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Islam�s Lost Heritage
By
Jahed Ahmed
[email protected]
��It was NOT
Islamic (in
Pakistan
) to say that combining hydrogen and oxygen makes water.
�You
were supposed to say,�
Dr. Hoodbhoy recounted,
�that
when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together then
BY THE WILL of ALLAH water was created�
-New
York Times
article
(
10/30/2001
) on effort to �Islamacize� science by portraying
Koran as a source of scientific knowledge
Probably the most suitable
noun that could accurately describe the intellectual status of today�s
Muslim world is �stagnancy�.
From Science-Technology to Literature-Art-Philosophy and like, the presence
of Muslim talents is highly scarce and frustrating. According to an informal
survey cited in the book entitled, �Islam
and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality�,
published in 1991 and
written by
Dr. Pervez
Hoodbhoy--an internationally
acclaimed Muslim Physicist and a professor at
Quaid-e-Azam
University, Pakistan--�Muslims
are seriously underrepresented in Science, accounting for fewer than one percent
of the world�s scientist while they account for almost a fifth of the
world�s population�. �Israel,"
as
Dr. Hoodbhoy reports, �has almost twice as many scientists as the Muslim countries put
together!�
Although it contrasts starkly with today�s reality, it�s a
well established fact that once Muslims constituted the most enriched
societies in the world in terms of pursuit of knowledge and the achievements.
For five straight centuries (9th to 13th), Muslims alone
kept the light of learning ablaze in whole world. Such time in the history is
known as THE GOLDEN AGE OF ISLAM.
�Nothing in Europe could hold a candle to what was going on in the
Islamic world until about 1600,� said Dr.
Jamil
Ragep1,
a
professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, USA.
Similar
comments have been made by experts
such as Dr. David Lindberg, a
medieval science historian at the
University
of
Wisconsin
.
Among all the Muslim scholars of the Golden Age, the most
famous ones probably include:
Al-Razi (865-925),
Al-Haytham
(a physicist, b. 965, Iraq),
al-Sufi (astronomer, 903-986), poet
Umar Khayyam
(1048-1131),
al-Biruni
(astronomer, mathematician and geographer, b. 973),
Ibn Sina (also known as
Avicenna,
a physician and philosopher b. 981) and poet
Al-Ma`arri (973-1058 C.E.).
One of the prime reasons attributed to Muslims� intellectual
enrichment during middle age is the substantial impact of Greek rationalistic
Philosophy on Muslim intellectuals. During seventh & eighth century,
Islamic empire was expanded from
Spain
to
Persia
and Muslims gained access to
works of such great Greek thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Democritus,
Pythagoras, Archimedes and Hippocrates. Consequently, the core of Greek
science, literature and philosophy fell into the hands of Muslims. �The West had a thin version
of Greek knowledge,� said
Dr. Lindberg2.
�The
East had it all.�
It
was the infusion of this knowledge into
Western
Europe
,
historians say, that fueled the Renaissance and the scientific revolution3.
As a result of the influence of Greek philosophy, the vast
majority of the Muslim intellectuals of
Middle Ages preferred reason over blind faith as a guiding philosophy. Such
groups of rationalistic Muslim thinkers of the time were known as
Mutazilites.
In an article entitled
�Muslims
and the West After September 11�
published
in Washington Post, Dr.
Pervez Hoodbhoy had the following to say about Mutazilites:
�Science flourished in the
Golden Age of Islam because there was within Islam a strong rationalist
tradition, carried on by a group of Muslim thinkers known as the
Mutazilites.
This tradition stressed human free will, strongly opposing the predestinarians
who taught that everything was foreordained and that humans have no option but
to surrender everything to Allah. While the Mutazilites
held political power, knowledge grew. �
However, such a rationalistic tradition faced its antithesis at a later
stage. Again, in the words of Dr. Hoodbhoy:
��in the twelfth century
Muslim orthodoxy reawakened, spearheaded by the cleric Imam al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali
championed revelation over reason, predestination over free will. He refuted
the possibility of relating cause to effect, teaching that man cannot know or
predict what will happen; God alone can. He damned mathematics as against
Islam, an intoxicant of the mind that weakened faith.
Islam choked in
the vice like grip of orthodoxy. No longer, as during the reign of the dynamic
caliph al-Mamun and the great Haroon al-Rashid, would Muslim, Christian, and
Jewish scholars gather and work together in the royal courts. It was the end
of tolerance, intellect, and science in the Muslim world. The last great
Muslim thinker, Abd-al Rahman ibn Khaldun, belonged to the fourteenth
century.�
Below briefly discussed are three prominent Muslim (here
I am using the word �Muslim� in mere cultural context) iconoclasts
belonging to the Golden Age of Islam:
AL-RAZI
(865-925 C.E.):
Full name- Abu Bakr Muhammad
B. Zakariya.
P. Kraus and S. Pines, in Encyclopedia
of Islam, have mentioned al-Razi as �perhaps
the greatest freethinker in the whole of Islam.�
Max
Meyerhof4
calls him �the
greatest physician of the Islamic world and one of the great physicians of all
time.� Al-Razi was the native
of Rayy (near
Tehran
), where he studied mathematics, philosophy,
astronomy and literature, and, perhaps, alchemy. Later, he went to
Baghdad
to study medicine. It may be
mentioned that at that time,
Baghdad
was reputed in the whole world as a great
center of learning. Al-Razi is known to have studied and contributed to
variety of subjects. His greatest medical work was an enormous encyclopedia,
al-Hawi,
on which he worked for fifteen years and which was translated into Latin in
1279.
Al-Razi was thoroughly a rationalist thinker. According to
Gabrieli,
'he
is the greatest rationalist �agnostic� of the Middle Ages, European and
Oriental.' The central theme of Al-Razi�s personal philosophy
was that no authority was beyond
criticism. He challenged tradition and authority in every field to which
he turned his attention. Like a true humanist, al-Razi
puts boundless faith in human reason and it is reflected in the
following excerpt, taken from his book of ethics, The Spiritual Physick:
Reason
�is God�s greatest blessing to
us�.By Reason we are preferred above the irrational beasts,�..By Reason we
reach all that raises us up, and sweetens and beautifies our life, and through
it we obtain our purpose and desire. For by Reason we have comprehended the
manufacture and use of ships, so that we have reached unto distant lands
divided from us by the seas; by it we have achieved medicine with its many
uses to the body, and all the other arts that yield us profit�.by it we have
learned the shape of the earth and the sky, the dimension of the sun, moon and
other stars, their distances and motions��
Al-Razi
denied the Islamic dogma of
creation ex nihilo. For him,
the world was created at a finite moment in time, but not out of nothing. Al-Razi
believed in the existence of the five eternal principles: creator, soul,
matter, time, and space.
He had no faith in Quran and the prophets.
'The
miracles of the prophets', said Al-Razi,
'are impostures, based on trickery, or
the stories regarding them are lies.' According to him, reason is superior to
revelation, and salvation is only possible through philosophy.
In his political philosophy, Al-Razi believed,
one could
live in an orderly society without being terrorized, or coerced by religious
law.
Al-Ma`arri
(973-1058 C.E.):
Full
name- Abul Ala Ahmad bin Abdallah bin Sulayman Al-Ma`ari. Because of his
magnificent poetic talent and philosophical views, sometimes, he
is called The Eastern Lucretius. Born in
Syria
, Al-Ma`ari was struck with
smallpox at an early age and eventually became totally blind. He studied in
Aleppo
,
Antioch
, and other Syrian towns before
returning his native town of
Ma
`arrat
al-Nu`man, where lived
until his death. For a brief
period, he was attracted by the famous center of
Baghdad, but stayed there only for
eighteen months. Such was his fame as an erudite man that eager disciples
flocked to his native town to listen to his lecture on poetry and grammar. One
of the recurring themes of his poetry was pervasive pessimism.
Al-Ma`ari was a supreme rationalist who everywhere asserted
�the
rights of reason against the claims of custom, tradition and authority.�
For al-Ma`aari,
religion
is a �fable invented by the ancients,� worthless except for those who
exploit the credulous masses. He
clearly puts Islam on the same level as all other creeds, and does not believe
a word of any of them.
About the prophets of
various religions, Al-Ma`ari says:
�Do not suppose the
statements of the prophets to be true; they are all fabrications. Men lived
comfortably till they came and spoiled life. The sacred books are only such a
set of idle tales as any age could have and indeed did actually produce.�
Al-Ma`ari attacked many of the dogmas of the Islam, particularly the
Pilgrimage, which he calls, �a heathen�s journey.� Kissing
of the black stone, a ritual during Muslim pilgrimage, according to Al-Ma`ari,
is a superstitious nonsense. In his opinion, religions have only resulted in
bigotry and blood-shed, with sect fighting sect, and fanatics forcing their
beliefs onto people at the point of a sword. All religions, as Ma`ari sees
them, are contrary to reason and sanity.
Adopting vegetarianism in his thirtieth year, he went against killing
of animals, a view, which is reflected in some of his poetry of later age. It
is no wonder, Von Kremer has said al-Ma`ari was centuries ahead of his time.
�UMAR
KHAYYAM:
�Umar Khayyam
was born around 1048 in
Nishapur
,
Persia
, and died there in 1131. Although
to the world, he is mostly known by virtue of his literary masterpiece Rubaiyat
(a collection of short,
spontaneous and self-contained poems), Khayyam
was, according to George Sarton5, �one
of the greatest mathematician of medieval times.� He
also wrote on Physics, astronomy, geography, music, metaphysics, and history.
In one of the early sources of his life, Mirsad
al-Ibad (the watch Tower of the Faithful),
Khayyam is described as an
atheist, philosopher, and naturalist. The constant
themes of Khayyam�s poetry are
the certainty of death, the
denial of afterlife, the
pointlessness of asking unanswerable questions,
the mysteriousness of the universe,
and the
necessity of living for and enjoying the present.
This is
clearly reflected in the following verses taken from Rubaiyat:
1)
How
much more of the mosque, of
prayer and fasting?
Better go drunk and begging
round the taverns.
Khayyam, drink wine, for soon
this clay of yours
Will make a cup, bowl, one
day a jar.
2)
When
once you hear the roses are in bloom,
Then is the time, my love,
to pour the wine;
Houris and palaces and Heaven
and Hell-
These are but fairy-tales,
forget them all.
3)
Drink
wine, for long you�ll sleep beneath the soil,
Without companion, lover,
friend or mate.
But keep this sorry secret to
yourself:
The withered tulip never
blooms again.
4)
Of all the travelers
on this endless road
Not one returns to tell us
where it leads.
����..
Long will the world last
after we are gone,
When every sign and trace of
us are lost.
We were not here before, and
no one knew;
Though we are gone, the world
will be the same.
It might be interesting to note the striking similarities of the
pessimistic theme between
Umar
Kahyyam and great English
dramatist and poet
William Shakespeare
as we read below:
Life�s but a walking
shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his
hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more:
it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of
sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Macbeth)
Sadegh
Hedayat, the greatest Persian novelist and short-story writer of
the twentieth century was at pains to point out that Khayyam from �his youth to his death remained a materialist, pessimist, agnostic.�
�Khayyam
looked at all religions questions with a skeptical eye�,
continues Hedayat,
�and hated the fanaticism, narrow-mindedness, and the spirit of vengeance of
the mullas, the so-called religious scholars�.
Another
important Muslim rationalist of twentieth century, who was greatly influenced
by Umar Khayyam
is Ali
Dashti6. Born in 1896 to a Persian ancestry at Kerbala
(present-day
Iraq
), Ali Dashti received a
traditional religious education. He went to
Persia
in 1918 and lived in
Shiraz
,Isfahan and finally in
Tehran, where he became involved in
politics of the day. Dashti was arrested twice: first in 1920 and then in 1921
after the coup d�e`tat
that brought the future Reza Shah to power. His prison memoirs, Prison Days, made him a literary celebrity both at home and
abroad. Dashti�s visit to
Russia
in 1927 was a decisive point for
his later development of skepticism and free thought which is explicitly
expressed in his classic
Twenty-three
Years
(the title refers to
the prophetic career of Muhammad).
In this book, Dashti leveled devastating criticism at some of Muslims�
cherished beliefs. The book was
written in 1937 but was published anonymously, probably in 1974, in
Beirut
, since the Shah�s regime
forbade the publication of criticism of religion between 1971 and 1977. After
the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Dashti authorized its publication by
underground opposition groups. The book
may well have sold over half a million copies in pirated editions between 1980
and 1986! In this book, Dashti
chooses reason over blind faith since
�belief
can blunt human reason and common sense,� even in learned scholars.
What is needed is more �impartial study�. Dashti strongly denied so
called miracles ascribed to Muhammad and didn�t acknowledge the popular
Muslim view that Koran is the word of God himself.
Instead, he favors through and skeptical examination of all
orthodox belief systems. Dashti
points out7 that-
Koran �contains
nothing new in the sense of ideas not already expressed by others. All the
moral precepts of the Koran are self-evident and generously acknowledged. The
stories in it are taken in identical or slightly modified forms from the lore
of the Jews and Christians, whose rabbis and monks Muhammad had met and
consulted on his journeys to Syria, and from memories conserved by the
descendants of the peoples of �Ad
and Thamud���In the field of moral teachings, however, the Koran
cannot be considered miraculous.
Muhammad reiterated principles which mankind had already conceived in
earlier centuries and many places. Confucius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates,
Moses, and Jesus had said similar things��..Many
of the duties and rites of Islam are continuous practices which the pagan
Arabs had adopted from the Jews.
�
Unfortunately, Dashti�s passion and courage to speak the truth
put his life in great danger, and he had to pay a big price! Ali Dashti died
in 1984 after spending three years in Khomeini�s prisons, where
he
was tortured even though he was eighty-three at that time. He told a friend before he died:
�Had the shah allowed books like
this to be published and read by the people, we would never have had an
Islamic revolution.� The
tragic fate of Dashti reminds us of great Greek philosopher Socrates who was
forced to drink lethal poison to death for having spoken his mind.
The
other Muslim rationalists of Middle Age who did not subscribe to the popular
views of Islam, besides the prominent three (i.e. Al-Raazi, Al-Ma`ari &
Umar Khayyam)
discussed above, include but
not limited to,
Al-Rawandi (B.C. 820-830 C.E.),
Al-Sarakhsi
(executed 899), and
Al-Mutanabbi (915-965). For Al-Rawandi
all
religious dogma is contrary to reason and therefore must be rejected.
'Any knowledge acquired by
the so called prophets',
according to Rawandi,
'can
be explained in natural and human terms.'
Al-Sarakhsi was an admirer of Greek philosophy and was the
tutor of the caliph al-Mu�tadid. He was executed for discussing heretical
ideas rather openly. Al-Mutanabbi, considered by many Arabs as the greatest
poet in the Arabic language,
regarded
Islamic dogmas as �spiritual instruments of oppression.�
It should be obvious
from the above discussion that rationalism was a pivotal trend among many
famous
Muslim intellectuals of the Medieval Islamic period. Unlike majority of
today�s Muslim intellectuals, those thinkers were more led by their own
conscience than any provincial dogma, belief system they might have inherited
from their ancestors.
It�s
an irony that the Muslim thinkers
of the later age clung to
bigoted Islamic clerics such as Al- Ghazali for inspiration while ignoring
many great Muslim rationalists of
the past.
Before I end, I would
like to say few words about the current unfortunate status of the freedom of expression
prevailing across today�s Muslim world.
It
would be probably no exaggeration to say no where in Muslim world
intellectuals are allowed to speak their mind when it comes to Islam.
Worse still, in countries like Pakistan, Iran, any open critical
views (be it however logical and true) of Islam may lead to
execution and death sentence by virtue of the existence of inhuman and barbaric Blasphemy
law (also widely used as
a political instrument of oppression).
Other
Muslim countries are also not any safe heaven in allowing
intellectuals/writers/journalists to express themselves freely on religious
issues. Some of the well known examples
of intense harassment and persecution of writers/intellectuals of Muslim
origin by the respective governments and the Muslim reactionary forces
include but not limited to, Bangladeshi feminist writer
Taslima Nasrin who has been on exile for more
than ten years; late freethinker/intellectual
Prof. Ahmed Shariff
(of Dhaka University, Bangladesh); Sheikh Muhammed Yunus
(a college teacher from Pakistan; was declared death sentence by blasphemy), the
prominent Egyptian feminist writer
Nawal al-Saadawi;
Dr. Nasr Abu Zayd
(a university professor in Egypt); novelist
Salman
Rushdi (was declared on death
sentence by a fatwa issued by Iranian chief clergy
late Khomeni) and many
others.
Mahmud
Muhammad Taha, a Sudanese
theologian and reformist,
was hanged publicly at the
age seventy-six in January, 1985, when he tried to minimize the role of the
Koran as a source of law.
Witnessing such crude and barbarian examples in the name of Islam one cannot
help wondering: are we indeed
living in 21st century? It seems to me, either the Muslim
countries are not aware of human rights declaration made by UNO (which is very
unlikely to be a case), or they are
totally indifferent toward such concept as freedom of expression. It must be
stressed that
according
to Article-19 of UN Universal Declaration of Human rights
�everyone
has the right to freedom of opinion & expression; this right includes
freedom to hold opinions without interferences & to seek, receive &
impart information & ideas
through any media & regardless of frontiers.�
Muslims
love to preach 'Islam is the greatest and truest religion' and Islam alone
can lead the civilization toward enlightenment. However, if we look at
current Muslim countries, it becomes hard to find a single example that
stands out by virtue of universal civil values such as coexistence of all
citizens based on tolerance, plurality and freedom to believe or not believe
in a doctrine. As a result, Muslims are not only alienating themselves from
rest of the civilizations, they are also forcing their new generations to
follow the same path of denial and illusion. This is a bad news both for the
Muslims and the mankind.
(Revised on January 14,
2007)
___
New York
USA
References:
1. The New York Times,
�How Islam Won, and Lost, the Lead
in Science�, by Dennis Overdye on
10/30/2001
.
2.Ibid
3. Ibid
4. M. Meyerhof,
�Thirty-three Clinical Observations by Rhazes,�
Isis
23, no.2 (1935): 322 f
5.G. Sarton,
Introduction to the History of Science (Washington, D.C. : Williams &
Wilkins, 1927), vol. 1, pp. 759-61.
6. In Search of
Omar Khayyam, the compilation by Ali Dashti ,
translated into English by Elwell
Sutton; (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1971), pp.187-99
7. Ali Dashti,
Twenty-three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammed (London: Allen
& Unwin, 1985)
(Note
for the readers:
In
addition to the sources mentioned above,
the article --to a significant extent--has been an adaptation of a few chapters from the book LEAVING
ISLAM: Apostates Speak Out, (2003 edition)
edited by Ibn Warraq, and
published by Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY 14228.)
Visit Jahed Ahmed's Article page
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