Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

190 • The Making of Islamic Scienceof the Islam and science discourse in the post–World War II era. Thesheer magnitude of changes to the physical landscape of regions thathad witnessed little change for centuries, the sudden appearance ofroads, railways, airports, telephones, oil refineries, and the Internetin deserts where until recently only camel riders traveled under thevast star-strewn skies could not but influence the way science andtechnology were perceived by men and women living in these lands.The arrival of new tools and techniques in a world unfamiliar withthe scientific principles that gave birth to them is a process that, asWerner Heisenberg (1901–1976) once remarked, has far-reachingconsequences for the culture that imports them—for tools andtechnologies change the way we live, which in turn changes ourrelationship with the tools and science behind them:One has to remember that every tool carries with it the spirit bywhich it has been created…In those parts of the world in whichmodern science has been developed, the primary interest hasbeen directed for a long time toward practical activity, industryand engineering combined with a rational analysis of the outerand inner conditions for such activity. Such people will findit rather easy to cope with the new ideas since they have hadtime for a slow and gradual adjustment to the modern scientificmethods of thinking. In other parts of the world these ideaswould be confronted with the religious and philosophicalfoundations of native culture. (Heisenberg 1958, 28)For the Muslim world, the post-1950 era has been like a rudeawakening from a medieval siesta. It is, however, the sudden usheringinto the twentieth century, filled with violence and traumas ofunimaginable proportions, that has brought the world’s one billionMuslims face to face with challenges the like of which they have neverfaced in their long history. Most of these new challenges are somehowrelated to science and technologies. The penetrating reach of modernscience and technology, their impact on the environment, their abilityto reshape and reconfigure lifestyles, and their control over modesof production—all of these have deeply influenced the Muslim worldduring the last quarter of the twentieth century. For a Western readerthe magnitude of this impact may be hard to understand, but to havean idea of this change we remember that from the environs of their