What they did not do, however, was develop science, in the sense of explanations of why the physical world works the way it does. This highlights the second difference between orthodox Muslim thinkers, such as al-Ghazali, and the Condemnations of 1277. Islam teaches that Allah directly controls everything and can do as he pleases with the world. Seeking explanations of physical processes was thus either not possible or inappropriate. So, for example, al-Ghazali argued that the idea that there were natural laws was blasphemous because it denied Allah’s freedom to govern the universe as he saw
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