(In continuation of President Khatami’s lecture)](http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/dec2002-daily/30-12-2002/oped/o1.htm)
According to Iqbal, “The Prophet of Islam seems to stand between the ancient and the modern world. Insofar as the spirit of his revelation is concerned, he belongs to the modern world. In emphasising nature and history as the sources of knowledge, the Qur’aan ushers in the modern scientific world whose weapons of discovery are observation, experimentation and generalisation.”
Though the Greeks scaled the sublimest height of speculative thought, too much dependence by them on deduction and their aversion to experimentation almost closed the door on any scientific advancement. Their society was based on slavery and was opposed to any manual work. The slaves worked, and the philosophers speculated. During the medieval age, it was scholasticism which held its iron grip on the mind of Europe. Scholasticism suffered from:
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Blind faith.
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Argument from authority.
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Indifference to facts.
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Undue emphasis on verbal subtleties.
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Reasoning on matters which observation alone could decide.
In Islam prophecy reaches perfection; and, therefore stands abolished. Henceforth man is thrown on his own resources for full consciousness. From this follows the necessity for the abolition of priesthood, as the repository of divine knowledge. This, in short, is the meaning of the concept of the finality of prophethood, according to Iqbal. It implies that all personal authority, claiming a supernatural origin has come to an end in the history of man.
Induction is a great gift of Islam to humanity. “Neither Roger Bacon nor his later namesake has any title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method,” says Briffault in “Making of History”, and goes on to affirm, “The experimental method of the Arabs was by Bacon’s time widespread and eagerly cultivated throughout Europe.”
On the other hand, it was Nazzam who first formulated the principle of doubt as the beginning of all knowledge. Ghazali amplified it in his Ihiya-ul-Ulum and anticipated Descartes by 400 years, who (Descartes) started off his philosophical odyssey with the dictum: “In order to reach the truth, it is necessary once in one’s life to put everything in doubt.”
Modern science has flourished in an atmosphere marked by scepticism. It puts to doubt all dogmas. It does not take anything for granted. The beliefs of a scientist are tentative, not final. They are not based on authority. Modern science is iconoclastic in dealing with convictions based on tradition or authority.
It is not antagonistic to the Qur’aanic spirit which is also iconoclastic. As opposed to scholasticism which believes in order to understand, the Islamic spirit understands in order to believe.
The Qur’aan emphasises rationalism. Over and over again, the Qur’aan appeals to tadabbur, tafakkur and ta’qqul. Tf says: Afa la tadabbarun? Afa la tafakkarun? Afa la ta’qqulun? (Why don’t you deliberate? Why don’t you think? Why don’t you reason).
The Qur’aan rejects irrationalism, forbids intolerance and abhors obscurantism. It enjoins us: “Allahumma, zidni ilmah” (O God, add to my knowledge.) What a prayer in the modern world, when knowledge is exploding and doubling itself in less than a decade!
In his magnum opus, the six lectures on “The Reconstruction of Religious thought in Islam”, Iqbal says: “For purposes of knowledge the Muslim culture fixes its gaze on the concrete and the finite.” Knowledge must begin with the concrete and the finite. This, indeed, is the spirit of modern science. When Iqbal emphasises the concrete and the finite, he exalts the scientific spirit at the expense of speculative flight into meta physics and rejects scholasticism.
By giving examples of Ibn-i-Khaldun’s view of history, Ibn-i-Maskwaih’s theory of life as an evolutionary movement and al-Khwarizmi’s shift from arithmetic to algebra, Iqbal concludes: "All lines of Muslim thought converge on a dynamic concept of the universe. Islam rejects a static view of the universe and regards it as ever-changing and evolving. The Qur’aan declares: “Kullo yoman, howa fi shan (Every day has its own glory).”
The principle laid down by Islam to keep pace with the ever-changing world is “ijtihad”, which means exertion with a view to form an independent judgement. According to the Qur’aan, God particularly does not like those who are unwilling to subject their ideas to re-examination (viii, 23, x, 1000).
Science demands immense in observation and great boldness in framing hypotheses. The test of scientific truth is patient collection of facts combined with bold guessing and ingenuity in the search of the law binding these facts together. Science demands an independent, inquisitive spirit, a pioneering zeal and an enterprising Èlan. Science advances when there is unity between theory and practice. Any dichotomy between theory and practice spells disaster for scientific progress. Muslim science withered away because of this dichotomy.
Why is it that for the last 500 years, the Muslim world has been so deficient in producing scientists and philosophers? Why is it that even now when it commands such immense resources, it lags so far behind the west in science and technology? The reason is that the Muslim mind has fallen a victim to irrationalism, traditionalism, and dogmatism. We dread the new, the novel and the original. We love clichÈs. We are fond of repeating the time-worn, moth-eaten views. We revel in interpretation, but flinch from creativity. We bask in the glory of the past. We do not have the courage to face harsh reality. We are in the stranglehold of “the nemesis of mimesis” (Toynbee). As Iqbal puts it: “We do not change, instead we change the Qur’aan.” Intellectual stagnation and moral degeneration are our dismal lot.
Historians and philosophers may differ about problems concerning science, but they are unanimous as regards the need for a particular worldview for the growth and blossoming of science, which cannot develop in an atmosphere vitiated by fanaticism, intolerance, conservatism, fundamentalism and irrationalism.
As Iqbal puts it: “The truth is that all search for knowledge is a kind of mystic seeker in an act of prayer. Although at present he follows only the footprints of the musk-deer and modestly limits the methods of its quest, his thirst for knowledge is eventually sure to lead him to the point where the scent of the musk is a better guide than the footprints of the deer. This alone will add to his power over nature and give him that vision of this total infinite which philosophy seeks but cannot find.”
Islam is not a closed system with set answers to all the problems of mankind, rather it is a faith in which God provides mankind anew every morning the riches whereby it may answer these problems. The Qur’aan is an infallible guide if its teachings are understood intelligently and followed creatively.
Islam overflows all definitions. It is open at one end to the immeasurable greatness of the Divine and it relates itself at the other end to the immeasurable diversity of the human. With the powerful instrument of ijtihad, the world of Islam must brace itself for the Renaissance and the Reformation, which we unfortunately have by-passed, and Iqbal so ardently and expectantly looked forward to.