The following is a lecture by Seyyid Hossein Nasr entitled, ``Islam and Modern Science’’, which was co-sponsored by the Pakistan Study Group, the MIT Muslim Students Association and other groups. Professor Nasr, currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, is a physics and mathematics alumnus of MIT. He received a PhD in the philosophy of science, with emphasis on Islamic science, from Harvard University. From 1958 to 1979, he was a professor of history of science and philosophy at Tehran University and was also the Vice-Chancellor of the University over 1970-71. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Princeton Universities. He has delivered many famous lectures including the Gifford Lecture at Edinburgh University and the Iqbal Lecture at the Punjab University. He is the author of over twenty books including ``Science and Civilization in Islam’’, ``Traditional Islam in the Modern World’’, ``Knowledge and the Sacred’’, and ``Man and Nature: the Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man’’. The verbatim transcript of the lecture was edited to enhance clarity and remove redundancies. We have tried our best to preserve the spirit of what was said. Any errors are solely the responsibility of the Pakistan Study Group. * and ** indicates places where either a phrase or sentence was indecipherable. Words in [ ] were added to improve continuity.
First
of all, let me begin by saying how happy I am to be able to accept an
invitation of the MIT Islamic Students Association, and that of other
universities and other organizations nearby, to give this lecture here today at
my alma mater. I feel very much at home not only at this university, but being
the first Muslim student ever to establish a Muslim students’ association at
Harvard in 1954, to see that these organizations are now growing, and are
becoming culturally significant. I am sure they play a very important role in
three ways. Most importantly, in turning the hearts of good Muslims towards
God, Allah ta’allah. At a more human level to be able to afford the possibility
for Muslims from various countries to have a discourse amongst themselves, and
third to represent the views of Muslims on American campuses where there is so
much need to understand what is going on at the other side of the world. That
world which seems to remain forever the OTHER for the West, no matter what
happens. The Otherness, somehow, is not overcome so easily.
Now
today, I shall limit my discourse to Islam and its relation to modern science.
This is a very touchy and extremely difficult subject to deal with. It is not a
subject with any kind of, we might say, dangerous pitfalls or subterfuges under
way because it is not a political subject. It does not arouse passions as,
let’s say, questions that are being discussed in Madrid, or the great tragedy
of Kashmir or other places. But nevertheless, it is of very great consequence
because it will affect one way or the other, the future of the Islamic world as
a whole.
Many
people feel that that in fact there is no such thing as the Islamic problem of
science. They say science is science, whatever it happens to be, and Islam has
always encouraged knowledge, al-ilm in Arabic, and therefore we should
encourage science and what’s the problem? -there’s no problem. But the problem
is there because ever since children began to learn Lavoiser’s Law that water
is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, in many Islamic countries they came home
that evening and stopped saying their prayers. There is no country in the
Islamic World which has not been witness in one way or another, to the impact,
in fact, of the study of Western Science upon the ideological system of its
youth. Parallel with that however, because science is related first of all to
prestige, and secondly, to power, and thirdly, without [science] the solution
of certain problems within Islamic society [is difficult], from all kinds of
political backgrounds and regimes, all the way from revolutionary regimes to
monarchies, all [governments] the way from semi-democracies to totalitarian
regimes, all spend their money in teaching their young Western science. I see
many Muslims in the audience today, many of you, your education is paid for by
your parents or your government or some university in order precisely to bring
Western science back into the Muslim world. And therefore we are dealing with a
subject which is quite central to the concerns of the Islamic world. In the
last twenty years [this subject] has begun to attract some of the best minds in
the Islamic world to the various dimensions of this problem.
And
therefore I want to begin by first of all by expressing for you, (making things
easier, categorizing it a bit), three main positions which exist in the Islamic
world today as far as the relationship between Islam and modern science is
concerned, before delving a bit more deeply into what my own view is. First of
all, is the position that many people re-iterate. I am sure many of you in this
room, and especially at a place like MIT, who would not have had much of a
chance to study the philosophical implications of either your own tradition,
that is Islam, nor of Western science, believe that one studies science and
then one says prayers, loves God and obeys the laws of the Shariah, and
that there is really no problem. This position itself is not something new. It
is something that was inculcated in many circles of the Islamic world during
the past century and going back historically, it was the position taken up by
Jamaluddin Al-Afghani who migrated to Egypt and called himself Al-Afghani. The
famous reformer, a rather maverick [figure], of the nineteenth century was at
once a philosopher, political figure, Pan-Islamist and anti-Caliphate organizer
*. Nobody knows exactly what his political positions were, but he was certainly
a very influential person in the nineteenth century, and was responsible,
directly, and indirectly, through his student Mohammed Abduh, for the so-called
reforms that took place in the 1880’s and 1890’s of the Christian era, that is
the beginning of the fourteenth century of the Islamic era, in Eygpt.
Jamaluddin has been claimed, interestingly enough, by both modernists and
anti-modernists forces like the Ikhwan-ul-Muslameen in Egypt during the
early decades of this century.
Jamaluddin was interested in Western science, [though] he had very little knowledge [of it], and he was also very much interested in the revival of the Islamic world. The character of [Jamaluddin’s] argument is absolutely crucial to the understanding of what I am talking about. He came up with view that science per se is what has made the West powerful and great. And the West is dominating over the Islamic world because it has this power in its pocket. And since this is being allowed, this is being done, there must be something very positive about this science, that science itself is good, because it gives power. This was the first part of his argument. Secondly, [he argued], science came from the Islamic world originally and therefore Islamic science is really responsible for the West’s possession of science and the West’s domination of the Islamic world itself. And therefore, all the Muslims have to do is to reclaim this science for themselves in order to reach the glories of their past and become a powerful and great civilization. This is the gist of a rather extensive argument given by Jamaluddin Afghani which equates, in fact, Islamic science with Western science. Secondly, it equates the power of the West with the power of science. To some extent this is true, but not completely so. And thirdly, it believes that acquisition of this science of the West [by the Muslims] is, no more no less, than the Muslims claiming their own property which has somehow been taken over by another continent and [the Muslims] just want back what is really their own. Now this point of view had a great deal of impact upon the Islamic world, upon the modernist circles, and in order to understand what is going on in the Islamic world today it is important to see what consequences flow from this.
I am really addressing my lecture predominantly to Muslims students and scholars and scientists, discussing in a sense family problems. I am sure there are some Christians and non-Christian Western people present which is fine, which is a way to understand another civilization’s struggle to look at the major problems that it has. But my lecture is really tailored to the internal problems of the Islamic world, as far as science is concerned. I hope other people will forgive me, this is not just a formal lecture on the history of science in last century in the Islamic world by any means. * I want to pursue what happened to Jamaluddin’s thesis in the nineteenth century. The modernists in the Islamic world [are] one of three important groups that came into being in the nineteenth century. The other two being those who are now being dubbed as the fundamentalists, a term which I do not like at all but which is now very prevalent, and third, those who believe in some kind of Mahdiism, some kind of apocalyptic interference of God. These two groups I shall not be dealing with at the present moment. The most important group for us to consider are the modernists.
The
modernists took on this thesis of Jamaluddin, and during the last century and a
half, they have carried the banner of a kind of rationalism within the Islamic
world which will accord well with the simple equation of science with Islamic
science and with the Islamic idea of knowledge, al-ilm. [Interestingly,]
as a consequence of this, the Islamic world during this one hundred and fifty
year period produced very few historians of science and very few philosophers
of science. It produced a very large number of scientists and engineers, some
of whom very brilliant and studying in the best institutions of the world like
here, but it produced practically no major philosopher and historian of science
until just a few decades ago. This problem [was just left aside] because it was
uninteresting and irrelevant, and all the debate that was being carried out in
the West itself about the impact of science upon religion, upon the philosophy
of science, [about] what this kind of knowing meant, these were circumvented,
more or less, in the Islamic educational system.
There
were a few exceptions. Kamal Ataturk came into power in Turkey. Though in many
ways a brutal [soldier, he] saved Turkey from extinction. We know what he did
to Islam in Turkey. But he had a certain intuition, certain visions of things.
The first thing that he did was to say that in order for Turkey to stand on its
feet as a modern ``secular’’ state, what it has to do is [to] learn about the
history of Western science. So when the program for the doctorate degree in the
history of science headed by the late George Sarton, scholar and historian of
science, was established at Harvard University which was the first program in
this country, Ataturk sent the first student to study the history of science
anywhere in America, to Harvard. The first person to enter the PhD program in
the history of science at Harvard University is a Turk, Aideen Saeeli. He is
still alive, [and] is the doyen of the Turkish historians of science.
There
were exceptions but by and large, the modernists forces within the Islamic
world, decided to neglect and overlook the consequences of Western science,
either philosophical or religious and felt that Islam could handle the matter
much better than Christianity. [They felt] that there was something wrong with
Christianity [as] it buckled under the pressures of modern science and
rationalism in the nineteenth century, and this would not happen to Islam.
Certain Western thinkers, in fact, followed this trend of thought. One of the
most rabidly anti-Christian, [and] anti-religion philosophers of France in the
nineteenth century, Ernst Renan, who was known as sort of the grandfather of
rationalism in nineteenth century French philosophy, wrote a book which is now
a classical book on Averroes, (Ibn-Rushd), [and] which has been reprinted now
after 140 years in France, in which he says exactly the same kinds of things.
He says that Averroes represents rationalism which led to modern science. [He]
represents Arabic Islamic thought and Western theology, [which] simply did not
understand this, has always been an impediment to the rise of modern science.
So a kind of psychological and, loosely speaking, philosophical alliance was
created between Islamic modernist thinkers and anti-religious philosophers in
the West. This is something which needs a great deal of analysis later on. Let
me just pass it over. It is not central to my subject, but we must take
cognizance of it.
And
this attitude continued, gradually proliferating from a few centers who sent
[people to the] West to the modern education institutions of the Islamic world
such as the Darul Fanooni in Iran, the University of Punjab in Punjab, the Foad
I University in Cairo, Istanbul University and so forth and so on, and
gradually embraced the whole body of the Islamic world. Today, every Thursday
evening when you turn on Cairo radio there are one or two very famous lecturers
who are, in fact, very devout Muslims, loved by the people of Egypt, [and] the
heart of their message is every single verse of the Quran which deals with either
Ta’akul or Taffakur, that is intellection or knowledge or
observation or mushahida. These [verses] are interpreted
``scientifically’’, that is, as an attempt to preserve Islam through scientific
support for the Islamic revelation, for the Quran itself. And this is a very
strong position in the Islamic world today. Therefore [the Muslim] thinks in
fact there is no problem as far as Islam and modern science are concerned.
Now
this position had a reverse. The ulema, religious scholars of the
Islamic world opposed the modernist thesis, [which] was also based on the
dilution of the Sharia, as you have seen in Turkey, the gradual
introduction of Western political and economic institutions in the Islamic
world, the rise of modern nationalism, all of these things which I will not go
into right now. The religious scholars of Islam whose names paradoxically
enough, meant scientists, in fact, disdained science completely. And so you
have this dichotomy within the Islamic world, in which the modernists refuse to
study the philosophical and religious implications of the introduction of
Western science in the Islamic world, and the classical traditional ulema,
and this cut across the Islamic world, all refused to have anything to do with
modern science. There are again a few exceptions.
This
left a major vacuum in the intellectual life of the Islamic community for which
every single Muslim sitting in this room suffers in one way or another. Many
people think this was all the fault of the ulema. I do not think this was
all the fault of the ulema, this is also the fault of the authorities
which had economic and political power in their hands, and the two in fact went
together. We must add to this a third element [which] is that while science was
spreading in the Islamic world, there had been created within the Islamic
world, a reformist puritanical movement, especially within Arabia, associated
with the name of Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahab, the so-called Wahabi
movement, which is still very strong in Saudi Arabia, which in fact gave rise
to [the country] with the wedding of Nejd and Hijaz in 1926-27. Its roots [lie]
in the eighteenth century when this man lived, and his way of thinking then
proliferated into Egypt and Syria.
[Similarly]
the Salafia movement in India and other places, [also] wanted to
interpret Islam in a very rational and simple manner and was opposed to
``philosophical’’ speculation and was opposed to the whole tradition of Islamic
philosophy. [These movements] all but went along with the more quarrelsome and
troublesome dimensions of the impact of science upon the faith system and the
philosophical world-view of Islam. It is interesting that the Wahabi ulema
in the nineteenth century opposed completely any interest in modern science and
technology. It is today that Saudi Arabia of course has one of the best
programs for the teaching of science and technology in the Islamic world. The
centers at Dhahran and other places are really quite amazing but it is a very
modern transformation. In the nineteenth century, those very people stood
opposed to the modernists, and the traditional Muslim ulema whether they
were Shafis or Malikis or anything else, felt that as far as
science was concerned, [opposition was justified].
This
changed one-hundred and eighty degrees in our time. Today people of that kind
of background, again want nothing to do with a discussion of the philosophical
implications of science, but very much identify themselves with the Al-Afghani
position, that science is al-ilm and let’s get on with it, let’s not
bother with its implications. This is a [very important] position which I have
traced for you rather extensively, because it is still very much alive in the
Islamic world today.
The second position which is held within the Islamic world today, which is now held by a number of very interesting and eminent thinkers, is that, in fact, the problem of the confrontation of modern science with Islam is not at all an intellectual problem but rather an ethical problem. All the problems of modern science, all the way from making possible the dropping of atomic bombs on people’s heads, to the creation of technologies which create the enslavement of those who receive them, the technological star wars of the last year in the Persian Gulf, all of these are not the fault of modern science, but [rather] of the wrong ethical application of modern science. And one must separate modern science from its ethical implications and usages in the West, take it and use it in another ethical system. As if one were to buy a Boeing 747 from California, then take it to Egypt and paint it Egypt Air, and it would become an Egyptian airplane. This is a view which exists and is rather prevalent in many places. Most of the new Islamic universities which have been established throughout the Islamic world, like the Islamic University in Malaysia, the Islamic University in Pakistan, the Umm-ul Quraa University in Makkah, try to emphasize this point of view. For example, in all Saudi universities, students are taught Islamic ethics with the hope that once they begin to learn science and engineering, they will take these and integrate them within this ethical system.
Now
we come to the third point of view. This was discussed for a long time by
practically no one, except yours truly. But in the last twenty years, it has
gained a large number of followers. And that point of view is that science has
its own world-view. No science is created in a vacuum. Science arose under
particular circumstances in the West with certain philosophical presumptions
about the nature of reality. As soon as you say, m, f, v, and a, that is, the
simple parameters of classical physics, you have chosen to look at reality from
a certain point of view. There is no mass, there is no force out there like
that chair or table. These are particularly abstract concepts which grew in the
seventeenth century on the basis of a particular concept of space, matter and
motion which Newton developed. The historians and philosophers of science in
the last twenty [or] thirty years have shown beyond the scepter of doubt that
modern science has its own world view. It is not at all value free; nor is it a
purely objective science of reality irrespective of the subject you study. It
is based upon the imposition of certain categories upon the study of nature,
with a remarkable success in the study of certain things, and also a remarkable
lack of success [in others], depending on what you are looking at.
Modern
science is successful in telling you the weight and chemical structure of a red
pine leaf, but it is totally irrelevant to what is the meaning of the turning
of this leaf to red. The ``how’’ has been explained in modern science, the
``why’’ is not its concern. If you are a physics student and you ask the
question, `what is the force of gravitation?’, the teacher will tell you the
formula, but as to what is the nature of this force, he will tell you it is not
a subject for physics. So [science] is very successful in certain fields, but
leaves other aspects of reality aside.
In
the 1950s, and I hate to be autobiographical but just for two minutes because
it has to do with the subject at hand, when I was a student here at this
University studying physics, the late Bertrand Russell, the famous British
philosopher, gave a series of lectures at MIT. I never forget that when I went
to that lecture, he said that modern science has nothing to do with the
discovery of the nature of reality, and he gave certain reasons. And I came
home, and I couldn’t sleep all night. I thought that I had gone to MIT not
because I was rich, or because the Iranian government forced me to go, [but] to
learn the nature of reality. And here was one of the famous philosophers of the
day [saying this was not to be]. This deviated me from the path of becoming a
physicist, and I spent the next few years, parallel with all the other physics
and mathematics courses I had to take, [studying] the philosophy of science
both here, and at Harvard. It was that which really led me to study the
philosophy of science and finally the Islamic philosophy of science and Islamic
cosmology, to which I have devoted the last thirty years of my life.
This
event turned me to try and discover what is the meaning of another way of
looking at nature. And I coined the term, ``Islamic Science’’, as a living and
not only historical reality, in the fifties when my book * came out. I tried to
deal with Islamic science not as a chapter in the history of Western science,
but as an independent way of looking at the work of nature. [This] lead to a great
deal of opposition in the West. Had it not been for the noble support of Sir Hamilton
Gibb, the famous British Islamicist [read Orientalist] at Harvard University, nobody would
ever have allowed me to say such a thing. At that time, [it] was actually
blasphemy to speak of Islamic science as an independent way of looking at
reality and not simply as a chapter between Aristotle and somebody else in the
thirteenth century. But now a lot of water has flown under the bridge. This
third point of view, with its humble beginning in books which I wrote in my
twenties, has won a lot of support in the Islamic World. And this perspective
is based on the idea that Western science is as much related to Western
civilization as any Islamic science is related to Islamic civilization. And as
science is not a value free activity, it is fruitful and possible for one
civilization to learn the science of another civilization but to do that it
must be able to abstract and make its own. And the best example of that is
exactly what Islam did with Greek science and what Europe did with Islamic
science, which is usually called Arabic science but is really Islamic science,
done by both Arabs and Persians, and also to some extent by Turks and Indians.
In
both of these cases what did the Muslims do? The Muslims did not just take over
Greek science and translate it into Arabic and preserve its Greek character. It
was totally transformed into the part and parcel of the Islamic intellectual
citadel. Any of you who have actually ever studied in depth the text of the
great Muslim scientists like Alberuni or Ibn Sina or any Andulusian scientists
know that you are living within the Islamic Universe. You’re not living within
the Greek Universe. It is true that the particular descriptions might have been
taken from the [works] of Aristotle or a particular formula from Euclid’s
Elements, but the whole science is totally integrated into the Islamic point of
view. The greatest work of Algebra in the pre-modern period is by the Persian
poet Omar Khayyam. When we read his book, of course, if when you get [to a]
particular formula or equation you could be writing in Chinese or English and
could be in any civilization, but the impact that the whole work makes upon you
makes you feel that you belong to a total intellectual universe- the Islamic
Universe. And this is precisely what the West did to Islamic science. When in
Toledo in the 1030’s and the 1040’s the translations of the books from the
Arabic into Latin began which really began the scientific changes of the 12th century
and again in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries of the West, books were simply
being translated from the Arabic into the Latin. The first few decades were
very much like what the Islamic world was, or has been, in the last few
decades. That is, actual works of, say, Ibn Sina were being read in medicine as
if they were in Arabic, but since no one knew Arabic, they were in Latin. They
may not have been very good translations but there they were. It only took a
century, not longer than that, for the West to make this learning their own.
And I always say to Muslims in giving lectures all over the Islamic World, to
people in ministries of education, to people who are responsible, that the
reason we cannot do this in the Islamic world is that symbolically, and the
symbol is important, when the West adopted Islamic science, it even adopted the
gown of the Muslim Ulema, * but it never took the turban and put it on its
head. The head-dress of the European bishops of the middle ages, * was kept on.
Whereas at many Islamic universities today, we have taken both the gown and the
cap from the West. We cannot think of ourselves independently. The whole thing
has been taken over and has now been made our own. This I am giving as a kind
of anecdotal reference but it is symbolic really of the type of processes that
are going on.
There
are two very good cases: One of Greek science taken over by Muslims, [and the
other] of Islamic science taken over by the Latin West and later on the
European West. In both cases there was a period of transmission but there was
also a period of digestion, ingestion, and integration which always means also
rejection. No science has ever been integrated into any civilization without
some of it also being rejected. It’s like the body. If we only ate and the body
did not reject anything we would die in a few days. Some of the food has to be
absorbed, some of the food has to be rejected. You might say what about the
case of Japan which is so successful in making Mitsubishis, modern washing
machines and so forth, but we haven’t seen the end of the story. Will Zen,
Buddhist [and] Shinto Japan be the same centuries from now and at the same time
the science totally Western Science [translated into] Japanese or will [Japan]
gradually transform the science and technology into something Japanese? We do
not know yet.
But
the historical cases that we do know- all point to a period of translation, and
then digestion and integration and by virtue of integration, the expulsion of
something which cannot be accepted, which is not in accord with that particular
world view, which is exactly what the Latin West did. The Latin West was not
interested in certain aspects of Islamic science which never took hold, which
never became central. And some Muslims were not interested in some types of
Greek Science which never took hold in Islamic soil. This is also a case which
can be proven historically.
Now,
all these views which are expressed for you today are not given force in the
Islamic world. There are people all the way from Abdus Salam, the only Muslim
to have won the Noble Prize in physics, who was asked `what happened to Islamic
Science?’ He said `Nothing. Instead what we cultivated in Isfahan and Cordoba
is now being cultivated in MIT, Caltech and at Imperial College, London. It’s
just a geographical translation of place’. All the way from that position,
which is really an echo of what Jamaluddin Afghani [presented in a] new garb by
a great physicist, over to the views [of] the so-called ``ajmalis’’ in England
who emphasize [the] ethical dimension of Islamic science and who at least
realize that modern science is not value-free [and finally], to the position
which is held by yours truly and many others in the Islamic world, and which
has now given rise to the only institution, Aligarh University in India, which
is trying to deal with this subject in a living fashion - I’ll get to that in a
moment. As I talk of these three ways of thinking about the relationship
between Islam and modern science there are several important phenomena that are
going on in the Islamic world which I must describe for you before analyzing
them.
First
and most powerful, is the continuous flow and absorption of western science and
technology into all existing Islamic countries to the extent that [they] can
absorb it. ** In every single Islamic country, whatever political regime,
whatever economic policy, whatever attitude towards the west [they may
espouse], whether they are completely pro-western or have demonstrations in the
street against the west, the adoption of western science and technology goes
on. Which is a very telling fact for the whole of the Islamic world.
There
are some places where some thought is being given to what is the consequence of
this. Now there are many questions to ask here. First of all is this [transfer
of science and technology] going on successfully? is it not going on
successfully? If it is not successful, what is it not going on successfully?
And if it is, why? This is a very major issue. The whole question of the
transfer of science [is] not really a subject for me to deal with today.
The
second phenomenon that is going on [today] is the [gradual] attempt being made
to study both the meaning and the history of Islamic science. I think that in
this field that Muslims should really be ashamed of themselves to put it
mildly. Let me give you some examples. There are now today a billion Muslims in
the world. Probably in the first to the second century of the history of Islam,
that is the eighth Christian century, no one knows exactly, but there were
something like 20-30 million Muslims. Despite that vast [Islamic] empire the
numbers were somewhere around there [according to] the demographers. It may be
wrong, but [it was] anyway a much smaller number [than the population of
Muslims today].
During
that 100 year period, more books in quantity, not to speak about the remarkable
quality, were translated [about] the basic philosophical and scientific thought
of Greek science than has been translated during a comparable 100 year period
by all Muslims put together in all Islamic countries. This is really
unbelievable. Not to talk about the quality, which is of a very high nature, in
the early translations from Greek which made Arabic the most important
scientific language in world for 700 years, [whereas today, we have] usually
very poor quality translations into modern Islamic languages, oftentimes based
on Latin knowledge of classical Arabic.
**
Most the history of Islamic science has been written by western scholars including
the great *. His one book, Introduction to the History of Science, has lead to
at least 500 or 600 books in Urdu, Persian, Malay, Arabic and other Muslim
languages which are sold in the streets as Islamic Science because everybody is
too lazy to go do his own or her own research. [Typically in such works] one or
two pages are just taken and culled and regurgitated and repeated and so forth
and so on in a manner that is really sickening. Compared to the other
civilizations of Asia, the Chinese and the Japanese and the Indian, the Muslims
have not had a very good record in studying their own history of science
despite the fact that this field was of great importance religiously, going
back to what I said about Jamaluddin and Mohammed Abduh in the later 19th
century, the rise of modernism in the Islamic world, and all of these other
very powerful forces.
During
the last 20-30 years, there has been a change. Gradually Muslim governments are
realizing that it’s very important that if you have 100 students that you have
80 of them study science and technology but it’s also very important that the
other twenty study the humanities and to train some people in the history of
science, [which] although allied to science, is not really science itself. It
is historical knowledge, it is linguistic knowledge, [and] it is philosophical
knowledge. The Muslims have not yet developed their own historiography of
science. This is a very important field. If you look at all the histories of
science written in the west, everything ends miraculously in the thirteenth
century- [implying] the whole of Islamic civilization came to an end in the
thirteenth century. Islamic philosophy, Islamic science, history of astronomy,
history of physics, alchemy, biology, anything you study, miraculously comes to
an end in the thirteenth century which coincides exactly with the termination
of political contact between Islam and the West. Now Muslims always get angry
at why this is so, but Western historians are completely right to study Islamic
history from their own point of view. And Muslim thinkers are completely wrong
in studying their own history from the point of view of western history.
I
said once many, many years ago in a statement in Pakistan 30 years ago, which
has been repeated not many times, that any individual that stands in a mirror
and looks at his or her own image perceives that image from the point of view
of the model or the * behind the mirror * but we’re doing this culturally, much
of the Islamic world is doing this culturally and that is nothing less than an
insane way of looking at themselves. We should be able to look at ourselves
directly and to do that we have to develop a historiography of science.
I
think for nine-tenths of the students in this room who are probably the most
brilliant young students in the field of science - I’m now addressing the
Muslim students - if I were to ask you `what do know about the history Islamic
medicine in the 17th Christian century’ you’d probably say nothing. Well, that
is a very brilliant period in the history of Islamic medicine and the reason
you don’t know anything about it is because E.G. Brown didn’t write about it in
his book ``Arabian Medicine’’. That’s the only reason. Because [Brown] was
[only] interested in Early Islamic medicine [as it] influenced the great
physicians in the west.
Now,
therefore this [question of] the historiography of Islamic science is far from
being a trivial question. And it has created, in fact, a vacuum within which
the integration of western science and technology is made doubly difficult in
the Islamic world. That is most young Muslim students have this view which has
unfortunately been abetted by Arab Nationalism. I have to be very honest here,
the nationalisms in the Middle East, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, are now more or
less [over], they are ending one way or the other. That is they’re showing
their bankruptcy, not completely, there are nations that still exist of course
but their grand days are perhaps over.
Arab
Nationalism began with a thesis, propagated by small non-Muslim minorities
within the Arab world, that the Islamic civilization began to go down when the
Arab hegemony over Islamic civilization came to an end. That is with the
Abbasids. If you look, for example, at the history of Arabic literature,
everybody talks about the Ummayad and the Abbasid period and there is nothing
going on for several hundred years until some poet begins to talk about the
lamentations of the war in Iraq or the * tragedies in Palestine. That is, of
course, very gripping poetry, but what were the Arabs doing for 700 years in
between? That is totally overlooked. There must be some Yemenese students here.
Where is there a single book on the history of Arabic poetry in Yemen- one of
the richest lands in the Islamic world of poetry. We don’t know that there
might be some local book published in Sanaa but certainly in Cambridge we know
nothing about it. So Arab nationalism had a lot to do with this * of trying to
diminish the contribution that Islamic civilization. after the Mongol invasion
and the destruction of Baghdad in 1258, which coincided with the downfall of
the political hegemony of the Arabs who did not regain the political hegemony,
even over themselves, until the 20th century.
Now,
the consequence of that is, first of all, the overlooking of 700 years, not 70
years, 700 years, of Islamic intellectual history during which the Muslims were
supposed to have done nothing. They were supposed to have been decadent for 700
years. Now how can you revive a patient that has been dead for that long a
time? The idea [which] is propagated in the West [is] that Muslims are very
brilliant, that they did science and things like that, [and then] suddenly
decided to turn the switch off and went to selling beads and playing with their
rosaries in the bazaar for the next 700 years till Mossadegh nationalized the
oil and they came back on the scene of human history are now living happily
again. This, of course, is total nonsense and it brings about a sclerosis,
intellectually, which is far from being trivial. ** Over [the] twenty years I
have taught at Tehran University, I always felt, [our students] could never
overcome this very long historical loss of memory. Somehow it was very
difficult for them. They wanted to connect themselves to Al-Biruni and
Khawarizmi and people like that, but this hiatus was simply too long. This
hiatus has not been created by history itself. It has been created by the study
of history from the particular perspective of Western scholarship, which is as
I said, perfectly [within] its right in its claim that Islam is interesting
only till the moment that it influences the West. The great mistake is when
that objective divides the history of Islam [into a period of productivity and
one of degeneration]. In the field of history of science, that is a very
important element.
This
leads me to the third important activity which is now going on in the Islamic
World. [We have] studied Islamic science from our own point of view somewhat
[though this study is hardly comprehensive for] it will take a long, long time
to get all the [relevant] manuscripts. There are over three thousand
manuscripts of medicine in India which have never been studied by anybody. This
is [only] the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of manuscripts in Yemen
which we don’t even know about. There is a new institution being established in
London which is being inaugurated at the end of next month, the Al-Furqan
Foundation, which will be devoted to assembling Islamic manuscripts from all
over the world. and [compiling] original surveys of where the manuscripts
are... places like Ethiopia for example, have treasuries of Islamic
manuscripts, many of them in the sciences. The process will take a long time,
but at least on the basis of what has been begun, [progress can be made].
But
in this field, there is now the third step of trying to further science within
the Islamic world under the foundation of an Islamic logic of science. Now this
is a very difficult and very tall order. It is not going something which is
going to be done immediately, but I want to say a few words about what is being
done and where. And we can perhaps discuss this with you during the
question-answer period. It is interesting that some of the places where a great
deal of the intellectual attention is being paid to the subject are not places
which have been known historically as the great intellectual centers of Islamic
civilization [which] have really always been between Lahore and Tripoli. About
nine-tenths of all famous Islamic thinkers have come from that region, Spain
being the one great exception. But today, one of the places, for example, where
a great deal of the work is being done is Malaysia .Normally one would think of
[Malaysia] as a small Islamic country with only a 55% or a 57% Muslim majority.
[However] there is, because of the interest of the government, a great deal of
effort being spent in trying to understand what is the meaning of Islamic
science and how can science be further [explored for] the basis of an Islamic
view towards science. Another place is Turkey. One does not usually think of
Turkey these days as being significant as a center of Islamic thought because
of the secularism brought by Kamal Ataturk. ** But within Turkey, despite all
of this, an incredible amount of intellectual activity [has been] going on in
the last few decades bringing things as different, as separate, as the
Naqshbandia of Istanbul and the Khizisists of Istanbul University together. The
most important journal which is being published in Turkey on this issue, called
``Science and Technology’’ is not, in fact, published by secular Turks. It is
published by very devout Muslims, who are extremely interested in the
Islamicisty of Islamic science, and I think the Turkish will be able to make
some major intellectual contributions in the future to this field.
Perhaps
most interesting of all these programs is going on in Aligarh University in
India. Aligarh University is of course a major Islamic university whose
Islamicisty is now very much threatened, by all that is going on in India, [one
of] the great tragedies of the last few decades. ** I was in India, exactly a
year ago tomorrow, and I was to give the Best Science awards in Aligarh
University. People had come from all over India * but I could not go to Aligarh
because it was too dangerous, because the government could not guarantee my
safety. Everyday, about seven or eight people were killed just on the road.
People pull you off of the car and shoot you, and you cannot do anything about
it. So I could not go to Aligarh and I feel very sad about that. But I know
exactly what is going on in Aligarh University. There is a new association
called the ``Muslim Association for the Advancement of Science’’ which now also
publishes a journal called the ``MAAS Journal’’. [MAAS] is a unique institution
founded by twenty or thirty scientists, almost all of them, scientists,
physicists, chemists, biologists, and some of them very brilliant, who want to
absorb, first, Islamic science, then to absorb Western science. There is no way
of establishing an Islamic science without knowing Western science well. To
talk of circumventing what the West has learnt is absurd. But then the next
step that has to be taken on the basis of Islamic world view and the view of
nature. Whether they will succeed or not, Allah o Aalim, `God knows best’, but
I mention it here as one of the most important attempts that is now being made
in the Muslim world. Gradually a network is being created among young Muslim
scientists who are concerned with religion and are also quite capable of
dealing with the humanities. * I think a great deal of positive result will
come from this, if the political situation does not get so bad as to destroy
the very physical basis for these activities.
Let me conclude with a word about the future. Of course a person should never be too charmed by futuroligists, otherwise you would never say insha’llah. * Three years ago probably companies [were paying] fortunes to [be told] what the future of the Soviet Union was and [yet] nobody guessed what was going to happen. So, let’s take this with a grain of salt. Only God knows. But from the point of a humble scholar of the situation, I believe that the cultural crisis created by the successful introduction of Western science and technology, successful enough to bring about rapid cultural patterns of change, is going to continue to pose major problems for the Islamic world. The best example of that is what happened in Iran. Iran had without doubt, the most advanced program for the teaching of science and technology and the largest per capita number of scientists. It was the only country in the Muslim world where alternative technology was already beginning to be discussed, but the cultural transformation brought about by the very success of the enterprise, besides all the other political problems that were involved * certainly contributed to the outcome of what happened in the late seventies. The government in Iran today, wants [very much] to go back to implement the very scientific programs and technological programs which were put aside during the ten years after the revolution. But I believe that the impact of the absorption of Western science and more than that, the application of technology, for science today, in the minds of Muslim governments is not separated from application of technology, they are not simply interested in pure science. Pure scientists have a lot of trouble finding money for their work; it is the applied aspect which is emphasized. I think this [cultural dislocation] is going to, without doubt, continue until something serious is done.
I
remember in 1983 when the Saudi government decided to found a science museum
center in Riyadh, they contacted me and I went several times to Saudi Arabia
and spoke to all of the leading people involved. I told them at that time, that
a science museum could be a time bomb. Do not think that a science museum is
simply neutral in its cultural impact. It has a tremendous impact upon those
who go into it. If you go into a building in which one room is full of
dinosaurs, the next room is full of wires, and the third full of old trains,
you are going to have a segmented view of knowledge which is going to have a
deep effect upon the young person who goes there, who has been taught about Tawhid,
about Unity, about the Unity of knowledge, about the Unity of God, the Unity of
the universe. There is going to be a dichotomy created in him. You must be able
to integrate knowledge. ** I mention this to you as an example.
The
problem [is] that with the increase of success of both the teaching of science
and the technology, will bring with it a cultural dislocation [and]
philosophical questioning which have to be answered especially at a time when
the Islamic world does not want to play the role of a dead duck. There is not a
moment in the history of Islam, when the Muslims like the other great
civilizations of Asia are trying to play the game of the West. The Islamic
world wants to pull its own weight, wants to finds its own identity, and
therefore this problem is going to be acute.
Secondly,
I believe that [a] very major crisis [is being] set afoot by the very
application of modern technology, that is the environmental crisis. [This
crisis is] of course global. You cannot say, `I am drawing a boundary around my
country, I do not want the hole in the ozone zone, [to make] the sun shine upon
my head’. You have no choice in that. Because of that, and because of the fact
that Islamic countries, like Buddhist countries, like Hindu countries, will
always eat from the bread crumbs of Western technology in the situation of the
world today, more of an attempt is made towards the direction of alternative
technologies. [This] began in Iran in the seventies, and thank God, is still
going on a little, and [in] other places [like] Egypt where a little [attempt]
to spend some of the energy of society towards alternative technology [is being
made]. [All of] which also means to try to look upon science as the mother of
technology in somewhat of a different way.
And
finally, I think, the intellectual effort is now being made. What is called by
some people, the Islamisation of knowledge and which is now very popular, [and]
which goes back to some of my own humble writings in the fifties, and later on,
the treatise written by the late Ismail Al-Faruqui who was assassinated in
Philadelphia two years back. This little treatise he wrote called, ``The
Islamisation of Knowledge’’, is now being discussed in educational conferences
throughout the Islamic World, [which] is finally going to bear some fruit.
Although it will require much more concerted effort of the most intelligent and
gifted members of the Islamic community, who must know Western science in
depth, who must know Islamic thought in depth, the cosmological message of the
Quran, not only its ethical message, and at the same time have the energy to
pursue this through. The task is a very daunting and difficult one. The problem
of the partition of science from Islam is a problem that exists unless Islam is
willing to give up its claim to being a total way of life. [If that were so],
we must suppress not only what we do on Friday noons, * but what we do and
think every moment of our daily lives. It is going to preserve an integrated principle
that of course * must also be taken into consideration.
Thank you.
Source: MIT MSA
Edited somewhat by the webmaster.
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