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Pervez Hoodbhoy’s Islam and Science

This section was labeled under Islam and conversation.

Rereading Pervez Hoodbhoy’s popular book Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, which tends to ignore history to reach some certain false conduction.

Introduction

There is that Quranic expression from Bara’ah: He layeth his foundation [constructing] on an undermined sand-cliff, it is ready to crumble to pieces with him (Arabic: أَسَّسَ بُنْيَانَهُ عَلَىٰ شَفَا جُرُفٍ هَارٍ فَانْهَارَ بِهِ فِي نَارِ جَهَنَّمَ), a lot of arguments are based on such a “undermined sand cliff” which is really ready to crumble but the ’argumenter’ doesn’t give a lot of attention of this, and he prolong, decorate and fortify his argument until the point it becomes a book: hundreds of page based on some inexact arguments.

There are a lot of examples of this, American creationists exert a lot of efforts based on false beliefs, they even created a fully so called ’scientific journal’ called biocomplexity which tries to prove that bio-objects are too complicated to be created by a blind watch maker. This is led by the misunderstanding to every evolutionary fact, all of the creationists claims however in how many pages it is descried, it is probably can be refuted in a few paragraphs which might sounds insanity to someone who watching this happens from afar.

Some chapters in Dr. Hoodbhoy’s, a Pakistani nuclear physicist, book are very applicable to this.

Methodology

Hoodbhoy’s book consists of 12 chapters:

1. Islam and Science: Are They Compatible?
2. Science: Its Nature and Origins
3. The War Between Science and Medieval Christianity
4. The State of Science in Islamic Countries Today
5. Three Muslim Responses to Underdevelopment
      - The Restorationist
      - The Reconstructionist Line
      - The Pragmatist Line
6. Bucaille, Nasr and Sardar - Three Exponents of Islamic
7. Can There Be An Islamic Science?
8. The Rise of Muslim Science
9. Religious Orthodoxy Confronts Muslim Science
10. Five Great 'Heretics'
      - AI-Kindi (801-873)
      - AI-Razi (865-925)
      - Ibn Sina (980-1037)
      - Ibn Rushd (1126-1198)
      - Ibn-Khaldun (1332-1406)
11. Why Didn't the Scientific Revolution Happen in Islam?
12. Some Thoughts for the Future
      - Appendix: They Call It Islamic Science
      - The Scientific Miracles Conference
      - The Amazing Conclusions of Islamic Science
      - Is This Science?
      - Falsifiability: A Criterion for Science
      - What Islamic Science Actually Is
      - Its Political Roots
      - A Reponse S. Bashiruddin Mahmood
      - My Reply to Mr Mahmood
      - Comments from the Wall Street Journal

They can be categorized by 5 kinds:

  1. The nature of science and the history of the definition of science (Chapters 2, 3).
  2. The “state” of the “Islamic” science in the new world (Chapters 4, 12 and 5)

    Which in he ignores the political turmoil behind anything that happens in the Middle East (the overwhelm of what he calls the Islamic World).

  3. A historical background (Chapter 10).

    More pierces a horrible historical background in which he tries to establish an constructing for the phantom war between "Science and Islam" by claiming that this war has been forever between the top Islamic scientist, the figures of the Islamic Renaissance: Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, AL-Kidi, AL Razi, AL Kindi and Ibn-Khaldoun, he ignores every historical event in their lives.

  4. Mockery on many ignorant who claims to do science (and he designate it to Islamic Science) (Chapter 12)

    Hoodbohy makes a very good use of straw man arguments, for instance in chapter 5 "Three Muslims Responses to Underdevelopment" he chooses carefully the most lunatic responses to laugh on and refute.

  5. Sterile discussion on the nature of Islamic science (Chapters 1, 7 and 9)

This article probably will not be another response from the Islamic science proponents, but a critique of facts Hoodbhoy ignored especially the historical facts in chapter 10 Five Great Heretics. I will try to put on my views of faith and science in a conclusion.

The Forth Muslim Response to Underdevelopment

The mushrooming of fundamentalist Islamic movements in the 1970s and 1980s is its most concrete manifestation. From nominally secular Egypt to the Wahabi Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from the revolutionary Shi’ite state of Ayatollah Khomenei to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the trumpets call incessantly for Holy War!. Holy War against the secular, rationalist and universalist ideal. Holy War against capitalism, socialism, and communism alike. Holy War to establish one or other vision of an ideal Islamic state. Holy War to fight against the principle - first enunciated by the Arab (and Muslim) philosopher Ibn Rushd some 800 years ago - that human reason is the only instrument which should be allowed to guide human society. And Holy War against the foundations of modern, secular, scientific thought and method. Hoodbhoy, P. (1991). Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. Zed Books.

This proem states the main problem with the book: the complete historical frame of all these events is being ignored. for instance the slump of the Arabic nationality and secular movements in the Arab world, which always had been on a feud with the Muslims Brotherhood (MB henceforth), one of the main causes of the re-rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab world, and it’s also one of the most influential on Jamaat e-Islami Liu, J. (2010, September 15). Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’at-i Islami. Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/15/muslim-networks-and-movements-in-western-europe-muslim-brotherhood-and-jamaat-i-islami/ which Hoodbhoy designates as partition of the ’restorationism line’, who knows how it would go if Israel did not exist to kill the core of Arab secularism in Egypt (Gamal Abdelnasser Chomsky, N. (2004). On Religion and Politics, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amina Chaudary. Islamica Magazine. https://chomsky.info/200704__/: The attitude toward Islam is quite complex. The U.S. has always supported the most extreme fundamentalist Islamic movements and still does. The oldest and most valued ally of the U.S. in the Arab world is Saudi Arabia, which is also the most extremist fundamentalist state. By comparison, Iran looks like a free democratic society – but Saudi Arabia was doing its job. The enemy for most of this period has been secular nationalism. U.S.-Israeli relations, for example, really firmed up in 1967 when Israel performed a real service for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Namely, it smashed the main center of secular nationalism, (Gamal Abdul) Nasser’s Egypt, which was considered a threat and more or less at war with Saudi Arabia at the time. It was threatening to use the huge resources of the region for the benefit of the population of the countries of the region, and not to fill the pockets of some rich tyrant while vast profits flowed to Western corporations. ) so he could continue to put pressure on them, or even if there were no Saddat to fund Islamists in Egypt to defend communism and left-wing, if the U.S. didn’t fund all these pro-wahhabi movements in the 80s-90s, Saudi Arabia alike.

There is a lot of consequential events that led to where we are today, all of it is not really related to Islam rather than the Middle East and its political unrest, actually we will observe that this is mostly the main reason of the phantom war between science and Islam in the following paragraphs.

Dr. Hoodbhoy used in his book what I can name the most lunatic ’responses’ to refute from Jammat e-Islam, which thinks that “All modernist ideologies are characterized by man worship. Man worship most often appears under the guise of science. Modernists are convinced that progress in scientific knowledge will eventually confer upon them the powers of Divinity.” Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 52 as Maryam Jameelah, a spokeperson of it, puts. Also its founder thinks that “geography, physics, chemistry, biology, zoology. geology and economics are taught without reference to Allah and his Messenger and are hence a source of gumrahi (straying from the truth)” Ibid, pp. 53. .

So I’m going to skip the three restorationist, reconstructionist, pragmatist lines, because they don’t really represent a response to the underdevelopment.

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Hussine Fahmy

However, Hoodbhoy began to establish the phantom war between science and Islam in this chapter, in The Prgamist line speaking of Sheikh Gamal El Dine Al Afghani

In 1870 Afghani was expelled from Istanbul under pressure from the clergy. His crime was the advocacy of a Darul-Funun, a new university devoted to the teaching of modern science. Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 53.

Hoodbhoy quotes this event from An Islamic Response to Imperialism Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani by Nikki R. Keddie, which is not really a biography, however Keddie himself said about this event that “no text of the talk seems to exist” Keddie, N. R. (1983). An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani” (Volume 21) (Near Eastern Center, UCLA) (First ed.). University of California Press, pp. 17. and he refuses to take Muhammad Abdo’s, who had been there, testimony because it is ’possibly doctored’ he says. Here is the story from a copy of Abdo’s testimony الأعمال الكاملة للإمام الشّيْخ محمَّد عَبْده: ترجمة جمال الدين الأفغاني. (ca. 1899). Quran Link. https://www.quran.link/books/89/101/ :

And after six months in AlMa’raef Majles, Afghani had been straightforward and righteous, and he sought to the popularization of Al Maraef, which would deduct a lof from Hussin Fahmy’s, Imam of Istanbul then, money, so he was mad on Afghani.

And in Ramadan 1287 hāʾ, Dar Al Funoon president asked Afghani to give a speech to talk about industries, Afghani refused because his Turkey wasn’t good enough, but Tahseen Afandy insisted so Afghani wrote the speech and showed it to Sawfat Basha, the minister of Al Ma’araef then and a lof of other representatives of Istanbul [See all the names in the original text] and all of them liked it.

Afghani compared industry with some biological organs and faith, and in somehow Hussen Fahmy, the Imam who had in fuel with Afghani before, interpreted it as Afghani was saying that “Al Nubwa” (means Allah’s revelation) is a kind of industry so in somehow he says that the Prophet was just a cleaver literal and the result is he must be Kafer.

Fahmy went to the preachers in Istanbul, and as powerful cleric he threatened them to spear the publicity that Afghani spears disbelief and blasphemy.

[…]

I think it’s clear now why Fahmy was the only one to be mad of Afgani’s speech however the overwhelm of Istanbul representatives liked it, because he was mad on him since the popularization of Al Maraef, it was not a muslim response to Afghani because he talked about science otherwise he would had been expelled from all countries he had visited.

Underdevelopment in The New Arab World

Lots of modern literature tried to re-explain the underdevelopment in the Arab world (e.g. Cammett, Melani. 2018) to a lot of reasons like the modern colonial heritage or even corruption. The question of underdevelopment might be discussed further in the future in this blog, however, I’d like to talk in brief about it.

Hoodbhoy believes, like me, that the overwhelming majority of people in the Islamic world are being satisfied by the belief of the pragmatist line: “pragmatist Muslims still form the majority. The electoral defeats of the fundamentalist parties in several Muslim countries strongly suggest that most Muslims will not accept fundamentalist versions of the Faith when there is an alternative” Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 63. . However, this put him in a contradiction: as the most of people are not fundamentalists, and there are some countries without an underdevelopment issues (The U.A.E, Qater, etc..), why we can’t remark science in these countries?

We can give a lot of arbitrary social reasons, for example, the majority of people that live in a country like the U.A.E might not be interested even in doing science, the U.A.E people have been in tribes to the last century, they are new to things like schools and university, it’s very discursive that they won’t be interested in science like other peoples. These countries are just out from either long colonial eras or a long marginalization: even during the Abbasid and Ottoman Caliphate, these countries wasn’t an interest to any of the ruling powers.

This is applicable to any of what Abdul Rahman Munif calls “Cities of Salt”, for instance, try to guess when the first university in Suadi Arabia was established? It is not even more than 100 years ago, it was about in 1950, U.A.E had its first university in 1976.

In the other side, the countries with more articulate history in science (e.g. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq) are suffering from political upheavals in the daily basis Lebanon is going through an endless crisis, and it does not emerge from one war unless it enters another. Egypt and Iraq are going through two phases that are the worst in their history. 30% of people are under poverty threshold in the official statements in Egypt, such a people shouldn’t be every interested in doing science.

Five Great ’Heretics’

In this chapter Hoodbhoy gives us examples of the holy insane war between Islamic fundamentalists and science, he gives five examples, five heretics: Al-Kindi AI-Kindi (801-873), AI-Razi (865-925), Ibn Sina (980-1037), Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and Ibn-Khaldun (1332-1406). I have not studied Islamic philosophy before, but I’m pretty sure Hoodbhoy doesn’t know a lot of those philosophers’ history nor their history.

The main argument in this chapter here is that the following scientists had been accused of disbelief.

Al-Kindi (801-873)

I’m glad that Hoodbhoy started with Al-Kindi, because his story is the most relatable to my argument that most of Islamic philosophers and scientists who had been accused by disbelief, wasn’t accused for a religious view rather a political issue with the governor (Khalifa).

Hoodbhoy designates Al-Kindi to be a one of Mu’tazilite, which is inaccurate, there is no any evidence that Al-Kindi was one of them, in fact, there is a very rare books about him in the current time, Islamic historian are not even sure about his previous religion before he converted to Islam as the Islamic historian Abu’l-Hasan Bayhaqi says:

And they weren’t sure of Al-Kindi, some people said he was a Jewish then he converted to Islam, and others said he was christian. Bayhaqi, A. ’.-H. (1154). Tarikh Hokmaa Al Islam [Bayhaqi’s history]. مطبة الترقي. https://shamela.ws/book/273/5

You can find a lot of funny stories about Al-Kindi with Abu Tamam and other writers, but there is a story that you will find only in Hoodbhoy’s book:

In the court of AI-Mamun, AI-Kindi was a star who shone bright in the foremost cultural centre of the world. His academic pursuits maintained their vigour in the subsequent reign of the rationalist Caliph al-Mutassim, and then of al-Wathiq. But then came the ascendancy of the orthodox Sunni Caliph AI-Mutawwakil, and with it the end of a long period of liberalism. It was not hard for the ulema to convince the ruler that the philosopher had very dangerous beliefs. Mutawwakil soon ordered the confiscation of the scholar’s personal library, known to all Baghdad as al-Kindiyah. But that was not enough. The sixty-year-old Muslim philosopher also received fifty lashes before a large crowd which had assembled. Observers who recorded the event say the crowd roared approval with each stroke.

What a sad fake story, sadly I couldn’t examine Hoodbhoy’s reference here, he says in the footnotes that it is The Genius of Arab Civilization by J. R. Hayes, which is not available at all, however, after I searched in mostly all Islamic historic book that mentioned AL-Kindi, I can insure by 99% that this is an inaccurate story.

At least not the part of that the fundamentalist Mutawwakil that order to give the philosopher 50 lashes because he had been a very bad philosopher.

Nevertheless the part about his issue with Al Mutawwakil and specially the classification of his library did happen, but not for the reasons that Hoodbhoy assumes. The Islamic historian Ibn Abi Usaybi’a tells us the full story in his book Lives of the Physicians [’Eyoun Al Inbaa’ fi Tabiqt Al Atibaa’] Usaybi’Ah, I. A., van Gelder, J. G., & Cockrell, S. H. (2020). Anecdotes and Antidotes: A Medieval Arabic History of Physicians (Oxford World’s Classics) (Abridged ed.). Oxford University Press. http://islamport.com/w/tkh/Web/340/199.htm :

Al-Kindi had been on feud with Banū Mūsā, a family group of scientists and engineers who served the caliphs on the royal court along side with Al-Kindi, however, Al-kindi was the most one of them to be closer to the Caliphate which Banū Mūsa didn’t like very much so they told him that Al kinndy “criticizes you politically and spreads disbelief” then, Al-Mutwakkel orderd to classify all of Al-Kindi books and put it somewhere called “Al Maktaba Al Kindiah” where Banū Mūsā studied it.

The way that some friend of Al-Kindy manged to get back his library happened as the following: Al Mutawkel wanted to build a Dam, he ordered Banū Mūsā to take the responsibility of it, unfortunately they failed him and all of them were about to die (as they destroyed many many resources and materials, they were sure that Al Mutawkeel was going to kill them all), so they rushed to Sanad ibn Ali, one of the best engineers ever in the Islamic world and Al-Kindi best friend then. Ali was aware of Banū Mūsā’s plan to bring Al-Kindi down, so he required them to bring Al-kendy’s library back again to him otherwise he wouldn’t help. And this is how Al-Kindy got his library back.

Thankfully some historians had written about how Al-Kindy dead, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the sad fiction story that he “couldn’t recover from the ordeal of the public flogging”. ‘Alī ibn Yūsuf al-Qifṭī says in his popular book “The biographies and the books of the great philosophers”:

And Abu ’Yaqoub [Refers to al-Kindi] had a problem with drinking, and he had repent of it lately and started to drink Sharab Al Asal [means the honey drink, I’m not sure what is it], which clotted in his blood, so he dead Al-Qifṭī, ‘Alī ibn Yūsuf (2005). Shams al-Dīn, Ibrāhīm (ed.). Ikhbār al-‘Ulamā’ bi-akhbār al-ḥukamā’ (tr. The biographies and the books of the great philosophers) (in Arabic) (1st ed.). Lebanon: Dar al-kotob al-Ilmiyah. http://islamport.com/w/trj/Web/295/161.htm

This is all about Al-Kindi, as I said their was no evidence that he was one of Mu’tazilite, actually Hoodbhoy gives an example of his Mu’tazilitism by saying that he interpret a verse from Quran ’rationally’:

To give an example of the allegorical reasoning that AI-Kindi believed in, consider verse L V5 of the Qur’an. In this passage, the believer is told that the sun, moon, stars, mountains, trees and beasts ’bow themselves’ before God. For the unsophisticated, this invokes an image wherein all creation literally bends in prayer. But AI-Kindi gave an elaborate linguistic argument that the Arabic word for ’bow’ should be understood as meaning ’obey’. Thus, the naive picture of universal worship should instead be understood as the universal obedience to God’s will. Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 111.

I’m not sure where Hoodbhoy read this, as I said I couldn’t a digital format of his source, but anyway this is not a rational interpretion at all rather a regular one. Give a look at Al-Baghawi’s Taffsir, and hi is a one of the top fundamentalists in Islam:

The prostration was said that it was in the sense of obedience, for there is no inanimate object that isnot obedient to God, submissive, and has a glorifying one for him Al-Baghawi, A. ū. M. ḥ. (1100). The Interpretation of al Hajj: 18. Tafisr Qura’n. https://quran4all.net/ar/tafsir/4/22/18

Averroes, Ibn Rushed (1126-1189)

Hoodbhoy says:

Ibn Rushd, as Qazi of Seville and later Cordova, became the victim of political intrigues and a target for the orthodoxy. When the Caliph Abu Yaqub died in 1184, and was succeeded by his son Abu Yusuf, Ibn Rushd soon fell out of favour. A prohibition was issued against the study oflogic and science by order of the Caliph. Ibn Rushd was eventually banned from Cordova and was unceremoniously carted off to a small provincial town together with other students of philosophy. All his books, except for some strictly scientific ones, were ordered burnt. It was only towards the end of the 12th century that he was restored to favour, and returned to Marrakesh to die Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 114. .

I’m speechless in correcting this, I have no choice so I’ll translate subchapter from Ibn Rušd biography This biography is from Al-Jabri, Muhammad Abed (1998). Ibn Rushd: Sīra wa-Fikr (ابن رشد: سيرة وفكر) [Ibn Rushd: life and thought]. Center for Arab Unity Studies. pp. 62-64 Al-Jabri is one of the contemporary philosophers and thinkers, and he devoted a part of his research to the study of Ibn Rushd .

A lot ot translated books tried to guess the reasons of Averroes’ catastrophe, and all of it is nothing but guesses attempt to discover the real accusation that Averroes was sued for. It was “Things in his books, it was said that it was written by his own hands” and one of these “things” is that he descried the giraffe in his book “The Animal” and said “I’ve seen it in the royal court of Barber kind” which frustrated Khalifa Abd al-Muʾmin al-Manṣūr of him, and this funny story continues and make up that Averroes tried to apologist for that, and he said to al-Manṣūr that he meant king of Birin Birin (Arabic: بِرِين) means the two lands in Arabic, refering to the Land of Morocco and Andalusia. not of Barbr but the reader confused it with barbar.

And this is completely false story, as The Animal Book was written in Sevilla in 565 hāʾ, as Averroes said himself, it was when he was a judge for Abi Youssef Y’qoub, about 6 years before al-Manṣūr governess, and 15 years before the court.

[…]

However, the writer of Mu’jab Refering to Abdel Wahid al-Marrakushi, The history of the Almohades, preceded by a sketch of the history of Spain from the time of the conquest till the reign of Yúsof ibn-Téshúfin, and of the history of the Almoravides, ed. R.P.A. Dozy, 1968 (reprint of the second edition, Leyden 1881; first edition Leyden 1847) that we made a use of before, suggested two reasons: one great and the other cryptic and it is the main reason, he says “It was the great antagonism of al-Manṣūr because Averroes didn’t served him in the best way that a Khalifa used to be served with” and he mention the giraffe story which, as we mentioned above, is very inaccurate and has a lot of contradictions. And the ’cryptic’ reason (the main one) is because Averroes said that Venus is a god, and we excluded this possibility because it isn’t relatable to him at all.

We have only two possibilities try to understand the reason of the catastrophe:

One of them is that it was a pretext, and the main reason —indirect reason— is Manṣūr’s aversion to Averroes because Averroes used to tell him that his behavior is not inappropriate to a king, and what was said the Cordoba philosopher wasn’t complimenting him enough, instead he used to talk to him like “listen to me, my brother!”.

And the second one is what historians were unanimous on, that people of Cordoba didn’t like Averroes at all because he had been better than them, they envied and competed with him in the proximity to the Khalifa. […]

Al-Jabri after that continues to explain the reason that he think is the real one, and it is a book on politics, in which Ibn Rushd appears criticize the rule of al-Mansur. You can observe the following: There is no any exist of a war between orthodox fundamentalists and a rationalist Averroes but three possibilities:

  1. Averroes criticized al-Manṣūr policy in his book of politics.
  2. People of Cordoba made up an affliction between Ibn Rushd and al-Manṣūr by deliberately misunderstanding his words on Venus.
  3. The Caliph punished Ibn Rushd because he did not praise him well.

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)

Hoodbhoy says:

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. Ibid, pp. 116.

It seems that Hoodboy couldn’t find anything about the infidelity of Ibn Khaldoun, as he was loved by most of people in his ages, even by fundamentalists in our days, I don’t know who are the Arab racialists and the extreme orthodox that he talks about, however he give us an example:

  • Taha Husain, the modernist Egyptian scholar, describes Ibn Khaldun as a man with an obnoxiously inflated ego and a dishonest rationalist who merely masqueraded as a Muslim.

So, Taha Husain The biggest enemy of Azhar and the fundamentalists in the 1990s, who criticized political Islam in such a way that Muslims themselves doubted his faith.. is one of the Arab racialists and the extreme orthodox. I’ve no comment on that.

Conclusion

The Holy War

You might notice that I didn’t give a response to Hoodbhoy’s claims about Avicenna and al-Razi, and that’s because: I couldn’t find any relabel biography for al-Razi, I didn’t find also any reference that talked about Hoodbhoy’s claim about his blindness, however I found that one of the greatest fundamentalists in Islam, Imam Zahbi, Praises Abu Bakr Al-Razi, which means he couldn’t be a heretic.

And the reason for skipping Avicenna (Ibn Sina) is that he is the one that could be named a ’heretic’, I’m not the one to talk about his, but the main point is that the mean reason that made a lot of fundamentalists accuse him of infidelity is his issues with sufi metaphysics (Arabic: وِحْدَّة الوُجودِ) it was not related to his science at all, even Ibn Taymiyyah, the godfather of Sahwa, fundamentalists and even terrorists movements, absolved him of infidelity after he had read in ibn Khallikān’s biography about him that he “have repent of all of his late heresy” تيمية, ب. أ., & العيساوي, أ. (2020). ‫مجموع الفتاوى: العقيدة الجزء الرابع كتاب مفصل الاعتقاد‬ (Arabic Edition). Ketab. , however Hoodbhoy prefers to believe that they just didn’t like that he was doing science and medicine, which is insanity.

Underdevelopment

I do have a problem with Hoodbhoy’s presumed causes of underdevelopment in the Islamic world, as I said before, the Islamic Its presentation was and is still vulnerable to colonial and imperial movements and political upheavals, all of this affect the whole educational process. As I said before, people of Syria won’t probably think about doing science while Israel bombs Damascus.

Footnotes:

1

Hoodbhoy, P. (1991). Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. Zed Books.

2

Liu, J. (2010, September 15). Muslim Brotherhood and Jama’at-i Islami. Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project. https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/15/muslim-networks-and-movements-in-western-europe-muslim-brotherhood-and-jamaat-i-islami/

3

Chomsky, N. (2004). On Religion and Politics, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amina Chaudary. Islamica Magazine. https://chomsky.info/200704__/:

The attitude toward Islam is quite complex. The U.S. has always supported the most extreme fundamentalist Islamic movements and still does. The oldest and most valued ally of the U.S. in the Arab world is Saudi Arabia, which is also the most extremist fundamentalist state. By comparison, Iran looks like a free democratic society – but Saudi Arabia was doing its job. The enemy for most of this period has been secular nationalism. U.S.-Israeli relations, for example, really firmed up in 1967 when Israel performed a real service for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Namely, it smashed the main center of secular nationalism, (Gamal Abdul) Nasser’s Egypt, which was considered a threat and more or less at war with Saudi Arabia at the time. It was threatening to use the huge resources of the region for the benefit of the population of the countries of the region, and not to fill the pockets of some rich tyrant while vast profits flowed to Western corporations.

4

Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 52

5

Ibid, pp. 53.

6

Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 53.

7

Keddie, N. R. (1983). An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani” (Volume 21) (Near Eastern Center, UCLA) (First ed.). University of California Press, pp. 17.

8

الأعمال الكاملة للإمام الشّيْخ محمَّد عَبْده: ترجمة جمال الدين الأفغاني. (ca. 1899). Quran Link. https://www.quran.link/books/89/101/

9

Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 63.

10

Bayhaqi, A. ’.-H. (1154). Tarikh Hokmaa Al Islam [Bayhaqi’s history]. مطبة الترقي. https://shamela.ws/book/273/5

11

Usaybi’Ah, I. A., van Gelder, J. G., & Cockrell, S. H. (2020). Anecdotes and Antidotes: A Medieval Arabic History of Physicians (Oxford World’s Classics) (Abridged ed.). Oxford University Press. http://islamport.com/w/tkh/Web/340/199.htm

12

Al-Qifṭī, ‘Alī ibn Yūsuf (2005). Shams al-Dīn, Ibrāhīm (ed.). Ikhbār al-‘Ulamā’ bi-akhbār al-ḥukamā’ (tr. The biographies and the books of the great philosophers) (in Arabic) (1st ed.). Lebanon: Dar al-kotob al-Ilmiyah. http://islamport.com/w/trj/Web/295/161.htm

13

Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 111.

14

Al-Baghawi, A. ū. M. ḥ. (1100). The Interpretation of al Hajj: 18. Tafisr Qura’n. https://quran4all.net/ar/tafsir/4/22/18

15

Hoodbhoy, P. (1991), ibid, pp. 114.

16

This biography is from Al-Jabri, Muhammad Abed (1998). Ibn Rushd: Sīra wa-Fikr (ابن رشد: سيرة وفكر) [Ibn Rushd: life and thought]. Center for Arab Unity Studies. pp. 62-64 Al-Jabri is one of the contemporary philosophers and thinkers, and he devoted a part of his research to the study of Ibn Rushd

17

Birin (Arabic: بِرِين) means the two lands in Arabic, refering to the Land of Morocco and Andalusia.

18

Refering to Abdel Wahid al-Marrakushi, The history of the Almohades, preceded by a sketch of the history of Spain from the time of the conquest till the reign of Yúsof ibn-Téshúfin, and of the history of the Almoravides, ed. R.P.A. Dozy, 1968 (reprint of the second edition, Leyden 1881; first edition Leyden 1847)

19

Ibid, pp. 116.

20

تيمية, ب. أ., & العيساوي, أ. (2020). ‫مجموع الفتاوى: العقيدة الجزء الرابع كتاب مفصل الاعتقاد‬ (Arabic Edition). Ketab.


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