Muslims and Their Chronic Intellectual Stagnation
According to a quotation usually attributed to Einstein,
insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and yet
expecting different results. In my view, this describes the state of the understanding
and interpretation by Muslims of their way of life, i.e., Islam, for about the last
few hundred years.
Muslim world is in a state of civilizational inanition and
stagnation. Corruption, political oppression, poverty, victim mentality,
conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience run rampant in the Muslim world. Muslims
are by-and-large in a state of lethargy and/or denial vis-à-vis this
predicament. They lack the critical mass of a vanguard of scientific and
critical thinkers to pull them out of this fatal impasse. It is high time to
talk about––and potentially find solutions to––these issues especially now as
the so-called Arab Spring struggles are raging and bringing to the fore more of
the ills of the current Muslim civilization.
The Quran provides an acid test for Muslims in Chapter 21
verse 105: “And certainly We have written in the Scripture before the Reminder
that my righteous servants shall inherit the earth,” reflecting what Jesus said
in the New Testament “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Muslims of the last couple of centuries, leave alone being
the “inheritors” of the earth, have been in the most unenviable status among
the nations of the world: subjugation and oppression by either foreign elements
or by their homegrown oppressors, corruption, and sectarianism. To this bleak
state of affairs, the response of the influential Muslim religious leaders has
been more of what had been tried before: imitation (called taqliyd) of the
intellectuals of a bygone era. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that a spell of intellectual
stagnation overtook the Muslim lands for the last few centuries.
Especially, the events of the last few decades show that the
socio-political machinery, nay, the whole civilizational modus operandi of
Muslims has gone broken.
Much has been written and said about this ongoing
civilizational crisis of Muslims: especially by Muslim intellectuals
themselves. Some blame the West, some blame worldwide conspirators, some blame
the Jews, some blame Islam, some blame lack of religiosity, some blame the
Quran, some blame the Hadith, and on and on.
In response to this ongoing civilizational crisis, the only practical
and visible answer the Muslim world seemingly produced is violence and terrorism, the latter a
product of the modern era socio-political struggles and turmoils. Muslim masses
seem to be numbed, indifferent, and worse of all, helpless toward the incessant
news of senseless killings/sectarian violence coming out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and now Egypt.
Muslims are coaxed into blaming others, sometimes believing
in the most fantastic conspiracy theories, but not casting a critical gaze at
their own selves. Criticizing fellow Muslims from the same denomination and
faction is almost a taboo and viewed as sinful, even if what they do is as
despicable as killing innocent civilians in mosques. The magnitude of what
Muslims are doing to each other and desensitization and indifference to these
atrocities is biblical in its gravity.
It does not seem to occur to mainstream Islamic religious
leaders that perhaps their understanding and practice of Islam is at fault.
That perhaps they should begin to try different solutions, adopt different
attitudes, and cultivate different viewpoints. Instead, they in fact redouble
their efforts of injecting more regurgitation of the previous thinkers and more
bigotry and closed-mindedness into Muslims. They tacitly presume that they
cannot possibly be the objects of the Quranic warning: They follow their
forefathers blindly. By so doing, I will
aver, they, in the words of Einstein, display insanity.
The reason for this insanity and impasse, I will advance, is
because the most fundamental cause of the civilizational crisis that Muslims
are in is not tackled. I will venture to say that this cause is the lack of
practice of critical thinking and analytical reasoning on the part of Muslims
in general. In the words of the Quran, Muslims “la ya’kiluun,” that is, they
are not using their faculty of reason.
To be sure, the Muslim world does produce brilliant
religious scholars, some of whom are the apotheoses of scholarship, such as the
late Muhammad Hamidullah1 and Muhammad Asad. However, they don’t
hold a great sway for the masses. Their ideas are not the ones that are widely taught
in the educational institutions, or discussed on TV channels or heard in mosques.
They are not the mainstream. Thus by “Islamic or Muslim religious leaders” this
article refers to the mainstream Islamic establishment scholars and figures. I use
the word “figures” deliberately because some of them are absolute charlatans without
any deep intellectual background who deceive unsuspecting masses by hook or by
crook.
The influential Islamic leaders of the mainstream
establishment are by-and-large not qualified to bring about, nay even to sow
the seeds of, change, which might eventually take Muslims out of this chronic
civilizational coma. As I will try to demonstrate below, most of the Islamic
religious leaders themselves don’t know and practice critical and scientific
reasoning. This claim is closely related to the fact that Muslims distanced
themselves from a scientific worldview long before the scientific revolution
took place in Europe. In fact, one could arguably claim that a scientific
devolution had just been completed in the Muslim lands by the time the
scientific revolution began to take hold in the Western world. Since then the Muslim lands have been in an
intellectual sclerosis, which, of late, has started to take its toll in
earnest. Muslims must bring their act together and take up a historical role
and start tackling their chronic disease before it turns fatal.
I am not blinded by the technically and materially advanced
state of the Western societies. In fact,
I think that the Western societies lack many other valuable and critical
civilizational assets that are grounded in spirituality. If not tackled, I will
opine, the latter might be the Achilles heel of the West.
So then, why this interest in the so-called Western science?
I am not motivated so much by the technical and material
progress science cultivates as the invaluable gift of critical and analytical thinking skills it inculcates. And, as noted above, I am of the opinion that
the latter is what Muslims in general are lacking so dearly. Practice of the scientific
method is the best way to teach, sharpen and hone the critical thinking skills
of our youth. Only a science-conscious society that knows how to think, as the
Quran so positively and ruefully alludes to, and that which is complemented by genuine
spirituality, can rise high to “inherit the earth.”
Below, I will try to demonstrate the anti-scientific,
anti-critical thinking attitude that is very pervasive in the Muslim
world today, focusing on evolution as a case in point.
In the last couple of decades, it has become a fashionable
thing for Muslim religious leaders and authors to talk disparagingly about
evolution and deny its validity, seemingly justifying their position with the
Quran. A quick search on the Internet search engines will reveal that a good
majority of the influential Islamic scholars and religious leaders are against
evolution. They contend, seemingly using Quranic verses, that evolution is an
anti-Islamic and anti-Quranic idea. So much so that a few go as far as
declaring anyone believing in evolution to be unbelievers.
A 2008 Pew study, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, indicates
that 51% of American Muslims, who are usually viewed as more educated and
progressive than the average Muslim population of the world, don’t see
evolution as the best explanation for the origins of human life on Earth.2
In a 2006 survey measuring public acceptance of evolution by
country, Turkey––a Muslim majority country––ranked the lowest.3 This
is not surprising given the fact that a vigorous anti-evolutionist campaign has
been waged in Turkey within the last couple of decades by well-organized and
well-funded religious groups, two of whose influential leaders are mentioned
below.
A striking example to the vehemence and vigor with which
some Muslim religious figures “fight” evolution in the public realm is that of Adnan
Oktar, aka Harun Yahya.
Adnan Oktar is a veteran of the creationist movement in
Turkey, who had the now-famed 800 glossy-paged Atlas of Creation sent
unsolicited––and free of charge––to numerous places all around the world a
few years ago. His group has a slew of websites dedicated to spreading disinformation
about evolution.
Fethullah Gülen
is an influential and venerable Turkish Islamic scholar who leads a movement
known as the Gülen movement. The latter is
known for opening and operating literally hundreds of schools around the world
with a mission and philosophy mandated by Mr. Gülen. Gülen’s early work involved
debunking the theory of evolution. Zaman, a daily Turkish newspaper run effectively
by the Gülen movement, publishes articles every now and again fiercely
attacking evolution.
Even some Sufis are not impressed by the theory of evolution.
Nuh Ha Mim Keller, an American convert to Islam and a Sufi master, declares
that the claim that humans are descended from a non-human species is kufr, that
is unbelief.4
The anti-scientific attitude of many Muslim religious leaders
goes beyond the theory of evolution.
Bilal Philips, a convert and an Islamist preacher situated
in Qatar, claims in his book on Islamic monotheism that believing in Einstein’s
famous equation E= mc2 and the conservation/transformation of energy
it implies is tantamount to disbelief. Not surprisingly, he also
rejects evolution.5
Sheik Bin Baz, the influential late Saudi scholar of Islam
asserted that the Sun rotates around the earth, not the other way around as the
Copernican paradigm claims.6
Furthermore, pseudo-scientific discussions are very common
on the TV channels of the Islamic world. Anyone interested in checking some of
these out is encouraged to visit the Middle East Media Research Institute
(MEMRI) website.7 This does not, of course, mean that I agree with
the mission of this institute; it seems to have a pro-Israel agenda.
The influential Muslim religious leaders simply lack a true
understanding and interpretation of what science is and does. They don’t
understand what the scientific method is and how various scientific theories
are closely related by virtue of them being the product of the rigorous
application of the scientific method. They don’t see that it is inconsistent to
accept and physically depend on some of the well-established concepts and products
of the scientific method and reject others: For instance, accept that the
universe got started and galaxies formed within a timescale, or accept to pay
to use cell phones and GPS, but reject the biological explanation of how life
evolved on Earth.
Science is God-neutral; it can of course provide inspiration
for people to draw conclusions about God. But the science proper does
necessarily concern itself about the “how” question. Strictly speaking, it
cannot conceivably answer the why question, although it can and will and should
speculate, e.g., why this particular universe with its specific physical laws
out of zillion possibilities?
Apart from the above-mentioned inconsistent evaluation of
science and lack of understanding thereof, I will venture to add that Muslim scholars, in general, are incompetent to properly understand and interpret the
Quranic verses pertaining to natural phenomena.
In particular, I will try to demonstrate that contrary to
the claims of these so-called scholars, the Quran, far from being
anti-evolution, in fact describes the creation of man in nothing but clear evolutionary
terms. Not only that, but the Quran goes as far as even using the word
“evolution” explicitly for the creation of man.
Here, I need to state my philosophy on the interaction
between the Quran and science in very clear terms. It is an interaction based
on inspiration. I am of the opinion that a Muslim scientist can draw
inspiration from the Quran not unlike the way Einstein drew inspiration for his
physical ideas from the philosophies and worldviews of Spinoza and Hume.
Of course, the ideas so drawn will have to face the objective
test of the scientific method, which can validate or invalidate them. As
Einstein said “Truth is what stands the test of experience.” In the case of
invalidation, I am not of those who think that the Quran is invalidated. The
reason is that one has to have the intellectual flexibility and maturity to
distinguish between a holy book, a philosophy, or a work of art, and the
inspirations they may engender in people’s minds.
With this in mind, let us see what the Quran explicitly states
about the origin of creation (of organic matter, and therefore man).
First task before us is to show that unraveling the mystery
of the creation of man is not an unknowable and inscrutable thing as the anti-evolutionists
make it out to be. Since obviously if one says that God just created something,
although from God’s perspective that may very well be, from our mortal
perspective we can only see the creation of that thing through the chain of
causality, i.e., cause and effect.
To focus the point, I remind the reader the fact that today
the science of cosmology has reached a stage where we have arrived at certain
seemingly mysterious knowledge about the creation of the Universe. How all that
exists came into being with a Big Bang from a point and how with this cosmic “explosion,”
space-time began to expand, and matter and radiation in it became diluted; how
first subatomic particles formed, how the atoms formed and how stars and
galaxies came into being. By sheer scientific exertion and study, humans have
been able to unravel these cosmic mysteries.
Although today we are not yet at a stage where we can claim
to know how life originated on Earth, there is progress made on that front as
well. Nevertheless, compared with the creation of the heavens and the earth,
the creation of man, according to the Quran, is a minute thing. The Holy Quran
states in 40:57: “The creation of the heavens and the earth is a greater
(event) than that of humans, but most humans do not know.” The creation of the
whole universe is an immense thing, the Quran avers, and I think most of us
will agree with that statement. Further, the Quran compares the two
“creations,” i.e., that of the Universe and that of man, and asserts the former
to be a greater phenomenon than the latter. It, in a way, demystifies the
creation of man, which is put on a pedestal by so many creationists, much more
so even than the creation of the Universe.
So if we can unravel the mysteries of the creation of the
whole universe, it is not unreasonable or unholy to expect that the creation of
man can also be understood. Evolution is doing exactly that: showing us how man
was created.
Now, let us focus on what the Quran has to say about the
creation of man, and evolution itself, if any: Well, the first thing that
strikes the reader is how the Quran—instead of dismissively saying, like the
anti-evolutionists, that we were just created all at once and separately with
other creatures, and that there is nothing else to it—talks about how man was
created out of various stages and from various substances (water, baked clay,
etc.). In fact, after a critical reading of the creation account in the Quran, it
is difficult to come away with any sense other than a gradual, step-by-step
creation out of not just one substance but a few different substances.
There is a double irony here; especially knowing how
vigorously and contemptuously most modern Muslim religious scholars oppose the
idea and theory of evolution. In the Islamic Golden era, the idea of evolution
was advanced and espoused by many Muslim scholars such as al-Jahiz and Ibn Miskawayh. The second irony is
that the Quran actually does give a procedural recipe for unraveling the
mystery of the origin of life on Earth. The verses 29:19-20 read thus: “Do they
not see how God originates creation and repeats it? This is most certainly easy
for God. Travel through the earth and see
how He did originate creation. Then God will bring forth a later creation. Most
certainly God has power over all things.”
So now we Muslims need to ask ourselves: is there anyone who
has followed that procedure, that recipe? Those Muslim scholars who
oppose evolution perhaps?! Note here that the Arabic word used in the Quran is
“un’zur,” which is stronger than mere looking, and it implies examination and
observation. So have modern Muslim scholars travelled the earth and observed
how creation did originate? Sadly, no. In fact, perhaps a third irony, it was
none other than Darwin and Wallace, two non-Muslim naturalists, who took the
trouble of traveling the most exotic places on Earth, observing and studying painstakingly
the book of nature, and finally advancing the theory of evolution.
What else does the Quran tell us about the creation of man
apart from the expository verses I mentioned? The Quran explicitly does
describe evolution to the point of using the Arabic counterpart of the English
word “in gradual stages.”
Chapter 71 verses 13 and 14: “What is wrong with you that
you don’t attribute majesty to God, seeing that He created you in stages?” A few verses down, verses 17
and 18: “God created you out of the earth in gradual growth (like a plant).
Then He will return you to it, and in the end He will raise you forth (in
resurrection).”
Apart from the idea of gradual creation being so evident in
these verses, the exact Arabic word used for the translated words “in stages”
is أَطْوَارًا “atwaran,” whose root
verb means “to develop, to evolve”, and whose noun form is تطوّر
“tatawwur,” meaning
“evolution”.8
It turns out that the late Islamic scholar Muhammad
Hamidullah has made similar claims on evolution and the Quran but apparently
they fell on deaf ears.9
Conclusion:
My purpose in this article was (1) to critique the outmodedness
and inadequacy of the current mainstream Muslim scholarship in general vis-à-vis
the intellectual challenges of the modern era, and (2) using evolution as a
case in point, to demonstrate how modern Muslim religious scholars and figures
who reject evolution don’t understand modern science and thus the Quranic text
on natural phenomena properly. Specifically, I tried to demonstrate that
contrary to the claims of the so-called Muslim “creationists,” one can make a
very strong case for the theory of evolution than against it, using the verses
of the Quran.
In closing, I think we Muslims must start owning up to our civilizational
failures and seize the reformist momentum generated in the Arab Spring to
transform the region and start establishing modern “Houses of Wisdom” and a new
golden era of Islamic civilization. To begin to do that we must claim what is
supposed to be ours: critical thinking and analytical reasoning per (1) the
Quranic injunction itself to be of “those who think”, (2) per our historical
precedence as exemplified by al-Jahiz, al-Khwarizme, Ibn al Haytham (Alhazen),
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) etc, and finally (3) per our own God-bestowed faculty of
ratiocination, and not regurgitation.
Serkan Zorba
Serkan Zorba
References and Notes
1 Bamba, A. Islamic Horizons, May/June 2013, p. 50.
5 Philips, B. The Fundamentals of Tawhid, International
Islamic Publising House, (2005) p. 51.
6 Holden,
D. Johns, R. The House of Saud, Sidgwick&Jackson (1981)
p. 262.
8 Anyone can check
the veracity of my claims using any Arabic-English dictionary, including
Google’s translation website.
9 Hamidullah, M. The Emergence of Islam, Islamic Research
Institute (1993).
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