and wd. enable a greater focus upon science and improving the standards of living for all people of all race of all cultures of all religions of all nations....................
Interesting article. Islam was indeed the cradle of science and knowledge centuries ago when Europe was struggling in the dark ages. I would like to believe it can happen again.
LMAO!
It is not often that a civilization is given two chances at greatness. For now let us just hope for catching up to basic literacy levels of Europe, N. America and Far East.
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