Islam's evolutionary legacy: Darwin and God

As we celebrate Darwin, let's not forget the unsung champions of evolution from the Muslim world

 

By Ehsan Masood

 

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 1 March 2009 13.00 GMT

Last month, scientists from around the world partied into the small hours on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin.

 

But as we celebrate the work of one of the most influential scientists ever, let's take a moment or two to remember others who contributed ideas in the history of evolutionary thought. Many came from Britain as well as other countries in Europe. Others came from further afield, and their writings are increasingly coming to light thanks to the painstaking work of historians of science, and historians of ideas.

 

One of them is an East African writer based in Baghdad in the 9th century called al-Jahiz. In a book describing the characteristics of animals, he remarked:

 

"Animals engage in a struggle for existence, and for resources, to avoid being eaten, and to breed." He added, "Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming them into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to their offspring."

 

Or there's Muhammad al-Nakhshabi, a scholar from 10th century central Asia. He wrote: "While man has sprung from sentient creatures [animals], these have sprung from vegetal beings [plants], and these in turn from combined substances; these from elementary qualities, and these [in turn] from celestial bodies."

 

In their excellent Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins, Adrian Desmond and James Moore describe how Darwin and his family were influenced by the anti-slavery movement, and they explore the extent to which these ideas, in turn, influenced his own thinking – especially on the idea of the connectedness of humanity.

 

A parallel line of argument can also be found from a Spanish philosopher from the 12th century. His name is Muhammad ibn Arabi and he developed an idea that his translators called the "unity of existence". He believed that all living matter is connected. And many commentators now think that this was his way of showing that within humanity, there can be no outsiders or "others".

 

These ideas were later taken up in the writings of Indian-born philosopher-poet Muhammad Iqbal in the early 20th century. We also know that Iqbal had been reading Darwin and wanted to find a way of synthesising the latest ideas from biological science with earlier Islamic-era philosophy. Iqbal today is revered throughout South Asia and also happens to be Pakistan's national poet.

 

Why is it important to emphasise links between Darwin, and thinking on evolution in other cultures?

 

One reason is that in many developing countries today, Darwin – and by extension evolution – are seen as being in the service of imperialism. This is partly because of the period in which Darwin lived and worked, but also because of a perception that Darwin's ideas were used by colonialists to provide "scientific" justification for empire.

 

Another reason comes from the rise of creationism. I've just finished work on a new documentary series for BBC radio 4 on science and Islam in the modern world. One thing I didn't expect to find was the extent to which creationism poses a risk to what is otherwise more encouraging news: that after decades of neglect, interest and investment in science and learning in Islamic countries is on an upward trajectory.

 

Many countries are building more universities and opening doors for young people to embark on PhDs. Progress, however, will be slower if more start believing that scientific knowledge can be found in the pages of sacred texts; or if they devote time and energy getting sucked into anti-evolution campaigns.

 

Instead, if today's young scientists could just take a peek into the history of science in Islamic cultures, they would see a respectable tradition of thinking, debate and argument on the origins of life and the evolution of species.

 

The irony in all this is that creationism did not exist as a significant movement during the heyday of Islamic civilisation. Back when Baghdad was a centre for advanced learning, scientists did not spend hours examining passages of revelation to see if they compare with observed knowledge of the natural world.

 

Instead, they went out and tried to discover things for themselves.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/feb/27/islam-religion-evolution-science

Islam and Science is on BBC Radio 4 at 9pm on Monday 2 March. It is also available to download on BBC i-player.

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Darwin and God: can they co-exist?

 

Muslim scientists must ensure that Islam's encounter with evolution does not turn out to be its Galileo moment.

 

Inayat Bunglawala

guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 July 2006 16.31 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jul/03/darwinismmuslimscientistsha

The United States has witnessed a very public and ill-tempered debate between the vast majority of scientists on one side supporting Darwin's account of how species have evolved over time, and mainly Christian supporters of "intelligent design" and other variants of creationism on the other, with both sides arguing that schools ought to teach children their version of life's history.

 

What is less well known is that in recent years expensively produced glossy literature and DVDs arguing for the direct creation and fixity of species have also become very popular in many Muslim communities in the UK and Europe. The material disseminated largely originates from Turkey and are the works of a Turkish philosopher, Adnan Oktar, who writes prolifically under the pen name of Harun Yahya.

 

Harun Yahya's books, website and DVDs are all very professionally presented in a manner clearly designed to impress.

 

I first came across a Harun Yahya publication, The Evolution Deceit around seven years ago and to my untrained eyes it was revelatory. Full of colour illustrations and written in lucid prose with plenty of quotations and references from the writings of prominent scientists, it seemed to make it clear that Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection was being exposed throughout the world as a fraud perpetrated by materialists seeking to undermine belief in God. When examined dispassionately, the actual evidence from the fossil record consistently showed creatures that were fully formed - there was no evidence for species evolving gradually into successor species.

 

Evolution had always been a rather uncomfortable subject for me and I suspect for many fellow believers. What role is there for God if evolution is true, I would say to myself? So, by disclosing in a seemingly authoritative manner that Darwinism was a bogus theory pushed by atheists, the Harun Yahya book played perfectly to my prejudices and fears.

 

Equipped with irrefutable facts, I now began to devour works by evolutionary biologists, including Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould confident that I could demolish the false claims of neo-Darwinism, alternatively known as the modern synthesis (the fusion of Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics).

 

Of course, I could not. Dawkins' work was forcefully argued and took no prisoners from the creationist camp; however, I did find his militant atheism quite off-putting (Madeleine Bunting was right in my view in arguing that Dawkins' approach unwittingly plays into the hands of creationists).

 

Gould on the other hand, while no less erudite and harbouring the same contempt for the pseudo-science utilised in creationist arguments, presented his case in a graceful manner and sought to convince his readers that biological evolution was the proper arena of science, not religion. And just as it was important for religious scholars not to overstep their boundaries by making unsupported assertions about issues that were within the domain of science, he also gently chided those scientists who made similarly unsupported atheistic claims about what evolution had to say regarding questions of meaning and purpose - questions that have traditionally been the domain of religion.

 

Professor Kenneth R. Miller, a leading American scientist and practising Catholic, meanwhile, in his book, Finding Darwin's God, convincingly argued that evolution and God can co-exist. His book criticised both those who use religion to attack evolution and those using science to promote a materialist worldview.

 

For an example of a Muslim religious figure who gets himself into a terrible muddle over evolution, have a read of this fatwa (religious opinion) taken from the popular Islam Online website.

 

I have raised the issue of Darwinism with several prominent British Muslims. One, an author of basic textbooks about Islam and early Muslim history told me that he did not accept Darwin's theory. When I asked him whether he had read any works by scientists on the matter, he admitted that he had not. I asked the same question of a religious scholar who appears on a weekly Islamic satellite channel to answer questions on matters of Islamic law. No, he said. Darwinism contradicts the teachings of the Qur'an and in any case is only a theory, not a fact.

 

I then asked a Muslim doctor - and presumably a person with some scientific and medical training - and he told me that evolution was certainly a convincing framework for explaining how so many different species had come to appear on the planet during the course of many hundreds of millions of years. Yet, when I posed the same question to him live on air (on my show for the Islam Channel) he would only say that "My belief on this question is the same as what our scholars derive from Islamic sources, so no, I don't accept it". He was clearly afraid of the reaction that his true views on evolution would cause.

 

Indeed, there have been worrying reports about Muslim medical students at universities distributing leaflets attacking evolution.

 

If its encounter with evolution is not to turn out to be Islam's Galileo moment then Muslim scientists have a crucial responsibility to engage in frank discussion about it with students and with religious scholars in an open and honest manner to help address a dogmatic aloofness which can only harm future Muslim science students.

 

Otherwise, much like those women from certain Gulf countries who cast off their burqas as soon as they set foot on a plane to go overseas, it is quite possible that many Muslim students may come to wrongly blame Islam, rather than the ill-informed interpretation of the Qur'an by some Muslims, for denying the fact - not theory - of biological evolution.

 

URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-science/islam-evolutionary-legacy-darwin-god/d/1266