Taner Edis

AN ILLUSION OF HARMONY

Science and Religion in Islam

Taner Edis is the author of one of the best books about science and religion (The Ghost in the Universe). Unlike some critics of religion, he does not take the position that religion is simply a delusion that is destined to be swept away by scientific enlightened rationalism. On the contrary, he holds that it is scientific thinking, not religion, that is profoundly unnatural for us.

This view informs his treatment of Islam in his new book. He is exceptionally well placed to write about this. He is Turkish but now lives and works in the USA as a physicist, a background that gives him a distinctly unusual, if not unique, insight into the issues that confront Islam in its attitude to science. Although his main focus is naturally on Turkey, the Islamic country he knows best, he has read widely in modern Islamic literature and so provides us with a comprehensive overview of how Muslims have reacted to science.

Historically, Islamic countries were impressed by Western technology and sought to acquire its benefits for themselves. To a considerable extent they succeeded, but they did not adopt the secularising mindset that had led to these advances in the West. They wanted the improvements in living standards that science provides but they rejected the accompanying secularism. Hence pure science, as opposed to applied science, is still at a poor level in Islamic countries.

There are considerable similarities between Muslims and Christians, especially Christians in the USA, in the way they have responded to secularism. Both groups, for instance, reject Darwinism. A point of difference, however, arises from the fact that secularism and science developed within Western culture, so they are not alien to Western Christians. Muslims, in contrast, have an ambivalent attitude to science. They welcome the benefits that technology brings but they generally see the underlying scientific thinking as an unwelcome import, a form of Western imperialism.

One response by Muslims to this has been to claim that modern scientific knowledge is actually prefigured in the Quran. This approach is discussed at length in Edis's second chapter. Comparable attempts to find scientific ideas in sacred texts have been made by adherents of other religions such as Hinduism. As Edis makes clear, however, the enterprise is always highly selective and ultimately trivial; it also has the disadvantage that it accords primacy to science rather than religion.

Scientific naturalism implies that there is nothing "above" or "beyond" the natural world. Such a view is incompatible, not just with Islam, but with almost any serious religious position, so it is hardly surprising that Islamic writers have sought to distance themselves from this way of thinking. Indeed, the view of the universe as designed by God for man is so deeply ingrained in Islam that it is pretty well inconceivable for Muslims to think differently. Here again the parallel with Western Christians is close.

Edis includes a chapter on the human sciences. In the West, postmodernism has led to a questioning of the intellectual basis of science by some sociologists, who suggest that the scientific world view is culture-based and has no better claim to truth than other world views based on different cultures. Not surprisingly, this attitude appeals to many Muslims, who use it to ask why they should not develop their own Islamic sociology.

Paradoxically, the most likely way in which Islamic countries could become more open to science would be via fundamentalism. If the fundamentalists were seen to fail, this might make the case for new ways of thinking seem more persuasive.

In his more personal final chapter, however, Edis expresses some reservations about the desirability of such a change. Although he is himself an Enlightenment rationalist who thinks that attempts to find human meaning in the universe are probably misguided, he recognizes that most people do not think in this way and indeed it may be socially undesirable that they should. Perhaps the partial rejection of science by Islamic countries may in the end prove to be the safer option. (As Dennett has noted, Darwinism is deeply corrosive, a universal solvent.)

Edis is a first-class guide for the Western reader who wants to understand how Muslims are responding to the challenge of secularism. In the process, however, he manages to shed quite a lot of light on Western thinking about these matters as well.

1 May 2007