For many people, it seems, faith as faith is not enough. They always try to seek validity of their faith through science and are hell bent on proving their faith against the benchmarks of science and the scientific discoveries. The natural corollary of such claims is that what science has discovered over the years, and is discovering even now, is already mentioned in their holy texts. Their contention thus is that science and the scientific discoveries are proving the correctness of their faith. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
The late French Physician Maurice Bucaille wrote Islam, Bible and Science in 1976, which lead many people to believe that proving scientific facts from holy books has been the exclusive domain of Muslims. But the truth is that before Muslims jumped onto this bandwagon, Christians had made claims on similar lines about the Bible. Even some Hindus have claimed scientific miracles in Vedas.
But oflate, this trend of seeking science in the scriptures has almost become commonplace among Muslims. It is one of the most dangerous and damaging pseudoscience prevalent among Muslims. This trend poses more danger to Muslims than to Christians because there is a very small base of scientists among Muslims. One can ascribe many reasons to this rising phenomenon of pseudo-science. Among many things, it has to do with the loss of intellectual prestige among Muslims. It is for everyone to see that the West has made tremendous strides in the field of science and technology in the last few centuries, whereas Muslims have been left behind by a long distance. To overcome this loss of prestige, Muslims unfortunately havent taken to science seriously, but actually circumvented this whole process by getting faith and the sacred texts into picture. So when someone talks about the big strides in science and technology that West has made over the years, the convenient answer by many Muslims is that these scientific discoveries only validate what is present in their religious text. Most of these claims are based on a very poor understanding of science. But the people who make such claims and arguments are hardly curious and concerned about the working of different phenomenon and natural processes. All they are concerned about is validating their faith through science, whose power is now universally recognized.
With the gradual decline of rational thought among Muslims, especially after the end of what is now called the Golden Age of Islam, Muslims have found it increasingly difficult to reconcile faith with science. Rather than keeping the two separate and without invoking religious scriptures in matters of science, Muslims have done exactly the opposite. Science works on the basis of a process, where solutions to various problems are sought. Science goes where proof takes it. In science, in the absence of any empirical evidence, nothing is said with certainty. But that is not the case with faith.
With the end of the Golden Age came another major blow to the evolution of the rational thought and scientific temperament among Muslims. The doors of Ijtihad (independent reasoning) were closed by the Muslim clergy and ulema. So any hopes of carrying on with the landmark achievements that various philosophers and scientists of that age like Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Khwarizmi, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Omar Khayyam or Ibn Khaldun had made, were quickly laid to rest. It is no surprise then that these great men of knowledge and wisdom and their scholarly works are hardly known to the world in general and Muslims in particular. Only when the discussion focuses on the contribution of Muslims in the field of science and philosophy, lip service is given to the achievements of these great men, without any efforts being made to either make their works known to the people or trying to imbibe their scientific and rational temperament. Subsequent generations of Muslims did not benefit from the path breaking discoveries and achievements of their predecessors. After the end of the Golden Age, darkness slowly started engulfing Muslim lands. The spirit of knowledge slowly gave way to dogma, irrationality, bigotry and extremism in mindset. It comes as no surprise that when the curtain of dogma was descending within the Muslim lands and free thinking was done away with, it was slowly and steadily rising in Europe.
The learning centres of Baghdad, Persia and Cardoba suddenly seemed to belong to a distant past. Muslims failed to understand that the scientists and philosophers of that Golden Age used hardcore science to understand natural phenomenon, medicine and human body. They were no quacks and didnt use religious texts as a crutch to make any scientific claims. They were not reading religious texts for making scientific discoveries. Far from it, these luminaries were in fact berated by the Muslim clergy for their rational thinking and some of them were actually declared apostates (More about that some other time). Their contributions in the fields of science, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, algebra, philosophy and optics were not only celebrated by Muslims, but by humanity as a whole. They saw knowledge without ownership of any creed and thus expanded knowledge to new frontiers.
Knowledge is an ongoing process and historically societies have benefited and also added to the contribution of their previous generations. So the work of Greek philosophers was improved upon by Muslims, whose work and contribution proved vital for the subsequent Renaissance in Europe. But Muslims havent made many worthwhile contributions in the field of science in the last four to five centuries.
With the discovery of oil in the Gulf States in the 1970s and the resultant economic boom in these countries, a new reactionary mindset began to be cultivated among Muslims. The Gulf monarchies began to aggressively spread a narrow and convoluted version of Islam, in which there is hardly any scope for rational thought. Science began to be projected as a conspiracy by the West and a tool of imperialism to undermine Islam. With increased political uncertainty in most Muslim majority countries, Muslims hardly had anytime to see through these bigoted claims and thus actually fell prey to this blatant propaganda.
Over the last few decades, a new breed of preachers has made inroads into Muslim societies worldwide. Most of these preachers are educated in contemporary subjects like Medicine, Engineering etc, and so one would have thought their mindset would be more accommodating towards science and they themselves would have a scientific bent of mind. But that, unfortunately, isnt the case. They further accentuate the lack of scientific temperament among Muslims because most of them seek scientific miracles in the holy Text. These preachers have scribbled books and delivered lectures claiming that Quran was full of scientific truths hundreds of years before the scientists in the West discovered them in their labs. Dare I ask them this question: If that be the reality, why didnt Muslims discover these scientific truths before the West did?
The worldwide web is littered with bogus claims of these scientific miracles, made by such preachers. There are absurd claims and calculations about the speed of heaven, the speed at which angels travel. There are claims about Mecca being the centre of the Earth and hence calls to replace GMT with Mecca Time. There are even claims about scientific reasons why tawaf (circumambulation) around the Kaaba by Muslims is done in a counterclockwise direction, and these claims are many. One can safely say these claims are based on gross misunderstanding of science. The centrality of Kaaba and its sacredness is known to every Muslim. As a tenet of Muslim faith, it would be better to leave it at that, rather than making bogus scientific claims about Mecca being the centre of the earth.
Vali Reza Nasr, the Iranian writer, has mourned the trend among contemporary Muslims of adopting Western science, but refusing to create a rational scientific mindset. Many other Muslim intellectuals have lamented this trend among Muslims. For Muslims to really make a scientific leap and meet the challenges of the 21st century, developing a strong scientific culture and mindset is the need of the hour.
People who are seeking scientific miracles in the holy texts are doing this neither by any genuine curiosity about revealing the secrets of nature nor by any desire to seek explanations for unsolved problems. Instead, the answer is already known to them. They merely seek a validity of their own belief through science. None of this is science. In fact, this is neither good science nor religion.
Stephan J Gould, the late American biologist called science and religion as non-overlapping magisteria, two equal but separate spheres of life. The former deals with the physical world and the latter with questions of ethics and meaning of life.
The late Carl Edward Sagan (1934-1996), an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmetologist and author summed up this curse of pseudoscience eloquently, when he said: I worry that , especially as the millennium edges near , pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self esteem or nerve, when we agonise about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us – then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.
This sounds almost as a prophecy, which Muslims would do well to listen to. A new Muslim mindset is the minimum to start with. If rational and scientific thought process and universality of knowledge continues to be denounced by them, then Muslims in the twenty-first century will find it difficult to move out of the pits of darkness.
Tariq Jameel, based in Bangalore, is an investment professional with interest in history, politics and sports.
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