Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

The Mosque, the Laboratory, and the Market • 83Jemmal-Eddin is an Afghan entirely divorced from the prejudicesof Islam; he belongs to those energetic races of Iran, near India,where the Aryan spirit lives still energetically under the superficiallayer of official Islam.” Renan admits “he may have appeared unjustto the Sheikh” in singling out Islam for his attack: “Christianity inthis respect is not superior to Islam. This is beyond doubt. Galileowas no better treated by Catholicism than Averroes by Islam.” Renanconcludes his rejoinder by stating that al-Afghani had “broughtconsiderable arguments for his fundamental theses: during the firsthalf of its existence Islam did not stop the scientific movement fromexisting in Muslim lands; in the second half, it stifled in its breast thescientific movement, and that to its grief” (Keddie 1972, 197).This is the immediate background to twentieth-century Westernliterature on Islam and science. Renan was pushed out of the picture,but Goldziher still reigned supreme in this discourse, which construesIslam inherently incapable of producing science. The fatal division onwhich Goldziher construed his thesis divides knowledge into ‘sciencesof the ancients’ (meaning all works translated from Greek) and ‘thesciences of the Arabs’ or the ‘new sciences’. By ancient sciences hemeans “the entire range of propaedeutical, physical and metaphysicalsciences of the Greek encyclopedia, as well as the branches ofmathematics, philosophy, natural science, medicine, astronomy,the theory of music and others” (Goldziher 1916, 185), although heacknowledges the extensive interest “that these sciences aroused fromthe second century AH on[ward] in religious circles loyal to Islam(and encouraged also by the Abbasid caliphs).” He states that “strictorthodoxy always looked with some mistrust on those who wouldabandon the science of Shafi and Malik, and elevate the opinion ofEmpedocles to the level of law in Islam” (Goldziher 1916, 185–86).Thus the entire range of Greek, Persian, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic works are pitted against “pure Islamic sciences.” This positionhas been previously examined in detail, and hence a quote here fromthat work will suffice:But when one examines the data used by Goldziher toconstruct his battle lines, one realizes that these battle linesare boundaries drawn on sand with a clear and pre-conceivedpurpose which is none other than a specific interpretation of