An illusion of harmony: science and religion in Islam

230 Pages·2007·1.25 MB·English

by  Taner Edis

001
Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
PREFACE

CHAPTER 1 - TO SEEK KNOWLEDGE IN CHINA
A RELIGION OF REASON
MUSLIM SCIENCE AS IDEAL AND REALITY
A HOST OF QUESTIONS
WHICH ISLAM?
NOTES

CHAPTER 2 - A USABLE PAST
THE GOLDEN AGE
REASON AND SCIENCE IN CLASSICAL ISLAM
MEDIEVAL SCIENCE
WHAT ABOUT THE WEST?
WESTERNIZATION BEGINS
MODERNISM
MILITARY SECULARISM
THE ISLAMISTS
NOTES

CHAPTER 3 - FINDING SCIENCE IN THE QURAN
FRAGMENTS OF FAITH
THE NUR MOVEMENT
SCIENCE IN THE QURAN
THE QUANTUM QURAN
FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE
NOTES

CHAPTER 4 - CREATED NATURE
THE TROUBLE WITH EVOLUTION
MUSLIMS RESPOND TO DARWIN
HARUN YAHYA
HIGHER LEVELS OF CREATIONISM
GUIDED EVOLUTION
MORAL NATURE
FITRA AND GENDER ROLES
HARMONY
NOTES

CHAPTER 5 - REDEEMING THE HUMAN SCIENCES
MAKING IDEOLOGY
POSTMODERN ISLAM
ISLAMIZING SOCIAL SCIENCE
ISLAMIC ECONOMICS
HISTORY AS TRADITION
SEEKING AUTHENTICITY
NOTES

CHAPTER 6 - A LIBERAL FAITH?
A LIBERAL ALTERNATIVE
PROTECTING REVELATION
LIBERAL IDEAS
CONSERVATIVE RESPONSES
THE WESTERN EXAMPLE
A CLASH OF AMBITIONS
A FUNDAMENTALIST ROAD TO SCIENCE?
NOTES

CHAPTER 7 - SCIENCE AT ARM’S LENGTH
THE PROSPECTS FOR SCIENCE
THE WEST IS THE BEST?
ENLIGHTENMENT’S END
NOTES

Published 2007 by Prometheus Books

An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam. Copyright © 2007 by Taner Edis.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Edis, Taner, 1967-An illusion of harmony : science and religion in Islam / by Taner Edis. p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59102-449-1 (alk. paper) eISBN : 97-8-161-59225-0
1. Islam and science. 2. Islam and reason. I. Title.

BP190.5.S3E35 2007
297.2’65—dc22
2006032642

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
PREFACE
While working as a physicist, I have also long been interested in questions about
religion, philosophy, and the nature of science. I have especially been fascinated
with those beliefs at the fringes of science, such as creationism, UFOs, and
psychic powers. My perspective on such matters has also been shaped by the fact
that I grew up in Turkey, and have now spent about half my life in Turkey and
half in the United States. Ever since the early 1990s, when I discovered a small
book defending creationism back in Turkey, I have been observing the varieties
of pseudoscientific ideas in the Islamic world, trying to make sense of them in
terms of the many ways Muslims have responded to modern science. So it was
perhaps inevitable that I should write a book on Islam and science.
Islam and science, however, is a very broad topic, and doing it justice required
that I approach the subject from the perspectives of many disciplines. Hence I
have taken as much advice as I could from a group of very helpful readers who
previewed and commented on the text as it developed. I owe many thanks to
Mustafa Akyol, Amy Sue Bix, Ömer Gökcümen, Mike Huben, Ahmet T.
Karamustafa, Zaheer Alam Kidvai, Ergi Deniz Özsoy, Brad Smith, Barend
Vlaardingerbroek, John Wilkins, and Mohamed Chams Eddine Zaougui. I would
also like to thank Pervez Hoodbhoy for his encouragement, and Steven L.
Mitchell, editor in chief of Prometheus Books, for his patience with me as I went
half a year beyond my deadline.
I have tried to make the book accessible to readers with no extensive
knowledge about Islam; I have especially tried to clarify those Turkish
approaches to Islam that are my main focus. One useful bit of advice to that end
was that I should include a glossary of Muslim religious terms. I have minimized
my use of such terminology, but I provide a list here so readers do not have go
back in search of where I first introduce a term.
Fitra: Created nature, particularly referring to humans. It generally has a
positive moral connotation.

Hadith: A report of a saying by the prophet Muhammad or his Companions.
This term is also used to describe a body of collected reports considered sound
by Muslim scholars. These reports serve as a kind of secondary scripture.
Orthodox Muslims believe a handful of hadith to contain the direct words of
God, as the Quran is supposed to do, but most reports are anecdotes of early
Islamic practices that are supposed to set down the ideal examples that the
faithful should follow.

Ijtihad: Independent legal reasoning based on the sacred sources (hadith or the
Quran). It usually contrasts with imitation—legal reasoning that closely follows
settled precedent.

Madrasa: Classical Muslim educational institution, devoted especially to
training religious scholars.

Nizam: Order. Often used to refer to the divinely imposed order of the universe.

Sharia: Islamic law. Used narrowly, sharia means a recognized body of legal
rulings and religious practices. More broadly, it can stand for the whole legal and
ritual framework of traditional Islam.

Shiite: The minority branch of Islam, claiming the allegiance of about 10 percent
of Muslims worldwide. Shiites are the majority in Iran and Iraq.

Sufism: A term standing for a variety of mystical and ascetic currents within
Islam. Although some forms of Sufism emphasize a mystical experience of
divine love to the extent of downplaying the importance of the sharia, most Sufi
orders are more orthodox.

Sunni: The majority branch of Islam, to which about 90 percent of Muslims
belong. Orthodoxy (and orthopraxy) in Islam is largely defined by common
Sunni practice. Though there are doctrinal differences between Shiite and Sunni
Islam, few are relevant where science is concerned.
Tawhid: The doctrine of the unity and uniqueness of God. Tawhid is also often
understood to imply the unity of nature under the sovereignty of God.

Ulama: The traditional class of religious scholars learned in Islamic law. The
ulama are, in effect, the Muslim clergy. Their role, however, is not equivalent to
a Christian priesthood—the role of the ulama is much more like that of rabbis in
Orthodox Judaism.

Umma: The worldwide community of Muslims. Like the Church” or “the
body of Christ” in Christianity, its precise boundaries can be hazy. Nevertheless,
it is a central concept in Islamic political thought.
The spellings of these terms vary widely in the literature; I have kept them as
simple as possible.
Also, since I use many Turkish names, a brief guide to pronouncing the letters
in the Turkish alphabet should be useful. Ö and ü are like the same letters in
German; English does not have precise equivalents. The undotted i—ı—is like
the e in water. C always sounds like a j. Ç is as the ch in chip. A ğ lengthens the
preceding vowel. And ş sounds like the sh in shower.
All translations from Turkish are my own. I have tried to reproduce the
originals as best as I can, including peculiarities in phrasing and grammatical
errors in some cases.
CHAPTER 1
TO SEEK KNOWLEDGE IN CHINA
A RELIGION OF REASON
“Seek uted to the prophet Muhammad, is known to millions of Muslims all over
the world. I first encountered it during my early schooling in 1970s Turkey; I
remember a teacher citing it to encourage us to work hard at absorbing the
content of our textbooks. My classmates and I were usually more interested in
playing outside than in schoolwork, so we must have needed a reminder that
“our religion” honored learning, especially in scientific and technological areas.
I, for one, was certainly fascinated by science. I did not care much about
religion, though—as a child of a secularist Turkish father and a nonreligious
American mother, religion was not a significant part of my life as I grew up. My
interest in science was nourished by my numerous encyclopedias and children’s
science books, not by any sacred literature. We lived in a westernized area of the
secular Republic of Turkey, and the public schools were not heavy-handed about
Islam. It was understood that about 99 percent of Turkish citizens were Muslims,
whether observant or not, but religion rarely intruded into classrooms. The
echoes of Islam that we heard usually served the worldly purpose of trying to
modernize Turkey. I constantly got the impression that Islam (or at least the
Islam the authorities wanted) was supposed to be a rational religion, with no
theological obscurantism. In particular, Islam supported science; many people
even suggested that Islam was fundamentally a scientific religion. It enjoined
believers to seek knowledge, even if it required a trip to China.
Few intelligent students believe everything they hear in school, and I was not
entirely impressed with the claim that Islam was a religion of reason. Almost
everyone around me believed in supernatural beings and events, but all that
struck me as little different than fairy tales. The notion that any book, let alone
the Quran, was infallible, miraculous, and sacred seemed strange. And I could
never see much reason behind the idea of a God. Still, although it was obvious
from early on that I was to remain an incorrigible skeptic, some of the constant
insistence that Islam was a uniquely rational religion must have had an effect. I