We have made you [believers] into a just community, so that you may bear witness [to the truth] before others and so that the Messenger may bear witness [to it] before you. We only made the direction the one you used to face [Prophet] in order to distinguish those who follow the Messenger from those who turn on their heels: that test was hard, except for those God has guided. God would never let your faith go to waste [believers], for God is most compassionate and most merciful towards people. [2:143]
Contrary to the dominant narrative peddled by historically illiterate new atheists, every major civilization has engaged in what we call the “scientific enterprise”. What was different about past peoples was the philosophical foundations upon which science was done and the cosmological perspective it fit within. Human beings were not superstitious dumb beasts roaming around the earth looking for the next source of food and water. No matter where you go on this planet, you can find evidence in remnants that indicates advancements in technology that would boggle the modern mind only because the modern mind has so much contempt for the past that it does not expect more than barbarism from it. This is a product of assuming that technological progress is equivalent to human progress and that it is qualitatively unique to our time. It is an attitude that is reminiscent of the people of ‘Ad, who God says about in the Quran:
The people of ‘Ad behaved arrogantly throughout the land without any right, saying, ‘Who could be stronger than us?’ Did they not realize that God, who created them, was stronger than them? They continued to reject Our message. [41:15]
It is also an attitude for which God asks a question in the Quran:
Have they not travelled through the land and seen how their predecessors met their end? They were mightier than them: they cultivated the earth more and built more upon it. Their own messengers also came to them with clear signs: God did not wrong them; they wronged themselves. [30:9]
There was a time when Europeans traveled to Muslims and had enough of an inferiority complex to cover their heads with Arab turbans. Now the tables have turned, and Muslims have the inferiority complex that drives many of us to cover our intellects with “Enlightenment” sophistry. We just do not recognize it as sophistry because we want to be acknowledged as “rational”. Why anyone would want to be given approval by an intellectually incoherent group filled with individuals who revel in circular reasoning is an odd thing. But it is not so odd when we recognize that to have a seat at the academic and “intellectual” table, we must pay homage to those who set it up. Otherwise, we will be eating leftovers outside with the peasants. At least, that is how it is presented and may appear at first glance until you look closer and realize the food on the table is spoiled, and if it was not for our transient case of anosmia we would not be producing so much unwarranted skepticism and vomit then calling it “reform” and “progress”.
As an increasing number of influential Muslims appear to be capitulating to the social pressures in the academic and public intellectual spheres, it is important more now than ever to be acutely aware of the truism that there is no science without philosophy. Every scientific theory is an intellectual construct produced to model how the patterns we observe and measure in the world are thought to behave. It is not only the explanatory value of the theories that gives them merit, but also their predictive one. That is why a proposal like Intelligent Design is not considered science. Anyone can look at how things are now and propose an explanation. But the progress of science does not depend on post hoc accounts. One needs to put their theories to the test by using them as predictive models. This is the primary reason why evolutionary theory continues to exist.
In the scientific world, evolutionary theory is not an atheist project bent on the destruction of religion. Actually, if you step outside of YouTube and stop paying attention to the Richard Dawkinses and Sam Harrises of the world, most scientists do not even bring up religion when they are engaged in their work. It is really not all that glamorous when you go behind the scenes: you have an idea about how something is/functions/came to be, you measure it, you make a prediction based on your idea and initial measurements, you carry out an experiment or a search to test whether your prediction will pan out, and then put up the findings against your idea. Sometimes you find out you were right, but most of the time it does not work out in your favour, and you have to go back to the drawing board and either adjust your idea or throw it out completely and come up with an alternative. This is all, of course, within the context of a general theoretical paradigm you are operating within. Sometimes the paradigm itself needs to be completely thrown out if it continues to accumulate predictions that are irreconcilable with empirical observations, and a new paradigm can begin to take hold. This will typically take at least a full generation before it is realized.
It all sounds neat, but it really is not. What happens in real life is that no theory has a perfect predictive record. Even when it looks like it does, such as in the case of gravity, it is a product of our limited observations. Gravity is not even a thing in and of itself. It is a relationship between material objects, and the grand narrative we made about it is based on our observations thus far. You only believe that what you throw up will come down if you did not have enough force behind it to overcome gravity because that has been our collective experience. It is not necessarily true. We just have faith that it will work out that way because we never experienced it otherwise. This insight is usually attributed by the selectively amnesic Western mind to David Hume, but it has been recognized by Muslims long before and as was famously articulated by Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali in his discussion on miracles, a scholar whose thought Neil deGrasse Tyson has made declarations about and its negative impact on the “Golden Age” of Islam despite not having read his work or Islamic history for that matter.
The convincing power of a scientific theory is not inherent to it. It is in the combination of selective reporting in an image-based culture that gives the impression of it having a neat predictive record and in the general application of science as technology. Outsiders to the daily practice of science do not make distinctions between physics, chemistry, and biology, let alone make distinctions between subfields within these areas of science. It is therefore untenable to expect them to grasp the underlying philosophical assumptions and by extension implications of theories proposed in these different areas. Abstract discussions tend to frustrate most people when they have no apparent immediate practical utility. Sensory experience tends to overpower the intellect, often in ways that can be harmful.
The ascent of scientists has less to do with the validity of theoretical claims they make and more to do with their ability to produce technology that facilitates modern ways of living. It is easy to fall into the error of assuming that we “know” how something is because we can manipulate it and subject it to our use. However, the simple example of the phenomenon of light refutes this notion.
The challenge Muslims have today is to sift through modern science and separate between valid conclusions, the theoretical constructs and philosophical assumptions upon which they were built, the equivocations between quantity and quality, and the grand narrative mythologies that make it on the New York Times Best Sellers list as popular science books. The Quran affirms that despite their indefatigable attempts at negating God, there will be truth in every theory, and the advancements being made will serve as proof on the Day of Rising against those who make them and continue to reject God:
They only know the outer surface of this present life and are heedless of the life to come. Have they not thought about their own selves? God did not create the heavens and earth and everything between them without a serious purpose and an appointed time, yet many people deny that they will meet their Lord. [30-7-8]
We shall show them Our signs in every region of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything? [41:53]
We must resist the reflexive binary reaction where we feel the need to reject either science or religion, or fall into unwarranted skepticism that bends the religion to make it congruent with whatever science happens to be in vogue at the time. Indeed, the latter reaction is a type of rejecting religion, for it removes its theology in exchange for philosophical naturalism as Islam is paradoxically made to have no conflict with scientism.
We need to get beyond Christian apologetics that seeks to affirm the validity of a text we believe was corrupted and a theology we reject as an anathema against God. We must take responsibility as witnesses and produce nuanced responses that use Islamic primary sources as the guiding compass, where we recognize the contextual realities that influenced our past scholars’ perspectives as well as those that currently influence us when we approach the tradition. Otherwise, we risk having Muslims turn into essentially atheists who happen to perform Islamic rituals. But hey, at least we can call ourselves “rational” that way.
