SOURCE OF GUIDANCE

  Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society

Chapter 2

SOURCE OF GUIDANCE—WHAT?

 

There are three claimants in the field of guidance and everyone of them claims that it can guide humanity in the ultimate problems of life. These claimants are:— (1) Science; (2) Philosophy; (3) Religion. We might take them up one by one and examine the validity of the claim of each.

 

1. SCIENCE

Modern Science entered the  field  of  human  thought  as  the  all-solving branch of knowledge and the rival of religion towards the middle of the 18th century. The reason of this new attitude of Science was not that Science had found out some such unerring methods or instruments of knowledge that could authorise it to make the claim. Rather, it was purely a sentimental affair.

 

Science came to the modern West from the world of Islam. It was the Muslims who, after the conquest of certain parts of Europe, specially Spain, established the first universities, scientific observatories, laboratories and libraries on the soil of Europe, and the first Christian scientists who, after centuries of darkness and ignorance, lit the torch of scientific knowledge in England, France, Germany and so on, were pupils of Muslim masters.⁶⁴ Christianity, as distinct from the original Message of the Holy Prophet Jesus (Peace be on him!), had been anti-Science and anti-reason from the very start. Indeed, it was Christianity which extinguished whatever light of knowledge was to be found in Greece, Egypt and Syria when it became politically powerful.⁶⁵ Besides, as already stated, Science came to the modern West through Muslims whom the Christians regarded as their deadliest enemies. Hence, the Christian Church persecuted the scientists, burnt them at the stake and hanged them on the gallows.⁶⁶

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⁶⁴ The facts referred to are known to all the scholars of history and have been stated by the most eminent authorities of the West and the East. For instance, the renowned British Orientalist, Marmaduke Pickthall, says:

“The Qur’ān undoutedly gave a great impetus to learning, especially in the field of natural science: and, if, as some modern writers have declared, the inductive method, to which all the practical modern discoveries are chiefly owing, can be traced to it, then it may be called the cause of modern scientific and material progress.

“The Muslims set out on their search for learning in the name of God at a time when Christians were destroying all the learning of the ancients in the name of Christ. They had destroyed the Library at Alexandria, they had murdered many philosophers, including the beautiful Hypatia. Learning was for them a devil’s snare beloved of the pagans. They had no injunction to ‘seek knowledge even though it were in China’. The manuscripts of Greek and Roman learning were publicly burnt by the priests.

“……..the revolving terrestrial globe happened to be part of the educational equipment of the Spanish Muslim universities at the time when the learned Bruno was burnt at a slow fire by the Inquisition for upholding the Corpernican theory of the Earth, and before the even greater Galileo was forced by persecution to recant and sign a solemn declaration that the Earth was fixed immovably as the Bible said it was. He is said to have murmured under his breath, as he put his name to the lie: E pur se Muov (“And yet it moves”). It was from the teaching of the Spanish Muslim universities that Columbus got his notion that the world was round, though he too was forced by persecution to recant it afterwards. When we remember that the Spanish Muslim universities in the time of the Khalifa Abdur Rahman III and the Eastern Muslim universities in the time of Al Ma’mun—I mention these two monarchs because it is specially recorded of their times—welcomed Christian and Jewish students on equality with Muslims; not only that, but entertained them at the Government expense: and that hundreds of Chiristian students from the South of Europe and the countries of the East took advantage of the chance to escape from ecclesiastical leading strings; we can easily perceive what debt of gratitude modern European progress owes to Islam, while it owes nothing whatsoever to the Christian Church, which persecuted, tortured, even burnt the learned.” (Islamic Culture. pp. 64, 67, 68).

 

The learned author of Islam in the World says (pp. 142-149):

“The influence of the powerful movement of Islamic culture in Spain rapidly made itself felt throughout Europe. Petrus Alfonsi (b. 1602) who studied at the Arabian medical schools, came to England from Spain as Physician to King Henri I and, in 1120, collaborated with Walcher, Prior of Malvern, in the production of a translation of Alfonsi’s astronomical treatise, based upon Arabian sources. In England their united effort represents the first impact of Arabian learning. Its effect was rapid, for immediately afterwards Adelard of Bath earned the distinction of being the first prominent European man of science, outside Spain, to come to Toledo and make a special study of Arabian learning, The cultural links thus formed between England and Muslim Spain were destined to produce important results. They stimulated in England the desire for the new philosophical and scientific learning and led to the achievements of Michael Scot (C.1175/1232) and Roger Bacon (1214-1294).

 

“Scot proceeded to Toledo in order to gain a knowledge of Arabic and of Arabian philosophy. At Oxford, Roger Bacon achieved brilliant success as an exponent of the new Arabian-Aristotelian philosophy. In the library of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral is a late thirteenth century illuminated manuscript, ‘Vetus Logica’, the earliest known commentary on Aristotle’s Logic produced in England following the Arabian ‘renaissance’ of Aristotelian philosophy. Amongst those scholars who came to Spain from Britain were Robert of England (flourished 1143), first translator of the Quran, Dental Morley (flourished 1170), etc. Roger Bacon’s work ‘Optics’ was based on Alhazen’s ‘Theraurus opticae’. The alchemical teachings of Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber) and other Arabian writers, are apparent in the work of Albert Magnus, Vincent of Beauvais, etc.

 

“In a recent study made by the ‘Madrid School of Spanish Arabists’, (a school which is concerned with the study of Islamic civilisation in Spain and its influence on Christian civilisation in the Iberian Peninsula as well as in the rest of Europe), Julian Ribera demonstrates that many of the institutions of Christian Spain were nothing but a copy or an imitation of similar institutions of Muslim Spain. He discovered Arabic sources for the doctrines of certain thinkers and certain poetic forms of songs of the Middle Ages, and for the mediaeval Andalusian music and songs of the troubadours, trouveres and minnesingers. Don Miguel Asin Palacios, in studying the origins of philosophy in Spain, traces the influences of such Arabian thinkers as Avempace, Averroes, Abenarabi, Abenmasarra and others. He also establishes the point that, one should seek the key of the Divine Comedy of Dante in the Islamic legends of the nocturnal voyage of Muhammad . It is further shown that historiographers, mathematicians and lexicologists, etc., owe much to their Muslim predecessors of Spain.”

 

“Emmanuel Deutsch says. ‘By the aid of the Qur’ān the Arabs conquered a world greater than that of Alexander the Great, greater than that of Rome and in as many tens of years as the latter had wanted hundreds to accomplish her conquests; by the aid of which they, alone of all the Semites, came to Europe as kings, whither the Phoenicians had come as tradesmen, and the Jews as fugitives or captives. They came to Europe to hold up the light to Humanity; they alone, while darkness lay around, to raise up the wisdom and knowledge of Hellas from the dead, to teach philosophy, medicine, astronomy and the golden art of song to the West as well as to the East, to stand at the cradle of modem science, and to cause us late epigoni for ever to weep over the day when Grenada fell’.”  

⁶⁵ Refer to footnote 64 above.

⁶⁶ Refer to footnote 64 above.

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That violent persecution made the Western scientists the enemy not only of the Christian Church but of all Religion, and because religion concerns itself basically with the ultimate problems of human life and demands the loyalty of human beings on that score, the scientists entered the field of ultimate problems and started in the name of scientific facts to oppose the teachings of Christianity concerning such problems as the origin of man, the origin of the world, the existence of the supernatural world and the existence of God. 

 

Thus, for instance Darwin sought to show that man was not a superior being as taught by religion, that he was not a being created in the ‘image’ of God, but just an animal among animals—merely a higher variety of apes! Indeed, he tried to trace the origin of human beings to the lowest form of life, namely, the amoeba, and said that the species had evolved through the process of transmutation, and that the position of man as the strongest of all animals was just due to chance and not because of any Divine decree. His entire thought was actually anti-religious, and others who came after him added to the list of the mistakes of Christian teaching in the name of scientific facts.

 

But the question remains: “Is Science really capable of answering the ultimate questions on the basis of sure knowledge?” 

The answer to this question lies in the analysis of the Scientific Method. The scientific method of obtaining knowledge consists in observation and experiment. We shall have to examine the validity of observation in order to find out as to how far it can help us in solving with any certainty the ultimate problems. 

Scientifically viewed, every observation is made up of three factors, namely: (1) the Observer; (2) the Object which is observed; (3) Conditions under which the observation is made. Let us examine these factors and find out whether they are variable or stable, in order to understand if we can arrive at sure knowledge of ultimate things on the basis of Observation.

 

The first factor is the observer. Now, observation is bound to vary from observer to observer, because different human beings do not have similarly sharp and accurate powers of observation either as regards their physical senses of sight, smelling, hearing, taste and touch or as regards the intellect which co-ordinates the reports that the brain gets through the physical senses. For instance, a person may be colour-blind or myopic and as such his observation will always differ from the observation of those who have what is called normal eyesight. Similarly, a person may be hard of hearing, or may have lost the smelling sense or the discrimination of taste or the sense of touch, or he may be an idiot or a lunatic. It is thus a well-established fact that the first factor in every observation is a variable factor, which means that different observations can vary on the basis of this factor.

The second factor is the object which is observed. It does not require much deep thought to realise that the more immediate, the more concrete and the more comprehensible an object is, the more is the possibility of the observation being correct; and the more remote, the more subtle and the more ungraspable an object is, the less possibility is there for anything like correct observation—nay, even for observation itself. For instance, if we have to find out the chemical properties of Sodium Chloride or of Calcium Carbonate, it is something easily available in its standard form. Also, it is something which  is concrete and it is something which can be examined in a test-tube. But even in immediate objects if we turn to Atomic Physics and try to observe the behaviour of the atom, it is bound to be a most difficult task, although the atom concerned may be one of Sodium, or of Calcium, or of Carbon. Going to remote objects and trying to observe them is a different matter altogether. For instance, if we try to observe the interplanetary strata, there are bound to be different opinions, even as they are there already. As a matter of fact, even in the case of an object like the moon which is observed and enjoyed even by the child, scientific observation begs for accuracy. For instance, till sometime back scientists had agreed on a certain calculation of the distance between the earth and the moon. But now they say it was a miscalculation and that the real distance is more than what had been believed in.

Coming now to the third factor, namely, the conditions under which an observation is made, we find that it also is a variable factor. For instance, if we take a straight rod and dip a portion of it in water, thereby placing one part of it in the medium of water and keeping the other part in the medium of air, we observe that the straight rod appears tilted at the point where air and water meet, although when we view it only in one medium, which may be air or water, it always appears straight. This normal change in the appearance of the shape of the rod is due only to change of conditions of observation and not due to any change in the structure of the rod. Another common instance is that where the distance of an object varies. For instance, when we view a sandy waste in the sultry heat of the sun from a distance, it appears to us as if it is a huge expanse of water—the common phenomenon in the deserts known as mirage. The false nature of this observation becomes known to us only when we approach that supposed lake of water. This means that if we become contented with the first observation, we would always remain in misunderstanding about the supposed lake of water. 

 

We have seen In the foregoing that all the three factors which constitute a scientific observation, are variable. In other words, any and every scientific observation liable to vary in its accuracy according to any one or two or all of these factors. The margin of this possibility of error in scientific observation becomes wider and wider as the objects observed become more subtle and more distant. This means that physical science can be a good guide and source of knowledge only in our immediate, and mostly physical, problems— although even there it is not immune from error. Indeed, it has been making lot of mistakes, as is well known to every student of the history of science. As regards the ultimate problems, which comprehend within themselves the entire universe and all aspects of existence, it should be very plain, even to a person of ordinary intelligence, that it would be extremely unscientific and even foolish to expect sure and accurate solutions from physical science.

 

We have said in the foregoing that physical science cannot give us sure knowledge in all cases even as regards the immediate physical objects. We might illustrate this fact by instances. The human body is the most immediate physical object of observation for a scientific observer. But, in spite of the fact that physical science is carrying man to the moon, it has not succeeded so far even in mastering thoroughly the mysteries of the human body. For instance, the Allopathic system of Medicine and the Homoeopathic system of Medicine are both virtually equally successful in treating human diseases. But the conceptions of human nature on which they are respectively founded are diametrically opposed. This clearly means that neither of them has yet succeeded in grasping the mysteries of human nature (even in its physical aspect) truly and comprehensively. Also, we  must bear in mind that if Medical Science, which is a part of Physical Science, had genuinely succeeded in knowing with certain, accuracy and thoroughness the physical aspect of human nature and the medicines needed for the cure of the different human diseases, the margin of failure in the cure of diseases would have become zero,—which is not the case at present. As regards the details of the human body, here again the same lack of accuracy and finality exists. For instance, there was a time when the scientists of the Allopathic school of medicine were of the opinion that the appendix and the tonsils were useless things and that they could be cast out of the body even as a precautionary measure. The scientific belief about the appendix was so vehemently stated that it gave rise even to an English proverb, namely: “as useless as an appendix”. But medical thought is now directed more and more to keeping the organs intact.

We may also give an instance concerning the ever-changing character of scientific conclusions as regards the ultimate problems. We might leave out here the per-Newtonian scientific thought, in order to be more charitable, and consider only the era starting with Newtonian Physics, which is considered to be the era of the maturity of Science. But what situation do we find here too? Sir Isaac Newton affirmed and proclaimed to the world that the universe was three-dimensional and that Space and Time were two different and independent entities. The entire scientific progress after him proceeded on this assumption. It was held by scientists to be an infallible truth, which they defended and by which they swore day in day out. But then came Einstein who proved, again scientifically, that Newtonian physics was all wrong in its foundations, that the universe was not three-dimensional but four-dimensional, that Time was the fourth dimension of Space and not an independent entity, that instead of immutability (on which Materialism had thrived) there was indeterminacy in the universe (which renders the scientific affirmation of the existence of God possible),—and Science has proceeded since then to show that Matter itself is unreal. Who knows that tomorrow another great scientist may come and explode the Physics of Einstein also? 

Source

to be continued . . . . .