Hi guys 
I was just wondering about what you guys think about the connection that Islam has with science. For those of you who are not familiar with this connection, these websites have some good stuff…
Why don’t you tell us what you think?
Modern Islam or the Islam of 1000 years ago?
I guess it also depends on the country someone is born into, even if a Muslim wants to be a scientist one born in France will have more opportunities than one born in Libya. The illiteracy rates are higher in Muslim countries too. You have to consider that Islamic countries are generally more poor and more oppressive than non islamic countries, so even if the muslims want to study science, the opportunities may not be there in a country with higher illiteracy rates, more poverty and more oppression.
Centuries ago, Islam was dominated by settled, advanced societies who enjoyed the legacies of literature from the ancient world. This began to change a bit before the Crusades, when thuggish barbarians began conquering the Islamic states. It was considerably more complex than that, but in essence that caused most of the Christian-Muslim battle which continues to this day, and in some respects provided the model for Wahhabism.
I’ve come across this one before; peddling (among other things) the same kind of intellectually-bankrupt creationist nonsense as its Christian equivalents (such as ICR and AiG).
…for example:
As those sites point out, there were masny islamic scientists who both retained copies of older works (asnd preserved them, in many cases) and who contributed their own observations.
Two that continue to amaze e are al Farisi and al Shirazi, Persian physicists who performed experiments on the rainbow in the fourteenth century (their names are multiple-barreled monsters that take up an entire line each. These are the shortened versions) Using spherical glass flasks filled with water in a darkened room, they were able to produce rainbows and demonstrate how they were formed, and they made the first observation of the tertiary rainbow, which is virtually impossible to see in nature. Twenty years later a French/German monk named Theodoric of Freibourg (also called Dietrich) duplicated this work. It’s never been clear if he knew of al Shirazi and al Faris’s work, or if he came by it independently (He certainly doesn’t mention anything. And he lived thousands of miles away, and worked two decades later in time.). Theodoric’s manuscript has come down to us, and his drawings show the correct origins for primary and secondary rainbowsw and for prismatic separation of colors. What’s amazing is that, after the deaths of these three, it’s as if they never existed. Subsequent explainers of the rainbow are ignorant of these works, and it wasn’t until Kepler’s work inspuired Descartes and Newton that a real explanation of the rainbow developed.
The Qu’ran hasnt changed since it has been revealed. We know this because of preserved copies of qu’ran are exactly identical to those of today, and also, the strict ruling of publishing qu’ran. 10,000 people during prophet muhammads (saw) time knew the qu’ran off by heart, and still today, hundreds of thousands of people know it off by heart.
He wasn’t asking about the Quran, he was talking about Islamic society and practice.
I’d never seen an Islamic Creationist site before, but it’s good to know that other religions are making their own contribution to ignorance in that field.
So the Koran hasn’t changed. So people have memorized it. Remember, non-English-speaking bands who sing in English learn the lyrics phoenetically and, while they know what the words MEAN, they still aren’t “literate” in that regard.
What do your contentions have to do with science? What changes forced the change in perception of the Islamic world from one of learned enlightenment to the present (perhaps overblown) image of fundamentalism and intellectual suffocation?
I am interested in the modern advances made by scientists in the Islamic nations as a sociological phenomenon. Do they work with the sanction of thier governments? Is there opportunity for people of a scientific bent? Do school systems identify and nurture these talents?
If you are a budding scientist, what can you expect in pursuit of your career?
Based on the link called out by Mangetout, it is interesting but disheartening — though not surprising — to note that despite its many flavors, bullshit is still bullshit.
OK. I think I know where this is coming from (and I sadly suspect I know where it’s going).
There is a particular set of Muslim apologists who have chosn to believe that a lot of science has been “pre-revealed” in the Qur’an and the modern science is simply “catching up” to those revelations (even though the scientific aspect of those revelations were never understood prior to science “catching up”).
If you look at Jamal’s first link and click on The Quran on Human Embryonic Development:, you will find a passage in the Qur’an explicated as though it was predicting/describing the discovery of human embryonic development. I’m afraid that I find the arguments unpersuasive, not unlike claims that the Greeks “knew” about atomic structure because Leukippos and Demokritos had speculated about all matter being made up of tiny indivisible particles or claims that Genesis 1 foreshadowed the Theory of Evolution by noting that certain types of life were created on different days (implying that the Bible knew that different life forms arose separately, even though the biblical order is incorrect).
And just as I tell Christians that they should use their holy book to discover the will and nature of God without trying to recast it with ad hoc misinterpretations of scientific discoveries, so I would tell Muslims that they should look to the description of God in the Qur’an without trying to impose extraneous meanings on its verses that were never intended by its author.
In any case, the quran has changed. The oldest quran in the world was found in the Great Mosque in Yemen in 1972 and it contains differences to the current quran. It hasn’t been studied properly yet (with proper western academic levels of scrutiny) so we can’t say for sure just how many differences there are or how important they are. A couple of western scholars have had a look at it though and they reported that at least two of the differences are so important that they change the whole meaning of the suras.
Then there are a number of hadiths which suggest that there were once other verses which got lost or forgotten and left out of the final version. In one hadith, Ayesha (Mohammed’s wife) claimed that one verse was left under their bed and got eaten by a small animal. Here’s one page that lists a lot of the hadiths which suggest that things are missing from the quran. (It looks like a christian page so I can’t vouch for its impartiality but presumably the hadiths it lists are correct).
Let us not forget the Sunni caliph Uthman ibn Affan.
According to traditional sources, Zaid ibn Thabit, under orders of the Sunni Caliph Abu Bakr, collected the Qur’an, creating the first supposedly authentic recension. This copy was kept by Hafsah bint Umar ibn Khattab (Umar ibn Khattab was the Sunni caliph after Abu Bakr). During Sunni caliph Uthman ibjn Affan’s reign, there were many disputes regarding the text. He ordered an official text to be compiled. (Whether Uthman had his own version compiled or used Zaid’s version, experts do not agree: tradition, however, asserts that under orders of Uthman the version with Hafsah was copied.) The official text was distributed throughout the Islamic realm with other copies being destroyed. Some qurraa’ (a qaari is one who recites, the plural of qaari is qurra’) were even executed for their refusal to accept the Uthmani version. The traditional version is from this webpage.
Wikipedia also states:
Therefore, the claim that the Qur’an has never been changed is an incorrect pious myth, and one which traditional sources discounts. If copies of the Qur’an never changed, then why would have Uthman needed to establish an official version?
Islam is not any more or less compatible with science compared to other religions. Muslims hold many theories that go against what science has demonstrated to exist (creationism is one such theory, rejection of evolution is another). There are a number of factual errors in the Qur’an (such as saying Christians and Jews worship their clergy). Like all religious texts, the Qur’an falls apart when put under the searing scrutiny of critical reading.
WRS