Differences Between

Islam and Christianity

Until the 15th century, science had flourished in the Muslim world, with important centres of research in Spain and other Muslim countries. There had been no clash between religion and science while science was based in Muslim countries, because there is no clash between a true religion and true knowledge. The God who has revealed His religion in the scriptures has also created the universe which science explores. How, then, can revelation and knowledge (science) come into clash with one another?

But when the work of scientific research shifted from Muslim Spain to Italy, France and Britain, a third party soon came in the way of scientific activity. This third, hitherto disinterested party was the Christian Church. When Christianity was disseminated from Syria and Palestine into Europe, it came into contact with Greek thought. Instead of resisting it, the Church moulded its whole theology according to Platonic logic. Eventually, after a few hundred years, the Christians came to revere Greek philosophy as sacred. Later, when scientific research exposed Greek thought as baseless conjecture, the Church felt that if science were to become popular, the whole foundation of Christian belief would become suspect. Instead of admitting its own mistakes, it determined to suppress science by force. At this time the Church was a mighty power in European affairs and it perpetrated dreadful oppression and tyranny in its attempt to eradicate science. But without success.

The fact that Christianity and Science clashed, whereas Islam and Science did not, is explainable in terms of the difference between the two religions.

Here is an example that illustrates the difference between Islam and Christianity in this matter. The ancient Greeks had two theories concerning the revolution of the sun and earth. One was the theory of Aristotle, (384-322 B.C.) according to which the earth was stationary and the sun revolved around it. The other was theory of Aristarchus, (2nd century B.C.) according to which the earth revolved around the sun.

The theory of Aristotle became very popular with the Christians. According to his geocentric theory, the earth was of prime importance, and it seemed more appropriate to the Christians, who believed in the divinity of Christ, that the centre of the solar system should be the planet where the Lord Jesus was born. At the time when Copernicus (1473-1543) put forward his heliocentric theory, churchmen reigned supreme in Europe. To preserve their belief, they suppressed Copernicus’s views. The portrayal of the place of the Lord Jesus’s birth as a mere satellite was a crime, which Christianity could never tolerate.

It was Christianity in its corrupt form, which was an impediment to scientific progress, not divine religion in its pure sense. The Muslims, not having deified their Prophet as the Christians had done, had no scruples about accepting the very reasonable theory that the sun was the centre of our solar system. The question of rejecting it on the basis of religion did not arise. In this connection Professor Burns, in his book entitled Western Civilization, writes: “In no subject were the Sarracens further advanced than in Science. In fact, their achievements in this field were the best the world had seen since the end of the Hellenistic civilization. The Sarracens were brilliant astronomers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists and physicians… Despite their reverence for Aristotle, they did not hesitate to criticize his notion of a universe of concentric spheres, with the world at the centre, and they admitted the possibility that the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun.”