Ibn Sina believed that there exists a single set of principles that can explain the nature of the physical universe, the reason for its creation, and the relationship between mind and body, and he made it his life’s work to find connections between these apparently different fields, and ultimately to discover a theory of everything. This was an ambitious scheme, but then Ibn Sina, according to Yahya Michot of the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, was always supremely confident of his abilities, and believed that God had deliberately made him brighter than the average individual.

So, according to Ibn Sina, miracles must have a physical explanation. To take one example: most Muslims believe that the world will end one day and that when this happens, every member of the human race will return from the dead in a physical form, ready to be judged by God for their conduct during their lifetime. But Ibn Sina held that such bodily resurrection defies the laws of nature, and he thought that the day of judgement might take a different form to that traditionally taught in religion. He also doubted the traditional view of heaven and hell, in part because of his belief that matter cannot be everlasting – no fire can burn forever. And he thought that heaven and hell might take the form of a state of mind, instead of a physical space. The example he gave to support his theory was that of pain. He postulated that if it is possible to feel pain without experiencing pain in the physical sense – such as during a bad dream – it ought to be similarly possible to experience heaven or hell without physically travelling to a different place.

By Ehsan Masood.

Excerpt from Science & Islam: A History, book by Ehsan Masood, p. 106-107, slightly edited.

The modal ontological argument purports to establish the astounding thesis that the mere possibility of the existence of God entails its actuality. That is, the argument says, once we agree that God can in principle exist we can’t but accept that God does actually exist. There are many distinct versions of the modal ontological argument but one of the most straightforward can be presented as follows.

According to ‘perfect being theism’, a form of theism most widely accepted among Judaeo-Christian-Islamic theists, God is a being that exists necessarily. Such a being is distinct from contingent beings like tables, cars, planets and people, which exist merely by chance. If God exists at all, there is no possible situation in which he fails to exist. Proponents of perfect being theism also typically say that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect because he is perfect in all respects. This observation suggests that the thesis ‘it is possible that God exists’ is equivalent to ‘it is possible that, necessarily, an all-powerful, all-knowing and morally perfect being exists.’ At this point the modal ontological argument appeals to a principle in modal logic that is widely accepted by logicians: If it is ‘possible’ that something is ‘necessary’, then that thing is simply ‘necessary.’ In other words, if we have the sentence ‘it is possible that something is necessary’ we can drop the phrase ‘it is possible that’ without changing the meaning. If we apply this logical principle to what we have derived so far, namely, the thesis ‘it is possible that, necessarily, an all-powerful, all-knowing and morally perfect being exists’, we can derive the thesis ‘it is necessary that an all-powerful, all-knowing and morally perfect being exists.’ This is equivalent to saying that God exists necessarily. If God exists necessarily, then God actually exists. Hence, the mere possibility of the existence of God logically entails its actuality.

Theists’ attempts to demonstrate the possibility of God involve some of the most creative ideas in philosophy. Clement Dore and Alexander Pruss, for example, try to establish the possibility that God exists by appealing to the fact that many people have encountered God in religious experiences. Dore and Pruss do not assume that these religious experiences are veridical – they are willing to accept that some (or even all) of them are hallucinations. However, according to them, if the existence of God is impossible then God cannot even appear in hallucinations. The fact that people encounter God in religious experiences suggests that, even if they are hallucinations, the existence of God is at least possible.

To take another example, Carl Kordig tries to establish the possibility that God exists by appealing to the so-called ‘ought implies can’ principle. If we ought to rescue a drowning child we can rescue that child. Conversely, if we cannot for some reason rescue a drowning child, then it is not the case that we ought to rescue that child. Kordig says that God ought to exist because he is a perfect being. And given that God ought to exist we can infer with the ‘ought implies can’ principle that he can exist as well. Hence, it is possible that God exists.

How does Gödel try to show that God’s existence is possible? He argues that it is possible because God has only positive properties. If God were to have both positive and negative properties simultaneously it would seem impossible for him to exist because they would contradict each other. For example, it would seem impossible for God to exist if he were to have the property of being all knowing (a positive property) and the property of being ignorant (a negative property) simultaneously. Therefore God, as the greatest possible being, has only positive properties, such as the properties of being all knowing, all powerful and morally perfect, which, according to Gödel, do not contradict each other.

Whether the abovementioned arguments for the possibility of God succeed is disputed. Yet the modal ontological argument is important because it seems to reduce the burden of proof on theists dramatically. They no longer need to rely on traditional arguments for the actuality of the existence of God, which appeal to the origin of the universe, the source of morality, the apparent design in nature, testimonies of miracles, and so on. All they need to do is show that the existence of God is at least possible. If we can show that, we can simply plug it into the modal ontological argument and derive, as a matter of logic, that the existence of God is actual. Hence, the modal ontological argument places us only a half-step away from a definitive proof of the existence of God.

By Yujin Nagasawa, published in OUPblog, November 8th 2017.

Yujin Nagasawa is Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the John Hick Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham. His books include God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge Arguments (CUP, 2008), The Existence of God: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2011) and Miracles: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2017). He is currently President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Religion Editor of Philosophy Compass, and a member of the editorial board of Religious Studies, the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. He is also the author of Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism (OUP, 2017).

Al-Ghazali, at least in his writings aimed at the masses, seemed to deny causality, in conformity with the normative Ash’ari school. However, there were many leading Ash’aris after Al-Ghazali, such as Al-Razi, Al-Amidi and others, some of whom endorsed belief in secondary causality, i.e. that God did create causal effects in created things. And there were vigorous discussions on these matters amongst the Ash’aris, Maturidis and Mu’tazilis.

The Task Force’s discussion [1] on causality was based additionally on the Shaykh Afifi A-Akiti’s new research whose central thesis is that Al-Ghazali was secretly more rationalist than he appeared in his texts aimed at the masses, and that his method enabled the rational and natural sciences, seen as heretical in his time, to be accepted into the mainstream of Islamic scholarship and discourse in later centuries.

Reinterpreting Al-Ghazali’s alleged opposition to science

Akiti’s paper was based on his study of Ghazali’s recently-discovered work, al-Madnun bihi ‘ala ghayri ahlihi (“That which is restricted from those unfit for it”). Akiti refers to “The good, the bad and the ugly” of Ghazali’s conception of rational or philosophical knowledge, denoting respectively the knowledge he set out in his Madnun, Tahafut al-Falasifah (Incoherence of the Philosophers) and Maqasid al-Falasifah (Objectives of the Philosophers). In the latter, he had reproduced Ibn Sina’s Hikayah.

Afifi Al-Akiti refers to Al-Ghazali as Sunni, orthodox, Ash’ari, Sufi, Aristotelian and rationalist and claims that although he single-handedly managed to get rational and natural sciences admitted by the backdoor into theological scholarship, some of his contemporaries and successors saw through this. For instance, his “appropriation” (talwih) of Greek rational sciences was condemned by Ibn Taymiyyah as “deception” (talbis), but described by Sabra as “naturalisation” (tatbi’).

Nevertheless, claims Al-Akiti, Al-Ghazali was so effective that within a century of his passing Muslim theological schools and madrassas were churning out major influential works in rational and natural sciences.

Little agreement on Al-Ghazali’s legacy towards Science

There was much discussion amongst the Task Force members about Ghazali’s views on causality, among other things, and his alleged role in degrading the support for science at the height of the Muslim Golden Age of Science. The members expressed concerns about Al-Ghazali’s dissemination of knowledge and his views according to three levels of his audience: the elite, the scholars and the masses as to whether he was right to restrict promotion of the rational sciences, which he had sometimes seemingly attacked in other works written for the masses, to the elite, or whether he had a duty to be more transparent and consistent.

For example, he wrote that “natural sciences are a mixture of truth and falsehood, correctness and errors.” Furthermore, mathematics had to be avoided because it was often the preliminary and foundational science to “erroneous sciences”: “We forbid the study of the science of Euclid and Ptolemy (the details of calculation and geometry) – although it makes the mind and the spirit stronger – because of what it leads to; indeed, it is the preliminary to the sciences of the ancients, which contain wrong and harmful creeds…”

It was noted that Ghazali clearly said different things in different books and at different times, and his authorship of various works is sometimes disputed. For example, his Jawahir al-Qur’an (Substances of the Qur’an), in which he again addresses some of these controversial topics, is one of his last works, and there is also his Qawa’id al-‘Aqa’id (Principles of Creeds). Montgomery Watt severely doubted whether the Mishkat al-Anwar was by Ghazali, especially the last chapter.

Other topics relevant to the Task Force that had been addressed by Al-Ghazali were his assessment of the validity of philosophical proofs of God, and his view on causality: Ibn Rushd said in his reply to Ghazali, Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), that Al-Ghazali had used a causal argument to refute causal effects: in short, he had “used causality to deny causality!” The hadith scholar Ibn al-Salah also attacked Al-Ghazali in this regard. Frank argues that Al-Ghazali used atomistic language but ultimately argued against atomism.[2] Griffel [3], in his discussion of the 17th chapter of the Tahafut, argued that Al-Ghazali denied deterministic causality, i.e. that things had intrinsic causal powers.

With regard to the emphatic denial of causality and takfir (judgment of heresy or blasphemy) of naturalism found there, Task Force Members suggested that this is disputed within the Ash’ari school, with many Ash’ari theologians endorsing God acting through secondary causality. And Al-Ghazali seems to have endorsed secondary causality in the Madnun.

Skepticism and the challenges of re-writing and re-interpreting centuries of scholarship and its harm aside, Al-Ghazali’s influence and legacy in the Islamic world, both Sunni and Shia, is so immense and that the Task Force members agreed that discussion of some of these issues is crucial to the “Islam and Science” conversation, although some members questioned how relevant pre-modern theology was to the advancement of modern science in contemporary Muslim-majority societies. The next steps should be “integration” of the rational and natural sciences into Islamic worldviews.

By Usama Hasan.

Muslim World Science Initiative, 2016, Report of İhsanoğlu Task Force on Islam and Science, London and Islamabad

Muslim Responses to Science’s Big Questions

References

[1] List of Task Force members: Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Usama Hasan, Tuncay Zorlu, Nidhal Guessoum, Bruno Guiderdoni, Mehdi Golshani, Farid Panjwani, Mohammed Ghaly, Mohammed Hazim Shah, Mohammed Basil Altaie, Afifi Al-Akiti, Rana Dajani, Philip Clayton, Willem B. Drees, Athar Osama

[2] Richard M. Frank, Ghazzali and the Ash’arite School, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 1994

[3] Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali’s Philosophical Theology, OUP, 2009

Photo Credit

Detail from ‘The Meeting of the Theologians’ by Abd Allah Musawwir, mid-16th century. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Western readers often overlook the Muslim world’s speculative fiction. I use the term quite broadly, to capture any story that imagines the implications of real or imagined cultural or scientific advances. Some of the first forays into the genre were the utopias dreamt up during the cultural flowering of the Golden Age. As the Islamic empire expanded from the Arabian peninsula to capture territories spanning from Spain to India, literature addressed the problem of how to integrate such a vast array of cultures and people. The Virtuous City(al-Madina al-fadila), written in the 9th century by the scholar Al-Farabi, was one of the earliest great texts produced by the nascent Muslim civilisation. It was written under the influence of Plato’s Republic, and envisioned a perfect society ruled by Muslim philosophers – a template for governance in the Islamic world.

As well as political philosophy, debates about the value of reason were a hallmark of Muslim writing at this time. The first Arabic novel, The Self-Taught Philosopher (Hayy ibn Yaqzan, literally Alive, Son of Awake), was composed by Ibn Tufail, a Muslim physician from 12th-century Spain. The plot is a kind of Arabic Robinson Crusoe, and can be read as a

thought experiment in how a rational being might learn about the universe with no outside influence. It concerns a lone child, raised by a gazelle on a remote island, who has no access to human culture or religion until he meets a human castaway. Many of the themes in the book – human nature, empiricism, the meaning of life, the role of the individual in society – echo the preoccupations of later Enlightenment-era philosophers, including John Locke and Immanuel Kant.

We also have the Muslim world to thank for one of the first works of feminist science fiction. The short story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ (1905) by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, a Bengali writer and activist, takes place in the mythical realm of Ladyland. Gender roles are reversed and the world is run by women, following a revolution in which women used their scientific prowess to overpower men. (Foolishly, the men had dismissed the women’s learning as a ‘sentimental nightmare’.) The world is much more peaceful and pleasant as a result. At one point, the visitor Sultana notices people giggling at her. Her guide explains:

‘The women say that you look very mannish.’
‘Mannish?’ said I, ‘What do they mean by that?’
‘They mean that you are shy and timid like men.’

Later, Sultana grows more curious about the gender imbalance:

‘Where are the men?’ I asked her.
‘In their proper places, where they ought to be.’
‘Pray let me know what you mean by “their proper places”.’
‘O, I see my mistake, you cannot know our customs, as you were never here before. We shut our men indoors.’

By the early 20th century, speculative fiction from the Muslim world emerged as a form of resistance to the forces of Western colonialism. For example, Muhammadu Bello Kagara, a Nigerian Hausa author, wrote Ganďoki (1934), a novel set in an alternative West Africa; in the story, the natives are involved in a struggle against British colonialism, but in a world populated by jinns and other mystical creatures. In the following decades, as Western empires began to crumble, the theme of political utopia was often laced with a certain political cynicism. The Moroccan author Muhammad Aziz Lahbabi’s novel The Elixir of Life(Iksir al-Hayat) (1974), for example, centres on the discovery of an elixir that can bestow immortality. But instead of filling society with hope and joy, it foments class divisions, riots, and the unravelling of the social fabric.

An even darker brand of fiction has emerged from Muslim cultures today. Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013) reimagines Frankenstein in modern-day Iraq, among the fallout from the 2001 invasion. In this retelling, the monster is created from body parts of different people who have died because of ethnic and religious violence – and eventually goes on a rampage of its own. In the process, the novel becomes an exploration of the senselessness of war and the deaths of innocent bystanders.

In the United Arab Emirates, Noura Al Noman’s young adult novel Ajwan (2012) follows the journey of a young, amphibious alien as she fights to recapture her kidnapped son; the book is being made into a TV series, and touches on themes including refugees and political indoctrination. In Saudi Arabia, Ibraheem Abbas and Yasser Bahjatt’s debut science-fiction novel HWJN (2013) explores gender relations, religious bigotry and ignorance, and offers a naturalistic explanation for the existence of jinns who reside in a parallel dimension. The Egyptian writer Ahmad Towfiq’s bleak novel Utopia (2008), meanwhile, envisions a gated community in 2023, where the cream of Egyptian society has retreated after the country’s wholesale economic and social collapse. And in post-Arab Spring Egypt, the novelist Basma Abdel Aziz conjures a Kafkaesque world in The Queue(2016) – a book set in the aftermath of an unsuccessful uprising, in which helpless citizens struggle to get by under the thumb of an absurd and sinister dictatorship.

Speculative fiction is often lumped in with European Romanticism and read as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. But if this gallop through the centuries of Muslim endeavour shows anything, it’s that pondering fantastical technologies, imagining utopian social arrangements, and charting the blurry boundaries between mind, machine and animal, are not the sole preserve of the West.

By Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, published in aeon, June 27th, 2017.

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad is a senior data scientist at Groupon, an affiliate associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington, and an inventor and artist. His research focuses on behavioural modelling, machine learning, and natural language-processing. He also writes for Three Quarks Daily (3QD).

Photo Credit

Flying Over Istanbul and the Galata Tower on the Magic Carpet from the 1001 Nights, Turkish miniature, 19th C. Photo by Rex.

Much has been said about the nature of causality. Scientists, philosophers and theologians have offered different perspective as to whether causality should be seen as a universal law and a necessary relation between two things, one of which brings about the other into existence, or a mere coincidence between two things which has no reality of its own let alone the creative power of bringing a thing into being. The theological view asserted that God alone is the real cause of all things and His will is not to be subjected to causality in the sense of a necessary cause and effect relationship. The question may thus be asked: what is the cause of a stone falling to the ground when it is thrown? Is it the muscular movement of the hand, the law of gravity, the nature of the stone, as opposed for example to the feather, the will of the person who throws it, or the potential in each case that God has endowed them with? Scholastic philosophy attributes to Aristotle the distinction between four types of causes: The material cause or what a thing is made of, the formal cause, or what makes a thing be what it is, the efficient cause or what acts in order to make something exist, and the final cause, or why a thing is and what is the end purpose for which a change is produced therein. In the example cited , the efficient cause would be the act of throwing the stone. It is this efficient cause which lies at the centre of causality in logic and philosophy. The efficient cause is thus understood not to be referring to the potentials of things but to what acts in order to make something exist. It is a cause that acts on another thing to produce an effect which consist of a change. The concepts of material and formal causes now seem to be archaic in philosophy and have little significance outside aesthetics. Final causes have also been expurgated from physics and they are, in any case, seen to be highly controversial.[1]

The notion of effective cause (al-‘illah al-tamma, al-‘illa al-mu’aththira) proceeds on a number of basic postulates which are generally accepted by the advocates of causation. One of these is that the relationship of cause to its effect is a necessary rather than a contingent relation which means that the effect must follow its cause simply because the cause necessitates its effect.[2] Second, everything that exists is an effect to a cause; the cause is either known or unknown, but it exists. This is expressed in the Arabic phrase kull dhi mahiya ma‘lul.[3] Causation as such engulfs everything that exists and nothing is therefore beyond its purview. The third underlying assumption of an efficient cause is that there is only one such cause for every effect, and that an effect cannot be simultaneously brought about by two such causes. For if this were to be accepted, neither of the two causes would be complete in itself, nor efficient for that matter, and it would contradict the necessary relationship of the cause to the effect.[4] Another generally accepted principle of causality is the priority of causes to their effects: the cause precedes its effect and not vice versa. It is similarly stated that the causes necessitate their effects, which means that effects can never necessitate their causes: When the sun shines on a stone, for example, and makes it warmer, it could never be said then that the stone in becoming warmer makes the sun shine on it.[5] It may be noted in passing that philosophers have also distinguished other causes, many of which overlap each other as well as the four of Aristotle. An “immanent” cause, for instance, is one which produces a change within itself, as in the case of a man who produces his own voluntary motions and thoughts. This is distinguished from a “transient” cause, which produces a change in something else. But this distinction too is seldom made now and philosophers seem to have generally ignored it.[6] Cause is, moreover, understood as power in the sense of it having the ability to produce an effect. The sun, for example, has the power to make things grow and to do all the other things it does. It is basically in this sense that God is thought of as the cause of the world, and, accordingly, as a Being who is all-powerful. Christian and Muslim thinkers have both embraced this perception of causation. Note, for example, that the largest part of John Lock’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, was, in fact, devoted to a discussion of causality in the sense of power. It was David Hume who finally proposed, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, to eliminate this idea from the conception of causation altogether maintaining essentially that causes and effects are merely changes that we find constantly conjoined. This was basically the idea that the Muslim theologian al-Ghazali had propounded much earlier, and many western philosophers since Hume have held that Hume was basically right not to read the idea of power into causation.[7]

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111), who basically rejected causality, maintained that the relationship between cause and effect is not that of one to one as the philosophers assumed, but a composite relationship which involves an indefinite number of contributory factors. Even an apparently simple phenomenon such as our seeing an object is complex insasmuch as it depends upon our vision, the conditions of light, absence of dust, the distance and direction of the object from us, its size and colour etc. The effect is thus hardly the result of a singular cause but of a plurality of causes. The same effect may be produced by a number of causes and not necessarily by the cause that is observed. Causes are, in other words, inert entities and cannot produce any effect of their own. The Will of God is the only real cause that brings about all observable effects in the entire universe.[8]

Al-Ghazali’s views have been criticised by many equally prominent figures, including Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595/1198) as obscurantist and irrational as I shall later elaborate. Al-Ghazali may have taken the theistic position on causality too far but his views have been profoundly influential. From the theological perspective of al-Ghazali reality is not confined within the four walls of causation, the sensory and material causes alone. Non-material factors too play a role in the emergence of phenomena.[9] More recently Muhammad Iqbal has also voiced the theistic position in his views on causality and took a reductionist stance on causation which I shall address in the following pages.

The Ash‘ariyya theological perspective on causality seeks to explain the world and all phenomena, natural and supernatural, in term of the Divine Omnipotence alone. In order to safeguard Divine Omnipotence, it denies the objective realty of causal powers in creatures, and tends to perceive causation as a threat to the sovereignty of God.

The scientific perspective on causality seeks to explain the world and all phenomena, including the miraculous, in terms of natural and material causes. There is some recognition in this view, as also shared by Muslim philosophers, of two types of causes, namely immediate and secondary.[10] The Ash‘arite theologians have, however, forcefully rejected the idea of secondary causality and have equated it with the concept of mediation and shirk. Action in the primary sense is accordingly a process of bringing a thing forth into being out of nothing, and this is God’s exclusive prerogative. Action in the secondary sense simply denotes the effects of the primary action in the object. God, in other words, is the only real or first cause of all things.[11]

Notwithstanding the theoretical complexity of causation and the differential perspectives of philosophy, theology and science over it, the basic notion of causation is hardly disputable. Causation is not only indispensible in the common affairs of life but in all applied sciences as well. Jurisprudence and law would become quite meaningless if men were not entitled to seek the causes of events such as violent deaths, fire, and accident. The same is true in such areas as public health, medicine, military planning and indeed every area of life. No one doubts that the battle against malaria began with the search for its causes. The search for causes and the need to understand and identify them are typical of the way men manage their practical affairs, and their environment.

Any conclusion that is drawn form the debate over causality is likely to have a bearing on its parallel debate over determinism and free will (jabr wa ikhtiyar). Does man have freedom in regard to his action and conduct or is he programmed in an irreversible course of action throughout his life? This naturally raises the next question as to whether man’s will and intention is subject to the law of causality in such a way that the effect obtains automatically in the presence of its cause? What role then causality plays in determining the course of action that man takes?

Issues pertaining to causality, free will and determinism have arisen in almost all religions in much the same way as in Islam. Ancient Egyptians, Indian Brahmans, Greek philosophers, Zoroastrians and Christian thinkers raised these questions even before the advent of Islam.[12] Their recurrence among Muslim thinkers is partly due to the fact that the Qur’an contains evidence which lends support to both free will and predestination. The Qur’anic evidence that is reviewed in the following pages is clearly indicative of a blended approach to these issues: The Qur’an does not reject either free will or determinism, nor does it totally support them, but tends to take a blended and composite approach toward them.

The destiny of every man is tied to the causes that precede it. Causality is thus related to the question of destiny. Whether one accepts the existence of a divine principle or not has, on the other hand, little bearing on the question of free will and predestination: One may either attribute the system of cause and effect to the will of God, or assume that it is independent and has no connection to a divine order. Determinism can likewise be attributed to the will of God, or to causality. What we mean by destiny may then be a function of a divinely preordained programme, or that it is the inseparable link of every phenomenon with its cause.[13]

Causality in the realm of science is relative to the subject matter of physical science and it falls short of providing a complete view of realty. Scientific concepts are relative to the level of experience to which they are applied. In the context of human behaviour, the human will, initiative and purpose are additional factors which act from within, unlike the concept of cause which is external to the effect and acts from without. Causality in the human behavioural context is thus different from scientific causal action.[14] As noted above, the Qur’anic evidence on causality and its related themes, free will and determinism is not decisive on any particular position or view that have been taken over these issues. This also means that the Qur’anic evidence on causality is two sided and remains open to interpretation. Numerous passages are found in the Qur’an where God most High identifies Himself as the only cause and originator of things:

It is God who causes the seed-grain and the date-stone to split and sprout. He causes the living to issue from the dead, and dead to issue from the living.” (al-An‘am, 6:95).

إن الله فالق الحب و النوى يخرج الحي من الميت ومخرج الميت من الحي

He it is that cleaves the daybreak (from the dark) (al-An‘am, 6:96).

فالق الإصباح و جعل الليل سكنا

It is He who sends down ran from the skies, with it We produce vegetation of all kinds.

و هو الذي انزل من السماء ماء، فأخرجنا به نبات كل شيء

It is not you who slew them; it was God: when you threw a handful of dust, it was not your act, but God’s (al-Anfal, 8: 17).[15]

ولم تقتلوهم و لكن الله قتلهم، وما رميت إذ رميت و لكن الله رمى

In all these verses there is no reference to a secondary or horizontal cause. The only cause identified is God as the direct and sole cause of the phenomena in question. The last verse which refers to the divine help given to Muslims at the Battle of Badr may be said to be more explicit in its denial of the power of causation in created beings. None of these passages, however, provide conclusive evidence as to the involvement or otherwise of other factors or causes in the acts described. The Qur’anic language may thus be read literally in these passages, or figuratively, perhaps, as proof of the Omnipotence of God rather than a description of the precise nature of causality as such.

This is in fact the view of the Indian reformist thinker, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (d. 1898), who has rejected the assertion that the Qur’an teaches determinism. God in the Qur’an ascribed to Himself the acts and conduct of His creatures, just as He did with regard to things and phenomena which are cause by some other causes. The Qur’an says God caused the rain to fall. He planted the trees and caused the rivers to flow. This mode of speech does not mean that there were no intermediate causes and the Qur’an has no intention of proving or disproving freewill or predetermination. The purpose is merely to impress the greatness of God on the human mind and to show that everything is caused by God who is the ultimate cause of all things. Therefore ‘it is not right to argue from the Qur’an in favor free will or predetermination’.[16]

II. Scholastic Theology

The theistic philosophy of Kalam originated in early theological and political debates in Muslim community concerning such problems as the attributes of God, the relationship of faith to deeds, freewill and predestination, causality, the definition of a believer etc. Most of these issues arose in conjunction with specific internal factors that were then experienced by the community and were both religious and political in nature. The debates that ensued led to the emergence of various sectarian movements. The most well-known of these were the Murji’ites, Qadariyya and Khawarij. It was out of these that the first systematic theological school, namely the Mu‘tazila, emerged.[17] Many of the rationalist doctrines of Mu‘tazila were subsequently challenged by the Ash‘ariyya. Although the Ash‘ariyya gained wider acceptance, their views on many issues, including causality, have often been criticised. The influence of Greek philosophy and internal political developments under the Umayyad and early Abbasid rulers are often cited as relevant factors to explain the course of developments in Kalam. Scholastic theology was evidently not as well received as the juristic schools of Fiqh: Whereas the schools of Fiqh have continued to have followers to this day, the schools of Kalam lost support and became extinct.

Classical Greek philosophy and the medieval Jewish, Christian and Islamic philosophy generally accepted the Aristotelian notion of causality. In this notion a necessary link existed between cause and effect and explicit recognition was given to the role of finite, created beings as horizontal or secondary causes in nature. The notion of horizontal and secondary causes did not necessarily deny the existence of a first of primary cause that vested the secondary causes with their natural potency. Yet God as the first cause was not a distinguishing feature of Aristotelian causality. The theistic notion of hierarchical causality and emanation of all causes from the Primary Cause did not develop until Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna-d. 428/1037) metaphysical cosmology became known to medieval philosophy.[18]

Kalam began to takes shape toward the end of the seventh, or beginning of the eighth, century at the hands of such scholars as Hasan al-Basri (d. 728 CE) and his disciples Wasil b. ‘Ata (d. 748) ‘Amr b. ‘Ubayd (d. 762) and others, who led the early Qadariyya movement. These were the advocates of free will and argued that man has the ability to create his own conduct, both good and evil. Al-Basri held, in response to a query by the Ummayyad Caliph, Abd al-Malik b. Marwan (d. 705) that both the Qur’an and reason affirm that God, Who is supremely just, cannot hold people accountable for action over which they have no control. When asked what he thought of those kings (the Umayyad caliphs) who spilt the blood of Muslims and took their possessions and then said “our actions are part of God’s decree – (qada wa qadar)”, al-Basri answered “these enemies of God are liars.” The controversy over free will and predestination had serious political implications as the early Qadaris had challenged the authority of the Umayyad rulers. Two of their leaders, Ma ‘bad al-Juhni and Ghaylan al-Dimashqi who did so were put to death by order of the Umayyad caliphs in 699 and 743 respectively.[19]

The execution of Ma‘bad and Ghaylan put life in their causes. Thousands of people in Sham and in Iraq subscribed to the Qadariyya and subsequently the Mu‘tazilah- Wasil b. ‘Ata and Amr b. ‘Ubayd. The two Mu‘tazila leading figures embraced some of the Qadariyya views and modified others; and it is due mainly to their scholarly works that the Mu‘tazilla gained prominence.

The Mu‘tazila maitained that man has the capacity to act freely. One of their leading figures, Abu al-Hudhayl al-‘Allaf (d. 235/841) thus advanced the concept of regeneration (tawalud), or the causal relation between the action of the doer and the deed. The acts “generated” by man can be divided into those of which he knows the modality (kayfiya) and those which he does not. An example of the former is the flight of the arrow, or the sound caused by the impact of two solid objects. An example of the latter is pleasure, hunger, knowledge etc. Man is the author of act of which he knows the modality, whereas act which he cannot observe nor scrutinise must be attributed to God.[20] In this regard Abu’l Hudayl departed from the teaching of Bishr b. al-Mu‘tamir (d. 825 CE), head of the rival school of Baghdad, who inaugurated his modified doctrine of generation (tawallud) and held that “whatever is generated from our deeds is our doing” irrespective of whether we can scrutinize it or not.[21] This doctrine recognised the human will as a basic component of causality that created effects independently of their causes.

The determinist (Jabriyya) response to the notion of tawallud was that creation implies knowledge of the effects of creation, in every respect, on the part of the creator. Man’s knowledge falls short of this, as man has only a general knowledge of the effects of his actions.[22]

To overcome the difficulties involved in the tension between human capacity and divine power, Ibrahim al-Nazzam (d. 835) resorted to the concept of kumum: both in reference to the inherent nature (tab‘) and that of God’s initial creation of the latent properties of things (kumum) subsequently manifested externally (zuhur). Nazzam appears to ascribe every activity in the world indirectly to God and directly to secondary natural agents. This modified version of determinism was, however, not supported either by the rest of Mu‘tazila or by their opponents, the Jabriyya.[23]

Mu‘tazilism was publicly supported by the Abbasid Caliphs al-Ma’mun (d. 218/833) and his immediate successors, Al-Mu‘tasim (d. 227-841) and al-Wathiq (d. 232/846). They became, however, aggressive and intolerant, in clear violation of the Islamic teachings, when they resorted to inquisition (mihna) that led to the punishment and abuse of many leading ‘ulama of the time.[24]

The determinists, or Jabriyya, grow in opposition to the Qadariyya and denied the doctrine of free will (ikhtiyar). Jahm b. Safwan (d. 131/745) who resided in Kufa advocated absolute determinism and maintained that man can have no part in his action in any real sense. The limbs of human body are like tools in God’s hands who creates the actions in a manner over which man has no power, will or choice. Unlike the Qadariyya who accepted causality as a necessary part of human conduct the Jabriyya effectively nullified causality and held that no cause would produce any effect as everything was determined by God.[25]

The Ash‘ariyya theological movement that Abu al-Hasan al-Ash‘ari (d. 332/943) had launched rejected the Mu‘tazilite view that a person is the creator and cause of his own deeds on ground that this amounts to dualism in which man became co-creator

with God. For al-Ash‘ari God’s power is unlimited and His decrees irreversible, therefore all good or evil is the result of God’s decree and fore-ordination, which no human can alter or escape. Nevertheless, al-Ash‘ari, much as he rejected the free will doctrine of Mu‘tazilites, was not willing to endorse the strict determinist views of their opponents. He opted instead for a theory of acquisition (kasb) according to which God creates the human acts as well as the power (qudra) and choice (ikhtiyar) that are exercised in respect thereof, but man acquires them and becomes accordingly liable to punishment or reward for them. Voluntary actions are thus created by God but acquired by the human agent.[26] Creation thus differs from acquisition in that the latter is the outcome of the “created power” of the agent, so that the same action is said to be created by the one and acquired by the other. Man thus acquires credit or discredit for the deed created by God. Since it is impossible that God should acquire it in time, while He is its author eternally.[27]

Ash‘arism remained the dominant school of thought due partly to the excesses of Mu‘tazilism, and the support of many of its prominent defenders including al-Ghazali (505/1111), al-Shahrastani (d. 548/1153), Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1209) and many others.

The Ash‘ariyya denied the Aristotelian notion of causality and provided an alternative version of their own which may be summarised as follows:

The world which means everything other than God, consists of transitory elements, atoms and accidents, created and recreated from one instantaneous period to the next. The world is thus not only created ex-nihilio but it is kept in existence by a process of continuous recreation out of nothing, with God’s power and will being the only cause and explanation for its continuity. What we normally think of as causes and their effects are really creations out of nothing which do not persist after their creation.[28] There is consequently no connection between one moment of creation and the next and therefore no horizontal nexus between things. The Ash‘arites thus atomise matter, space, and time as a result of which the universe becomes a domain of separate and disconnected entities. There is harmony in nature only because it is created and governed by God. Since all things are attributed to God there is no recognition of horizontal or secondary causes.[29]

The theistic view of causality also advances the argument that the universe is an inseparable whole with all of its parts connected with each other. The whole supports its parts and vice versa. Hence the conclusion that causes do not exist in isolation and no phenomenon, however small, can be attributed to contingent and limited causes. Causes can in other words, produce their effects only in a holistic context, and not independently of other relevant factors. A tree can grow, for example, only when a series of factors act together – soil and minerals, water, sunlight, gravity, the solar

system etc. A tree in other words cannot exist without the whole universe, and no single cause can therefore be held accountable for its growth.

In short, since all things are contingent and limited but they all interact in harmony resulting in a faultless order, the conclusion is drawn that they are created and governed by one Absolute Being.[30]

The Shi‘a Imamiya take the intermediate position (al-amr bayn al-amrayn)[31] between determinism and free will. They do not subscribe entirely to the Ash‘arite determinism nor to the Mu‘tazila view that regards man the master of his own destiny. The Imamiya concur with the determinist position in regard to the basic norms of the universe, the awamir takwini, such as the creation of man and the world of animate and inanimate beings where man has no role to play and all is determined by God.[32]

But man has freedom in matters of his personal concern. The work he does, the person he or she chooses to marry, what he eats, when he rests and so on. This degree of freedom is also availed to man in respect of following or transgressing the laws of God concerning the halal and haram. Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq is quoted to have said that “there is neither determinism nor surrender but an intermediate position between the two.”

Ja‘far al-Sadiq elaborated that God has enabled mankind to exercise reason and free will but He is in the meantime watchful over their conduct so that His commands are obeyed and His prohibitions are avoided. What God wills, no other power can hinder and His knowledge and power is all-embracing.[33] Even chosen prophets of God were not in a position to rely totally on their own deeds and plans as the Qur’an recounts what the prophet Shu‘ayb told his people:

I am unable to assure the path of deliverance and success except with God’s help and guidance. I place my trust in Him and to Him I turn. (Hud, 11: 90)

وما توفيقي إلا بالله عليه توكلت و إليه أنيب

This is what the intermediate posture (amr bayn amrayn) actually means.

III. Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd on Causality

For Ibn Sina (Avecenna, d.428/1037) every event has a cause and no event is without it. The chain of causation cannot, however, be traced back indefinitely. Yet to assume that there is a first causeless cause in this chain questions the very basis of causation that every event has a cause. On the other hand, it is also impossible to think of an indefinite regress of causes which starts nowhere. The chain of causation must therefore start in the first causeless cause, that is God, who is a necessary Being. “God is the supreme efficient cause, the necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of the world, the effect”.[34]

As for the nature of causal connection, Ibn Sina observed that even if we cannot actually observe the causal connection, we can over a period of time observe regular connections which lead us to make justifiable inferences about causal connections and future events despite the unobservablity of the causal nexus. Ibn Sina argued that logically this nexus is necessary rather than contingent. Effects do not just happen to be brought about by their causes, nor are they events which now and then follow other events. The effects must follow their causes, because they are necessitated by them, and the whole of creation is a necessitated and necessitating series of events.[35]

Al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) has basically accepted Avicenna’s view of appropriate lawlikeness in nature as an adequate guide for finding out what future natural phenomena are likely to take place, without at the same time accepting the logic of Ibn Sina’s account of the necessity of the causal relation itself. Al-Ghazali argued that causal relations are as they are because of God’s influence over the world’s organisation.[36] He maintained that the nexus between the cause and its effect is not observable and gives this example to illustrate his point. When we see that fire burns cotton, what we see is only the fire and then burnt cotton, that is, what we cannot actually see is the power that causes the burning of the cotton. Al-Ghazali argued:

It is possible for the flame to touch the cotton and yet for no fire to ensue, and for the cotton to burn without it even touching the flame. In denying fire its nature, al-Ghazali was influenced by the Qur’anic account of the miracle of prophet Abraham, who was thrown into fire by his polytheist enemies but was not burnt. It is to be noted, however, that the same Qur’anic verse can be used in support of causality. The verse in question provides: “they said: Burn him and protect your gods. If you do (anything at all)!” We said “O Fire! Be thou cool, and (a means of) safety for Abraham!” (al-Anbiya, 21: 68-69)

   قلنا يا نار كوني بردا و سلاما علي إبراهيم

If indeed fire was not a burning agent, then God would not have commanded the fire to cool.

The philosophers may respond that it is of the nature of fire to burn, and of the cotton to be burnt, and when they come into contact, a conflagration is inevitable. Yet Ghazali points out that observation proves only simultaneity, not causation. Al-Ghazali added that it is God who causes things to exist and continually recreates them if He wishes them to remain in existence. Since the cause and their effects exist for too short a time for a significant connection to take place between them, one can only say that the effect occurs with the cause (ma‘ahu) rather than by it (bihi).[37] It is God’s custom, al-Ghazali maintained, that once an object has been created, He continues to create it over and over again. Thus the uniformity of the physical world is the manifestation of God’s custom not of causation.[38]

Ibn Rushd (d.595/1198) wrote a rejoinder in refutation to al-Ghazali’s (d. 505/1111) Tahafut al-Falasifa (incoherence of philosophers) entitled Tahafut al-Tahafut (Incoherence of the Incoherence) which forcefully refuted al-Ghazali’s critique of the logical status of causality: “to deny the existence of efficient causes which are observable in sensible things is sophistry.” How do we know things, their properties and what image we have of them? Ibn Rushd added that the causal properties of an entity are an essential aspect of our understanding of that entity. If we try to strip things of their causal properties to reveal what “real” substance there may remain, we shall end up with nothing at all. This is because the way we label objects are directly influenced by our grasp of their characteristics vis-à-vis other objects. One who casts doubt on causation damages the quest for knowledge as causation is intimately connected with our knowledge of the world. To quote Ibn Rushd:

Logic implies the existence of causes and effects, and knowledge of these effects can only be rendered perfect through knowledge of their causes. Denial of causation implies the denial of knowledge, and denial of knowledge implies that nothing in this world can really be known, and that what is supposed to be known is nothing but opinion, that neither proof nor definition exists, and that the essential attributes which compose definitions are void.[39]

Ibn Rushd argues that even though the ultimate cause of every phenomenon is God, He has established a secondary cause for every phenomenon. While God is capable of

bringing about satiety without eating, quenching of thirst without drinking and burning without contact with fire, He does not normally do so and when He does so, it becomes a miracle, which is among “divine acts and beyond the reach of human intellect.”[40]

VI. Determinism and Free Will: An Overview of the Sources

The Qur’an and Sunna contain evidence that leads support to both determinism and free will. An exhaustive treatment of these sources is not proposed here but a selection of the relevant passages may be reviewed as follows:

A) Evidence For Determinism

With reference to the rejectors of faith, the Qur’an provides:

God has set a seal on their hearts and hearing, and there is a veil on their eyes. Great is the penalty that they would face (al-Baqarah, 2:7)

ختم الله علي قلوبهم و علي سمعهم و علي أبصارهم غشاوة و لهم عذاب عظيم

The prophet Noah addressed the rejectors among his people, as the Qur’an recounts:

My counsel will not benefit you, much as I desire to give you good counsel, if God has willed to leave you in your misguidance. (Hud, 11: 34)

لا ينفع نصحي إن أردت أن أنصح لكم إن كان الله يريد أن يغويكم

In an address to the Prophet Muhammad, it is provided:

Will you save from the fire of Hell one against whom the decree of punishment is justly enacted? (al-Zumar, 39: 19).

أ فمن حق عليه كلمة العذاب أ فأنت تنقذ من في النار

Say nothing will happen to us except what God has decreed for us. He is our protector, and in God let the believers put their trust. (al-Tawbah, 9:51)

قل لن يصبنا إلا ما كتب الله لنا هو مولنا و علي اله فليتوكل المؤمنون

God will surely accomplish His purpose. For all things, He has appointed a due proportion. (al-Talaq, 65: 3)

إن الله بالغ أمره قد جعل الله لكل شيء قدرا

Al-Bukhari has recorded the following hadiths:

Mu‘awiya wrote to Mughira bin Shu‘ba : “write to me what you heard the Prophet s.a.w. might have said after his prayers (salah)”. Mughira replied: I heard the Prophet saying after the prayer: … “O Allah! None can withhold what you give, and none can give what you withhold and the fortune of a man of fortune is of no use before you.”[41]

كتب معاوية إلى المغيرة: أكتب إلي ما سمعت النبي صلي الله عليه و سلم يقول خلف الصلاة. فأملي علي المغيرة قال: سمعت النبي صلعم يقول خلف الصلاة: لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له.

اللهم لا مانع لما أعطيت. و لا معطي لما منعت ، و لا ينفع ذا الجد منك الجد

Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet, peace be on him, said:

In a discussion that occurred between Adam and Moses, peace be on them both, (in the presence of God) Moses said to Adam: God created you by His Hand and breathed into you of His spirit, (and made) the angels prostrate to you; God then admitted you in Paradise and then you brought down the people, because of your error, to this earth! Adam replied to Moses: you are the chosen of God, He honoured you with His speech and revealed the scripture to you; how long was it that God created the Torah before He created me. Moses replied: Forty years. Then Adam asked: Did you find in it the verse (and Adam disobeyed his Lord, so he was led astray)? Moses replied “Yes”. Adam then told Moses: You blame me for an act I did which God had prescribed for me to do forty years before He created me. The Prophet (Muhammad) then said “Adam reasoned with Moses as such” (he said this three time).[42]

According to another hadith, Hudhayfa b. Asid reported that the Pprophet, peace be on him, said:

Two angels visit every foetus in the womb upon completion of forty or forty five nights and say: O Lord! Is it misguided or righteous? Then they write (the answer). Then they ask: O Lord! Is it male or female? Then they write (the answer). They also write its deeds, wealth and means of livelihood, and time of death. Then they roll off the parchment to which nothing is added nor detracted afterwards.[43]

عن حذيفة بن أسيد يبلغ به النبي صلعم قال: يدخل الملك علي النطفة بعد ما تستقر في الرحم بأربعين أو خمسة و أربعين ليلة فيقول: يا رب أ شقي او سعيد؟ فيكتبان ، فيقول ، أي رب أ ذكر أو أنثي؟ فيكتبان، و يكتب أثره و أجله و رزقه، ثم تطوي الصحف ، فلا يزاد فيها و لا ينقص

The substance of this is confirmed in another hadith wherein the Prophet has also made a reference to the Qur’an:

Abi’l Aswad al-Da’ali and ‘Imran b. Hasin reported that two men from Mazayna came and asked the prophet, peace be on him, O messenger of God! What would you say concerning the people who work today and exert themselves hard – is it their destiny which is predetermined in advance, or what they do is the response they give to the message that is delivered to them by their Prophet…? The Prophet, peace be on him, said: no, it is predetermined and decided in advance, and this is proven in the Book of God, where it is declared ‘by the sun and its brightness… and the soul that is endowed in perfection and awareness (or conscience) as to its misdeeds and its righteousness’ (Qur’ an, 91:1, 7-8)[44]

The Qur’anic ayah quoted in this hadith evidently means that God makes the soul and gives it order and proportion in order to adapt it for the particular circumstance in which it has to live its earthly life. God inspires into it an understanding of right and wrong and the circumstances in which it may be placed.

Abu Hurayra reported that some of the Qurayshite disbelievers were arguing with the Prophet, peace be on him, concerning predestination (qadar) and it was on this occasion that the Qur’anic verse was revealed ‘Verily We have created all things in proportion and measure. And our Command is but a single act, like the twinkling of an eye’ (al-Qamar, 54: 49-50).[45]  انا كل شيء خلقنه بقدر ، و ما أمرنا إلا واحدة كلمح البصر

The Qur’anic verse that the Prophet quoted here indicates that the proportion and measurement in question may to human beings seems gradual, unfolding over time, but in God’s command, the plan, the word, the execution and consequence are but a single momentary act. The proportion and measurement is written in the preserved tablet (al-lawh al-mahfuz).[46]

B) Evidence in Support of Freewill (Ikhtiyar)

“Freewill” is not, perhaps, an accurate translation of “ikhtiyar,” for “free will” is not focused on the element of choice, which is central to ikhtiyar, and tends to look in the direction of unbounded freedom, which is not quite accurate to be read into ikhtiyar. Be that as it may, the Qur’an and Sunna do not actually use the word ikhtiyar, yet they contain much that can be quoted in support of man’s liberty to determine his act and conduct, and accept or reject the guidance that is conveyed to him. To quote the Qur’an:

One who commits evil and wrongs his own soul, but then seeks God’s forgiveness, he will find God Forgiving and Merciful. Any one who commits a sin, commits it against his own soul. And God is All-knowing, All-wise. (al-Nisa, 4:111)

و من يعمل سوءا أو يظلم نفسه ثم يستغفر الله يجد الله غفورا رحيما. و من يكسب إثما فإنما يكسبه علي نفسه

Say, that truth has come from your Lord, let him who will, believe, and let him who will reject. (al-Kahf, 18:29)

قل الحق من ربكم فمن شاء فليؤمن و من شاء فليكفر

We have shown man the path (to truth and deliverance); whether he be grateful or ungrateful (rests on his will) (al-Insan, 76:3).

انا هديناه السبيل إما شاكرا و إما كفورا.

Certainly you are accountable for what you do. (al-Nahl, 16:93).

و لتسألن عما كنتم تعملون

There shall be no compulsion in religion. Guidance has been made clear from misguidance, one who rejects evil and believes in God has verily clung to a firm hand-hold …(al-Baqara, 2:256).

لا إكراه في الدين، قد تبين الرشد من الغي، فمن يكفر بالطاغوت و يؤمن بالله فقد استمسك بالعروة الوثقي

And this is My straightened path. Follow it and follow not paths that lead you away from this path. Thus God advises you that you may be righteous (al-An ‘am, 6:153).

و إن هذا صرا طي مستقيما فاتبعوه و لا تتبعوا السبل فتفرق بكم عن سبيله. ذلكم وصاكم به لعلكم تتقون

Truly God will not change the condition of a people until they change it themselves (al-Ra‘d, 13:11).

إن الله لا يغير ما بقوم حتى يغيروا ما بأنفسهم

This revelation is a reminder, whoever wishes (to take it) will take a straight) path to his Lord (al-Insan, 76:29).

إن هذه تذكرة فمن شاء اتخذ إلي ربه سبيلا

Enlightenment (basa’ir) has come from your Lord to open your eyes. He who sees does so for his own good, and he who shuts his eyes does so to his own detriment (al-An ‘am, 6:104).

قد جاءكم بصائر من ربكم، فمن ابصر فلنفسه، و من عمي فعليها

Whoever does the smallest good deed shall experience the result of it, and whoever does the slightest evil deed shall experience the result of it. (al-Zilzal, 99:7-8).

و من يعمل مثقال ذرة خيرا يره، و من يعمل مثقال ذرة شرا يره

Evidence also shows that God does not stand in the way of the miscreants: He surely gives them the power and capacity to do evil, just as He gives them the ability to do good and smoothens their path (fa-sa-nuyassiruhu li’l yusra… fa-sa-nuyassiruhu li’l ‘usra) (al-Layl, 92:7,10).

The Qur’an also proclaims that those who opposed the prophets and rebelled interpreted destiny and qadar in a determinist sense. This assertion is denied in several places as follows:

The associators will say: had God willed, we and our ancestors would not have been associators… say do you have knowledge of this to show us. You only follow your conjecture and you say but lies (al-An‘am, 6:149) (see also al-A‘raf, 7:28 and al-Zukhruf, 43:20-21).

سيقول الذين أشركوا لو شاء الله ما أشركنا و لا آباؤنا   … قل هل عندكم من علم فتخرجوه لنا إن تتبعون إلا الظن و إن أنتم إلا تخرصون

The worshippers of false deities said: if Allah had so willed, we wold not have worshipped aught but Him – neither we nor our fathers… Those who went before them also said this. But what can the messengers do other than conveying a clear message? (al-Nahl, 16:35)

و قال الذين أشركوا لو شاء الله ما عبدنا من دونه من شيء، نحن و لا آباءنا و لا حرمنا من دونه من شيء. كذلك فعل الذين من قبلهم، فهل علي الرسل إلا البلاغ المبين

If it is said (by the transgressor): if only God had guided me, I would certainly have been among the righteous … The reply will be: no, My signs came to you, but you rejected them, became arrogant and became one of the disbelievers. (al-Zumar, 29:57,59).

أو تقول لو أن الله هداني لكنت من المتقين. بلي قد جاءتك آياتي فكذبت بها و استكبرت و كنت من الكافرين

V. Determinism and Free Will: A Roundup of Modern Opinion

Whereas much of the early discourse on causality, predestination and free will occurred in sectarian contexts., modern opinion on these issues does not, on the whole, seem to relate to the kalam dialectics of earlier times. This is shown by our review of modern opinion as follows.

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897) rejected as exaggerated the views of both the determinist (Jabriyya) and those of the western critics of Islam who assumed erroneously, as if determinism was the normative and generally accepted doctrine. Al-Afghani noted that none of the prevailing groups of Muslims, whether the Sunnis or Shi‘ah, Zaydi, Isma‘ili or Wahhabi believe in pure determinism and that the Jabriyya as a sect did not leave a lasting impact among Muslims. The Muslims generally subscribe to the belief that man is partially free within the meaning of the doctrine of acquisition or kasb. Al-Afghani stressed that the critics often failed to distinguish between the doctrine of jabr (compulsion) and that of qada wa qadar (predestination). Belief in qada wa qadar is a part of the dogma of Islam, the belief that all things in the universe happened by sequence of cause and effect – God Himself being the first cause, the human will and decision are a necessary part of that sequence.[47]

Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) believed in predestination with regard to the mores, temperament, and characteristic behaviour of nations: God created them the way they are. But as far as individual behaviour is concerned, ‘Abduh refuted the doctrine of jabr and said that the Qur’an condemned it and affirmed acquisition (al-kasb) and free will (al-ikhtiyar) in no less than sixty four verses. The Prophet of Islam also endorsed this in his words and conduct.[48]

The Indian Reformist thinker Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (d. 1898) believed in a version of predestination as he held that man’s acts flow from his physical constitution, and men are not, therefore free to act and behave absolutely as they like. If a foolish person and a wise person could exchange their physical constitution, then the foolish person would act like the wise person and vice versa, which is normally not possible. Scientists who studied human behaviour found that man lacks freedom of will in regard to his attachment to social, national, and cultural norms, and also with regard to the training and education he receives.[49]

Shibli Nu‘mani a colleague and contemporary of Sir Syed also held a partially determinist view on account of causation. Generally, the people say that desire and intention depend on our choice. But this is erroneous. When all the causes leading to an action converge on one point, it is impossible that the desire to commit such an action should remain in abeyance. Therefore our desire itself is not within our control. If we chose a certain course of action, our choice is also not free.[50]

Syed Ameer Ali (1928) too spoke in support partially of determinism and quoted Ibn Rushd as saying that our actions depend partly on our free will and partly on extraneous causes. We are free to wish and to act in a particular way but our will is always restrained and determined by exterior causes. These causes spring from the general laws of nature.[51]

Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) spoke in support of the human ego and the inner dynamics of the human will. He projected a forceful role of the ego and its interplay with extraneous causes and wrote that the causal chain is ‘itself an artificial construction of the ego for its own purposes’.[52] When attracted by the forces around

him man has the power to shape and direct them; when thwarted by them, he has ‘the capacity to build a much vaster world in the depths of his own inner being.’ Man shapes his own destiny as well as that of the universe around him ‘now adjusting himself to its forces, now by putting the whole of his energy to mould its forces to his own ends and purposes.’[53]

Fazalur Rahman upheld a middle course between free will and determinism. Taqdir according to Fazlur Rahman is to be understood in terms of powers, potentialities and dispositions rather than preordained events and happenings as it is popularly understood. Events in the world are never preordained by God, nor indeed by physical forces. That an event shall occur at a certain time remains an open possibility among other alternatives, until it is actually caused. This is because what is determined are not events, but potencies, powers and forces. Thus it is determined that oxygen has a potency that when mixed with hydrogen in a certain proportion and under certain conditions the result will be water. The actual events of their being turned into water at a definite space and time is never predetermined and depends on a host of factors.[54]

As can be seen, there is a wider support for ikhtiyar and only a partial support for determinism. The views that we examined tend to convey the concern that the whole concept of religious guidance would otherwise be faced with internal contradiction in a predominantly deterministic context and outlook. The wider support for ikhtiyar and the limited recognition for predestination and determinism that we have seen here are, I believe, in harmony with the balance of the evidence that I have examined in the Qur’an. The modernist stance on these issues also seems to be more balanced and reasonably free of some of the exaggerations of the earlier scholastic discourse.

VII. Conclusion

The Mu‘tazila upheld the principle of causality and considered human freedom as a necessary postulate both of man’s moral responsibility and of God’s justice. They vindicated God’s justice which the determinists had threatened and which the Qur’an had clearly upheld. By reducing human action and the principle of causality to mechanical occurrences, the determinists made a mockery both of man’s responsibility and divine justice. The Mu‘tazila tried to correct this imbalance but they too went so far as to embrace the view that it is obligatory on God to reward the virtuous and punish the deviant and that He cannot do otherwise.[55] Contrary to this, the Ash‘arites believed that reward and punishment are God’s absolute prerogatives; He rewards whom He wills and punishes whom He wills.

The Mu‘tazila were also emphatic on the rationality of God’s ways, and contended that good and evil are not necessarily rooted in the dictates of God, as the traditionists and the Ash‘arite had held, but could be established by reason. From this premise, the Mu‘tazila then went against the accepted dogma to argue that God cannot enjoin what is contrary to reason and the welfare of His creatures as this would compromise His Justice and Wisdom. Thus the Mu‘tazila could not reconcile themselves with the Omnipotence of God.[56] Both the Mu‘tazila and their predecessors, the Qadariyya, were initially prompted, not so much by freethinking, but by the demand of pious thought, and “religious conscience against an unworthy conception of God and of God’s relation to His servants.”[57]

What hurt the Mu‘tazila cause most was its failure to appreciate the limits of reason. They also showed intolerance of opponents. Intervention by Umayyad rulers to impose the Mu‘tazila view on the populace led to distortion and indulgence in unproductive, hair-splitting debates, which had no basis in the Qur’an and Sunna and were plainly excessive.[58]

The Ash‘arite support for rational proofs and syllogism also prompted them into positions that deviated from the path of orthodoxy. For the major schools of law, there was little to chose between Mu‘tazila and Ash‘arites. Consequently the kalam itself became the target of protest.

Al-Shafi‘i (d. 205) denounced the kalam advocates as having “forsaken the Qur’an and Sunna” and deserve public condemnation.[59] Ibn Taymiyah (d. 728/1328) observed that the philosophical movement had become totally discredited. He even said that “there is no philosophy in Islam” and that the philosophers are misguided! The reason for this was not their views on causality, but their indulgent speculative thought. Ibn Taymiyya upheld causality and criticised the Ash‘ariyya for their denial of efficient cause and said that those who deny them violate the Qur’an, the Sunna and consensus (ijma‘) of the pious predecessors (salaf).[60] Ibn Khuldun (d. 808/1406) who was a rationalist himself devoted a chapter on “Refutation of Philosophy” in his Muqaddima and wrote that the philosophers did not acknowledge their limitations and did not realise that the universe was too vast and complex to be comprehended entirely by human reason and senses.[61]

If there were no free choice for man, the whole concept of man’s religious accountability would be unjust. The oppressive tyrant would deserve no blame and the just would merit no praise, because responsibility has meaning only within the sphere of what is possible and attainable.

However the affirmation of free will does not necessarily affect the all-embracing attribute of God’s power, because He has willed that we should freely take our own decisions, in accordance with the norms and law He has ordained.

The argument that affirmation of man’s free will amounts to duality and a challenge to the sovereignty of God is clearly exaggerated. For man’s will does not set itself up in opposition to the divine will, nor is man’s will contrary to what God desires. For it is God who makes free will a part of man, and it is He who bestows it upon human beings.

The mistake made by both the determinists and the protagonists of unlimited free will is that they have imagined man to have only two possible roads before him: either all his acts must be attributed exclusively to God, so that he then loses all freedom and turns into a robot, or else that he is obliged to accept that his volition inheres in an independent and unbounded essence, which entails limitation on God’s power.

From one point of view, man’s deeds can be attributed to him, and from another point of view to God. Man has a direct and immediate relationship with his own deeds, while God’s relationship with those deeds is indirect. Both forms of relationship are real and neither is necessarily antithetic to the other. The fact that the Qur’an provides some evidence for all of this is perhaps indicative of the validity of a conciliatory approach to the understanding of these issues. One can either read this evidence and try to reconcile and understand it, or to read irreconcilable conflicts therein.

Man in Islam does not possess absolute free will that would enable him to act outside the parameters of God’s will, nor is he free to act outside the norms of causation. Man is also not a prisoner, in the meantime, to a mechanism that prevents him from choosing his own path in life, nor is he a slave, like an animal, to his instincts. Attribution of man’s volitional acts to God is unwarranted. In all of the Qur’anic verses that are concerned with God’s will, there is none which attributes man’s volitional acts to the divine will.[62]

Our review of the evidence has also shown that predestination and qadar has a recognised place in the divine order, human life, and universe. It is perhaps a matter largely of faith, and human knowledge, it seems is incapable of unraveling its mystery. The Prophet’s instruction on this for the Muslims is to “restrain from expatiation when there is  a mention of qadar (idha dhukira’l qadaru fa’msiku),”

and general opinion among Muslim scholars has upheld this position, not only because the Prophet has instructed so, but also because it is tantamount to fathoming the unfathomable, something which is beyond human capacity.[63]

The Qur’an has clearly stated, in more than one place, that God has shown man the path to salvation but man is not compelled to follow it, and when he does reject guidance, he does so to his own detriment.

There is, moreover, much support in the Qur’an and Sunna for supplication and prayer (do‘a) that encourages the believer to solicit God’s help and benediction in all matters of concern to him.[64] The Qur’an also provides, in numerous places, authority and support for repentance (tawba) and God’s willingness, even pleasure, to grant it to those who desire to change themselves for the better.[65] Thus it would appear that God leaves open the possibility of change in the human predicament when the human agent is ready and earnest to pursue it. The critic may say again, perhaps, that supplication and repentance could be read within the purview of predestination. Yet it would be difficult to accept such an assertion as it would render both meaningless. The Qur’an can hardly be expected to take emphatic positions on the efficacy and virtue of do‘a and tawbah in so many places and then to close the door to both through unmitigated foreordination and determinism.

By Mohammad Hashim Kamali, International Islamic University Malaysia.

References

[1] Cf. Richard Taylor, “Causation”, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, New York: Macmillan Publishing co. 1967, vol. 1, p. 56; Michael E. Marmura, “Efficient Causality in Avecinna”, in ed. Michael E. Marmura, Islamic Theology and Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York, 1984, p. 177. Among Muslim philosophers, Abu Yusuf Ya ‘qub bin Ishaq al-Kindi (d. 252/866) was the first to discuss the four types of causes and pay tribute to Aristotle’s pioneering work on it. Cf. Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970, p. 70. See also Yamine Bouguenaya Mermer, Induction, Science and Causation, Some Critical Reflections, Occasional paper 32, Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1996, pp. 12-13.

[65] Cf. al-Tawbah, 9:5 & 11; al-Ma’idah, 5:39; al-Furqan, 25:71; al-Ahzab, 33:73

Photo Credit

Detail from ‘The Meeting of the Theologians’ by Abd Allah Musawwir, mid-16th century. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Initially, scientific inquiry was directed by everyday practices of Islam. For example, developments in astronomy were influenced by the fact that the times of Muslim prayer were defined astronomically and its direction was defined geographically. In the later stage, the quest for truth for its own sake became the norm, leading to numerous new discoveries and innovations. Muslim scientists did not recognize disciplinary boundaries between the ‘two cultures’ of science and humanities, and individual scholars tended as a general rule to be polymaths. Recently, Muslim scholars have started to develop a contemporary Islamic philosophy of science by combining such basic Islamic concepts as ‘ilm (knowledge), khilafa (trusteeship of nature) and istisla (public interest) in an integrated science policy framework.

1. Science and metaphysics

The Muslim inspiration for the study of nature comes straight from the Qur’an. The Qur’an specifically and repeatedly asks Muslims to investigate systematically natural phenomena, not simply as a vehicle for understanding nature but also as a means for getting close to God. In Surah 10, for example, we read:

He it is who has made the sun a [source of] radiant light and the moon a light [reflected], and has determined for it phases so that you might know how to compute years and to measure [time]…in the alternative of night and day, and in all that God has created in the heavens and on earth, there are messages indeed for people who are conscious of Him.

(Surah 10: 5-6)

The Qur’an also devotes about one-third of its verses to describing the virtues of reason. Scientific inquiry, based on reason, is thus seen in Islam as a form of worship. Reason and revelation are complementary and integrated methods for the pursuit of truth.

The philosophy of science in classical Islam is a product of the fusion of this metaphysics with Greek philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Ibn Sina’s theory of human knowledge which, following al-Farabi, transfers the Qur’anic scheme of revelation to Greek philosophy. In the Qur’an, the Creator addresses one man – the Prophet – through the agency of the archangel Gabriel; in Ibn Sina’s Neoplatonic scheme, the divine word is transmitted through reason and understanding to any, and every, person who cares to listen. The result is an amalgam of rationalism and ethics. For Muslim scholars and scientists, values are objective and good and evil are descriptive characteristics of reality which are no less ‘there’ in things than are their other qualities, such as shape and size. In this framework, all knowledge, including the knowledge of God, can be acquired by reason alone. Humanity has power to know as well as to act and is thus responsible for its just and unjust actions. What this philosophy entailed both in terms of the study of nature and shaping human behaviour was illustrated by Ibn Tufayl in his intellectual novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan. Hayy is a spontaneously generated human who is isolated on an island. Through his power of observations and the use of his intellect, Hayy discovers general and particular facts about the structure of the material and spiritual universe, deduces the existence of God and arrives at a theological and political system.

While Mu’tazilite scholars had serious philosophic differences with their main opponents, the Ash’arite theologians, both schools agreed on the rational study of nature. In his al-Tamhid, Abu Bakr al-Baqillani defines science as ‘the knowledge of the object, as it really is’. While reacting to the Mu’tazilite infringement on the domains of faith, the Ash’arites conceded the need for objective and systematic study of nature. Indeed, some of the greatest scientists in Islam, such as Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1039), who discovered the basic laws of optics, and al-Biruni (d. 1048), who measured the circumference of the earth and discussed the rotation of the earth on its axis, were supporters of Ash’arite theology.

The overall concern of Muslim scientists was the delineation of truth. As Ibn al-Haytham declared, ‘truth is sought for its own sake’, and al-Biruni confirmed in the introduction to his al-Qanun al-mas’udi: ‘I do not shun the truth from whatever source it comes.’ However, there were disputes about the best way to rational truth. For Ibn Sina, general and universal questions came first and led to experimental work. He begins his al-Qanun fi’l-tibb (Canons of Medicine), which was a standard text in the West up to the eighteenth century, with a general discussion on the theory of drugs. For al-Biruni, however, universals came out of practical, experimental work; theories are formulated after discoveries. But either way, criticism was the key to progress towards truth. As Ibn al-Haytham wrote, ‘it is natural to everyone to regard scientists favourably…. God, however, has not preserved the scientist from error and has not safeguarded science from shortcomings and faults’ (see Sabra 1972). This is why scientists so often disagree amongst themselves. Those concerned with science and truth, Ibn al-Haytham continued, ‘should turn themselves into hostile critics’ and should criticize ‘from every point of view and in all aspects’. In particular, the flaws in the work of one’s predecessors should be ruthlessly exposed. The ideas of Ibn al-Haytham, al-Biruni and Ibn Sina, along with numerous other Muslim scientists, laid the foundations of the ‘scientific spirit’ as we have come to know it.

2. Methodology

The ‘scientific method’, as it is understood today, was first developed by the Muslim scientists. Supporters of both Mu’tazilism and Ash’arism placed a great deal of emphasis on systematic observation and experimentation. The insistence on accurate observation is amply demonstrated in the zij, the literature of astronomical handbooks and tables. These were constantly updated, with scientists checking and correcting the work of previous scholars. In medicine, Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Razi’s detailed and highly accurate clinical observations in the early third century ah (ninth century ad) provide us with a universal model. Al-Razi was the first to observe accurately the symptoms of smallpox and described many ‘new’ syndromes. However, it was not just accurate observation that was important; equally significant was the clarity and precision by which the observations are described, as was demonstrated by Ibn Sina in his writings.

The emphasis on model construction and theory building can be seen in the category of Islamic astronomical literature known as ‘ilm al-haya, or ‘science of the structure (of the universe)’, which consists of general exposition of principles underlying astronomical theory. It was on the strength of both accurate observation and model construction that Islamic astronomy launched a rigorous attack on what was perceived to be a set of imperfections in Ptolemaic astronomy. Ibn al-Haytham was the first to declare categorically that the arrangements proposed for planetary motions in the Almagest were ‘false’. Ibn Shatir (d. 1375) and the astronomers at the famous observatory in Maragha, Adharbayjan, built in the thirteenth century by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, developed the Tusi couple and a theorem for the transformation of eccentric models into epicyclic ones. It was this mathematical model that Copernicus used to develop his notion of heliocentricity, which played an important part in the European ‘scientific revolution’.

Apart from the exact sciences, the most appropriate and interesting area in which theoretical work played an essential role was medicine. Muslim physicians attempted to improve the quality of materia medica and their therapeutic uses through continued theoretical development. Emphasis was also placed on developing a precise terminology and ensuring the purity of drugs, a concern that led to a number of early chemical and physical procedures. Since Muslim writers were excellent organizers of knowledge, their purely pharmacological texts were themselves a source for the development of theories. Evolution of theories and discovery of new drugs linked the growth of Islamic medicine to chemistry, botany, zoology, geology and law, and led to extensive elaborations of Greek classifications. Pharmacological knowledge thus became more diversified, and produced new types of pharmacological literature. As this literature considered its subject from a number of different disciplinary perspectives and a great variety of new directions, there developed new ways of looking at pharmacology; new areas were opened up for further exploration and more detailed investigation. Paper-making made publication more extensive and cheaper than use of parchment and papyrus, and this in turn made scientific knowledge much more accessible to students.

While Muslim scientists placed considerable faith in scientific method, they were also aware of its limitations. Even a strong believer in mathematical realism such as al-Biruni argued that the method of inquiry was a function of the nature of investigation: different methods, all equally valid, were required to answer different types of questions. Al-Biruni himself had recourse to a number of methods. In his treatise on mineralogy, Kitab al-jamahir (Book of Precious Stones), he is the most exact of experimental scientists. However, in the introduction to his ground-breaking study India he declares that ‘to execute our project, it has not been possible to follow the geometric method’; he therefore resorts to comparative sociology.

The work of a scholar of the calibre and prolificity of al-Biruni inevitably defies simple classification. He wrote on mineralogy, geography, medicine, astrology and a whole range of topics which dealt with the dating of Islamic festivals. Al-Biruni is a specific product of a philosophy of science that integrates metaphysics with physics, does not attribute to either a superior or inferior position, and insists that both are worthy of study and equally valid. Moreover, the methods of studying the vast creation of God – from the movement of the stars and planets to the nature of diseases, the sting of an ant, the character of madness, the beauty of justice, the spiritual yearning of humanity, the ecstasy of a mystic – are all equally valid and shape understanding in their respective areas of inquiry. In both its philosophy and methodology, Islam has sought a complete synthesis of science and religion.

Polymaths such as al-Biruni, al-Jahiz, al-Kindi, Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Razi, Ibn Sina, al-Idrisi, Ibn Bajja, Omar Khayyam, Ibn Zuhr, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd, al-Suyuti and thousands of other scholars are not an exception but the general rule in Muslim civilization. The Islamic civilization of the classical period was remarkable for the number of polymaths it produced. This is seen as a testimony to the homogeneity of Islamic philosophy of science and its emphasis on synthesis, interdisciplinary investigations and multiplicity of methods.

3. Revival attempts

At the end of the twentieth century, scholars, scientists and philosophers throughout the Muslim world are trying to formulate a contemporary version of the Islamic philosophy of science. Two dominant movements have emerged. The first draws its inspiration from Sufi mysticism and argues that the notions of ‘tradition’ and the ‘sacred’ should constitute the core of Islamic approach to science. The second argues that issues of science and values in Islam must be treated within a framework of concepts that shape the goals of a Muslim society. Ten fundamental Islamic concepts are identified as constituting the framework within which scientific inquiry should be carried out, four standing alone and three opposing pairs: tawhid (unity), khilafa (trusteeship), ‘ibada (worship), ‘ilm (knowledge), halal (praiseworthy) and haram (blameworthy), ‘adl (justice) and zulm (tyranny), and istisla (public interest) and dhiya (waste). It is argued that, when translated into values, this system of Islamic concepts embraces the nature of scientific inquiry in its totality; it integrates facts and values and institutionalizes a system of knowing that is based on accountability and social responsibility. It is too early to say whether either of these movements will bear any real fruit.

ZIAUDDIN SARDAR
Copyright © 1998, Routledge.

References and further reading

Bakar, O. (1996) ‘Science’, in S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman, History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Routledge, ch. 53, 926-46. (Discussion of some of the main thinkers and principles of science in Islam.)

* Dani, A.H. (1973) Al-Biruni’s India, Islamabad: University of Islamabad Press. (Al-Biruni’s research on the people and country of India.)

Fakhry, M. (1983) A History of Islamic Philosophy, London: Longman, 2nd edn. (A general introduction to the role of reason in Islamic thought.)

Hill, D. (1993) Islamic Science and Engineering, Edinburgh: EdinburghUniversity Press. (The classic work on the practical aspects of Islamic science.)

Hourani, G. (1975) Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science, Albany, NY: StateUniversity of New York Press. (An important collection of articles on particular theoretical issues in the philosophy of science.)

Hourani, G. (1985) Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. (A discussion of the clash between reason and tradition in Islamic culture as a whole, especially in ethics.)

* Ibn Tufayl (before 1185) Hayy ibn Yaqzan (The Living Son of the Vigilant), trans. S. Oakley, The Improvement of Human Reason Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokhdan, Zurich: Georg Olms Verlag, 1983. (This translation of Hayy ibn Yaqzan was first published in 1708.)

Kirmani, Z. (1992) ‘An Outline of Islamic Framework for a Contemporary Science’, Journal of Islamic Science 8 (2): 55-76. (An attempt at conceptualizing modern science from an Islamic point of view.)

Leaman, O. (1985) An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. (A general approach to the role of philosophy in Islam.)

Nasr, S.H. (1993) The Need for a Sacred Science, Richmond: Curzon Press. (An argument for the significance of religion in any understanding of science.)

Pines, S. (1964) ‘Ibn al-Haytham’s Critique of Ptolemy’, in Actes du Xe Congrès internationale d’histoire des sciences, Paris: Ithaca. (One of the most important works in Islamic astronomy.)

* Sabra, A.I. (1972) ‘Ibn al-Haytham’, in C.C. Gillispie (ed.) Dictionary of Scientific Biography, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 6th edn. (An excellent introduction to the thought and work of Ibn al-Haytham.)

Said, H.M. (ed.) (1979) Al-Biruni Commemorative Volume: Proceedings of the International Congress held in Pakistan, November 26-December 12, 1973, Karachi: HamdardAcademy. (Contains numerous papers discussing all the major works of al-Biruni.)

Saliba, G. (1991) ‘The Astronomical Tradition of Maragha: A Historical Survey and Prospects for Future Research’, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 1 (1): 67-100. (A study of a particularly well-developed period of astronomical research in the Islamic world.)

Sardar, Z. (1989) Explorations in Islamic Science, London: Mansell. (Some contemporary debates on the nature of Islamic science.)

Young, M.J.L., Latham, J.D. and Serjeant, R.B. (1990) Religion, Learning and Sciences in the Abbasid Period, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. (The leading work on the most important period for science in the Islamic world.)

Photo Credit

Courtesy of Zarah Hussain.

Science and Islam are intimately linked. This sounds odd. First, because we normally think of religion as harmfully hostile to science. Wasn’t there a long and protracted war between science and Christianity? Did the Church not prosecute Galileo? But this “war” between science and religion was purely a western affair. There is no counterpart in Islam of such mutual hostilities. Second, science and technology are conspicuous in Muslim societies largely by their absence. It is this state of affairs that has led many – including at a recent seminar in Rome, George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury – to conclude that Islam is anti-science.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Islam not only places a high premium on science, but positively encourages its pursuit. Indeed, Islam considers it as essential for human survival.

The Koran devotes almost one-third of its contents to singing the praises of scientific knowledge, objective inquiry and serious study of the material world. The first Koranic word revealed to the Prophet Muhammad is: “Read.” It refers to reading the “signs of God” or the systematic study of nature. It is a basic tenet of Muslim belief that the material world is full of signs of God; and these signs can be deciphered only through rational and objective inquiry. “Acquire the knowledge of all things,” the Koran advises its readers; “. . . say: ‘O my Lord! increase me in knowledge”. One of the most frequently cited verses of the Koran reads:

Surely in the heavens and earth, there are signs for the believers;

And in your creation, and the crawling things He has scattered abroad, there are signs for a people having sure faith;

And in the alternation of night and day, and the provision God sends down from heaven, and therewith revives the earth after it is dead, and the turning about of the winds, there are signs for a people who understand. (45:3-5)

The sayings of the Prophet Muhammad reinforce these teachings. Islamic culture, he insisted, was a knowledge-based culture. He valued science over extensive worship and declared: “An hour’s study of nature is better than a year’s prayer.” This is why he directed his followers to “listen to the words of the scientist and instil unto others the lessons of science”.

The religious impulse propelled science in Muslim civilisation during the classical period, from the eighth to the 15th centuries. The need to determine accurate times for daily prayers and the direction of Mecca from anywhere in the Muslim world, and to establish the correct date for the start of the fasting month of Ramadan as well as the demands of the lunar Islamic calendar (which required seeing the new moon clearly), led to intense interest in celestial mechanics, optical and atmospheric physics, and spherical trigonometry. Muslim inheritance laws led to the development of algebra. The religious requirement of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca generated intense interest in geography, map-making and navigational tools.

Given the special emphasis that Islam placed on learning and inquiry, and the great responsibility that Muslim states took on themselves to assist in this endeavour, it was natural for Muslims to master ancient knowledge. At the instigation of powerful patrons, teams of translators lovingly translated Greek thought and learning into Arabic. But Muslims were not content with slavishly copying Greek knowledge; they tried to assimilate Greek teachings and applied Greek principles to their own problems, discovering new principles and methods. Scholars such as al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd subjected Greek philosophy to detailed critical scrutiny.

At the same time, serious attention was given to the empirical study of nature. Experimental science, as we understand it today, began in the Muslim civilisation. “Scientific method” evolved out of the work of such scientists as Jabir Ibn Hayyan, who laid the foundations of chemistry in the late eighth century, and Ibn al-Haytham, who established optics as an experimental science in the tenth century. Medicine and surgery, as we know them today, evolved in the Muslim civilisation. Ibn Sina’s Canons of Medicine was a standard text in Europe until the 19th century. Many surgical instruments, such as scalpels, midwifery hooks for pulling out foetuses and instruments for eye surgery, were first developed by Muslims. From astronomy to zoology, there was hardly a field of study that Muslim scientists did not pursue vigorously or make an original contribution to.

The nature and extent of this scientific enterprise can be illustrated with four institutions considered typical of “the Golden Age of Islam”: scientific libraries, universities, hospitals and instruments for scientific observation (particularly astronomical instruments such as celestial globes, astrolabes, sundials and observatories). The most famous library was the “House of Science”, founded in Baghdad by the Abbasid ruler Caliph al-Mamun, which played a decisive role in spreading scientific knowledge throughout the Islamic empire. In Spain, the library of Caliph Hakam II of Cordoba had a stock of 400,000 volumes. Similar libraries existed from Cairo and Damascus to places as far off as Samarkand and Bukhara.

The first university in the world was established at al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo in 970. It was followed by a host of other universities in such cities as Fez and Timbuktu. Like universities, hospitals – where treatment was mostly provided free of charge – were institutions for training and for theoretical and empirical research. The Abodi hospital in Baghdad and the al-Kabir al-Nuri hospital in Damascus acquired worldwide reputations for their research output.

Similarly, there was a string of observatories dotted throughout the Muslim world; the most influential one was established by the celebrated astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, who developed the “Tusi couple”- a mathematical device that helped Copernicus to formulate his theory that the earth moved around the sun – at Maragha in Azerbaijan.

All this is, sadly, in stark contrast to the standing of science and technology in the Muslim world today. Apart from the notable exceptions of Abdus Salam, the Pakistani Nobel laureate, and Ahmed Zewail, the Egyptian scientist who won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1999, modern Muslim societies have produced hardly any scientists of international repute. Scientific research has a very low priority in most Muslim states. The little that is undertaken is usually associated with defence and confined to developing nuclear or other weapons. Not a single university of international renown can be found in any Muslim country.

But things are about to change. A new movement is emerging dedicated to bringing science back to Islam. And these efforts begin with a frank admission: we cannot blame everything on colonialism and the west. As Building a Knowledge Society, the UN’s 2003 Arab Human Development Report, makes clear, a great deal of responsibility for the lack of science and technology in contemporary Islamic societies lies with Muslims themselves. The ground-breaking report blames authoritarian thinking, lack of autonomy in universities, the sorry state of libraries and laboratories, and underfunding in the Arab world. “The time has come,” it declares, “to proclaim those positive religious texts that cope with current realities.” In particular, the report calls for “reviving ijtihad and the protection of the right to differ”.

Ijtihad, or systematic original thinking, is a fundamental concept of Islam. It was the driving force behind the scientific spirit of Muslim civilisation. But the religious scholars, a dominant class in Muslim society, feared that continuous and perpetual ijtihad would undermine their power. They were also concerned that scientists and philosophers enjoyed a higher prestige in society than religious scholars. So they banded together – around the 14th and 15th centuries – and closed “the gates of ijtihad“. The way forward, they suggested, was taqlid, or imitation of the thought and work of earlier generations of scholars. Ostensibly, this was a religious move. But given that, in Islam, everything is connected to everything else, it had a hugely damaging impact on all forms of inquiry. The religious scholars thus buried scientific inquiry to preserve their hold on society.

It is now widely thought that science itself can play an important role in reopening the gates of ijtihad. So the revival of science in Muslim societies and the reform of Islam itself can proceed hand in hand. Similar thoughts are being echoed by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference’s standing commission on scientific and technological co-operation. The commission has argued that substantial increases in scientific expenditure and original work would not only improve Muslim societies, but would have a catalytic effect on Islamic thought. “Science played a key role in transforming Muslim societies in history; it can play the same role in transforming Islamic thought today,” says Dr Anwar Nasim, an adviser to the commission.

Dr Gamal Serour, professor and consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at al-Azhar University in Cairo, agrees. “It was the neglect of science that plunged the contemporary Muslim world into poverty and underdevelopment,” he says.

During a recent visit to al-Azhar to make a Radio 4 documentary, I spoke to several scientists who expressed similar sentiments. Traditionally, the university concentrated on religious subjects. But now science is emphasised as much as religion. And the atmosphere of scientific inquiry and criticism in its classes and laboratories is bound to find its way into religious discourse.

Muslim societies have an emotional attachment to Islamic history. But their grasp of the true achievements of Muslim scientists is rather limited. Efforts are now under way in Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan, as well as in some Arab countries, to introduce the history of Islamic science into school and university textbooks. In Britain, similar efforts are being made by the recently formed Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation. The foundation, which aims to popularise, disseminate and promote an accurate account of Islamic scientific heritage, has generated tremendous interest in the subject among Muslim students. Based in Manchester, and managed by a volunteer force of young Muslims, it maintains the popular website www.muslimheritage.com. The website, which claims to present a thousand years of missing history of science and technology, has become an invaluable educational forum for the Muslim community.

The wide-ranging Science and Religion in Schools Project (www.srsp.net), based at the Ian Ramsey Centre at Oxford University, aims to produce educational materials on Islam and science for GCSE and A-level students. The initial output of the project, which is led by John Hedley Brooke, professor of science and religion at Oxford, is being tested in a number of schools in Britain. Once its initial phase is over, the project will spread to other countries.

To be faithful to their scientific heritage, Muslims need to do much more than simply preserve the ashes of its fire; they need to transmit its flame. “The best way to appreciate the scientific heritage of Islam,” says Nasim, “is by building the scientific capacity of Muslim societies.” Muslims are now moving in the right direction. “We are beginning to realise that conscious efforts to reopen the gates of ijtihad and return to systematic, original thinking mean placing science where it belongs: at the very centre of Islamic culture,” Nasim declares.

By Ziauddin Sardar, published in NewStatesman, April 5th 2004.

The decline of science in the Islamic world over the last 1,000 years is probably due to a complex interplay of different factors: theological, political and economic. On the latter point, George Saliba has suggested that the discovery of a sailing route around the Cape of Good Hope was significant, as merchants travelling from Europe to Persia, India or the Far East no longer had to pay taxes to the Mediterranean-based sultans and caliphs: scientific research has usually required generous funding via royal patronage throughout history.

But the most decisive factor, at least in Sunni Islam, has been the dominance of traditionalism over rationalism, with religion remaining deeply sceptical of natural philosophy, the forerunner to the modern natural sciences. (Shia Islam has retained a strongly rationalist, or Mutazilite, and philosophical character.)

The 11th-century theologian al-Ghazali epitomised the traditionalist Ashari school that came to dominate Sunni Islam. His Incoherence of the Philosophers attacked philosophy on 20 counts of heresy. These included the idea that nature had its own, internally-consistent laws and ways of operating – this was heretical because only God is truly independent, and nature must be dependent on God. The theologians missed an obvious mystical solution: nature reflects the names of God, so for example, the beauty and precision of natural, scientific laws reflects the divine names of God as the Beautiful and the Determiner.

The Asharis also denied causality, or the principle of cause and effect, even though their position negates free will and personal responsibility. If I were to punch you in the face, I could argue that God and his angels had actually broken your nose: it was purely a coincidence that my fist was nearby, and any imagined connection between my punch and your injury was just an illusion!

The Asharis were trying to justify miracles, such as that of Abraham remaining unharmed when thrown into a large fire. Fire burned objects, they reasoned, not because of an innate burning quality but because God created this quality in fire at every instant. If God willed, he could suspend the burning action of fire, as he did to save Abraham. al-Ghazali extended this reasoning to other familiar situations: “Water does not quench thirst, bread does not satisfy hunger and medicine does not cure illness” – it is always God who mediates what we think is cause and effect.

The 12th-century philosopher-jurist Ibn Rushd (Averroes), who believed fully in the harmony of religion and philosophy, wrote a vehement point-by-point rebuttal of al-Ghazali entitled The Incoherence of the Incoherence. In it, he described al-Ghazali’s above-mentioned arguments as “sophistry … very objectionable, and contrary to common sense.” Averroes argued that God creates things with innate qualities so that water, bread and medicine do have effects via their intrinsic nature.

Ironically, the Islamic world largely ignored Averroes in favour of al-Ghazali, whilst the former had a profound influence upon the Christian west. A further irony is that centuries later, Hume also thought about miracles, very differently to al-Ghazali, but wrote that reason and empirical observation could not prove causality. Whereas Hume’s apparent denial of causality has had no negative impact on western science and is not taken seriously, leading Islamic seminaries and universities still dogmatically teach the anti-scientific Ashari theory to this day, despite the fact that it has been untenable at least since Newton’s discovery of the deterministic laws of motion and gravity that are confirmed a trillion times every day. Whenever I’m asked why the Islamic world has still not come to terms with Darwin, I reply that it needs to get over Newton first!

Al-Ghazali’s triumph in the Islamic world led to a deepening gulf between religion and science. A couple of examples from 15th-century traditionalist scholars will illustrate this. Ibn Hajar, a master of hadith-commentary, queried the Muslim astronomers who explained that solar eclipses were caused by the moon blocking the sun: “How can this be, when you yourselves claim that the sun is much bigger than the moon?” And the Egyptian scholar Suyuti wrote in his Qur’an-commentary, “The religious authorities hold that the earth is flat, in opposition to the astronomers who hold that it is spherical, although this is not a major principle of religion.”

As a Cambridge-trained scientist and a traditionally-trained Qur’an-student, I believe in balancing tradition and reason. I am comfortable with western scientific rationalism, but with the added sense of wonder and of the sacred upon contemplating nature, a major theme of the Qur’an, which also supplies universal values and answers to the meaning and purpose of life and existence. And my heroes of science include: Bayruni and Bohr; Ibn Rushd and Rutherford; Maqdisi and Maxwell; Nasir Tusi and Newton; Ibn Haytham and Hawking; Ibn Sina and Einstein.

By Usama Hasan, published in The Guardian, November 27th 2009.

Ziauddin Sardar on the shadow cast over Islamic culture by the Enlightenment.

What Enlightenment? It may have been good for Europe, but for the rest of the world in general, and Islam in particularly, the Enlightenment was a disaster. Despite their stand for freedom and liberty, reason and liberal thought, Enlightenment thinkers saw the non-West as irrational and inferior, morally decadent and fit only for colonisation. This legacy is not only with us but is positively thriving in the guise of neo-conservative thought, dogmatic secularism and scientism.

For key Enlightenment thinkers, such as Voltaire, de Montesquieu, Volney and Pascal, Europe occupied a special place: it was to be the destiny of humanity, construed as Western man. They worked hard to provide a rational justification for colonisation. They rationalised the medieval images, anxieties and fear of Islam and its Prophet – so evident in the sections devoted the Muhammad in Pascal’s Pensees – and presented it as evidence for the innate inferiority of Islam. They deliberately suppressed the Muslim contribution to science and learning and severed all intellectual links between Islam and Europe. Their Eurocentricism thus further locked Islam into an exclusive confrontation with the West, which continues to this day.

For thirteen and fourteenth century thinkers of Christendom, such as Roger Bacon and John Wycliff, Islam was simply a pagan, enemy Empire. To their credit, the Enlightenment thinkers saw Islam as a civilisation. But it was a civilisation grounded in a backward society and inferior political institutions and religious beliefs at its core.  In Mohammad and Fanaticism, Voltaire denounced Islam in harsh and hostile terms. Later, in the Essai sur les moeurs, he was a little more restrained, but the judgement did not change. He still saw Islam as an embodiment of fanaticism, antihumanism, irrationalism and the violent will to power. But despite this, Muslims did have a few positive aspects. They could move towards greater tolerance thanks largely to Islam’s loose sexual standards, which made it akin to a natural religion. While Jesus was good, Christians had become intolerant. But Muslims were tolerant despite their evil Prophet. Positive development in one case, negative in another. This is how Voltaire reconciled his deep seated prejudices of Islam and Muslims with reason.

For all their sabre rattling against religion, Enlightenment thinkers saw Christianity as the standard of civilised behaviour and norm of all religion. In effect, they further naturalised the natural law theory of medieval Christianity which had always been both vague in the sense of never precisely defined yet highly specific in being a universalising of Christian norms as the standard for human behaviour. Islam remained the antithesis to Christianity. Thus, in Les Ruines, Volney announced that ‘Mohammad succeeded in building a political and theological empire at the expense of those of Moses and Jesus’ vicars’. Or, in the scene where he has an imam speaking about ‘the law of Mohammad’, ‘God has established Mohammad as his minister on earth; he has handed over the world to him to subdue with the sabre those who refuse to believe in his law’. Volney described Muhammad as the ‘apostle of a merciful God who preaches nothing but murder and carnage’, the spirit of intolerance and exclusiveness that ‘shocks every notion of justice’. While Christianity might be irrational, Volney declared that it was gentle and compassionate but Islam had a contempt for science – a truly bizarre claim since Volney himself, and all his fellow Enlightenment thinkers, learnt most their science and philosophy from such names as al-Frabi, Ibn Sina and ibn Rushd.

While the Enlightenment may have been concerned with reason, its champions were not too worried about truth when it came to Islam. They not only shamelessly plagiarised philosophy, science and learning from Islam, but the very hallmark of Enlightenment, liberal humanism, has its origins in Islam. It is based on the adab movement of classical Islam, which was concerned with the etiquette of being human. Islam developed a sophisticated system of teaching law and humanism that involved not just institutions such as the university, with its faculties of law, theology, medicine and natural philosophy, but also an elaborate method of instruction including work-study courses, a curriculum that included grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, medicine, and moral philosophy, and mechanisms for the formation of a humanist culture such as academic associations, literary circles, clubs and other coteries that sustain intellectuals and the literati. The adab literature and institutions were, in fact, what enlightenment was all about in Islam. One cannot have a revolt on behalf of reason in Islam because reason is central to its worldview: reason is the other side of revelation and the Qur’an presents both as ‘signs of God’. A Muslim society cannot function without either. While Muslims can hardly be exonerated for the decline of reason and learning in Muslim civilisation, it was colonialism that as deliberate policy destroyed adab culture in Muslim societies.

But Enlightenment Europe swallowed the adab system, including text books, en masse. However, since it was a product of an inferior culture and civilisation its origins had to be shrouded. Thus, classical Arabic had to be replaced with another classical language, Latin. This was followed by a systematic expunging of all traces of the influence of Islamic thought on Europe. From the days of Voltaire right up to 1980, thanks largely to the efforts of Enlightenment scholars, it was a general western axiom that Islam had produced nothing of worth in philosophy, science and learning.

The Enlightenment legacy that Islam and Europe have nothing in common, that Islam is only a darker shadow of the West, that liberal secularism is the destiny of all human cultures, is much in evidence in our newspapers and television, literature and scholarship, as well as in our politics and foreign policies. It is the bedrock of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ hypothesis, Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisation’ thesis, and the neo-conservative ‘Project for the New American Century’. Voltaire’s Bastards, to use the title of John Ralston Saul brilliant 1992 book, are busy rationalizing torture, military interventions, western supremacy and demonising Islam and Muslims. The Enlightenment may have been big on reason but it was, as Saul shows so convincingly, bereft of both meaning and morality.
Forgive me if I don’t stand up and salute the Enlightenment.

By Ziauddin Sardar, published in The Philosophers’ Magazine, Issue 42 3rd Quarter 2008.

What we need today are critical thinkers who force Muslims to think and not feel-good narratives that create comfort bubbles and inhibit thought. It is only through reading and engaging in philosophical discourses will the intellectual level of the Muslim community rise. Towards that end I want to recommend five Muslim philosophers that all Muslims must read. The purpose of this introduction is to generate enough curiosity so that people can start reading them.

One does not need to be a student or teacher of philosophy to read the works of these great philosophers. The complexity and sophistication of their work is an indication of the quality of intellectual life that prevailed in what is often referred to as the golden age of Islam. All educated Muslims should familiarize themselves with their work just to be intellectually plugged into their own heritage. One does not have to read them in the original, great if you can. Reading at least secondary sources of their works can go a long way in helping one grasp the broad intellectual contours of Islamic civilization.

Al-Farabi (872-951 AD)

Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi, also known in Arabic as Al-Muallim Al-Thani, the second teacher (after Aristotle) is easily one of the greatest philosophers of the world. His contribution to both Aristotelian and Platonic thought is immeasurable and the modern age owes a great debt to this Central Asian polymath who not only preserved but developed Greek philosophy. He contributed to philosophy, mathematics, music and metaphysics, but I am partial to his work in political philosophy. His most important book on political philosophy was ārā ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila (The Views of the People of The Virtuous City).

In his Virtuous City, Al-Farabi seeks to establish a city based on justice, much like Plato’s Republic, that seeks the ultimate happiness of its citizens and is guided by the enlightened views of its philosophers. I think of Al-Farabi as the first Muslim to explicitly consider the merits of democracy. For someone who has been arguing that Islam and Democracy are compatible, it was delightful to read his views on democracy, which are very positive. Al-Farabi suggests that free societies have the potential to become virtuous societies because the good people in free societies have the freedom to pursue virtue.

Reading Al-Farabi is illuminating. He not only makes you think about a just polity, but also makes you think about thinking itself.

Al-Ghazzali (1058-1111 AD)

Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali is one of the most important scholars of Islamic thought. He was a philosopher, a legal scholar and a theologian and towards the end of his life a mystical thinker in the class of Ibn Arabi. For many Muslims al-Ghazzali is the paragon of the Mujaddid, a reviver of Islam. Coming at a time when there were many disputations between philosophers and theologians, between rationalists and traditionalists and the Mystical and the orthodox, he tried to bridge these divisions. His Ihya Ulum al-Din, The Revival of Religious Sciences embarks on a massive endeavor to find a golden mean between all these diverging trends.

The mature al-Ghazzali is very interesting. After his intellectual crisis and subsequent spiritual awakening he becomes more like Sheikh Rabbani of India who balanced Shariah and Tariqah (law and mysticism). While his Ihya is important and should be read by all Islamic scholars, all Muslims who go to college should at least read Al-Ghazzali’s Kitab al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (Deliverance from Error) in which the esteemed Shaykh discusses his intellectual and spiritual doubts and his quest for truth. This one book is an entire liberal arts education in itself.

Ibn Rushd (1126-1198 AD)

Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes, has probably had a bigger impact on Western religion and philosophy than on Islamic thought. Some Muslim historians have described the modern enlightened West as the imagination of Averroes. Ibn Rushd was a remarkable thinker. He was a judge, expert in Islamic law (Maliki), a physician and a philosopher.

In his Fasl al-Maqal (The Decisive Treatise) he makes the case for philosophy and for the compatibility of science and religion, faith and reason. His Tahafat al-Tahafat (Incoherence of Incoherence) is a systematic rebuttal to Al-Ghazzali’s Tahat al-Falasifah (Incoherence of Philosophy) and a strong defense of Aristotelian philosophy. Together the two classics by Ibn Rushd and Al-Ghazzali are a highlight of Islamic philosophical heritage. Muslims must read these philosophers; some of their arguments are still germane.

Ibn Arabi (1165-1240 AD)

Ibn Arabi is perhaps the most unique, most perplexing and at the same time most profound Muslim philosophical thinker. He was not a rational philosopher like al-Farabi or Ibn Rushd. He was mystical, speculative and indescribable. Ibn Arabia was perhaps the first postmodern and feminist thinker in human intellectual heritage. His works Fusus al-Hikam (Bezels of Wisdom) and Futuhat al-Makiyyah (The Meccan Openings) are perhaps the acme of Islamic mystical and philosophical thought. One can never fully appreciate Islamic intellectual heritage without trying to understand Ibn Arabi.

Fortunately, Professor William Chittick has written several books that translate and comment on Ibn Arabi’s thought and make him partially comprehensible to ordinary mortals like me. To me personally, Ibn Arabi provides the most compelling explanation of the purpose and meaning of creation as a continuous self-disclosure (Tajalli) of God. His reading of the sacred texts is always surprising and tantalizing to the thinking mind. Most orthodox scholars fear and hate Ibn Arabi, because they cannot understand him. Once they do, they are no more orthodox. It would be a colossal tragedy if you are a Muslim and have intellectual leanings and never read Ibn Arabi, Al-Sheikh al-Akbar.

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 AD)

Ibn Khaldun is the Sheikh of all social scientists. He was a philosopher of history and the first social scientist. He was the first major Islamic thinker who emphasized empirical thought over normative theory. Ibn Khaldun made three very important contributions to social sciences. He emphasized the importance of empirical facts, developed a theory of change and identified tribal solidarity as the driver of change. What Muslims need today are literally a million such social scientists that can help bring good governance to the Muslim World.

Last year I spoke at the conference hosted by the Ibn Khaldun Society in Istanbul. I was both surprised and delighted to see the growing interest in his work. There have been many such conferences trying to revive, even build a social science based on Khaldunian approach. I am not sure if his ideas matter substantively, but his spirit is really needed. He must be taught in all Muslim high schools and all colleges regardless of the discipline. His interests in political theory and diplomacy give him a very special place in my library.

Final Thoughts

I hope this very short introduction to some of the greatest thinkers of Islamic heritage generates enough curiosity that young Muslims take interest in them. There is no point in bragging that once we had a great civilization and that we had a golden age, if we are not familiar with the nuggets and contents of that glorious age; time to head to the library folks.

By Muqtedar Khan.

Follow Muqtedar Khan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MuqtedarKhan

Like Averroes, Sardar is well read and versed in the knowledge both of his times and of his classical culture. He too has sharp analytical skills and refined writing talents, and uses both to dissect and shred the views of various schools of thought. Unlike Ibn Rushd, though, Sardar has been endowed with a fine sense of humor.

Ziauddin is something of a contemporary cultural prodigy. Indeed, rarely does one find a person who is so well versed in such a wide spectrum of subjects, from science and technology to philosophy and religion, cultural and postmodernist theories, arts, future studies, policies and politics and more. Moreover, Sardar is a prolific writer; now in his mid-fifties, he has published over 40 books and innumerable articles, not to mention a number of documentaries. Unfortunately, it seems that only one book of his (The Touch of Midas: Science, Values and Environment in Islam and the West) has ever been translated to Arabic, and that too became possible when the then crown-prince of Jordan read it, liked it and funded its translation.

Sardar continues to write regular columns in the British newspapers and weeklies (The Observer, The Independent, New Statesmen); in past times, he wrote extensively (and worked for awhile) for the high-level science journal Nature and the influential weekly New Scientist. Most amazing about Sardar is the fact that he is equally at ease and at home with several cultures at once: the Muslim, the British, the Pakistani and the South Asian; indeed, he can use the whole intellectual heritage of these cultures as well as the large palette of tools they can put at one’s disposal (books, journals and magazines, TV broadcasting, universities and research institutes etc.); and yet he is critical of all of them at the same time. Belonging almost equally to two worlds is never an easy feat; Sardar has described himself as ‘an enigma in both spheres’.

The man has already led a very fulfilling life and has been very influential; indeed, he had achieved that much (fulfilment and influence) by the time he was barely thirty. For a full measure of the variety of experiences he has gone through, one should read his autobiography (Desperately Seeking Paradise), where he describes his intellectual and spiritual voyages from his teenage years in Britain to his trips in the Muslim world (in the seventies and eighties) trying to survey the state of science and technology there, to the years he spent in Saudi Arabia (from 1975 to 1980) when he tried to help modernise some aspects of Islamic life (Hajj, for example), to his intellectual battles within and on behalf of his Ijmali school of thought, to his failed attempts to help make Malaysia the ‘new Andalus’ (the spirit of Ibn Rushd surfacing here again).

Sardar has always been interested in the future, particularly that of Muslim societies. For that reason he examines the present. And to understand the present, he sometimes needs to delve into the past. He is convinced that no progress can be made by any society if it tries to apply artificial solutions, such as those that consist of emulating the West or implementing its ready-made techniques and solutions. Furthermore, his critique of modern science, of hard-line rationalism and of colonial (classical and neo) methods has not earned him the love of proponents of the West and its civilization. Because of this stand, he has often very mistakenly been considered a traditionalist. On the other hand, the neo-traditionalist camp (Seyyed H. Nasr and his followers) have criticised Ziauddin for his little usage of the spiritual dimension of Islam; in their view, he seems mainly interested in ethical, environmental and Third World (post-colonial) critiques of science, not in its fundamental metaphysical bases.

Nidhal Guessoum is associate dean at the American University of Sharjah. He can be followed on Twitter at:

www.twitter.com/@NidhalGuessoum.

]]> https://islam-science.net/muslim-astronomer-weighs-in-on-the-religion-science-debate-1413/ Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:25 +0000 http://islam-science.net/?p=1413 Over at Big Questions Online, astronomer Nidhal Guessoum asks Why Should Scientists Care About Religion?

“As a Muslim scientist,” he writes, “I spend much time and expend much energy trying to convince Muslims and other believers to take modern science seriously, with all its methodology and results – and its limits.”

But:

“The reverse exercise, to try to convince scientists and other educated people that religion should be taken seriously, is much more difficult, for several reasons. First, there is an intrinsic asymmetry in the relationship: science, in addition to being a methodology and a discovery process, is able to ascertain a vast array of results and present whole swaths of established knowledge.  Today, no one can doubt that matter is made of atoms and particles, that life evolved and produced a vast tree of species, or that the universe has expanded from a singularity and is today made up of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each made up of hundreds of billions of stars, many/most of which have planets around them, etc.

On the other hand, “religion” (I’ll get to definitions shortly), while having developed branches of knowledge, with methodologies and references, cannot claim to present realms of established knowledge. Still, “religion,” in some forms and from some perspectives, can present an ensemble of highly respectable and beneficial ideas that even hardline scientists can appreciate and find useful, for humanity if not for themselves.”

I’ve been a little surprised that his essay hasn’t gotten more attention in the science blogosphere, as his last sentence is one that –in some quarters–usually prompts strongly negative responses.*

Guessoum is a professor at the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. While his argument that science and religion are not fundamentally irreconcilable may not sway many scientists on this side of the Atlantic, he does raise some interesting questions.

For example:

“Should “Religion” and “Science”  just be considered as totally separate “magisteria” (as in Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘NOMA’, the Non-Overlapping Magisteria) or should one attempt to relate the two in some way?

Will “wonder and awe” come to replace “religion and spirituality” in the future, or does “religion” have some core values that will always be attractive to people?”

To the extent that religion is defined by a set of practices, customs and rituals, I think the answer to the second question is almost certainly no. From an anthropological perspective, the religious impulse seems to have been hardwired from the beginning.

As for Gould’s NOMA, it was never a very compelling model for an accommodation between science and religion, either for scientists deeply skeptical about the value of religion’s influence in society, or for theologians skeptical of the notion that science has nothing to contribute to our understanding of moral and philosophical questions.

*Author’s disclosure: The Templeton Foundation sponsors the Big Questions blog, and formerly sponsored a religion and science journalism fellowship, of which I was a beneficiary in 2010.

By John Farrell.

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