Dr. Ismail Faruqi: “To be a Muslim is to be a scientist because you can’t be a Muslim if you don’t fulfill the terms of Khilāfa (Man’s trusteeship and stewardship on earth). The terms of Khilāfa are that you deal with nature and you transform the nature within you and the nature in other human beings and nature outside like the trees, the mountains, the rivers and everything, the whole of creation. So you have to study the nature in order to know its laws and its secrets to deal with it and transform it. Another reason is that the nature is the creation of Allah (God) and He has planted His patterns in it. Therefore, to discover patterns of nature is to discover patterns of Allah and therefore to glorify him. So there are these two reasons why every Muslim must be a scientist. That is why Muslims have done wonders in science. Therefore, Muslims study the nature not because nature is an enemy, like for instance the Greeks did. Muslims study the nature not because there is a jinni in the nature which he is trying to master or to subdue. Not at all, the Muslims study the nature because it is a gift from Allah which Allah has made subservient to man so the man may live and may fulfill the commandments of Allah.
By observing nature man has always learned to adapt it to his needs. Ancient agriculture systems are a perfect example of man turning observation into practical knowledge. It is necessary to have scientific understanding of the nature to develop such basic technology.
In Europe, it was not until the sixteenth century that Bernard Palissy presented the first coherent description of the water cycle. He described that how water evaporates from the oceans and cools to form clouds. The clouds move inland where they rise, condense and fall as rain. The rain gathers in lakes and streams and flow back to the ocean in a continuous cycle. This picture is familiar to us toady. But the ideas prevalent at the time of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), added to myths and speculations than to observed facts. In the seventh century before Christ, the Thales of Mellitus believed that surface spray from the ocean was picked by the wind and carried inland to fall as rain. It was thought that water returned to ocean through a great abyss which Plato called the Tartarus. Whereas, the Aristotle imagine that the water vapor from the soil was condensed in cooled mountain caverns and formed underground lakes that fed springs. The Quran, far from reflecting the common misconceptions of the time, is in close agreement with facts of modern hydrology.
“Have you not seen that God makes the clouds move gently, and then joins them together, then makes them a heap and you see rain drops issuing from within them.” Quran, chapter An-Noor Verse: 43.
“It is the God who sends the winds and they raise the clouds and then He spreads them in the sky as He wills, breaking them into fragments, until you see rain drops falling from within them, then when He has made them to reach those of His servants as He wills, see how they rejoice even though before they received the rain, they were dumb with despair.” Qur’an, chapter ar-Room Verse: 48-49
Science is the study of material world and the way in which the nature works. While the religious teaching as in the Qur’anic revelation presents an overview.
“Have you not seen that Allah sent rain down from the sky and caused it to penetrate the ground and come forth as springs, then He caused crops of different colors to grow...” Qur’an, Chapter Az-Zumar Verse: 21.
“And among His signs He shows you the lightning, by the way of both of fear and hope, and He sent down rain from the sky and with it gives life to earth after it is dead , truly in that are sings for those who are wise.” Qur’an, chapter Ar-Room Verse: 24.
The Qur’an asks man to look for science within him and on the horizons. To attain understanding the man must use his eyes, his mind and his heart. Any part of knowledge demands an act of faith but not, as it is commonly misunderstood, blind faith. True seekers of knowledge expect their ideas and their faith in those ideas to be continually tested.
In the short history of modern science many ideas and concepts have been presented only to be discarded as new evidence points to a different truth. Nevertheless, there are many scientific discoveries that can be said to be undisputed facts. This fact is commonly known and widely accepted today that the sun is a direct source of light and the moon, having no light of its own, is merely a reflective body. Such specific details were not commonly known fourteen hundred years ago. Yet in the Qur’an moon light is described as “Munir”, a word which means “to borrow or to reflect”. The sun is compared to a blazing lamp (Wahhaj in Arabic) or a torch (Seraj), a precise and accurate description of the difference between sun light and moon light.
”Blessed is the one who placed the constellation in heaven and placed there in a lamp and a moon giving light.” Qur’an, Chapter Al-Furqan Verse: 61.
For a long time, European philosophers and scientists believed that the earth stood still with the center of the universe and every other planetary body, including the sun, moved around it. In the west, this theory of geocentricism went unchallenged from the time of Ptolemy, in second century before Christ, right through until the sixteenth century when Coffenicus asserted that it is the earth which moves around the sun. In 1609, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler published the Astronomia Nova in which in which he concluded that not only the planets move in electric orbits around the sun but they also rotate upon their axis in irregular speeds. With this knowledge it became possible for European scientists to explain correctly many of mechanisms of our solar system including the process of night and day.
In explaining the sequence of night and day the Qur’an used the Arabic verb kawwara to describe the way the night ‘winds’ or ‘coils’ itself around the day and the day around the night. It fits perfectly with the cycle of night and day produced by the turning (spinning) of the earth upon its axis.
“He coils the night upon the day and the day upon the night.” Qur’an, chapter Az-Zumar Verse: 5.
“It is He Who created the night and day, the sun and the moon, all the celestial bodies traveling in an orbit each with it own motion.” Qur’an, Chapter Al- Anbiya Verse: 33.
Revelation goes much further than science in its unified vision of the creation. Yet those aspects of it which particularly describe the material world agree with well established scientific facts. Also there is no observation in the Quran which is contradicted by scientific facts.
This is no genuine quarrel between the religion’s search for wisdom and the scientific search for truth. It is dogmatism which cerates this illusion. Religious dogmatism leads to denial of much genuine scientific discoveries. Scientific dogmatism often arises through an inability to distinguish between fact and theory. Nowhere does this become more apparent than in the controversy surrounding the theory of evolution.
For most of us the concept of evolution conjoins up the name Charles Darwin.
(A teacher showing the statue of Charles Darwin to his students in a museum)
Teacher: Now here is Charles Darwin and we want to remember him because he was the first to think of a convincing mechanism to explain how the evolution might have occurred. He called this mechanism natural selection and he described it in his book. Does anybody remember the name of his book?
Student: He wrote the book “On the Origin of Species.”