Islam’s Role in Bringing About the Modern Civilization
The present-day civilization is a direct outcome of tapping into these secrets of nature.
I had been reflecting on Dr Abdus Salam’s experience and was reminded of an extract from a recent encyclopedia published by the Oxford University. This scholarly compilation acknowledges that there had been a transfer of knowledge from the East to the West for several centuries during the medieval ages, with Muslim regions of Spain, Sicily and Baghdad being the principal sources of this transmission.
The Orientalist who commented on Muslims’ contribution to the world incorporated the whole of history in his remarks. However, it would have been more appropriate to state that in the present age Muslims have no share in research and development taking place around the world. But so far as Muslims of the medieval times are concerned, their investigations into a variety of disciplines led to considerable advancements in human knowledge which provided an impetus to the scientific revolution of the modern age.
I have written in detail on this subject in my book Islam: Creator of the Modern Age. One of the points discussed in the book pertains to the discovery of the laws governing nature which enabled human beings to develop science and technology that form the basis of modern civilization. These laws have existed throughout the universe since time immemorial, yet it took humans centuries to discover them. Given the possibilities of nature, why did so many thousands of years have to elapse? The answer to this historical question is that it was the advent of Islam that opened the doors of research and investigation into nature. The present-day civilization is a direct outcome of tapping into these secrets of nature.
Before Islam, certain erroneous notions were associated with religion. One among them was the inclusion of religion in every area of knowledge. A consequence of this tendency was that if any novel discovery in a discipline appeared to clash with religious beliefs, it was immediately trampled upon. Freedom of expression and independent reasoning were severely curtailed. This is why, although several individuals in the past made significant discoveries through study and observation, their insights could not gain much momentum. They were obliterated when they came to the knowledge of the orthodoxy. Islam was the first to detach religion from science. This made possible free and independent enquiries into different branches of knowledge, which led to progress on many fronts.
In the period prior to Islam, polytheism held sway. This was a creed which looked upon things and creatures as deities and encouraged their worship. In ancient times polytheism dominated the entire world. Humans considered the moon a deity, just as they held all kinds of other inanimate objects to be gods. The moon, with its brilliant silvery light, inspired people to bow before it rather than step foot on it. When the moon was accorded the status of divinity, the very thought of conquering it was sacrilegious.
In the seventh century Islam presented the idea of monotheism, which soon became the dominant creed of the times. In the monotheistic belief, the Creator is divine while the everything else, including nature and the universe, is part of His creation. The view of the sanctity of all of nature’s phenomena had made studies in natural sciences forbidden territory. It was the revolution of monotheism, which opened the doors of research and exploration by displacing nature from its sacred pedestal. Thus began a new era of freedom to investigate nature. The slow, thousand-year process of maturation finally culminated (towards the end at an ever-accelerating pace) in modern science and technology. Modern science is wholly the gift of the Islamic revolution – directly in its initial stages, and indirectly in its later stages.
This truth has been generally acknowledged in one way or another. A number of books which have come out in modern times, with titles like The Scientific Achievement of the Arabs, or The Muslim Contribution to Civilization, testify to its general acceptance. Scholars are in agreement that modern industrial progress owes its existence to Arabo-Muslim influences. A. Humboldt writes: “It is the Arabs who should be regarded as the real founders of physics.” Philip K. Hitti writes in his book, History of the Arabs: “No people in the Middle Ages contributed to human progress so much as did the Arabians and the Arabic-speaking peoples.”
Historians have generally accepted that it was the science, which reached Europe through the Arabs (who were, of course, Muslims), which finally brought about the Renaissance. Hitti writes that Arabic translations of books available in different languages, as well as original works prepared by the Arabs in Arabic after the establishment of Bait al-Hikmah in Baghdad in 832, were translated into Latin, and this stream was “re-diverted into Europe by the Arabs in Spain and Sicily whence it helped create the Renaissance of Europe.”
In the present age, the lamentable condition of Muslims is attributable to their misguided leadership. However, by the will of God, this situation will certainly change for the better in the future.
