Modern Islamic Science?

free hit counters

Science and Islam
Muzaffar Iqbal

Jane H. Murphy. with the Colorado College Department of History, Colorado Springs, Colorado turns in a great review of the book Science and Islam by Muzaffar Iqbal -- which transcends the subject by digging into the underlying modern psychology and history of contemporary Islam.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/320/5878/876

For a perspective, I was trying to think of a modern democratic Islamic nation -- and, of course, only Turkey came strongly to mind -- and I am not sure whether or not Turkey is Islamic or democratic -- or something else. But of course on second thought, there is Indonesia.

Image:Wikipedia, The Masjid al-Haram in Mecca as it exists today

Neither of these nations, Turkey nor Indonesia, is at the "heart" of Islam, nor is Pakistan, nor Persia (Iran) and Iran was the power of the Ancient world long before the Abrahamic religions. But where does the world of Islam begin?

Off the cuff, at least 4.5 billion years of Earth's existence is way before Islam. These are real years, hard years; years measured in the layers of annual sediments and revolutions around the Sun, as well as the scintillating slow decay of heavy atoms of elements like uranium.

"Science" develops that perspective.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

=========================
One of the links in Murphy's fine review is Iqbals web effort and is worthy of long inspection as a scholastic interlude.

http://www.cis-ca.org/

At which these articles and many others can be seen:

1.Muhiuddin Abu `Abd Allah Muhammad Ibn al-`Arabi (560-638/1165-1240)
2.Jamal al-din Afghani (1839-1897)
3.Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905)
4.Syed Amir Ali (d.1928)
5.Abu’l-Kalam Azad (1888-1958)
6.Naquib al-Attas (1931-)
7.Alparslan Acikgenc (1952-)
Credit: www.cis-ca.org
=========================
The above selections are from (the Latin Roman Alphabet's) "A" category, last name of the author. Most of the authors lived and died long years ago.

You can select any of the 57 items available and find that some of them do not work as links. But many of them do.

Some of the "issues" published "recently" such as Adnar Oktar, (pen name Harun Yahya (Aaron John))The Evolution Deceit, The Scientific Collapse of Darwinism and Its Ideological Background, [Istanbul: Okur Publishing, 2000] which is an "Islamic refutation of Charles Darwin" could be informative for knowledge denialists, or for Christian fundamentalists as well.

++++ (In reading a few of the texts placed on the site, I find no science whatever. None.)

Image: Wikipedia - Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Blue Mosque, Istanbul Turkey

Jane H.Murphy begins her review with a few quick comments about Ibrahim Muteferrika, a converted-to-Islam Balkan and his procurement of a license for the first Islamic-run printing press in the empire of the Ottomans, in 1727. Aware of the Catholic Church's position and their actions regarding the Copernican heliocentric solar system (Early idea of the "Universe"), with its carry-over to Reformation Churches, he was worried a Turkish translation of the Copernicus model would be a detriment to his printing press. He was concerned over the similar reaction's of the Western Churches when this departure from dogma of the Roman church, even those fragmented from the monolithic Roman Church -- and how Islamics might respond to this idea proliferated in Muslim form via the printing press.

That was not the way it worked out. It was not the Islamics that short-circuited the printing press -- it was the guild of manual copyists and calligraphers that ended the early Turkish Islamic presses. Thousands would be out of work!

As to the Copernican revolution -- that affected Islam not at all.

This Islam-Science relationship has gone through at least three distinct phases. The first flowery emergence of science in the Islamic civilization in the eighth century, ended with the rise of modern science in the West; (Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo (esp.).

The second Islamic-Science phase is characterized by the arrival of modern science in the Muslim world, most of which, occurred at the time, most Muslim lands, tribes and groups, were under colonial occupation.

The third phase, which began post WWII, in about 1950, was coincidental with exposure to economic colonialism and oil, and was characterized by the typical major questions modern science has posed for all Abrahamic religious traditions.

Murphy rightly belabors author Iqbal's "scholarship," not science, as Iqbal's writing rightly criticizes current Islamic countries lack of real substance in any science. It appears, says Murphy, Iqbal must embrace a sense of crisis because he is advocating a "radical" shift in Islamic policy and aims.

Image: Wikipedia, Al-Aqsa Mosque, built on top of the Temple Mount, Judaisms holiest site, is the third holiest mosque in Islam. (Mecca and Medina contain the others)

[Iqbal can't say it, but I will. It is "almost" a recognition of the despotic, fractured, and inadequate framework of the religion's failure to deal with the modern world -- and "almost" an admission that the retreat from the modern beginnings of science occurred detrimentally after the Crusades. The recall of Islam from Islamic robust vibrancy occurred then, when a retrenchment of Islamic ideas to some fundamentalist limit was imposed by the mullahs, so that true Islam ends where it could have truly begun, but actually stepped backward.

It ends by returning to the eighth century. A dead end. Before the modern outlook of knowledge (science); of experimental and phenomenal observation and measurement; before quantification of the fundamental framework of the items in the phenomenal world, Islam had terminated itself in the return to the fixed firmament of the Prophet, and the self-professed authority of small minded leaders. One can actually see this implosion in the Taliban, and in its destruction of artifacts of an earlier time, such as the Giant Buddhas. As long as Islam is self-contained, fixed, intellectually paralyzed, it is a terminal meme for the species. It is locked into itself and will end that way, and its lack of maturity and outlook (unless it actually and realistically changes) will damage all extant societies it touches to whatever level it can. It is truly a logical belief in Death, not life.]

Possibly, realizing the above, but self-constrained to directly address it, Iqbal, wishing or desiring this unification or marriage of Islam with Modern Science still is not realizing that truly, modern science is not formulated on a fixed outlook. This fixed [frozen] outlook is what Islam contains, and why Islam, is by itself, contained and constrained to even scholarly historical mediocrity. If a true Modern Science approach were entered, the fixed dead-end of Islam would be recognized.

In Islam the "fallen-away" face the sword to the neck for lack of belief. (The Queen of Hearts, "Off with their Heads!" In a way, like the witch-hunts and prescriptions of the 13th and 14th centuries in Europe, as well as the Spanish Inquisition. Locked into that framework -- it is death to a mere "belief." Tithes will dwindle, people, adherents -- will leave in the face of the real world. Right now, the religion serves as the means of political control of some billion humans. The Saudi's and Kuwaiti's through grants and institutes attempt to buy scientific thought or guide it, with no outward recognition of their logical religious folly. (It is the primitive mullah mind that needs reformation -- in fact, excision.)

Some of the best allegories and tales that illustrate the human condition are the fictional ones, and Arabian tales of magic and travel are among them. It is this suspension of "disbelief" in the tale told, for some of the greatest works of literature. Some of the greatest repositories of human wisdom that are human are contained in the fable or in a collection of work like Shakespeare's works or even the various bibles, or Buddhist texts, or the Indian Hindi works and recognized myths. For modern Islam, the challenge to achieve science must be a "suspension of belief" in the use of a "dead framework" to carry forward to a future.

Science and Islam DO NOT work together. Science will always be framed by what is discovered in the real world; how it's truth tests out; and will always be dynamic and vibrant, since despite the "end of knowledge" forecasts, will never run out of truth's to seek, understand, and possibly exploit.

Murphy points out that as Iqbal concedes, most Islamic governments and their publics do not share this (his) goal of bringing science to Islam. Rather, Murphy explains, his "call" comes from "a small minority of Muslim scholars."

Murphy indicates as Iqbal suggests "a deep-seated, almost insatiable, hunger for modern science in the Muslim psyche." This hunger is "explained" as an emergent feeling of inferiority stemming from the "colonial experience."

[I disagree as to the feelings "source," and suggest a deep logical analysis with comparisons to other beliefs and their mechanisms to somehow communicate meaningfully in the modern world of science.]

Jane H. Murphy's review concludes and I quote, "Iqbal wants to revive Islamic intellectual society through a reclamation--or more properly the creation--of a modern Islamic science. If his project succeeds, modern Islamic science, rather than bringing Islamic societies further into Euro-American networks of institutions and practices, would be a point of differentiation."

Those are very kind words.

Islam is not the only fixed construct which does not deal well with "modern science," or with what is before the eyes.

-----------------

To experience a convoluted and tortured view logically founded in a flawed perspective, Read or see:
http://www.cis-ca.org/reviews/4-pos.htm

. . . For a strong flavor of Iqbal's views -- which are commendable "scholarship."

See also my story of the Horse in Europe . . .

http://www.xomba.com/the_truth_in_the_horses_mouth

BTW, the origin of the horse story above lies amidst the mysteries of antiquity. My version is for "illustration" only. Some attribute it to one of the Bacon's, but most say it is much older and earlier.

Image: Wikipedia

If you are interested in seeing some of the written information and pictures of horse teeth, and their problems, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_teeth

Image: Wikipedia