Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

Islam and Modern Science: Contemporary Issues • 191holiest place on earth—the Ka‘bah—to the remotest desert in Africa,there is no place where life has not been altered for Muslims becauseof science and technology produced in the West. It is true that all ofhumanity has witnessed a fundamental change in the spectrum oflife, but this change has often produced corresponding adjustments insocieties where modern science and technologies are cultivated. Sucha process has not taken place in societies where modern science andtechnologies are imported. What Heisenberg realized in 1958 was, infact, merely the tip of the iceberg.The phenomenal impact of modern science and technologyon Islamic civilization has also produced a corresponding impacton the Islam and science discourse, resulting in the emergence oftwo different kinds of discourses in the post-1950 era. The first hasproduced new dimensions of that discourse, which first developedin the 1800–1950 era; the second is the appearance of an entirelynew kind of discourse on modern science. Before we begin toexplore these two facets, it is important to note that the temporaldemarcations being used here are not definitive but approximatetime periods that mark the appearance of a significant change inthe discourse. Likewise, it is important to have a general idea of theattempts that have been made to initiate a scientific tradition in theMuslim world, for these developments are related to the new Islamicdiscourse on science that has emerged in the post-1950 era.The liberation movements in the colonized Muslim world werepredominantly nationalistic in nature. Many of the men leading thesemovements had gone to England or France for higher educationand returned home to demand rights and freedoms of the kindthey had observed in Europe. The colonial powers allowed them toemerge as national leaders and in time transferred political powerto them—sometimes reluctantly, sometimes willingly, but in allcases with the satisfaction that nothing could reverse the course theyhad set during their occupation of the Muslim world. The political,educational, economic, and scientific institutions they had establishedwould continue to control new nation states, which were sometimescarved out of geographical areas where no independent state had everexisted in history (especially in the Middle East, where Syria, Iraq,and Jordan had never been completely independent states). The Arab