Islamic Sciences Quotes

“It is for Muslim scholars to study the whole history of Islamic science completely and not only the chapters and periods which influenced Western science. It is also for Muslim scholars to present the tradition of Islamic science from the point of view of Islam itself and not from the point of view of the scientism, rationalism and positivism which have dominated the history of science in the West since the establishment of the discipline in the early part of the 20th century in Europe and America.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World

“Islamic science is related profoundly to the Islamic world view. It is rooted deeply in knowledge based upon the unity of Allah or al-tawhid and a view of the universe in which Allah’s Wisdom and Will rule and in which all things are interrelated reflecting unity on the cosmic level. In contrast, Western science is based on considering the natural world as a reality which is separate from both Allah and the higher levels of being. At best, Allah is accepted as the creator of the world, as a mason who has built a house which now stand on its own. His intrusion into the running of the world and His continuous sustenance of it are not accepted in the modern scientific world view.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World

“To consider Western science simply as a continuation of Islamic science is, therefore, to misunderstand completely both the epistemological foundations of the two sciences and the relationship that each has to the world of faith and revelation. It is also to misunderstand the metaphysical and philosophical backgrounds of the two sciences.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World

“The significance of the vast Islamic scientific tradition for Muslims and especially for young Muslims today is not only that it gives them a sense of pride in their own civilization because of the prestige that science fhas in the present day world. It is furthermore a testament to the way Islam was able to cultivate various sciences extensively without becoming alienated from the Islamic world view and without creating a science whose application would destroy the world of nature and the harmony that must exist between man and the natural environment.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World

“The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.”
― Avicenna, Psikologi Ibn Sina

“The tradition of Islamic science of course gradually weakened but it did not decay as rapidly as some people have claimed in the West. It continued on into the 10th, 11th and 12th Islamic centuries especially in the fields of medicine and pharmacology. If one is going to talk about the decay of the Islamic sciences, it is only of the last two or three centuries that one should speak if one takes the whole of the Islamic world into consideration. And one should not be ashamed of that fact because no civilization in the history of science has always been avidly interested in the natural sciences throughout its whole history. There have been periods of greater interest and those of lesser interest in every civilization, and there is no reason why one should equate the gradual loss of impetus in the cultivation of the sciences in the Islamic world with an automatic decadence of that civilization. This is a modern, Western view which equates civilization with science as understod in the modern sense.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World

“The decadence which did occur in the Islamic world belongs to a much later period of Islamic history than is usually claimed. This fact would be fully substantiated if the integral history of Islamic science and civilization were to be written one day. Unfortunately to this day such a detailed history does not exist and moreover much of the scholarly work that has been done in this field has been carried out by Western scholars who have been naturally primarily interested in those aspects of the Islamic sciences that have influenced the West. It remains the task of Muslims scholars and scientists to look upon the whole of this scientific tradition from the point of view of Islam and the inner dynamics of Islamic history itself.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World

“The myth of the Islamic Golden Age

The medieval philosophers and thinkers who dedicated their lives to science and philosophy, who stood up to Islam and paid a dear price for rejecting its teachings and discrediting its founders are currently introduced as Muslim scholars.”
― Theo Alistair

“هناك علاقة طردية بين تصور بعينه للدين وبين حجم القوة التي يوفرها للقائمين علي توظيفه سياسياً؛ وأعني أنه كلما كان الدين حرفياً وقطعياً يكون مقدار القوة التي يقدمها لهؤلاء الساعين إلي التخفي وراءه أكبر- بما لا يقاس- من تلك التي يوفرها لهم حين يكون موضوعاً لتفكير مفتوح. ويرتبط ذلك بحقيقة أن قطعية الدين وحرفيته تكون هي الأكثر مثالية في إخضاع الجمهور وقهره؛ وأعني من حيث لا يكون متاحاً له، في إطارها، إلا محض التسليم والامتثال من دون جدل أو سؤال. وإذ يقوم دعاة الإسلام السياسي بتثبيت هذا التصور القطعي للدين علي أحد المفاهيم الشائعة المستقرة في وعي الجمهور؛ وهو مفهوم القطعي الثبوت والدلالة، فإنه يلزم التنويه بما يقوم عليه هذا المفهوم من مراوغة تسوية قطعية الثبوت مع قطعية الدلالة، وذلك فيما ينتمي الثبوت إلي مجال التاريخ الذي يغاير بالكلية مجال المعني الذي تنتمي إليه الدلالة. وبالطبع فإنه لا يمكن التسوية أبداً بين ما ينتمي إلي مجال الثبوت التاريخي، وبين ما ينتمي إلي مجال المعني الدلالي؛ وبمعني أنه في حين أن أحدا لا يجادل في يقينية ثبوت القرآن؛ وبما يعنيه ذلك من إمكان- بل وجوب- التأكيد علي قطعية ثبوته، فإنه لا يمكن القول بقطعية دلالته ومعناه، لأن ذلك يعني وجوب القول بأحادية الدلالة والمعني؛ وهو ما لا يمكن لمسلم أن يقبله بخصوص القرآن.”
― علي مبروك

“Be-patient for what was written for you was written by greatest of writers”
― Altaf ul qadri

“There's a name of peoples without beards
called women's”
― Altaf ul qadri

“Ali, who had seen scores of his students go out to become mullahs of neighborhoods and villages, now thanked God he had the talent to remain in a life of learning, since he clearly lacked the courage - he was tempted to say the audacity - to tell other people how to live their lives.”
― Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran

“Combined with this indecision was Ahmad's sense of being intellectually incomplete; he felt he had never really read enough and never studied enough to offer a firm opinion on anything. Privately he would assure his friends that they had no idea, they could not possibly imagine, how ignorant he was. In the semipublic arena of the dowreh on Islamic philosophy that he and Ali attended, when Ahmad entered the conversation he would talk brilliantly about a subject for a few minutes, then think up objections to what he had said, then think of things he should have read before he had spoken on the subject. Then, after adding several times, "What can I say? I don't really know," he would tumble into silence and, in his good-natured way, look even more deeply oppressed than he had before he talked.
It was no surprise that Ahmad published so little.”
― Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran

“I decided that we should understand Islam in its root meaning. as the innate submission of the human spirit to God, as in the Koranic verse: 'Do they seek something other than the Religion of God while all creatures in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, have accepted Islam from Him, and to Him shall they all return?'
So my second reason for going to Tehran and then going abroad was that I counted all mankind as in some sense Muslims, and in that mood I decided there were other 'muslim' systems of thought waiting to be discovered which I couldn't find in Qom.

[A scene from Ahmad's conversation with Ali: 364.]”
― Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran

“Please excuse this slow-witted talabeh, who will have to read the text and the margins several times to make sure he gets today's lesson right.”
― Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran

“Free will from the perspective of Islam is not an absolute open concept without boundaries. A Muslim has to abide to the shari'ah, and hence has to be conscious of both his/her individual and collective responsibilities.”
― Noraini M. Noor, Psychology from an Islamic Perspective: A Guide to Teaching and Learning