سائنس و ٹیکنالوجی اور اسلام مجلہ: ماہنامہ البرہان لاہور مدیر: ڈاکٹر محمد امین

Science & Technology
and Islam

Co m p il ed b y: R a n a A mm a r M az h ar
Science & Technology and Islam

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7 Islam and Science
7 Bruno Guiderdoni
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Page 6 of 30
Islam and Science
Bruno Guiderdoni
Let me start by uttering the traditional formula “In the Name of

God the Compassionate the All-Merciful”. With this sentence, Muslims
begin all the ritual actions of their lives, as well as the actions of their
everyday lives that get the value of ritual actions. This formula opens
every chapter, or sura, of the Holy Koran, the sacred book of Islam, as
a key for the reading of the text, and for subsequent action inspired
from this reading. The whole revelation of the Koran comes from God
the One, through His names of love and mercy.
It sounds quite simple indeed. Unfortunately, one must admit that

what actually happens is far from these principles. Of course,
everybody would agree that there is a gap between principles and
realities, between what religion should be and what the members of
this religion make of it, between the realm of spiritual tenets and the
vicissitudes of history.
But is there a specific issue with Islam? Many voices are heard
that put the Islamic faith on trial. It is a fact that, in contrast with other
cultural zones, the Islamic world seems to participate very little in the
scientific pursuit of today, and to be struck by recurrent social and
political disorders. Several authors have attributed these two facts to
the same cause: the presumed inability of the Islamic faith to establish
a sound relationship with the practice of reason, and consequently to
enforce reasonable behaviours in societies. Islam is blamed for the
Page 7 of 30
following crime: it seemingly includes in its very principles the germs of

its own, violent deviation.
Here comes the point I would like to address, with your

permission, in this lecture, from the specific viewpoint of a Western
Muslim, who happens to be a professional scientist. Does Islam,
because of its very principles, face an insuperable difficulty with the
methods and results of science? Has it a specific problem with the
practice of reason that would entail the impossibility for Muslims to
adopt reasonable behaviours in modern societies? In a single sentence,
is it possible to be a coherent Muslim and to participate constructively
in the endeavours of our common world, and, first of all, in science? I
would like to hereafter argue that, although ignorance, hate and
violence unfortunately exist in the Islamic world, the spiritual tenets
and intellectual resources of the Islamic faith actually prompt Muslims
to search for knowledge, love and peace.
My lecture will be divided into three parts: First I will summarize

the basic principles of the Islamic faith that appear relevant to
understanding the nature of knowledge in the Islamic perspective.
Second, I will briefly review a few historical and contemporary positions
about the relation between faith and reason, and between religion and
science. Third, I will try to defend a viewpoint in which faith although it
does not say anything about the specific content of science, offers a
broad metaphysical background that helps me, as a scientist, find
purpose and meaning in its discoveries. Finally, I will conclude by a
new examination of the above-mentioned issue: the organization of
societies and the dialogue of faiths and cultures. It turns out that this
metaphysical background also helps us find purpose and meaning in
Page 8 of 30
the diversity of faiths, as well as it gives us guidelines for a peaceful

coexistence in this world.
The principles of Islamic faith
The presumed difficulty that Islam faces in its relationship with

reason, was recently summarized, with great talent and large impact,
by the famous lecture given by Pope Benedict XVI in Regensburg, on
September the 18th, 2006, in front of an audience of “representatives
of science” — the detail has its importance for the issue we are
addressing here. In an attempt to propose a new vision to secularized
Europe, the Holy Father explained what he considered the specific
feature of Christianity. For him, it is not surprising that modern science
and reasonable behaviours developed in countries where Christianity
was predominant. As a matter of fact, this lecture triggered strong
reactions in the Islamic world because Islam was used as a sort of
counter-example, a religion in which the absence of reason and the
presence of violence are interwoven.
According to the Pope, “For Muslim teaching, God is absolutely

transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even
that of rationality.” After this Regensburg lecture, there were
exchanges between the Islamic world and the Holy See, requests for
apologies on one side, and statements that the lecture was
misunderstood on the other side. Here, I would like to address the
issue raised by the Holy Father very much where he left it, and to
answer positively to the calls for dialogue that were eventually heard
on both sides.
Page 9 of 30
As a matter of fact, I think the issue stems from the idea we have
about God. When the Pope writes, after many other authors, “for
Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent”, he understands this
sentence in the following way: “For Muslims, God is only transcendent”.
Is the God of Islam different from the God of Christianity? It is not the
Muslims’ opinion. For them, Allah, a word that etymologically means
“The God”, is not the name of the Muslims’ God. It is the Arabic name
of the One God, the God of all humanity, worshipped by Jews,
Christians, and Muslims.
For Islam, as much as for Judaism and Christianity, God is

absolutely transcendent and He is perfectly immanent too. It means
that He cannot be known by any of our categories, and simultaneously,
He is close to us, He acts in the world, He knows and loves us, He lets
Him be known and be loved by us. As the Koran says, “Nothing is
similar to Him, and He is the One who perfectly hears and knows.” God
gathers aspects that are contradictory: “He is the First and the Last,
the Apparent and the Hidden.” And “He is closer to us than our jugular
vein.” This coexistence of these two aspects is necessary, in a
monotheistic religion, to prevent our idea about God from becoming an
idol. In Islamic terms, one would say that the tawhid, the statement of
the Oneness of God, simultaneously requires the tanzih, the statement
that God is like nothing else, and the tanshbih, the comparison of
names, attributes and actions of God with those of the world. A God
who is only transcendent is an abstract concept, and a God who is only
immanent is nothing else than a form of cosmic energy.
One can readily understand that the issue of the intelligibility of

God’s attributes and actions, and the extension of the domain where
Page 10 of 30
reason can apply to know religion and to know science, strongly

depend on the balance between transcendence and immanence. It is
true that extreme standpoints did exist in the Islamic thinking, in one
direction or another. However, the main stream defended the
simultaneous existence of these two aspects, and the fact that,
immanence is possible because God is so transcendent that His
transcendence is unaffected by His presence in the world, close to us.
God created the world. This sentence means that the world is not
self-sufficient. The world may not have been there. But it actually is
there, and the explanation provided by religions is that the being of the
world is given by another Being, who is not “a being” like the others,
but rather the action of being itself. God also revealed Himself in the
world through specific moments in which infinity gets in contact with
the finite, eternity with the temporal. These moments give birth to new
religions that, in the Islamic perspective, are only new adaptations of
the same universal truth to new peoples (and to the “languages” of
these peoples). And God has a specific contact with each of the human
beings, whom he cares after, and inspires.
Islam is the third come of the monotheistic religions in the wake

of the promise made to Abraham by God, after Judaism and
Christianity. Remember this story of the Book of Genesis, when
Abraham obeys God’s order and leaves his wife Hagar and his son
Ishmael in the desert. For Muslims, the place where Hagar and Ishmael
were left is the valley of Bakka, where a temple that was given by God
to Adam after the Fall from Eden, used to be located before the Deluge.
Later, Abraham and Ishmael rebuilt the temple, a small cubic building
covered by a black veil, now in the great mosque of Makka. This
Page 11 of 30
building is empty, and only inhabited by the sakina, a mysterious and

sacred presence of God, which is quite paradoxical, because God is
everywhere, and still he specifically manifests in some places.
Islam brings the renewal of this Abrahamic faith, through a new

revelation, that is, an initial miracle that founds a new relation of a part
of the human kind with God. This initial miracle is the revelation of a
text, the Holy Koran, to a human being, Prophet Muhammad, who was
born in Makka at the end of the 6th century. The revelation started
during the Night of Destiny, and lasted twenty years till the Prophet’s
death in 632. What exactly is this miracle? For Muslims, the miracle is
the fact that not only the meanings of the Holy Koran come from God,
but also the choice of the words, sentences, and chapters, in a given
human language, the Arabic language, in such a way that the divine
speech can be heard, pronounced, and understood by the human. As a
faithful messenger, Muhammad did not add nor cut a single word of the
Holy Reading or Proclamation (the meaning of the word Koran) that
subsequently became a Book, and acquired its final appearance under
Uthman’s caliphate (644—656). Of course, the Arabic language almost
breaks down under the weight of the divine speech. There are
subtleties, the use of an uncommon vocabulary, separated letters that
may convey mysterious information. The Arabic words frequently have
several meanings, and the task of the commentators is to highlight the
richness of the teachings that a single verse can bring forth. The
Prophet himself mentioned the multiplicity of the meanings of the
Koran by saying that “each verse has an outer meaning and an inner
meaning, a juridical meaning and a place of ascension”, that is, a direct
spiritual influence on the reader. This plurality of meanings makes the
task of the translator quite uneasy, because this plurality does not
Page 12 of 30
transfer directly into other languages, and especially into European

languages. Another fascinating aspect of the Koran is the fact that it
gathers messages about the divine names, attributes and actions,
prescriptions and prohibitions from God, stories of the prophets,
descriptions of this lower world and of the hereafter, ethical advice, and
chronicles of the life of the first Islamic community around the Prophet.
But all these chains are more or less mixed up, or interlaced, in each of
the 114 chapters, in such a way that the internal coherence can be
found only after reading and re-reading the text, which progressively
sheds light on itself.
The miracle of the descent of the Koran reproduces the miracle of

creation. God creates things though His speech, with His order: “Be!
(kun)” The creatures receive their existence from God through this
ontological order. God subsequently unveils hidden knowledge, again
though His speech, with another of His orders: “Read! (iqra’)”, the first
word of the Koran given to Prophet Muhammad. This instruction speaks
to the reader, the human being who uses its intelligence to understand
the Holy Text. As a consequence, the Koran is like a second creation, a
book where God shows his signs or verses (âyât), very much as we
contemplate God’s signs (âyât) in the entities and phenomena of the
first creation. God unveiled the Book of Religion (kitâb at-tadwîn) very
much as He created the Book of Existence (kitâb at-takwîn). The issue
of the relationship of faith with science specifically deals with the
coherence between the first and the second book. This topic of the
Liber Scripturae and the Liber mundi is expressed in similar terms in
other faiths.
Page 13 of 30
Islam manifests itself as the renewal of the faith of Abraham, as a

new adaptation of the same universal truth that was given to Adam,
first human being, first sinner, first repentant, first forgiven human,
and first prophet. Muhammad comes as the last prophet, after a long
chain that includes many prophets of the Bible, Noah, Abraham, Isaac,
Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, David and Solomon, as well as John the Baptist
and Jesus. The Koran also includes stories about other prophets that
are not known by the biblical tradition, and were sent to the Arabs, or
maybe to other peoples in Asia. Hence the fundamental formula of
Islam, the so-called profession of faith, or shahada that is the first of
the five pillars of Islam: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is
God’s messenger”. The message is the Koran, a message from God
that prompts the Muslims to be faithful to their own spiritual vocation.
The second pillar of Islam is the canonical prayer performed five times
a day, at specific moments linked to cosmic events: before sunrise,
after noon, in the middle of the afternoon, after sunset and when night
is dark. The third pillar is alms-giving on accumulated wealth. The
fourth pillar is ritual fasting during the month of Ramadan (the month
during which the first verses of the Koran were revealed), from the first
light of the day to sunset. And finally, the fifth and last pillar is the
pilgrimage to the House of God, the kaaba, and some places around
Makka. These five pillars constitute reference points for the actions of
worship. This is the most important part of the religious law, or sharî’a.
The sharî’a also includes a description of many aspects of the social life.
There are only few Koranic verses that actually deal with social
organization, but, in the time of the first Islamic community, the
presence of the Prophet allowed it to solve all issues. Later, when Islam
became the religion of a vast empire, it became necessary to have a
Page 14 of 30
more complete codification of the religious law, and the so-called

classical sharî’a was slowly constituted. Muslims now need to re-
examine this issue in a context that is much more complex, in societies
which are shaped by science and technology, globalization, exchanges
of people and information, and the presence of many minorities. It is a
great challenge, and a strong “effort of interpretation” or ijtihâd, is
necessary.
Jews and Christians were present in Arabia during the time of the
Koranic revelation, and the Koran alludes to the exchanges that they
had with Prophet Muhammad. It turned out that these exchanges had
the following outcome: The majority of the Jews and Christians did not
acknowledge Prophet Muhammad, and Islam became a religion clearly
and completely separated from Judaism and Christianity. The main
difference with Judaism is the fact that Islam, like Christianity, is a
religion that is explicitly universal. Its message speaks to all the human
kind, whereas Judaism is linked to a given people. The main difference
with Christianity is the disagreement about the nature of Jesus. Jesus is
present in the Koran as an “Islamic prophet” who came to bring the
message on the Oneness of God. But he is a very unusual Prophet. He
was born miraculously from Maria the Virgin, who herself was protected
against any sin. The angel Gabriel announced Jesus’ birth to Maria. For
Muslims, Jesus is the Christ, al-Masîh, the anointed by the Lord. He
spoke out with wisdom just after his birth, and made miracles with
God’s permission. He miraculously escaped from death and he is still
alive, beside God. Muslims say that Jesus is a Spirit of God (Ruh Allah)
and a Word from God (Kalimat Allah), but they do not say that Jesus is
God’s son. If they were to say so, they would be Christians, and Islam
would be only one more Christian church. As a consequence, for Islam,
Page 15 of 30
there is no incarnation, no Trinity, no crucifixion and no redemption

(and in any case, no primeval sin that would make redemption of the
human kind necessary). It is true that Jews differ from Christians also
about the figure of Jesus. Apart from this central figure, the three
monotheistic religions have a lot in common: the One God, the creation
of the world, the creation of the human being “according to God’s
image and likeness” (we Muslims say: “according to the form of the
Merciful”), the call for spiritual life, for helping the poor, and the belief
that the human being, despite his sins, can improve and be saved.
Finally, it is fair to say that, even if Jesus currently separates Jews,
Christians and Muslims, he will eventually reunite them, in a horizon
that is at the end of times. Muslims consider that Jesus is “the sign of
the ultimate hour”, and that he will come to gather the believers of all
religions. As a matter of fact, Christians say the same thing about
Jesus, and Jews wait for the Messiah. It is a great mystery that these
believers who say things that are so different about the Messiah will
eventually recognize and follow him.
According to the constant teaching of the Islamic tradition, and

because of the specific status of the Holy Text of Islam as the
fundamental axis of revelation, faith is intimately linked to knowledge.
A famous Koranic verse1 prescribes: “worship your Lord till certainty”,
and many Prophetic sayings strongly recommend the pursuit of
knowledge as a religious duty “incumbent to all Muslims”. The Prophet
himself used to say: “ My Lord, increase my knowledge”. Of course,
this knowledge consists in knowing God through revelation. But it is
clear too that all sorts of knowledge that can be in some way connected
1
Koran 15:99
Page 16 of 30
to God, and that help the religious and mundane life of society, are
good and have to be pursued. Clearly, when the Prophet recommended
that his companions search for knowledge as far as China, he did not
alluded primarily to religious knowledge.
Human beings have a “faculty of knowing” that is described in the

Koran according to a three-fold aspect: “And it is God who brought you
forth from your mothers’ wombs, and He appointed you for hearing,
sight, and inner vision”.2 Hearing is our faculty of accepting and
obeying the textual indication, that is the Koran and the Prophetic
tradition which are the two primary sources of religious knowledge;
sight is our ability to ponder and reflect upon the phenomena, and is
closely related to the rational pursuit of knowledge; and the inner
vision symbolically located in the heart is the possibility of receiving
knowledge directly from God, through spiritual unveiling. As a
consequence of these three facets, the nature of knowledge is also
three-fold: It is religious through the study of the Holy Scriptures and
the submission to their prescriptions and prohibitions, rational through
the investigation of the world and reflection upon it, and mystical
through inner enlightenment directly granted by God to whom ever He
wishes among His servants.
Moreover, there is a well-known story about the independence of

natural rules with respect to religious teaching. Farmers who used to
grow date palms asked the Prophet whether it was necessary to graft
these date palms. The Prophet answered “no”, and they followed his
advice. They then complained that the date crops were very bad. The
2
Koran 16:78
Page 17 of 30
Prophet answered that he was only a human like them. He said “You
are more knowledgeable than I in the best interests of this world of
yours”. This is a very important story. There is a domain in which
religion simply has nothing to say, a domain that is neutral with respect
to the ritual end ethical teachings of revelation. However, because
Islam does not separate the intellectual aspects of life from ethical
concerns, the only knowledge that should be avoided is useless
knowledge, which, in this Islamic prospect, is this type of knowledge
that closes our eyes to the treasures of our own spiritual vocation.
To summarize, the descent of the Koran, in which God unveils His

transcendence and His immanence, provides the Muslims with a way to
celebrate God’s mystery as well as to approach His intelligibility. This
intelligibility requires the use of reason encapsulated in a broader
perspective of knowledge. Through His explanations and promises, God
chooses to be partly bound by the categories of reason, out of His
Mercy and Love for the world. But reason itself is unable to approach all
the Truth, because Truth is not only conceptual. It also involves all the
being. In the Islamic perspective, the “intellect” precisely includes the
practice of reason, and the lucidity to understand where reason ceases
to be efficient in this quest. The question of the exact extension of the
domain of reason has been debated, and I will now try to illustrate the
type of debates that took place in Islamic thinking.
Islamic perspectives on faith and reason
After the extension of the Islamic empire, during the Umayyad

and Abbasid caliphates, the Islamic thought met Greek science and
philosophy. At that time, it became necessary to define more
accurately the place of rational knowledge in the religious pursuit, by
Page 18 of 30
marking the field that we can validly explore with our own reason. The
great thinker al-Ghazali (1058—1111), known in the West as Algazel,
examined the relation between science and philosophy on the one
hand, religion on the other. As all his predecessors, he had the strong
belief that there is only one truth, and that well-guided reason cannot
be in contradiction with textual indications given by the Koran and
Prophetic tradition. In his intellectual and spiritual autobiography “The
Deliverer from Error” (al-Munqidh min al-dalâl), he enumerated the list
of sciences practiced by Islamic philosophers (al-falâsafah) in the wake
of Plato's and Aristotle's works. Among these sciences, “arithmetic,
geometry and astronomy have no relationship whatsoever, positive or
negative, with religious matters. They rather deal with issues submitted
to proof, which cannot be refuted once they are known and
understood.” However, al-Ghazali writes, there is a “double risk” in
their practice. On the one hand, because these scientists are too proud
with themselves, they often adventure beyond the field where reason
can validly apply, and they make metaphysical or theological
statements about God and religious issues that happen to contradict
textual indications. On the other hand, the common believers, after
seeing the excesses of these scientists, are led to reject all sciences
indiscriminately. Al-Ghazali condemned “those who believe they defend
Islam by rejecting the philosophical sciences”, and “actually cause
much damage to it.” Now, providing there is only one Truth, how to
deal with possible contradictions between science and Koranic verses?
The situation is clear: Wherever science apparently contradicts textual
indications, it is the fault of the scientists who surely have made errors
in their scientific works, as far as they have been led to conclusions
which are at odd with revealed truth. In his book “The Incoherence of
Page 19 of 30
the Philosophers” (Tahâfut al-falâsafah), al-Ghazali attempted to revisit

the proofs given by philosophers, and to demonstrate logically and
scientifically where their errors come from.
In his book “The Decisive Treatise which establishes the

Connection between Religion and Wisdom” (Kitâb fasli-l-maqâl wa
taqrîr ma bayna-sh-sharî’ah wa-l-hikmah mina-l-ittisâl), Ibn Rushd
(1026--1098), known in the West as Averroes, examines again the
issue addressed by al-Ghazali. Ibn Rushd was a judge (qâdî) and his
text is indeed a juridical pronouncement (fatwa) to establish “whether
the study of Philosophy and Logic is allowed by the revealed Law, or
condemned by it, or prescribed, either as recommended or as
mandatory.” Ibn Rushd quoted some of the many Koranic verses that
prompt the reader to ponder upon Creation: “Will they not ponder upon
the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, and all that God created?”
As the enforcement of the revealed Law requires the use of the juridical
syllogism (qiyâs shar’î ) in Islamic jurisprudence, knowing Creation and
meditating upon it require the use of the rational syllogism (qiyâs ‘aqlî
), that is, the philosophers’ works. Now, Ibn Rushd wrote, “since this
revelation [i.e. the Koran] is true and prompts to practicing rational
examination (nazhar) which leads to the knowledge of truth, we
Muslims know with certainty that rational examination will never
contradict the teachings of the revealed text: because truth cannot
contradict truth, but agrees with it and supports it.” As a consequence,
Ibn Rushd explains that wherever the results of rational examination
contradict the textual indications, this contradiction is only apparent
and the text has to be submitted to allegorical interpretation (ta’wîl).
Page 20 of 30
The Islamic world met modern science during the 19th century, as
a double challenge, a material one and an intellectual one. The defense
of the Ottoman empire in front of the military invasion brought by
Western countries, and the success of colonization, have made the
acquisition of Western technology necessary, and also of Western
science which is the foundation of the latter. The West appears as the
model of progress that has to be reached, or at least followed, by a
constant effort of training engineers and technicians, and by
transferring the technology that is required to develop third-world
countries. But the encounter between Islam and modern science also
gave birth to a reflection, and even a controversy, the nature of which
is philosophical and doctrinal.
To cut a long story short, the Islamic world now has a great
interest for science, but a lot of disagreement about what science is, or
has to be, to be fully incorporated in Islamic societies by being made
“Islamic”. For the modernist stream, “Islamic science” is only universal
science practiced by scientists who happen to be Muslims. For the
reconstruction stream, “Islamic science” has to be “rebuilt” from
Islamic principles, in the prospect of the needs of Islamic societies. For
the traditional stream, “Islamic science” is the ancient, symbolic
science that has to be recovered, in a prospect that is more respectful
of nature and of the spiritual pursuit of the scientists. The various
streams of the contemporary Islamic thought show an intense activity
on the relationship between science and religion. All of them have to
identify pitfalls on their path. The main issue is that they are
conceptions that are elaborated a priori, as mental representations of
the activity of Muslim scientists, and may have little to do with the
actual practice in laboratories. If I were to comment on these streams,
Page 21 of 30
I would say that each of them seizes, and emphasizes, a part of the
situation. Yes, it is true that science, in its methods and philosophy, is
largely universal, and the common property of the human kind. Yes, it
is true that science cannot be decoupled from the society in which it
develops, and that the way it is organized, the topics that are
highlighted, the ethic that is practiced, are influenced by the worldview
of the scientists. Yes, it is true that, even if science describes the
material cosmos, the issue of meaning and purpose, and the inclusion
of the scientific pursuit in a broader quest for knowledge, have to be
considered by scientists who are believers.
As a matter of fact, most of the debates between science and

religion in the Islamic perspective simply forget a fundamental starting
point, that is, the nature of the knowledge brought forth by the Koranic
revelation. As it is explained already in the first verses that descended
on Prophet Muhammad during the Night of Destiny, God speaks to the
human to teach it what it does not know: “Read in the name of your
Lord who created. He created the human from a clot of blood. Read,
and your Lord is the most Bountiful, who taught the use of the pen,
and taught the human that which he knew not.” The teachings of the
Koran primarily consist in highlighting the spiritual vocation of the
human being, the purpose of creation, and the mysteries of the
hereafter. They speak mostly of what to do to act righteously, and to
hope to be saved. These teachings are proposed under the veils of
myths and symbols. Here, we must give these words a strong meaning.
Myths and symbols in holy texts are not simple allegories. The
language of the muthos conveys meanings that cannot be expressed
otherwise, that is, in the language of the logos, the language of
articulated and clear demonstration. Myths, and symbols are just like
Page 22 of 30
fingers that point to realities that would be otherwise beyond our

attention. They just call for the meaning they allude to, to knowledge
that is obtained by an intuition in relationship and resonance with the
contemplation of the symbols. In some sense, all ritual actions are like
“symbols” that bring spiritual influence. With this view, it is possible to
avoid a literalistic reading of the text, and to focus on spiritual realities.
The verses on heavens do not speak of astronomy, but of the upper
levels of being inhabited by intellectual realities, as much as the
chronicles on the wars and struggles that the first Muslims had with the
pagans do not speak of general rules for the relation of Muslims with
non-Muslims, but of the symbols of the “greatest effort”, which is the
struggle against our own passions that darken our souls.
Faith as a matrix for purpose
Let me now propose a view on how the articulation between

modern science and religion can be addressed in the Islamic tradition. I
would like to suggest that the theological and metaphysical corpus of
the Islamic thought is rich enough to help the Muslim scientist find a
meaning in the world as it is described by the current scientific inquiry.
Of course, I am not going to propose a new form of parallelism. I will
rather speak in terms of convergence. Reality uncovered by modern
science can fit in a broader metaphysical stage. I will only give four
examples on how this convergence can take place.
(1) The intelligibility of the world
The fundamental mystery that subtends physics and cosmology is

the fact that the world is intelligible. For the Islamic tradition, this
intelligibility is part of the divine plans for the world, since God, who
Page 23 of 30
knows everything, created both the world and the human from His
Intelligence. Then He put intelligence in the human. By looking at the
cosmos, our intelligence constantly meets His Intelligence. The fact
that God is One, guarantees the unity of the human and the cosmos,
and the adequacy of our intelligence to understanding at least part of
the world.
The Koran mentions the regularities that are present in the world:
“you will find no change in God's custom”. Therefore “there is no
change in God's creation.” Clearly this does not mean that Creation is
immutable, since in many verses the Koran emphasizes the changes we
see in the sky and on earth. These verses mean that there is “stability”
in Creation reflecting God's immutability. Moreover, these regularities
that are a consequence of God's Will can be qualified as “mathematical
regularities”. Several verses draw the reader's attention to the
numerical order that is present in the cosmos: “The Sun and the Moon
[are ordered] according to an exact computation (husbân).”
(2) God’s action in creation
How does God act in His Creation? According to the mainstream

Islamic theology, God does not act by fixing the laws of physics and the
initial conditions and letting the world evolve mechanistically. As a
matter of fact, the “secondary causes” simply vanish, because God, as
the “primary Cause”, does not cease to create the world again and
again. “Each day some task engages Him.” In this continuous renewal
of creation (tajdîd al-khalq), the atoms and their accidents are created
anew at each time. This is the reason why “the accident does not
remain for two moments.” The regularities that are observed in the
world are not due to causal connection, but to a constant conjunction
Page 24 of 30
between the phenomena, which is a habit or custom established by

God's Will.
The examination of causality by the Islamic tradition emphasizes

the metaphysical mystery of the continuous validity of the laws. “All
that dwells upon the earth is evanescent”, and should fall back into
nothingness. But the (relative) permanence of cosmic phenomena is
rooted in God's (absolute) immutability (samadiyyah). This is the
reason why “you will not see a flaw in the Merciful's creation. Turn up
your eyes: can you detect a single fissure?”
In any case, the metaphysical criticism of causality by Islam did

not hamper the development of the Islamic science at the same epoch.
On the contrary, the criticism of the Aristotelian conception of the
causes as mere conditions for effects to occur necessarily and
immediately opened the way to a deeper examination of the world to
determine what the “habit” or “custom” proposed by God actually was.
Deductive thinking that goes from causes to effects cannot be used a
priori in the realm of nature. One has to observe what is actually
happening. The development of science in Islam during the great
classical period was closely linked to the will to look at phenomena.
(3) God praises and loves diversity
One fundamental element of the Islamic doctrine is the fact the

God praises and loves diversity: “Among his signs: the diversity of your
languages and of your colors.” As a matter of fact, God never ceases to
create, because of His love, or rahma, a word that etymologically
alludes to the maternal womb. The mother’s love for her children is the
best symbol of this divine love on earth, according to a Prophetic
Page 25 of 30
teaching which says that God created one hundred parts of this rahma,
and He kept ninety-nine parts of it with Him, while letting one part
descend on earth. It is with this part on earth that all mothers care
after their children. This divine love reaches the diversity of creatures,
physical phenomena, plants and animals, as well as the human
diversity of ethnical types, languages and cultures, and extends to the
diversity of religions, according to this well-known verse: “And if God
had wanted, He could surely have made you all one single community.
But He willed otherwise in order to test you by means of what He has
given to you. Vie, then, with one another in doing good works. Unto
God you all must return; and then He will make you truly understand
all that on which you are differing.”
A Muslim scientist can easily appreciate this love of diversity in the

meditation on the results of modern science. Thanks to the technical
means of exploration, modern cosmology has discovered a spectacular
view of the universe of galaxies, one hundred billions galaxies in the
observable universe. Each galaxy consists in typically one to one
thousand billion stars. And it is very likely that each of these stars is
surrounded by several planets, which themselves may have satellites.
This makes an incredible number of planets, to which one must connect
the fact that differential evolution gives each planet a specific identity
that does not resemble to the others. Of course, we do not know how
much of these planets actually harbor life forms, but astrophysicists
cannot contemplate these large numbers without thinking that life
probably exists elsewhere is the universe. Only on earth, there are
millions of living species. Can one imagine what the observable
universe is? And the patch of the universe where it is expected that the
laws of physics (and galaxies, stars and planets) are similar to the ones
Page 26 of 30
we know, is probably much larger than the observable universe, by a

factor of many billions. And this patch of the universe may be
encapsulated in an infinite multiverse in which the laws of physics and
the properties of the outcomes greatly vary from patch to patch. What
is the meaning of that all? A believer can read the creativity and love of
God in this landscape. Love is the explanation of creation, according to
the tradition where God says, “I was a hidden treasure. I loved to be
known, so I created the creatures to be known by them.”
(4) Science cannot be separated from ethic
According to the Islamic doctrine, the human being is created

from clay and from God’s spirit, to become “God’s vice-regent of
earth”. The human being is the only creature that is able to know God
through all His names and attributes, and it is put on earth as a
garden-keeper in the garden. Our relationship with other living
creatures on earth is not that from the upper to the lower level, with
the concomitant possibility to exploit all “inferior” beings”, but that
from the central to the peripheral. The “central” position of the garden-
keeper on earth is the position of the watchman who equally cares after
all the inhabitants of the garden. This implies a sense of accountability
for all creation, and should lead to humility, not to arrogance. As a
consequence, we can eat the fruits of the garden, but we have no right
to uproot the trees, which do not belong to us. The power that science
has given to us must be accompanied by a greater sense of the ethic
that is necessary to use this power with discrimination and intelligence.
To say the things in a few words, we must not do all what we can do,
very much as Adam was not allowed to touch one specific tree in the
garden. This prohibition makes us free, because freedom requires the
Page 27 of 30
possibility of a choice. This symbol of the garden keeper in the garden

has a strong echo today, with the current debates on how to deal with
global warming, the share of natural resources in a sustainable way, or
the preservation of biodiversity.
Unity and diversity: a key for the century to come
The Islamic tradition has a considerable spiritual and intellectual

legacy that should make it contribute to the building of the 21st
century. We do hope that the human kind will find a paradigm for its
diversity within a strong sense of its unity. Unfortunately, there are
also forces of darkness and ignorance that operate in our world.
Instead of diversity, we see fragmentation. Instead of unity, we see
uniformity. The believers have their share of responsibility in this
tragedy, because they do not promote a genuine sense of the religious
truth.
What has the debate between science and religion to do with that?
I think that the idea that God wrote two books, the Book of Creation
and the Book of Scriptures, with the certainty that these books are in
fundamental agreement in spite of apparent discrepancies, can prepare
us to the idea that God has written, or revealed “many Books of
Scriptures”, that are also in fundamental agreement in spite of
apparent discrepancies. As far as the solution of these discrepancies is
concerned, we must leave with some tension, while praising the Lord
for the marvelous diversity He created and revealed.
In conclusion, let me address this issue of ultimate truth, and tell

you a brief and profound story that illustrates the mystery of the
human condition. We have to go back to the past, and look again at
Page 28 of 30
Ibn Rushd. Around 1180, Ibn Rushd was informed that a young man,
called Muhyî-d-dîn Ibn ‘Arabî, aged about 15, was granted spiritual
openings during his retreats. Ibn Rush, who was the greater
philosopher of his time, invited this youngster to meet with him. Later,
Ibn ‘Arabi, who then was considered the Greater Master of Islamic
mysticism, wrote about the story of the meeting in the introduction of
his major book, The Meccan Openings, a 4000-page treatise that
unveils the content of his spiritual intuitions. I just let Ibn ‘Arabi speak.
“When I entered in upon [Ibn Rushd], he stood up out of love and
respect. He embraced me and said, “Yes”. I said, “Yes.” His joy
increased because I had understood him. Then I realized why he had
rejoiced at that, so I said, “No.” His joy disappeared and his color
changed, and he doubted what he possessed in himself.” Then Ibn
Arabi gives us the key of these strange exchanges, in which answers
come before questions. Ibn Rushd addresses the central topic of our
lecture of this evening: “How did you find the situation in unveiling and
divine effusion? Is it what rational consideration gives to us?” Ibn ‘Arabi
replied, “Yes no. Between the yes and the no spirits fly from their
matter and heads from their bodies.” Ibn ‘Arabi reports Ibn Rushd’s
reaction to these words: “His color turned pale and he began to
tremble. He sat reciting, ‘There is no power and no strength but in God,
since he has understood my allusion.”
As a matter of fact, Ibn ‘Arabi alluded to eschatology, by recalling

that even if reason can go very far to capture reality, no one has been
intimately changed by scientific knowledge. Knowing Gödel’s theorem,
quantum physics of the Standard Hot Big Bang Model changes our
worldview, and maybe the way our minds work, but it does not change
our hearts. Of course, these discoveries are fundamental milestones in
Page 29 of 30
intellectual history. They can produce strong feelings in those who

dedicate their lives to such studies. But revelation speaks of another
degree, or intensity, of Truth that changes our very being, and
prepares it for the mystery of the afterlife. The teaching of religions is
that we shall have to leave this world and enter another level of being
to pursue our quest for knowledge in a broader locus more fitted to
contemplating God than our narrow, physical world. Our reason fails to
conceive how it is possible. It is a matter of faith in the promises of our
Holy Scriptures. At that time, it is better to stop speaking, because, as
the poet and mystic Jalal-ad-Din Rumi used to say, “the pen, when it
reaches this point, just breaks.”
Page 30 of 30

سائنس و ٹیکنالوجی اور اسلام مجلہ: ماہنامہ البرہان لاہور مدیر: ڈاکٹر محمد امین

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سائنس و ٹیکنالوجی اور اسلام مجلہ: ماہنامہ البرہان لاہور مدیر: ڈاکٹر محمد امین

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Islam and Science

Let me start by uttering the traditional formula “In the Name of

It sounds quite simple indeed. Unfortunately, one must admit that

following crime: it seemingly includes in its very principles the germs of

Here comes the point I would like to address, with your

My lecture will be divided into three parts: First I will summarize

the diversity of faiths, as well as it gives us guidelines for a peaceful

The principles of Islamic faith

The presumed difficulty that Islam faces in its relationship with

According to the Pope, “For Muslim teaching, God is absolutely

For Islam, as much as for Judaism and Christianity, God is

One can readily understand that the issue of the intelligibility of

reason can apply to know religion and to know science, strongly

Islam is the third come of the monotheistic religions in the wake

building is empty, and only inhabited by the sakina, a mysterious and

Islam brings the renewal of this Abrahamic faith, through a new

transfer directly into other languages, and especially into European

The miracle of the descent of the Koran reproduces the miracle of

Islam manifests itself as the renewal of the faith of Abraham, as a

more complete codification of the religious law, and the so-called

there is no incarnation, no Trinity, no crucifixion and no redemption

According to the constant teaching of the Islamic tradition, and

Human beings have a “faculty of knowing” that is described in the

Moreover, there is a well-known story about the independence of

To summarize, the descent of the Koran, in which God unveils His

Islamic perspectives on faith and reason

After the extension of the Islamic empire, during the Umayyad

the Philosophers” (Tahâfut al-falâsafah), al-Ghazali attempted to revisit

In his book “The Decisive Treatise which establishes the

As a matter of fact, most of the debates between science and

fingers that point to realities that would be otherwise beyond our

Faith as a matrix for purpose

Let me now propose a view on how the articulation between

(1) The intelligibility of the world

The fundamental mystery that subtends physics and cosmology is

(2) God’s action in creation

How does God act in His Creation? According to the mainstream

between the phenomena, which is a habit or custom established by

The examination of causality by the Islamic tradition emphasizes

In any case, the metaphysical criticism of causality by Islam did

(3) God praises and loves diversity

One fundamental element of the Islamic doctrine is the fact the

A Muslim scientist can easily appreciate this love of diversity in the

we know, is probably much larger than the observable universe, by a

(4) Science cannot be separated from ethic

According to the Islamic doctrine, the human being is created

possibility of a choice. This symbol of the garden keeper in the garden

Unity and diversity: a key for the century to come

The Islamic tradition has a considerable spiritual and intellectual

In conclusion, let me address this issue of ultimate truth, and tell

As a matter of fact, Ibn ‘Arabi alluded to eschatology, by recalling

intellectual history. They can produce strong feelings in those who

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3 &'()#$ % "