✅The word Islam conjures a disturbing image in the minds of many people outside the Muslim world. It is a fact that many in the West imagine Islam to be a faith far removed from modern life, closed to science and that attaches no value to a good quality of life.
The first reason for this erroneous belief is that various people who claim to be Muslims in fact have views and lifestyles that are far from Islamic. However, someone looking in from the outside cannot recognize these and will be unable to evaluate matters accurately.
One of the most important and informative points of reference that should be used to learn about Islam is the Quran. However, we see that some people do not interpret the Quran correctly and produce their own perverse and foolish deductions from it to support their own misguided and superstitious beliefs. One of the subjects most easily capable of being misinterpreted in this way is science and scientific activity.
Science is an important reality that enables us to know the universe we inhabit, the Earth and our own bodies and to be able to appreciate all the beauties around us. Scientific advances have enlightened human life and opened the door to a healthier way of living. For example, by means of medical advances the average human life span today is much greater than it was a century ago. Similarly, advances in other branches of science have made our lives easier and more comfortable.
Today, for instance, the benefits of the Internet are obvious. By means of the Internet we can learn at once what is happening in different parts of the world. Communications among people have grown and become far easier. Information about a subject one wants to investigate can now be accessed immediately. Thus, those people making greater uses of the benefits of science now live at a much more advanced level at least both physically and materially.
For a sincere Muslim, science is a blessing that God has bestowed upon mankind. Islam advocates a rational approach. In many verses of the Quran, God advises people to use their intelligence. He emphasizes the need for us to think rationally and scientifically, speaking of, “…those deeply rooted in knowledge…” and “…only people of intelligence pay heed.” (Quran 3:7). Another verse advises people to think about the formation of the universe: “…reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth…” (Quran 3:191)
Today, use is still being made of the work of various Muslim scientists in the past that understood Islam’s encouragement of scientific investigation. People such as Avicenna, Farabi and Battani were among the leading scientists of the Middle Ages. Avicenna’s book “The Canon of Medicine” (al-Qānūn fī al-Tibb) was used as a textbook in the universities of Montpellier and Louvain until 1650. Battani’s “Zij” was regarded as a most important astronomical text, and his work inspired that of Copernicus.
Al-Khwarizmi’s work “Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing” is regarded as the first work in which the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations is presented. The very term “algebra” comes from “Al-Jabr,” one of the methods for solving quadratic equations in al-Khwarizmi’s book. Many other examples of contributions to scientific progress by Muslim scientists could be given.
Today too, there are a great many scientists, academics and intellectuals who have emerged from the Islamic world and serve all mankind. The spread of scientific thinking and concentration on rationality will further increase the numbers of such people and the contributions they make. That is why it needs to be better understood that the Quran encourages rational thinking alongside scientific research and activity.
