Is it Darwin’s or Muslim Theory of Evolution? Let History Answer It
By T.O. Shanavas, New Age Islam
13 September 2024
Darwin's theory marked a significant scientific advancement in biology. Muslim scholars were among the first to propose the concept of evolution. The contributions of Muslim thinkers to the theory of evolution were known in the West long before Charles Darwin. John William Draper accurately highlighted this when he stated:
"The intellectual movement of Christendom has reached that point which Arabism had attained in the tenth and eleventh centuries; and doctrines which were then discussed are presenting themselves again for review; such are those of Evolution, Creation, Development" (italics by author). (Ref: John William Draper, *Conflict between Religion and Science*. New York: Appleton and Company, 1875, p. XV.).
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Also Read: Darwinism is Consistent with Qur’anic Insights on Man’s Origin
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Who was Draper? John William Draper (1811-1882) was an English-American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. Draper made significant contributions to scientific photography, including producing one of the first clear photographs of a human face in 1839-40 and the first detailed photograph of the moon in 1840. He was the first president of the American Chemical Society (1876-77).Draper wrote several influential books, including "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe" (1863) and "History of the Conflict between Religion and Science" (1874), which popularized the conflict thesis between religion and science. At the famous 1860 British Association meeting in Oxford where Darwin's theory was debated, Draper presented a paper titled "On the Intellectual Development of Europe, considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin and other.“ This paper by Draper initiated the discussion that led to the famous exchange between Bishop Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley about Darwin's theory. Draper was thus a contemporary of Darwin and played a role in early discussions and debates about evolutionary theory, though he is often overlooked in popular accounts that focus on Huxley and Wilberforce. (Ref: Gould, Stephen Jay. “Knight Takes Bishop?” Natural History, (May 1986), p. 18; and Lucas, J. R. Historical Journal, XXII (1979), p. 102).
According to Draper,
“[Christian] (t)heological authorities were therefore constrained to look with disfavour on any attempt to carry back the origin of the earth to an epoch indefinitely remote, and on the Mohammedan theory of evolution [italics by author] which declared that human beings developed over a long period of time from lower forms of life to their present condition.“ (Ref: Draper, John William. The Conflict between Religion and Science, p. 188.). “Sometimes, not without surprise, we meet with ideas with which we flatter ourselves with having originated in our own times. Thus our modern doctrine of evolution and development were taught in their [Muslim] schools [italics mine]. In fact they carried them much farther than we are disposed to do, extending them even to inorganic or mineral things.“ (Ref: Draper, John William. The Conflict between Religion and Science. p. 118.)
Today, we recognize that Darwin's theory of evolution has roots in earlier Muslim theories of evolution. It is difficult to believe that European scientists, who were neighbours to the Muslim world, were unaware of these ideas, especially when an American scientist and contemporary of Darwin, John William Draper, acknowledged that the theory originated among Muslims. Is it plausible that Europeans, who heeded Roger Bacon's advice to "learn Arabic and Arabic science for progress,“ (Ref: Briffault, Dr.Robert. The Making of Mankind, p. 201. ) were unaware of the Muslim contributions to evolutionary thought?
Western historians have acknowledged that books of medicine written by physicians during the Golden Age of Islam served as standard textbooks in European medical schools until the eighteenth century (Ref: Durant, Will. *The Story of Civilization*, Vol. 4, pp. 246–249). Therefore, it is undeniable that Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), and his father, Robert Darwin (1766–1848), both physicians, were influenced by these textbooks written by Muslim scholars.
Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail, a prominent Muslim physician and philosopher, authored *The Story of Hai bin Yaqzan* (also known as *The Journey of the Soul*), a philosophical tale notable for its themes related to evolution, presented centuries before Darwin's theory. This work gained significant popularity in Europe, with the first Latin translation published in Oxford in 1671 by Edward Pocock, Jr., followed by multiple editions between 1671 and 1700. The first English translation by Simon Ockley was published in 1708, and Dutch, German, and French translations followed in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Ref: The Story of Hai bin Yaqzan (The Journey of the Soul) by Edward Pocock, Jr. pp. vi-vii.).
The widespread publication and translation of this work across Europe suggest it was highly influential. Given its popularity, it would be unlikely that Charles Darwin, his father, and his grandfather, a philosopher, were not familiar with it.
Now review and compare the poems written by Jalaluddin Rumi and Erasmus Darwin who encourage his grandson, Charles Darwin to quit Christian seminary for the study of nature.
Rumi wrote Masnawi:
“Hundreds of thousands of years I was flying (to and fro) involuntarily, the notes in the air.
He came first to the inorganic realm.
and from there stepped over to the vegetable kingdom.
Living long as a plant.
He has no memory of his struggles in the organic realm.
Similarly rising from the plant to the animal life
he forgets his plant life
retaining only an attraction for it which he feels
especially in the spring
Ignorant of the secret and cause of his attraction
like the infant at the breast who knows not why he is attracted to the mother. . . .
Then the creator draws him from animality to humanity.
So he went from realm to realm
until he became rational, wise, and strong.
As he has forgotten his former types of reason (every stage being governed by a particular type of reason) so he shall pass beyond his present reason.
When he gets rid of this coveted intellect, he shall see a thousand other types of reason.“ (Ref: Hakim, Dr Khalifa Abdul. The Metaphysics of Rumi, p.37).
Darwin wrote in his poem, Temple of Nature:
“Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs’d in Ocean’s pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.“ (REF: https://books.google.com/books?
We must acknowledge that Darwin gathered substantial evidence for the theory of evolution. Although the West celebrates Darwin for his concept of natural selection, an essential component of evolutionary theory, he was not the first to recognize the role of natural selection in the evolution of life. Why?
Abu Rayhan Muhammad al-Biruni (973-1050) explained natural selection. He believed that God delegated active nature (kiyan) to perform its assigned duties in the universe. He explained natural selection in almost the same words as did Darwin centuries later. He also saw examples of selection in the methods of horticulturists, as well as in the natural behavior of bees. Al-Biruni wrote in Fi Tahqiq Ma Li’l-Hind (Al-Biruni’s India):
“The agriculturist selects his corn, letting grow as much as he requires, and tearing out the remainder. The forester leaves those branches, which he perceives to be excellent, whilst he cuts away all others. The bees kill those of their kind who only eat, but do not work in their beehive. Nature proceeds in a similar way [italics added]“ (Biruni, Al.Fi Tahqiq Ma Li’l-Hind (Alberuni’s India), Translated by Dr.Edward C. Sachu, p. 400.)
These quotes from al-Biruni suggest that, long before Malthus and Darwin, he understood the disparity between reproduction and survival. He described speciation and natural selection as a result of structural advantages in certain species of plants and animals:
“The life of the world depends upon sowing and procreating. Both processes increase in the course of time, and this increase is unlimited, while the world is limited. When a class of plants or animals does not increase any more in its structure, and its peculiar kind is established as species of its own [italics added], when each individual of it does not simply come into existence once and perish, but procreates a being like itself or several together, and not only once but several times, then this will, as single species of plants or animals, occupy the earth and spread itself and its kind over as much territory as it can find.“ (Biruni, Al.Fi Tahqiq Ma Li’l-Hind (Alberuni’s India), Translated by Dr.Edward C. Sachu, p. 400.)
Notice the similarity between the above quote from al-Biruni and the following passage from Darwin centuries later:
“A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase… [and] every organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with full belief, that the war of nature is incessant . . . the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply [and] that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those, which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection or the Survival of the Fittest.” (Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. p. 75, 86, 88)
Important scientific discoveries made by Muslim scholars about uniformitarianism, and the origin of fossils, theory of evolution, etc. have been almost completely erased from global awareness by Western scholarship. Western historians often begin with the Greeks and skip over Islamic history, jumping directly to the European Renaissance. This omission of Islamic scientists' contributions clearly distorts the historical record. Why aren’t the contributions of Muslim scholars more widely known? Professor John William Draper points to persistent efforts by Western scholars to suppress this history:
"I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the Mohammedans. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever." (REF: Draper, John William. The Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 42.46)
Draper attributes the erasure of Muslim contributions from the Western historical record to religious and racial prejudices. In *The Making of Humanity*, British historian Robert Briffault highlights the deficiencies in the Western historical record, demonstrating that the European Renaissance occurred "under the influence of Arabian and Moorish revival culture," asserting that "Spain, not Italy, was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe." He explains that while Europe wallowed in ignorance and barbarism, Muslim cities were “centres[N1] of civilization and intellectual activity.” He argues: "That a brilliant and energetic civilization full of creative energy should have existed side by side and in constant relation with populations sunk in barbarism, without exercising a profound and vital influence upon their development, would be a manifest anomaly." For Western historians to limit the mention of such influence to “the triumphs of Cross over Crescent” and “the reclamation of Spain from Moorish yoke” does not, in his view, erase the relationship between Islamic culture and Europe, despite “the conspiring of every circumstance to suppress, deform, and obliterate the records of that relation.” (REF: Briffault, Robert. The Making of Mankind, p. 188-190.)
Briffault echoes Draper’s accusation of the scholarly suppression of truth, which was “stubbornly ignored and persistently minimized” even by prominent historians like Gibbon. He not only considers past representations of Islamic culture during the Middle Ages inaccurate but also critiques contemporary depictions. Briffault's discontent with the scholarly injustice toward Islamic culture led him to conclude: "It is highly probable that but for the Arabs modern European civilization would never have arisen at all." (REF: Briffault, Robert. The Making of Mankind, p. 188-190. )
Briffault’s statements reflect a commitment to scholarly truthfulness, an endeavour that almost always requires ethical courage, without which scholarship will eventually lose its credibility as times change. In this context, an old African proverb about history and historians is fitting: "Until the lions have their historian, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter." (REF: Briffault, Robert. The Making of Mankind, p.190)
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T.O. Shanavas is a native of Kerala, but is now based in the USA. He is the author of “Islamic Theory of Evolution The Missing Link Between Darwin and The Origin of Species.” Co-author of the book, And God Said, "Let There Be Evolution!": Reconciling The Book Of Genesis, The Qur'an, And The Theory Of Evolution. Edited by Prof. Charles M. Wynn and Prof. Arthur W. Wiggins.
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-science/darwin-muslim-theory-evolution-history/d/133188
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