"Seek knowledge, even unto China" - Prophet Muhammad

As-salamu alaykum, chapos!

After consulting with the cyber Ulama we have decided to create an open thread where curious posters can take a break from the great posting jihad and ask questions on the nature of Islam or the Muslim experience. So long as they are asked in good faith, from a position of truly wanting to learn, these questions will be answered without judgement.

As for Muslims, all of us are free to answer any of the questions, even ones that have already been answered. This is an open thread, and the input of different Islamic perspectives is valuable to getting a big picture.

To all those reading this, remember: No one person is an authority on Islam. This is why it traditionally the din never had its own clergy. Always have this in mind when researching on Islam.

Alright, now GET TO ASKING!

  • Classic_Agency [he/him,comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    What is the relationship of modern Muslims to science? During the Umayyad there was a lot of scientific progress made but now Muslim countries seem to have fallen behind quite a bit (they rank really low on nobel prize winners for example). Why do you think this is? Also is there a creationism vs evolution debate amongst Muslims like with Christianity or is it different?

    • Saif [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      When Darwin released On the Origin of Species, most Christian theologians and scholars disavowed the findings. However, when word reached the Middle East, it was split about 50/50, and wasn't debated as impassionately. This shouldn't be a surprise, considering Muslim scholars formed the theory of natural selection centuries before the West did:

      In Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of the Animals), the 9th-century scholar al-Jāḥiẓ references several facets of natural selection, such as animal embryology, adaptation, and animal psychology. One notable observation al-Jāḥiẓ makes is that stronger rats were able to compete better for resources than small birds, a reference to the modern day theory of the "struggle for existence." In the 11th century, the scholar Sami S. Hawi argues that Persian scholar Ibn Miskawayh wrote about the evolution of man in his Fawz al-aṣghar.

      The 14th-century influential historiographer and historian Ibn Khaldun wrote the Muqaddimah or Prolegomena ("Introduction") on what he referred to as the "gradual process of creation." He stated that the Earth began with abiotic components such as "minerals." Slowly, primitive stages of plants such as "herbs and seedless plants" developed and eventually "palms and vines." Khaldun connects the later stages of plant development to the first stages of animal development. Finally, he claims that the greater thought capabilities of human beings was "reached from the world of the monkeys."

      This is because the Islamic perspective on science is that it is a tool of the din, not in opposition to it: The Qur'an and several hadith both command us to seek knowledge as much as we can, that the duty of humanity is to learn about Creation. We are taught that absolutely nothing we can learn is incompatible with Islam - anything we discover scientifically is merely an addition to the greater understanding of the Islamic cosmology. Of course, this gets into the question you see in the West of what, then, do we make of the creation story? The typical answer you see from non-creationist theists is that the stories in the Bible are metaphorical, non-literal. This is also incompatible with Islam. But how does that figure? How can we both believe Adam and Eve were made from clay, and also that the human species evolved out of natural selection?

      Ibn Taymiyyah has a great way of explaining this. He maintains that the distinction itself, between literal and non-literal, is in fact an artificial mental construct entirely divorced from the way language functions in the real world. He is fully aware that words denote a number of different meanings, admitting an equivocity; however, these are not to be classified as 'metaphoric' or 'figurative'. For instance, he accepts that the word yad, hand, can be used to mean other things than the five-digit appendage of flesh and bone; in English, say, it can be used as 'can you give me a hand?' or 'he had a hand in this!' What he is rejecting is the notion that words possess, independent of context, particular 'literal' or 'real' meanings which we are condemned to abandon in favor of secondary, 'metaphoric' meanings. Rather, for him, all meaning, every instance of language use, is determined by context and judged by the communally shared conventions of the language in question.

      Essentially, it is not that the Qur'an uses metaphor exactly, just that one thing can mean something else other than the obvious, not in a representative way like a metaphor, but as it actually is. So it is not that "Adam and Eve are metaphors" of anything, the Qur'an is saying this "happened" just not in a way you immediately understand, that the words describe something equally true at the same time.