Muslims And The Scientific Education

Some say that the Muslims are backward in scientific education because their religion discourages them from acquiring it, or, at least, does nothing to encourage them to do so. But this is far from the truth.

Innumerable verses from the Qur’an and many sayings of the Prophet can be quoted which explicitly urge their readers to delve deeper into the mysteries of the earth and the heavens. How then is it possible that with such exhortations enshrined in their most sacred literature, Muslims, for whom Islam was and is a living thing, should not have engaged themselves in the observation of nature? It almost goes without saying that making a study of nature is to discover the Creator in His creation. That is the most wonderful benefit to be derived from such a study. Looked at in another way, in terms of worldly activity, the carrying out of research into the phenomena of nature, and body of knowledge to be gained from it, is what we commonly regard as science.

Moreover, Muslim history itself contradicts the supposition that Islam is an obstacle to scientific investigation. On the contrary, history testifies to the fact that, in the early Muslim period, great advances were made in various branches of science. In a period when Europe had not taken even one step forward in the sciences, Muslims had achieved phenomenal progress in these fields. Bertrand Russell has acknowledged this fact in these words:

         

Our use of the phrase ‘the Dark Ages’ to cover the period from 600 to 1000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe. In China this period includes the time of the Tang dynasty, the greatest age of Chinese poetry, and in many other ways a most remarkable epoch. From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary. (A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell, p. 395)

This fact has been universally acknowledged by historians. But this is not all that there is to the matter. We must go one step further, and add that the modern sciences are the very creation of Islam. I do not mean to say that Islam was revealed for the purpose of science. But there is no doubting the fact that the scientific revolution is a by-product of the Islamic revolution. This relation between Islam and science has been acknowledged by Briffault in these words:

         

The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries of revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence. The ancient world was, as we saw, pre-scientific. The Astronomy and Mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importations never thoroughly acclimatized to Greek culture. The Greek systematized, generalized, and theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science, detailed and prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien to the Greek temperament. Only in Hellenistic Alexandria was an approach to scientific work conducted in the ancient classical world. What we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry, of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, of the development of Mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs. (Making of Humanity, Briffault, p.190)

Workshop of Nature

It is an academic and historical truth that Islam is the creator of modern science. What is science? It is simply the name of the study of nature. Since time immemorial, since man has existed in this world, he has been observing nature. Then what explains the delay in studying and conquering it? All the developments of science have taken place only within the span of the past one thousand years, whereas they should have come into existence millions of years ago. It was the dominance of animism (shrik) in ancient times that hindered man from studying nature, discovering its forces and utilizing them.

          What is animism? It is worship of nature, says Arnold Toynbee:

(For the ancient man) Nature was not just a treasure-trove of natural resources, but a goddess, Mother Earth. And the vegetation that sprang from the earth, the animals that roamed the earth’s surface, and the minerals hiding in the earth’s bowels, all partook of nature’s divinity. So did all natural phenomena, springs and rivers and the sea-mountains, earthquakes, and lightening and thunder.

Everything on earth and in the sky, - the trees, the stars, the sun – all that seemed extraordinary, was thus regarded as being imbued with divinity. Such is the stuff of animism. And it was ideas such as these which dominated the human mind throughout much of the inhabited world before Islam.

To ancient man, nature was an object of veneration. How then was it possible for it to become an object of investigation? Herein lies the real reason for ancient man’s disinclination to make a study of it.

Having accorded nature the status of divinity, man then proceeded to worship it. Such reverence became an obstacle to investigation. Bending nature to the ends of civilization obviously became impossibility.

Arnold Tonybee has acknowledged that this prolonged age of nature worship was put an end to for the first time by Monotheism. The faith of monotheism led man to realize that nature, far from being the creator, was merely the thing created. It was a thing to be exploited – not a thing to be worshipped. It was meant to be conquered not revered. This concept of monotheism, which had fallen into desuetude, was revived by Islam, hence the revolution in modern human thought is directly traceable to Islam. There is no doubting the fact that the message with which all of the prophets has been sent was that of pure monotheism. In very age, every prophet had preached monotheism pure and simple, but never in human history had it been possible before Islam to bring about a revolution on such a basis. That is why it was only with the advent of Islam that man could share the fruits of monotheism.

While we accept that all the prophets were the harbingers of true monotheism, we have to admit that their followers failed to preserve their religious teachings in the original form. Their main error was to adulterate this true concept with polytheism. For example, Jesus Christ perpetuated the tenets of monotheism, but his followers accorded the status of divinity to Jesus himself.

This distorted belief in many ways retarded scientific progress. For instance, when certain astronomers carried out research on the solar system, and came to the conclusion that the earth revolved around the sun, they were severely opposed by Christian clergymen, the reason being that their beliefs were misguided. If the earth was truly the birthplace of the Son of God, it seemed to them unthinkable that such an earth could possibly be a mere satellite instead of being the center of the solar system. In order to defend their distorted beliefs they refused to acknowledge the scientific fact.