Dissertation - Islamic Creationism

8/7/2019 Dissertation - Islamic Creationism

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DISCUSS THE IMPACT OF

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHICAL AND

POLITICAL HISTORY ON THE

APPROPRIATION OF DARWINS

EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES

ACROSS THE ISLAMIC WORLD

Robert Ross Swan

Student ID 07397886

10,827 words


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CONTENTS

Introduction . Page 3

The Quran and Islam, c.600 1800 AD ... Page 5

Islam and Darwinism, 19th 20th Centuries .. Page 14

Islam and Darwin in the Modern World ... Page 21

Conclusion Page 35

Bibliography . Page 41


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Verily your Lord is God,

Who created the heavens

And the earth in six Days,

And is firmly established

On the Throne of authority,

Regulating and governing all things1.

Islam is perfectly clear. Allah created the heavens and the earth and all that is

in between them. He is the source of all creation and the reason for it. Without him

willing it to be so, nothing would exist. In this manner Allah created all things. He

created the plants and the animals, and placed them on Earth, and He decreed upon

them the laws by which the natural order of all creation functions. Things exist

according to those laws and do not require divine intervention, the laws placed by

Allah take into account all the natural phenomenon and, for Muslims, provide further

proof of Allahs greatness. Nevertheless, as the first decade of the 21st

century is

brought to a close, it seems that crucial questions regarding the relationship between

ethics, morals, faith and science are being raised with an ever increasing urgency, one

of these being Charles Darwins Theory of Evolution, in particular the evolution of

the human species, and its impact on society.

Islam, like most religions, takes great interest in each of its followers

reproductive activity, setting the guidelines for the conditions of conception, birth

circumstances, adolescent sexuality, marriage, life and death2. How then, do any of

these rules conform in a fatalistic, harsh, every-individual-for-himself world laid out

under the rules of Darwins theory?

1 A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran: Text , Translation and Commentary (Brentwood: Amana Corp.,

1983), p.483-484.2 Durant, J.,Darwinism and Divinity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), p.136.


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In the Western world the debate between creationism, intelligent design, and

evolution, and which should be taught in our schools has become ever more important

in the previous decades, especially in the United States and increasingly in Europe.

What many in the West do not realise is the extent of the scientific pride which exists

in the Islamic Middle East, and that just as in the West, science and evidence are

coming under attack on all fronts by groups who view Darwins theory of evolution as

contradictive to any belief in a supreme being, and who are adamant that evolution

under any guise should not be taught to Muslim children. There does though also exist

groups of Muslims who see no problem with neither science nor evolution and who

believe that both religion and evolution can exist harmoniously within the sphere of

the Quranic codes. Just as with the Christian Bible, the Quran can be interpreted in

numerous ways, in speaking about what Muslims believe about creation and

evolution we are appealing to different audiences and different interpretations. The

purpose of this dissertation is, from a historical perspective, to take all these differing

audiences into consideration.

It is with this in mind that this dissertation will cover more than 1,000 years of

Islamic philosophical and political history, using sources from the Quran itself as

well as the philosophies of Islamic intellectuals such as Ibn Hazm, al-Ghazali and

Mohammed Abduh among others, as well as the writings of modern day Muslim

creationists such as Harun Yahya (pen-name of Adnan Oktar). The aim being to

answer the question posed above, Discuss the impact of Islamic philosophical and

political history on the appropriation of Darwins evolutionary theories across the

Islamic world.

Islamic history can be difficult to define, itself covering such a large period of

time, many geographical locations and human groups, each with their own individual


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respective history. Combining the history of 8th

century Umayyad Syria with that of

17th

century Mughal India together as Islamic history can be disrespective of both. A

comparison to help understand would be to suppose that the histories of 12th

century

England and 19th century Mexico are the same on the basis that both make up part of a

Christian history3. In order to keep complexities to a minimum this dissertation will

be split into three main parts, that of Quranic verse and major relevant changes in

Muslim philosophies and politics c.600 AD until the 19th

century, secondly the history

and fallout surrounding Darwins publication of his The Origin of Species, and

finally Islam in the modern world and the rise in Islamic creationism.

THE QURAN AND ISLAM, c.600 1800 AD

For Aulie (1983), the theory of evolution is a logical extension of the

Judeo-Christian linear time doctrine of creation ex nihilo and seeped in thousands of

years of Judeo-Christian scientific enquiry4. Ancient traditions of nature being

created, wholly contingent and capable of rational thought on its own terms, in due

time passed from Judeo-Christian doctrine into Muslim thought. The last of the

Abrahamic religions, following Judaism and Christianity, Islam considers the creation

of the universe as ultimate proof of the existence of one creator5. In Islam, the world

and everything on it as man knows it, begins and ends with Allah. Unlike Christianity,

the creation process is not described in detail, but referred to as a starting point for

Allahs power. The creation story in Islam is described in the Quran as the creation

3 A., Al-Azmeh, The Genesis of Islam in the Light of History. The Medieval History Journal, 12

(2009) 1-12, p.3-4.4 R. P. Aulie, Evolution and Special Creation: Historical Aspects of the Controversy, Proceedings of

the American Philosophical Society, Vol.127 (1983), 418-462, p.428.5 Ibid., p427.


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of the universe by Allahs will with a single command: Be!. Several verses in the

Quran highlight Allahs power of creation. Of the heavens and the earth : When he

decreeth a matter, He saith to it: Be, and it is6, and, God createth what He willeth:

When He hath decreed a plan, He but saith to it, Be, and it is! 7.

.

Many Muslim intellectuals regard the early years of Islam to have been a

Golden Age, when the arts flourished and the religion was scientifically creative, but

how true a statement is this? Delcambre (2005) suggests that during this period, Islam

was not as scientifically creative as others may wish to believe. Islam took its science

from the ancient Greeks, from books largely translated by Christians for the attention

of a very small elite group of the Muslim population, who were regarded as heretics

by most others8, for the majority of Muslims the attainment of knowledge was only

acceptable if it served in the search for a holy and just life as laid out by the Prophet

Mohammed9. Still, these Muslims must have seen value in the Greek sciences

otherwise they would not have invested in it so readily, Islamic religious ideology

never endorsed the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake, more overcome with

the search for personal salvation, knowledge would always be more of a means than

an end. For these Muslims, science was justified more by the merit of its utility, and

medicine was certainly a science with obvious utility10

, indeed, the practice of

medicine had been encouraged by the Prophet Muhammad11

.

6A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran (Brentwood: Amana Corp., 1983), p.50.

7Ibid., p.135.

8 Pervez Hoodbhoy,Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality (London:

Zed Books, 1991) p.59-60.9 Howard Turner, Science in Medieval Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997) p.162.10 David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: the European Scientific Tradition in

Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1992) p.171-173.11

Said ibn Ahmad Andalusi, Science in the Medieval World: Book of the Categories of Nations

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991) p.44.


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Important as Islams first philosopher, Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (801 - 873),

analysed causation and substance, his observations bringing him to the conclusion of

there being an essential cause for all things that seemed accidental. As a Muslim with

a mindset grounded in the Quran, al-Kindis essential cause for the creation of the

world and of all substances from nothing, had to be Allah12

. Who hath created, and

further, given order and proportion; Who hath ordained laws. And granted

guidance13

. This means that the nature, origin, growth, decays and end of a thing or

being is determined by Allah, it is He who decrees its destiny. Pitting evidence against

faith is a false notion14

.

From the 8th to the 10th centuries AD, Islamic philosophical thought was

dominated by that of the Mutazilites and their belief that human reason is more

reliable than tradition, because of this, Mutazilites tended to interpret the Quran

farther from their literal meaning than many Muslims do today, and it was these ethics

of rationalism that worried many traditional theologians at the time. A main objective

leveled by the traditionalists was that independent human reason insinuates a limit on

Allahs power, if humans were able to assess what is right and what is wrong, then

they could judge on what Allah could rightly prescribe for man, an act which would

be inherently blasphemous15

.

Important as one of the earliest encyclopedic works of early Islam is the

Rasail-e-Ikhwanus Safa, the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. Though historians

disagree on the timing of its actual writing, it appears to have been written over the

12Alfred L. Ivry, Al-Kindis On First Philosophy and Aristotles Metaphysics, in Essays on Islamic

Philosophy and Science, ed. by George F. Hourani (New York: State Univ ersity of New York Press,

1975) 15-25, p.15.13

A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran (Brentwood: Amana Corp., 1983), p1723.14 Alfred L. Ivry, Al-Kindis On First Philosophy and Aristotles Metaphysics, in Essays on Islamic

Philosophy and Science, ed. by George F. Hourani (New York: State University of New York Press,

1975) 15-25, p.15.15 George F. Hourani, Ethics in Medieval Islam: A Conspectus, in Essays on Islamic Philosophy and

Science, ed. by George F. Hourani (New York: State University of New York Press, 1975) 128-135,

p.130.


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period of two centuries or so (10th

-12th

centuries), by varying authors, rewritten and

reinterpreted as they went. What is clear though is that whoever it was written by, the

authors were extremely liberal in their thought and had a great knowledge of the

Greek natural sciences16. One such Greek philosopher known to Muslims of antiquity

was Epicurus, who as early as the 3rd

century BCE had supposed that with the passage

of time, plant and animal species may change from one form to another17

.

The Rasail is important in offering a teleological argument for the evidence of

Gods design based on the very structure of the cosmos which has led some modern

historians to believe that the authors of the Rasail possessed an understanding of

natural sciences similar to the modern day theory of evolution. This arises out of the

Rasails writings that all earthly changes happen as a result of a Universal Soul and

not by an independent agent such as the will of Allah. Also, the Rasail sees this

world as the mirror of another world more real than this, everything in this world also

exists in the other, almost a modern view of parallel dimensions. The Rasail has

written:

The species and genus are definite and preserved. Their forms are in matter.

But the individuals are in perpetual flow; they are neither definite or

preserved. The reason for the conservation of forms, genus and species in

matter is fixity of their celestial cause because their efficient cause is the

Universal Soul of the spheres instead of the change and continuous flux of

individuals which is due to the variability of their cause.18

The modern theory of evolution and the writings contained in the Rasail have

16Abbas Hamdani, The Arrangement of the Rasail Ikhwan al-Safa and the Problem of

Interpolations,Journal of Semitic Studies, XXIX/1 (1984), 97-110, p.97-98.17

Muzaffar Iqb-al,Islam and Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002) p.259.18 Ibid., p.116-117.


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similarities, such as minerals existing before plants and that organisms may adapt to

their environment. However, the concepts contained in the Rasail are teleological in

that everything exists for a purpose and was placed on this earth by the hand of a

divine being19.

It is important to note though that whoever the authors of the Rasail were,

their position within Islamic thought was marginal and was largely refuted20

. Towards

the end of the 10th

century as Buyid power declined, the Sunnis refined their work of

disengaging official politics from religious authority, and Shiite and Mutazilite

teachings were prohibited. This Sunni reformation gained much of its theology from

the scholar al-Ashari (873-935), who denied that rational human thought could

translate the Qurans writings into any facts other than what was specifically written

in its sacred texts21

. The effect which Asharism had on intellectual life was decisive,

Asharism held the opinion that God and his all-powerful will caused all events

directly, while secondary causes may be in operation, no special explanation was

required for miracles. The Asharites were renowned for denying the notion of natural

causation, that a things very nature can result in its own acts22.

Ibn-Hazm (994-1064), took literalism further with his scepticisms of

inner-enlightenment. For Ibn-Hazm, nothing could be established via rational thought

alone, Allah instituted language and only things expressible through language can be

discovered, therefore the Qurans texts should be taken in a straightforward sense.

But since what is not written in divine law cannot be forbidden, Ibn-Hazms thoughts

actually increased this area. There is no natural law humans can discover through their

19Ibid., p.117.

20 Ibid., p.118.21 Anthony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought: from the Prophet to the Present

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), p.82-83.22 Michael E. Marmura, Ghazalis Attitude to the Secular Sciences and Logic, in Essays on Islamic


1975) 100-111, p.100.


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own understanding, it is already written in the sacred texts23

.

Throughout Islam, knowledge had been divided into two spheres, the rational

or foreign and the traditional. Traditional knowledge came from the divine authority

of the Quran and as such was uncontestable, whereas the foreign sciences gained

from the Greeks was of human origin. Not to be accepted as authority, these foreign

sciences were open to criticism, any attempt to apply these rational sciences onto the

traditional would always be dangerous and it was inevitable then that the more

conservative Muslims would see these rational sciences as a threat24

. The great

Islamic thinkers Avicenna and Averroes, 10th

and 12th

centuries, were persecuted for

their beliefs in the use of reason and rational thought. Islams early years then were in

fact not as conducive to science and reason as some may believe, the exercise itself

alien to Islams original dogmas25

.

A turning point in the history of Asharism came during the intellectual career

of al-Ghazali (d. AD 1111), who philosophised that a science must be rejected if its

conclusions cannot be demonstrated and is in conflict with scripture, however if its

findings are demonstrably true but is still in conflict with scripture, then scripture

must be metaphorically reinterpreted26

. Where al-Ashari saw the atomistic essence of

nature but denied any causal pattern in the human world, for al-Ghazali the pattern

could change at any moment whenever Allah saw fit to change his mind27

. The Sufi

orders which developed from the time of al-Ghazali in the 11th

century achieved its

aim of providing a framework in which Islams more learned people could work

23Anthony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought: from the Prophet to the Present

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), p.83-84.24 David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1992) p.173.25 Pervez Hoodbhoy,Islam and Science (London: Zed Books, 1991) p.59-60.26 Michael E. Marmura, Ghazalis Attitude to the Secular Sciences and Logic, in Essays on Islamic


1975) 100-111, p.101.27

Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West(Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996) p.250.


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together and share ideas with the most ordinary people28

.

However, neither dogma was universal, the debate between rationalism and

traditionalism was never settled outright. Across the Muslim world over the coming

centuries, Shiite countries such as Iran continued to adopt rationalist principles, while

traditionalist principles prevailed throughout the Sunni countries well into the modern

day29

.

As we can see from above, the application of the sciences varied throughout

the Muslim world, leading historians to different interpretations of the time, the main

two interpretations being called the appropriation thesis, and the marginality

thesis30.

For proponents of the appropriation theses maintain that Muslims were

reasonably hospitable to Greek science, and that, despite being opposed by the more

conservative population, Islam became engaged in a program of scientific cultivation

and recovery31

.

On the other hand, advocates of the marginality thesis are more adamant that

these foreign sciences were forever seen by most Muslims as useless and even

dangerous, that they met none of the theologys fundamental needs and were very

rarely included in the education system. Because of this, foreign sciences in Islam

survived on the margin of culture and were never truly integrated into it32

.

By the 17th

century a cultural renaissance took place in rationalist Iran, led by

the philosopher Mulla Sadra, considered by many Muslim intellectuals to be the most

influential Muslim philosopher in the last four centuries. Sadras doctrine on the

28 Philip J. Stewart, Unfolding Islam (Reading: Garnet, 2008) p.201.29

George F. Hourani, Ethics in Medieval Islam: A Conspectus, in Essays on Islamic Philosophy and

Science, ed. by George F. Hourani (New York: State University of New York Press, 1975) 128 -135,

p.132.30

David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1992) p.173-174.31

Ibid., p.174.32 Ibid., p.173.


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primacy of existence over essence transformed Muslim thought, whereas before,

philosophers such as Avicenna had maintained that essence precedes existence, Sadra

argued that existence precedes essence, meaning that something needs to exist before

one can rightfully enquire on the make-up of its essence, what it is33.

More importantly though, another central concept of Sadras philosophy were

his theories on substantial motion. For Sadra, every single substance within nature

undergoes its own meaningful changes as a result of their own self-flow and

penetration of being , transformation was an inescapable reality which affected

everything throughout the cosmos34

. Mulla Sadra created an immense amalgamation

of thought which dominated the Persian, as well as Muslim Indian intellectual life for

centuries to come. This redirection of doctrines containing elements of both the

natural and philosophical sciences would have major impacts when Darwins On the

Origin of Species arrived in the middle-East two centuries later35

.

The above has covered a thousand years of philosophical changes in thought,

but it is also imperative that we keep the political events of 1000 to 1200 AD in mind.

The historian, Karen Armstrong, is adamant that the Crusades were one of the direct

causes of the conflict in the Middle East today36

.

At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II sparked off the First

Crusade by his call to regain the Holy Land and save the Eastern Church, over

100,000 men were mobilized in what became a holy war. Brutality was common

place, starving soldiers on their way to Jerusalem faced famine and disease on an

33 Fazlur Rahman, The God-World Relationship in Mulla Sadra, inEssays on Islamic Philosophy

and Science, ed. by George F. Hourani (New York: State University of New York Press, 1975)

238-253, p.238.34 Ibid., p.245.35

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilisation in Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1968), p.336.36

Alan Heston, Crusades and Jihads: A Long-Run Economic Perspective, The Annals of the

American Academy of Political and Social Science, 588 (July 2003), 112-135, p.112-113.


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unprecedented scale, infamously culminating in the AD 1098 destruction of the town

of Maara, and the cannibalism of its entire population, men, women and children. An

event little known in the West but well remembered in the East37

.

In AD 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, Jerusalem was recaptured by the armies of

Saladin, marking the beginning of the end for the crusader kingdoms. Not only did

Europe fail to regain the Holy Land, but instead of keeping Islam down, it resulted in

a backlash which encouraged an Islamic expansion by motivating its followers.

Likewise, the attack on Muslim Cairo during the Fourth Crusade inadvertently

resulted in the sack of Christian Byzantium and paved the way for its consequent

collapse38.

To this day, the Crusades are a major symbol for Muslims as the beginning of

a thousand years of Western rape, Christian rule had been extremely violent and

Muslims in Jerusalem were banned, completely at odds with the time when Muslims

had ruled Jerusalem and both Christians and Jews had been allowed to live there in

peace. The Crusades are symbolic of a major change in the relationship between the

Middle East and Europe, Crusader kingdoms in the Middle East came to represent

Europes first colonies in the region, and by the end of the crusades the Muslim

position in the world had declined substantially and marked the end of the Muslim

Golden Age (AD 800 1200)39

.

37 Ibid., p.116-117.38

Ibid., p.117-118.39 Ibid., p.118-119.


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never command much attention unless they also had a degree or were students of a

well-known mentor. Now, once the printing press appeared, both male and female

writers could command an audience without necessarily holding the correct education

or being students of the correct mentor44.

The previous two hundred years had seen the rise of a new kind of modern

West which became vastly superior to the Islamic world and its only superpower, the

Ottoman Empire. As the Ottomans began to realise their backwardness in

comparison to the West, they began a process of Westernisation through importing

technology and adapting to Western legal structures and educational systems. For the

most part this reformation was welcomed by Muslim intellectuals and scholars45. The

Ottoman Tanzimat (Reform) edict of 1839, for the first time, adopted the workings of

European thought through the increasingly common held belief that introducing

European-style reforms was the only way to save the empire46

.

However, there was more to it than the welcomed trains, telegraphs and

education systems. Western philosophies also began to appear which began to alarm

Muslim thinkers, particularly because they contained many anti-religious and atheistic

sentiments. An intellectual war began as theories such as Darwins became

fashionable amongst those Ottoman elite which had been Westernised and Islamic

scholars increased their production of tracts which refuted these theories of

disbelief coming out of Europe, it was no surprise then that the West became known

as a place of godlessness47

.

Published in 1859, Darwins On the Origin of Species was translated into

44Ibid.

45 Mustafa Akyol, Intelligent Design Could be a Bridge Between Civilisations,

(28th January 2010, 14:50).46

Anthony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,

2001), p.280-281.47

Mustafa Akyol, Intelligent Design Could be a Bridge Between Civilisations,

(28th January 2010, 14:50).


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Arabic during the 1870s. Darwins own On the Origin of Species famously states in

final paragraph of its revised second edition, There is grandeur in this view of life

having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one48

.

Writing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1860, Harvard botanist Asa Gray said of Darwin,

we think that a theistic view of Nature is implied in his book, and we must charitably

refrain from suggesting the contrary until the contrary is logically deduced from his

premises49

.

When Shibli Shumayyil (d.1916) introduced Darwins theory into the Arab

world, the majority of Muslims reacted negatively. Just as in the West, Darwinism

was deemed to be a threat to Faith, with traditionalists protesting jihad against the

poison of Darwinism. Even one of the major Muslim advocates of Western science,

Jamaluddin Afghani, became the first main Muslim figure to point out its dangers.

Though like many whose disbelief in evolution can be directly linked to their lack of

understanding, Afghani proclaimed that if evolution were true, then it would be

possible that after the passage of centuries a mosquito could become an elephant and

an elephant, by degrees, a mosquito50.

The role played by Arab scientific journalists was important in the Islam and

science discourse. As a matter of usual practice, scientific journals such as al-Manar,

al-Mashriq and al-Muqtataf, al-Hilal published articles discussing the relationship

between religion and science, with many of their authors using a mixture of religious

and secular formulations as a path for the adoption of modern science in the Muslim

world. It was via these Arabic scientific journals that dialogues such as the issues of

Darwinism and his Theory of Evolution were discussed throughout the Middle East.

48 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection 2nd Edition (London: John Murray,

1860), p.490.49 R. P. Aulie, Evolution and Special Creation: Historical Aspects of the Controversy, Proceedings of

the American Philosophical Society, Vol.127 (1983), 418-462, p.420.50 Pervez Hoodbhoy,Islam and Science (London: Zed Books, 1991), p.47.


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Many of these journalists, such as Husayn al-Jisr (1845-1909) allied themselves with

the aforementioned principles of al-Ghazali and Syed Ahmed Khan in reinterpreting

the Quran when faced with valid scientific evidence51

.

Western changes to the education system itself had major unforeseen impacts.

Previously the Muslim societies had been governed by the principle of tawhid, the

Unicity of God and submission to His Will, and one way of achieving the knowledge

of Allahs divine attributes had been through the education system of the time, the

curriculum of which had been formed around Islams core beliefs. The Western

educational system on the other hand was derived out of a spirit of inquiry and free

thinking rational thought where nothing was seen as absolute and where the Church

Fathers or Muslim Ulama were treated on equal ground. The introduction of a

Western education system inadvertently taught students the benefits of impartial

inquiry which may not necessarily be based upon Faith52

.

One of the most important Modernist Muslim scholars was Mohammad

Abduh, teacher and chief judge in Egypt from 1877 to 1905. Well aware of the

decaying Islamic society brought about by the printing press as well as by the modern

sense of human rationale, Abduh sought to highlight to the newly secular groups that

one could still be a devout Muslim in the modern world53

.

A close friend of Abduh, Qasim Amin (1863 - 1908), wrote:

Perfection is not to be found in the past, even the Islamic past; it can only be

found, if at all, in the distant future. The path to perfection is science, and in

the present age it is Europe which is more advanced in the sciences and

51Muzaffar Iqb-al,Islam and Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p.275-276.

52 Muzaffar Iqb-al,Islam and Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p.210.53

Andrew Rippen,Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge, 2001),

p.87-88.


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therefore also on the path to social perfection.54

In order to achieve these goals, Abduh pleaded for a return to the sources with the

aim of reassessing them in the light of modern advancements, using human reason for

the good of Islam and not as a tool against it. Abduhs scripturalist emphasis has

made him a useful reference for both Modernist writers as well as many

fundamentalist groups55

.

The printing press had reached Egypt in the 1820s, and as in other areas,

resulted in an availability of Quranic commentary to everyone. Seeing change as

both inevitable and beneficial, as well as potentially dangerous, Abduh began a

Quranic commentary which sought to do away with theological speculations and

obtuse grammatical discourses so common in previous commentaries. Comparisons

are rightly found here in the Protestant Reformations and Martin Luthers Bible

translation which gave the text to the common people56

.

Abduhs insistance on leaving the unknown unknown instead of using folk

tales to explain the unexplained marked a redirection in Quranic interpretations, if

more details were useful, Allah would have added them. For Abduh, modern

science could not be found in the Quran, any references in scriptural text to modern

advancements such as the telephone were merely a result of an imperfect mans

imagination and certainly not centred around sound characteristics of interpretation,

science can not reveal the Qurans true meaning57

. While in his The Epistle of

Divine Unity (1897), his main message was that of all religions, Islam was not only

the most scientifically compatible, but also the most rational, proposing that Muslims

should be willing to abandon antiquated practices and beliefs and be ready to

54Azzam Tamimi, The Renaissance of Islam, Daedalus, 132 (2003), 51-58, p.56.

55 Andrew Rippen,Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs (London: Routledge, 2001), p.88.56

Ibid.57 Ibid., p.89.


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modernise their faith58

.

One of the most radical Muslim thinkers of the 19th

century was Syed Ahmed

Khan (1817-1898), a reconstructionist and Indian born Muslim who was spurred on

by the British domination of his country. For Ahmed Khan, superstitious beliefs and

obedience to tradition while rejecting reason was directly to blame for the

backwardness and subservience of much of the Muslim world to the West. As a result

he made it his lifes work to reinterpret Islamic theology in order to make it more

compatible with the scientific advancement coming out of the West, separating

irrelevant and out-dated dogma from what he called pure Islam59

.

Ahmed Khans reinterpretations were unusually radical and led to conclusions

on topics such as evolutionary theory that would be controversial even today. Ahmed

Khans proposal that the Quran should be reinterpreted in order to take away all of its

seeming contradictions with physical reality drew condemnation, but there was reason

behind this madness. For Ahmed Khan, scientific truths were manifestly proven, but

since the Quran was Allahs word, any contradiction between proven science and the

word of God must not be a real contradiction, but simply a misunderstanding of

scriptural exegesis60

.

Though Ahmed Khans insistence that the proper Quranic interpretation

should be the one proven by science, and that if the two conflict then the Quran

should be interpreted metaphorically, harks back to the principles of al-Ghazali more

than 700 years previous, this did not prevent the traditionalists outcry against him as

well as a general lack of uptake on his controversial thoughts, even amongst many

modern day progressives61

.

58Philip J. Stewart, Unfolding Islam (Reading: Garnet, 2008), p.216.

59 Pervez Hoodbhoy,Islam and Science (London: Zed Books, 1991), p.55-56.60

Ibid., p.56.61 Ibid., p.56-57.


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By the late 19th

century, Islam was not only encouraging, but demanding that

its followers acquire knowledge and reform society62

. Even the philosopher

Muhammad Iqbal (18731938), famous for his anti-rational mindset and defense of

intuition was still well aware of the ways in which religion could be furthered by the

use of intellect63

. This belief in progress was equally important to 19th

century Islamic

reformists who saw all knowledge as developing over time via experiment, reason and

observation. Allahs creation contained certain eternal truths, but these truths were

applicable to their place and time, it being necessary to reinterpret them for each new

society and age. Reinterpretation did not mean an abandonment of essential Islamic

virtues, but instead a rediscovery64.

Another important point for the Reformists was the lack of contradiction

between modern science and Islam. Although the Quran does refer to a six-day

creation four times, in one place it calls one of Allahs days as similar to fifty

thousand human years, and in another to one thousand years. In terms of evolution,

the Quran usefully presents creation, not as a once-for-all act, but as a continuous

process. Many Muslims point to 71:14s, He has created you in stages, as implying

the process of natural selection, therefore many Muslims have no problems accepting

the idea that natural selection is the divine principle for the evolution of species,

including humans65

.

As Mohammed Rashid Reda, editor of the journal Al Manar wrote in 1910:

What is mentioned in the Quran about creation and its secrets is not an

account of how creation actually happened, nor as a manual of how creatures

come into being and survive. That is not the objective of religion. Tales in the

62Azzam Tamimi, The Renaissance of Islam,Daedalus, 132 (2003), 51-58, p.51.

63 C. A. Qadir,Philosophy and Science in the Islamic World(London: Routledge, 1990), p.3.64

Philip J. Stewart, Unfolding Islam (Reading: Garnet, 2008), p.218.65 Ibid., p.219.


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Quran of creation and creatures are rather mentioned as signs of Gods

power, knowledge, wisdom and compassion for His creatures.66

ISLAM AND DARWIN IN THE MODERN WORLD

Today, as a result of differing philosophies as can be seen above, throughout

the Muslim world there is no official opinion on evolution, the Quran does mention

the universes creation, but avoids specifics, leaving many verses open to

interpretation. Like the Christian bible, the Qurans creation story involves a six-day

account of creation, but unlike the Christian version, the length of the Qurans six

days is ambiguous, from a thousand years of your reckoning67

, to the measure

whereof is as fifty thousand years68

. All of this leaves possible the notion of a very

old earth and absolutely does away with any concept of a young-earth creationism, as

seen in the Christian West69

. Acceptance of evolution is favoured by the more liberal

theologians, whilst it is rejected by the more conservative and orthodox theologies70.

Yet, even if there were not differing opinions, or was an official opinion on evolution,

it is possible that 20th century relations between West and the Middle East would still

have resulted in malevolence towards the idea.

Good relations between the West and the Islamic Middle-East have been

systematically destroyed over the course of the 20th

century. Far from welcoming

66 W. Al-Shobakky, Rethinking Darwin,

(28th January 2010, 16:00).67 A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran (Brentwood: Amana Corp., 1983), p.1093.68

Ibid., p.1605.69 S. Hameed, Bracing for Islamic Creationism, Science, 322 (2008), 1637-1638, p.1637.70

R. P. Aulie, Evolution and Special Creation: Historical Aspects of the Controversy, Proceedings of

the American Philosophical Society, Vol.127 (1983), 418-462, p.424.


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Muslim advancement, European empires seemed intent on holding it back. Realising

the potential for oil wealth, Britain had already begun setting up protectorates in the

Persian Gulf. Later, Britain and France lied to Hashemite Sharif Huseyn of Mecca by

betraying his trust via the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement which secretly arranged for

Iran and Palestine to be given to Britain, and Syria to be taken by France after World

War One had ended71

.

The advent of WWII in 1939 brought about the invasion of Iran by Russia and

Britain, who imposed a compliant new shah, and in 1953, Britain and America

organised a coup to oust Prime Minister Massadegh after he attempted to nationalise

the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Shortly after, in 1956, the Anglo-Franco-Israeli

armies attempted to invade Egypt after the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, the

invasion was a failure72

.

However, the event that did the most to ruin Arab-Western relations in the last

century was the establishment of the Zionist state of Israel on Palestinian land. As a

result of all this, people in the Middle-East had by now realised that Western states

were unwilling to treat them as equals73.

Fast forward to the modern day and within the previous two decades we have

seen two wars waged by the West on Middle East, specifically, Iraq. Many, within

and without the Middle East are of the opinion, rightly so, that the Bush

administrations real reason for imposing a change of regime has far more to do with

securing cheap supplies of oil to the West, and much less to do with weapons of mass

destruction74

.

Osama bin Laden summed this up perfectly when talking to Al Jazeera news:

71 Philip J. Stewart, Unfolding Islam (Reading: Garnet, 2008), p.223.72

Ibid., p.224-225.73 Ibid., p.225.74

Alan Heston, Crusades and Jihads: A Long-Run Economic Perspective, The Annals of the

American Academy of Political and Social Science, 588 (July 2003), 112-135, p.113.


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We are following with great interest and concern the preparation of the

crusaders to launch war to occupy a former capital of Islam, to pillage the

wealth of Muslims and install a puppet government that follows the dictates of

its masters in Washington and Tel-Aviv.75

Bin Ladens use of language here says it all, clearly today an Arabic collective

memory still resonates with the brutal nature of the Crusades, with its continuing to

have major influence within the Muslim and Arabic consciousness76

. In this refusal to

acquiesce we see a demand for rule change, a demand arising out of changes in

environmental and social conditions co-existing alongside a centuries old dogma.

However, the steps necessary for pushing forward a cultural evolution are slow and

painful77

.

Since the 1980s, militant Islam has emerged across the Muslim world as a

major political force to be reckoned with, characterized by its willingness to use

violence, especially against the ever-pervading culture emanating from the West, as

well as against its own leaders considered to be secular or to be opposing Islamic

movements78.

The problems faced by Muslims during the Crusades were appearing once

again, even when not under direct attack, the culture of the West was seen as

insidiously pervading the culture of the Islamic world. Countries such as Lebanon

during the 1970s became massively westernized, with a Christian president, the latest

fashions, nightclubs similar to those in Europe, and the most eminent academic

institutions being French or American, teaching Western philosophies and sciences,

including Darwins Theory of Evolution. It is under these conditions that the

75 Ibid.76

Ibid.77 John Durant,Darwinism and Divinity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), p.139.78

Mary-Jane Deeb, Militant Islam and the Politics of Redemption, The Annals of the American

Academy of Political and Social Science, 425 (November 1992), 50-65, p.52.


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Muslim world has seen a rise in militant Islamic movements intent on changing the

areas politics, as well as its education, portraying themselves as the saviors of the old

society, and their weapon is religion79

.

As mentioned above, the introduction of Western styles of education had

unforeseen ramifications. Muslims who had received their education in this newer

secular system found themselves struggling between the two opposing worldviews of

physical reality and faith. For many, their lack of faith combined with lack of

knowledge on their own religion resulted in it becoming a mere set of rituals to be

saved for important events such death or marriage, parallels of this can clearly be seen

in Western societies today. Unfortunately for Islam then, the Islam and science

discourse lost something most important to it, its education system, the process of

modernizing science in the Muslim world had resulted in much of the faith of those

Muslims who would back it being lost to secularism80

.

Today in many Islamic countries, supporting evolutionary biology can be a

dangerous opinion to hold with many Muslim countries having laws against its being

taught. One such example is Sudan, where in 1990, University of Kartoum professor

Farouk Mohammed Ibrahim was sent to jail and violently beaten in the presence of

members of Sudans revolutionary council simply for teaching Darwins theory to his

students. However, Muslim thought in one country does not accurately reflect opinion

across the whole of the Islamic world, the British Muslim community protested

strongly against Ibrahims sentence and treatment81

.

Muslim scholars who do get away with it have tended to take a different

approach, such as al-Isfahani, an Iraqi Shii scholar wrote his own book as a repost,

Critique of Darwins Philosophy, published in 1941, attempted to give forth a

79 Ibid., p.54-55.80

Muzaffar Iqb-al,Islam and Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p.210.81 Pervez Hoodbhoy,Islam and Science (London: Zed Books, 1991), p.47.


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theistic theory of evolution where he went as far as saying that there was no such

thing in nature as blind chance, and that Charles Darwin as well as his bulldog,

Huxley, were believers in God. Others such as Hassan Husayin urged for a

metaphorical interpretation of the Quranic verses speaking of a six-day creation,

while also connecting Darwins theory to the aforementioned Rasail-e-Ikhwanus

Safa, which for him had clearly been written under the guidance of a heavenly

wisdom82

.

As Western aggression continued towards the Middle East, the Islamic

reformist movement continued. Mahmud Taha was a Sudanese reformist who drew

great interest among the reformist circles for his liberal thinking approach to Islam83.

However, this did not mean Taha was completely accepting of the West, for Taha the

notion that society no longer needed God because scientific knowledge had freed us

from ignorance is a blasphemous misconception, in fact the West could not yet be

considered a true civilization due to its confusion of values84

.

On the topic of evolution Taha was ambiguous, ignoring any concept of

humans having evolved from separate species, he states the word of the Quran is

final, that Allah created man as he is. However, man began existence in a state of

submission to God just like all animate and inanimate objects, but that through a form

of evolution human beings could ascend from this instinctive submission to a higher

state of conscious submission, that through mans evolution, society would also

evolve85

.

For Muslims of antiquity, critical research could never be tolerated as it

automatically infers doubt in the mind of the researcher. Any science such as biology,

82Muzaffar Iqb-al,Islam and Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p.277.

83 John Cooper,Islam and Modernity: Muslim Intellectuals Respond (London: Tauris, 1998), p.105.84

Ibid., p.108-109.85 Ibid., p.114.


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which called into question one of Islams established truths could never be allowed.

Amongst the more fundamentalist population today, modern science can only be

tolerated if it can serve to advance Muslim heritage, or at the very least does not

oppose it86. The commonly held belief that Muslims are Gods unique elect has

implicit consequences in a view that the normal considerations of historians or

scientists do not really apply to them87

, whilst many Muslims confuse evolution

with atheism, seeing it then automatically opposed to their religion88

. For many,

Darwin is clearly irreligious89

.

The assumption that rationality is inherently atheistic is a dogma seriously

offensive to faiths such as Islam. This is not a small problem, but for many is one of

the major sources of contempt Muslims have for the West90

.

A respectable alternative to Darwins evolution has become the theory of

intelligent design, despite its failure in the field of science it is given continual

credence by philosophical critiques which emphasise naturalism in science. Like

creationism, the proponents of intelligent design often behave less like scientists

testing a hypotheses and more like a political pressure group more concerned with

affirming their own religious commitments91

.

For Muslims looking at the West, Darwins theory of evolution has led to a

philosophical materialism which propagates a biological justification for sexual

promiscuity. Mustafa Akyol, journalist and one of the expert witnesses who testified

to the Kansas State Education Board during hearings on evolution, sees this

86Muzaffar Iqb-al,Islam and Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p.60-61.

87 A. Al-Azmeh, The Genesis of Islam in the Light of History. The Medieval History Journal, 12

(2009) 1-12, p.4.88 S. Hameed, Bracing for Islamic Creationism, Science, 322 (2008), 1637-1638, p.1638.89 Pervez Hoodbhoy,Islam and Science (London: Zed Books, 1991), p.79.90


(28th January 2010, 14:50).91

Matt Young, Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism (New

Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), p.12.


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justification perfectly highlighted in the Bloodhound Gang hit song, The Bad Touch

(2000), containing the lyrics, You and me baby aint nothing but mammals, so lets

do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. Darwins philosophical materialism has

for many Muslims, led to this cultural materialism that we are all simply animals and

should live for the moment. Even for Daniel Dennet, one of Darwinisms major

proponents, the Theory of Evolution has become a universal acid, it eats through just

about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionised worldview. A

worldview where a God is ridiculed, attacked and denied, could only ever be a major

problem for Muslims and their view of the West as well as anything coming out of

it92.

Intelligent Design gives science a new perspective that can be fully compatible

with God while still being based on scientific evidence, not only a bridge between

theology and science, but also increasingly a bridge between the Western and Islamic

worlds. Islamic newspapers in Turkey are translating Western ID texts such as those

by Phillip E. Johnson and Michael J. Behe as the debate over ID attracts Muslim

attention. Instead of a divide, Muslims are now realising they share a commonality

with Western believers, instead of a source of the plague that is materialism, the West

can be the antidote93

.

Today, common misinformation on Darwins theory of evolution, combined

with relatively poor education standards across the Muslim world, has made it a prime

battleground for the next major fight over the teaching of creationism vs. evolution.

The increasing importance of the biological sciences and rising education levels

almost guarantee the appearance and growth of Islamic creationism94

. Many people

92Mustafa Akyol, Intelligent Design Could be a Bridge Between Civilisations,

(28th January 2010, 14:50).93

Ibid.94 S. Hameed, Bracing for Islamic Creationism, Science, 322 (2008), 1637-1638, p.1637.


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simply do not understand what evolution is, the often asked, if men evolved from

monkeys then why are there still monkeys? being a perfect example of this. Such an

understanding is either regrettable or laudable95

. The denial of Darwins Theory of

Evolution has prompted theologians and biologists to ponder over topics each group

had previously thought to be the domain of the other96

.

Despite the many attempts to corroborate science with verse, attempts to refute

them have been just as influential. Amin al-Khuli (1895-1966), professor at the

Egyptian University of Giza is the most notable for his methodic and detailed

refutation of modern scientific exegesis, who divided his arguments under the four

headlines of Lexicological, Philological, Theological, and Logical.

Lexicologically, the linguistics of the Quran have no correlation to the vocabulary

and terms used within modern science. Also, modern scientific understanding is

philologically unsound since the Quran was initially told to the peers of the Prophet

Mohammed and would obviously not contain information they would not understand

at that time. Theologically, scientific exegesis is dangerous given that the Quran is

meant as a life guide, done by laying forth a worldview based not around scientific

principles, but around doctrines. Therefore, it is logically foolish to infer that the

limited quantity of text within the Quran should include the ever-changing views of

the previous two centuries of science97

.

This view of science as ever-changing has caused problems for others too,

such as Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (d. 1943), who was quick to highlight problems

with interpreting the Quran with modern science. For Ali Thanvi, it is a mistake to

subject the Quran to a knowledge that is forever changing, Islamic philosophical

95R. P. Aulie, Evolution and Special Creation: Historical Aspects of the Controversy, Proceedings of

the American Philosophical Society, Vol.127 (1983), 418-462, p.421-422.96

Ibid., p.418.97 Muzaffar Iqb-al,Islam and Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), p.290-291.


29/45


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attempt to highlight the miracle of creation by comparing modern scientific

advancements with the Qurans cosmological verses. However, in many cases this has

resulted in a gross injustice to science as well as great profanation of Quranic verse,

and has had a large part to play in the birth of the Islamic creationist movement102.

Caught between East and West through examples highlighted above, young

Turks were stuck in a secular society where religion had found itself under attack and

was at war with itself. With these inner tensions, Turkey has become a nation where

the discourse on science and Islam is not a calm one, but often a matter of life and

death, which came to the forefront during the last two decades of the 20th

century103

.

In Turkey, the education systems emphasis on creationism has grown and

shrunk in accordance with Turkeys ruling parties and their own emphasis on Islam.

Creationism made its first appearance in Turkish schools when, in 1985, Education

Minister Dincerler, through contact with the American ICR (Institute of Creation

Research)104

, decided a section on scientific creationism should be added to secondary

school textbooks, as well as criticisms of both the Darwinian and Lamarckian theories

of evolution105.

Not until 1998 and a new government did secondary school textbooks give a

more balanced view of Darwins theories, a move which infuriated the BAV (Bilim

Arastima Vakfi), the Science Research Foundation, who fought back by stepping up

their campaigns, organising seminars and giving away Harun Yahyas anti-Darwin

tracts and books. Consisting of mostly young professionals, the BAV has become one

of the worlds largest anti-evolution groups outside of the USA and have much

influence in many other Muslim nations, describing themselves as not trying to dispel

102 Ibid., p.269,272.103

Ibid., p.272.104 Ibid., p.273.105

Robert Koenig, Creationism Takes Root Where Europe, Asia Meet, Science, 292 (May 2001),

1286-1287, p.1286.


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science, but to harmonise it with the Quran106

.

In some parts of Turkey and across the Muslim fundamentalist world, books

such as Harun Yahyas The Evolution of Deceit (1999) and his TV series The Dark

Face of Darwinism have become more influential than school textbooks.

Spearheaded by the BAV, scientists who supported evolution have come under

attack in part of a campaign to discredit Darwinism in favour of creationism,

receiving threats on their lives. Meanwhile, speakers from American creationist

organisations have been flown-in in order to speak at anti-evolution events held across

Turkey, also arranged by the BAV107

.

Harun Yahya, pen name of Adnad Oktar, begins his Atlas of Creation with a

note to the reader, the first paragraph of which reads:

A special chapter is assigned to the collapse of the theory of evolution because

this theory constitutes the basis of all anti-spiritual philosophies. Since

Darwinism rejects the fact of creation and therefore, Gods existence over

the last 140 years it has caused many people to abandon their faith or fall into

doubt. It is therefore an imperative service, a very important study to show

that his theory is a deception.108

Oktar claims that in the 150 years since Darwin first proposed his theory, no

scientific findings have been found to support it and that Darwins theory was

dreamed up in his own imagination, that they were not based on any findings or

evidence. Oktar goes on to state that the fossil record reveals that life forms have

never undergone any change whatsoever and are the same today as they were

hundreds of millions of years ago109

.

106Ibid., p.1286-1287.

107 Ibid.108

Harun Yahya,Atlas of Creation (Istanbul: Global Publishing, 2008), p.i.109 Ibid., p.14-15.


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Finally, Adnan Oktar concludes his book with the words:

The theory of evolution, an outdated 19th

century concept, has completely

collapsed in the face of todays scientific facts. Darwinists have no scientific

reply to offer in the face of the fossil record [] Darwinists cannot point to a

single fossil suggesting that evolution ever took place.110

Later going on to claim that Darwinism causes terrorism as well as communist

ideals111

.

Oktar attended the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts but did not complete

his degree in Interior Design and has no further scientific education. Despite both this

and the wealth of scientific evidence refuting his claims, his popularity is unparalleled

across the Islamic world, his ideas gaining particular fame among the more

fundamentalist groups who agree with Yahyas ideas that Darwin was an atheist

whose theory served to undermine all religions. This is an opinion which can be

understandable for a theory which ultimately points towards a godless, random

universe112

.

The debate is so strong that many biologists in Turkey are afraid to speak out

against creationism, there is though a small, but influential minority of Muslim

academic doctors and biologists who do accept the theory of evolution as seen by the

West113

. As a backlash against the BAV, in 1998 a small group of Turkish scientists

founded the Evolution Group, with the aim of better explaining the science behind

evolutionary theory to the public, shortly followed by the Turkish Academys own

public statement in defense of evolution, that the academy will fight any effort to

110 Ibid., p.612.111 Ibid., p.620-621.112

W. Al-Shobakky, Rethinking Darwin,

(28th

January 2010, 16:00).113 S. Hameed, Bracing for Islamic Creationism, Science, 322 (2008), 1637-1638, p.1638.


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drop the teaching of evolution from our textbooks. Many Muslim scientists do accept

Darwins theory, usually within the rationale that Allah began the process by a

moment of creation first willed by Him, after which the evolutionary process

began114.

Conservation biologist Can Bilgin of Middle East Technical University

explains that, The creationists have access to lots of money, and the political

situation is in turmoil. An example of this can be seen in Turkish politician, Ali

Goren, who used legislature to attempt to stop the teaching of Darwins theory in

Turkish secondary schools, claiming that the theory encouraged separatism and

atheism. Gorens attempt to stop the teaching of evolution is still ongoing115.

Where Darwinists ridicule those god of the gaps theists who fit a divine

being into those spaces science has not yet explained. The BAV see instead an

atheism of the gaps, that instead of seeing the gaps slowly being filled in by science

over time, actually see the opposite, with the theory of evolutions problems actually

widening. This can be seen in the discovery of the sheer complexity of biological life

as well as the Cambrian explosions dramatic leap in biological entities. For Muslims

such as Yahya, a simple lack of realisation and knowledge about biology led to wrong

assumptions that biology is simple enough to be explained by non-design theories

such as Darwins116

.

In Turkey, the debate between creationism and evolution is really a microcosm

of a larger debate, that of Islam and secularism, and not one confined to Turkey. In

Sudan in 1985, theologian Mahmud Taha was sentenced to death and hanged simply

for trying to set apart the verses of the Quran which express moral exhortations from

114 Robert Koenig, Creationism Takes Root Where Europe, Asia Meet, Science, 292 (May 2001),

1286-1287, p.1287.115 Ibid., p.1286-1287.116


(28th January 2010, 14:50).


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the verses which actually do call for waging war. A decade later, in Egypt, 1996, after

using modern historical criteria to critically analyse the Sunna and the Quran, Nasser

Hamed Abouzeid was put on trial. Losing the case, Abouzeid was condemned for

apostasy and officially declared divorced from his wife, since in no way could she

be allowed to stay married to this new infidel117

.

Many fundamentalist sheiks are convinced that there is nothing new about

modern science, in fact it is not even modern, western scientists having merely

rediscovered things already mentioned in the Quran, including quantum physics,

atomic fission, and evolution118

. The Muslim Reformists, however, disagree. For them

it is not important who said what and when, what is important is understanding the

ideas which grew to have immense significance throughout 20th

century Islam. One of

these ideas, central to the reformist structure, was the belief that Western civilisation

had much to teach Islam, many developments from the industrial and scientific

revolutions could be of great use to the Muslims, and in the religious sphere this

meant the application of modern techniques and concepts, including Darwins

evolutionary theory119.

Weak opinions on evolution do not however accurately reflect the education

given in Muslim countries. In 2006, fourteen Islamic states, including Indonesia,

Egypt and Iran signed an IAP (Interacademy Panel) agreement on the teaching of

human evolution in schools. But only two years later, a 2008 survey of eighteen

school teachers in Pakistan found contradictory attitudes, while fourteen of the

teachers accepted the evolution of organisms, fifteen rejected human evolution, yet,

all of them saw no contradiction between Islam and science120

.

117Pervez Hoodbhoy,Islam and Science (London: Zed Books, 1991), p.61.

118 Ibid., p.62.119

Philip J. Stewart, Unfolding Islam (Reading: Garnet, 2008), p.217.120 S. Hameed, Bracing for Islamic Creationism, Science, 322 (2008), 1637-1638, p.1638.


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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, in speaking about what Muslims believe about creation and

evolution, we are appealing to different audiences, different interpretations and ways

of seeing things. Some people find that it helps their faith to look at facts and figures,

finding it reassuring to examine all of Allahs works with a scientific, rational eye.

Others see evidence for the existence of a creator in the simple beauty of a sunset.

As seen above, within the Quran are a large number of verses describing the

origin of life and the cosmos, therefore it was natural for Muslim scientists to pay

attention to these verses. For Muslims, an opposition to evolution is not based on any

particular thing written in the Quran, but instead on the cultural and social threat

Darwins theory poses for Muslims, a threat which takes the shape of heathen atheism

and materialism121

.

The major difference between the understandings of Islamic natural historians

and that of modern biologists when it comes to fossils and older forms of life derives

from the issue that for the historians, the physical natural world is transcended by a

level of reality much higher than that which can be seen, the level of Allah and the

Quran. For them, the normal interpretation of evolution is both theologically and

metaphysically unacceptable122. The new challenge for modern Muslim scholars is to

bring forth new synthesis on Darwins theory that takes the last 150 years of debates

and research into account, and not simply to restate old arguments more than a

century old123

.

121 Ibid.122 Seyyed Hossain Nasr, Science and Civilisation in Islam (Cambrudge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1968), p.94.123 W. Al-Shobakky, Rethinking Darwin,

(28th January 2010, 16:00).


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Muslims see Darwinians as belonging to a subjective faith, and not an

objective faith as they have claimed, taking it for granted that God does not exist is

merely limiting science according to an unproven premise. According to Phillip E.

Johnson, the debate over Intelligent Design is ultimately a question of whether the

United States is a nation under Darwin, or a nation under God. Muslims see the

former as a plague, but have no problem with the latter124

.

When fundamentalist Islam does mention science, it really means religious

science, since for Muslims there can be absolutely no detachment of science from

religion, a view that has led many over the centuries to regard Islam as a backward

religion and holding itself back from scientific progress. Abdus Salam, winner of the

1979 Nobel Prize for Physics, once commented, Of all the great civilisations of the

planet, it is the Islamic community that has given the least attention to science125

.

For many Muslims today, the scientific area of biology contains good and evil

sides which exist alongside oneanother; the question to be asked is whether that good

outweighs the evil. Answering this question correctly requires both a detailed

understanding of the human genome, as well as an understanding of the nature of

mankind. Muslim scientists and scholars need to give still more serious thought to

modern day developments in biology and determine, within an Islamic mindset, if the

benefits inherent to these developments outweigh the possibility of their leading

Muslim societies away from Islam126

.

Islams shaky relationship with science and rational thought has been

highlighted numerous times above, from the very beginning, taking science from the

124 Mustafa Akyol, Intelligent Design Could be a Bridge Between Civilisations,

(28th January 2010, 14:50).125

Pervez Hoodbhoy,Islam and Science (London: Zed Books, 1991), p.60.126 Munawar Ahmad Anees, Islamic Values and Western Science: a Case Study of Reproductive

Biology, in The Touch of Midas: Science, Values and Environment in Islam and the West, ed. By

Ziauddin Sardar (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 112-117, p.117.


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completely different society of the Greeks led to troubles and ostracised many who

welcomed it. For the majority of Muslims, science was always going to be a means of

achieving personal religious salvation, and not a way of becoming secular. Long

before secularism became an issue, it was obvious that any scientific interpretation

would have to take place within the understanding of the Quran, as can be seen in

al-Kindis analysis of causation and substance. Al-Kindi believed that Allah created

the universe. Precisely how He did this, in what manner, and in what length of time,

are things known to Him alone. Darwins theory of evolution is one of many theories,

there are other ideas about how human life and the universe came into being, for

many Muslims none of them need take away from Allahs role as the Creator.

The changing philosophies in the Muslim world have also had a large part to

play in its ambiguous relationship with science and later, evolutionary theory. From

the Mutazilites advocation of human reason from the 8th

10th

centuries, to

Asharisms complete rejection of its use and need of the authors of the Rasail

Ikhwan to write underground, and the resulting schism as Islamic philosophy fell into

the two camps of rational vs traditional thought. Even the rationalist principles of

the great philosophers such as al-Ghazali and Mulla Sadra were not adhered to across

the entire Muslim world and so can only be truly important within the history of the

nation and sect they belonged to.

Perhaps, when advanced Western sciences and technologies did begin to

arrive in the Middle East, with the violent history between East and West still fresh in

so many minds, it was no wonder that their uptake was so slow, and even less

surprising given that when technologies such as the printing press were implemented,

the result was the ability of any man or woman, educated or not, to have their views

read worldwide.


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At the same time, unfortunately for the Ottomans, their rush to modernize and

adapt Western styles of education soon resulted in a secularized mindset and

individuals with little knowledge of their own religion. With all this godlessness

emanating from the West, then it is no surprise, that even with Darwins clever use of

words such as creator in his 2nd

edition, that his theory of evolution caused negative

reactions when it arrived. It taking years and further use of Islamic journals, the

printing press and mixed discourses on science within Islam for much of the uproar to

die down.

Ultimately it took new philosophers such as Abduh to reinterpret both Islam,

the Quran and the sciences within a modern mindset, though often simply restating

the philosophies of those such as al-Ghazali who had come before them, to redirect

Muslim society onto a clearer, more scientifically compatible path. For these new

philosophers there could be no modern science in a Quran written at a time when

science as we know it existed, and it made no sense to ignore the evidence. Better to

metaphorically reinterpret verse instead, as can be seen in Ahmed Khans proposal

that any contradictions must simply be down to a misunderstanding of scripture.

Yet, these ideas did not always go down well. Perhaps where once the West

had physically and violently invaded the lands of the Middle East, centuries later they

were unintentionally invading the mindsets, and achieving far more everlasting

societal change than they had done during the Crusades. So it is no wonder then that

many Muslims fought these changes just as vehemently as their ancestors had fought

the crusaders. As reformists sought to change their society for the better,

traditionalists once again attempted to hold them back.

Refuting anything coming from the West then only became easier given the

20th century relations between the two worlds. First the West physically invades, then


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the West invades the mindset and changes the systems of education, then oil is

discovered and the West physically invades again on numerous occasions throughout

the 20th

century. Where at the end of the 19th

century reform was slowly but surely

taking place, events throughout the 20th resulted in further rejection and the birth of

fundamentalist ideals and philosophies such as creationism taking root.

With results ranging from the imprisonment and death of those who taught

evolution as in Sudan, to the clash of creationists vs scientists in countries such as

Turkey, where East meets West, and authors such as Adnan Oktar, despite his utter

lack of any scientific background being able to write books which are read as gospel

by millions worldwide.

The above has shown how significant the historical background of Islamic

philosophical and theological thought are to the cultivation of the modern day natural

sciences, which are having real problems from escaping a world-view arising from

scriptural sources and not from the natural sciences themselves.

In the Muslim East, as in the West, armies of scientists exist who resist not

faith itself, but those who use faith to apply it in oppressive ways. Many Muslim

scientists live in hope that one day Islamic science will undergo its own renaissance,

especially now that Islam is undergoing another renaissance across the entire world,

asserting its political importance in a globalised community. The reason for this is that

Muslims today recognize the importance of scientific research, publication, proper

scientific training and the necessity of not shunning, but openly exchanging ideas and

findings with the non-Muslim community.

If an Islamic scientific renaissance does take place, in will most likely, as in

the past, take place within a Quranic frame of reference, adapting experimental

philosophy for its own purposes, while no doubt still encountering the ethical and


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moral questions faced by both the West and the Islamic world as highlighted in this

essay. A key principal in dealing with these issues is the search for both material truth

and moral truth, unfortunately though it appears impossible to do this without the

inevitable clash between those who regard the capability of the mind as the origin of

all truth and those who regard the Quran as the origin of that truth. In the largely

secular West this argument would appear to have been mostly won, not by religion,

but by intellect. The Islamic world however, despite its increasing secularization in

the previous century, has yet to become a predominantly secular civilization, and as

such the confrontation between rationality and traditional faith is yet to be won, only

time will tell.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Texts

Andalusi, Said ibn Ahmad, Science in the Medieval World: Book of the Categories

of Nations (1029-1070; repr. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991)

Darwin, Charles, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection 2nd

Edition (London:

John Murray, 1860)

Hameed, S., Bracing for Islamic Creationism, Science, 322 (2008), 1637-1638

Koenig, Robert, Creationism Takes Root Where Europe, Asia Meet, Science, 292

(May 2001), 1286-1287

Yahya, Harun,Atlas of Creation (Istanbul: Global Publishing, 2008

Yusuf Ali, A. The Holy Quran: Text , Translation and Commentary (Brentwood:

Amana Corp., 1983)


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Cooper, John,Islam and Modernity: Muslim Intellectuals Respond(London: Tauris,

1998)

Deeb, Mary-Jane, Militant Islam and the Politics of Redemption, The Annals of the

American Academy of Political and Social Science, 425 (November 1992), 50-65

Durant, J.,Darwinism and Divinity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985)

Hamdani, Abbas, The Arrangement of the Rasail Ikhwan al-Safa and the Problem of

Interpolations,Journal of Semitic Studies , XXIX/1 (1984), 97-110

Heston, Alan, Crusades and Jihads: A Long-Run Economic Perspective, The Annals

of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 588 (July 2003), 112-135

Hoodbhoy, P., Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for

Rationality (London: Zed Books, 1991)

Huff, Toby E., The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Iqb-al, Muzaffar,Islam and Science (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002)

Lindberg, D. C., The Beginnings of Western Science: the European Scientific

Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D.


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Documents

Dissertation - Islamic Creationism