Islam and Science Quotes

“It is imperative to realize that Muslim culture is inextricably wedded to the past”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Science may have transformed the world into a global village, but it has yet to teach the villagers to learn to talk with and understand each other.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Reform is not instantaneous, but proceeds by degrees. In contrast, the dogmatist dreams of reforming all of society in one holistic sweep and believes that he has in his possession a unique, unalterable blueprint. This quest for a utopia leads to authoritarianism, intolerance and violence because, once the end goal has been defined, no one is allowed to criticize or change it.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“It is absurd to think that the scientific views of a Muslim scientist are necessarily connected with his religious belief, or that he necessarily derives inspiration for his scientific work from faith. This was as true a thousand years ago as it is now. Alchemy provides an excellent example. Developed extensively by Jabir Ibn Hayyan and AI-Razi, and based on certain myths going back to Arius and Pythagoras, it was one of the most important Muslim contributions. Of course, today everyone knows that alchemy was scientific nonsense: there cannot be anything like the Philosopher's Stone, and the transformation of base metals like copper or tin into silver or gold by chemical means is an impossibility”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“The new Islamic science has been fathered by the global resurgence of orthodoxy in Muslim countries; it is not peculiar to Pakistan by any means. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia are also particularly active centres. However, it is not confined by national boundaries and is particularly to be found amongst immigrants settled in the West. It evidently provides a form of psychological defence against the continuous battering by modern science in its many manifestations. For this reason, one must not expect the phenomenon to disappear in the decades to come.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Science is the supreme expression of man's rationality.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“But it is only a mature society which can possess intellectual and religious tolerance, and which can provide basic liberties to its citizens.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“The inability of the traditional system of education to respond adequately to a changing world may well have been the most critical factor which denied to Muslims the chance of spearheading the Scientific Revolution.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“The rote nature of education in contemporary Muslim societies can be traced to attitudes inherited from traditional education, wherein knowledge is something to be acquired rather than discovered. and in which the attitude of mind is passive and receptive rather than creative and inquisitive. The social conditioning of an authoritarian traditional environment has. as an inescapable consequence. That all knowledge comes to be viewed as unchangeable and all books tend to be memorized or venerated to some degree. The concept of secular knowledge as a problem-solving tool which evolves over time is alien to traditional thought.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“A society oriented towards fatalism, or one in which an interventionist deity forms part of the matrix of causal connections, is bound to produce fewer individuals inclined to probe the unknown with the tools of science.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“It is a sad commentary on the state of Muslim scholarship that Ibn Khaldun remained a virtual nonentity until he was discovered by Orientalists. Now that he has their stamp of recognition, many scholars - excepting Arab racialists and the extreme orthodox - have entered into a competition to see whose encomiums are the loudest”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Ibn Rushd's writings were translated into Latin and Hebrew by European scholars. There soon appeared super-commentaries on his commentaries. Many of the writings exist only in these two languages, the original Arabic writings being long lost. This itself is a commentary on the extent to which Ibn Rushd, as a rationalist philosopher, was able to influence the mood of his times”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Long before his death in 873 at the age of seventy-two, AI-Kindi had succumbed to prolonged depression and silence. Although a friend managed to retrieve his library by means of some subtle extortion, he never really recovered from the ordeal of his public flogging. AI-Kindi was the first major figure of Islamic scholarship to fall victim to the orthodox reaction against rationalism”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“The great scholars of Islam were often endangered not by Mongol hordes or infidel Christians but, instead, by homegrown religious orthodoxy.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“It is somewhat paradoxical that AI-Ghazzali spearheaded the attack against free-thinkers and the proponents of logic, but in doing so had to use the weapon of his adversaries. Indeed, the stubborn ghost of Greek dialectics withstood exorcism by the greatest Asharite of all time.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Fire causes burning, lightning causes thunder, winds cause waves, and gravity causes bodies to fall. Such connections between an effect and its cause form the cornerstone of scientific thinking, both modern and classical. But this notion of causality is one which is specifically rejected by Asharite doctrine, and the most articulate and effective opponent of physical causality was AI-Ghazzali”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Ibn Khaldun, though a conservative in certain aspects of his belief, was nevertheless dismayed by the negative attitudes towards learning among the Muslims. He writes:

When the Muslims conquered Persia and came upon an indescribably large number of books and scientific papers, Sa'd bin Abi Waqqas wrote to Umar bin al-Khattab asking him for permission to take them and distribute them as booty among the Muslims. On that occasion, Umar wrote him: 'Throw them in the water. If what they contain is right guidance, God has given us better guidance. If it is error, God has protected us against it.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Muslims – who comprise one-fifth of all humanity - will continue to suffer an undignified and degraded existence if science, and particularly a rational approach to human problems, is considered alien to Islamic culture.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“The proponents of this bizarre science are not the traditional ulema but, instead, holders of high-level degrees in scientific fields. Most of them have studied in the West, although almost none of them have any significant professional achievements to their credit. Islamic science provides a refuge from the challenge of doing difficult science.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“The new Islamic science, like Creationism in the West, is a reaction against modern science. It is not a new direction of science.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“An Islamic scientist describes his conception of how the universe began and will end. making an analogy with the passage of electricity in a wire. At the beginning there was disorder in the World of Spirits, just as electrons are disordered in a conductor. Then .... And finally. the soul is radiated into the Final World just like an electron radiates off electromagnetic waves.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Objectivity is made possible because experiment and logical consistency are the sole arbiters of truth - of no consequence is the scientist's mood or moral character, his political beliefs or nationality. or even his status in the world of science. On this last point, consider, for example, that Einstein was never taken too seriously when he (wrongly) set out to criticize quantum mechanics - this in spite of the fact that he was acknowledged as the greatest living physicist of the time.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Even the elites in developing countries know nothing about the development of calculus or electromagnetism and why, without these theoretical tools, the modern products of science would have been impossible. Indeed, appreciation and internalization of science cannot occur without the simultaneous development of a rational, modern and egalitarian system of education.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Modern man does not deny spirituality. But he is oriented towards the present and future rather than the past, is open to fresh experiences and new ideas, accepts reason and calculability instead of fate, has a large inventory of knowledge and facts at his disposal, relies on planning and organization, is willing to accept the right of others to their opinions, and believes in individual merit and rights.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“A nation which has no great philosophers will never have any great scientists. Heidegger says that the philosopher is a man who is always capable of wonder. This also characterizes the scientist. The utilitarian man is not capable of wonder. Hence, it is doubtful whether he can develop science”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Should a non-Muslim have alleged that Muslim science is but a regurgitation of Greek Science, one can safely suppose that he would be angrily challenged. But coming from supposed defenders of the faith, these insults to Muslim science and Its heroes have drawn little reaction.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“The Hanbalite Ibn Taymiya understood Ilm (knowledge) as referring to that knowledge which derives from the Prophet. Everything else he regarded either as useless or no science at all, even though it might be called by that name.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Following the ascendancy of the conservative Sunni Caliph al-Mutawakkil, whom Syed Ameer Ali describes as a 'cruel drunken sot in league with the qazis and mullahs,' the physical extermination of Mu'tazilites, together with Shias, began in earnest. They were removed from all governmental positions, accused of heresy, subjected to torture, and summarily executed. Scholars and scientists, most of whom subscribed to rationalist beliefs, fled Baghdad for other parts of the Islamic world. Thus ended the most serious attempt to combine reason with revelation in Islam. Apart from various isolated efforts by individua119th century Muslim reformers, the separation between the religious and secular has been complete in Islam ever since.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“Civilization, as we know it today, is defined in large measure by science.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality

“First stage of Islamic scientific development was essentially an assimilation of imported knowledge and Muslim scholars had only a secondary role to play as translators.”
― Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality