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An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam

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With one famous exception, Muslims don't live in caves. They like the control, convenience and power that technology gives to otherwise weak humans as well as anybody else does. But they conspicuously do not feel comfortable with the "why" questions that underlie the "how" questions that technology answers. That is, to the extent (small as a proportion of the whole umma) that Muslims turn toward modernity, they turn to engineering, not to research science.

Taner Edis, a physicist educated in the allegedly most secular of Muslim countries, Turkey, asks how this came about and whether there is any chance that science, as westerners understand it, could ever become as much a part of Muslim societies as it has in western countries and, as he notes, a few others, like Japan.

Not to give away the ending, but, no, not likely.

Because Islam is based on a sacred text, and because almost all Muslims remain committed to a fundamentalist conception of the text's inerrancy, Edis must start by asking what, if anything, the Koran says about science. Answer: not much, but because of a predilection for finding all things in the sacred words (Koran and hadith), the scholars spend a lot of energy trying to find it.

After setting the stage, he then asks how leading Muslim thinkers have conceived of science and its relation to the restrictions of the Koran. Of course, at this point, Edis might have stopped. Once restrictions are imposed, science slows down or stops. Though Edis, unlike some other commentators, speaks respectfully about Islam, this requires a certain indifference to the elephant in the room -- Islam has not contributed anything to modern science.

It contributed to medieval science, but that was a different animal. Edis writes, "When European science began to take off, education and intellectual life in Muslim lands was completely dominated by orthodox scholars and sufi saints, neither of whom encouraged attention to knowledge that did not have any explicit religious purpose."

The political collapse of Islam in front of expanding Europe (and even expanding but not very modern Russia) forced a reassessment. Edis traces the different approaches various Muslims have taken in trying to tap the obvious advantages of modern thought without abandoning the social harmony on which Islam prides itself. A number of Islamic schools of thought have thought that it could be done.

Edis, correctly, considers these all to have been failures -- illusions of harmony.

As a result, pseudoscience is rife even among the small, sophisticated segments of Islam. As Edis notes, the same can be said about western society. But crackpottery has a different quality in Islam.

For one thing, it is powerful as it is not in the West. Edis does not bring up the examples of Muslim opposition to eliminating poliomyelitis or guinea worm, but he could have.

Edis, a skilled explainer of ideas that he does not himself accept (for example, in his demolition of the Christian fundamentalist "intelligent design" movement in a book he co-wrote with Matt Young, "Why
Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism") packs a lot into few pages.

He rightly dismisses liberalizing tendencies among Muslims, as far as they might create an opening for a genuine science within Islamic societies. Although Edis does not go into earlier history, Islam has always destroyed its liberalizers. From Almohads to Wahhabis, the puritans have always prevailed politically, if not necessarily in every corner of daily life.

Edis then contemplates the possibility that "fundamentalism could inadvertently create conditions more hospitable for doubt and skeptical inquiry . . . For this to happen, however, fundamentalism must fail."

Edis does not relate this to the Bonifacian solution, but that is what it is: Boniface, the apostle to the Germans, cut down the sacred grove. When the gods failed to retaliate, they lost status. As long as all Muslims are persuaded that god prefers them, there will be no incentive for them to suspect that the future history they believe they have been divinely promised could be illusory. This cancels out whatever tendencies toward accommodationism they may feel.

Edis leaves the question of whether one of the alternatives might work for science open.

As a scientist himself, he would like to see real science become part of Muslim societies. But it is doubtful many Muslims, most of whom cannot even read, put such goals high on their priority lists.

The implications for a rejection of genuine science on Islamic political relations with the rest of the world are obvious, but Edis does not mention them.

"An Illusion of Harmony" is probably as fair and respectful a hearing of the options facing Islamic premodernism as Muslims are ever likely to get.

Taner Edis has done the world a huge favor in writing this book on Islam and Science through time. This kind of relationa is really rare to find due to lack of interest or flat out ignorance on the topics.

This is an honest book that is objective and Taner (of Turkish descent) does not say more than is needed to make his point. Muslims who read this book will of course be disturbed by some facts of historical Islam, but won't come out offended or feel like the author was aiming to ridicule Islam, because he writes in a calm, objective manner. He's after facts not slander.

Islamic creationism and reactions from Islam to science through time are the core focus of the book.

Here is a short synopsis of what is contained within the book:

Discussion of Islam in Turkey
Historical Islamic Views of Science
Different Views of Science from Modern Islam
Scientific Progress and Technological Advances in Muslim Countries
Speed of Technological Progress and Comparison to Western Scientific Progress
Examples of Islamic Creationism and Critiques of Maurice Bucaille, Harun Yahya, and other Islamo-scientific apologetics
Islamic View of History and Social Sciences and their Applications
Islam's Reaction to the West and Modernization (Resistance and Acceptance)
Conservative and Liberal Islamic Views of Science
The Author's Personal View of Science and Belief Systems

This book should be read with Bucaille's Book The Bible, the Qu'ran and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge and other Islam supporting science books like The Quran: Unchallengeable Miracle.

For books on the nature of science please read The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (2nd edition), Theories of Explanation, and The Structure of Scientific Theories. Also check out Taner Edis' Science and Nonbelief where he does a respectful analysis of the relationship of science and theistic religion and the religions of atheism and agnosticism. He is very well balanced here and simply does an honest job. He is not as militant or zealous or "fundamentalist" as other "nonbelivers" are with "believers" in terms of criticism.

Also here is a good book that I think is well balanced and well researched on the historical and complementary relationship between "religion" and "science" : Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction - Islam has one essay while Christianity and Greek Theism has more. It's amazing how the "Conflict Thesis" is the most popular yet the most irrational and hastily generalized. Read on.

This is an awesome contribution to Islamic literature. Anyone interested in Islamic creationism or history should read this book. It helps understand and identify what difficulties or simplicities future Muslims must face in order to maintain their beliefs in light of the modern knowledge of nature.

Islam is, to quote the book, "under reconstruction" as the billion-strong Muslim world, seeking parity with the West, attempts to come to terms with modernity and all that that implies. The author, a Turkish American physicist, is particularly well qualified to comment on this process, and has brought a scholarly approach to bear on an extremely wide range of material, most of it from English language or Turkish language sources. In doing so, he has shown a rare ability to describe in sympathetic terms points of view with which he does not agree, and those who open this book hoping to find yet another anti-Islamic rant will be disappointed. Indeed, the contrasts drawn are not always in the West's favor, especially when we come to compare unbridled individualism with the Islamic concern for community.

Modernity implies technology, and technology depends on science. But science relies on observation, continually modifies and refines its own conclusions, and accepts only natural explanations. This is in direct contrast to the dominant strains of Muslim epistemology, which give pride of place to revelation, especially the final perfect revelation embodied in the Quran, and to faith in an all-powerful God active and manifest in the world. Edis describes a wide range of attempts to resolve this conflict, from the rise (and fall) of Kemalism, to medieval style attempts to subordinate science to theology, to the promotion by those who should know better of the pseudoscience of creationism and Intelligent Design.

The conflict between science and faith is of course not peculiar to the Muslim world, and in his final section the author discusses this conflict in more general terms as he speculates about how it will develop in the future. Here again, his appraisal is much more nuanced than one might have expected from a self-proclaimed Enlightenment rationalist, leaving believers and unbelievers alike with much to reflect on.

This is a rare book, informative and precise, yet perfectly accessible to the non-expert. Anyone who wants to know the nature and history of the Muslim interaction with the modern sciences could not do better.

Taner Edis at no point condemns the Muslim attitude; rather, he understands and explains the effect on science of the traditional religion that permeates the social structure of the Muslim people, determines their view of the world and reality, and forms the basis for a kinship that transcends even national identity. And he explains how it is that religious people, by a socially normal insistence on the perfection of Islam as a religion and a social force, have boxed themselves into a corner in which theoretical science, to the extent that it might contradict religious orthodoxy, cannot be easily tolerated; it is antithetical to an entire way of looking at the world.

The book is fascinating.

There is food for thought and a cautionary tale embedded within this story of Islam and science. It might be wise if our own society gave serious consideration to the consequences for theoretical and innovative scientific research when the results of such research have to be stifled and forced to conform to the dictates of a religious orthodoxy that insists that nothing can be allowed to deviate from its particular beliefs.

An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam by Taner Edis

An Illusion of Harmony by Taner Edis is a well-written even-handed book about the level of harmony that exists between science and religion. The author covers the diverse range of Muslim thinking about science and Islam. It focuses on the overall reluctance of Muslims to allow science into their societies for fear that it may threaten their faith. The book is composed of the following seven chapters: 1. To Seek Knowledge in China, 2. A Usable Past, 3. Finding Science in the Quran, 4. Created Nature, 5. Redeeming the Human Sciences, 6. A Liberal Faith?, 7. Science at Arm's Length.

Positives:
1. Taner Edis is an excellent author who takes a pleasant, respectful tone throughout.
2. The author gives you exactly what you expect from the title of the book.
3. I have limited knowledge about the Muslim faith so I welcomed the knowledge.
4. Interesting facts about the lack of scientific productivity in the Muslim world.
5. Some interesting perceptions are debunked.
6. Interesting history of the "golden age."
7. Fascinating dilemma of science versus religion. There are many examples that apply to the United States as well.
8. Great explanation of the "Science-in-the-Quran" arguments.
9. Interesting history about the aggressive creationism and ID movements.
10. The embrace of "other ways of knowing."

Negatives:
1. Focused too much on the nation of Turkey. I realize that the author has Turkish blood and as with most writers you will tend to write about what you are most comfortable with but I was disappointed with the lack of diverse examples. A few examples such as the Malaysian astronaut but few and far between.
2. Lack of illustrations and charts.
3. Lack of conviction behind some statements. I understand that many of the topics covered in this book are subjective but I felt that the author was too politically correct.
4. Not the most quotable book.

In summary, "An Illusion of Harmony" is an interesting view of the level of conflict between science and religion in Islam. The book stays focused on the topic and concludes with a somewhat surprising conclusion. This book meets the expectations that I had. Though not as rewarding as his "Science and Nonbelief" book, I still feel strongly enough to endorse it if you are interested in this topic.

In America, a large proportion of the population rejects the findings of science whenever those findings conflict with scripture taken literally. The scripture in such cases is usually the Bible, but it is good to be reminded that fundamentalists Christians are not the only ones who can't accept all that science has to offer. With even more fervor, believers in Islam have such a degree of faith that they are able to reject even larger chunks of science. Many American scientists and believers in the scientific way fret that churches who instill doubt about scientific discoveries may undermine young peoples' understanding of the natural world around them, a world that is the target for all scientific explanations. But Islam's difficulty in accommodating science is even more fundamental. In _An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam_ (Prometheus Books), physicist Taner Edis has written an overview that will provide a new way of looking at the classic religion vs. science conflict if you are used to considering only Christianity as representing the religious side.

For Christian fundamentalists, the idea that the Bible could be anything but literally true is unacceptable. This is even more the case, Edis shows, in Islam which is centered on the Quran as the word of God, a divine text whose freedom from error must not be questioned. Of course there is a creationist movement in Islam, often allied with Christian creationists. American creationists, "due to their ever-fruitless but always hopeful expeditions hunting for the remains of Noah's Ark in the mountains of eastern Turkey," have been considered scientific experts by Muslims in the region, experts who could spout an anti-evolution position. The refusal to accept evolution reflects but one part of Islamic rejection of science. Muslims can view scientific thinking as part of the Western or Christian culture, yet another import that corrupts the faith. There is emphasis on applied science in Muslim countries. There are plenty of engineers among Muslims, and especially among their political leaders, and technology is valued. Science is equated with practical technology; astrophysics or evolutionary theory are among the pure sciences that demonstrate at the deepest levels how material causes are sufficient to understand our world, and are thus suspect. There are Muslims who favor liberal views similar to many Christians; if the science conflicts with a passage in the respective holy book, for instance, it is best to take the passage metaphorically. There is a western tradition of doing so going back to Copernicus, and millions of Christians with liberal views, notably even Catholics, have no problem accepting that the Bible is not a text to be used as a science book. Muslim thinkers who advocate such liberal, metaphorical views are subject not only to censorship but to persecution.

Edis has a fine vantage from which to view these issues, and to help explain them. He was born and raised in Turkey, where his introduction to Islamic concepts was within the secular state advocated by Kemal Ataturk. He admits that his personal sympathies are with Enlightenment ideals. He does his physics research in American institutions rather than even in the secular Turkish ones not only because the resources are superior, but because of the better intellectual climate. Muslims who want to do pure scientific research have to go abroad to study, because Muslim culture does not now accept the experimentation and formation of theories which is the way science is done. Edis reflects that it isn't impossible that Islam and science will take their own paths as Christianity and science have done, but he makes clear that such a separation would mean a complete reinterpretation of Muslim thought, a change which is likely no time soon.

The tensions between modern scientific conceptualizations of the world and traditional supernatural accounts have a unique dynamic in Turkey and in other Islamic lands. While they are immersed in a science and technology driven global economy, they have come to recognize its power and importance to their lives. But, they have also come to recognize its implications that erode their traditional ways of thinking about and relating to the world and to other humans.

The literalist rhetorical tradition in relation to the Quran has played a central role in this tension. When it has become obvious that scientific knowledge does not agree with traditional readings of scripture, the response by many Turks has been to turn to pseudoscience to seek affirmation of deeply held beliefs. The strain that this dilemma imposes must be truly painful to many.

On the one hand there is the promise of technological and economic advancement but this carries with it the looming danger of a loss of identity and heritage. On the other hand, by retaining the familiar and trusted ways, there is the danger of falling out of step with the rest of the world.

Taner Edis, a Turkish native who took his undergraduate degree in Istanbul and now teaches physics at Truman State University, offers a unique perspective on this issue having partaken of intellectual life both in the U.S. and Turkey.

Painting a rich and nuanced picture of the cultural state of Islam and its troubled relationship with evidence based epistemology, Edis gives the reader not only a great book on science and Islam, but science and religion in general.

AN ILLUSION OF HARMONY: SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN ISLAM charts a changing relationship between science and religion in the Islamic world, departing from the usual Western Christian connections and focus and thus providing college-level holdings strong in Middle Eastern studies and spirituality with a unique coverage. From discussions of modern scientific routes possibly foreshadowed in the Quran to issues of intelligent design and the Muslim world, chapters consider history, religious developments, and trends which have pitted Western science's progress against Islamic traditions. A fascinating discourse and a top pick for Middle Eastern holdings.

The Clearest disproof'v the absens'v science/scientific discourse in Islam, is the utter lack'v it amungst its early adherents. Which companion'v muhammad exceld in mathematics? which discoverd difrent blood groups?which inventid the bicycl? which discoverd electricity? I can easily point to euclid, proclus, pythagoras - not to mention indian mathematicians centuries befor the qur'an. Did muhammad, who allegedly knows all except five things etc, the 'final prophet' who informs peopl'v actions that bring one closer to paradise, EVER say 'Mathematics, biology, chemistry' r useful so study them. NEVER.

Muslims by n large posit a palpably false cause-effect construct that goes something like this: the early muslims adhered sincerely to the qur'an and sunnah and 'thus' they enjoyd the blessings - the hasanaat'v this world.. they were leaders in science n technology.

This,'v cours, is demonstrably untenabl. early muslims did not. it was only later once there was a mixing of the greek/roman cultures that arab science flourisht between 800ce onwards NOT 610> when it was the 'best generation'.

who then, are the scientists'v islam? abu bakr? Ai'shah? Ja'far al Saadiq? Mu'aawiyah? no, it's Ibn Siinah, Abu bakr al Raazi the scholars'v ma'moon's Hikmah- all cald by the sunnis kaafirs/heretics etc.

the Qur'an contains false, misleading, unscientific knowledge, even its very language is suspect unArabic words, weird grammar etc.

Is Pakistan Japan? Is Syria Japan? Is Saudi Arabia Japan?
Muslim skolars such as abu haniifah, ahmad bin hanbal, or mawdoodi, qutb, kawthari are obscurantist failures steept in the failure'v the quran and sunnah..the pathetic need for the superimposition of science on the quran and sunnah is ampl demunstration'v the its orijinal weaknes. And no muslim can present a new scientific theory going by the qur'an. it's tellingly only in hindsight they say 'see , the amazing qur'an already states that'!



the mor authors like Edis demunstrate this, the mor the muslims will c the qur'an as a knowledge/intelectual cul-de-sac.

"You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth," wrote Einstein to a friend in 1949; "I prefer an attitude of
humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."

Reminiscent of the all-but-humble Islamophobic V.S. Naipaul of "Among the Believers" less the literary craft, associate professor of physics at Truman State University Taner Edis, author of "An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam" is one such crusading professional. With an overreaching title doing its best to enliven a text peppered with self-congratulatory Westernism and cocktail-hour inferiority complex such as "The problem is that Muslims have not be enable to become productive in basic science" (p. 202), Taner's "Illusion", though a miss on relevance, makes for entertaining reading as a Kemalist settling of accounts with Turkish religiosity and "creationism."

This is one of the latest offerings by Prometheus Books, publishers of "God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist" (in their "Popular Science" series) by a Victor J. Stenger, which the same Taner Edis hurrayed with the blurb, "Both casual readers interested in what science has to say about religion, and scholars looking to acquaint themselves with the latest science-based arguments against God will find much in this book worth their attention." What adjudication on earth or in heaven science has over religion is itself a classic fallacy Hamlet dispatched, as did Einstein when he said "My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality."

"My roots are in Turkish secularism," Taner says, "which tried to impose a version of the European Enlightenment on a deeply pious peasant population" (p. 22). In seven chapters of which the irritatingly solipsistic first (p. 14-32) and last (p. 239-251) respectively stand in for a missing introduction and conclusion, Taner's "Illusion" begins with "Seek Knowledge in China," the "coup d'envoi" of his crusade against youthful religious indoctrination. The chapter has a section entitled "Which Islam?" with profundities like "I agree that 'Islam' can be an impossibly broad term, serving as little more than a symbol for all that is good and proper as seen by someone identifying themselves as a Muslim" (p. 27). Such fantastic phrases in a book promoted as "Islamic studies" (!) are primarily a vista into the current standards of American publishing ("God: The Failed Hypothesis" made the 'NY Times' bestseller list). They only accidentally show how proper Westernized Turks make it a point, ridicule be damned, to know less and less about the religion which propelled their forefathers from tribal mishmash to world superpower. Far from bizarre, in the parallel world of the author's "Turkish popular Islam" - read Kemalism - it is politically correct to be able to boast with a straight face that "many Turks enjoy their alcohol" but are "very careful not to eat pork" - and still
seriously claim concern about not "misrepresent[ ing] the current state of Islam" (p. 27).

Chapter 2, "A Usable Past," contains hilariously shallow assessments of the flourishing of science in the golden age: "Muslim rulers supported astronomers in order to obtain the best astrological advice" (p. 44), "medieval medicine did perfect the occasional useful technique" (p. 49). Such ill-tempered, reductive superficialities excuse Taner from having
to reconcile his freely-dispensed awareness that "concepts like God, divine purpose, design, and morality were integral to the whole enterprise of acquiring and interpreting knowledge, whether it was in medicine or astronomy" (p. 47) with the fact that faith never impeded science, on the contrary.

Like a scientistic caricature out of Dickens pontificating about "FACTS, Sir, FACTS is what life's about," Tener cries "myth, myth" every chance he gets - up to four or five times in the space of ten lines (p. 46, 94) just so you won't miss the point. About 10 per cent of his pages bring up "The Enlightenment." All Middle Eastern atheists are fond of
trumpeting their allegiance to "The Enlightenment."

Chapter 3, "Finding Science in the Quran," as misnamed as the book itself, discusses tourism in Turkey, Turkish cafés, Turkish rugs, Turkish TV, Turkish preachers (p. 81-86), proceeding to "the Nur movement" of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (p. 86-93), finally entering the subject 15 pages into the 25-page chapter with a three-page treatment of Maurice Bucaille (p. 95-97) then moving on to discuss Turkish MD vulgarizer Haluk Nurbaki (p. 98-100), finally lapsing into a paced diatribe against the religious abuse of quantum-physics terminology (p.101-111) with references to the book of Job, more Turks including "political scientist" Muhammed Bozdag, whose writings "can be hard to take seriously" (p. 104) and some Americans, but nary a word about the chapter-title.

Taner's real target is not Islam but religion as a whole. In Chapter 4, "Created Nature," he takes potshots at the American "Intelligent Design" movement (p. 118-120), finding it relevant to mention their "ever-fruitless but always hopeful expeditions hunting for the remains of Noah's Ark" and how Protestant creationists envy Harun Yahya's bottomless budget and work in tandem with him and Mustafa Akyol, another self-promoting Turk and outright ally of the American Right (125-133) among other popular writers whose mention, again, hardly makes sense. An intellectual bully, he is careful to visit the bantam weight of his Associate Professorship in physics on easy targets, ignoring the more serious arguments for Intelligent Design forwarded by the likes of Fred Hoyle and his "Superintellect" or Sir John Archibald Wheeler and his anthropic principle.

As the book nears its end it finishes losing touch with its purported subject-matter and actually disproves its own thesis with its best-crafted chapter 5, "Redeeming the Human Sciences," which seems written at a different time and by a different person than the rest.
After briefly engaging Recep Sentürk's 'fiqh' paradigm in classical Islam, Taner, closing the door opened by the Columbia-trained sociologist and Azhari-trained 'faqih', retreats to the safer territory of absolute Westernization:

...Sentürk plausibly argues that the social and intellectual role that sociology plays in modern Western societies was filled by 'fiqh' in classical Islamic civilization. 'Fiqh' nevertheless concentrates heavily on moral and ritual prescriptions and does not really attempt to explain social dynamics.... Any sociology worth the name must have not just some overall framework and some ability to generate raw data about societies, it also must fill in the middle ground of modest explanations of limited social phenomena. And Islamic sociology has no success occupying this middle ground... (p. 179-180)

Taner then launches into an apology for the skewed Western models of the sociology of religion and their tendentious reductionism and Christiano-centrism (180-183), then a critique of Islamic economics (p. 184-188) and historiography (189-194). He praises "the religious change and vigorous experimentation going on among ordinary Muslims" (one
shudders to guess what he means in light of his winebibbing friends), but shows his exasperation with the moralism and traditionalism of Muslim social thought, which he is pleased to blame on "fearful conservatism" and "a failure of imagination" (p. 196).

In chapter 6, "A Liberal Faith?" Taner unveils his program for progress. After rejoicing that "most elite scientists such as the members of the US National Academy of Sciences reject traditional religious beliefs," he declares that "the best way to achieve Muslim harmony with science might be to promote liberal tendencies within Islam" (p. 203). This is the soul of Kemalism as the author himself defines it elsewhere, stemming from the post-Christian Western model of separation of church and state: "Kemalists ultimately wanted Islam to take on a role similar to that of Christianity in modern Europe. They wanted religion to become a matter of private conscience" (p. 67).

Taner's "Illusion" reads like a petulant introduction to a serious, scientific refutation which never materializes (no pun intended) but is not missed. It will find its niche among Islamophobes (even their theists will gloat in the present climate), although rebarbative from the pure viewpoint of science, as it is big on formulas and small on argument. In yet another betrayal of the purpose of academe, the author forsakes the need to appeal to the wretched, under-scienced Muslims, opting instead, like the run of the mill in his genre, to preach to the choir. As a result he indulges in such massive under-representation of scientific Islam as to seem maliciously ignorant of its standing as easily the most science-friendly Abrahamic religion with a more than respectable share, if not the largest proportion of inventors, theorists and scientists in human history.