Bruno Abd-al-Haqq Guiderdoni gave this lecture on Thursday, 17 April 2008.
Bruno during a lively discussion at Bell Baxter High School (© Fife Herald)
Guests at dinner with Bruno
Biography
Dr Bruno Abd-al-Haqq Guiderdoni is the director of the Observatory of Lyon (France). His main research field is in galaxy formation and evolution. He has published more than 100 papers and has organized several international conferences on these issues.
He is an expert on Islam in France and has published 50 papers on
Islamic theology and mysticism. He was in charge of a weekly French
television program called Knowing Islam from 1993 to 1999 and is now the
director of the Islamic Institute for Advanced Studies.
Islam and Science
Bruno Guiderdoni
Let me start by
uttering the traditional formula “In the Name of God the Compassionate the
All-Merciful”. With this sentence, Muslims begin all the ritual actions of
their lives, as well as the actions of their everyday lives that get the value
of ritual actions. This formula opens every chapter, or sura, of the Holy
Koran, the sacred book of Islam, as a key for the reading of the text, and for
subsequent action inspired from this reading. The whole revelation of the Koran
comes from God the One, through His names of love and mercy.
It sounds quite
simple indeed. Unfortunately, one must admit that what actually happens is far
from these principles. Of course, everybody would agree that there is a gap
between principles and realities, between what religion should be and what the
members of this religion make of it, between the realm of spiritual tenets and
the vicissitudes of history.
But is there a
specific issue with Islam? Many voices are heard that put the Islamic faith on
trial. It is a fact that, in contrast with other cultural zones, the Islamic
world seems to participate very little in the scientific pursuit of today, and
to be struck by recurrent social and political disorders. Several authors have
attributed these two facts to the same cause: the presumed inability of the
Islamic faith to establish a sound relationship with the practice of reason,
and consequently to enforce reasonable behaviours in societies. Islam is blamed
for the following crime: it seemingly includes in its very principles the germs
of its own, violent deviation.
Here comes the
point I would like to address, with your permission, in this lecture, from the
specific viewpoint of a Western Muslim, who happens to be a professional
scientist. Does Islam, because of its very principles, face an insuperable
difficulty with the methods and results of science? Has it a specific problem
with the practice of reason that would entail the impossibility for Muslims to
adopt reasonable behaviours in modern societies? In a single sentence, is it
possible to be a coherent Muslim and to participate constructively in the
endeavours of our common world, and, first of all, in science? I would like to
hereafter argue that, although ignorance, hate and violence unfortunately exist
in the Islamic world, the spiritual tenets and intellectual resources of the
Islamic faith actually prompt Muslims to search for knowledge, love and peace.
My lecture will be
divided into three parts: First I will summarize the basic principles of the
Islamic faith that appear relevant to understanding the nature of knowledge in
the Islamic perspective. Second, I will briefly review a few historical and
contemporary positions about the relation between faith and reason, and between
religion and science. Third, I will try to defend a viewpoint in which faith
although it does not say anything about the specific content of science, offers
a broad metaphysical background that helps me, as a scientist, find purpose and
meaning in its discoveries. Finally, I will conclude by a new examination of
the above-mentioned issue: the organization of societies and the dialogue of
faiths and cultures. It turns out that this metaphysical background also helps
us find purpose and meaning in the diversity of faiths, as well as it gives us
guidelines for a peaceful coexistence in this world.
The principles
of Islamic faith
The presumed
difficulty that Islam faces in its relationship with reason, was recently
summarized, with great talent and large impact, by the famous lecture given by
Pope Benedict XVI in Regensburg, on September the 18th, 2006, in
front of an audience of “representatives of science” — the detail has its
importance for the issue we are addressing here. In an attempt to propose a new
vision to secularized Europe, the Holy Father explained what he considered the
specific feature of Christianity. For him, it is not surprising that modern
science and reasonable behaviours developed in countries where Christianity was
predominant. As a matter of fact, this lecture triggered strong reactions in
the Islamic world because Islam was used as a sort of counter-example, a
religion in which the absence of reason and the presence of violence are
interwoven.
According to the
Pope, “For Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not
bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.” After this
Regensburg lecture, there were exchanges between the Islamic world and the Holy
See, requests for apologies on one side, and statements that the lecture was
misunderstood on the other side. Here, I would like to address the issue raised
by the Holy Father very much where he left it, and to answer positively to the
calls for dialogue that were eventually heard on both sides.
As a matter of
fact, I think the issue stems from the idea we have about God. When the Pope
writes, after many other authors, “for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely
transcendent”, he understands this sentence in the following way: “For Muslims,
God is only transcendent”. Is the God of Islam different from the God of
Christianity? It is not the Muslims’ opinion. For them, Allah, a word that
etymologically means “The God”, is not the name of the Muslims’ God. It is the
Arabic name of the One God, the God of all humanity, worshipped by Jews,
Christians, and Muslims.
For Islam, as much
as for Judaism and Christianity, God is absolutely transcendent and He is
perfectly immanent too. It means that He cannot be known by any of our
categories, and simultaneously, He is close to us, He acts in the world, He
knows and loves us, He lets Him be known and be loved by us. As the Koran says,
“Nothing is similar to Him, and He is the One who perfectly hears and knows.”
God gathers aspects that are contradictory: “He is the First and the Last, the
Apparent and the Hidden.” And “He is closer to us than our jugular vein.” This
coexistence of these two aspects is necessary, in a monotheistic religion, to
prevent our idea about God from becoming an idol. In Islamic terms, one would
say that the tawhid, the statement of the Oneness of God, simultaneously
requires the tanzih, the statement that God is like nothing else, and the
tanshbih, the comparison of names, attributes and actions of God with those of
the world. A God who is only transcendent is an abstract concept, and a God who
is only immanent is nothing else than a form of cosmic energy.
One can readily
understand that the issue of the intelligibility of God’s attributes and
actions, and the extension of the domain where reason can apply to know
religion and to know science, strongly depend on the balance between
transcendence and immanence. It is true that extreme standpoints did exist in
the Islamic thinking, in one direction or another. However, the main stream
defended the simultaneous existence of these two aspects, and the fact that,
immanence is possible because God is so transcendent that His transcendence is
unaffected by His presence in the world, close to us.
God created the
world. This sentence means that the world is not self-sufficient. The world may
not have been there. But it actually is there, and the explanation provided by
religions is that the being of the world is given by another Being, who is not
“a being” like the others, but rather the action of being itself. God also revealed
Himself in the world through specific moments in which infinity gets in contact
with the finite, eternity with the temporal. These moments give birth to new
religions that, in the Islamic perspective, are only new adaptations of the
same universal truth to new peoples (and to the “languages” of these peoples).
And God has a specific contact with each of the human beings, whom he cares
after, and inspires.
Islam is the third
come of the monotheistic religions in the wake of the promise made to Abraham
by God, after Judaism and Christianity. Remember this story of the Book of
Genesis, when Abraham obeys God’s order and leaves his wife Hagar and his son
Ishmael in the desert. For Muslims, the place where Hagar and Ishmael were left
is the valley of Bakka, where a temple that was given by God to Adam after the
Fall from Eden, used to be located before the Deluge. Later, Abraham and
Ishmael rebuilt the temple, a small cubic building covered by a black veil, now
in the great mosque of Makka. This building is empty, and only inhabited by the
sakina, a mysterious and sacred presence of God, which is quite paradoxical,
because God is everywhere, and still he specifically manifests in some places.
Islam brings the
renewal of this Abrahamic faith, through a new revelation, that is, an initial
miracle that founds a new relation of a part of the human kind with God. This
initial miracle is the revelation of a text, the Holy Koran, to a human being,
Prophet Muhammad, who was born in Makka at the end of the 6th
century. The revelation started during the Night of Destiny, and lasted twenty
years till the Prophet’s death in 632. What exactly is this miracle? For
Muslims, the miracle is the fact that not only the meanings of the Holy Koran
come from God, but also the choice of the words, sentences, and chapters, in a
given human language, the Arabic language, in such a way that the divine speech
can be heard, pronounced, and understood by the human. As a faithful messenger,
Muhammad did not add nor cut a single word of the Holy Reading or Proclamation
(the meaning of the word Koran) that subsequently became a Book, and acquired
its final appearance under Uthman’s caliphate (644—656). Of course, the Arabic
language almost breaks down under the weight of the divine speech. There are
subtleties, the use of an uncommon vocabulary, separated letters that may
convey mysterious information. The Arabic words frequently have several
meanings, and the task of the commentators is to highlight the richness of the
teachings that a single verse can bring forth. The Prophet himself mentioned
the multiplicity of the meanings of the Koran by saying that “each verse has an
outer meaning and an inner meaning, a juridical meaning and a place of
ascension”, that is, a direct spiritual influence on the reader. This plurality
of meanings makes the task of the translator quite uneasy, because this
plurality does not transfer directly into other languages, and especially into
European languages. Another fascinating aspect of the Koran is the fact that it
gathers messages about the divine names, attributes and actions, prescriptions
and prohibitions from God, stories of the prophets, descriptions of this lower
world and of the hereafter, ethical advice, and chronicles of the life of the
first Islamic community around the Prophet. But all these chains are more or
less mixed up, or interlaced, in each of the 114 chapters, in such a way that
the internal coherence can be found only after reading and re-reading the text,
which progressively sheds light on itself.
The miracle of the
descent of the Koran reproduces the miracle of creation. God creates things
though His speech, with His order: “Be! (kun)” The creatures receive their
existence from God through this ontological order. God subsequently unveils
hidden knowledge, again though His speech, with another of His orders: “Read!
(iqra’)”, the first word of the Koran given to Prophet Muhammad. This
instruction speaks to the reader, the human being who uses its intelligence to
understand the Holy Text. As a consequence, the Koran is like a second
creation, a book where God shows his signs or verses (âyât), very much as we
contemplate God’s signs (âyât) in the entities and phenomena of the first
creation. God unveiled the Book of Religion (kitâb at-tadwîn) very much as He
created the Book of Existence (kitâb at-takwîn). The issue of the relationship
of faith with science specifically deals with the coherence between the first
and the second book. This topic of the Liber Scripturae and the Liber mundi is
expressed in similar terms in other faiths.
Islam manifests
itself as the renewal of the faith of Abraham, as a new adaptation of the same
universal truth that was given to Adam, first human being, first sinner, first
repentant, first forgiven human, and first prophet. Muhammad comes as the last
prophet, after a long chain that includes many prophets of the Bible, Noah,
Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, David and Solomon, as well as John the
Baptist and Jesus. The Koran also includes stories about other prophets that
are not known by the biblical tradition, and were sent to the Arabs, or maybe
to other peoples in Asia. Hence the fundamental formula of Islam, the so-called
profession of faith, or shahada that is the first of the five pillars of Islam:
“There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God’s messenger”. The message is the
Koran, a message from God that prompts the Muslims to be faithful to their own
spiritual vocation. The second pillar of
Islam is the canonical prayer performed five times a day, at specific moments
linked to cosmic events: before sunrise, after noon, in the middle of the
afternoon, after sunset and when night is dark. The third pillar is alms-giving
on accumulated wealth. The fourth pillar is ritual fasting during the month of
Ramadan (the month during which the first verses of the Koran were revealed),
from the first light of the day to sunset. And finally, the fifth and last
pillar is the pilgrimage to the House of God, the kaaba, and some places around
Makka. These five pillars constitute reference points for the actions of
worship. This is the most important part of the religious law, or sharî’a. The
sharî’a also includes a description of many aspects of the social life. There
are only few Koranic verses that actually deal with social organization, but,
in the time of the first Islamic community, the presence of the Prophet allowed
it to solve all issues. Later, when Islam became the religion of a vast empire,
it became necessary to have a more complete codification of the religious law, and
the so-called classical sharî’a was slowly constituted. Muslims now need to
re-examine this issue in a context that is much more complex, in societies
which are shaped by science and technology, globalization, exchanges of people
and information, and the presence of many minorities. It is a great challenge,
and a strong “effort of interpretation” or ijtihâd, is necessary.
Jews and
Christians were present in Arabia during the time of the Koranic revelation,
and the Koran alludes to the exchanges that they had with Prophet Muhammad. It
turned out that these exchanges had the following outcome: The majority of the
Jews and Christians did not acknowledge Prophet Muhammad, and Islam became a
religion clearly and completely separated from Judaism and Christianity. The
main difference with Judaism is the fact that Islam, like Christianity, is a
religion that is explicitly universal. Its message speaks to all the human
kind, whereas Judaism is linked to a given people. The main difference with
Christianity is the disagreement about the nature of Jesus. Jesus is present in
the Koran as an “Islamic prophet” who came to bring the message on the Oneness
of God. But he is a very unusual Prophet. He was born miraculously from Maria
the Virgin, who herself was protected against any sin. The angel Gabriel
announced Jesus’ birth to Maria. For Muslims, Jesus is the Christ, al-Masîh,
the anointed by the Lord. He spoke out with wisdom just after his birth, and
made miracles with God’s permission. He miraculously escaped from death and he
is still alive, beside God. Muslims say that Jesus is a Spirit of God (Ruh
Allah) and a Word from God (Kalimat Allah), but they do not say that Jesus is
God’s son. If they were to say so, they would be Christians, and Islam would be
only one more Christian church. As a consequence, for Islam, there is no
incarnation, no Trinity, no crucifixion and no redemption (and in any case, no
primeval sin that would make redemption of the human kind necessary). It is
true that Jews differ from Christians also about the figure of Jesus. Apart
from this central figure, the three monotheistic religions have a lot in
common: the One God, the creation of the world, the creation of the human being
“according to God’s image and likeness” (we Muslims say: “according to the form
of the Merciful”), the call for spiritual life, for helping the poor, and the
belief that the human being, despite his sins, can improve and be saved.
Finally, it is fair to say that, even if Jesus currently separates Jews,
Christians and Muslims, he will eventually reunite them, in a horizon that is
at the end of times. Muslims consider that Jesus is “the sign of the ultimate
hour”, and that he will come to gather the believers of all religions. As a
matter of fact, Christians say the same thing about Jesus, and Jews wait for
the Messiah. It is a great mystery that these believers who say things that are
so different about the Messiah will eventually recognize and follow him.
According to the
constant teaching of the Islamic tradition, and because of the specific status
of the Holy Text of Islam as the fundamental axis of revelation, faith is
intimately linked to knowledge. A famous Koranic verse[1]
prescribes: “worship your Lord till certainty”, and many Prophetic sayings
strongly recommend the pursuit of knowledge as a religious duty “incumbent to
all Muslims”. The Prophet himself used to say: “ My Lord, increase my
knowledge”. Of course, this knowledge consists in knowing God through
revelation. But it is clear too that all sorts of knowledge that can be in some
way connected to God, and that help the religious and mundane life of society,
are good and have to be pursued. Clearly, when the Prophet recommended that his
companions search for knowledge as far as China, he did not alluded primarily to
religious knowledge.
Human beings have
a “faculty of knowing” that is described in the Koran according to a three-fold
aspect: “And it is God who brought you forth from your mothers’ wombs, and He
appointed you for hearing, sight, and inner vision”.[2]
Hearing is our faculty of accepting and obeying the textual indication, that is
the Koran and the Prophetic tradition which are the two primary sources of
religious knowledge; sight is our ability to ponder and reflect upon the
phenomena, and is closely related to the rational pursuit of knowledge; and the
inner vision symbolically located in the heart is the possibility of receiving
knowledge directly from God, through spiritual unveiling. As a consequence of
these three facets, the nature of knowledge is also three-fold: It is religious
through the study of the Holy Scriptures and the submission to their
prescriptions and prohibitions, rational through the investigation of the world
and reflection upon it, and mystical through inner enlightenment directly granted
by God to whom ever He wishes among His servants.
Moreover, there is
a well-known story about the independence of natural rules with respect to
religious teaching. Farmers who used to grow date palms asked the Prophet
whether it was necessary to graft these date palms. The Prophet answered “no”,
and they followed his advice. They then complained that the date crops were
very bad. The Prophet answered that he was only a human like them. He said “You
are more knowledgeable than I in the best interests of this world of yours”.
This is a very important story. There is a domain in which religion simply has
nothing to say, a domain that is neutral with respect to the ritual end ethical
teachings of revelation. However, because Islam does not separate the intellectual
aspects of life from ethical concerns, the only knowledge that should be
avoided is useless knowledge, which, in this Islamic prospect, is this type of
knowledge that closes our eyes to the treasures of our own spiritual vocation.
To summarize, the
descent of the Koran, in which God unveils His transcendence and His immanence,
provides the Muslims with a way to celebrate God’s mystery as well as to
approach His intelligibility. This intelligibility requires the use of reason
encapsulated in a broader perspective of knowledge. Through His explanations
and promises, God chooses to be partly bound by the categories of reason, out
of His Mercy and Love for the world. But reason itself is unable to approach
all the Truth, because Truth is not only conceptual. It also involves all the
being. In the Islamic perspective, the “intellect” precisely includes the
practice of reason, and the lucidity to understand where reason ceases to be
efficient in this quest. The question of the exact extension of the domain of
reason has been debated, and I will now try to illustrate the type of debates
that took place in Islamic thinking.
Islamic
perspectives on faith and reason
After the
extension of the Islamic empire, during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, the
Islamic thought met Greek science and philosophy. At that time, it became
necessary to define more accurately the place of rational knowledge in the
religious pursuit, by marking the field that we can validly explore with our
own reason. The great
thinker al-Ghazali (1058—1111), known in the West as Algazel, examined the
relation between science and philosophy on the one hand, religion on the other.
As all his predecessors, he had the strong belief that there is only one truth,
and that well-guided reason cannot be in contradiction with textual indications
given by the Koran and Prophetic tradition. In his intellectual and spiritual
autobiography “The Deliverer from Error” (al-Munqidh min al-dalâl), he
enumerated the list of sciences practiced by Islamic philosophers
(al-falâsafah) in the wake of Plato's and Aristotle's works. Among these
sciences, “arithmetic, geometry and astronomy have no relationship whatsoever,
positive or negative, with religious matters. They rather deal with issues
submitted to proof, which cannot be refuted once they are known and
understood.” However, al-Ghazali writes, there is a “double risk” in their
practice. On the one hand, because these scientists are too proud with
themselves, they often adventure beyond the field where reason can validly
apply, and they make metaphysical or theological statements about God and
religious issues that happen to contradict textual indications. On the other
hand, the common believers, after seeing the excesses of these scientists, are
led to reject all sciences indiscriminately. Al-Ghazali condemned “those who
believe they defend Islam by rejecting the philosophical sciences”, and
“actually cause much damage to it.” Now, providing there is only one Truth, how
to deal with possible contradictions between science and Koranic verses? The
situation is clear: Wherever science apparently contradicts textual
indications, it is the fault of the scientists who surely have made errors in
their scientific works, as far as they have been led to conclusions which are
at odd with revealed truth. In his book “The Incoherence of the Philosophers”
(Tahâfut al-falâsafah), al-Ghazali attempted to revisit the proofs given by
philosophers, and to demonstrate logically and scientifically where their
errors come from.
In his book “The Decisive Treatise which establishes the Connection
between Religion and Wisdom” (Kitâb fasli-l-maqâl wa taqrîr ma
bayna-sh-sharî’ah wa-l-hikmah mina-l-ittisâl), Ibn Rushd (1026--1098), known in
the West as Averroes, examines again the issue addressed by al-Ghazali. Ibn
Rushd was a judge (qâdî) and his text is indeed a juridical pronouncement
(fatwa) to establish “whether the study of Philosophy and Logic is allowed by
the revealed Law, or condemned by it, or prescribed, either as recommended or as
mandatory.” Ibn Rushd quoted some of the many Koranic verses that prompt the
reader to ponder upon Creation: “Will they not ponder upon the kingdom of the
heavens and the earth, and all that God created?” As the enforcement of the
revealed Law requires the use of the juridical syllogism (qiyâs shar’î ) in
Islamic jurisprudence, knowing Creation and meditating upon it require the use
of the rational syllogism (qiyâs ‘aqlî ), that is, the philosophers’ works.
Now, Ibn Rushd wrote, “since this revelation [i.e. the Koran] is true and
prompts to practicing rational examination (nazhar) which leads to the
knowledge of truth, we Muslims know with certainty that rational examination
will never contradict the teachings of the revealed text: because truth cannot
contradict truth, but agrees with it and supports it.” As a consequence, Ibn
Rushd explains that wherever the results of rational examination contradict the
textual indications, this contradiction is only apparent and the text has to be
submitted to allegorical interpretation (ta’wîl).
The Islamic world met modern science during the 19th century,
as a double challenge, a material one and an intellectual one. The defense of
the Ottoman empire in front of the military invasion brought by Western
countries, and the success of colonization, have made the acquisition of
Western technology necessary, and also of Western science which is the
foundation of the latter. The West appears as the model of progress that has to
be reached, or at least followed, by a constant effort of training engineers
and technicians, and by transferring the technology that is required to develop
third-world countries. But the encounter between Islam and modern science also
gave birth to a reflection, and even a controversy, the nature of which is
philosophical and doctrinal.
To cut a long story short, the Islamic world now has a great interest
for science, but a lot of disagreement about what science is, or has to be, to
be fully incorporated in Islamic societies by being made “Islamic”. For the
modernist stream, “Islamic science” is only universal science practiced by
scientists who happen to be Muslims. For the reconstruction stream, “Islamic
science” has to be “rebuilt” from Islamic principles, in the prospect of the
needs of Islamic societies. For the traditional stream, “Islamic science” is
the ancient, symbolic science that has to be recovered, in a prospect that is
more respectful of nature and of the spiritual pursuit of the scientists. The
various streams of the contemporary Islamic thought show an intense activity on
the relationship between science and religion. All of them have to identify
pitfalls on their path. The main issue is that they are conceptions that are
elaborated a priori, as mental representations of the activity of Muslim
scientists, and may have little to do with the actual practice in laboratories.
If I were to comment on these streams, I would say that each of them seizes,
and emphasizes, a part of the situation. Yes, it is true that science, in its
methods and philosophy, is largely universal, and the common property of the
human kind. Yes, it is true that science cannot be decoupled from the society
in which it develops, and that the way it is organized, the topics that are
highlighted, the ethic that is practiced, are influenced by the worldview of
the scientists. Yes, it is true that, even if science describes the material
cosmos, the issue of meaning and purpose, and the inclusion of the scientific
pursuit in a broader quest for knowledge, have to be considered by scientists
who are believers.
As a matter of fact, most of the debates between science and religion in
the Islamic perspective simply forget a fundamental starting point, that is,
the nature of the knowledge brought forth by the Koranic revelation. As it is explained already in the first
verses that descended on Prophet Muhammad during the Night of Destiny, God
speaks to the human to teach it what it does not know: “Read in the name of
your Lord who created. He created the human from a clot of blood. Read, and
your Lord is the most Bountiful, who taught the use of the pen, and taught the
human that which he knew not.” The teachings of the Koran primarily consist in highlighting the
spiritual vocation of the human being, the purpose of creation, and the mysteries
of the hereafter. They speak mostly of what to do to act righteously, and to
hope to be saved. These teachings are proposed under the veils of myths and
symbols. Here, we must give these words a strong meaning. Myths and symbols in
holy texts are not simple allegories. The language of the muthos conveys
meanings that cannot be expressed otherwise, that is, in the language of the
logos, the language of articulated and clear demonstration. Myths, and symbols
are just like fingers that point to realities that would be otherwise beyond
our attention. They just call for the meaning they allude to, to knowledge that
is obtained by an intuition in relationship and resonance with the
contemplation of the symbols. In some sense, all ritual actions are like “symbols”
that bring spiritual influence. With this view, it is possible to avoid a
literalistic reading of the text, and to focus on spiritual realities. The
verses on heavens do not speak of astronomy, but of the upper levels of being
inhabited by intellectual realities, as much as the chronicles on the wars and
struggles that the first Muslims had with the pagans do not speak of general
rules for the relation of Muslims with non-Muslims, but of the symbols of the
“greatest effort”, which is the struggle against our own passions that darken
our souls.
Faith as a matrix for purpose
Let me now propose a view on how the articulation between modern science
and religion can be addressed in the Islamic tradition. I would like to suggest
that the theological and metaphysical corpus of the Islamic thought is rich
enough to help the Muslim scientist find a meaning in the world as it is
described by the current scientific inquiry. Of course, I am not going to
propose a new form of parallelism. I will rather speak in terms of convergence.
Reality uncovered by modern science can fit in a broader metaphysical stage. I
will only give four examples on how this convergence can take place.
(1) The intelligibility of the world
The fundamental mystery that subtends physics and cosmology is the fact
that the world is intelligible. For the Islamic tradition, this intelligibility
is part of the divine plans for the world, since God, who knows everything,
created both the world and the human from His Intelligence. Then He put intelligence
in the human. By looking at the cosmos, our intelligence constantly meets His
Intelligence. The fact that God is One, guarantees the unity of the human and
the cosmos, and the adequacy of our intelligence to understanding at least part
of the world.
The Koran mentions the regularities that are present in the world: “you
will find no change in God's custom”. Therefore “there is no change in God's
creation.” Clearly this does not mean that Creation is immutable, since in many
verses the Koran emphasizes the changes we see in the sky and on earth. These
verses mean that there is “stability” in Creation reflecting God's
immutability. Moreover, these regularities that are a consequence of God's Will
can be qualified as “mathematical regularities”. Several verses draw the
reader's attention to the numerical order that is present in the cosmos: “The
Sun and the Moon [are ordered] according to an exact computation (husbân).”
(2) God’s action in creation
How does God act in His Creation? According to the mainstream Islamic
theology, God does not act by fixing the laws of physics and the initial
conditions and letting the world evolve mechanistically. As a matter of fact,
the “secondary causes” simply vanish, because God, as the “primary Cause”, does
not cease to create the world again and again. “Each day some task engages
Him.” In this continuous renewal of creation (tajdîd al-khalq), the atoms and
their accidents are created anew at each time.
This is the reason why “the accident does not remain for two moments.”
The regularities that are observed in the world are not due to causal
connection, but to a constant conjunction between the phenomena, which is a
habit or custom established by God's Will.
The examination of causality by the Islamic tradition emphasizes the
metaphysical mystery of the continuous validity of the laws. “All that dwells
upon the earth is evanescent”, and should fall back into nothingness. But the (relative) permanence of cosmic
phenomena is rooted in God's (absolute) immutability (samadiyyah). This is the
reason why “you will not see a flaw in the Merciful's creation. Turn up your
eyes: can you detect a single fissure?”
In any case, the metaphysical criticism of causality by Islam did not
hamper the development of the Islamic science at the same epoch. On the
contrary, the criticism of the Aristotelian conception of the causes as mere
conditions for effects to occur necessarily and immediately opened the way to a
deeper examination of the world to determine what the “habit” or “custom” proposed
by God actually was. Deductive thinking that goes from causes to effects cannot
be used a priori in the realm of nature. One has to observe what is actually
happening. The development of science in Islam during the great classical
period was closely linked to the will to look at phenomena.
(3) God praises and loves diversity
One fundamental element of the Islamic doctrine is the fact the God
praises and loves diversity: “Among his signs: the diversity of your languages
and of your colors.” As a matter of fact, God never ceases to create, because
of His love, or rahma, a word that etymologically alludes to the maternal womb.
The mother’s love for her children is the best symbol of this divine love on
earth, according to a Prophetic teaching which says that God created one
hundred parts of this rahma, and He kept ninety-nine parts of it with Him,
while letting one part descend on earth. It is with this part on earth that all
mothers care after their children. This divine love reaches the diversity of creatures,
physical phenomena, plants and animals, as well as the human diversity of
ethnical types, languages and cultures, and extends to the diversity of
religions, according to this well-known verse: “And if God had wanted, He could
surely have made you all one single community. But He willed otherwise in order
to test you by means of what He has given to you. Vie, then, with one another
in doing good works. Unto God you all must return; and then He will make you
truly understand all that on which you are differing.”
A Muslim scientist can easily appreciate this love of diversity in the
meditation on the results of modern science. Thanks to the technical means of
exploration, modern cosmology has discovered a spectacular view of the universe
of galaxies, one hundred billions galaxies in the observable universe. Each
galaxy consists in typically one to one thousand billion stars. And it is very
likely that each of these stars is surrounded by several planets, which
themselves may have satellites. This makes an incredible number of planets, to
which one must connect the fact that differential evolution gives each planet a
specific identity that does not resemble to the others. Of course, we do not
know how much of these planets actually harbor life forms, but astrophysicists
cannot contemplate these large numbers without thinking that life probably
exists elsewhere is the universe. Only on earth, there are millions of living
species. Can one imagine what the observable universe is? And the patch of the
universe where it is expected that the laws of physics (and galaxies, stars and
planets) are similar to the ones we know, is probably much larger than the
observable universe, by a factor of many billions. And this patch of the
universe may be encapsulated in an infinite multiverse in which the laws of
physics and the properties of the outcomes greatly vary from patch to patch.
What is the meaning of that all? A believer can read the creativity and love of
God in this landscape. Love is the explanation of creation, according to the
tradition where God says, “I was a hidden treasure. I loved to be known, so I
created the creatures to be known by them.”
(4) Science cannot be separated from ethic
According to the Islamic doctrine, the human being is created from clay and
from God’s spirit, to become “God’s vice-regent of earth”. The human being is
the only creature that is able to know God through all His names and
attributes, and it is put on earth as a garden-keeper in the garden. Our
relationship with other living creatures on earth is not that from the upper to
the lower level, with the concomitant possibility to exploit all “inferior”
beings”, but that from the central to the peripheral. The “central” position of
the garden-keeper on earth is the position of the watchman who equally cares
after all the inhabitants of the garden. This implies a sense of accountability
for all creation, and should lead to humility, not to arrogance. As a
consequence, we can eat the fruits of the garden, but we have no right to uproot
the trees, which do not belong to us. The power that science has given to us
must be accompanied by a greater sense of the ethic that is necessary to use
this power with discrimination and intelligence. To say the things in a few
words, we must not do all what we can do, very much as Adam was not allowed to
touch one specific tree in the garden. This prohibition makes us free, because
freedom requires the possibility of a choice. This symbol of the garden keeper
in the garden has a strong echo today, with the current debates on how to deal
with global warming, the share of natural resources in a sustainable way, or
the preservation of biodiversity.
Unity and diversity: a key for the century to
come
The Islamic tradition has a considerable spiritual and intellectual
legacy that should make it contribute to the building of the 21st century. We
do hope that the human kind will find a paradigm for its diversity within a
strong sense of its unity. Unfortunately, there are also forces of darkness and
ignorance that operate in our world. Instead of diversity, we see
fragmentation. Instead of unity, we see uniformity. The believers have their
share of responsibility in this tragedy, because they do not promote a genuine
sense of the religious truth.
What has the debate between science and religion to do with that? I
think that the idea that God wrote two books, the Book of Creation and the Book
of Scriptures, with the certainty that these books are in fundamental agreement
in spite of apparent discrepancies, can prepare us to the idea that God has
written, or revealed “many Books of Scriptures”, that are also in fundamental
agreement in spite of apparent discrepancies. As far as the solution of these
discrepancies is concerned, we must leave with some tension, while praising the
Lord for the marvelous diversity He created and revealed.
In conclusion, let me address this issue of ultimate
truth, and tell you a brief and profound story that illustrates the mystery of
the human condition. We have to go back to the past, and look again at Ibn
Rushd. Around 1180, Ibn Rushd was informed that a young man, called Muhyî-d-dîn
Ibn ‘Arabî, aged about 15, was granted spiritual openings during his retreats.
Ibn Rush, who was the greater philosopher of his time, invited this youngster
to meet with him. Later, Ibn ‘Arabi, who then was considered the Greater Master
of Islamic mysticism, wrote about the story of the meeting in the introduction
of his major book, The Meccan Openings, a 4000-page treatise that unveils the
content of his spiritual intuitions. I just let Ibn ‘Arabi speak. “When I
entered in upon [Ibn Rushd], he stood up out of love and respect. He embraced
me and said, “Yes”. I said, “Yes.” His joy increased because I had understood
him. Then I realized why he had rejoiced at that, so I said, “No.” His joy
disappeared and his color changed, and he doubted what he possessed in
himself.” Then Ibn Arabi gives us the key of these strange exchanges, in which
answers come before questions. Ibn Rushd addresses the central topic of our
lecture of this evening: “How did you find the situation in unveiling and
divine effusion? Is it what rational consideration gives to us?” Ibn ‘Arabi
replied, “Yes no. Between the yes and the no spirits fly from their matter and
heads from their bodies.” Ibn ‘Arabi reports Ibn Rushd’s reaction to these
words: “His color turned pale and he began to tremble. He sat reciting, ‘There
is no power and no strength but in God, since he has understood my allusion.”
As a matter of fact, Ibn ‘Arabi alluded to eschatology,
by recalling that even if reason can go very far to capture reality, no one has
been intimately changed by scientific knowledge. Knowing Gödel’s theorem,
quantum physics of the Standard Hot Big Bang Model changes our worldview, and
maybe the way our minds work, but it does not change our hearts. Of course,
these discoveries are fundamental milestones in intellectual history. They can
produce strong feelings in those who dedicate their lives to such studies. But
revelation speaks of another degree, or intensity, of Truth that changes our
very being, and prepares it for the mystery of the afterlife. The teaching of
religions is that we shall have to leave this world and enter another level of
being to pursue our quest for knowledge in a broader locus more fitted to
contemplating God than our narrow, physical world. Our reason fails to conceive
how it is possible. It is a matter of faith in the promises of our Holy
Scriptures. At that time, it is better to stop speaking, because, as the poet
and mystic Jalal-ad-Din Rumi used to say, “the pen, when it reaches this point,
just breaks.”
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