Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

78 • The Making of Islamic Scienceby his successors. In this chapter we only discuss cosmological origins;the question of biological origins is discussed in Chapter 7.Since in this chapter we only explore the nexus between Islamand science during the eighth to the sixteenth centuries, the thirdset of issues is irrelevant here, for these technologies did not existduring that time. We will, however, discuss these while dealing withthe relationship between Islam and modern science.Storm in a Cup of Tea: Islam Against Science or Islam forScience?As far as science is concerned, Islam is definitely a hurdle in itspropagation; it can be said that there is something inherently wrongwith Islam that does not allow science to flourish. This is why, inspite of the enormous oil wealth available in the Middle East, noMuslim country is producing science today. Historically speaking, itis true that a large part of Greek scientific texts was translated intoArabic and made available to Muslims, but even this did not produceany original science, and certainly not the kind that emerged inEurope at the time of Scientific Revolution. It appears that Greekscience survived in the Islamic civilization not because of Islam,but despite it. Treated as “foreign sciences,” the Greek heritage wasalways looked upon by Muslim religious authorities with suspicionand hostility and as soon as they could, they destroyed it. Al-Ghazali(d. 1111) was the man most responsible for this. Despite this, a fewbrilliant philosopher-scientists and physicians need to be mentioned,for, in spite of vigorous opposition, they left behind a small body ofwork—mainly commentaries on Aristotle’s natural philosophy—thathad a significant impact on Western thought when it was translatedinto Latin. Among these philosopher-scientists, al-Kindi, al-Farabi (d.ca. 950), Ibn Sina, Ibn Bajja (d. 1139), and Ibn Rushd are noteworthy.This is how a very large number of general books on science andreligion, as well as those dealing with the history of science, depictthe eight hundred years of scientific activity in Islamic civilization.Most accounts actually reduce this time period to half its length bya summary death sentence, which turns this tradition to an inertmass some time in the twelfth century. This is the prevalent view of