world, and the growing influence of western secularism and Soviet communism among the Muslims.
The idea was, that if politics could be ‘Islamised’ (Mauddudi, Qutab, Khomeini), then so could science and (later), economics (banking). Grudgingly recognizing the economic and political advances made by the Jews after World War-II through education, the Arab world, defeated by Israel in 1967 and 1973, tried to come up with their own notion of advancement.
But as mentioned before, this advancement was not really about producing large numbers of highly educated Muslims but rather, a populace fed on empty, feel-good ‘scientific’ claptrap produced by overpaid groups of crackpots calling themselves scientists and economists. And anyway, the new post-Bucaille Muslim mindset had already begun labeling the ‘secular sciences’ as ‘invented by Jews to subjugate the Muslims.’
Bucaille enthusiasts were also not bothered (rather not aware) about the entirely unoriginal make-up of his theory. Many still believe that proving scientific truths from holy books has been the exclusive domain of Muslims.
Very few seemed to know that before Muslims, certain Hindu and Christian theologians had already laid claim to the practice of defining their respective holy books as metaphoric prophecies of scientifically proven phenomenon. They began doing so between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whereas Muslims got into the act only in the twentieth century.
Johannes Heinrich’s ‘Scientific vindication of Christianity (1887)’ is one example, while Mohan Roy’s ‘Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of Hinduism’ is a good way of observing how this thought has actually evolved from the fantastical claims of the followers of other faiths.
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As hybrid secular ideas in Muslim countries such as ‘Arab socialism,’ ‘Islamic socialism’ and democracy began to wither in the event of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979), and the eruption of ‘Islamic jihad’ in Afghanistan, the idea behind Islamic science being the celebration of the achievements of ancient and modern Muslim scientists was gradually replaced by unsubstantiated and fancy convolutions being defined as science.
So it was only natural that Pakistan’s military dictator, General Ziaul Haq, heavily influenced and financed by the Saudis, would be the man to green light a seminar of Muslim ‘scientists’ who met in Islamabad in 1986 to unveil the wonders of Islamic science where so-called learned men actually set about discussing things like how to generate energy and electricity from jinns, or how to calculate the speed of heaven, etc.
The message seemed to be, why read books of science, or enter a lab to understand the many workings of God’s nature and creatures – just read the holy book. Forget about all those great Muslim scientists of yore, or Abdus Salam, Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Just get in touch with your friendly neighborhood jinn for all your energy needs.
Such was the nonsense Muslim governments in the 1980s were ‘investing’ their money and efforts in when a majority of Muslim countries were continuing to struggle to up their literacy rates.
This practice sanctified myopia and an unscientific bent of mind in the Muslim world.
Rationalist Islamic scholars have been insisting throughout the twentieth century that the Qur’an is less a book of laws or science, and more an elaborate moral guide for Muslims in which God has given the individual the freewill to decide for him or herself through exerting their mental faculties and striving to gain more empirical knowledge.
Iranian writer, Vali Reza Nasr, is right to mourn the trend today that though most Muslims are quick to adopt western science, they simply refuse to assume a rational scientific mindset.
No wonder then, for example, most Pakistanis still don’t have a clue about what the country’s only Nobel Prize winning scientist, Dr Abdus Salam, got the award for, but many are quick to quote from books written by Harun Yahya and some others, explaining how things like the Big Bang and others are endorsed in the Holy book.
Though such rubbish is thankfully no more a part of the state’s educating agenda (at least not in Pakistan), one still does come across idiocy in which cranks manage to use mainstream media and forums to crank it out, defining sheer drivel as science.
But not always are such folk mere cranks. Some ‘respected scientists’ have also been known to take the Bucailleian tradition and fuse it with some post-9/11 conspiratorial hogwash, as proven recently by Dr. Attur Rehman.
Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.
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