The Qur'an and the Secular Mind; A Philosophy of Islam (2008) - Shabbir Akhtar

38 Quranic Islam and the secular mind
onwards as traditional feudal society was challenged by widespread peasant discontent
and by the rise of the cities and universities which heralded the emergence
of national secular culture. Meanwhile, the Lutheran Reformation questioned
the role and plenary authority of the ancient church. Despite these revolutionary
changes, medieval Christendom remained feudal, isolated, religiously homogeneous
and authoritarian: its urge to persecute the interior heretic and the exterior
infidel was deep and permanent. The culmination of this process of questioning the
sanctity of authority is encapsulated in the revealing motto of the Royal Society,
the oldest learned society in the world, established in 1663: Nullius in verba. Take
nobody’s word for it, to translate it colloquially. In matters of empirical knowledge,
this effectively rejects the joint authority of citation of the ancients and
concordance with divine revelation, the two foundations of medieval scholasticism.
Understandably, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), a daring thinker we encounter
again in Chapters 3 and 8, is often invoked as the guiding spirit behind the Royal
Society.
The Age of Reason, dated from Europe’s early seventeenth century, did not
intend to deny the existence of God. Rather it aimed at purging religion of its
superstitions and fantastic dogmas in the hope of finding a residue more worthy
of belief. Thomas Paine’s influential The Age of Reason (published in 1794–6) is
a passionate defence of deism, a jejune version of theism. Paine’s god is the deus
otiosus (the redundant god) who reveals his rational will solely through nature,
the open book of God, and via unaided human mind and conscience. Prophets,
miracles, and scripture – the paraphernalia of established religion – are, for Paine
and his anemic deity, dangerous superfluities. 34
After the seventeenth century, the rapid growth of the natural sciences and the
industrialization of all aspects of life eventually led to the industrial revolution,
the systematic application of the methods and discoveries of empirical science
to the ends of industrial production. The last 250 years witnessed the spread and
impact of industrial technology, the continuing colonization of the non-western
world abetted by occidental maritime power, the democratic revolt against aristocracy
(especially among the French peasantry and middle classes), the spectacular
increase of urban populations, increasing access to public education and the growth
of literacy. The net result is a vigorous western civilization that arose out of the
debris of medieval Christendom.
Over the past 200 years, Christianity has been gradually reduced to a source
of cultural continuity and identity, and, owing to a mistaken view of its origins,
a source of western racial pride, especially among evangelical and right
wing Christians. The religious authority of Christianity, as measured by indices
such as ecclesiastical sovereignty over beliefs, morals and institutions (especially
marriage), has dramatically eroded in the ideologically western world and in the
Catholic Americas. This irreversible decline has been accompanied by a spectacular
increase in the power of the economic motive which originally actuated the
industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. A rural life lived close to nature’s
harmonious cycles and soothing periodicities was desecrated and replaced by a
harsh mechanical life in cities such as London, the first sizeable metropolis of the