Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

76 • The Making of Islamic Sciencetake the necessary precautions to ward off with fortitude thedangers and mishaps that may beset him. (Al-Biruni, tr. 1967,5)A possible rebuttal to this methodology would be the presenceof non-Muslim scientists and scholars within this scientific tradition.It is true that many non-Muslims participated in the making ofthe Islamic scientific tradition, especially in its early phase, but oncloser examination it becomes obvious that the scientific enterprisecultivated in the Islamic civilization cannot be divided into Muslimand non-Muslim categories; it was a tradition that explored the worldof nature from within the overall worldview provided by Islam and, assuch, even non-Muslim scientists and translators who participated inthis enterprise worked within that overall framework. This should notseem odd. After all, the thousands of Muslim scientists now workingin the modern enterprise of science built upon a worldview other thanthat of Islam have not made this enterprise “Islamic.”A final point on methodology pertains to the role of revelationin Islam. The Islamic concept of knowledge is ultimately linked torevelation, which is considered the only absolutely real and true sourceof knowledge. In our context, this is to be understood in the sensethat whatever knowledge one gleans from or of the physical world byone’s external physical senses (touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing,or by scientific instruments that are extensions of these senses), mustbe processed in the light of revealed knowledge. Revealed knowledgeoutlines a certain order of things and their relations. Knowledgederived from senses or their extensions is examined in the light ofthis order. A star or a moon does not exist by itself, or for itself; itexists within a vast universe populated by numerous other thingsand, as such, in addition to its own existence as a thing, it has anexistence in relation to other things. This relational existence providesthe framework in which its own existence is examined. The eveningstar that rises over Samarqand at a certain place and time duringthe summer months has its own existence, but an al-Biruni or anal-Khwarizmi studying its rising and setting by making observationsis using this data for constructing a model of the universe in whichthe evening star is but one entity. This model of the universe has,broadly speaking, an Islamic framework, and the integration of the