An Illusion of Harmony: Science And Religion in Islam (Hardcover)

by Taner Edis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Current discussions in the West on the relation of science and religion focus mainly on science’s uneasy relationship with the traditional Judeo-Christian view of life. But a parallel controversy exists in the Muslim world regarding ways to integrate science with Islam. As physicist Taner Edis shows in this fascinating glimpse into contemporary Muslim culture, a good deal of popular writing in Muslim societies attempts to address such perplexing questions as:

· Is Islam a "scientific religion"?
· Were the discoveries of modern science foreshadowed in the Quran?
· Are intelligent design conjectures more appealing to the Muslim perspective than Darwinian explanations?

Edis examines the range of Muslim thinking about science and Islam, from blatantly pseudoscientific fantasies to comparatively sophisticated efforts to "Islamize science." From the world’s strongest creationist movements to bizarre science-in-the-Quran apologetics, popular Muslim approaches promote a view of natural science as a mere fact-collecting activity that coexists in near-perfect harmony with literal-minded faith. Since Muslims are keenly aware that science and technology have been the keys to Western success, they are eager to harness technology to achieve a Muslim version of modernity. Yet at the same time, they are reluctant to allow science to become independent of religion and are suspicious of Western secularization.

Edis examines all of these conflicting trends, revealing the difficulties facing Muslim societies trying to adapt to the modern technological world. His discussions of both the parallels and the differences between Western and Muslim attempts to harmonize science and religion make for a unique and intriguing contribution to this continuing debate.

About the Author
Taner Edis (Kirksville, MO), born and raised in Turkey, is an associate professor of physics at Truman State University and the author of The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science and Science and Nonbelief, among other publications.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 265 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (February 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591024498
• ISBN-13: 978-1591024491
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #289,904 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A clash of tradition and modernity,

By	Harry Eagar (Maui) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Honest Analysis Of The Relationship of Islam and Science , November 20, 2007

By	F. Ramos "Exhaustive Thinker" (Ontario, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Taner Edis has done the world a huge favor in writing this book. Christianity has been bombarded heavily for 2000 years and its about time Islam was bombarded too. Hopefully Hinduism and Buddhism are next to get bombarded.

This is an honest book that is objective and Taner 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 creation and reactions from Islam to science throughout 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.

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 future Muslims must face in order to maintain their beliefs as rational and objective.

9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book deserves a wide audience, March 18, 2007

By	E. Schechter (West Chester, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.