Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

80 • The Making of Islamic Sciencenonspecialists, who have never touched a real manuscript with theirhands and who have never looked at an Islamic scientific instrumentof surpassing aesthetic quality and dazzling details displaying amastery of complex mathematical theorems. The extent of theentrenchment of this view makes it almost an obligation of anyonewriting a new work on Islam and science to first examine evidencesupporting this view. When one makes that attempt one finds thatall roads lead to Ignaz Goldziher, the godfather of the “Islam versusforeign sciences” doctrine, who first enshrined it in a German papercalled “Stellung der alten islamischen Orthodoxie zu den antikenWissenschaften” (Goldziher 1916). It was translated into English in1981 by Merlin Swartz under an inaccurate title, “The Attitude ofOrthodox Islam Toward the ‘Ancient Sciences’” (Swartz 1981). TheEnglish title is misleading, as Dimitri Gutas has pointed out, because“it omits the word ‘old’ (‘alte’) from the original title, eliminating eventhis minimal differentiation among the various epochs of Islamichistory…omitting the word ‘old’ in the English context makes all‘orthodox Islam’ appear opposed to the study of the ancient sciences”(Gutas 1998, 168).Among the 155 references cited by Goldziher, however, there isnot a single reference to a scientist complaining about the “oppositionof Islamic orthodoxy” to his work a la Galileo. This glaring absenceof internal evidence has never been mentioned by any critique ofGoldziher’s position, although there exist at least four importantcriticisms that have somewhat blunted its influence in recent years(Sabra 1987, Makdisi 1991, Berggren 1996, Gutas 1998).What is fundamentally problematic in Goldziher’s constructionis his conception of “orthodoxy” in Islam, as George Makdisi haspointed out:The use of the term “orthodoxy” implies the possibility ofdistinguishing between what is true and what is false. This termimplies the existence of an absolute norm as well as an authoritywhich has the power to excommunicate those whose doctrinesare found to be false or heretical. Such an authority exists inChristianity, in its councils and synods. It does not exist inIslam. (Makdisi 1981, 251)