Amir Amin

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Eurocentrism 44 copies The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World
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24

El Capitalismo En La Era De La Globalizacion 23 copies Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral
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Accumulation on a World Scale 13 copies Spectres of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions 12 copies Neo-colonialism in West Africa 12 copies Dynamics of Global Crisis 10 copies Imperialism and Unequal Development 9 copies The Maghreb in the modern world: Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco; (Penguin
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Beyond US Hegemony?: Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World

copies 6 copies

The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Class and Nation: Historically and in the Current Crisis 6 copies Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggles (Middle East series ; no. 2)
copies 5

The Future of Maoism 5 copies The Law of Worldwide Value: Second Edition 4 copies Delinking: Towards a Polycentric World 4 copies Empire of Chaos 4 copies A Life Looking Forward: Memoirs of an Independent Marxist 4 copies Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure (The United Nations 3 copies Europe and the Arab World: Patterns and Prospects for the New Relationship 3 copies Obsolescent Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder 3 copies Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism? 3 copies The Law of Value and Historical Materialism 3 copies Aid to Africa: Redeemer or Coloniser? 3 copies Re-Reading the Postwar Period: An Intellectual Itinerary 2 copies Oltre la mondializzazione 1 copy Sulla transizione 1 copy Global History 1 copy Le fiabe del capitale. A centocinquant'anni dal maifesto comunista 1 copy Transforming the Revolution 1 copy

The Liberal Virus Permanent War and the Americanization of the World
Amin, Samir

Publisher: Monthly Review Press Year Published: 2004 Pages: 144 pp ISBN: 1-58367-107-2 Resource Type: Book Cx Number: CX8631 Argues that the ongoing American project to dominate the world through military force has its roots in European liberalism, but has developed certain features of liberal ideology in a new and uniquely dangerous form.

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Catalogue of more than 10,000 books, articles, films, periodicals, websites and other resources. Indexed by Author, Title, Format, Subject, Dewey number, Library of Congress classification, Year of Publication. Associations and NGOs dealing with social and environmental issues A-Z Index or Subject Index. For experts and media spokespersons also see the Sources directory and the comprehensive Sources Subject Index. Selected Internet resources featuring information about alternatives. Events from across Canada. Also see: Sources Calendar and news releases. Resources, publications and articles to help you get publicity and raise awareness. Plus Media Names & Numbers Canadian media directory, the Parliamentary Names & Numbers Canadian government directory, and mailing lists. Connexions welcomes your support. Your donations make our work possible. Volunteers always welcome. Connexions exists to support individuals and groups working for freedom and social justice. We work to maintain and make available a record of the theory and practice of people struggling against oppression and for social change. We believe that the more we know about the struggles, victories, and defeats of the past, and about those who took part in them, the better equipped we will be to bring a new world into being. Connexions maintains a physical archive of books and documents, and is engaged in an ongoing project to build and expand an indexed digital archive of documents. We try to feature a wide variety of resources reflecting a diversity of viewpoints and approaches to social change within our overall mandate of support for democracy, civil liberties, freedom of expression, universal human rights, secularism, equality, economic justice, environmental responsibility, and the creation and preservation of community. We are internationalist in our orientation, but as a Canadian-based project we feature an especially extensive collection of Canadian documents and profiles of Canadian activist organizations. Some materials in Connexions are copyrighted by their authors or creators. Others are in the public domain or copyright Connexions. Materials for which Connexions holds the copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non-commercial - No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License. Indexing and search applications are by Ulli Diemer, Chris DeFreitas, and Henri Nzounkeu.

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Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a global failure - By Samir Amin (1990)

Contents: Introduction: why a political analysis? Notes 1. Africa's economic backwardness
Sources and methods for the analysis South of the Sahara The origins of Africa's agricultural failure Analysing the exploitation of peasants North Africa and the Arab world: from statism to comprador capitalism False analyses, false solutions Conceptions of Africa's agricultural development: a critique Industrialization and the agricultural revolution Notes

2. The decade of drift: 1975-1985

The excitement of the Bandung plan (1955-73) The battle for a new international economic order (NIEO): 1974-1980 Structural costs; the stakes; the struggle for the NIEO Africa: from the Lagos plan (1980) to the world bank plan and the United Nations Conference (1986) Debt and the threat of a financial crash The efforts of radical African nationalism: adjustment or delinking? Notes

3. The crisis of state

Nation-state and the ideology of nation in crisis' Ethnicity: myth and reality The cultural dimension of development in Africa and the third world The cultural dimension: the example of the crisis in the arab world today - the end of the Nahda? New forms of the social movement Notes

4. Complexities of international relations: Africa's vulnerability and external intervention

African economies' vulnerability vis--vis the challenge of capitalism's new worldwide expansion Some specific aspects of Africa's economic integration in the world system, ACP-EEC association and Euro-American mercantile conflict Special links with France: the Franc zone Evolution in Euro-Arab relations: interwoven economics and politics Conflict and national and regional security in Africa The Middle East conflict in a world perspective Africa and the Arab world in the world system Notes

5. Alternative development for Africa and the third world

Inequality in income distribution the centre and periphery The alternative: popular national development, social and political democracy, delinking Obstacles to popular national, autocentric and delinked development Notes

6. Political and social conditions for alternative development in the third world
Impossibility of the bourgeois national state in the peripheries of the world system Inequality in the worldwide expansion of capitalism; the state's central role The worldwide spread of value A return to the third world? The consequences of unequal development The issue of democracy The historical subject of the popular national option; the role of the intelligentsia Notes

7. Inter-African and south-south co-operation

Pan-Africanism in the light of the colonial inheritance The problematic of the Arab nation Afro-arab co-operation Prospects for south-south co-operation Notes

8. A polycentric world favourable to development: a possibility?

The scope and stakes of the global crisis Conservative forces' offensive The difficulties of forecasting The real options for the peoples of the West Options for socialist societies and east-west relations The genuine long-term option, transnationalization or a polycentric world and broad autocentric regions Conclusion: a crisis of transnationalization, ideology and development theory Notes

www.rrojasdatabank.info/uu32me00.htm

General Editor: Samir Amin THE UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY/THIRD WORLD FORUM STUDIES IN AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY The United Nations University's (UNU) Project on the Third World and World Development aims to study contemporary global developments from the perspective of the South: ongoing trends and structural changes in the world-system are analysed in terms of their consequences for the different regions of the third world and their implications for development strategies and policy options that the developing countries can pursue, singly and collectively through SouthSouth co-operation. Through an interdisciplinary and global comparative framework, the Project integrates the UNU's previous research work on the regional perspectives of Africa, Asia, and Latin America - research which has been undertaken over the last decade and has involved, worldwide, hundreds of researchers organized into regional networks. (The Studies in African Political Economy series grew out of the work of the African regional network as part of an earlier UNU project, Transnationalization or Nation-Building in Africa.) The comparative research into the different regions' experiences of the 1980s provides a basis for comprehending their expectations for the 1990s and for formulating development strategies that would be fully cognizant of the changes that hew occurred at all levels of the global system. Those changes have been analyzed in this Project through five main themes: the process of transnationalization, the crisis of states, the emergence of social movements, the cultural dimension of contemporary developments, and conflicts and the possibilities of co-operation in the third world.
archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu32me/uu32me00.htm

Copyright (c) 2002 University of Oregon Oregon Law Review

SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS AND LATCRIT COMMUNITY: The Law Stood Squarely on Its Head: U.S. Legal Doctrine, Indigenous Self-Determination and the Question of World Order
Fall, 2002 81 Or. L. Rev. 663

Author WARD CHURCHILL* Excerpt As anyone who has ever debated or negotiated with U.S. officials on matters concerning American Indian land rights can attest, the federal government's first position is invariably that its title to/authority over its territoriality was acquired incrementally, mostly through provisions of cession contained in some 400 treaties with Indians ratified by the Senate between 1778 and 1871.n1 When it is pointed out that the U.S. n2 has violated the terms of every one of the treaties at issue, thus voiding whatever title might otherwise have accrued therefrom, there are usually a few moments of thundering silence.n3 The official position, publicly framed by perennial "federal Indian expert" Leonard Garment as recently as 1999, is then shifted onto different grounds: "If you don't accept the treaties as valid, we'll have to fall back on the Doctrine of Discovery and Rights of Conquest." n4 This rejoinder, to all appearances, is meant to be crushing, forestalling further discussion of a topic so obviously inconvenient to the status quo. While the idea that the U.S. obtained title to its "domestic sphere" by discovery and conquest has come to hold immense currency among North America's settler population, one finds that the international legal doctrines from which such notions derive are all but unknown, even among those holding degrees in law, history or political philosophy. The small cadre of arguable exceptions to the rule have for the most part not bothered to become acquainted with the relevant doctrines in their original or customary formulations, ...
1. litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?...

Copyright (c) 1994 Utah Law Review Society Utah Law Review

SYMPOSIUM: The International Style in Postwar Law and Policy

1994 1994 Utah L. Rev. 7
Author
David Kennedy *

Excerpt

I. From Kelsen to Jackson: International Policy Pragmatism

To bemoan the shortcomings of the international political class remains a commonplace in much contemporary commentary on international law and policy. The indictment: as ever broader dimensions of public life have come to be discussed in international terms, the terms of the discussion have become ever narrower and more technocratic. International regimes seem too weak to pursue a political program of their own, or even to withstand serious challenge, while being too technocratic to respond adequately to the political needs of national clients or the democratic participation of citizens. This Article is a study of the intellectual sensibilities of the largely liberal mainstream international postWorld War II intelligentsia. My aim is to articulate the network of ideas--sometimes critical, sometimes utopian, sometimes descriptive--which, in the international arena, produce this rather common sense of technocratic inevitability and of the need for political renewal. Although the combination of technocratic strength and political weakness is, in some sense, undeniable as a description of the contemporary international system, I end up skeptical of both those who would right the balance by rejuvenating the international political machinery and those who would have us bow to the inevitability of the technocratic. As I read the consciousness of the international intelligentsia, these common sense observations and criticisms have somehow grown up together as part of a common puzzle, as if there were a division of labor between two sensibilities--one which holds out the political as a promise, ...

Maldevelopment - Anatomy of a global failure

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Obstacles to popular national, autocentric and delinked development

The obstacles to the implementation of these principles are obvious. But are they unstoppable? What are the most serious obstacles? We can think of five.4 a) The obstacle of size, especially of the African countries, is evident. But it has much greater impact on industry than on agriculture. In fact many of the immediate problems facing agriculture could be solved by direct action at the base, and by the base. Undoubtedly, solution of these problems would require some materials to be imported if they cannot be supplied by local industry. The obstacle here is less the impossibility of supplying the means than the social framework imposed by the global strategy. If the role of agriculture is to provide a surplus for at best - an unrelated industrialization or, more often, parasitic consumption, it is useless to expect rural mobilization, since an attempt is being made to smash the peasants' autarky not to improve their lot but to exploit them. The methods envisaged reveal this option: a preference for huge dams and enclosed settlements, plantations for the multinationals and the green revolution associated with modernized large and medium scale properties (driving the poor peasants off the land), state farms and cooperatives, imposing on the country the crops and techniques that produce an increasing surplus. These methods suit the agribusiness supplies of inputs; but they

are extremely expensive and of dubious efficiency, owing to the very factor of peasant resistance. A diffused progress, based on thousands of small improvements - assured water supply for small holdings, intensive agriculture and livestock, among others, calls for an entirely different social framework and an overall strategy that does not aim at securing an increasing surplus from the peasants. Size is not much of an obstacle at this stage. And it can be seen that some of the large African countries, where this obstacle does not exist, do no better than the others. This obstacle should not prevent the beginning of an autocentric industrialization, at least for the countries with a population of more than five million. Undoubtedly the industrialization for these countries would not be 'complete' and would not avoid fairly heavy dependence on imports. Moreover, the obstacle could be lessened by intra-African co-operation, founded on planned complementarities. But this co-operation is incompatible with the 'common market' formula that encourages rather than reduces inequalities. b) The effort required of Africa to achieve the agricultural revolution is gigantic. The problem of the agricultural revolution in the contemporary Third World is in no way comparable with that Europe faced in centuries gone by. Development economists nearly always forget that the European agricultural revolution involved a vast movement of expulsion from the rural areas. At the time the migration had two trump cards to play: the industry of the day had jobs on offer out of all proportion to the jobs available in modern industry; and Europe had an outlet in overseas emigration that is closed now days to the Third World. It suffices to recall that the regions inhabited through European migration (the American continent, Australia and New Zealand, white South Africa...) have nowadays ten times the population of the regions of Europe where these populations originated to see the difficulties population pressures would have meant for Europe in the absence of the migration. In today's Third World the agricultural revolution has to be made at the same time as the majority of the population must for some time to come be maintained in the countryside. This is still possible in South and South-East Asia, and in China, and in some regions of Africa. But already, as in the Arab and Latin American countries' urbanization is accelerating at such a rate that it will be too late to do it tomorrow. c) Advanced, sometimes maniacal, urbanization is a new and additional obstacle. In this case, what has been said of relations between agriculture and industry is also true of relations between the modern urban activities and the so-called 'informal' sectors. In other words, forms of useful activity that show low productivity must be rediscovered to ensure the long transition. The latter must not be conceived as the source of financing for the other activities, as is the case in current capitalist relations, where the 'modem' sector benefits from super-exploitation of the 'informal' sector and it is the latter that supplies cheap components for reproduction of the labour force. The relation must be reversed. d) Integration in the world system is of itself an obstacle. This integration benefits those centres that have peripheries - whether true colonies or not - to contribute to their own accumulation, while the peripheries - who are not in a position to exploit colonies in turn! - are expected to do the same. Undoubtedly the external obstacle would have been lessened if the demands the Third

World formulated in the plan for a 'New International Economic Order' had been met. To be sure the NIEO was not in itself an autocentric strategy, since it was basically a revision of the international division of labour on terms beneficial to the South. But this improvement in the resources available to the South might have been put to use in making autocentric development less difficult. The NIEO plan was aimed at changing for the better the mode of Third World integration in the world system, by 'adjustment' of the North to the demands of the South's development. It is clear that the fight has to be fought on two grounds, the long-term strategy, which must be for delinking, and the medium-term strategy, which aims at reducing the damaging effects of the world system as it is. e) If the internal factor is decisive, it is in the sense that in the final analysis the real obstacle is emphatically social, since autocentric development sacrifices the privileged growth of the middle classes. The adjustment policies proposed serve to reinforce these classes, through the liberalization of prices and transfers, for example. The aim is obviously political; it is a matter of reinforcing the class allies of international capital, of creating a 'comprador' state and society. In the remaining chapters we shall return in greater detail to the conditions for national and popular development, the internal factors (popular alliance, democracy, new state, and so on, in Chapter 6) and the external factors (South-South co-operation, in Chapter 7: favourable international evolution, in Chapter 8). Meanwhile, is there something positive to be done? a) Returning to the example of the CILSS, it should be noted that the advantage of the position taken by the Arab Bank for the Development of African States (BADEA) is that it does not, in the ingenuous way of the World Bank, assume that the world environment is by definition 'favourable'. On the contrary BADEA seeks to define the relations between the (more or less favourable) modes of integration in the world system and the possible modes of agricultural development. From this point of view it is easy to identify two approaches, each in its way extreme, and possibly a provisional compromise solution. The first extreme approach: acceptance of the current forms of integration in the world system, depending on mining or oil royalties (when there are any!) or exporting tropical agriculture, and seeking to develop import substitution industry on this basis. This is ultimately the World Bank option. But it is a mediocre one, as history shows. Moreover, this option is a dire prospect for the regions without mining or tropical agricultural potential. For the Sahel it means famine and beggary, with an effort to make them the least explosive possible by preserving the archaic structures of the rural universe and crowning them with a naturally despotic comprador state. The second extreme approach: delinking through national and popular revolution, strengthened by regional, or African, unity. In the long run there is no other answer.

Meanwhile is it possible to imagine a better form of integration in the world system and agricultural development? A better world integration is possible if one is able, in regard to: i) mining or oil royalties, to impose a new negotiated, stable and 'acceptable' guaranteed level, with good popular management of this income to avoid the pure and simple waste that commonly occurs; ii) agriculture, to complement the effort to export specific tropical crops (with arrangements ensuring stable remunerative prices) through an effort to develop food and similar crops (dry-farmed and irrigated cereals, fruit and vegetables, extensive and intensive livestock, fish) for the local market and in the expectation of greater South-South trade, especially between the African and Arab countries; iii) industries, to move out of the narrow horizon of substitution light industry on small country scale to a complementary programme of machine tools and light industry on the scale of a group of associated countries. As an example, the iron mining in Mauritania could serve as the basis for ship construction giving Senegal, whose maritime role is obvious, a place in the establishment of West African merchant shipping and ensuring genuine industrialization of fishing. Better agricultural development for a region such as the Sahel also requires relinquishment of archaic structures, without thinking that marginalizing them through the emergence of a kulak class would meet the challenge. The middle road is acceptance of some measure of 'inequality', but on a regional rather than social basis. Does common sense not suggest that it is easier to bring one million peasants from yields of one to ten tonnes than to bring five million people in the countryside from one to two tonnes? But this option implies a concentration on the 'best regions', those suitable for irrigation to ensure a constant supply of water, without prejudice as to the kind of irrigation (large, medium or small-scale hydraulic). The accent should be on policies to reduce social inequality in the areas of advance. As for the regional inequalities, could we not reduce their breadth by national policies of redistribution and by migration from one rural area to another? There are, of course many obstacles to the options proposed by BADEA. An enumeration of them would provide a snapshot of the current situation: (i) defence by the former colonial powers (who retain great influence in Africa) of the routine interests of the old colonization (commercial trading companies, for example): (ii) the fragility of states and corruption of the ruling classes (and hence waste...); (iii) micro-nationalism as an obstacle to regional cooperation; and (iv) financing difficulties, inherent in any strategy conceived within the framework of worldwide expansion but capable of being lessened through better use of income and South-South financial co-operation (which goes much further then 'add' end includes financial associations). b) It is also always possible to act, even in a medium size and exposed country, provided that great care is taken as to what can be achieved within modest bounds. In a first step no more can be expected than to reduce external vulnerability (by avoiding worsening the pressures of the double deficit in public expenditure and external commitments) and to reinforce national and popular support. A participatory democracy, direct involvement of the communities in preparing and managing small projects, denial by the state of seeking immediate profits from them (at this stage the profits must revert in their entirety to the communities at the base), reinforcement of an

international policy of non-alignment and South-South co-operation, are undoubtedly the chapter headings of a viable programme. The late President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, chose this option. Is it surprising that he was assassinated in circumstances that left the blame for their authorship open to doubt?

Notes
1. Amin, Samir, 'Democracy and National strategy in the Periphery'. Third World Quarterly. October 1987; 'Comments on Senghaas', (SUNY) Review, No. I. 1988 2. For the technical significance of Lorenz curves and the Gini coefficients see Chapter3 of the original French text of La dconnexion, Paris. La Dcouverte, 1986. Or an English version of the chapter published by the Research Foundation of the State University of New York as Amin, Samir, 'Income Distribution in the Capitalist System', Review. 8. 1. Summer 1984, 3-28. 3. Amin, Samir, Delinking, Zed Books 1989; Samir Amin's preface to Mansour, Fawzy, The Third World Revolt in preparation, Amin, Samir, 'On the intelligentsia'. Qadaya Fikriyya, 1988 (in Arabic). 4. See introduction to Amin, Samir, (ed.) Modern Migrations in Western Africa, BADEA, Rapport sur le Sahel. 1985.

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The Struggle for Democracy, Issa Shivji, Dar-es-Salaam, 2003

The Struggle for Democracy

Issa Shivji, Dar-es-Salaam, 2003 The contemporary neo-liberal discourse has one fundamental blind spot. It treats the present as if the present has had no history. The discourse on democracy in Africa suffers from the same blindness. The struggle for democracy did not begin with the post-cold war introduction of multi-party system. The independence and liberation struggles for self-determination, beginning in the post-world war period, were eminently a struggle for democracy. Neither formal independence nor the victory of armed liberation movements marked the end of democratic struggles. They continued, albeit in different forms. The struggle for democracy is primarily a political struggle on the form of governance, thus involving the reconstitution of the state. No one claims that democracy means and aims at social emancipation. Rather it is located on the terrain of political liberalism so, at best, creating

conditions for the emancipatory project. This is important to emphasize in the light of the hegemony of neo-liberal discourse which tends to emasculate democracy of its social and historical dimensions and present it as an ultimate nirvana. On these premises, although liberation was no doubt a democratic struggle, its articulation as a struggle for liberation gave democracy a social dimension, which the neo-liberal ideology eschews and avoids. In turn, the tension between political democracy and social emancipation constantly beleaguered the liberation and independence movements. This tension inevitably got enmeshed in the cold-war ideological confrontation between the two power blocks under respective superpowers. The cold war confrontation not only disfigured the liberation and democratic discourse in Africa, it turned the newly and fledging independent states into pawns, and the continent into a chessboard, of proxy hot wars. The consequences of those hot wars have been devastating for the continent. Today s failed states were once upon a time the darlings or demons depending on the point of view you take of global hegemonic powers. Military coups became the order of the day in the 60s and 70s. The targets were nationalist regimes, which wanted to carve out an independent space and give their sovereignty a modicum of reality. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the American and Belgium manipulation and involvement (Blum 1986, 174). A surrogate regime of Mobutu was put in place. The Congo, and its people, including, neighboring states in Central Africa have since seen no peace. Kwame Nkrumah, who early realized the importance of continental unity and the curse of imperial exploitation through multinationals, was overthrown in a CIA engineered coup (ibid., 223). That country too has not totally regained stability and development since. Between January 1956 and the end of 1985 there were sixty successful coups in Africa, that is, an average of two every year (Hutchful 1991, 183). In 1966 alone there were eight military coup d etat and by 1986, out of some 50 African states, only 18 were under civilian rule (Nyong o 1998, 78). Behind virtually every coup was the hand of one or the other imperial power, and, more often than not, the US. Overthrowing nationalist regimes and installing tyrannical dictatorships was, then, a fair game for today s champions of democracy and good governance ! The regimes, which for various reasons, escaped the fate of military take-over inevitably turned authoritarian one-party states under some or the other form of developmentalist rhetoric (see, generally, Shivji 1986). The one-party rule and curbing of individual freedoms was presented as a trade-off between democracy and development. Even that trade-off did not work. Unlike a Cuba in the socialist sphere or a South Korea in the capitalist sphere, none of the African states was able to wrench itself free of the neo-colonial economic structures imposed by colonialism and perpetuated by the imperial world market. By the end of 1970s, many African states, regardless of the nature of their states or their economic policies or ideological orientation, found themselves in deep economic crisis with high debts, low or negative growth rates, hyper inflation and massive transfers of surpluses through various ways, to the developed North. Meanwhile, the North, the US and Europe, was smarting under Reaganite and Thatcherite economics and politics (see Hobsbwam 1994, ch. 8). The general swing towards the right gripped even the social democratic northern Europe. The humiliating defeat in Vietnam, the newly-found power of the oil-producing countries in OPEC and the 1979 Iranian revolution dealt a heavy body blow to the hegemony of imperialism, in particular to the United States. Thus the Second Cold War in which the Reagan-Thatcher neo-liberal axis not only further fuelled the fires of ideological warriorism but also rabid anti-Third Worldism, which was directed equally against nationalist and self-identified socialist regimes (Hobsbawm ibid., 247 et. seq.) .The combination of economic crisis at home and the rise of neo-liberalism globally made many an African country a ready victim of the IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes or SAPs. SAP came with its stringent conditionalties liberalization of markets, balancing of budgets, removal of subsidies, so-called cost-sharing in the provision of social services, etc.. African states, including the most nationalist among them like Tanzania, were in no position to resist. They eventually gave in, wreaking havoc in the already fragile economies on the one hand, and the welfare of the most disadvantaged of their people, on the other (Mwanza ed., 1992). Import-substitution industrialization, which had been one of the developmental planks of the nationalist period, was virtually wiped out as industry after industry was bankrupted, unable to withstand the imports of cheap goods. Agriculture stagnated. There was little the governments could do beyond exhorting the peasants to work harder. Social indicators like education, health, water and electricity began to decline. In short, SAPs sapped whatever vitality there was in the fragile African economies (see, generally, Gibbon ed. 1993, Mongula 1994, Mamdani 1994). Even the moderate social achievements of the nationalist period in education, health, and water. were swept away.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the first Gulf War, marked another phase in the political come-back of imperial hegemony, or, what Furedi has called, the moral rehabilitation of imperialism (Furedi 1994). If in SAPs imperial powers and the IFIs had flexed and applied their economic muscles, in the post-cold war democracy crusade, they aggressively and uncompromisingly applied their political muscles. Political conditionalities were added to economic conditionalities, while economic conditionalities were upgraded to include privatization of not only parastatals but also services water, electricity, communication, education, etc. Multi-party democracy, human rights, good governance , poverty reduction became the buzz words of the discourse, now renamed, policy dialogues .

Hegemonic ideologies and dominant elites were not without their critiques. Nationalism of the middle class which came to power on the morrow of independence was severely rebuked by Frantz Fanon (.1963). Fanon roared and young intellectuals echoed him all over the continent. The national middle class which takes over power at the end of the colonial regime is an under-developed middle class. It has practically no economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace. (pp. 119120) It follows the Western bourgeoisie along its path of negation and decadence without ever having emulated it in its first stages of exploration and invention, stages which are an acquisition of that Western bourgeoisie whatever the circumstances. In its beginnings, the national bourgeoisie of the colonial countries identifies itself with the decadence of the bourgeoisie of the West. We need not think that it is jumping ahead; it is in fact beginning at the end. It is already senile before it has come to know the petulance, the fearlessness or the will to succeed of youth. (p.123) Developmentalism, or, what was called socialism in some places, found its critiques in theories of dependency and underdevelopment. Samir Amin (1990), Walter Rodney (1972), the young intellectuals of the Dar Campus, all vigorously debated with the mainstream American paradigms of political science centering around modernization and nation-building (Cliffe and Saul eds., 1973). . Multi-party and liberal democracy immediately elicited even a more passionate search for real democracy. A spate of publications in the 1980s on popular struggles and social movements countering top-down civil society approaches became popular for a while but was not sustained (Nyong o ed. 1987). SAPs too were subjected to academic research and intellectual scrutiny, though, more often than not, by this time, home-grown critiques were beginning to wear thin (Mwanza ed., op.cit., 1992, Gibbon ed., op.cit.) . The neo-liberal discourse, if it deserves that respectability, appears much more dominant today. Consultancy, the so-called policy-dialogues, NGOs and human rights have sucked in radical intelligentsia giving charlatans and policy-advisers the intellectual field-day. But to the credit of African radicalism, the apparent intellectual hegemony is more a pretence than a reality. A few critiques have continued to challenge it, albeit ignored, at worst, or acknowledged as tokens, at best. But the matter of social change and transformation is not simply one of discourse. The struggle for democracy is ultimately rooted in the lifeconditions of the people. In the debates of the 60s and 70s, radical political economy, with its concepts of class and modes of production, placed on the centre stage the real struggles of popular classes and oppressed masses, notwithstanding that it remained an elite, and very often an elitist project. People were posited as the agency and drivers of change, as opposed to the state. The neo-liberal discourse is bereft of any such theoretical rigour or political vision. Popular classes and masses have been turned into a helpless lump of poor waiting with bowls in their hand to receive poverty reduction funds while the so-called private sector is paraded as the locomotive of development. Curiously, the dialectic opposite of the poor is not the rich but the donors ! The analytical question is not how-the- poor-became-poor and continue to be so , but rather how many are poor, moderately poor, very poor and how long would it take to eradicate poverty? As I said before, the neoliberal discourse is not only blind to history but utterly oblivious of agency of change. It is par excellence the ideology , nay, the propaganda of, for and by the vested interests of the status quo. And it is on this ahistorical and asocial terrain that the discourse on governance, (that is good governance and bad governance ) is constructed. Theoretical Treatment of Governance What is the conceptual status of good governance ? At the minimum, liberal and radical paradigms would agree that governance refers to the institutions and relations to do with political power: the way political power is exercised and legitimized. In other words, governance is constructed primarily on the terrain of power. Thus articulated, the values and principles by which governance would be judged and characterized relate to forms of governance, such as democratic governance or authoritarian governance or dictatorial governance. The good governance discourse, however, does not admit of the relationships of power. Rather it presents itself as a moral paradigm, distinguishing between the good, the bad and the evil. What is good and bad governance thus turns out to be a moral judgment, on the one hand, and relativist and subjectivist, on the other. The result, I want to suggest, is that good governance has no conceptual or theoretical value in understanding a phenomenon with a view to change it. Rather, it is, at best, a propagandist tool easily manipulatable by whoever happens to wield power. And this is exactly how it has been deployed in the dominant, neo-liberal discourse. One of the political conditionalities imposed on African governments by the IFIs and the donor-community is good governance . This has become a flexible tool in the hands of global hegemonies to undermine the sovereignty of African nations and the struggle for democracy of the African people. For, the people are no longer the agency of change but rather the victims of bad governance to be delivered or redeemed by the erstwhile donor-community. The instrument of this deliverance is supposedly the policies and political conditions multi-party, governance commissions which must be put in place for a state to qualify to receive aid . The recipients on their part reform their governance structures, with aid and technical assistance from the same donor-community , to satisfy their, what these days are called, partners . The example from my country, which is far more subtle, and relatively more independent in its relationship with partners , illustrates the point.

In Tanzania, we have first a ministry, headed by a full-fledged minister, of good governance. Then, through donor pressure, the Government was obliged to establish a Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance with aid from the Danish government. Among the first things was to build a gargantuan structure to house the Commission and establish the infrastructure at a cost of over 1.5 billion shs. (or roughly 1.5 million US$). (The people of Tanzania would never know the exact amount nor the conditions of the contract. It is secret from them. The Danish people would perhaps be in a better position to know how their government promotes good governance in Tanzania.) Then another bureaucratic structure of civil servants headed by seven commissioners is set up drawing usual salaries and numerous allowances. Besides a minister of good governance and a commission, there was another benefit the Government received as part of good governance assistance. A couple of years ago, the distinguished Finnish diplomat, Martin Althassari, paid visits to Tanzania as an advisor to the President on good governance, sponsored by the World Bank! Presumbaly, he made a report to the President (or the World Bank, who knows?) after consulting civil servants, a sprinkling of NGO representatives, academics, private sector etc., as is the consultants custom these days. How this consultancy represents the struggle of the people of Tanzania to construct a democratic state and polity, I cannot tell. And this is because, we are not even sure if good governance means the same thing as democratic governance of, for and by the people of Tanzania! After all they were never consulted on the appointment of the advisor to their president! What about the Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance? The Commission, among other things, receives complaints about violation of human rights and abuse of power and investigates the same. This is precisely the kind of work supposed to be done by the mainstream judiciary and the former Permanent Commission of Inquiry. The Permanent Commission was set up in the middle sixties modeled on Scandinavian Ombudsman to inquire into abuse of power by state officials and report to the President. True, both the judiciary and the Permanent Commission had a lot of flaws. People have had lots of criticisms and grievances against these institutions and expressed them, whenever they got an opportunity, or, whenever, they could snatch such opportunities. Both institutions cried out for reforms. Both required the political vision, will and resources for reform based on the grievances of the people. If the reforms were internally generated and grounded in the struggle and demands of the people, they would have almost certainly taken a very different trajectory. For example, the judiciary, in particular the lower judiciary, could be improved significantly by directing resources to train judicial personnel, providing reasonable benefits to the staff, such as housing, transport etc., and by innovative structures to institutionalize people s participation in judicial processes. Yet, that is not how good governance reforms are conceived. Structures parallel to existing ones are put up as a result of donor-pressure. The desirability and viability of such structures is hardly assessed within the countries concerned. One of the effects of setting up such structures is to undermine time-tested traditional state structures. Worse, reforms from the top instigated by donor conditionalities undermine the right of the people themselves to struggle for and conceive their own institutional reforms and set their own priorities. Furthermore, needless to mention, such top-down reforms conceived, prioritised and financed by the erstwhile IFIs and donors undermine the very basis of democratic governance, that is, accountability to the people. The governors are accountable to the donors and their consultants and advisors on good governance rather than the people. Where is then the so-called democracy, trumpeted so much, and in whose name, political power seeks legitimacy? No wonder, in my own country, which perhaps is not the worst example in Africa of utter submission to hegemonic powers, the President cites the acclamation he receives from IFIs (not his own people) as an example of the success of his policies. One cannot help being cynical about the whole good governance project. This is not to say that Tanzania, like many other African and nonAfrican countries, including some in the North, do not require reform of their governance structure. But the point is what kind of reforms, in whose interest and conceived and implemented by whom. Democratic reforms, let it be said for the umpteenth time, is the prerogative of the people. It is the exercise of their sovereignty and their right to self-determination. That is what the struggle for independence and liberation was all about. It was the struggle of the African people to reclaim their humanity and dignity and the right to think for themselves and to chart their destiny. This was, and is, precisely the essence of anti-imperialist struggles. It follows, therefore, that economic and political conditionalities, including those on good governance, are an expression of the reassertion of imperial domination, however it may be labeled. Alternative to Good Governance What I have presented so far may sound conspiratorial and one-sided. I am not a believer in conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, it remains a historical and contemporary truism that global hegemonic power, or, imperialism, is an anti-thesis of democracy. Together with local reactionary classes and groups, imperial powers have played a major role in suppressing democratic struggles of the people (Shivji 2002a). Neoliberal politics, thrust down the throats of African people, is a corollary of the economic policies of the Structural Adjustment Programmes based on the Washington Consensus, mindlessly propagated and imposed by the World Bank and IMF. SAPs have wreaked havoc in the third world, particularly African economies. Serious studies testify to this. I need not cite any suspect sources in support. Suffice to quote the former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz:

The application of mistaken economic theories would not be such a problem if the end of first colonialism and then communism had not given the IMF and the World Bank the opportunity to greatly expand their respective original mandates, to vastly extend their reach. Today these institutions have become dominant players in the world economy. Not only countries seeking their help but also seeking their seal of approval so that they can better access international capital must follow their economic prescriptions, prescriptions which reflect their free market ideologies and theories. The result for many people has been poverty and for many countries social and political chaos. The IMF has made mistakes in all the areas it has been involved in: development, crisis management, and in countries making the transition from communism to capitalism. Structural adjustment programs did not bring sustained growth even to those, like Bolivia, that adhered to its strictures; in many countries excessive austerity stifled growth; (pp.17-18) Such systemic failures can hardly be described as mistakes . Rather, as the author himself observes elsewhere, they are the result of the interests that drive these institutions: the policies of the international economic institutions are all too often closely aligned with the commercial and financial interests of those advanced industrial countries. (ibid., 19-20) So, ultimately, we are not dealing with mistaken policies or conspiracy, but rather with the systematic forces reflecting the unequal relationships of the global system. I should perhaps also clarify another point. In spite of what looks like the omnipresent and omnipotent global power, neither the neo-liberal discourse nor the imperial domination have been accepted without intellectual and practical resistance of the people. While it is true that we are generally in the trough of the revolution, and democratic and national liberation struggles have been aborted and pre-empted, African intellectuals have continued to pose alternative discourses based on bottom-up struggles and aspirations of their people. Liberal politics have been countered by social democratic politics and democracy by new democracy . In a summing up of a debate on democracy, Archie Mafeje, chiding his fellow African intellectuals for parroting liberal democracy, succinctly observed: Regarding the present conditions in Africa, this can refer only to two things: first, the extent to which the people s will enters decisions which affect their life chances, and, second, the extent to which their means of livelihood are guaranteed. In political terms the first demand does not suggest capture of state power by the people (workers and peasants) but it does imply ascendancy to state power by a national democratic alliance in which the popular classes hold the balance of power. The second demand implies equitable (not equal) distribution of resources. Neither liberal democracy, imposed multi-partyism nor market forces can guarantee these two conditions. It transpires, therefore, that the issue is neither liberal democracy nor compradorial democracy but social democracy. (in Chole & Jibrin, eds. 1995, 26). In an article written in the late 1990s, I argued that it was new democracy that was on the African agenda (Shivji 2000). The three critical elements of new democracy are popular livelihoods, popular power and popular participation. The term popular is meant to convey three meanings. First, popular is used in the sense of being anti-imperialist. This is well captured in the people s own perception of what is called Second Independence. Given the continued and even more blatant imperialist domination that I have described, the new democratic consensus cannot be constructed without addressing the issue of liberation from imperialism, which is the anti-thesis of both national and democratic . But at the same time the term popular is used to transcend the limits of the term national . It is meant to highlight the limits of the first (national) independence which took the form of anti-colonialism. The independence or first liberation consisted in constituting state sovereignty; the core of the second liberation consists in resolving the issue of people s sovereignty. The second meaning in which popular is used refers to the social basis of the project. The social core of the new consensus has to be popular classes, i.e. a popular bloc of classes. While its exact composition will of course differ, in many African countries the land based producer classes and the urban poor together with lower middle classes would constitute the masses . This is where, to use Lenin s phrase, serious politics begin - not where there are thousands, but where there are millions (quoted in Carr 1961, 50). The third meaning that I attach to popular is in the sense of popular perceptions, custom, culture and consciousness. Custom and culture, not in the vulgar sense of atrophied or unchanging tradition but rather in the sense of a living terrain of struggles where the old and the new, the progressive and the reactionary, jostle and struggle to attain hegemony. Needless to say that culture and traditions constitute one of the most important ideological fronts (albeit neglected in our social science discourses). This is where, in the words of Raymond Williams, the dominant culture either tries to harmonize or demonize the cultures of resistance. (See also Wamba 1991) Such alternative discourses and struggles of the people have no doubt been aborted and pre-empted by the neo-liberal rhetoric. This is only a passing phenomenon, though. So long as neo-liberal politics and economics are incapable of addressing the real life-conditions of the African people, they have little legitimacy. The good governance discourse thus turns out to be profoundly a discourse of domination rather than that of liberation and democracy.

Conclusion: The Intellectual Tasks Ahead. It is now time to conclude. In this, rather long-winded presentation, I have tried to argue that the great democratic struggles of the African people expressed in their independence and national liberation movements remain incomplete. The so-called democracy constructed on ahistorical and asocial paradigms of neo-liberalism are an expression of renewed imperial onslaught, which is profoundly anti-democratic. It may as well proclaim: Democracy is dead. Long live democracy. The tasks of committed intellectuals is to recognize the new imperialism called globalization and articulate the ideologies of resistance expressed in popular struggles (see, Shivji 2002b). African intellectuals must join issue with neo-liberalists and expose the paucity of concepts like good governance . The post-cold war renewal of imperialism is even more ferocious than classical colonialism. It is led by a dangerous and unrestrained superpower undermining the very basis of democracy, the right of the peoples to self-determination, that is, their right to think for themselves. It is playing god by deciding for the rest of the world, what is good and what is evil, who is a friend and who is a foe, who are people and who are non-people. Commending Tanzania for its new foreign policy based on economic diplomacy , the US Ambassador to the country patronizingly told the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs: The liberation diplomacy of the past, when alliances with socialist nations were paramount and so-called Third World Solidarity dominated foreign policy, must give way to a more realistic approach to dealing with your true friends those who are working to lift you into the 21st century where poverty is not acceptable and disease must be conquered. (The Guardian, 29th July, 2003) Here is an imposed friendship! During the nationalist phase, propounding his non-aligned policy Nyerere could say, We shall not allow our friends to choose enemies for us . The current African leaders dare not even whisper so. But no people can accept to live under bondage for ever. Empires have come and gone. This too will go. Thirty years ago, Mwalimu Nyerere, talking about apartheid South Africa said, and this remains a fitting reply to all arrogant super powers: Humanity has already passed through many phases since man began his evolutionary journey. And nature shows us that not all life evolves in the same way. The chimpanzees - to whom once we were very near - got on to the wrong evolutionary path and they got stuck. And there were other species which became extinct; their teeth were so big, or their bodies so heavy, that they could not adapt to changing circumstances and they died out. I am convinced that, in the history of the human race, imperialists and racialists will also become extinct. They are now very powerful. But they are a very primitive animal. The only difference between them and these other extinct creatures is that their teeth and claws are more elaborate and cause much greater harm - we can see this even now in the terrible use of napalm in Vietnam. But failure to co-operate together is a mark of bestiality; it is not a characteristic of humanity. Imperialists and racialists will go. Vorster, and all like him, will come to an end. Every racialist in the world is an animal of some kind or the other, and all are kinds that have no future. Eventually they will become extinct. Africa must refuse to be humiliated, exploited, and pushed around. And with the same determination we must refuse to humiliate, exploit, or push others around. We must act, not just say words. (Nyerere 1973, 371).

References

Amin, S., 1990, Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure, London: Zed. Blum, W., 1986, The CIA: a forgotten history, London: Zed Books. Carr, E., 1961, What is History, London: Penguin.

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Unity through Spirituality

Just another Hadithuna Muslim Blogs weblog

Archive for the Adi Setia Category

Taskhir, fine-tuning, intelligent design and the scientific appreciation of nature.
Monday, January 5th, 2009

Author: Setia, Adi Date: Jun 22, 2004 Words: 9109 Publication: Islam & Science ISSN: 1703-762X The concept of taskhir in the Quran refers to the easily observable fact that nature, in both its cosmic and biospheric dimensions, has been constrained by Allah to render service and benefit unto humankind. In modern cosmological terms, taskhir refers to the high degree of fine-tuning of the design-parameters of the universe for the support of life on earth, and ultimately, conscious and intelligent human life. Through taskhir, the perfection of Allahs wisdom (hikmah) is manifested in the phenomenal world, and His Grace (fadl) realized for humanity. The service rendered to mankind by the Divine subjugation of nature is ultimately not only physical and material in nature, but also intellectual, moral and metaphysical in its significance: that humanity would be brought to recognize, acknowledge and glorify their Creator, and thus to

realize fully the enduring transcendent meaning of their fleeting, phenomenal life on earth. Axiologically, this means that Islamic science is less utilitarian than intellecto-moral, and hence, the outer utilitarian dimension of science is to be subsumed under, and guided by, its inner intellecto-moral dimension, and not vice-versa. Keywords: taskhir, intelligent design, fine-tuning, specified complexity, irreducible complexity, al-niam al-afaqiyyah, al-niam al-anfusiyyah, goals of Islamic Science. Introduction: The Concept of Taskhir in the Quran Taskhir is the verbal noun of sakhkhara, which means to bring something into service, to compel something to be of service to something else, to make something subservient. In the classical dictionary Mukhtar al-Sihah, sakhkharahu taskhiran is clarified as kallafahu amalan bi la ujrah, to charge someone with a task without remuneration; or kallafahu ma la yuriduhu wa qaharahu, to charge someone/something with a task not of his/its own accord and to compel him/it to do it. Thus anything that submits to you and obeys you, or is ready for you, has most certainly been made subservient to you. (1) In the Quran, taskhir refers to Allah compelling the heavens and the earth to be of service to humankind that they may consciously appreciate His manifold blessings upon them and thereby give thanks to Him. Among the many verses of the Quran concerning taskhir, the following five may be noted: (2) 1. Allah is He who has created the heavens and the earth, and caused water to descend from the sky, thereby producing fruits as food for you, and made the ships to be of service unto you, that they may run upon the seas at His command, and has made of service unto you the rivers, and made the sun and the moon constant in their courses to be of service unto you, and has made of service unto you the night and the day. 2. See you not how Allah has made subservient unto you whatsoever is in the skies and whatsoever is in the earth and has loaded you with His favors both without and within? Yet of mankind is he who disputes concerning Allah without knowledge or guidance or a scripture giving light. 3. Allah is He who has made the sea to be of service unto you that the ships may run thereon by His command, and that you may seek of His bounty; and that haply you may be thankful; and has made of service unto you whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth; it is all from Him. Lo! herein are portents for people who reflect. 4. Have you not seen how Allah has made all that is in the earth subservient unto you? And the ships run upon the sea by His command, and He holds back the heaven from falling on the earth unless by His leave. Lo! Allah is, for mankind, full of pity, merciful. 5. Allah is He Who has raised up the heavens without visible supports, then mounted the Throne, and compelled the sun and the moon to be of service, each runs unto an appointed term; He

ordered the course; He detailed the relevations, that haply you may be certain of the meeting with your Lord. Taskhir in al-Fakhr al-Razis Mafatih al-Ghayb Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (544-606/1149-1209) was not only an accomplished mutakallim and mufassir (3) but also an eminent philosopher and scientist. As we shall see, al-Razis holistically rational explication of taskhir is quite sophisticated, rigorous and elegant. He shows a philosophico-scientific approach to the understanding of Quranic verses that can have conceptual and empirical import for re-elucidating the Islamic worldview, or ruyat al-Islam lilwujud (4) in contemporary intellectual discourse. As expounded by Professor al-Attas, this worldview is the Islamic vision of reality and truth, which is a metaphysical survey of the visible as well as the invisible worlds including the perspective of life as a whole; or the vision of the totality of being and existence projected by Islam. (5) In his Mafatih al-Ghayb, al-Razi gives a metaphysical explanation of verse 2 of surah al-Rad, in which the sun and the moon are mentioned as being compelled to be of service by Allah (wa sakhkhara al-shams wl-qamar). (6) He says that the celestial bodies (al-ajram al-falakiyyah), including the sun, the moon and the stars, are like all other material bodies (al-ajsam) in their receptivity to motion (al-harakah) and rest (al-sukun). The fact that the celestial bodies are in perpetual motion when it is equally possible, from the metaphysical point of view, for them to be in perpetual rest, indicates that motion has been determined for them, and not rest. Metaphysically, the two physical states, motion and rest, are equally possible of being actualized in the external world, and so, there is no intrinsic reason why one physical state (motion) should have preponderance over the other (rest). The physical, actual fact that the celestial bodies are in a state of motion and not rest, even though both modes of being are equally possible for them metaphysically, is clear indication that their motion is not of their own accord, but of the determination (takhsis) of a transcendent determiner (mukhassis) who has determined for them the state of motion instead of rest. Furthermore, each of the celestial bodies can be seen to move in a certain manner distinct from those of other celestial bodies, for each has its own particular mode of motion. Each mode of motion has its peculiar slowness (al-but) and quickness (al-surah) relative to the motion of other celestial bodies. The fact that each body has its specific mode of motion out of all possible modes also indicates the existence of a transcendent determiner who has determined for each and every body its particular mode of motion according to which it is actually moving in the physical world. Al-Razi goes on to point out the fact that the movements of these bodies have been specifically measured out (muqaddar bi maqadir makhsusah) such that their orbits in the celestial sphere follow their respective precise spacio-temporal regularities, and this cannot happen except by perfect ordinance (tadbir kamil) and profound wisdom (hikmah balighah). The meaning of this verse as elaborated by al-Razi can be summarized thus: The celestial bodies are compelled by Allah to move in the way they actually do: they do not move of their own accord. They are compelled to render service to humankind by drawing their attention to their wondrous motions which are indicative of transcendent design and ordinance, thereby bringing them to recognize the existence and greatness of the Creator and to be certain of their meeting

with Him. This means that when human beings contemplate the movement of the heavens, they are drawn to affirm the existence of a most wise Creator, and to believe in Him and the Last Day; for He Who has power over the heavens must most certainly have power over the Day of Judgment. (7) Al-Razi not only explains the service of the heavens and the earth to humankind in terms of its metaphysical dimension as outlined above, but also in terms of its physical significance. In other words, humankind derives both spiritual and material benefits from the way in which creation has been made subservient to them. This understanding of the physical significance of cosmic subserviency to humanity is also apparent in his explanation of verses 32-33 of surah Ibrahim and verse 20 of surah Luqman. (8) The same understanding of taskhir is also obvious in al-Razis explication of verses 12-14 of surah al-Nahl:
And He has constrained the night and the day, and the sun and the moon to be of service unto you, and the stars are made subservient by His command. Lo! herein indeed are portents for people who have sense; and whatsoever He has created for you in the earth of diverse hues; lo! therein is indeed a portent for people who take heed; and He it is who has constrained the sea to be of service that you eat fresh meat from thence, and bring forth from thence ornaments which you wear. And you see the ships ploughing it that you may seek of His bounty, and that haply you may give thanks. (9)

Al-Razi says that the night and the day, the sun and the moon, and all the inanimate things (aljamadat) are governed by Allah in a manner that serves the welfare (masalih) of human beings, even though it is not inherently necessary for them to do so, nor is it of their own volition. Thus, these totally passive inanimate things are compelled to act only in the particular possible manner specified for each of them, and not in any other possible manner. It is this constraint, or specification and fixation of the parameters of actual physical movement and behavior manifesting an aspect of divine governance that is referred to by the term taskhir. As evident in this verse, the temporal physical benefits of cosmic and terrestrial subservience to humanity are for drawing them to attain to the deeper everlasting spiritual benefits of showing gratitude to the Creator. (10) Similarly, in his explication of surah Ibrahim, verses 32-34, al-Razi gives an elegant elaboration of the material benefits of taskhir for humankind in which he invites attention to the complex interconnections between the blessings that are in the cosmic horizons (al-niam al-afaqiyyah) and those that are in the human selves (al-niam al-anfusiyyah). He says:
When you take a morsel of food into your mouth, you should reflect on what happened before that and what happens after it. As for the happenings prior to it: You should realise that your morsel of bread would not have been complete and wholesome except when this whole cosmos is already established in the best manner. This is because your morsel of bread is derived from wheat which does not grow except with the aid of the four seasons, the arrangement of the physical natures, and the appearance of the winds and the rains. Each one of these would not happen except through the revolutions of the celestial spheres, and through the specific interactions between the

movements of the planets with respect to direction, quickness and slowness. Then, when the wheat is ripe, it needs to be milled and baked by the required tools. Such tools in turn can only be realized by the formation of iron in the bowels of mountains. These iron tools in turn would not have been utilized beneficially except by the use of other iron tools that are prior to the former, and so on until the first iron tool invented. So reflect on how all these are formed according to forms specific to each. Yet still, when all these tools are attained, there is need for the four elements, namely, earth, water, air and fire, in order for the flour to be baked into bread. The foregoing pertains to what is prior to the attainment of your morsel of food. As for that which comes afterwards, reflect on the arrangement of your animate living body. This pertains to the way in which Allah has fashioned animate bodies in such manner that they can benefit from the morsel. It pertains too to the manner in which some food may harm animals, and to the specific organs in which such harmful effects occur. It is not possible for you to know these matters even superficially except by knowing the sciences of anatomy and medicine in their totality. Thus it is quite evident from what we have said that the nutritive benefits of a single morsel of food cannot possibly be known except by knowing the totality of natural ordinances. But the minds of humankind fail to encompass even an atom of all these fields of investigation. Therefore by this overwhelming demonstration, the truth of the Divine word is made manifest, that: If you would count the bounty of Allah you cannot exhaust it. (11)

In his explication of verse 20 of surah Luqman, al-Razi also points out the significance of taskhir with respect to divine favours that pertain to cosmic phenomena (al-niam al-afaqiyyah) and those pertaining to the psychological and physiological selves of a human being (al-niam alanfusiyyah). (12) In short, it is through the precise yet artful interplay between the design configurations of the cosmos, the biosphere and the human self that Divine favors are realized for humanity, that they may be thankful to their Lord, and be certain of their meeting with Him. This elaborate exposition of Divine design in nature in relation to the realization of Divine grace has earlier been undertaken by the great observer of life, culture and nature, Abu Uthman Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz (d. 255/868) in his Kitab al-Dalabil wa al-Itibar ala al-Khalq wa alTadbir, (13) and by al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) in his Kitab al-Hikmah fi Makhluqatil-Lah. (14) Though written long centuries ago in the light of the best scientific knowledge of their time, these critical reflections on the deeper significance of nature have an amazing contemporary relevance (15) to the recent remarkable revival of the argument from design in modern science and philosophy. One of the most original, eloquent and effective revivers of the design argument is Badiuzzaman Said al-Nursi (1876/7-1960), who wrote in the light of his own critical assessment of modern scientific discoveries and their philosophical underpinnings. (16) Taskhir in al-Nursi In The Supreme Sign: The Observations of a Traveller Questioning the Universe Concerning His Maker, al-Nursi elaborates at length on the theme of the universal co-operation visible

throughout the cosmos; the comprehensive equilibrium and all-embracing preservation prevailing with the utmost regularity in all things (17) from celestial bodies to the earth, and from the inanimate atomic elements to the cells of animate beings:
Solid, inanimate and unfeeling objects, that nonetheless cooperate with each other in sensitive and conscious fashion, must of necessity be caused to rush to each other's aid by the power, mercy and command of a Compassionate, Wise and Glorious Sustainer. (18)

In his explication of the verse, And (in) the disposition of the winds (tasrif al-riyah) and of the clouds held in disciplined order (al-sahab al-musakhkhar) between the heavens and earth (19), al-Nursi draws attention to the fact that the lifeless and volatile elements of the winds and the clouds do not act of their own accord, but in accordance with the orders of a Powerful and Knowing Commander to serve the function of aiding all animals to breathe and to live, all plants to pollinate and grow. (20) In the Tenth Window of the Thirty-Three Windows: Making Known the Creator, al-Nursi expounds on the verses 32-34 of surah Ibrahim:
Allah is He who has created the heavens and the earth, and causes water to descend from the sky, thereby producing fruits as food for you, and has made the ships to be of service unto you, that they may run upon the sea at His command, and has made of service unto you the rivers, and made the sun and the moon constant in their courses to be of service unto you, and has made of service unto you the night and the day. And He gives you of all that you ask Him. And if you count the bounties of Allah you cannot enumerate them.

He says:
The mutual assistance and solidarity of beings in the universe and the fact that they respond to one another show that all creatures are trained by a single Instructor. For through an all-embracing law of mutual assistance, the sun cooks the necessities for the lives of living beings on the earth, and the moon acts as a calendar, and light, air, water and sustenance hasten to the assistance of living beings, and plants hasten to the assistance of animals, and animals hasten to the assistance of human beings, and the members of the body hasten to assist one another, and particles of food even hasten to the assistance of the cells of the body. (21)

This central theme of universal, perfect order, balance and equilibrium, and precise measure observable in the cosmos and the biosphere is emphasized and reiterated as material proof of divine unity (22) in al-Nursis exposition of numerous Quranic verses in many of his treatises in the Risale-i Nur Collection, (23) such as the The Supreme Sign, Nature: Cause or Effect, (24) The Key to Belief, (25) The Tongues of Reality, Thirty-Three Windows, Man and the Universe (26) and others.

The aim of his emphasis on observed phenomenal order is to draw the attention of both the discursive reason and the intuitive intellect to the impossibility of blind chance, futile fortuitousness and care-less causality having any share in this purposeful arrangement (27) and regularity, and thereby to the recognition, acknowledgement and adoration of the only direct, immediate and effective Cause, namely, the Most Wise Creator Who is present with all things and does all things in all things. (28) Taskhir, Fine-Tuning, Irreducible Complexity and Intelligent Design In their exposition of taskhir as an aspect of divine governance, al-Razi and al-Nursi repeatedly invite our attention to the complex, integral order quite self-evident in observed natural processes in order to press home the point that the universe is in reality an organic, not aggregate, whole. Al-Nursi, especially, argues that since all things are interconnected into an integral whole, whatever it is that is responsible for a part of the whole must of necessity be equally responsible for the whole itself; and whatever it is that is responsible for the whole must of necessity be equally responsible for even its tiniest part. For just as the watchmaker is responsible for the finished, integral system of the watch as an accurate time-keeping instrument, so is he equally responsible for all its various components and their purposeful dynamic arrangement. This means that the one who created the atom must also be the same one who created the cosmos, (29) and that when attributed to the Single Maker, all beings become as easy as a single being. (30) This truth is alluded to in many Quranic verses such as: Your creation and resurrection are naught save as a single soul (31); The matter of the Hour is but as the twinkling of the eye or closer still (32); There is not a thing but hymns His praise (33) ; and Our commandment is a single act, as a twinkling of the eye. (34) Both al-Razi and al-Nursi are essentially arguing for transcendent intelligent design by means of scientific and philosophical inference from the central feature of designthat is, purposeful arrangement and dynamically coordinated systemic interactionsquite self-evident in all observable natural phenomena. Design, as a noun, has been defined by the American biochemist Michael Behe as the ordering of a number of separate interacting components in such a way as to accomplish a function beyond the capacity of the individual components (35); or more briefly and comprehensively, as the arrangement of parts resulting in an integral functional and/or structural whole. Defined thus, designincluding semantically closely related modern scientific notions such as the cosmological fine-tuning and Behes biological irreducible complexitycoheres very well with al-Razis and al-Nursis conception of taskhir as the constrainment of processes in nature for the ultimate benefit of human life, and corresponds accurately with empirical studies of these processes. As shall be shown below, the concept of taskhir and the argument from design as integral, finetuned and irreducible complex order impinge on our understanding of the true nature of causality and of the true goals of scientific research in Islam. In modern science there are many prominent cosmologists who have become increasingly aware of the extent of design that is apparent in the physical characteristics of the universe. In the words of physicist and cosmologist Hugh Ross:
Astronomers have discovered that the characteristics of the universe, of our galaxy and of our solar system are so finely tuned to support life that the only reasonable explanation for

this is the forethought of a personal, intelligent creator whose involvement explains the degree of finetunedness. It requires power and purpose. (36)

In modern cosmophysical parlance, the existence of life on earth, especially human life, is due to the extremely high degree of fine-tuning in the design parameters of the universe. Without this fine-tuning of design parameters, not only life, but even the physical universe as we know it, would not have come into existence. Among the astronomical evidences for the fine-tuning of the universe invoked by Ross are as follows: (37) 1. Gravitational force constant: if larger, stars would be too hot and would burn up quickly and unevenly; if smaller, stars would remain so cool that nuclear fusion would never ignite, hence no heavy element production. 2. Ratio of electron to proton mass: if larger or smaller, insufficient chemical bonding. 3. Expansion rate of the universe: if larger, no galaxy formation; if smaller, universe would have collapsed prior to star formation. 4. Entropy level of the universe: if larger, no star condensation within the protogalaxies; if smaller, no protogalaxy formation. 5. Velocity of light: if larger, stars would be too luminous; if smaller, stars would not be luminous enough. 6. Average distance between stars: if larger, heavy element density too thin for rocky planets to form; if smaller, planetary orbits would become destabilized. Much more relevant to our discussion here is the further discovery of cosmologists that our galaxy-star-earth-moon system has also been fine-tuned for the support of life. They realized that

only a certain kind of star with a planet just the right distance from that star would provide the necessary conditions for life. (38) Not only are the physical parameters of the system finetuned, but they are also fine-tuned within specific limits that are very confining. The degree of confinement greatly increases when all these physical parameters must be maintained within such narrow specific limits for the total time span required for the emergence, sustenance and survival of life on earth. The physical conditions for the support of life as we know it have been found to be so stringent that some cosmologists such as Robert Rood and James Tregil have proposed that intelligent physical-life exists only on earth. (39) The following are some examples of the high degree of fine-tunedness of the design parameters of the galaxy-sun-earthmoon system for the support of life: (40) 1. Number of stars in the planetary system: if more than one, tidal interactions would disrupt planetary orbits; if less than one, heat produced would be insufficient for life. 2. Parent star age: if older or younger, luminosity of star would change too quickly. 3. Parent star color: if redder or bluer, photosynthetic response would be insufficient. 4. Distance from parent star: if further or closer, planet would be respectively too cool or too warm for a stable water cycle. 5. Inclination of orbit: if too great, temperature differences on the planet would be too extreme. 6. Rotation period: if longer, diurnal temperature difference would be too great; if shorter, atmospheric wind velocities would be too great. 7. Oxygen quantity in atmosphere: if greater, plants and hydrocarbons would burn up too easily; if less, advanced animals would have too little to breathe. 8. Oceans-to-continents ratio:

if greater or smaller, diversity and complexity of life-forms would be limited. The foregoing are clear scientific attestations to the reality that the heavens and the earth have been constrained to be compliant and subservient for the ultimate service of humankind. In concluding his overview of cosmological findings, Ross says that modern cosmologists are confessing that:
... the best, perhaps the only, explanation for the universe we observe is the action of an entity beyond the space-time continuum of the universe who/that is capable of design and of carrying out that design. (41)

As elaborated briefly earlier on, taskhir pertains not only to cosmological phenomena but also to the biological, physiological and psychological phenomena and processes of the human self phenomena and processes that have been referred to by al-Razi with the term al-niam alanfusiyyah. Frontiers of research in various areas of life sciences such as ecology (interactive, multi- and inter-systemic complexity of diverse life forms and their environments), microbiology and biochemistry (irreducible complexity (42) of life processes at the cellular and molecular level), genetics (specified complexity (43) of the DNA sequence), cognitive linguistics (the innate biologically endowed conceptual system underlying human speech and its special design properties) and cognitive psychology (mental construction of experience), (44) have also revealed a high degree of fine-tuning of design parameters in the animate systems of living beings. The Australian molecular biologist and medical doctor Michael Denton graphically presses home to the minds eye this overwhelming complexity by a vivid analogy:
To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like port holes of a large space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer regions of the cell.... We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. (45)

This dynamic order, regularity, balance and integrated interactive complexity at each level of animate and inanimate organization from the sub-atomic to the cosmic levels, and the ultimate total integrated complexity of all levels, render the notion of linear, gradual and random physical causality not only entirely meaningless, but also entirely inconceivable. As argued by Denton, It

is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, to whatever depth we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. (46) In exposing the conceptual and empirical bankruptcy of the notion of material causality, al-Nursi says:
If all material causes were to gather together and if they possessed will, they could not gather together the being of a single fly and its systems and organs with their particular balance. And even if they could gather them together, they could not make them remain in the specific measure of the being. And even if they could make them remain thus, they could not make those minute particles, which are continually being renewed and coming into existence and working, work regularly and in order. In which case, self-evidently, causes cannot claim ownership of things. (47)

Accordingly, physicist Yamine Mermer comments that at most, apparent causes are merely conditions for a particular effect, are situated together with that effect within a particular order, and are thus created together simultaneously as the order is actualized, and so everything is directly a miracle of divine power. (48) As the notion of random, gradualistic causality becomes increasingly untenable in the light of the empirical evidence, biochemist Michael Behe is drawn to the serious, empirically compelling consideration that, Clearly, if something was not put together gradually, then it must have been put together quickly or even suddenly. (49) It seems that, ultimately, the causal connections between things in nature are only ideal or conceptual (hence discontinuous, transcendent and imposed), not material or physical (hence not continuous, inherent and essential). (50) Moreover, as pointed out by al-Attas, even the things themselves are in reality only mentally posited (itibari). (51) In short, the scientific evidence points overwhelmingly toward a symbolic (or existentialist) (52) rather than an essentialist interpretation of nature, and therefore, as al-Nursi puts it, nature has a meaning that is otherreferential (mana harfi), not self-referential (mana ismi). (53) In outlining his philosophy of science, al-Attas affirms that nature is a symbolic form perpetually manifesting divine creativity at the level of phenomenal reality. (54) Nature consists of discontinous events, processes and relations which in reality are but perpetually renewed manifestations of an underlying, abiding spiritual reality of existence that both includes and excludes them. (55) The multiple and diverse natural forms partake of symbolic existence by virtue of being continually articulated by the creative word of God, (56) as alluded to in the verses, His command, when He intended a thing, is only that He says unto it: Be! and it is, (57) and As We began the first creation, We repeat it. (58) Consequently, things in the world are not independent, self-subsisting, self-organizing essences having persistence in absolute time and space, but rather they perish upon coming into existence and are continually being recreated by the Creator, thus the absence of a necessary relation between cause and effect. (59) Therefore, everything, from the tiniest particular part to the greatest universal whole, is both immediately and ultimately caused by Allah, (60) hence there is not a thing but hymns His praise. (61) The feature of integral structural and functional order in nature is self-evident enough to indicate that such a philosophy of science is not merely a speculative, fact-free metaphysical dogma, but is truly and accurately descriptive of the fundamental systemic nature of reality, as well as

grounded in that reality, both through direct intuitive experience and discursive logico-empirical arguments. Taskhir and the Goals of Scientific Research in Islam The foregoing consideration of al-Razis and al-Nursis explication of the Quranic concept of taskhir and of its conceptual and empirical affinity with the modern scientific concepts of finetuning and irreducible complexity has wide-ranging implications for our conceptualization of the general goals of scientific research in Islam. Current empirical discoveries in modern science bring into renewed and refined focus the concept of taskhir as referring to the fine-tuning of the design parameters of the cosmos and the biosphere, including human life. The physical configurations of the cosmos and the biological configurations of living things have been fixed in such a precise manner that they ultimately serve the function of rendering service to humankind as the epitome of divine creativity. The service that is rendered unto humanity through the fine-tuning of the physical parameters of creation has two aspects: an aspect that pertains to material or physical self, and an aspect that pertains to spiritual or metaphysical self. With respect to the former, taskhir has to do with fulfilling the biophysiological need of human beings for nourishment, shelter and clothing, and their psychologico-emotional need for sociocultural interactions with fellow human beings. With respect to the latter, taskhir has to do with bringing humanity to acknowledge the perpetual divine presence and wisdom manifested in all things, and to show gratitude (shukr) to Him. Such acknowledgement and gratitude on the part of humanity as the epitome of creation facilitate in them the attainment of spiritual peace and satisfaction, and make perfect and whole their spirit. Al-Nursi says:
The All-Wise Creator of the universe made the universe like a tree with conscious beings as its most perfect fruit, and among conscious beings He made man its most comprehensive fruit. And man's most important fruit, indeed the result of his creation, the aim of his nature, and the fruit of his life are his thanks and worship. (62)

In other words, the whole of creation together with all its mutually dependent and interacting components have been created and ordered for the purpose of making possible the biological, cultural and spiritual life of human beings. To put it even more succinctly, creation has been made perfect for human life to be existentially possible and spiritually meaningful. If creation with all its harmoniously interacting components has been perfected by the Creator for humankind, then the scientific endeavor in Islam cannot be about overpowering, dominating and controlling an imperfect, capricious and hostile nature in order that it may be readjusted and manipulated for human welfare. There can be no such thing as human beings making improvements on the workings of nature by unlocking its laws and manipulating them to serve the betterment of human civilization by furthering its development and progress. From the Islamic point of view, domination, control and exploitation of nature can never be the true goal of scientific research, since only the Creator has the knowledge and the power, and hence the right to subjugate nature. Nature is not something to be dominated,

controlled or manipulated by human beings precisely because it has already been divinely constrained to be of service to them. From this perspective then, it is quite clear that the modern incessant urge to unlock the secrets of nature in order to subdue it smacks of a pathological dissatisfaction with, even denial of, divine bounty (fadl), and an utter ignorance of its ultimate significance. I think it would be appropriate here, in view of the foregoing, to comment briefly on a dangerous misconception of taskhir discernible in the writings of some Muslim authors, such as C. A. Qadir, for instance. Since the Quranic concept of taskhir clearly means Gods subjugation of nature for man, and not mans subjugation of nature for himself, then it is problematic to say, as Qadir does, that The Quran requires Muslims to subjugate the forces of nature for the good of mankind. (63) Even more questionable is his citation of the verse All that is in heaven and earth has been subjugated to man, to lend support for his further assertion that Knowledge is power, in the sense that it is through knowledge that one can dominate nature and make it subservient to ones will. (64) The literal meaning of the verse he cites does not support his assertion, and if there are Quranic commentators who concur with him, he does not cite them. A deeper reflection on this verse and other verses of similar import will go a long way toward warding off a Baconian infiltration of Islamic philosophy and science through the back door. To resume, one may say that Nature has been created for the service of human beings since they are the raison detre for its existence. Instead of viewing nature as a foe or an adversary to be overcome and subdued to realize some narrow, ill-conceived short-term utility, it should instead be viewed as a precious gift in the form of a ready and able companion or helpful friend who deserves to be treated with respect, understanding and a strong sense of responsibility and appreciation, as a precious divine bounty to be held in trust for all posterity. Any tampering with the subtle and delicate design parameters of nature would most certainly reduce its capacity to be of service to humankind, and may even prove destructive, not only to human life, but also to the biosphere as a whole:
Corruption doth appear in the land and sea because of what the hands of men have wrought, that He may make them taste a part of that which they have done, in order that they may return. (65)

Both rough and ready common sense and scientific observations (especially in the field of ecology and environmental science) have shown that the forces of nature on earth have been dynamically and harmoniously balanced for the continual sustenance and generation of life in all its organized interlocking multiplicity, diversity and complexity. This holistic scientific fact or reality should have a strong bearing on our assumptions about what should be the proper immediate (horizontal) and ultimate (vertical) goals of scientific research. Humans, as selfconscious, intelligent and moral beings, have been endowed with the cognitive capacity to uncover regulating patterns and design parameters in nature, including the manner in which these are mutually dependent and fine-tuned for life to exist and prosper. At the same time they have also been endowed with the will and ability to manipulate and tamper with these patterns and parameters. They can create and have created artificial environments in which the configurations of these design parameters can be altered for specific purposes, despite their very limited understanding of the profound overall dynamic interdependency and interaction of these

parameters, and the unknown, even unknowable, consequences of such flippant meddling in the workings of nature. Now this is where the danger lies. If nature is viewed as being already made perfect for the ultimate service of humankind, then there is a limit to the extent of human manipulation of natural laws. Nature consists of dynamically interconnected elements and compounds with specific structures and functions having design-parameters fine-tuned to very confining ranges of values that cannot be transgressed without bringing about unforseen, unforeseeable and probably disastrous consequences for human life and for the natural environment as a whole. When an integral constituent of a holistically functioning system is reconfigured, all other constituents of the system will be affected in one way or another, and will have to be reconfigured accordingly in order for the system to continue functioning smoothly and efficiently. But obviously, in view of the total complexity of the cosmos and the biosphere, human beings certainly do not have the knowledge, hence nor the right, to take on the great responsibility of readjusting the way nature works. Therefore, it is quite clear that the scientists very uncovering of the fine-tunedness of design parameters in nature compels them morally to work within the narrow confining limits of these parameters, and never to transgress nor alter them. For, these are the limits imposed by Allah, and so trangress them not; for whoso transgresses Allahs limits, such are the wrongdoers. (66) On the other hand, if nature is somehow viewed as imperfect for realizing some shortsighted ideals of human comfort, then naturally scientists will tamper with the physical limits of these design-parameters. Such an attitude will clearly be an outgrowth of selfish intellectual arrogance expressing itself in the view that nature is not sacred, but only a lifeless automaton that can be taken apart and put together in endless new ways to fulfill someones vague notions of the good life. Such a philosophy of science which strips nature of any transcendent significance by viewing it as a result of blind chance instead of intelligent design, deprives it of any meaning save as an object of the scientists and technologists absolute domination, mastery and control, or even as a plaything of idle curiosity to be studied disinterestedly for its own sake. Such a study of nature is devoid of real purpose and the pursuit of knowledge becomes a deviation from the truth, which necessarily puts into question the validity of such knowledge. (67) Ultimately, a particularly tiny minority of peoplethose with privileged access to scientific information, technical expertise, political power and economic leveragewill cooperate to strive their utmost to manipulate nature and exploit natural resources, including other lesser people, i.e., human resources, in order to achieve their destructive self-serving objectives universalized as global development and progress. (68) Precisely because the Creator has already made nature to be subservient unto humans, humans in turn, as a matter of moral logic, have to render sincere worship and give thanks to Him. Al-Nursi says:
... men are observers, sent by the Pre-Eternal Sovereign to contemplate and study the wonderful, strange miracles of power displayed in the exhibition of the universe. And that after receiving their marks and ranks in conformity with the degree they have grasped the value and grandeur of those miracles of power and the degree to which the miracles point to the grandeur of the Pre-Eternal Sovereign, they will return to the

Sovereign's realm. So he will say: "All praise be to God!" for the bounty of belief which has given him this bounty. (69)

Thus the study, use and enjoyment of nature can never be an end in itself, but it must be for the purpose of creating and maintaining a socio-cultural ambience conducive to human beings adoration of their Creator. It follows then that one of the central goals of scientific research in Islam is to uncover, understand and appreciate as much and as truly as possible the many ways in which nature has been constrained by the Creator to be of service unto humankind, and thus to ascend in the knowledge, recognition and appreciation of His Wisdom and His limitless, unending Grace. Obviously, such a goal is more intellecto-moral than utilitarian. This means that the outer utilitarian dimension of science must be subsumed under and guided by the inner intellecto-moral one, and not vice-versa. From this perspective, the vision of science in Islamas projected in the Quranic conception of tashkircan be understood as the conceptual and empirical investigation of the phenomenal manifestations of the underlying enduring spiritual reality of existence, by which investigation belief in that reality can be founded on verified experiential certainty, and thus freed from doubt and blind dogmatic imitation of false beliefs. Such a conception of science leads the scientist to uncover the ontological unity between the natural and spiritual order, and ultimately brings him to affirm the Unity and Oneness of the Creator. In the insightful words of Yamine Mermer:
It is a great crime for believers to leave this meaningful, wise, and purposeful universe to the hands of the materialists and turn a blind eye to their condemning it to meaninglessness, purposelessness, chance and coincidence under the name of "scientific study." The believer should take the universe in his hand, see it as a book, and under the guidance of the Qur'an, "which teaches the meaning of the book of the universe," read it in the name of his Sustainer. This is "scientific study" for the believer. In whatever field of knowledge he works, it is the duty of every believer who follows the Qur'an to open up that long distance between cause and effect and to see the Most Beautiful Divine Names which show themselves clearly in that space, and to display them. (70)

Conclusion The concept of taskhir in the Quran refers to the easily observable fact that nature, in both its cosmic and biospheric dimensions, has been constrained by Allah to render service and benefit unto humankind. In modern cosmological terms, taskhir can be said to refer to the extremely high degree of fine-tunedness of the design-parameters of the universe for the support of life on earth, and ultimately, conscious and intelligent human life. Through taskhir, the perfection of Allahs Wisdom (hikmah) is manifested in the phenomenal world, and His Grace (fadl) realized for humanity. The service rendered to mankind by the divine subjugation of nature is ultimately not physical in nature, but metaphysical in its significance: that humanity would be brought to recognize, acknowledge and glorify their Creator, and thus to realize fully the enduring transcendent meaning of their fleeting, phenomenal life on earth. Axiologically, this means that Islamic science is less utilitarian than intellecto-moral, and hence, the outer utilitarian dimension of science is to be subsumed under, and guided by, its inner intellecto-moral dimension, and not vice-versa.

Can there be any doubt concerning Allah, the Creator of the heavens and the earth? (71) We shall show them Our portents on the horizons and within themselves until it becomes manifest to them that it is the truth. (72) Such is the Knower of the invisible and the visible, the Mighty, the Merciful, Who has perfected all things which He created ... (73) Such then is Allah, your true Lord: Apart from the Truth, what is there save error? How then are you turned away? (74)

(1.) Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1980), p. 401; Muhammad b. Abu Bakr b. Abd al-Qadir al-Razi, Mukhtar al-Sihah (Beirut: Maktabah Lubnan, 1988), p. 122; al-Fayruzabadi, al-Qamus al-Muhit, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar Ihyab al-Turath al-Arabi, 1997), 1: 571; Ibn Manzur, Lisan al-Arab, 18 vols. (Beirut: Dar Ihyab al-Turath alArabi, 1997), 6: 203. (2.) Respectively, Ibrahim: 32-33; Luqman: 20; al-Jathiyah: 12-13; al-Hajj: 65; and al-Racd: 2. All translations of Quranic verses are based on Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Quran (Mecca: Muslim World League, 1977). (3.) Mutakallim, a scholar of Islamic dialectical theology (kalam); mufassir, an exegete of the Quran. (4.) Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1995), p. 1. (5.) Ibid., pp. 1-2. (6.) Muhammad b. Umar b. al-Husayn b. al-Hasan b. cAli al-Bakri al-Tabaristani Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Tafsir al-Kabir, 32 parts in 11 vols. (Beirut: Dar Ihyab al-Turath al-Arabi, 1996), 6 (18): 526-7. This work is also known as Mafatih al-Ghayb, which means Keys to the Unseen. (7.) Mafatih, 6 (18): 527. (8.) Ibid., 7 (19): 96-100; and 9 (25): 123-4. (9.) Ibid., 7 (19): 185-7. (10.) Ibid. (11.) Ibid., 7 (19): 99-100; translation mine. (12.) Ibid., 9 (25): 123-4.

(13.) (Aleppo: al-Maktabah al-Ilmiyyah, 1928); translated into English by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem as Chance or Creation: Gods Design in the Universe (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 1995). (14.) Published in Majmucah Rasabil al-Imam al-Ghazali (Beirut: 1994). (15.) Abdel Haleem, Chance or Creation, p. xii. (16.) Sukran Vahide, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi: The Author of the Risale-i Nur (Istanbul: Sozler Publications, 1992), pp. 23-5, 379-90. (17.) The Supreme Sign, trans. Hamid Algar (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1993), p. 89. (18.) Ibid. (19.) al-Baqarah: 164. (20.) Supreme Sign, p. 26. (21.) Thirty-Three Windows, trans. Sukran Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1991), p. 30-1. (22.) The Tongues of Reality, trans. Sukran Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1991). (23.) Badicuzzaman Sacid al-Nursi, The Risale-i Nur Collection, trans. Sukran Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1992-97). For the comprehensive Arabic edition, see Ihsan Qasim al-Salihi, trans., Kulliyat Rasabil al-Nur, 9 vols. (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1998). (24.) Trans. Sukran Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1997). (25.) Trans. Sukran Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1991). (26.) Trans. Meryem Weld (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1991). (27.) For a biochemical analysis of purposeful arrangement as indicative of intelligent design, see Michael Behe, Darwins Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: The Free Press, 1996), pp. 192-6; and for an incisive microbiological refutation of evolution, see Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (London: Adler and Adler, 1996). (28.) Supreme Sign, p. 136. (29.) Nature: Cause or Effect, pp. 19, 29, 36, 47; Supreme Sign, pp. 115-25 passim. For al-Razi on the argument for God from design and order in the universe, see the useful overview by Yasin Ceylan, Theology and Tafsir in the Major Works of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1996), p. 85, in which is also noted Ibn Rushds view that the observed design and order in nature is the strongest proof for the existence of God.

(30.) Nature: Cause or Effect, p. 47; Colin Turner, The Risale-i Nur: A Revolution of Belief, with facing Turkish translation (Istanbul: Risa1e-i Nur Institute, 1997), pp. 8-10. As for the similitude of the watchmaker: if it is argued that he may not necessarily be directly involved in the actual material fabrication of some of the individual parts and so he cannot be totally responsible, the counter-argument is that his idea is necessarily involved in determining exactly how each part should be materially fabricated and fitted into the whole; and since Gods is the highest similitude (wa liLlahil-mathalul-ala), He alone is directly and perpetually involved in creation both in idea and in act. As al-Nursi says in the Twentieth Letter, There is no division in His regarding and acting towards the creation. (See Sukran Vahide, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi: The Author of the Risale-i Nur, pp. 389-90.) (31.) Luqman: 28 (32.) al-Nahl: 77. (33.) al-Israb: 44. (34.) al-Qamar: 50. (35.) Michael Behe, Darwins Black Box, pp. 193-4, 215. This definition is actually my synthetic paraphrase of his words. (36.) Hugh Ross, Astronomical Evidences for a Personal Transcendent God in J. P. Moreland, ed., The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for a Intelligent Designer (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p. 160. Aspects of the historical and contemporary cosmological argument can be accessed in William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2000); and George Ellis and Peter Collins, Before the Beginning: Cosmology Explained (London and New York: Marion Boyars, 1993). (37.) Ross, Astronomical Evidences, pp. 160-3. See also Richard Swinburne, Argument from the Fine-Tuning of the Universe in John Leslie, ed., Physical Cosmology and Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 154-73. For an extended, critical and more impartial presentation of the evidence of fine-tuning see John Leslie, Universes (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 25-65. (38.) Ross, Astronomical Evidences, p. 165. (39.) Ibid., p. 170. (40.) Cited in ibid., pp. 165-9 passim. (41.) Ibid., p. 171. (42.) Behe (Darwins Black Box, p. 39) defines an irreducible complex system as one which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning; for further elaboration, see ibid., pp. 39-48 passim.

(43.)Specified complexity as a concept of information theory refers to the high number of nonredundant specific instructions conditioning the occurrence and operation of complex functional structures, whether natural or artificial, animate or inanimate; see Walter L. Bradley and Charles B. Thaxton, Information and the Origin of Life in Creation Hypothesis, pp. 173-210 on 203209 passim. (44.) All these findings at the frontiers of scientific research are surveyed in Moreland, ed., Creation Hypothesis passim. For the language faculty in relation to the mental creation of experience, see Ray Jackendoff, Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993). (45.) Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 328. (46.) Ibid., p. 342. (47.) Risale-i Nur Collection, vol. 3: The Flashes Collection, p. 308. (48.) Yamine Mermer, Cause and Effect in the Risale-i Nur, Third International Symposium on Badiuzzaman Said Nursi, 24th-26th September, 1995, Istanbul, proceedings, trans. Sukran Vahide, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1997), 1: 49. (49.) Darwins Black Box, p. 187. (50.) Ibid., pp. 43-5. Behe makes a distinction between a physical precursor and a conceptual precursor in his analysis of complex transformations in nature, and points out that if a system is irreducibly complex, it can have no (horizontal) functional precursors. (51.) S. M. N. al-Attas, The Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf: Preliminary Thoughts on an Islamic Philosophy of Science (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Academy of Science [ASASI], 1981), pp. 6-7; see also Prolegomena, p. 291. (52.) al-Attas, Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf, p. 7n7. (53.) Mesnevi-i Nuriye, 46, cited in Sukran Vahide, The Book of the Universe: Its Place and Development in Bediuzzamans Thought in A Contemporary Approach to Understanding the Quran: The Example of the Risale-i Nur, proceedings of International Symposium, Istanbul 2022 September 1998 (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyet, 2000), pp. 466-83 on 471. A fuller discussion of mana harfi and mana ismi in relation to causation and causality and the synthetic interpretation of nature is Yamine B. Mermer, The Hermeneutical Dimension of Science: A Critical Analysis Based on Said Nursis Risale-i Nur in The Muslim World Review, Special Issue: Said Nursi and the Turkish Experience, LXXXIX: 3-4 (July-October 1999), pp. 270-96 passim. (54.) Islam and the Philosophy of Science, p. 3; Prolegomena, p. 113; Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf, pp. 6-8, 11-12. (55.) Islam and the Philosophy of Science, pp. 21, 28, 33; Prolegomena, pp. 128, 134, 140.

(56.) Islam and the Philosophy of Science, p. 27; Prolegomena, p. 133. (57.) Ya Sin: 82. (58.0 al-Anbiyab: 104; similarly, see also al-Ankabut: 19 and 20: See they not how Allah originates creation, then repeats it? Travel in the land and see how He did originate creation, then Allah did bring forth the later production. (59.) Islam and the Philosophy of Science, p. 28; Prolegomena, p. 134. (60.) Supreme Sign, pp. 115-21 passim. (61.) al-Isra: 44. It can be said that in philosophico-scientific terms this verse alludes to the logical and empirical fact that given any integral system, if the ultimate efficient cause for it exists, then this same ultimate cause has also, of necessity, to be its direct and immediate efficient cause. (62.) Nature: Cause or Effect, p. 41. (63.) C. A. Qadir, Philosophy and Science in the Islamic World (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 15. (64.) Ibid., p. 22. The verse is Qadirs own rendition. (65.) al-Rum: 41. (66.) al-Baqarah: 229. Al-Nursi calls the Laws of Nature the Shariah of Creation or the Greater Shariah by analogy to the Laws of Religion; see Nature: Cause or Effect, pp. 33-4; and Sukran Vahide, The Book of the Universe, p. 482. (67.) al-Attas, Islam and the Philosophy of Science, pp. 27-8; Prolegomena, pp. 133-4; Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf, p. 6. (68.) For an excellent historical, ideological and political-economic critique of development and progress as collective delusion see Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, trans. Patrick Camiller (London and New York: Zed Books and Cape Town: UCT Press, 2000); and for a good specific case study in the Malaysian context, see Colin Nicholas, The Orang Asli and the Contest for Resources: Indigenous Politics, Development and Identity in Peninsular Malaysia (Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs IWGIA & Subang Jaya, Malaysia: Center for Orang Asli Concerns [COAC], 2000). (70.) Yamine Mermer, Cause and Effect, p. 53. (71.) Ibrahim: 10. (72.) Fussilat: 53.

(73.) al-Sajdah: 6-7. (74.) Yunus: 32. Adi Setia is Research Fellow (History and Philosophy of Science) at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Email: adisetiamuh@pd.jaring.my COPYRIGHT 2004 Center for Islam & Science Copyright 2004, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company. Posted in Adi Setia | No Comments

Fakhr al-Din al-Razi on physics and the nature of the physical world: a preliminary survey.
Monday, January 5th, 2009

Author: Setia, Adi Geographic Code: 9MALA Date: Dec 22, 2004 Words: 6935 Publication: Islam & Science ISSN: 1703-762X Fakhr al-Din al-Razis conception of physics and of the nature of the physical world is explored here through a preliminary survey of a number of his early and late works. Al-Razi defines the three grades of meanings of the term nature. His definition is similar to the general consensus in Ash arite kalam which rejects the Avicennan notion of tabi ah as an effective causal principle inherent in natural phenomenal processes. He also explores the notion of the existence of a multiverse in the context of his commentary on the Quranic verse, All praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds. He raises the interesting question of whether the term worlds in this verse refers to multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond this known universe. Based on primary classical Islamic source texts, this survey provides an insight into the classical Islamic view of nature as expressed by one of its most important representatives. Keywords: Universe and multiverse; cosmic structure of the world; Fakhr al-Din al-Razi; almawjudat; al- ilm al-tabi i; tabi ah; alam; falsafah, hikmah; al-Razis concept of nature; physics; nature; falak; harakah; sukun; jism; jawhar; arad. Introduction

As D. E. Pingree and S. Nomanul Haq have shown in their learned article, al-tabi a, the original Aristotelian term [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] in the literal sense of nature and in its functional Arabic equivalents of tabi ah, tiba and tab, has accumulated complex, diverse, even mutually incompatible meanings in its long journey through the labyrinthal history of Islamic scientific, philosophical, and theological thought. (1) With the rise and dominance of peripatetic natural philosophy as represented by Ibn Sina (d. 1037 CE) and the philosophico-theological reactions it provoked, it was the Avicennan definition of the term that most attracted the critical attention of the mutakallimun, including Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (2) (d. 1209 CE) in a number of his works. Here we shall first explore his conception of tabi ah in his late work Sharh Uyun al-hikmah (SUH) (3), his critical commentary on Ibn Sinas Uyun alhikmah (UH), (4) and then go on to some of his other early, middle-period and late works. The Science of Physics (ilm al-tabi ah) Defined Following the UH, the SUH is divided into three parts: logic (mantiq), which includes a long discussion of the ten Aristotelian categories of being; physics (tabi iyyat), which covers the traditional ground from space, bodies, time, and motion to meteorology and psychology; and metaphysics (ilahiyyat), which includes discussion of matter and form, substance and accidents, and theology and eschatology. The physics part begins with a long introduction to philosophy (al-hikmah), its meaning and its division into the theoretical and the practical sciences. The latter (al-hikmah al- amaliyyah) includes the three basic sciences of politics (hikmah madaniyyah), household management (hikmah manziliyyah), and ethics (hikmah khuluqiyyah). The former (alhikmah al-nazariyyah) includes the three basic sciences of physics (hikmah tabiiyyah), mathematics (hikmah riyadiyyah), and metaphysics (falsafah ilahiyyah). (5) In commenting on this tripartite division of theorectical philosophy, al-Razi clarifies further the relation of physics (i.e., natural sciences or sciences of nature) to mathematics and metaphysics:
If the quiddity of a thing (al-mahiyyah) is in need of matter (al-maddah) for [realising] its external (al-khariji) and mental (fi al-dhihn) existence, then it is [included in] the science of physics (al- ilm al-tabi i), which is the lowest science (al-'ilm al-asfal). If the quiddity [of a thing] is in need of matter for [realising] its external existence, but is independent of matter for its mental existence in the sense that the mind can grasp it without considering its materiality (maddatiha), then it is [included] in the science of mathematics (al- ilm al-riyadi), which is the intermediate science (al- ilm al-awsat). If the quiddity is independent of matter for [both] its external and mental existence, then it is [included in] the highest science (al ilm al-a la) and the first philosophy (al-falsafat al-ula). (6)

Thus the science of nature for al-Razi (as for Ibn Sina) is the science which studies existents (almawjudat) that are constituted of matter (al-maddah). At another place, he defines physics as that science whose subject matter is the body (al-jism) insofar as it undergoes change (al-taghayyur), and is in motion (yataharrak) and repose (yaskun). (7) Hence, physical or natural science is the study of material bodies that undergo change and are either in motion or repose. On the principles of this science, al-Razi follows Ibn Sina in saying that the principles constituting the

bases of demonstrations in physics are derived not from physics itself but from metaphysics, and elaborates at some length on this point. (8) Nature (Tabi ah) Defined In al-Mabahith al-Mashriqiyyah, an early work, al-Razi explains that the term tabi ah has three grades of meanings: the generic (al umum), the specific (al-khass) and the more specific (alakhass). Generically tabi ah refers to the essence of a thing; specifically it refers to the constitutive element (muqawwim) of the essence of a thing; and more specifically it refers to the constitutive element which is the principle of motion (harakah) and repose (sukun). (9) This last meaning is the most relevant in the context of this study of his physics. Thus in the SUH, al-Razi comments on the Avicennan distinction between the two basic (internal) principles of motion, namely tabi ah and nafs (nature and soul), in which the former is defined as:
... the faculty (quwwah) existing in the body (al-jism) which has no consciousness (shu ur) of whatever that proceeds from it (ma sadara anhu), and that which proceeds from it [the body] is a single effect occurring in a single manner (atharan wahidan waqi an ala nahjin wahidin). (10)

An aspect of this tabi ah is the earthly nature (al-tabi ah al-ardiyyah) which he describes as:
... requiring settledness (al-istiqrar) but on the condition that this [earthly] body (al-jism) is found existing in its natural place (makanihi al-tabi i) which is the earth (al-ard), while the motion [of this body] toward it [the earth] is on the condition that this body is outside its [natural] place. The existing faculty (al-quwwah al-mawjudah) for this effect (al-athar) [whether of settledness or motion] is a faculty having neither consciousness nor apprehension (idrak) at all of the effect, and furthermore this effect is a single effect (athar wahid) occurring in a single manner (waqi an ala tariqatin wahidatin). (11)

By this definition and example, tabiah is differentiated from the soul (al-nafs), which, as a motive principle (mabda al-harakah), is divided into three classes: the vegetative soul (al-nafs alnabatiyyah), the corporeal celestial soul (al-nafs al-falakiyyah al-jismaniyyah), and the animal soul (al-nafs al-hayawaniyyah). The vegetative soul, though unconscious, produces various actions (af alan mukhtalifatan) which cause increase in the length (tul), breadth (ard) and depth (umq) of the bodily organs (al-a da), and give rise to various forms (suwaran mukhtalifatan) and distinct shapes (ashkalan mutabayinah) such as flesh (lahm), heart (qalb), and brain (dimagh). The corporeal celestial soul, though producing only a single effect that occurs in a single manner, possesses consciousness; this soul is the faculty which is the immediate cause for setting into motion the celestial spheres (al-quwwah al-mubashshirah li al-tahrik al-falaki). As for the animal soul that subsists (hallah) in the bodies of animals found in this world, it is a faculty that is both conscious of the effects issuing from it; these effects are diverse (atharan mukhtalifatan) and occur in diverse manners (manahija mukhtalifatin). (12)

It is clear from the above that the principle by virtue of which a moving body actually moves is conceived as something distinct from the body itself. If the motive principle is intrinsic to the body then the motion is either due to nature (tabi ah) or due to a soul (nafs); but if the motive principle is extrinsic to the body then the motion is imposed or coerced (harakah qasriyyah). So it seems that altogether there are three basic principles or causes of motion, namely, one external coercive principle, and two internal, namely, nature and soul. In brief, these three principles may be referred to respectively as the coercive (qasriyyah), the natural (tabi iyyah), and the animate (nafsiyyah) principles of motion. Haq has also noted in the article mentioned above that al-Razi does not admit of tabia in inanimate objects, and this clearly means that he is thinking of it exclusively in psychological terms; for him, tabi a was a faculty which necessarily implied volition, and this was certainly not Aristotles [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] (13) This view of tabi ah is certainly in accord with the general consensus in Ash arite kalam on the rejection of the Avicennan notion of tabi ah as an effective causal principle inherent in natural phenomenal processes. (14) This is also al-Razis stand in another late work of his, the Mafatih al-Ghayb, (15) where, in the long commentary on the verse, And He (Who) has caused water to pour down from the sky, thereby producing fruits as food for you, (16) he rejects the view that God creates in the water an effective nature (tabi ah muaththirah) and in the earth a receptive nature (tabi ah qabilah) by which natures fruits are produced for humankind. On the contrary, he says that it is totally within the power of God to produce the fruits from the very beginning without recourse to the intermediary means of water and earth. Like al-Ghazali (d. 1111 CE), al-Razi considers intermediary means or causes such as water and earth not as real effective causes but as manifestative of divine custom (al- adah or sunnatuLlah)) in the phenomenal regularity of the physical world. (17) In a sense, the perceived causal regularity in natural processes is, as it were, an intellecto-spiritual test for humankind, for as the saying goes, Were it not for the causes the doubter would not have doubted! (18) Therefore, the tabi ah in inanimate things as a principle of motion and transformation has to be taken, in the case of al-Razi, in the metaphorical (majazi) sense, in the sense of adah, (19) that is, not in the sense of a real effective causal principle independent of God. Al-Razi is also quite explicit in the al-Matalib al- Aliyyah, yet another late work, in rejecting the ascription of effective causal agency to other than God, thus he says, for example:
Invalid is the claim (batala al-qawl) for the existence of an effective agent (mu'aththir) other than God, whether called planet (kawkab), celestial sphere (falak), intelligence (aql), soul (nafs), lofty spirit (ruh ulwiyy), or lowly spirit (ruh sufliyy)." (20)

So for al-Razi even the animate soul, like inanimate nature, is an effective cause only in a derived metaphorical sense, in the sense of manifest divine custom according to which things in the world are regulated as they are. That al-Razi rejects the notion of nature or tabi ah as a causal principle independent of God is also evident in his commentary on the verse: And We have created above you seven paths, and We are never unmindful of creation. (21) He says that this verse:

... indicates the fallacy of the belief in nature (al-tabi ah) for if one of those features (al-sifat) had come about by nature then it would have necessarily persisted and not undergone change. And if you say that those features have only changed due to change in nature, then this nature is itself in need of a creator and an originator (mujid). (22)

Difference Between Tabi ah, Tab and Tiba In the Sharh al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat, an early work, al-Razi makes a distinction between the terms al-tabi ah and al-tab:
The difference between al-tabi ah and al-tab is well known. And this [difference] is that al-tabi ah is a principle of motion of that [thing] in which it inheres without consciousness, whereas al-tab is a principle in the unqualified sense whether or not it [the thing in which the principle inheres] has consciousness. Therefore al-tab is more general than al-tabi ah. (23)

Another meaning of tab is in the sense of khatm (seal, stamp), which in the Quranic context refers to God setting a seal on the hearts of obstinate, evil people such that they never believe. Thus in the Mafatih al-Razi comments:
You have known that al-tab and al-khatm according to us refer to the occurrence of a strong motivation (al-da iyyah al-qawwiyyah) for disbelief which hinders the occurrence of belief. This is so because action without any motivation whatsoever is impossible. Hence when there arises a firmly grounded and strong motivation for disbelief, the heart becomes as if stamped with disbelief. Now, as for the occurrence of this motivation, if it is from the servant, an infinite regress (tasalsul) would ensure, but if it is from God, then the point is achieved (fa al-maqsud hasil). (24)

As in his understanding of tabiah as adah, al-Razi also shows himself, in this comment, to be an Asharite in theology, for the Asharites believe that all actions of human beings are, in the final analysis, created by God. (25) The World in the Totality of Being In the Matalib, (26) al-Razi divides the existent (al-mawjud) or being into three basic divisions: (1) the space-occupying (mutahayyizan), (2) that which subsists (hallan) in the space-occupier (al-mutahayyiz), and (3) that which is neither space-occupying nor subsisting in a spaceoccupier. A space-occupier is either divisible (qabilan lil-qismah), in which case it is a body (jism), or indivisible, in which case it is an atomic substance (jawhar fard). As for that which subsists in the space-occupier, these are the accidents (al-a rad) which subsist in both bodies (al-ajsam) and atoms (al-jawahir). (27)

According to the philosophers, with whom al-Razi seems to concur, the accidents are of nine kinds (ajnas tis ah), which, together with the category of substance (jawhar), constitute the ten Aristotelian categories of being (al-maqulat al- ashr lil-wujud). In the Mabahith (28) and SUH (29), al-Razi gives a fuller account of these nine categories of accidents, namely, the accidents of quantity (kamm), quality (kayf), relation (mudaf, idafah), where or place (ayna), when or time (mata), situation or posture (mawdu, wad), possession (milk, an yakuna lahu), acting, doing what (fi l, an yaf al), and being affected or acted upon (an yanfa il, infi al). (30) Al-Razi makes it clear that the first two main divisions of being constitute the world (al- alam), which he defines in the Muhassal, a middle-period work, for instance, as every existent other than God Most High, (31) and which is either substances (jawahir) or accidents (a rad). (32) Also for al-Razi the world is contingent (mumkin), i.e., not necessary in its essence (laysa bi wajibin li dhatihi), (33) and incipient (muhdath), i.e., preceded by non-existence (masbuqan bil- adam). (34) He also conceives of alam epistemologically as a means for knowing God, thus he says:
The world (al- alam) is an expression (ibarah) for every thing other than God Most High, and this is so because [the term] al- alam is derived, as previously shown, from al- ilm (ishtiqaq al- alam ala ma taqaddama min al- ilm); and everything that is [providing] knowledge (ilman) of God and [providing] evidence (dallan) of Him is an alam. There is no doubt that every incipient thing (muhdath) is evidence for God Most High (dallan ala Allah Ta ala). Hence every incipient thing is a world. (35)

As for the third of the three divisions of being, namely, the existent that is neither spaceoccupying nor subsisting in a space-occupier, al-Razi affirms, based on certain, sound proofs (aldala il al-yaqiniyyah), that God is such a being. (36) As he has clarified earlier, this means that God is not in space, nor is He a body or a substance and neither is He infinite space. (37) He however then raises the question whether or not an existent (mawjud) from among the contingents (mumkinat), in contrast to God the necessary being, can belong to this third division? (38) In other words, can a contingent being, like the necessary being, be neither space-occupying nor subsisting in a space-occupier? To this question, al-Razi gives an interesting reply that provokes in him (and in those of us who care to read him) a profound rethinking of the perennial problem of the incipience versus eternity of the world:
The philosophers (al-hukama') affirm it [i.e., affirm a contingent being neither space-occupying nor subsisting in a space-occupier] while the rationalist theologians (al-mutakallimun) deny it, even though the mutakallimun have no proof (dalil) showing the fallacy (fasad) of this division. Their proof for the incipience (huduth) of the world (alam) deals only with the space-occupiers and the accidents subsisting in them, but not with this third division. Because of this, their claim that all that is other than God is incipient (muhdath) can only be completely argued for either by invalidating this third division, or, granted its existence, by stating a proof showing the incipience of this third division. And since they did not state anything in these two contexts, their discourse has not completely

achieved its aim (wa lamma lam yadhkuru shay an fi hadhayni al-maqamayni kalamuhum ghayru tammin fi al-maqsudi). (39)

With this statement, al-Razi seems to be pointing out that the mutakallimun, in arguing for the incipience of the world, have not sufficiently taken into account a class of beings that, while still contingent, are not atoms nor bodies nor accidents, i.e., not physical in nature but spiritual. This is borne out in his commentary on the verse All praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds, (40) in which he specifies these contingent but non-physical entities:
As for the third [division of being], namely the contingent that is neither space-occupying nor an attribute of a space-occupier, it is the spirits [al-arwah], and these are either lowly (sufliyyah) or lofty (ulwiyyah). As for the lowly spirits, these are either good (khayrah), and they are the pious among the jinn, or wicked and evil, and they are the rebellious satans (maradat al-shayatin). The lofty spirits are either connected (muta alliqah) to bodies, and these are the souls of the celestial spheres (al-arwah al-falakiyyah), or not connected to bodies, and these are the purified, sanctified souls (al-arwah al-mutahharah al-muqaddasah). (41)

If this is the case, then, strictly speaking, instead of three there are altogether four basic divisions of being, namely, the three divisions of contingent beings: (1) the space-occupiers which are either atoms or bodies, (2) the accidents which subsist in the space-occupiers, (3) that which is neither space-occupying nor subsists in the space-occupiers; and (4) the one division of necessary being. These four divisions can be further reduced to two more fundamental ones: (1) contingent beings, and (2) the one necessary being. These four, ultimately reducible to two, divisions of being, are borne out also in the same context of his commentary on the verse, All praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds, only the context is now cited at length:
Know that the existent [or being = al-mawjud] is either necessary in its essence (wajiban li dhatihi) or contingent in its essence (mumkinan li dhatihi). As for the necessary in its essence, it is God Most High only. As for the contingent in its essence, it is every thing other than God Most High, and it is the world. This is because the rationalist theologians (al-mutakallimin) say, "the world is every existent other than God (al- alamu kullu mawjudin siwa Allahi)." The reason for the naming of this division (of being) as alam is that the existence of every thing other than God indicates the existence of God Most High. Thus for this reason every existent other than God is named alam. When you know this then we say: every thing other than God is either space-occupying or an attribute of the space-occupier, or neither space-occupying nor an attribute of a space-occupier. These then are the three divisions [of being]. As for the first division, the space-occupier, it is either receptive to division or it is not; if it is receptive to division then it is a body; if it is not like that then it is an atomic substance. As for the body, it is either from among the lofty bodies (al-ajsam al- ulwiyyah) or the lowly bodies (al-ajsam al-sufliyyah). As for the lofty bodies, these are the celestial spheres (al-aflak) and the planets [or stars] (al-kawakib). And

the revealed law (al-shari ah) has established the existence of other entities apart from these two divisions, such as the throne (al- arsh), the chair (al-kursiyy), the lote-tree of the outermost boundary (sidrat al-muntaha), the tablet (al-lawh), the pen (al-qalam), and the garden (al-jannah). As for the lowly bodies, these are either simple (basitah) or compound (murakkabah). As for the simple bodies these are the four elements (al- anasir al-arba ah). The first of these [four] is the sphere of the earth (kurrat al-ard) together with whatever within it including the deserts (al-mafawiz), the mountains (al-jibal) and the inhabited lands (al-bilad al-ma murah). The second of these is the sphere of water (kurrat al-ma), and it is the encompassing ocean (al-bahr al-muhit) and these great seas [or lakes] (al-abhur al-kabirah) that are found in this inhabited quarter [of the world] (hadha al-rub al-ma mur) together with whatever is within it [this quarter] including the great rivers (al-awdi ah al- azima) the number of which none knows except God Most High. And the third of these is the sphere of air (kurrat al-hawa); and the fourth of these is the sphere of fire (kurrat al-nar). As for the compound bodies (al-ajsam al-murakkabah), these are the plants (al-nabat), the minerals (al-ma adin), and the animals (al-hayawan) in all their numerous divisions and diverse kinds. As for the second division (of being) it is the contingent (al-mumkin) which is the attribute (sifat) of the space-occupiers, and this [division] is [that of] the accidents (al-a'rad). The rationalist theolgians have mentioned close to forty kinds of accidents. As for the third [division of being], namely the contingent that is neither space-occupying nor an attribute of a space-occupier, it is the spirits (al-a rad), and these are either lowly (sufliyyah) or lofty (ulwiyyah). As for the lowly spirits, these are either good (khayrah), and they are the pious among the jinn, or wicked, evil, and they are the rebellious satans (maradat al-shayatin). The lofty spirits are either connected (muta aliqah) to bodies, and these are the souls of the celestial spheres (al-arwah al-falakiyyah), or not connected to bodies, and these are the purified, sanctified souls (al-arwah almutahharah al-muqaddasah). (42)

At another place, al-Razi also includes time (al-zaman) and place (al-makan) among the alamin = all existents other than God; thus he says:
And included in the totality of what is other than God are place and time, for place refers to open space (al-fada), spatial domain (al-hayyiz) and the extended void (al-faragh al-mumtadd), whereas time refers to the duration (al-muddah) by virtue of which priority (al-qabliyyah) and posteriority (al-ba diyyah) occur. His (God's) verse: "Lord of the worlds" shows that He is Lord of place and time, their Creator (khaliqan) and their Originator (mujidan). (43)

Cosmic Structure of the World Concerning the cosmic structure of the world, al-Razi says in the Matalib:

The world as a whole (jumlat al- alam) is constituted by eleven spheres (kurrah), five of which constitute the celestial sphere of the sun (falak al-shams), and these [five] are the sphere[s] of Mars (al-mirrikh), Jupiter (al-mushtari), Saturn (zuhal), the sphere of the fixed stars (falak al-thawabit) and the Great Sphere (al-falak al-a zam). The other five [spheres] are within the sphere of the sun, and these are the sphere[s] of Venus (al-zuharah), Mercury (utarid), the Moon (al-qamar), then the sublime sphere (al-kurrat al-latifah) of fire (al-nar) and air (al-hawa'), and the gross sphere (al-kurrat al-kathifah) of water (al-ma') and earth (al-ard). And since the sun is like the king of the world of bodies (sultan 'alam al-ajsam), it is not inappropriate that it should be located in the center among the spheres of the world (fi wasat kurrat al- alam). (44)

Commenting on the verse: They [the sun and moon] float each in an orbit, al-Razi gives an interesting interpretation of the meaning of falak (celestial sphere or orbit) and its relation to the movement of the celestial bodies, for it is quite clear to him, following the Quran, (45) that the stars, planets, sun and moon are distinct from their respective spheres or orbits (aflak) in which they move:
The falak, what is it? We say [that it is] the round body or the round surface or the circle, for the lexicographers (ahl al-lughah) agree that the whorl of the spindle (falakah al-mighzal) is named falakah due to its roundness, and the falakah of the tent is the wooden circular plate that is fixed to the head of the tent-pole so that the pole will not tear the tent, and it is a rounded sheet. If this is so, then it follows that the sky is circular, but most of the exegetes agree that the sky is spread out wihout having extremities [resting] on mountains, and it is like a flat roof; and this is indicated by the verse of the Most High: And the raised roof [al-Tur: 5]. We say that there is nothing in the [Sacred] texts that indicates categorically that the sky is spread out and not circular whereas the evidence of the senses (al-dalil al-hissi) shows that it is circular, hence it is imperative to accede to it. (46)

This is followed by a long and elaborate argument to prove the curvature and circular shape of the sky, after which he goes on to say:
This [verse] shows that for each planet an orbit (falakan).... As for the seven itinerants [i.e., sun, moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Mercury], they each have an orbit, and as for the other planets [i.e., the fixed stars=alkawakib] it is said that they have collectively an orbit. (47)

This followed by a long discussion on the question of the physical structure of the spheres or orbits and their relation to the motion of the stars and planets in it. (48) Earlier he has discussed the same question in the context of his commentary of another, similar verse. (49) Are the

spheres or orbits to be considered as real, concrete physical bodies or are they merely the abstract circles in the heavens traced out year in and year out by the various stars and planets? Al-Razi relates that some people like Dahhak say that the falak is not a body but merely the abstract orbit traced by the stars. (50) Most of the learned, like the astronomers (arbab al-hayah or ahl alhayah) say that the falak are the bodies (i.e., solid spheres) on which the stars turn (hiya ajsamun taduru al-nujum alayhi), and this view is closer to the apparent sense of the Quranic verses regarding the celestial orbits. (51) The solid star-carrying sphere is likened by al-Razi to a hollowed out globe in which inner wall a nail is implanted, and so when the globe is rotated the nail is seen by an observer at the center of the globe to be in circular motion about the center. (52) Another possibility that al-Razi considers is that of four parallel circular planes encompassed within a sphere and on which planes the stars are positioned and put into orbital motion when the sphere is turned. (53) Quite obviously, both the sphere and the planes have to be totally transparent to the sight in order for the stars embedded therein to be observable. But ultimately, al-Razi seems to be undecided as to which celestial models, concrete or abstract, most conform with external reality, for he says: In truth, there is no way to ascertain the characteristics of the heavens except by authority [of divine revelation or prophetic traditions] (al-khabar). (54) Thus it seems that for al-Razi (and for others before and after him), astronomical models, whatever their utility or lack thereof for ordering the heavens, are not founded on sound rational proofs, and so no intellectual commitment can be made to them insofar as description and explanation of celestial realities are concerned. (55) In volume four of the Matalib, al-Razi devotes a twenty-page section to elaborating further on the nature of this cosmic structure and of celestial entities like the sun, moon and stars therein and their beneficial influences on terrestrial life. (56) There is also a thirty page section in the alMabahith on the benefits of celestial bodies for the elementary world. (57) Universe (alam) or Multiverse (alamin, awalim)? Alamin (in the genitive case as in rabb al- Alamin = Lord of the worlds) and awalim are plural forms of alam = world. As in the case of the singular, the plural form of the word, i.e., al-alamin, is defined as an expression for every existent other than God Most High. (58) Both forms are used to refer to both the physical and the spiritual worlds of contingent beings. An instance of alRazis use of awalim to refer to the spiritual world is as below:
Know that the worlds of the divine disclosures (awalim al-mukashafat) have no terminal limit (la nihayata laha), because these worlds represent the mind's journey (safar al-aql) into the stations of God's majesty (maqamat jalal Allah), the gradations of His greatness (madarij azamatihi) and the mansions of the marks of His grandeur and sanctity (manazil athar kibriya'ihi wa qudsihi). And just as there is no terminal limit for these stations (al-maqamat), so there is no terminal limit for the journey into these stations. (59)

In the context of his commentary on the verse All praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds, alRazi raises the interesting question of whether the term worlds (al- alamin) refers to multiple worlds within this single universe or cosmos, or to many other universes or a multiverse beyond

this known universe. In other words, is al- alamin to be understood intracosmically or extracosmically? In clarification of this question, he says:
It is established by evidence that there exists beyond the world a void without a terminal limit (khala' la nihayata laha), and it is established as well by evidence that God Most High has power over all contingent beings (al-mumkinat). Therefore He the Most High has the power (qadir) to create a thousand thousand worlds (alfa alfi 'awalim) beyond this world such that each one of those worlds be bigger and more massive than this world as well as having the like of what this world has of the throne (al- arsh), the chair (al-kursiyy), the heavens (al-samawat) and the earth (al-ard), and the sun (al-shams) and the moon (al-qamar). The arguments of the philosophers (dala'il al-falasifah) for establishing that the world is one are weak, flimsy arguments founded upon feeble premises. (60)

So it is quite clear that al-Razi rejects the Aristotelian and Avicennan view of the impossibility of multiple universes. (61) In a short three-page section of volume six of the Matalib, he overviews the main Aristotelian arguments against the existence of multiple universes and points out their weaknesses and refutes them. (62) This rejection naturally follows from his affirmation of atomism which entails the existence of vacant space in which the atoms move, combine and separate. Al-Razi takes up the issue of the void in greater detail in volume five of the Matalib. (63) Al-Razis Symbolic Understanding of Nature The physical world can be studied on its own quite apart from the obvious fact of its ontic and causal dependence on the Creator, but it is clear in al-Razis physics, as shown above, that the world is to be studied symbolically. This means that knowing the world is an integral aspect of knowing the Creator of the world, and so the world is not to be studied and known for its own sake but for the sake of knowing some aspects of the divine as manifested in the phenomenal entities, structures, and processes of the world. For al-Razi this symbolic view of nature is borne out by the fact that the world is not self-explanatory, i.e., the diverse physical features and characteristics of the world are not explainable by reference to processes within the world itself, but by reference to what transcends the world, thus he says in the Mafatih:
The bodies of the world are homogenous (mutasawiyah) with respect their essential corporeality (mahiyyat al-jismiyyah) whereas they are different (mukhtalifah) with respect to their characteristics (al-sifat), which are their colours (al-alwan), places (al-amkinah), and modes of being (al-ahwal). It is impossible that each body's specificity (ikhtisas) with regard to a particular characteristic be due to its corporeality per se or to the concomitants (lawazim) of corporeality, otherwise the bodies will all be homogenous (husul al-istiwa). Thus it is necessary that this specificity be due to the specifying act (takhsis) of a specifier (mukhassis) and the organization of an organizer (tadbir mudabbir). And this specifier,

if it is a body, then the above will again be said of it (ada al-kalamu fihi); but if it is not a body, then that is the required point (al-matlub). Now this being, if it is not living, knowing and having power but whose efficacy (ta'thiruhu) is due rather to emanation (fayd) and nature (tabi ah), then the same problem of homogenity is again entailed; but if it is living, knowing and having power, then that is the point. Once you realised this then it will be manifest that each one of the particles (dharrat) of the heavens and the earth is a truthful witness (shahid sadiq) to and an articulate informer (mukhbir natiq) of the existence of the powerful, wise and omniscient God. And my father the shaykh, al-Imam Diya' al-Din Umar, may Allah have mercy on him, used to say: "That [this witnessing and informing] is so, because it is possible for every atomic substance to occur, alternatively (ala al-badl), in an infinite number of places, and it is also possible for it to be characterized, alternatively, by an infinite number of characteristics. And each of these postulated situations (al-ahwal al-muqaddarah), supposing they occur, points to their dependence [for their occurrence] on the existence of the Merciful and Wise Fashioner (al-Sani al-hakim, al-Rahim)." Thus it is established by what we have said that this domain of investigations has no terminal end. As for the realisation of guidance by way of spiritual exercise and purification, this way is an ocean having no shore. And for each wayfarer to God his peculiar route and his particular drinking place, as indicated in His verse: And for each a course he travels by. (64)

Conclusion The foregoing preliminary survey of al-Razis thoughts on the nature of the physical world shows that he sees physical nature to be worthy of humankinds intellectual reflection and investigation, for it is through nature that the reality of divine providence and wisdom is manifested. Contrary to popular modernist presumption, belief in a creative God of knowledge, will, and power does not put premature limits to the scientific curiosity innate in every human being, but rather it guides that curiosity toward genuinely fruitful ends and in fact opens up new horizons of understanding of nature. The way before us, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in modern science now is either God of the gaps or Chance of the gaps, for whether we like it or not, there is always an explanatory gap, however small, between what we term as cause and what we term as it its effect, and our actual, practical jump across that gap is always an act of personal commitmenta personal commitment either to the god of wisdom or to the god of chance. The choice before believers is obvious, for we know that in science nothing, absolutely nothing happens by chance, for chance is merely a convenient euphemism for ignorance, but ignorance can never be a productive, creative principle. Everything happens by intelligence, and the gaps in our scientific knowledge are merely reflective of the realms of infinite intelligence we have yet to explore and the pages in the never ending story of creation we have yet to read. (65)

And and the Lo!

if all the trees in the earth were pens, the sea, with seven more seas to help it, (were ink), words of Allah would never be exhausted. Allah is Mighty, Wise. (66)

(1.) Encyclopedia of Islam, new edition (EI2), article tabi a. (2.) For a concise account of his life and works, see EI2, article Fakhr al-Din al-Razi by G. C. Anawati who cites the relevant classical biographical sources. A critically comprehensive account of al-Razis life and works is Muhammad Salih al-Zarkan, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi wa Ara uhu al-Kalamiyyah wa al-Falsafiyyah (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1963), 8-36 passim; henceforth cited as Zarkan. An interesting nuanced reinterpretation is Tony Street, Concerning the Life and Works of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society, a Festschrift in honour of Anthony H. Johns (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 135-46. (3.) Ed., Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqa, 3 vols. in 1 (Tehran: Muassasah al-Sadiq, 1415H?). (4.) Ed. Abd al-Rahman al-Badawi (Beirut: Dar al-Qalam, 1980). (5.) SUH, 2: 16ff. Words in round brackets are al-Razis, either translated or transliterated, whereas those in square brackets are my contextual clarifications of the text. (6.) SUH, 2: 16ff. (7.) SUH 2: 19. (8.) SUH 2: 19ff. (9.) Al-Mabahith al-Mashriqiyyah, ed., Muhammad al-Mu tasim biLlah al- Baghdadi, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al- Arabi, 1990), 1: 645; henceforth Mabahith. (10.) SUH, 2: 29-30. (11.) SUH, 2: 29. (12.) SUH, 2: 29-30. (13.) EI2, tabi a, 26, citing al-Razis ethical and psychological treatise Kitab al-Nafs wal-Ruh, ed. M. S. H. Ma sumi (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1968). (14.) Ibid. (15.) Muhammad b. Umar b. al-Husayn b. al-Hasan b. Ali al-Bakri al- Tabaristani Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Tafsir al-Kabir, 32 vols. in 11 (Beirut: Dar Ihya al-Turath al- Arabi, 1996), 1 (2): 342ff. This work is also known as Mafatih al-Ghayb, which means Keys to the Unseen; henceforth Mafatih.

(16.) al-Baqarah: 22. (17.) Mafatih, 1 (2): 343-44. (18.) Ibid., 343 (law la al-asbabu lama irtaba murtabun). (19.) For more on his conception of adah, see Mafatih, 1 (2): 342ff. (20.) Cited in Zarkan, 356. (21.) al-Mu minun: 17. (22.) Mafatih, 8 (23): 267-68. (23.) Cited in Samih Dughaym, Mawsu at Mustalahat al-Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Beirut: Maktabah Lubnan, 2001), 423, henceforth Dughaym. (24.) Mafatih, 6 (16), 157 (commentary on al-Tawbah: 87); also cited in Dughaym, 423. (25.) The problem of human freedom of action and hence moral responsibility before God in relation to divine knowledge, will, and power is a complex philosophico-theological issue which shall understandably not be dealt with here. It suffices here to say that the Asharites are neither fatalists since they believe in human choice and moral responsibility nor voluntarists since they believe in divine predestination, but are somewhere in between; however this paradox can only be resolved not at the discursive, theoretical level but at the level of intuitive spiritual experience. (26.) Al-Matalib al- Uliyyah min al- Ilmi al-Ilahi, ed., Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqa 9, vols. in 5 (Beirut: Dar al- Kitab al-Arabi, 1987), 4: 9ff. (27.) Matalib, 4: 9ff. (28.) 1: 233ff. (29.) 1: 95ff. (30.) A concise account of the Arabic categories is J. N. Mattock, EI2, article al-makulat. (31.) Mafatih, 1 (2): 444. (32.) Muhassal Afkar al-Mutaqaddimin wa al-Muta akhkhirin min al- ulama wa al-hukama wa al-mutakallimin (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Lubnani, 1992), 109; also cited in Dughaym, 433. (33.) Sharh al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat, cited in Dughaym, 433. (34.) Fakhr al-Razi, Kitab al-Arba in fi Usul al-Din (Hyderabad: Dairah al-Ma arif alUthmaniyyah, 1934), 7; also cited in Dughaym, 685.

(35.) Mafatih, 1 (2): 444; cited also in Dughaym, 433. (36.) Matalib, 4: 12. (37.) Matalib, 2: 8ff. (38.) Matalib, 4: 12. (39.) Matalib, 4:12. For a recent monograph on this issue, see Muammer Iskenderoglu, Fakhr alDin al-Razi and Thomas Aquinas on the Question of the Eternity of the World (Leiden: Brill, 2002). (40.) al-Fatihah: 2. (41.) Mafatih, 1 (1): 198-99. (42.) Mafatih, 1 (1): 198-99. (43.) Mafatih, 1 (1): 163. (44.) Matalib, 4: 332; cited also in Dughaym, 433; Cf., W. Hartner, al- Falak and P. Kunitzsch, al-Nudjum both articles in EI2. (45.) al-Anbiya: 33; Ya Sin: 40. (46.) Mafatih 9 (26): 279-80. (47.) Ibid., 280-81. (48.) Ibid., 9 (26): 280-83. (49.) al-Anbiya: 33. (50.) Mafatih, 8 (22): 141. (51.) Ibid. (52.) Mafatih, 9 (26): 281. (53.) Ibid. (54.) Mafatih, 8 (22): 141. (55.) Cf. Anton M. Heinen, Islamic Cosmology: A Study of As-Suyutis al-Haya as-Saniya fi lHaya as-Sunniya, with critical edition, translation, and commentary (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 1982), 181-82.

(56.) Matalib, 4: 331-52. (57.) Mabahith, 2:103-138. (58.) Mafatih, 1 (1): 24; also cited in Dughaym, 436. (59.) Lawami al-Bayyinat Sharh Asma Allah Ta ala wa al-Sifat (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1983), 138; also cited in Dughaum, 504. (60.) Mafatih, 1 (1): 24. (61.) Cf. Arif, Ibn Sinas Cosmology, 11-13, citing mainly the Shifa and al-Iraqi, 371-73. (62.) Matalib, 6: 193-95. (63.) Matalib, 5: 155-85; see chapters two and four. (64.) Mafatih, 1 (1): 26, commenting on al-Baqarah: 148. (65.) For more on al-Razis scientific appreciation of nature, see my article in Islam & Science, Vol. 2 (2004) No. 1, 1-32. (66.) Luqman: 27. All translations of Qurbanic verses are based on Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Qurban: Text and Explanatory Translation (Mecca: Muslim World League, 1977). Adi Setia, International Islamic Univerity, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Email: adisetiamuh@pd.jaring.my COPYRIGHT 2004 Center for Islam & Science Copyright 2004, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company. Posted in Adi Setia | No Comments

Brian Tokar (ed.), Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering.
Monday, January 5th, 2009

Author: Setia, Adi Date: Jun 22, 2005 Words: 758 Publication: Islam & Science ISSN: 1703-762X

Brian Tokar (ed.), Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering (London and New York: Zed Books, 2001), 440 pp, Pb, index, ISBN 1 85649 835 2 This book documents in one handy volume the global negative effects of the present-day overlycommercialized model of biotechnology/ genetic engineering (BT/GE) research on health, food security and indigenous economies. It even calls into question the scientific integrity of the overly optimistic claims of BT/GE to enhancing food production and overcoming diseases. While not actually advocating a wholesale abandonment of the BT/GE program, the book does emphasize that it is high time for scientists in the public interest to take a thorough second look at BT/GE and do a systemic review of all its theoretical assumptions and research methods. Political economists in the public interest may also do well to deconstruct the not-so-altruistic socio-economic objectives which drive much of BT/GE research today. The book is divided into four parts of a total of thirty-one articles by various authors, including such notables as Vandana Shiva, Tokar himself, Beth Burrows, David King, Hope Shand and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz. Part one has eight chapters centering on the theme of health, food and environment. The six articles of part two focus on medical genetics, science and human rights. The next part of eight articles deals with the issue of patents, corporate power and the theft of knowledge and resources. While these first three parts are concerned with the various shortcomings and negative impacts of BT/GE, the last part tells us through eight articles just what the free peoples of the world are doing about the GE threat to their sense of biological and spiritual well-being. The substantial seventeen-page Introduction by the editor ably overviews the contents of the book. For Tokar, BT/GE encapsulates the intellectual conceit and political economic tyranny of a technology gone way off-track. It is a science that has to be done simply because it can be done and society at large will just have to adjust its values to its absolute utilitarian ethos. It symbolizes, or rather, it constitutes the rise of a new technological and financial elite who act as if the earth and all its inhabitants are little more than chess pieces that can be endlessly played and manipulated to satisfy the insatiable wants of an extravagantly wealthy few (p. 2). In sum, it is technology for money as an end in itself; an end to end all ends, nay, all life, if need be. In order to ameliorate popular misgivings about the safety of BT/GE, science students and teachers (who are often not much wiser) are hoodwinked by the biotechnology industry into believing that genetic engineering is not essentially different from traditional, time-tested interventions such as the breeding of plants and animals, or using yeasts to make bread or beer (p. 4). However, this suggestion of a continuum from cultivating wheat to cloning sheep is a gross misrepresentation of both history and biology (p. 5). While breeding is restricted to genetic exchange between animals and plants that mate naturally, gene splicing transcends this natural restriction to facilitate genetic exchange between totally unrelated organisms, hence creating and introducing new types of organisms into ecosystems which have never known them. Apart from the unforeseeable impact of novel GE organisms on the natural environment, the book also highlights socio-ethical concerns pertaining to farmers rights over their crops and seeds, patenting (a.k.a. monopolizing) of genetic information, genetic reductionism in medicine

and the insidious revival of eugenics in gene therapy. For Tokar, BT/GE epitomes a science driven by greed, i.e., the commercial lust to reduce all life to a set of objects and codes to be bought, sold and patented (p. 7). In the century-long tradition of sustained and often brilliant counterattacks against the rise and dominance of global technopoly, (8) this book should find a prominent place amongst the works of such conscientious writers as Theodore Roszak, Jerry Mander, Ivan Illich, Vandana Shiva, Claude Alvares, Martin Khor, Ashis Nandy, Pietro Croce, Majid Rahnema Neil Postman and last but probably foremost, Paul Feyerabend. As one who graduated from the very center of global technopoly (MIT), Brian Tokar is well positioned as an insider critic of a technology that would disfigure, even destroy, life itself, simply because it can be done, and moreover, be done for money, the one true god. (8.) Postman, Neil, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993). Adi Setia International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia COPYRIGHT 2005 Center for Islam & Science Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company. Posted in Adi Setia | No Comments

Islamic Science as a scientific research program: conceptual and pragmatic issues.

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Title Annotation: The End Matters Author: Setia, Adi Geographic Code: 1USA Date: Jun 22, 2005 Words: 3125 Publication: Islam & Science ISSN: 1703-762X Islamic Science, Islamization, and the Road Ahead: Conceptual Issues

The idea of Islamizing the sciences has become a matter of much passionate discussion and debate among Muslim intellectuals and academicians, including professional scientists, mathematicians, engineers and technologists. Many books and articles have been written and seminars held to clarify the idea in conceptual and pragmatic terms. However, it would seem that little progress has been achieved so far toward achieving a broad consensus among them on a positive reception of the idea. Some, like Abdus Salam and Hoodbhoy, (1) reject the idea altogether, while others accept it wholeheartedly without a clear understanding of what the idea really means and entails for their scientific work, but most working scientists have only a hazy notion of the idea without any genuine intellectual commitment for or against it. This situation is not surprising given the realization that the idea of Islamization of sciences necessarily demands close, critical engagement with the philosophy, history and practice of both Islamic and modern science. Thus, only a very few Muslim scientists and philosophers of science (e.g., Nursi, (2) al-Attas, (3) Nasr, (4) Bakar, (5) Golshani (6) and others) have been successful in articulating the idea with any degree of intellectual insightthough not all use the term Islamizationbased on a thorough knowledge of both the Islamic and Western scientific traditions, including the contemporary ubiquity of modern science. However, after three decades or so of Islamization, my feeling is that their works need to be further explicated in terms that can provide practical direction to scientists not exposed to the history and philosophy of Islamic and modern science. One thing that all parties in the debate have realized is that the Islamization of the sciences has to be far more substantial than merely citing the relevant Quranic verses and Ahadith, for the real intellectual challenge lies in articulating the religious textual relevance in conceptual terms rich enough to determine the content and direction of actual empirical scientific research. In view of this complex and difficult situation, it should be fruitful for Muslim scientists to conceive of the Islamization of the sciences or Islamic Science as a long-term scientific research program. (7) Like other scientific research programs (such as kalam and falsafah physical theories, (8) Ibn al-Haythams optics, (9) classical Newtonian mechanics, (10) Darwinian evolution, (11) Einsteins relativity, (12) quantum mechanics and David Bohms implicate order, (13) Chomskyan linguistics, (14) Eccles and Poppers mind-brain interactionism, (15) cognitive psychology, (16) big-bang cosmology, (17) chaos and complexity theories versus intelligent design, irreducible complexity and creation hypothesis, (18) and now superstring theory (19)), the scientific research program of Islamic Science has a core metaphysical component consisting of basic, abstract theoretical assumptions underpinning the program, and a network of auxiliary hypotheses providing directions for the conceptual clarification and empirical investigation of this core metaphysical component, and hence providing rational and scientific evidential support for it. Empirical clarifications, once achieved, may even lead to practical, useful technological and engineering applications which can serve to realize the axiological implications of the core metaphysical component in contemporary Muslim communities throughout the world. The core metaphysical component here obviously consists of the fundamental elements of the Islamic worldview (i.e., the Islamic vision of man, nature and ultimate reality), while the auxiliary hypotheses provide guidance toward working out the implications of this worldview in empirical terms, for instance, the implications of (i) the Islamic vision of man for formulating a contemporary empirical Islamic psychology and epistemology, (20) (ii) the Islamic vision of

nature for formulating an empirically fruitful alternative to Darwinian evolution, (21) (iii) the Islamic vision of ultimate reality for deciding between the Copenhagen instrumentalist and the Bohmian realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, (22) (iv) the Islamic medical methodological alternative to vivisection, (23) and so on and so forth. This research program pertains to both the ongoing conceptual clarification of various aspects of the Islamic worldview, and the concomitant working out of their empirical implications for Islamic science, technology and engineering. In short, a major cognitive function of this research program is to provide directions toward critical conceptual and empirical reevaluations of modern scientific theories which are found to be problematic from the perspective of the Islamic worldview, with a vision toward their eventual modification and even replacement with better theories if necessary. The articulation of this Islamic Science research program, conceived thus, necessarily requires critical, creative engagement at a deep theoretical level with modern science since it is the default science for which Islamic Science is proffered as the more viable alternative, at least for Muslims if not for humanity at large. Obviously, the ambitious scope of this research program for the revival of Islamic Science necessarily entails an interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists, technologists and engineers on the one hand, and historians, philosophers and sociologists of science on the other. Also, the axiological, as opposed to the cognitive and methodological, aspects of Islamic Science will require the informed input of authoritative experts in Fiqh, Usul al-fiqh and the Maqasid of the Shari ah. Furthermore, non-Muslim intellectuals, academicians and scientists may also want to participate and contribute to the elucidation of the content of this research program given the present-day widespread self-critical spirit of modern science leading to serious consideration of scientific methodological pluralism (24) and the search for alternative, more democratic sciences and technologies, a.k.a., science and technology with a human face. (25) Pragmatic Issues I: Globalization and Techno-Scientific Creativity in the Islamic World Universities (including other forms of public and private educational organizations) throughout the Islamic world may want to establish, say, departments, centers or institutes of integrated studies in science with a clear vision toward facilitating this wide ranging multi- and interdisciplinary collaboration at the local, regional and international levels of intellectual and scientific networking. This institutional framework provides a regular, ongoing formal intellectual platform for promoting interdisciplinary discourse amongst scholars and students toward acquiring a profound and sophisticated understanding of the Islamic worldview in relation to science and technology and its clarification in terms of cognitive, pragmatic and axiological directions for empirical and technical research in the challenging global context of contemporary scientific and technological enterprise. Through the local, regional and international research and networking activities of these institutes of integrated studies in science, policy makers in the Islamic world can have access to responsible advice with regard to enhancing Muslim techno-scientific creativity while avoiding a scenario in which globalizationif allowed to run its courseresults in the Islamic world remaining at the receiving end of technology i.e. continuing to use other peoples technology to

produce goods and services for other peoples market without itself ever producing competitive technology. (26) Since long-term prosperity cannot be a borrowed one, it will have to be one whose conceptual and pragmatic bases are self-consciously defined first and foremost from within the context of Muslim societies. In practical terms, this means that the techno-scientific endeavor has to be eventually homegrown, cultivated and geared ultimately to serving the authentic creative and material needs of indigenous Muslim communities and then (when opportunity beckons) the global community at large. This means empowering promising young scientists and technologists to conceptualize, choose, propose, plan and direct their own research agendas, to pursue plausible novel theories, to experiment, and to innovate in thinking and implementing, and lastly but not least, to be continually well-informed of, and hence to be involved fruitfully in debates on, the shifting, global political economics of issues pertaining to intellectual property rights, research agendas, and alternative and emerging technologies. In order for science, engineering and vocational students to be able to do meaningful non-trivial choosing and conceptualizing, it will not be enough to expose them merely to the hard facts of the standard, mostly western contextualized, textbooks and technical manuals. Provisions must also be made not only for teaching science and technology as such, but also for educating students in the creative conceptual foundations of theories, methodologies and techniques, as well as exposing them to the cultural expectation matrices within which the techno-scientific enterprise is socially supported and finds its axiological direction and meaning. This consideration is especially important in the overwhelmingly religiously oriented nations of the Muslim world, including countries like Malaysia, in which the major world religious cultures (Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism) play a pivotal role in determining the worldviews and value-systems of its citizens, and hence, in providing their lives with an ultimate sense of direction, meaning and purpose. Here again, institutes of integrated studies in science, as conceived above, can provide the kind of historically and philosophically grounded conceptual and pragmatic perspectives needed to formulate scientific and technical educational policies geared to the attainment of a creative, holistic understanding of science and technology amongst students, teachers, intellectuals and policy makers. Pragmatic Issues II: Islamic Science as Re-Democratizing Science Seen as a universal human activity, science is a way of thinking about and experiencing the world, and ordering it in thought and act, hence it is neither the invention nor the monopoly of the modern West, but a natural birthright of every human being who experiences and interacts with his or her environment. Just as there is cultural diversity amongst humankind, so too there is scientific diversity as part and parcel of this universal cultural diversity, which in turn is reflective, even expressive, of the diversity and complexity of the natural world. The history of Islamic science is the history of a truly scientific cosmopolitanism in which the positive, creative contributions of all ethnic and religious communities were welcomed, appreciated and critically integrated into the framework of an intellecto-spiritual and ethicomoral outlook toward the bounties of nature as a divinely bestowed trust. To be free and creative, Muslim scientists can and should learn from this rich history. They should reclaim their heritage

and their birthright by renewing all that is good in their scientific history and rearticulate it in contemporary terms in full, unapologetic critical engagement with modern western science. Therefore, the call for the revival of Islamic Science as a viable scientific research program is in a way a call for the redemocratization of the scientific endeavor of all mankind. It is a call for the study of nature in terms of not only its temporal utility, but also and more importantly in terms of its transcendent significance for the ultimate salvation of humanity. Accordingly, there are two interlocking dimensions of study in Islamic Science. One pertains to utility, i.e., to the improvement of the sociomaterial conditions of temporal earthly life. The other, more important, dimension pertains to intellectuality, i.e., to the contemplative appreciation that the way nature functions indicates that it is thoroughly dependent on an intelligent designer who transcends it and to whom scientists will be accountable for what they do in and out of their study of nature. The latter dimension is more important because it underlies the first and provides the scientific enterprise with an organizing vision of ultimate meaning, direction and purpose that can curtail the commercial monopolization of science and technology for individual and corporate greed masquerading as progress, development and change for the better. The problem now is that mainstream, western modern science ever since Darwin is thoroughly imbued with a naturalistic, reductionist, utilitarian and hence manipulative outlook toward the natural world. Naturalistic because it sees nature as self-subsisting and self-organizing and thus independent of the Creator; reductionist because it reduces all natural phenomena to physical, linear, quantitative and quantifiable causes and effects; utilitarian and manipulative because it studies nature for the Baconian purpose of controlling, manipulating and exploiting it to realize vague, elitist notions of the good life. The unabashed three-way wedding of science with multinational corporations and state power in the West for controlling and exploiting the worlds resources is a clear indication that much of modern scientific research may never achieve its selfproclaimed democratic, liberal and humanitarian goals. To be precise, mainstream modern science and technology is basically the Euroamerican way of doing science and technology. This technopoly (27) is thoroughly imbued with a totally secular, utilitarian outlook to the natural and social world. To a large extent, its present-day global ubiquity is due to the after-effects of systematic colonial destruction of indigenous, holistic systems of science, technology, knowing and living, and their replacement with reductionist forms of knowing and living now indirectly (but nonetheless, aggressively) imposed on poor indebted nations through the various structural adjustments programs of international lending institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Again, Islamic Science conceived as a scientific research program carried out by Muslim institutes of integrated studies in science can provide the formal research and scholarly framework for contributing the Islamic intellectual input to the global, grass-roots movement toward the dewesternization and hence redemocratization of science and technology. Toward the attainment of this goal, Muslims may share a common vision and mission with non-Muslims in the East and West through the various formal and informal avenues for mutual collaboration at their disposal.

(1.) Hoodbhoy, Pervez Amirali, Muslims and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Struggle for Rationality, foreword by Mohammed Abdus Salam (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1991). A comprehensive survey of Muslim intellectual responses to modern science is Osman Bakar, Tawhid and Science: Essays on the History and Philosophy of Islamic Science (Kuala Lumpur: Nurin Enterprise, 1991), 201-26. (2.) Mermer, Yamine and Ameur, Redha, Beyond the Modern: Sa id al-Nursis View of Science in Islam & Science, Vol. 2 (Winter 2004) No. 2, 119-60. (3.) Seti, Adi, Al-Attas Philosophy of Science: An Extended Outline in Islam & Science, Vol. 1 (December 2003) No. 2, 165-214. (4.) Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Science and Civilization in Islam, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1987). (5.) Bakar, Osman, The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1998). (6.) Golshani, Mehdi, Issues in Islam and Science (Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, 2004); reviewed by Osman Bakar in Islam & Science, Vol. 2 (2004) No. 2, 209-14. See also Golshani, Mehdi, The Holy Quran and the Sciences of Nature (Tehran: Global Publications, 1997). (7.) For modern scientific research programs see Lakatos, Imre, Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes in Musgrave, A. and Lakatos, I. (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 91196. Kalam physical theories are investigative in nature and hence are research programs, see Sabra, A. I., Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islam: The Evidence of the Fourteenth Century in ZGAIW, 9 (1994), 1-42. For a critical overview of Islamic science, philosophy and theology as investigative scientific research programs, see Adi Setias Introduction to his unpublished doctoral thesis The Physical Theory of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, IIUM, 2004), 1-23. (8.) See Adi Setias Introduction to his unpublished doctoral thesis, The Physical Theory of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, IIUM, 2004), 1-23. (9.) Saud, Muhammad, The Scientific Method of Ibn al-Haytham (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1990); Omar, Saleh B., Ibn al-Haythams Optics: A Study of the Origins of Experimental Science (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1977); Anton, Heinen, al-Biruni and al-Haytham: A Comparative Study of Scientific Method in Said, Hakim Mohammed (ed.), alBiruni Commemorative Volume (Karachi: Hamdard National Foundation, 1979), 501-13. (10.) Newton, Isaac, The Principia, trans. by Andrew Motte (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1995). See also Burtt, E. A., The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: The Scientific Thinking of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Their Contemporaries, reprint of 2nd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980).

(11.) A recent, somewhat dogmatic, restatement of the Darwinian paradigm is Mayr, Ernst, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001). (12.) Einstein, Albert, The Meaning of Relativity (London: Routledge, 2003); see also David Bohms interpretation of relativity in his The Special Theory of Relativity, reprinted (London: Routledge, 2002). (13.) Bohm, David, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 2002); idem and Hiley, B. J., The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory, paperback reprint (London: Routledge, 2002). (14.) Chomsky, Noam, Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). 15. Popper, Karl and Eccles, John, The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism, reprinted (London: Routledge, 2003). (16.) Jackendoff, Ray, Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993); idem, Languages of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); idem, Consciousness and the Computational Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987); idem, Semantics and Cognition, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985). (17.) Craig, William Lane and Smith, Quentin, Theism, Atheism and Big-Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993). (18.) Moreland, J. P. (ed.), The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1994); Behe, Michael, Darwins Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: Free Press, 1996). (19.) Green, M. B., Schwarz, J. H., and Witten, E., Superstring Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). (20.) Here, Muslim psychologists may draw from traditional Islamic faculty psychology and modern cognitive psychology of especially the Chomskyan school. (21.) The positive research program here may be referred to as the intelligent design or creation hypothesis based on the Quranic concept of taskhir and other related concepts such as itqan and ishan; for elaboration, see Setia, Adi, Taskhir, Fine-Tuning, Intelligent Design and the Scientific Appreciation of Nature in Islam & Science, Vol. 2 (Summer 2004) No. 1, 7-32. (22.) Here, Muslim scientists may also draw from and work out the empirical implications of Sufi ontology as outlined in al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib, The Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf: Preliminary Thoughts on an Islamic Philosophy of Science (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Academy of Science, 1981), and further elaborated in his Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam, 2nd ed. Kuala

Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), especially Chapters III, V, VI, VII and the Epilogue. (23.) Here, Muslim medical researchers may draw from the history of Islamic medicine as well as from the modern scientific and methodological critique of vivisection by Croce, Pietro, Vivisection or Science?: An Investigation into Testing Drugs and Safeguarding Health (London: Zed Books, 1999); see review of this book in this issue of Islam & Science, Vol. 3 (Summer 2005) No. 1, 87-90. (24.) For instance, Paul Feyerabends seminal Against Method, 3rd ed. (London: Verso, 1993). (25.) A useful collection of articles on the search for a democratic scientific future is Harding, Sandra (ed.), The Racial Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). (26.) Daud, Wan Ramli Wan and Zain, Shaharir Mohamad, Indigenisation of Technology and the Challenge of Globalization: The Case of Malaysia in MAAS Journal of Islamic Science, Vol. 15 (1999), 110. (27.) Postman, Neil, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993). Adi Setia, International Islamic University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email: adisetiamuh@pd.jaring.my COPYRIGHT 2005 Center for Islam & Science Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company. Posted in Adi Setia | No Comments

The theologico-scientific research program of the mutakallimun: intellectual historical context and contemporary concerns with special reference to Fakhr alDin al-Razi.
Monday, January 5th, 2009

Author: Setia, Adi Geographic Code: 4EUUK Date: Dec 22, 2005 Words: 9766 Publication: Islam & Science ISSN: 1703-762X

Situating kalam in its full intellectual historical context reveals it as a systematic theocentric scientific research program possessing of objective cognitive content. On the one hand kalam is about understanding God, and on the other it is about understanding Creation, and in between lies the rational mind mediating between the two poles of Being: one absolute, the other contingent, relating one to the other and integrating them within the framework of a comprehensive and coherent Quranic worldview. Unsurprisingly, the investigative nature of this research program demands of the mutakallimun a mastery of the revealed, rational, and empirical sciences which enables them to critically engage the scientists and philosophers with a view toward the formulation of a sophisticated, empirically rich, theocentric counter-science. Fakhr alDin al-Razi plays a central role in the conceptual and empirical maturation of this research program, thus serving as an intellectual beacon for Muslim scientists in their systemic quest for a contemporary counter-science powerful and elaborate enough to function as a substitute for modern Western science. Keywords: Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina, ilm, kalam, al-kalam al-jadid, mutakallimun, falasifah, scientific research program, falsafah, Tahafut al-Falasifah, al-Mabahith al-Mashriqiyyah, al-Matalib al-Aliyyah, Mafatih al-Ghayb, Ibn Khaldun, Abu al-Barakat alBaghdadi, science, philosophy, theology. Introduction: for a people who think In Knowledge Triumphant, Franz Rosenthal observes that the Islamic civilization is one that is essentially characterized by knowledge (ilm), for ilm is one of those concepts that have dominated Islam and given Muslim civilization its distinctive shape and complexion. (1) This should not be surprising since the divine revelation itself repeatedly emphasizes that its signs or verses are only understandable for a people who think, (2) and exhorts believers, nay, even non-believers, to look to the cosmic horizons and into their very selves for empirical indications of the revealed truth. (3) For many scholars, including some professional orientalists, the seeds of rational thinking are already to be found in early Islam, in the Quranic revelation itself. (4) Hence, from the very beginning, Muslims have taken a rational and scientific approach to matters in both the religious and mundane domains. Simply put, there was never in Islam the peculiarly Christian problem of reconciling between reason and revelation as if the two were somehow mutually exclusive avenues to truth and knowledge that have to be brought together in some form of uneasy compromise. As far as Muslims are concerned, revelation and reason are in mutual harmony as complementary avenues to knowledge that spring ultimately from the same source. For Muslims, to whom belief must be grounded in knowledge possessing of objective cognitive value, the problem is merely that of specifying the precise relation between the two, which is reason finding its proper role within the context of experience, including the religious experience of revelation. Such was the position taken by the mutakallimun and the falasifah, both of whom did not distinguish theology from philosophy, (5) and neither did they distinguish it from physics or mathematics for that matter. (6) Islamic scientific endeavor

The scientific endeavor in Islam can be said to have begun with the textual standardization of the Quran, and with the systematic transmission, collection, and authentication of the Sunnah. These budding endeavors in systematic intellectual work soon inspired the cultivation of sophisticated linguistic sciences (etymology, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicography, prosody, metrics, rhetoric, and tajwid, the art of Quranic recitation) which emphasized the precise relations between words and their meanings. (7) On these elaborate linguistic foundations the science of jurisprudence (fiqh) was rigorously developed with its own internal analogical principles (qiyas) or a comparative-deductive8 method of juristic inference which facilitated the creative application of the normative injunctions of the Quran and Sunnah to the particular local and temporal contexts of Muslim society. This cultivation of linguistic definition (9) and rational argumentation in the context of religious discourse prepared the minds of Muslim scholars for their eventual creative engagement with the attractions and challenges of the rich intellectual aspects of the cultures of the ancient Greeks, Persians, and Indians which they encountered in the newly acquired, far-flung territories beyond the borders of the Arabian peninsula. The Muslims were most attracted to the Greek philosophical, logical, mathematical, scientific, and ethical principles and studied them very thoroughly and critically indeed. By the time of the Caliph al-Mamun (ca. mid-10th century) an intellectual movement for translating these Greek works into Arabic was in full swing with the active patronage of the state and rich individuals. While rejecting some of those Greek principles, Muslim scholars readily recognized many others that were found to be clearly in general accord with the Quranic injunction to ground belief and practice in rational thinking and empirical experience. Clearly the appropriation of these ancient sciences (al-ulum al-awail) was motivated and framed both by the cognitive and pragmatic needs of the new empire and the intrinsic intellectual allure of the new knowledge. (10) But long before the attractions of Greek rational thought had taken root, the initially dormant argumentative acumen of Muslims had already been activated and honed by external theological debates with the Jews and Christians, as well as by intra-Muslim political, theological, and juristic controversies which resulted in the rise and consolidation of distinct, opposing doctrinal sects (firaq), and schools of thought (madhahib) in philosophical, scientific, and legal matters. (11) To be sure, there were heated controversies amongst these opposing schools of thought as to the extent to which Greek philosophico-scientific thought was or was not compatible with the Islamic worldview (12) projected by the Quran. On the one hand there were the Muslim philosophers (falasifah/hukama) like al-Kindi (d. 866), al-Farabi (d. 950), and ibn Sina. (d. 1037) who can be said to be more receptive than critical of the Greek speculative sciences, while, on the other hand, there were the Asharite rationalist theologians (mutakallimun) like al-Ashari himself (d. 935), as the founder of the school, al-Juwayn (d. 1085), (13) al-Ghazalii (d. 1111), and F. al-Razi (d. 1209), all of whom, in contrast, can be said to be more critical of than receptive to Greek rationality; both camps were at the same time in heated engagement with the Hanbalites, Mutazilites and Shiites. (14) Even amongst the philosophers, Farbian-Avicennan Aristotelism was not received uncritically; a particular case in point is Abu al-Barakat alBaghdadis (d. 116 ) remarkable Kitab al-Mutabar, (15) which criticized Aristotelian physics and metaphysics just as al-Ghazali earlier criticized its metaphysics, and which prefigured much of the Fakhrurazian wide-ranging polemics against peripateticism. Even the so-

called anti-rationalist ibn Taymiyyah can be found to be appreciative of the Mutabar and its author and of ibn Rushd himself while being rather critical of both ibn Sina and al-Fakhr al-Razi. (16) Ironically, even surprisingly, the perceived intellectual threat of Hellenistic thought, particularly Aristotelianism in its Neoplatonic garb, was in the end overcome by a gradual process of cooption in which the Greek sciences were actively appropriated and completely naturalized to such an extent that ibn Khaldun in the fifteenth century was drawn to observe that one could no longer differentiate between kalam and falsafah, so much had the two been fused together. (17) It may be surmised that the eventual triumph of Asharism (including Maturdism and Tahawism, or Sunnism in general), was due to its creative intellectual versatility in co-opting and integrating both the rationalism of the Mutazilites and the falasifah and the traditionalism of the Hanbalites into its own synthetic theological framework18 which gave both naql and aql their due, and took a middle course between the doctrines of the opposing sects. (19) So instead of impeding philosophico-scientific thought in Islam, al-Ghazalis celebrated Tahafut al-Falasifah, by the intense positive and negative responses it provoked through subsequent centuries, actually did much to hasten this process of synthesis and naturalization. The Tahsfut marked the rise of the new philosophical kalam (al-kalam al-jadid) which was characterized by an aggressive, self-confident, thorough-going polemic against Avicennan falsafah on its own terms, a polemic which ended with the former taking over as its own much of the ground covered by the latter. (20) By the time al-Ghazali (d. 1111) died, logic was naturalized as a conceptual tool for kalam and fiqh, and by the time F. al-Razi (d. 1209), died logic was well on its way to becoming an independent Islamic discipline in its own right, (21) while the subject matter of falsafah was as a whole thoroughly integrated into the new kalam. As Elder puts it, New proofs were forthcoming which made use of the physics, metaphysics and mathematics of the philosophers. (22) In recognition of the pivotal roles of al-Ghazali and F. al-Razi in the rise and establishment of the new kalam, ibn Khaldn says: The first (scholar) to write in accordance with the (new) theological approach was al-Ghazali. He was followed by the Imm ibn al- Khab [i.e., Fakhr al-Din al-Razi]. A large number of scholars followed in their steps and adhered to their tradition. (23) Eventually the originally threatening Hellenistic background faded into oblivion and falsafah gradually Islamized until it became totally transformed into a naturalized Islamic science in the form of hikmah ishraqiyyah at the hands of al-Suhraward and his successors, (24) and in the form of mantiq and philosophical kalam at the hands of F. al-Razi and his successors from almid to al-Taftzn and al-Jurjn. (25) Of course there would always be detractors like ibn Taymiyyah and al-Suy, (26) but in effect, falsafah in the guise of kalam, and mantiq as an independent science, had become thoroughly Islamized and firmly entrenched in mainstream traditional Islamic education throughout the Muslim world, from the Maghrib (27) to the Malay Archipelago. (28) It is against this general intellectual historical background that one must situate and evaluate the continuing significance of F. al-Razis life and works. Fakhr al-Din al-Raziis intellectual life: a brief sketch (29)

The empire of the Great Seljuqs in which al-Ghazali flourished was already crumbling when Fakhr al-Din first saw the light of day in Rayy in northern Persia in 543/119. As a renowned scholar he found generous patronage under the Ghurids and later on under the Khwarizm Shahs who inherited the Seljuq realms. As a young student he studied with his scholarly father Diya al-Din Abu al-Qasim and traced through him his intellectual lineage in Asharite kalam to alJuwayni (d. 1085) and al-Ashari, and in fiqh to ibn Surayj (d. 918) and al-Shafii (d. 820). (30) Together with al-Suhrawardi, he was a pupil of Majd al-Din al-Jili in kalam and falsafah. According to Kraus (31) and Rescher, (32) al-Razi was also a pupil of Hibat Allah ibn Ali ibn Malki Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi (d. 116), (33) the famed Jewish-turned-Muslim physician and philosopher who authored the important contra-Avicennan treatise on logic, physics, and metaphysics entitled al-Mutabar fi al-Hikmah, (34) the influence of which on al-Razi is apparent by his many references to it. (35) Thoroughly learned in practically all the intellectual, scientific, and religious sciences of his time, F. al-Razi was a strong, even aggressive defender of Asharite theology against the Karrmites and the Mutazilites. His unrelenting critique of ibn Sinas logic, physics, and metaphysics, so reminiscence of the spirit of the Tahafut, provoked a strong counter-attack from Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), which only serves to enhance his intellectual stature. His controversies with the scholars of Transoxiana show him to be a very combative, self-assured debater with an incisive and agile mind. (36) While yet a young scholar, many of his works were already widely studied and used as teaching texts. (37) Any doubt about his erudition is quickly dispelled by a quick perusal of the list of his many extant works and a cursory appraisal of their contents. (38) Thus ibn Khallikan (d. 1282) is more than justified in declaring Fakhr al-Din to be the pearl of the age, a man without a peer who surpassed all his contemporaries in scholastic theology, metaphysics, and philosophy. (39) Most of the other classical biographers and historians such as ibn al-Athir, al-Subki, alSafadi, and ibn Khaldun also paint him in similar positive light, while the negative evaluation of either his works or his person by his detractors such as ibn Taymiyyah turns out on closer inspection to be either trivial or unfounded. How can it be otherwise, since ibn Taymiyyah was himself led by F. al-Razi to a deeper personal understanding of philosophy and heresiography? (40) Before dying in 1209, al-Razi dictated a wasiyyah or will which tells us of his intellectual and spiritual motivation for his wide-ranging scholarly investigations as well as of his final evaluation of their worth. It has been interpreted in different ways by different readers, with most seeing it as a typical deathbed remorseful disavowal of philosophical kalam and a reaffirmation of the simple faith of the old woman. However, as persuasively argued by Tony Street, a less superficial and more nuanced reading will show that the will is in fact an affirmation of both the simple and the sophisticated approach toward fathoming the relation between man and God. (41) The one negates not the other and each has its role to play in the intellectual and spiritual adventure of man from his earthly sojourn to everlasting life. Another way to capture some of the motivating spirit of Fakhr al-Din al-Razis intellectual investigations is by citing his own conclusion to volume four of his kalam work, al-Matalib al-

Aliyyah, after a four hundred-page long debate with the various parties of the philosophers and theologians over the problem of the incipience (huduth) versus the eternity (qidam) of the world (al-alam):
Know that these schools of thought (al-madhahib) have been summarized in this way such that each is exposed in all their praiseworthy strengths and repugnant weaknesses; and [that] upon [perusal] of this [exposition], people who are amazed and perplexed may say: these arguments do not attain to [the degree of] clarity and tenacity such as may dispel doubts and invalidate excuses, and satisfy the mind with their soundness and insight. Indeed, each of these arguments is prone to abstruseness, so much so that it behooves the Merciful, the Gracious, to excuse the mistaken [interlocutor] in complexities such as these.... O my Lord, my knowledge is but as the mirage, while my heart is done in by trepidation [in the face] of diverse problems as numerous as [all] the particles of sand and dust. Yet, despite all this, I have hope that I may be among [Your] beloved, so let not my hope be vain, O Most Gracious, O Most Generous. O my Lord, You know that all which I have said and all which I have written are not intended save to attain to truth and correctness, and to depart from ignorance and vacillation. If I have been correct, do accept it by Your grace, and if I have been mistaken do disregard it by Your mercy and forbearance, O Most Generous, O Endower of being! (42)

Al-Razi clearly views his work as a noble and pious intellectual quest for the truth, and that was the whole point of his dialectical thoroughness in examining the viewpoints of all intellectual stakeholders in any particular question or issue or bone of contention. While confident and forceful in espousing and arguing exhaustively for what he found to be sound and correct, he is at the same time humble and candid in admitting that in certain problems no cognitive commitment can be made as to their solutions. Though clearly belonging to the party of the mutakallimun, he does not hesitate to show what they have overlooked in their argumentation. For him, the intellectual quest for the truth has a moral dimension as well, which is expressed in his perpetual awareness of the utter reliance of human intelligence on the guidance of the Knower of the Unseen and the Manifest, and of the dependence of the human soul for its salvation on the Mercy and Grace of the Creator. To sum up his scholarly legacy in one sentence, one can do no better than to cite the words of Effat al- Sharqawi:
He was a man of an Ashar heart and Avicennian mind, and in practice he tried to put the Ashar traditions into a philosophical system that could appeal to the intellectual Muslim. (43)

Fakhr al-Din al-Raziis investigations and their historical impact The works of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi are in many ways (especially in the breadth and depth of their logico-empirical analyses) the apogee in the long movement of thought (44) in the Sunni kalam engagement with Hellenistic philosophy and science from al-Ashar (d. 935), al-Maturidi (d. 944), al-Baqillani (d. 1013), al-Juwayn (d. 1085), al-Ghazali (d. 1111), al-Nasaf (ca. d. 11 2), and al-Shahrastn (d. 1153) to al-mid (d. 1233), al-Bayw (d. 1286), al-j (d. 1355), al-Taftazani (1390), and al-Jurjani. (d. 1413) and beyond (for which one will have to take a closer look at the

many substantial post-fifteenth century kalam works). This movement of thought integrated theological, philosophical, and scientific themes, and resulted in a resurgent full-fledged philosophical kalam characterized by an unapologetic self-confident investigative reelucidation of traditional Islamic beliefs (naqliyyat) on rational principles (al-mabadi alaqliyyah). As Sabraputsit, kalam was an argumentative approach to religion which sought, through discussion and discursive thought, to interpret and transform the content of the Islamic revelation into a rationally-based doctrine, (45) and as such it was a genuine form of knowledge that is essentially neither apologetic nor polemical in its intellectual goals, for, moreover:
The mutakallimun in particular made it their business to meet the falasifa on their own ground, not however by merely arguing against their opponent's views, but by being able to produce a distinct body of thought that proved powerful and elaborate enough to function as a substitute for falsafa. (46)

Sabra applies this characterization to both Asharite and Mutazilite kalam, and in this regard he finds ready support in R. M. Frank and Alnoor Dhanani, both of whom are inclined to view kalam as a kind of intellectual research program. (47) Investigation or research is the key word here, for al-Hathth ala al-Bahth (The Encouragement to Investigation) was the title the great al-Ashari himself gave to a work of his, the purpose of which was to encourage the study of kalam, or rationalistic theology. (48) AlRazis early work critically engaging Avicennan thought was entitled al-Mabahith alMashriqiyyah (The Eastern Investigations). The Mabahith was already, even at this early stage of his intellectual life, a work very critical of Avicennan philosophy, somewhat in the spirit of Abu al-Barakats Kitab al-Mutabar, or even as some have claimed, in the spirit of al-Ghazalis Tahafut. (49) As a matter of fact, his intellectual journey was highly nuanced from the very beginning to the very end as indicated by the title of his last philosophico-kalam work, al-Malib al-Aliyyah (The Lofty Researches). Instances of this intellectual self-criticism are many, including his initial rejection and later whole-hearted acceptance and exposition of atomism in terms of discrete minimal parts, (50) and his critical consideration of ibn Sinas statement in al-Najah that, verily, for every body (jism) there is a natural place (makanan tabiiyyan), (51) in which he ended up saying, This is the end of the inquiry into this matter. It is incumbent on us to figure out (natafakkar) the solution to these uncertainties (al-shukuk), and may God Most High accord us the attainment of the truth regarding it. (52) Hence, it cannot be said that he started out as a straightforward peripatetic philosopher to end up eventually as a straightforward Asharite mutakallim. This investigative tone of his discourse is a prominent and stable feature of all his major works throughout his lifetime, even in the Malib, which most probably was his last major philosophicokalam work. (53) A striking evidence of this is the often impassive manner in which he goes at great lengths to present the arguments of various opposing viewpoints so much so that at times it can be a rather delicate task to ascertain his own personal and final positions, for, as noted by Ceylan, he criticizes the philosophers and the theologians equally, and adopts a position

according to the strength of argument put forward.5 Thus the general impression of him that comes to mind even through a cursory perusal of his works is that of a researcher meticulously carrying out a wide-ranging intellectual research program into understanding the nature and reality of things, and insofar as falsafah and kalam contribute to his research, he gladly delves into them and integrates their approaches and arguments into conclusions of his own creation which may even turn out to be inconclusive. Hence, it would be in perfect accord with the tentative nature of scientific inquiry in which F. al-Razi was deeply involved to find in his works complex shifting positions as the inquiry progresses until attaining final maturity in his late works, in what can be termed as a thoroughly philosophized Ashar kalam worldview.55 Although the century after al-Ghazali also bears witness to some notable mutakallimn such as alNasaf and al-Shahrastn, (56) Fakhr al-Din al-Razi is still clearly the first post-Ghazlian mutakallim to bring to comprehensive realization the intellectual project of close and comprehensive critical engagement with Greek philosophy initiated by al-Ghazali in his celebrated Tahafut al-Falasifah. While al-Ghazali succeeded in integrating Aristotelian logic into the principles of kalam and fiqh, al-Razi managed further to integrate much of the subject matter of Aristotelian metaphysics and physics into his many kalam and falsafah works. He is noted by Dhanani as the first mutakallim to discuss space and time in a comprehensive manner, (57) and probably the first also to undertake a comparative study of atomism and hylomorphism of any comprehensive scope and intensity of treatment. (58) This versatility is no doubt due in large measure to his own intimate, first-hand knowledge of the philosophical and natural sciences such as logic, physics, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy, in addition to his complete mastery of traditional Islamic sciences. (59) As a matter of fact, two of his pupils, Qub al-Din al-Mir and Farid Damad, were Nar al-Din al-Tusis teachers in mathematics, natural sciences, ibn Sinas philosophy and medicine. (60) Therefore it is hardly surprising to find that here Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was to become al-Ghazalis most influential continuator. (61) According to Marmura, al-Ghazalis Tahfut can be interpreted as a response to ibn Sinas wideranging criticisms of the kalam. (62) Yet, in launching his blistering counter-attack, al-Ghazali could not avoid being persuaded to some extent by the obvious intellectual merits of his adversary, hence his appropriation of some Avicennan ideas to flesh out his basically Asharite framework. As al-Ghazalis most influential continuator, and most probably also the most outstanding Sunnite figure63 after him, F. al-Razi took up where the former let off, and intensified the debate with ibn Sn, even while ibn Rushd, his illustrious contemporary in the Islamic far west, was preparing his own counter-Tahafut to criticize al-Ghazali and ibn Sina. (64) F. al-Razis engagement with falsafah was such that he can be said to have succeeded in kalamizing philosophy and, as an unavoidable consequence, philosophizing kalam, thus integrating (if not confusing) the two intellectual disciplines. Such is the judgment of Ibn Khaldn, and one cannot but agree with him somewhat after even a cursory reading of al-Razis works. (65) So it seems that historically the exciting intellectual combat (66) between falsafah and kalam has always been a dynamic two-sided affair, with blows and counter-blows actively exchanged and no implications, however subtle, left hidden and un-explicated. Kalam may have won finally, (67) but as can be surmised from Ibn Khalduns remarks, the victory was bittersweetkalam ended up thoroughly imbued with the philosophizing spirit which demands of

Muslims that they, as responsible thinking individuals, be self-conscious and self-critical about their own beliefs. F. al-Razis celebrated Muhassal Afkar al-Mutaqaddimin wal-Mutaakhkhirin (68) generated great impact on both the Shite and Sunn worlds with both al-Tusi (69) and ibn Khaldun, (70) for instance, writing their respective summaries of it. The important later kalam works by al-mid, (71) al-Baydawi, al-Taftazani, al-Iji, and al-Jurjani owe much of their self-confident, thoroughgoing engagement with the philosophical and natural sciences to the intellectual example set by F. al-Razi. A brief comparison of their works and al-Razis will clearly bear this out. He also attracted the attention of f metaphysicians, for the Great Master of the Sufis, Muhyi al-Din ibn Arabi, was sufficiently impressed by the agility and versatility of al-Razis thought to engage in a long correspondence with him in the hope of winning him over to (metaphysical?) fism. (72) The works of F. al-Razi reinforce the general impression of the major kalam works from alAshari to al-Taftazani as being less dogmatic than investigativehence, for instance, the investigative character (73) of al-Ijis Mawaqifmore in the nature of an ongoing long-term scientific research program than a petrified, repetitively reactive system of unexamined doctrines. (74) F. al-Razi was also very influential in other disciplines, which, unsurprisingly, tend to be imbued with the rationalistic approach he cultivated in kalam. His major multi-volume work on the principles of Islamic jurisprudence al-Mansul fi Usul al-Fiqh (75) has had major impact on subsequent Shafii, Hanafi, and Maliki usul works, including the important works of al-Shatibi (d. 790/1388) on the philosophy of Islamic law. (76) In the long history of Quranic exegesis, alRazis multi-volume Mafatih al-Ghayb is unique and outstanding in its combination of traditionalist, linguistic, philosophical, and theologico-scientific approaches to understanding the revealed text. Throughout the centuries many abridgements and adaptations have been made of it, including the two-volume Arabic tafsir of the important nineteenth century Makkah-based Javanese Muslim scholar al-Nawawi al-Bantani al-Jawi (d. 1897), Marah Labid, which is largely derived from the Mafth. (77) In his pioneering research, Rescher has shown F. al-Razi to be a pivotal figure in the development of logic in Islam, (78) while his significance for the general history of science is indicated by Gabrielis article in Isis (79) and by Sartons notice in his Introduction to the History of Science, (80) though his noticeable absencenoticeable because of the presence of many lesser figuresfrom C. C. Gillispies Dictionary of Scientific Biography (81) and Roshdi Rasheds Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science (82) only exposes the general absence of detailed, systematic textual studies on F. al-Razis major philosophical and scientific works. The long term intellectual consequences of F. al-Razis wholesale creative appropriation of the philosophical sciences into kalam discourse was duly, if critically, appreciated not only by subsequent Asharite mutakallimn but also by Hanbalite theologians such as ibn Taymiyyah, (83) and by the formulators of Shii kalam in the Persian East, such as al-Tusi (d. 127 ), (84) and Christian scholastics in the Latin West. (85) The intellectual impact of this new kalam, as manifested about two centuries later in al-Iji and al-Taftazani, was also felt by medieval Jewish thinkers86 and the thinkers, philosophers, and scientists of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment who shared with the mutakallimun a determined rejection of Aristotelism and a preference for experimentation with various forms of atomism, as well as the belief in an

omnipotent and free creator. (87) Even modern day Christian creationist theologians have not failed to notice the Fakhrurazian link in the intellectual historical development of the kalam cosmological argument. (88) Contemporary Concerns Despite F. al-Razis obvious importance as a pivotal figure of post-Ghazlian philosophical kalam and his far-ranging influence in many other traditional Islamic disciplines such as usul al-fiqh and tafsir, precious little has been studied of his thought as compared to the many book-or article-length textual studies on al-Ashari, ibn Sins, and al-Ghazali published almost every year. A perusal of Daibers (89) and Pearsons (90) Islamic bibliographic indices only serves to confirm this impression of general scholarly neglect of F. al-Razis works amongst scholars in the flourishing field of Islamic studies. Only lately has this situation seen some promising improvement, especially in Muslim Arab scholarship, with many of his works edited and published, and some detailed monographic studies done on various aspects of his thought. Still, forty long years have passed, and al-Zarkans pioneering, extensive though still far from definitive, 650-page, one-volume study of F. al-Razis life and works have yet to be surpassed in its general informative usefulness. (91) It has been and remains the starting point for any serious research into any aspect of F. al-Razis thought, including any fresh attempt toward a much needed definitive authentication, chronological ordering, and synoptic descriptions of the contents of the vast Fakhrurzian corpus. (92) Since the publication of al-Zarkns work in 1963, a number of F. al-Razis extant works in manuscripts have been edited and published, (93) and substantial monographic studies of his rhetoric, (94) cognitive theory, (95) psychology, and ethics (96) have appeared, including a handy dictionary of Fahkrurzian technical terminologies (97) as well as two handy one-volume indices to his Mafth al-Ghayb. (98) Recently Brill published an informative comparative study of F. al-Razis and Thomas Aquinas views on the question of the eternity of the world, but, as pointed out by a reviewer, much more needs to be known about F. al-Razis system of thought first before any meaningful comparison with other thinkers can be made. (99) A modest doctoral dissertation on his physical theory has just recently been completed (100) while another (tentatively entitled Basis of Divine Transcendence) is in progress on his theological interpretation of the so-called anthropomorphic verses of the Quran based on his Asas al-Taqdis fi Ilm al-Kalam. (101) A work on F. Razis teleological ethics by Ayman Shihadeh entitled The Teleological Ethics of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi has also been recently submitted to Brill for possible publication in the series on Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science. (102) Among the most important of F. al-Razis extant writings are his many critical commentaries on Ibn Sinas philosophical works, his kalam or rationalist theological works, and his magnum opus Mafatih al-Ghayb, a remarkable philosophico-scientific-kalamic exegesis of the Quran in thirtytwo volumes. Many of these published philosophical and kalam works have been critically edited by Amad Hijz al-Saqq, including a lucid, critical edition of the nine-part al-Matalib al-Aliyyah in five volumes, apparently al-Razis final and most important kalam work, written during the last few years of his life. (103) Also to be noted here is Muhammad al-Mutasim bi-Llah alBaghdadis lightly annotated but otherwise uncritical two-volume edition of F. al-Razis very early work, al-Mabhith al-Mashriqiyyah, (104) which is basically an extensive critical study of

the al-Shifa and al-Najah of ibn Sina. Another important late work of al-Razis is the one-volume Sharh Uyun al-Hikmah, (105) which, as the title indicates, is a critical commentary on ibn Sinas Uyun al-Hikmah (Fountains of Wisdom). (106) By reading and reflecting on F. al-Razis works, especially his very accessible Mafatih and Malib, Muslim thinkers and intellectuals today are sure to learn a thing or two about the kind of critical, creative thinking that is needed for the cultivation of an intelligent, self-confident engagement with the theoretical frameworks of modern science and philosophy. By learning afresh the sufficient and comprehensive (107) principles of traditional Islamic kalam and working toward its elaborative reapplication in the contemporary socio-intellectual context, serious, thinking Muslims are sure to acquire a powerful conceptual tool for overcoming the intellectual challenges of modernity and providing a viable, systemic alternative. With respect to his physical theory, for instance, one finds in him a detailed, strikingly impartial review of past reflections on the nature of the sensible world, from the ancient Greeks to ibn Sina and Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi, and in him one finds also a pre-figuration, or rather, a preview, as it were, of all further intellectual developments in Sunn kalam, from al-mid to al-Jurjn and beyond, and even unto the modern age, for any serious revival of kalam amongst present-day Muslim scholars will have much to learn from the intellectual genius and versatility of al-Razi. To be more explicit and to the point, one must say, and say with intellectual certainty born of long years of academic experience and reflection, that an Islamic counter-science as a viable research program in the contemporary context presupposes a thorough-going conceptual mastery of the kalam method of creative, rational analysis. In the absence of this creative mastery, the alternatives are, and have been, either sophisticated but ultimately vacuous, obscurantist romanticism, repetitive negative criticism ad nauseam, or a form of pseudo-Islamic science born of conceptual naivete and constituted of an incoherent patchwork of unexamined traditional and modern categories. In light of the foregoing, Muslim progress in appreciating their rich intellectual heritage will not be boosted by the prevailing negative talk amongst many Muslim academicians, educationists, intellectuals, and policy-makers about the contemporary relevance or lack thereof of the seemingly obtuse and error-prone traditional Islamic philosophies and sciences of the long bygone and well nigh forgotten past. Quite on the contrary, Islamic philosophy exercises the mind and trains it to grasp structures and methods revealed through the passage of time. Its comprehension represents a constant challenge to the powers of human understanding and its creative force, the imagination.108 This colossal, even deliberate, charlatanistic lack of real, informed, and creative appreciation of their cultural history among the Muslim educated elite underlies their pathetically reactive, imitative, and defensive attitude toward western systems of thought, an attitude that can only inspire secret contempt instead of grudging respect in the minds and hearts of our dialogue partners. In short, if Muslims fail to appreciate the relevance of their past history, they thereby fail to comprehend the predicament of their present moment, and in turn fail to plan for their future revival as a leading, creative and positive civilizational force in the post-rational, post-modern, postwestern, post-liberal, post-scientific, post-technological, postprogressive, post-secular, post-

industrial, post-neocolonial, post-development, posteconomic, and, shall we say, post-global dollar world (109). To be active, we have to be pro-active. To create history, we have to learn from history. Verily, in their histories is a lesson for owners of hearts. (110) (1.) Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 2. (2.) al-Baqarah: 16 . All translations of Qur anic verses are based on Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Quran: Text and Explanatory Translation (Mecca: Muslim World League, 1977). (3.) Ibid, Fussilat (Ha Mim al-Sajdah): 53. (4.) For instance, Professor Hans Daiber in his unpublished series of lectures entitled Islamic Philosophy: Innovation and Mediation between Greek and Medieval European Thought, delivered to his graduate students at ISTac during the 2001-2002 academic year; see also his The Quran as Stimulus of Science in Early Islam cited in What is the meaning of and to what end do we study the history of Islamic Philosophy?: The history of a neglected discipline, in his Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 1: xxxi, note 127. Cf. J. van Ess, Early Development of Kalam, in G. H. A. Juynboll, ed., Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 109-123 on 110ff. (5.) Richard M. Frank, The Science of Kalam in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 1 (March, 1992), 7-37 on 19. (6.) They realized that acceptance of atomism entails rejection of Euclidean geometry and affirmation of discontinuous or discrete geometry, as shown, for instance, by Alnoor Dhanani, The Physical Theory of Kalam (Leiden: Brill, 199 ), 62ff, 101ff, 133ff. Al-Kind himself was able to argue for cosmic finitude wholly along mathematical lines, as shown by Nicholas Heer and Haig Khatchadourian, Al-Kinds Epistle on the Finitude of the Universe in Isis, 56 (1965), 2633. See also, Anton M. Heinen, Mutakallimun and Mathematicians: Traces of a controversy with lasting consequences in Der Islam, 55 (1978), 57-73. (7.) G. Bohas, Jean-Patrick Guillaume and D. E. Kouloughli, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition (London: Routledge, 1990). (8.) Hans Daibers term, unpublished academic course lectures delivered at ISTAC, 2001-2002. (9.) In his public lecture organized by UNESCO, Islam and the flowering of the exact sciences in Islam, Philosophy, and Science (Paris: UNESCO Press, 1981), 133-167 on 133, Roshdi Rashed says, If the writings of these two [principal] civilizations [Hellenistic and Persian] and the information they had acquired were to be understood and, therefore, expressed in Arabic, the

first task was to translate them and, consequently, to make Arabic, which was a language of the desert, a language of science. (10.) Details in Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid (London: Routledge, 1998). (11.) Concerning these extra- and intra-communal politico-theological controversies, see respectively Daniel J. Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam: The Heresy of the Ishmaelites (Leiden: Brill, 1972); and Josef van Ess, Umar II and His Epistle against the Qadariyya in Abr-Nahrain, XII (1971-72), 19-26. A survey in this regard is W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973). (12.) For a detailed, authoritative exposition of the Islamic worldview that is thoroughly grounded in the Islamic tradition while critically cognizant of the Western tradition, see Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Basic Elements of the Worldview of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2002). (13.) On al-Juwayni, see the useful introduction by Paul E. Walker, trans., A Guide to Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief: Kitab al-Irshad il Qawiti al-Adillah fi Usul alIItiqad (Reading: Garnet, 2000), xix-xxxvii. (14.) See, for instance, the useful survey by Shlomo Pines, Islamic Philosophy in The Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, vol. III: Studies in the History of Arabic Philosophy, ed., Sarah Stroumsa (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996). (15.) Kitab al-Mutabar, 3 vols. in 1 (Hyderabad: 1357H). A monograph on his metaphysics is Jamil Rajab Sidabi, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi wa Falsafatuhu al-Ilahiyyah: Dirasah li Mawqifihi al-Naqdi min Falsafah ibn Sina (Cairo: Maktabah Wahbah, 1996). (16.) See Sulaymn al-Nadws informative introduction to the Kitab al-Mutabar, 3 vols. in 1 (Hyderabad: 1357H), 3: 230-252. Ibn Taymiyyahs philosophical acumen is remarkably borne out in some recent meticulous studies such as those by Yahya J. Michot, A Mamluk Theologians Commentary on Avicennas Risala Adhawiyya, being a translation of a part of the Dar al-Taarru of ibn Taymiyya, with introduction, annotation, and appendices in two parts, in Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol. 1 (2003) No. 2 and 3, 1 9-203 and 309-363 respectively; and Jon Hoover, Perpetual Creativity in the Perfection of God: Ibn Taymiyyas Hadith Commentary on Gods Creation of this World, in Journal of Islamic Studies, Vol. 15 (200), No. 3, 287-329. (17.) Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958), 3: 52-53; cf. A. I. Sabra, The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement in History of Science, Vol. 27 (1987), 223-243. (18.) Mustafa Ceric, Roots of Synthetic Theology in Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1995).

(19.) Fathalla Kholeif, ed. and intro., al-Maturidi, Kitab al-Tawhid (Beirut: Dar al-Machreq, 1982), xiii. (20.) Al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, trans. Michael Marmura (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2000), xv-xvi. (21.) Nicholas Rescher, The Development of Arabic Logic (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 196), 51-5 , 57ff. (22.) Earl Edgar Elder, trans., A Commentary on the Creed of Islam: Sad al-Din al-Taftazani on the Creed of Najm al-Din al-Nasaf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950), xvi. (23.) Muqaddimah, 3: 3. (24.) Mehdi Amin Razavi, Suhraward and the School of Illumination (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997); also, Ian Richard Netton, Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology (London: Routledge, 1989), 256ff. Cf. Bilal Kuspinar, Ismail Ankaravi on the Illuminative Philosophy: His lzahul-Hikem: Its edition and analysis in comparison with Dawwanis Shawakil al-Hur, together with the translation of Suhrawardis Hayakil al-Nur (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1996). (25.) Shlomo Pines, Some Problems of Islamic Philosophy in Islamic Culture (January 1937), 66-80 on 68-69, 80. The reading of kalam as philosophical is reflected in the title and substance of the monumental work by Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1976). Though useful and thoroughly informative, it is unfortunately marred by a too-hasty tendency to hunt for parallels to, hence sources of, kalam theories in classical, Hellenistic, and patristic theological thought and concepts. A compelling reaction to this is R. M. Frank, who, in his presidential address Hearing and saying what was said in Journal of the American Oriental Society, 116.4 (1996), 615, says that the highly nuanced language of the classical kalam was developed in an ongoing process of autonomous discourse in Arabic. (26.) Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, Sawn al-Mantiq wal-Kalam an Fann al-Mantiq wal-Kalam, bound in one volume with his abridgement of Taqiyy al-Din ibn Taymiyyah, Nasihah Ahl al-Iman fi Radd ala Mantiq al-Yunan, ed., Al Shami al-Nashshar (Cairo, 1947?). (27.) For the case of the Maghrib, the educational role of Abu Abd Allah al-Sanusi (d. 1490) is significant; see article on him in EI2 by H. Bencheneb, s.v., al-Sanusi, with copious references. (28.) For the case of the Malay Archipelago, see, for instance, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, The Oldest Known Malay Manuscript: A 16th Century Malay Translation of the Aqaid of alNasafi (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1988), 1-52 passim. (29.) This sketch is largely based on the detailed, critical, and comprehensive account by Muammad Sali al-Zarkan, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi wa Arauhu al-Kalamiyyah wa al-Falsafiyyah (Beirut: Dr al-Fikr, 1963), 8-36 passim. Cf. Fathallah Kholeif, ed. and trans., A Study on Fakhr

al-Din al-Razi and His Controversies in Transoxiana (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1966), 9-25; idem, (Fat Allah Khulayf), Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Cairo: Dr al-Maarif, 1969), 1-23; Yasin Ceylan, Theology and Tafsir in the Works of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1996), 1-13; and G. C. Anawati, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, in Encyclopedia of Islam 2nd ed. (EI2). All provide references to the classical biographical dictionaries. (30.) Ibn Khallikan, Kitab Wafayat al-Ayan, trans. Mac Guckin de Slane, 3 vols. (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1961), 1: 655. (31.) Paul Kraus, The Controversies of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Islamic Culture, Vol. XII (1938), 131-153, on 133. (32.) Rescher, Arabic Logic, 183. (33.) On him see Collette Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 131-10; cf. Shlomo Pines, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi in EI2, 1: 111-113; idem, Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C. C. Gillispie (New York: Scribners, 1970-1980), 1: 26-28. (34.) (Hyderabad, 1357H). (35.) Pines, Atomism, 9 -95. (36.) Fathallah Kholeif, ed. and trans., A Study on Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and His Controversies in Transoxiana (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1966); cf. Paul Kraus, The Controversies of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Islamic Culture, Vol. XII (1938), 131-153, on 136. (37.) Ibid., 82. (38.) The best and most reliable critical account and list of his works is by Zarkan, 40ff. I have not been able to access the articles of Jomier cited in Tony Street, Concerning the Life and Works of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society, a festschrift in honour of Anthony H. Johns (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 135-146, on 135n1. (39.) Ibn Khallikan, Kitab Wafayat al-Ayan, trans. Mac Guckin de Slane, 3 vols. (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1961), 1: 652. (40.) H. Laoust, Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-d-din Ahmad b. Taymiya, cited in G. C. Anawati, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in EI2. (41.) Tony Street, Concerning the Life and Works of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society, a festschrift in honour of Anthony H. Johns, eds., Peter G. Riddell and Tony Street (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 135-146. (42.) Al-Matalib al-Aliyyah, ed. Amad Hijazi al-Saqqa, 9 vols. in 5 (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab alArab, 1987), 4: 26-27.

(43.) Cited in Anthony H. Johns, On Quranic Exegetes and Exegesis: A Case Study in the Transmission of Islamic Learning in Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society, a festschrift in honour of Anthony H. Johns (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 3-49 on 11. (44.) A. I. Sabra, Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islamic Theology: the Evidence of the fourteenth Century in Zeitschrift fur Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften (ZGAIW), vol. 9 (1994), 23. (45.) A. I. Sabra, Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islamic Theology: the Evidence of the Fourteenth Century in ZGAIW, vol. 9 (1994), 1-42 on 11. (46.) A. I. Sabra, Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islamic Theology: the Evidence of the Fourteenth Century in ZGAIW, vol. 9 (1994), 1-42 on 23n24. (47.) A. I. Sabra, Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islamic Theology: the Evidence of the Fourteenth Century in ZGAIW, vol. 9 (1994), 1-42 on 11; R. M. Frank, The Science of Kalam in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, vol. 2 (1992), 7-37; cf., idem, The Kalam, an Art of Contradiction-Making or Theological Science?: Some Remarks on the Question review article in JAOS 88 (1968), 295-309. (48.) R. M. Frank, trans. and ed., al-Asharis Kitab al-Hathth ala l-Bahth in Melanges de lInstitut Dominicain dEtudes Orientales du Caire (MIDEO) 18 (1988), 83-152; cf. Alnoor Dhanani, The Physical Theory of Kalam (Leiden: Brill, 199 ), 2-3, for kalam as a research program. (49.) Muammad Atif al-Iraqi, al-Falsafah al-Tabiyyah inda ibn Sina (Cairo: Dar al-Maarif, 1971), 414; cf. Abd al-Rahman al-Badawi, al-Turath al-Yunani fi al-Hadarah al-Islamiyyah (Cairo: Dr al-Nahdah al-Arabiyyah), 270n. 1; cf. Muhammad al-Uraybi, Muntalaqah alFikriyyah inda al-Imam al-Fakhr al-Razi (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Lubnani, 1992), 44; cf. discussion in Zarkan, 85ff. (50.) For instance in al-Matalib, 6: 29-82. (51.) Al-Najah, ed., Muhammad Taqi Danish-pazhuh (Tehran: 136 ?), 134. (52.) Al-Mabahith al-Mashriqiyyah, ed., Muhammad al-Mutasim biLlah al-Baghdadi, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arab, 1990), 2: 66-69; cf. Zarkan, 8-449. (53.) A detailed but not quite definitive chronology of al-Razis works is in Zarkan, 56ff, with references to editions and manuscripts locations. (54.) Ceylan, xv. (55.) Zarkan, 388.

(56.) Among others he wrote the contra-Avicennan Kitab al-Musaraah, ed. and trans. by Wilfred Madelung and Toby Mayer (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001); and a treatise on atomism, see Amad Said al-Damardash, Makhat al-Sharastn an al-Jawhar al-Fard in Majallah Mahad alMakhtutat al-Arabiyyah, vol. 25 (1979), 195-218. (57.) Alnoor Dhanani, Al-Ghazalis Perspective on Physical Theory, paper presented to the International Conference on al-Ghazalis Legacy, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, October 2 -27, 2001, 6-7. (58.) Volume 6 of 200 pages of the Matalib is devoted to the issue of atomism versus hylomorphism; see discussion in Adi Setia, The Physical Theory of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, doctoral dissertation (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, September 2005), Chapter Two. (59.) Zarkan, 37-55. (60.) Hans Daiber, Al-s, Nar al-Din in EI2. (61.) Gerhard Endress, The Defense of Reason: The Plea for Philosophy in the Religious Community in ZGAIW, vol. 6 (1990), 1-49 on 37. (62.) Michael Marmura, Avicenna and the Kalam in ZGAIW, vol. 6 (1990), 173-206 on 206. (63.) Kholeif, Controversies, 6. (64.) Simon van den Bergh, trans., Averroes Tahafut al-Tahafut (London: Luzac, 1978). An aspect of this Ibn Rushd-Ghazlian debate is well summarized by George F. Hourani, The Dialogue between al-Ghazali and the Philosophers on the Origin of the World, 2 parts, in Muslim World 8 (1958). (65.) The Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. (New York: Pantheon, 1958), 3: 43. (66.) Hourani, Dialogue , 183. (67.) Interestingly Hourani (Dialogue , 191) judged ibn Rushds argumentative performance to be disappointing as had Van den Bergh (Averroes, 20, note p. 23. 1). (68.) Muhassal Afkar al-Mutaqaddimin wa al-Mutaakhkhirin min al-Ulama wa al-Hukama wa al-Mutakallimin (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Lubnani, 1992) and (Cairo: Maktabah al-Kulliyyat alAzhariyyah, n.d.). (69.) Talkhis al-Muhassal, introduced by Ta Ha Abd al-Rauf Sad and bound together with alRazis Muhassal (Cairo: Maktabah al-Kulliyyat al-Azhariyyah, n.d.). (70.) Lubab al-Muhassal fi Usul al-Din, ed., Rafiq al-Ajam (Beirut: Dr al-Mashriq, 1995).

(71.) Sayf al-Din al-Amidi (d. 1233) wrote a critical summary of F. al-Razis Matalib entitled alMaakhidh ala al-Imam al-Razi; see the introduction by Hasan Mahmud Abd al-Latif, ed., to al-Amidis Ghayat al-Maram fi Ilm al-Kalam (Cairo: 1971), 12. (72.) See Muhammad Muaf, ed., Kitab Risalah al-Shaykh Muhyi al-Din ibn Arabi ila al-Shaykh Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Cairo: al-Tibaat al-Muhammadiyyah, 1987), though it does seem that Sufis like al-Rumi and al-Ankaravi do not consider F. al-Razi to be adept in the mysteries of the spirit (see Bilal Kuspinar, Ismail Ankaravi on the Illuminative Philosophy {Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1996}, 136-38). (73.) A. I. Sabra, Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islamic Theology: the Evidence of the Fourteenth Century ZGAIW, vol. 9 (199 ), 1-42 on 27. (74.) More discussion in R. M. Frank, Knowledge and Taqlid, the Foundations of Belief in Classical Asharism in JAOS, 109 (1989), 38-62; idem, Elements in the Development of the Teaching of al-Ashari in Le Museon, 10 (1991), 141-190; idem, The Science of Kalam; cf. A. I. Sabra, Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islamic Theology: The Evidence of the Fourteenth Century in ZGAIW, vol. 9 (1994), 1-42. (75.) Ed., Taha Jabir al-Alwani (Beirut: Muassasah al-Risalah), 1992. (76.) See Muhammad Khalid Masud, Shatibis Philosophy of Islamic Law (Kuala Lumpur: iBT, 2000). (77.) Anthony H. Johns, On Quranic Exegetes and Exegesis; A Case Study in the Transmission of Islamic Learning in Islam: Essays on Scripture, Thought and Society, a festschrift in honour of Anthony H. Johns (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 3- 9 on 9ff. (78.) Rescher, 72, 183-85. (79.) Giuseppe Gabrieli, Fakhr-al-din al-Razi in Isis 7 (1925), 9-13. (80.) George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 2: 36 . (81.) Ed. in chief, 16 vols. (New York: Scribners, 1970-1980). (82.) Ed., 3 vols. (London: Routledge, 1996). (83.) See, for instance, Jon Hoover, Perpetual Creativity in the Perfection of God: Ibn Taymiyyas Hadith Commentary on Gods Creation of this World in JIS, 15: 3 (200 ), 287-329. (84.) Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in M. M. Sharif, ed., A History of Muslim Philosophy (Delhi: D. K. Publications), 1: 6 2-656 on 646. Cf. editors introduction to F. alRazis al-Matalib al-Aliyyah, ed., Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqq, 9 vols. in 5 (Beirut: Dr al-Kitab alArabi, 1987), 8-9, 12ff. Nar al-Din al-s can be said to be the pivotal figure who helped

Avicennan philosophy recover somewhat from the Fakhrurzian onslaught. See also Hans Daiber, Al-Tusi, Nasir al-Din in EI2. (85.) Shlomo Pines, Some Problems of Islamic Philosophy in Islamic Culture (January 1937), 66-80 on 68n. 2; cf. Hans Daiber, unpublished ISTAC lectures, parts 5 and 6 with copious invaluable references. (86.) For instant, Maimonedes, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 1: 179ff. Shlomo Pines in his Studies in Islamic Atomism, trans. Michael Schwarz and ed., Tzvi Langermann (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 97n.152, notes that al-Razis al-Mabhith al-Mashriqiyyah was already translated into Hebrew in the fourteenth century and used as a basis for the Hebrew version of al-Ghazalis al-Maqasid alFalasifah. (87.) Sabra, Science and Philosophy , 52. A separate, detailed inquiry is obviously needed regarding late kalam influence on the metaphysical foundations of early modern science. (88.) William L. Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 17-18. (89.) Hans Daiber, Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1999). (90.) J. D. Pearson, Index Islamicus: 1906-1955 (Cambridge: Heffer, 1961), and continued and expanded with additions by other compilers and publishers, including, currently, G. J. Roper and C. H. Bleaney (London: Bowker, 1993-2000). (91.) Muhammad Salih al-Zarkan, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi wa Arauhu al-Kalamiyyah wa alFalsafiyyah (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1963). His study is divided into three main parts, the second of which concerns F. al-Razis theory of the physical world (al-lam) and is a substantial study of his physical theory in its own right. (92.) See Zarkn, 56ff, for a useful but far from definitive chronological ordering. A more recent attempt is by Jomier but I have not been able to access his articles. Much of this work is made easier because al-Razi likes to cross-reference to his other earlier works, and in many cases an absolute chronology is determinable as in the case of the Malib and Mafatih, where he often records the date when he completes a particular section or surah. The relative chronology I follow throughout this study is based on Zarkans work, but, needless to say, a new improved chronology will necessitate a separate study. (93.) Of which among the most notable is his al-Mahsul fiIlm Usul al-Fiqh, ed., Taha Jabir alAlwani (Beirut: Muassasah al-Risalah, 1992). (94.) Amad Hindawi Hilal, Al-Mabahith al-Bayaniyyah fi Tafsir al-Fakhr al-Razi Dirasah Balaghiyyah Tafsiliyyah (Cairo: Maktabah Wahbah, 1999).

(95.) Muhammad al-Arab Buazz, Nazariyyah al-Marifah inda al-Razi min khilali Tafsirihi (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Arab, 1999). (96.) M. aghr Hasan Mam, Imm Rzs Ilm al-Akhlq: English Translation of his Kitb al-Nafs walRh wa Sharh Quwhum (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1985). He also edited the Arabic text published by the same institute in 1968. (97.) Sam Dughaym, Mawsah Mualaht al-Imm Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Beirut: Maktabah Lubnan, 2001). (98.) Michel Lagarde, Index du Grand Commentaire de Fahr al-Din al-Razi (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996); cf. Ibrahim Shams al-Din and Ahmad Shams al-Din, al-Tafsir al-Kabir: al-Faharis (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ilmiyyah, 1992). (99.) Muammer Iskenderoglu, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Thomas Aquinas on the Question of the Eternity of the World (Leiden: Brill, 2002). The review is by Ayman Shihadeh in the Oxford Journal of Islamic Studies, vol. 15 no. 2 (May, 200 ), 213-215. (100.) Adi Setia, The Physical Theory of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, September 2005). (101.) Introduced by Muammad al-Uraybi (Beirut: Dr al-Fikr al-Lubnani, 1993); doctoral research by Farid Shahran of ISTAC. (102.) Based on information provided by Professor Hans Daiber. (103.) (Beirut: Dr al-Kitab al-Arab, 1987). (104.) (Beirut: Dr al-Kitab al-Arab, 1990). (105.) Ed., Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqqa, 3 parts in 1 vol. (Tehran: Muassasat al-Sadiq, 1994). (106.) Ed. Abd al-Rahman al-Badawi (Beirut: Dar al-Qalam, 1980). (107.) Mawlana Ali Ashraf al-Thanvi (d. 1934), al-Intibahat al-Mufidah, translated by Muhammad Hassan al-Askari and Karrar Husain as Answer to Modernism, 2nd ed. (Karachi: Maktaba Darul-Uloom, 1992), 1-5. (108.) Daiber, What is the meaning , xxxiii. (109.) Paul Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason (London: Verso, 1988); P. Radin, Primitive Man as Philosopher (London & New York: Appleton, 1927). Christian Comeliau, The Impasse of Modernity: Debating the Future of the Global Market Economy, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Zed Books, 2002); and R. Vachon, Ashis Nandy, Wolfgang Sachs, and Raimon Pannikar, The Post-Modern Era: Some Signs and Priorities in Interculture, special issue, vol. 2 , no. 1, Winter 1996; cf. Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash, Grassroots Post-Modernism: Beyond Human

Rights, the Individual Self, the Global Economy (New York: Peter Lang, 1996); Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London: Verso, 1983). Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the World: The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive towards Global Uniformity, trans. Rosemary Morris (Oxford: Polity Press, 1996); Robert J. Ringer, How You Can Find Happiness During the Collapse of Western Civilization (New York: Qed/Harper and Row, 1983); B. McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989); Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980). Frederic F. Clairmont, The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism: The Making of the Economic Gulag, republished (Penang: Southbound and Third World Network, 1996). Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, 3rd ed. (London: Verso, 1993); Paul Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (Reading, ma: Addison-Wesley, 1996); cf. David Lindley, The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory (New York: Basic Books, 199 ); Majid Rahnema, Science and Subjugated Knowledges: A Third World Perspective, in Ruth Hayhoe, ed., Knowledge Across Cultures: Universities East and West (Toronto/Wuhan: OISE Press and Hubei Education Press, 1993); Ashis Nandy, Science, Hegemony and Violence (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1988). L. Winner, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in the Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); idem, Autonomous Technology (Cambridge: miT Press, 1977); R. Romanyshin, Technology as Symptom and Dream (London: Routledge, 1989); Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991). G. A. Almond, M. Chodorow, and R. H. Pearce, Progress and Its Discontents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); W. W. Wagar, Modern Views on the Origins of the Idea of Progress in Journal of the History of Ideas, 28, 1967, 55-70; Larry Laudan, Progress and Its Problems: Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); James Bernard, The Death of Progress (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1973); Trevor Blackwell and Jeremy Seabrook, The Revolt Against Change: Towards a Conserving Radicalism (London: Vintage, 1993). Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 2nd ed. (Kuala Lumpur: iSTac, 1993). K. A. Gourlay, World of Waste: Dilemmas of Industrial Development (London: Zed Books, 1992); cf. Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society, reprinted (Berkeley: Celestial Arts: 1989); idem, Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society (Backinprint.com, 2003). Ivan Illich, Shadow Work (London: Marion Boyars, 1981), which helps us to re-look the past 500 years so as to be able to really look afresh to the next 500; cf. B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, and H. Tiffin, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1995). Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith, trans. Patrick Camiller (London and New York: Zed Books and Cape Town: ucT Press, 2000); Majid Rahnema with Victoria Bawtree, The Post-Development Reader (London: Zed Books, 2001); Jeremy Seabrook, Victims of Development: Resistance and Alternatives (London: Verso, 199 ); Ramashray Roy, Against the Current: Essays in Alternative Development (Delhi: Satvahan Publications, 1982); Wolfgang Sachs, ed., The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge and Power (London: Zed Books, 1992); W. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington dc: Howard University Press, 1981); Bruce M. Rich, Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment and the Crisis of Development (London: Earthscan, 1994); Kothari Rajni, Rethinking Development: In Search of

Human Alternatives (Croton-on-Hudson: Apex Press, 1989); Samir Amin, Maldevelopment: Anatomy of a Global Failure (London: Zed Books, 1990); H. W. Arndt, The Rise and Fall of Economic Growth: A Study in Contemporary Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 198 ). Paul Ekins, The Living Economy: A New Economics in the Making (London: Routledge, 1986); Richard Douthwaite, The Growth Illusion: How Economic Growth Has Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1992); E. Herman Daley and John B. Cobb, Jr, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future (Boston, ma: Beacon Press, 1971). Cheryl Payer, The World Bank: A Critical Analysis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982); cf. Susan George and Fabrizo Sabelli, Faith and Credit: The World Bank Secular Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 199 ), and cf. John Perkins, The Confessions of An Economic Hit Man (San Francisco: Berrett Koehler, 200 ). (110.) Ysuf: 111. Adi Setia is Assistant Professor (History and Philosophy of Science), Faculty of Science, International Islamic University, Malaysia; Email: adi_setia@iiu.edu.my. COPYRIGHT 2005 Center for Islam & Science Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company. Posted in Adi Setia | No Comments

Three meanings of Islamic science: toward operationalizing Islamization of science.

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Author: Setia, Adi Geographic Code: 4EUUK Date: Jun 22, 2007 Words: 12392 Publication: Islam & Science ISSN: 1703-762X The twin historical and philosophical meanings of Islamic science are to be integrated into a third operative, programmatic meaning pertaining to the systemic reapplication of Islamic cognitive and ethical values to science and technology in the contemporary world. This will involve critical integration of the scientific endeavor into the conceptual framework of the Islamic worldview, and the concomitant explication of the cognitive, methodological, and axiological implications of such integration for present and future scientific research. This operative redefinition of Islamic science will render it into a new over-arching paradigm or research program pregnant with novel methodological and empirical implications (and hence, novel discoveries) for remanifesting the Islamic worldview in everyday individual and societal

life through the vision and practice of a non-Western, authentically Islamic science and technology geared first and foremost toward identifying and solving the true problems and satisfying the real needs of the Ummah. Keywords: Islamic worldview; Islamic science; Islamization of Science; Islamic ethico-cognitive values; al-Attas; Nasr; Bakar; research program; operative meaning. Introductory Earlier I have outlined briefly the need to reformulate the concept of Islamic science as a longterm, practical empirico-conceptual research program. (1) This reformulation arises, in particular, in response to the question raised, often tacitly, by concerned, practising Muslim scientists, namely, How do we actually go about realigning our scientific work along the lines envisaged by al-Attas, (2) Nasr, (3) and Bakar (4) in their many writings on various aspects of the philosophy and history of Islamic science? So there is, on the one hand, a growing understanding of the concept of Islamic science itself, while, on the other, a conundrum with regard to executing the concept. (5) I think one of the main reasons for this already more than three decades old operational impasse is that the major writers on Islamic science (or on the Islamization of Science (6)) have not engaged (or have not meant to engage) closely with the detailed, empirical aspects of the various disciplines of modern science as they are presently taught and practiced by Muslim scientists the world over. For instance, while all three authors, al-Attas, Nasr, and Bakar, have written and argued against the Darwinian theory of evolution from the philosophical and metaphysical points of view, (7) none, to my limited knowledge, has so far offered a concomitant positive countertheory that is both conceptually and empirically rich enough to account for the same observed biological phenomena ostensibly accounted for by the mainstream evolutionary theory. A positive, empirical counter-theory is important simply because Darwinian theory presents itself, and is understood, first and foremost, as an empirical, scientific theory rather than a metaphysical, philosophical one. (8) So, for lack of a well-articulated, empirically rich, countertheory, (9) whether they like it or not, biologists, including those who privately believe in a transcendent creative agent of power and intelligence, are stuck with the default theory and they will continue to interpret known and yet to be discovered biological phenomena along the lines predetermined by that theory. (10) That said, one has to admit wholeheartedly that the pioneering philosophical works of al-Attas, Nasr and Bakar are of fundamental importance for opening our eyes to the very possibility (hence, imperative even!) of constructing relevant counter-theories to mainstream Western theories, especially if the latter are shown to be grounded, whether explicitly or implicitly, in underlying metaphysical foundations incompatible with, or even undermining, the Islamic worldview, i.e., the Islamic metaphysical vision of truth and reality. (11) The key-word here is construction, specifically, the proactive creative work of constructing viable alternative scientific theories that are, on the one hand, grounded in, or compatible with, Islamic metaphysics, while, on the other, empirically responsible, i.e., that can adequately account for the same sets of observed phenomena ostensibly accounted for by rival, un-Islamic (or less-thanIslamic) theories, and even, if possible, supersede them altogether. (12) I think that is the true

operative essence of Islamic science: that it has to be involved in an unapologetic, proactive construction of empirico-conceptual frameworks for interpreting and interacting with the world in a way that is self-consciously inspired by, (13) and hence, in harmony with, the ethicocognitive principles of Islam . (14) Without this proactive vision or proactivity, we are left with three reactivities: (i) a shallow Quranic scientific-miracle or tafsir ilmi (15) approach that always seems to run after the tailcoats of (arbitrarily selected) modern, Western empirical discoveries, without ever coming out with original discoveries or insights of its own; (16) (ii) a repetitive, largely unsystemic, negative critique, however sophisticated, of various modern theories or methods incompatible with Islamic metaphysics or ethics without concomitant positive critique giving rise to viable, systemic counter-theories and counter-methods; (l7) and (iii) an overly romanticized glorification of the so-called golden age of Islamic science that assaults the hearing like the pitiable lament of a defeated psyche. In the absence of this proactive, operative vision, Islamic science will continue to be viewed by scientists, including religiously pious Muslim scientists, as purely reactionary to the normal (18) state of affairs, and thus fail to draw them into understanding and furthering its abnormal, (19) radical cause. (20) Due to the many published scholarly studies available, I think we now know enough about the history and philosophy of Islamic science to argue for and formulate a more proactive, operative approach toward reviving Islamic science in the manner envisaged by al-Attas, Nasr, and Bakar; i.e., in a manner that relates it organically and seamlessly to the authentic Islamic intellectoreligious tradition while engaging constructively with modern science, and thus revives it as an unapologetic constructive contributor to contemporary technoscientific discourse. (21) Some Historical Lessons In the Quran it is stated that Verily, in their stories is a lesson for owners of hearts. (22) So I think we can try fulfilling the Divine injunction implicit in this verse with regard to what pertinent lessons we, as people of understanding, should draw from the success stories of our great Muslim scientists, philosophers, and theologians of yore. First of all let us look briefly at scientists (23) such as Ibn Haytham (965-1040), acclaimed in both the East and West as the founder of modern optics by virtue of his seminal work Kitab alManazir. (24) His empirical optical discoveries and formulation of the scientific research methodology underpinning them were in the immediate context of close critical engagement with various ancient Greek optical theories, in both their philosophical and empirical aspects. He was not satisfied by finding these theories wanting in one way or another, rather, he went further by systematically setting out to construct counter-theories that could be found not-wanting, i.e., that could stand up to rigorous, objective logico-mathematical analyses and refined, innovative observational testing. He was, similarly, constructively critical of Ptolemaic astronomy, so much so that his al-Shukuk ala al-Batlamyus (Doubts about Ptolemy) (25) laid the groundwork for subsequent improvements to it by al-Tusi (1201-1274) (26) and Ibn Shatir (1304-1375) that eventually lead directly or indirectly to the Copernican revolution. (27) Similar proactive, self-confident critical engagement is evident in the case of mathematicians such as Umar al-Khayyami (d. 1131) and Jamshid al-Kashi (d. 1429). The former formulated a new postulate to demonstrate Euclids problematic fifth postulate (the parallel postulate) which

eventually lead to the rise of non-Euclidean geometry, while the latter perfected the decimal place value notational system for both integers and fractions .2s In other sciences such as medicine, for example, one may cite the works of physicians such as Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakariyya al-Razi (865-925) with his al-Shukuk ala al-Jalinus (Doubts about Galen) 29 in which he criticizes Galens humoral theory and postulates other material qualities from his own clinical observations and chemical experiments. In philosophy, the case of Ibn Sina (980-1037) is well known. Though greatly influenced by the Aristotelian philosophical system, he envisaged the need to bring the more problematic aspects of that system into greater harmony with Islamic metaphysics. His reformulation of the metaphysics of efficient causation is a case in point. (30) Then, in the case of kalam, we have the great theologian-philosopher al-Ghazali (1058-1111) who, in his Tahafut, (31) went further in Islamizing Aristotelism by eliminating intermediary causation altogether and offering in its place a positive, alternative causal theory that is arguably even more empirically adequate than the criticized and rejected peripatetic theory. This series of constructive thrusts and counter-thrusts eventually lead to the full-fledged atomism and occasionalism of post-Ghazalian, Fakhrurazian (d. 1209) kalam physical theory, (32) a development in which much of peripatetic natural philosophy was appropriated into mainstream, orthodox intellecto-religious discourse and hence naturalized (33) (i.e., Islamized). Again, these positive achievements were brought about in the wake of systemic engagement with both the hard and soft aspects of the Greek sciences, so much so that many, if not most, of the post-Ghazalian mutakallimun, even arguably right up to the mid-nineteenth century, were also practicing, accomplished scientists (tabiiyyin) and philosophers (hukama) in their own right. (34) This essentially programmatic nature of classical Islamic religio-scientific investigations (bahth/mabahith) (35) sketchily described above which critically assimilated and built on the works of the past in order to go beyond them was still more or less prevalent up to the advent and consolidation of global European colonial expansionism in the 19th century, even in the MalayIslamic Far East. (36) In the case of technology as opposed to science and philosophy, this same constructive attitude can also be argued for, again right up to the mid-nineteenth century, especially in the case of Mamluk Egypt, Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia, Mughal India, Islamic Civilization in China, and some of the Sultanates of the Malay Archipelago of the Islamic Far East, although, admittedly, much textual and artifactual research needs to be done and published in order to render this thesis persuasive. (37) These Muslim scientists, philosophers and theologians not only cultivated a constructive approach to the foreign sciences but they were also self-critical as well as mutually critical amongst themselves. The point here is not whether some of the later scholars of the last three centuries were aware of, and tried to catch up with, the scientific advancements of the colonizing imperialistic West, but rather to what extent they continued to identify, and address themselves to, religious, scientific and technological problems arising out of their respective indigenous sociocultural contexts, for creative science is, first and foremost, about solving ones own problems (i.e., problems you posit to yourself) not the problems of others (i.e., problems created for, and imposed on, you by others). For sure, many if not most of these indigenous contexts were to some extent conditioned by global Western civilizational challenges, yet, more often than not, these very challenges spurred the creation of dynamic, largely autonomous

intellecto-cultural spaces rendering possible effective, proactive responses. (38) I dare say that these autonomous spaces only shrunk significantly and even disappeared altogether during the so-called postcolonial, independence era of the mid-twentieth century, which is rather ironic, though, in the final analysis, unsurprising, once the disembodied, insidious westernizing process had set in to complete the work left undone, or that could not be done, by the departing, civilizing imperialists. (39) I think it is more fruitful for our particular purpose here to read the history of Islamic science not as a long chronological series of ossified discoveries whose value is often obsessivly seen in the extent of them being anticipative or otherwise of modern discoveries, but rather as indicative of an underlying, creatively dynamic pattern of meaningful intellectualizing about the human and natural world within the over-arching context of religious experience of revelation. To be curt, those great Muslim scientists of the past were simply not worried about anticipating Copernicus or Newton or Einstein; rather, they were totally concerned about doing something that could be meaningful to themselves and to their community, and, perhaps, be acceptable to their Creator. Since that is the case with regard to our forebears, why are we today so much more concerned with catching up with the West than with doing really original, creative science that is appropriate to our socio-natural context and geared first and foremost toward solving our problems as conceived by us? The big question about any science or any technology is not whether it is advanced or backward, high or low with respect to the West, but whether it is truly useful and beneficial with respect to us. From this autonomous perspective, the question of the decline of Islamic science is, to a large extent, an intellectual red herring. Therefore, the purpose of studying the history of Islamic science for Muslims today is not only to know who discovered what first, second, or last, but, more importantly, to rearticulate clearly in contemporary terms the often hidden, underlying creative thought processes leading to those discoveries and to bring to light their usually not-so-apparent background of internally generated problematics, regardless of whether these discoveries be of a physical or conceptual nature. For it must be understood that these discoveries, if truly meaningful, were only discovered to solve problems or to achieve objectives that arose or were conceived from within the socio-intellectual dynamics of the then predominant, cosmopolitan Islamic world-civilization. Without achieving this deep-level understanding, those scientific artifacts, works and relics of the long bygone and (for most people) well-nigh forgotten past will have no substantive, larger meaning for the great majority of Muslims living in the immediate, everyday life of the real, overly westernized , (40) secularized (41) world (as opposed to the sterile, elitist life of expensive science museums, grand exhibition halls, glossy coffee-table books and innumerable feel-good film documentaries) (42) To clarify this issue further I think we need to demarcate three distinct yet interlinked operative meanings of the term Islamic science. By operative, I mean what scholars or researchers actually refer to when they say they are studying or talking about Islamic science. Three Meanings of Islamic science The first meaning pertains to the subject matter of the formal academic discipline that studies the history of the development of empirical science and technology in Islamic Civilization in relation to the sciences of earlier (e.g., Greek, Indian) and later (i.e., Latin European) civilizations. This

meaning places Islamic science squarely within the larger discipline of History of Science as envisaged by George Sarton. (43) Islamic science simply means history of science in Islamic culture and society; it is less about conceptual theory than actual practice and empirical results. Some notable works, among many, indicative of this meaning are A. I. Sabras The Optics of Ibn Haytham, (44) Daniel Martin Variscos Medieval Agriculture and Islamic science: The Almanac of a Yemeni Sultan, (45) Roshdi Rasheds Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, (46) and Donald R. Hill, Islamic science and Engineering. (47) The valuable, ongoing multi-volume reference work of meticulous research and documentation on the Islamic scientific and literary tradition undertaken by Professor Fuat Sezgin is, to a large extent, in this category. (48) Also, the excellent, well documented and illustrated scholarly articles accessible online through the website muslimheritage.com provide a very comprehensive survey of practically all the empirical sciences cultivated in Islamic Civilization 49 One can no longer pretend to be a tabula rasa with regard to the subject. The second meaning pertains to the subject matter of the sub-discipline in Islamic Philosophy that serves to describe and clarify in objective, contemporary terms the methodological and philosophical principles that have guided or undergirded the cultivation of the sciences in Islamic civilization. This meaning renders Islamic science as part of philosophy and philosophy of science in general, and focuses more on the conceptual or intellectual rather than the empirical, practical or artifactual aspects of Islamic science. Notable works in this regard are also many, including al-Attas Islam and the Philosophy of Science, Nasrs Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, Bakars Classification of Knowledge in Islam, Franz Rosenthals Knowledge Triumphant. The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam, (50) Fazlur Rahmans Avicennas Psychology (51) and many others. A useful internet resource in this regard is www.muslimphilosophy.com (52) covering practically all aspects of Islamic Philosophy, including philosophical aspects of Islamic science. Moreover, many valuable articles and even whole books are downloadable from this website for free in pdf format. Again, mere lack of the relevant references can no longer be offered as an easy excuse for ignoring the subject. Obviously it is in the latter category of works that the meaning of Islamic science most overlaps with the meaning of Islamic Philosophy, while in the former case, Islamic science can be and usually is studied on its own with little reference to Islamic Philosophy as such. Most scholars and researchers, when they talk about Islamic science, are either referring to its empirical, philosophical, or both aspects. However, none, to my very limited knowledge, have tried to read Islamic science in any systematic manner as essentially programmatic in nature, i.e., as a systemic research program that has continually been creatively enriched and rearticulated throughout its history by the intellecto-scientific ijtihad (53) of succeeding generations of scholars, each generation in response to the demands and challenges of their age, although support for this reading can easily be gleaned from the many accessible published studies on various aspects of the history and philosophy of science in Islamic culture and civilization. This is not to say that these scholars of the past self-consciously viewed what they were doing as programmatic in the Lakatosian (54) sense of the term, but their actual intellectual attitude towards it, as can be gleaned from their works, certainly was programmatic in that sense. Hence, al-Ghazalis Tahafut al-Faldsifah (55) is not merely a one-off reaction against peripatetic

philosophy, but a more comprehensive programmatic outline for a new kalam, a new kind of Islamic philosophico-theological system termed kalam jadid by Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406). (56) Al-Shafiis (767-820) Risalah (57) is a program to set fiqh on a more organized disciplinary framework. Ibn Khalduns Mugaddimah (58) is essentially a new socio-historical research program; and so on and so forth. Similarly, in order for us to revive Islamic science today, we should build on the works of al-Attas, Nasr, and Bakar, and in order to do that, we have to critically re-read their works, especially al-Attas Prolegomena, in an operative, programmatic framework. The third meaning pertains then to the subject matter of the (yet to be created) discipline that serves to reformulate the concept of Islamic science as a long term creative research program dedicated toward a systemic reapplication of Islamic cognitive and ethical values to science and technology in the contemporary world. (59) This reformulation, in order to be realized, will necessarily require leading Muslim scientists of high, contemplative (as opposed to merely technical) acumen to work toward a critical integration of the scientific endeavor into the conceptual framework of the Islamic worldview, and the concomitant explication of the cognitive, (60) methodological and axiological implications of such integration for present and future empirical scientific research. This programmatic redefinition of Islamic science will render it into a new over-arching paradigms or research program (62) pregnant with novel methodological and empirical implications (and hence, novel discoveries) for remanifestating the Islamic worldview in everyday individual and societal life through the vision and practice of a non-Western, authentically Islamic science and technology geared first and foremost toward identifying and solving the true problems and satisfying the real needs of the Ummah. For the effective, substantial realization of this third, programmatic, meaning, leading Muslim scientists should take some time off from their busy professional teaching and research work to cultivate the philosophico-historical acumen necessary for grasping the first two meanings of Islamic science in sufficient conceptual depth and informative detail. This acumen, once attained, will enable them to undertake the arduous theoretical and empirical work of fleshing out the direction and content of aspects of the Islamic science Research Program applicable to their specializations or particular areas of research. (63) In practice, then, these three meanings have to be mastered and integrated into a single whole and applied to any particular scientific research project one is involved in. From the history of science in Islam, we draw lessons from the successes and failures (64) of previous sages as constituting an invaluable heritage and resource for instilling self-confidence, breaking impasses and inspiring fresh ideas. From the lessons of Islamic philosophy, particularly where they pertain to scientific thought and practice, we learn the art of critical reflection and analysis by which we may harmonize between our human drive to know and our human need to be happy, so that the science we cultivate be a constructive rather than destructive aspect of our civilization. By reading the history and philosophy of Islamic science as programmatic in nature we build the capacity to construct and cultivate a new, contemporarily relevant Islamic science and Technology that, on the one hand, will manifest and realize our value system and hence directed toward fulfilling our physical, emotional and spiritual needs, and, on the other, engage constructively with Western modern science and technology. To further elaborate one needs to go into some details of the conceptual content of this general Islamic science Research Program (ISRP).

Islamic science Research Program I In the Quran it is stated clearly that Allah will reveal His signs in the cosmic horizons and in our own selves until it shall be clearly manifest to us (and to humankind in general) that it (the Quran) is the truth/the real. (65) This verse implies that the revealed, metaphysical truths of the Quran have their physical, sensible, observable and experiential counterparts in phenomenal creation which manifest, indicate and instantiate these transcendent truths. But in other verses there is a caveat to the effect that these Divine signs are only recognizable as such by people who think and reflect, (66) meaning those who think and reflect correctly in both the rational, discursive (fikri) (67) and the intellective, contemplative (aqli) sense, (68) otherwise they reject them and view nature as bereft, or independent, of the Divine presence. This implies that these phenomenal signs, for most people, including scientists, do not self-evidently point to Allah, otherwise all will be believers as a matter of course as there will be no cognitive testing of their innate, fitri (69) intelligence, and hence no intellectual motivation for the cultivation of the theoretical and practical sciences. In other words, as pointed out in various ways by Nursi (18781960), (70) Nasr (71) and al-Attas, (72) there is a certain degree of cognitive ambiguity in phenomena, in the sense that they both veil and unveil the Divine presence. The ultimate test for humankind on earth, and which they must pass in order to attain to true, everlasting salvation, is to perceive the Divine presence through the superficial veil of phenomena. This means that the semiological ambiguity of nature serves the purpose of being an intellecto-moral test of mankinds fidelity (73) to their Creator. Of course Islam teaches many ways by which one can see through the veil and attain to true knowledge/marifah and hence true worship/ibadah, but here we shall restrict ourselves to the way of discursive investigative science understood as systematic, empirical study of nature, which in the past was largely undertaken within the more general disciplinary frameworks of falsafah, kalam and hikmah. There is the further consideration that the Quran is not only true/real with regard to what it says about the ontological reality, (74) that is veiled and yet unveiled by the phenomenal world, but also with regard to what it says about both the physical and human aspects of the phenomenal world itself and the laws governing them. Again for most people, it is not immediately obvious that these lower phenomenal realities exhibit features confirming or realizing in detail what the Quran says about them by way of general, often allusive, indications, hence the need again for the cultivation of both the intellectual and religious sciences. For instance, the Quran mentions that nothing in nature is in vain or wasted, (75) a truth that is now borne out in all its factual empirical, quantitative details through the ecological and environmental sciences (76) The Quran mentions directly the healing and nutraceutical benefits of honey (77) and indirectly the therapeutic value of sleep, (78) general truths that, when clarified enough through relevant biological and medical research, become sucessfully applicable to specific health related situations. (79) With respect to the more ethico-moral domains of intellectual life, the Quran mentions the Prophet, sallaLlahu alayh wa sallam, as being sent as a mercy for all creation (rahmatan li alalamin), (80) inanimate, animate, and human. This in itself is a general abstract truth that becomes concretely self-evident for believers not living in the Prophets lifetime through the science of shah or prophetic biography. We are obliged to obey Allah in all aspects of our life, a general moral, injunctive truth that is rendered objectively realizable in actual conduct through

the science of usul al fiqh which intellectually mediates between the general normative injuctions of the Quran and Sunnah and their positive applications in the complexity of diverse personal and social contexts. We are obliged to obey the Prophet, a moral, injunctive truth for the realization of which the science of hadith criticism, (83) with its distinctive testimonial logic of sanad (84) scrutiny, was cultivated and refined. So the programmatic reading of the Islamic sciences of nature should also be extendable to what is usually known as the religious sciences, especially if we want to revive the latter so as to engage and overcome constructively and in a systemic manner the many complex socio-religious and political economic problems that are peculiar (85) to our present, overly westernized age. However, in order to keep this discourse within manageable limits, I shall restrict myself to the problem of reviving Islamic science, i.e., science as systematic investigation of nature. Islamic science Research Program II As stated earlier, (86) the Islamic science Research Program, in general, consists of an unchanging core metaphysical component underpinning the program, and a surrounding network of auxiliary explicative theories and hypotheses for relating the metaphysical abstract core to the concrete physical world. The role of the network of auxiliary theories is to provide directions for the conceptual clarifications and empirical investigations of various aspects of this permanent metaphysical core by relating them to corresponding aspects of the physical world, thus imbuing the former with experiential and empirical content or meaning. In other words, the auxiliary, theoretical network is that by which we intellectually mediate between the metaphysical worldview of revelation and the physical world of creation, through which mediation we provide rational and scientific support for that worldview, thus enriching and clarifying it conceptually and empirically until it becomes manifest to them (and to us also) that it (the Quranic worldview and all that it implies) is the truth/the real. (87) Schematically, the Islamic science Research Program can be represented in the form of three concentric circles as shown below: The inner circle represents the unchanging, permanent, revealed metaphysical core expressed as the Islamic worldview (ruyat al-Islam li al-wujud). (88) The middle circle represents the network of auxiliary theories and hypotheses which may be modified, changed or added to from time to time; this may be called the network of auxiliary theories (shabakah al-nazariyyat almulhaqah). The outer circle represents nature (al-tabiah), the physical, sensible world itself, or simply, the physical world. Islamic scientific creativity lies exactly in the middle circle and consists in articulating objective theoretical frameworks for facilitating a sufficiently detailed reading of the physical world as unveiling (affirmative of) rather than veiling (unaffirmative of) the truth and reality of the revealed, metaphysical core. By objective is meant that this sufficiently detailed reading is to be amenable to participation and scrutiny by non-Muslim scientists, if they so wish, even if they do not believe the metaphysical core, by reference to the very same physical world accessible to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. It is by virtue of this objectivity that Muslim scientists involved in ISRP will have no problem recognizing and incorporating certain positive elements of Western and eastern sciences into their research. (89) It is not possible here to elaborate further on the creative nature of the middle circle of the ISRP, which is basically where the discursive reason (fikr) and

contemplative intellect (aql) mediate between the book of revelation and the book of creation; however, we may invoke a simple general example. The Quran says that the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be on him, was sent as a mercy (rahmah) to all the worlds. If we, as scientists, are to follow in the footsteps of the merciful (rahmatic) Prophet, then the way we study nature and interact with it (muamalat Want altabiah) (90) is constrained by the prophetic ethics of cosmic mercy. (91) This means that much of what we do or take for granted in contemporary science and technology has to be seriously and systemically rethought since it is obviously unrestrained by the ethics of mercy. Modern science and its technological offshoots are, in many diverse, complex ways, very aggressive toward nature and, by extension, toward humankind as part of nature. (92) If by definition science is the study of nature, then obviously it is in the interest of science to preserve nature in order to guarantee its continued study by science. Thus scientific curiosity entails moral responsibility. However, the paradox now is that the more science knows about nature, the more of it is devastated, and the less there remains of it to be studied and appreciated. It is as if the modern pursuit of abstract, cerebral science and its manipulative technological offshoots have to go hand in hand with the desolation and disappearance of living nature as an unavoidable consequence, but that position is unacceptably fatalistic for truly concerned Muslim scientists. For them, the Quranic ethics of universal, cosmic mercy shows the way toward another way of doing science that respects and preserves nature (and by extension humankind) rather than destroys it, and I believe that a well articulated ISRP involving all thinking, reflective and selfcritical scientists will facilitate the way toward realizing that science in practice. The following are some particular examples by way of illustration. Vivisection (the very term means to cut alive) is the way modern, business-driven medicine tortures live animals to test drugs in order to rid humanity of their ever lengthening list of old and new diseases. (93) As a method of medical research it is relatively new (a hundred or so years old) and peculiar to modern Western medical culture. Quite apart from the extrinsic question of ethics in respect thereof, there is also a more fundamental intrinsic question, namely the question of the scientific integrity (or cognitive value) of the underlying, largely unexamined assumption of a significant degree of biological and physiological similarity between laboratory test animals and human beings justifying extrapolations of clinical results from one to the other. The ISRP for Muslim medical researchers in this regard will be to find systemic alternatives of unquestioned scientific and ethical integrity to vivisection, including valid alternatives critically sourced from marginalized Western and eastern medical traditions which could be incorporated into the ISRP (or to be more specific, the IMRP, Islamic Medicine Research Program). Some of these alternatives can also be gleaned by undertaking evidence-based medical research into the well documented but largely neglected vast corpus of the very successful one thousand years old Islamic cosmopolitan medical tradition. (94) Modern agriculture, to take another example, is overly chemical intensive with widespread use of pesticides, herbicides, synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and so on, which poison the earth, kill rural wildlife, even toxify the harvests and disrupt the health of farmers. Traditional farming methods have been perfectly adapted to local socio-natural conditions generating a symbiotic, holistic balance between the needs of humanity and the rights of nature. As the word implies, agriculture is a culture, a whole way of life of mutual respect, communal give and take, and

cooperative rather than competitive living. There are also agro-innovations of course, but innovations within ecological limits, as the case of Andalusian agricultural science and practice show. (95) It is not a mere business, as the modern corruption of the original word into agribusiness would have it, which imposes the corporate tyranny of impersonal profitmaximization on once self-respectful, independent farmers and indigenous peoples, reducing them into wage- and debt-slaves, squatters on the very lands they once have had customary rights to but now wrested from them by faceless, soulless corporations. It is strange that agricultural food production, which once unquestionably served the welfare of humankind, should now, in the hands of big agrochemical companies like Monsanto, (96) be seen to be working toward destroying the very ecological basis of that welfare. In order to return agricultural practice onto the ethical path of mercy toward humanity and nature, an authentic Islamic Agricultural Research Program (IARP) would be one that eschews harmful chemicals altogether and instead looks into the various effective organic methods now available such as permaculture, (97) and develop new ones by, for instance, drawing on the thousand years accumulated experience of a very successful Islamic agricultural tradition, the original, truly green revolution. (98) To return to the question of scientific objectivity (i.e., the question of what should count as objectively verified knowledge and the research methods by which this objectivity is ascertained), this has more to do with the cognitive rather than ethical values underpinning the ISRP, though in Islamic scientific practice, the cognitive merges seamlessly into the ethical and becomes one with it. In other words, cognitive evaluation and ethical evaluation are both intrinsic to the scientific enterprise in Islam, as is quite evident in Ibn Haythams much studied scientific methodology. The realization that scientific objectivity and methodological probity are not possible without concomitant ethico-moral integrity has been growing in the West and is now moving more toward the Islamic position thus allowing room for mutual constructive engagement on this important meta-scientific issue. (99) To illustrate very briefly how the concept of scientific objectivity actually operates in the ISRP with respect to cultivating a critical attitude toward Western science, let us consider the twin Quranic cognitive principles of tabayyun (investigation, scrutiny) (100) and burhan (proof, evidence). (101) Due to the global dominance of Western science, Muslim scientists are continuously bombarded with reports of promising new methods, discoveries and techniques in prestigious Western journals like Nature, Science, New Scientist and Scientific American. It will be irresponsible of them to take these reports at face value without undertaking their own investigation (tabayyun) into the often hidden underlying context of these reports and ascertaining their empirical adequacy (burhan) and epistemological autonomy (al-istiglal alilmi) from powerful forces geared less toward global scientific enlightenment than narrow political economic enrichment. (102) Creative understanding and practice of tabayyun and tabarhun, as exemplified by Ibn Haytham, will help Muslim scientists to separate the wheat from the chaff of Western science and incorporate it into the ISRP. For instance, in the case of chemistry, the growing new field of green chemistry (103) is something that shows great promise of eliminating the threat of toxic chemicals from the human and natural environment, thus realizing the ethico juridical principle of la darar wa la dirar (no harming and no reciprocating harm), which is itself derived from the cosmic, prophetic principle of universal mercy.

Finally, there is the very important, strategic question of the appropriate higher educational institutional framework for realising the ISRP over the long term, especially by educating and training postgraduate researchers to creatively apply ISRP principles to their respective specializations. (104) As pointed out by S. Nomanul Haq, there is a great need to revise the way we educate university science students so that they know how to integrate their scientific knowledge and expertise into the more fundamental and higher goals of human life and thus avoid the destructive pitfalls of scientism. (105) True science is beneficial knowledge (al-ilm alnafi) that is geared toward serving rather than subverting these higher, human goals. And the highest goal, the summum bonum, is, of course, to bring a sound conscience to the meeting with the Lord, (106) and thereby attain His pleasure (mardatiLlah). Conclusion The foregoing shows that the ISRP can be a very exciting, wide-ranging alternative scientific research program for Muslim scientists, especially if they are serious about wanting the Islamic worldview to be operative in the scientific and technological domains of life. We now have Islamic Law and Islamic Economics as operative realities in academic and public institutions, and there is no reason why Islamic science, due to its cosmopolitan nature and universal appeal, should not attain similar or greater level of professional and popular acceptance, even amongst non-Muslims. All we need to do, in my opinion, is to recast the first and second meanings of Islamic science into the operative, programmatic framework of the third meaning and then apply this meaning to ones particular field of scientific specialization, provided, of course, that specialization is axiologically justifiable (107) from within the perspective of the Islamic worldview. I hope the foregoing has shown clearly, if somewhat sketchily, that the cognitive and ethical concerns inherent in the ISRP will eventually result in methods, techniques and even products that exhibit and embody those concerns and thus create a truly beneficial scientific future for Muslims, and, by extension, for the world. (108)
You are the best community sent out for mankind; you enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and you believe in Allah. (109)

Adi Setia is Assistant Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Department of General Studies, International Islamic University, Malaysia. Email: adi-setia@iiu.edu.my (1.) Islamic science as a Scientific Research Program in Islam & Science, Vol. 3 (Summer 2005) No. 1, 93-101. (2.) Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and the Philosophy of Science (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1989), which also constitutes Chapter III of his Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2001), 111-142; idem, The Positive Aspects of Tasawwuf Preliminary Thoughts on an Islamic Philosophy of Science (Kuala Lumpur: ASASI, 1981); cf. Adi Setia, Al-Attas Philosophy of Science: An Extended Outline in Islam & Science, Vol. 1 (2003) No. 2, 165-214.

(3.) Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964); idem, Science and Civilization in Islam, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1987). (4.) Osman Bakar, Classification of Knowledge in Islam: A Study in Islamic Philosophies of Science (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1998); idem, The History and Philosophy of Islamic science (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1999). (5.) On 9-10 February 2007, an intensive workshop attended by about forty selected Malaysian and Indonesian scientists was organized by Professor Shaharir Muhammad Zain, Professor Wan Ramli Wan Daud, Dr. Muhammad Alinor and Dr. Assanah Mydin of the Islamic Academy of Science, Malaysia (ASASI) to address this conundrum under the guiding theme of Reviving Islamic science, with further, more specialized, national, regional and international workshops in the pipeline. This question is latent, especially in the last few chapters, throughout Muzaffar Iqbal, Islam and Science (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate: 2002); see the generally positive, nonscholarly review of Dr. Iqbals book by John Maxwell Kerr accessible online at www.scimednet.org/library/reviewsN86+/N861gbal_islam.htm (accessed March 27, 2007). A more scholarly and intellectually challenging review is Roxanne D. Marcotte, Review of Islam and Science, in Ars Disputandi (www.ArsDisputandi.org) Vol. 6 (2006), accessed March 27, 2007. (6.) That is, briefly speaking, critical integration of mainstream scientific research and its results into the conceptual framework of the Islamic worldview. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 2nd edn. (Kuala Lumpur ISTAC, 1993), 44 ff and 182 ff defines Islamization as the liberation of man first from magical, mythological, animistic, nationalcultural tradition opposed to Islam, and then from secular control over his reason and his language. For his application of this definition to present-day knowledge, including the human, natural, physical and applied sciences, see ibid., 162 ff. For the limited purpose of this paper, science is simply taken to refer to the systematic study of the natural world. (7.) Osman Bakar, ed., Critique of Evolutionary Theory: A Collection of Essays (Kuala Lumpur: ASASI and Nurin, 1987), which include articles by Nasr, Bakar and others; cf. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, A Commentary on the Hujjat al-Siddiq of Nur al-Din al-Raniri: being an exposition of the salient points of distinction between the positions of the theologians, the philosophers, the Sufis and the pseudo-Sufis on the ontological relationship between God and the world and related questions (Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Culture, 1986), 460-461. (8.) Harun Yahyas many colorfully illustrated anti-evolution books, especially the remarkable Evolution Deceit: The Scientific Collapse of Darwinism and Its Ideological Background, trans. Mustapha Ahmad (London: Ta Ha, 2000), brings to our attention in great detail the many scientific, as opposed to the philosophical or metaphysical, shortcomings of darwinian and neodarwinian evolutionary theories, but there is no attempt at all therein to construct a proper scientific counter-theory. On the other hand, Abdul Wahid Pallacken, Origin of Genetic Information and Evolution of Biological Species in Islam & Science, Vol. 3 (Summer 2005) No. 1, 7-42, both criticizes evolution and attempts to construct an alternative theory but its

conceptual foundations are rather weak and largely ungrounded in the Islamic intellectual tradition, especially with regard to Islamic psychology and natural philosophy. (9.) Such as along the lines of Michael Behe, Darwins Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: Free Press, 1996). My review of Behes book is published in Jawhar. Journal of Book Review, Vol. 3 (February/March 2006) No. 1, 75-82. (10.) The analogy here is this: if you go to someones house and point out to him its leaking roof and crumbling walls but fail to build for him (or teach him to build) a better house to live in, he will thank you very much for being so kind and go on living in it until it falls over and buries him in the rubble. (11.) Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2001). (12.) For instance, in the way atomism displaced hylomorphism, or in the way cognitive psychology (which is arguably more compatible with Islamic faculty psychology) displaced behaviourism. Another example is the way many alternative, traditional medical systems (such as Japanese kampo, Indian ayurvedic and Chinese acupuncture) are shown to be just as effective as (or even more effective than) modern allopathic medicine in treating the same types of illnesses, minus, of course, the side-effects inherent in modern synthetic drugs. So, if rival scientific theories can account for the same set of phenomena, or solve the same set of empirical problems, then the theories most compatible with the Islamic worldview should be identified, chosen, improved upon, extended and incorporated/integrated into the ISRP (Islamic science Research Program). (13.) In the past when Islamic culture was predominant, it can be surmised that the Quranic inspiration for the pursuit of science was mostly tacit. It was there in, or as, the general intellectual ambience and need not be explicitly brought to the fore. This may explain why, as noticed by Roxanne D. Marcotte in Review of Islam and Science, 3, there is little direct reference to the Quran in most scientific works. But in todays Westernized world, especially in the light of the growing realization that the scientific enterprise is thoroughly value-laden, it is of the utmost imperative for Muslim scientists to be critically self-conscious about their Islamic worldview so that they can determine for themselves to what extent their work can or cannot be integrated into it and act accordingly. (14.) That is, principles derived from Islamic epistemology and axiology of science as will be elaborated in detail on another occasion, but see, meanwhile, Adi Setia, Al-Attas Philosophy of Science: An Extended Outine in Islam & Science, Vol. 1 (December 2004) No. 2, 187-194 and 204-211. (15.) Brief critical reviews of this approach are Mustansir Mir, Scientific Exegesis of the Quran-A Viable Project? in Islam & Science, Vol. 2 No. 1 (Summer 2004), 33-42; and Jalees Rehman, Searching for Scientific Facts in the Quran: Islamization of Knowledge or a New Form of Scientism?, in Islam & Science, Vol. 1 No. 2 (December 2003), 245-252. See also

Chapter 10 of Muzaffar Iqbal, Islam and Science (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), for his less than optimistic review of the Quranic scientific exegesis project. A scathingly terse review by Taner Edis, Quran-science: scientific miracles from the 7th century, accessible online at www2.truman.edu/~edis/writings/articles/quran-science.html, is interesting for drawing attention to parallel developments in the Bible-science of the literalist, fundamentalist Christian creationists. My personal view here is that the so-called al-tafsir al-ilmi or scientific exegesis should be recast as al-tafsir al-kalami along the lines of Fakhr al-Din al-Razis Mafatih al-Ghayb as exemplified in his exegesis of the the Quranic concept of taskhir in relation to certain aspects of observed human and natural phenomena, by which relation that concept is imbued with empirical and experiential content or meaning; see Adi Setia, Taskhir, Fine-Tuning, Intelligent Design and the Scientific Appreciation of Nature in Islam & Science, Vol. 2 (Summer, 2004) No. 1, 7-32. As exemplified in the Mafatih al-Ghayb, kalam exegesis involves rigorous semantico-conceptual analyses of Quranic concepts in order to draw out their logical implications for actual, empirical investigations of the physical world whose results may or may not coincide with the truth-claims of modern science. It is dialectical since it mediates disciplined, reflective intellectual dialogue between revelation and creation. It was through the kalam dialectical method that the natural sciences in the past were critically appropriated, naturalized, and incorporated into the conceptual framework of the Islamic worldview. This was a constructive process which generated a new, Islamized science of nature, which, I think, should be the whole point of a proper, contemporary scientific exegesis of any degree of intellectual profundity. Another consideration for not using the term tafsir ilmi is to preempt a narrowing, in the public consciousness, of the classical rich meaning of the term ilm to the modern impoverished meaning of the term science. This issue will be further elaborated at another opportunity, inshaa'Llah. Badiuzzaman Said al-Nursis profoundly influential Rasail al-Nur can be read as a new approach to tafsir kalami for effective engagement with the intellecto-moral challenges of the modern age. The Mafatih and the Rasail, though seven centuries apart, are, in spirit and purpose, identical. (16.) And without bothering to consider the tentative and sometimes highly contentious nature of such discoveries or their underlying assumptions rendering them valid. (17.) On the whole, Islamic critiques of evolution, for instance, have remained repetitively of a general nature and hence conceptually and empirically stagnant and unproductive for the past three decades except lately in the works of Harun Yahya (especially Evolution Deceit), who engages it largely from within in greater scientific detail, but even here there is no attempt at a corresponding counter-theory. Another example is the relatively recent Islamic medico-fiqhi concern with certain biotechnological driven innovations (cloning, stem-cell therapy, organ transplant, gene therapy, etc.) in Western medicine with no attempt whatsoever at a deeper philosophical, methodological, sociomedical, and political economic critique, hence the tacit unexamined assumption of a universal, context-free relevance of the medical problems driving these, largely private-interest, business-driven, for-profit rather than for-health, innovations. For a sampling of these medico-fighi concerns, see Ahmed Abdul Aziz Yacoub, The Fiqh of Medicine: Responses in Islamic Jurisprudence to Developments in Medical Science (London: Ta Ha, 2001); cf. V. Rispler-Chaim, Islamic Medical Ethics in the 20 Century (Leiden: Brill, 1993).

(18.) Normal here in the Kuhnian sense. Since most Muslim scientists, even very pious religious ones, are so totally immersed by education and training in mainstream modern Western scientific culture with little or no significant exposure to non-Western scientific systems, they lack the necessary comparative perspective for critically evaluating what they presently do as scientists. They simply cannot conceive of any other way to do science; even if informed of such alternative approaches, they will consider them abnormal if not beyond their ken. (19.) Abnormal here again in the Kuhnian sense, meaning simply what is not being done or pursued by the great majority of scientists for one reason or another. So abnormal science is not necessarily quackery or pseudo-science; on the contrary, it can be just as rational and empirical as normal science or even more so, only that it has not yet grown influential enough amongst mainstream scientists to be counted as normal. For Thomas Kuhns view of scientific change, see his influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), which can be adapted, with qualifications, to our project. (20.) In this respect, Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London: Verso, 1986), can be read by Muslim scientists as opening the way for them to create better alternatives to Western science such as Islamic science. (21.) It is in this regard that I find wanting writings on various aspects of the Islamization of the sciences by Ismail al-Faruqi and Ziauddin Sardar, as these generally bypass altogether the conceptual profundity of traditional Islamic and modern Western philosophico-scientific debates and appeal directly to Quranic categories with little or no systemic analysis and informative input. I think this short-cut, rush-rush approach is shallow, to say the least, and will paradoxically result in an uncritical, passive reception of the very same secular Western sciences it set out to Islamize in the first place. This paradoxical situation has already taken firm hold at the International Islamic University Malaysia which is basically premised on the Faruqian approach to Islamization. (22.) Yusuf 111. (23.) Or rather those generally recognized as scientists in the modern sense of the term, though they were a lot else besides. (24.) A. I. Sabra, trans. and comm., The Optics of Ibn Haytham: Books I-III: On Direct Vision, 2 vols. (London: Warburg Insttitute, 1989); cf. Muhammad Saud, The Scientific Methodology of Ibn Haytham (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1990); cf. Saleh B. Omar, Ibn Haythams Optics: A Study of the Origins of Experimental Science (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1977). (25.) Arabic text edited with annotations by A. I. Sabra, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 1996). (26.) Unless otherwise stated, all dates refer to Common Era. (27.) Details in Edward S. Kennedy, Astronomy and Astrology in the Medieval World (Aldershot: Variorum, 1998); David A. King, Islamic Mathematical Astronomy (Aldershot:

Variorum, 1998); George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Noel Swerdlow and Otto Neugebauer, Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicuss De Revolutionibus (New York: Springer, 1984). (28.) Details in J. L. Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986); cf Victor J. Katz, A History of Mathematics (Reading, MA: AddisonWesley, 1998), for the excellent Chapter 7 on Islamic Mathematics, 238-287 passim; Daoud S. Kasir, The Algebra of Omar Khayyam (New York: AMS Press, 1972). (29.) Edited by Mehdi Mohaghegh (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993). (30.) Michael Marmura, Avicenna on Causal Priority in Parviz Morewedge, ed., Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism, 3rd ed., (New York: Caravan Books, 1981). (31.) Tahafut al-Falasifah, trans. Michael Marmura (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2000). (32.) Adi Setia, The Theologico-Scientific Research Program of the Mutakallimun: Intellectual Historical Context and Contemporary Concerns with Special Reference to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Islam & Science, Vol. 3 (Winter, 2005) No. 2, 127-151; idem, Atomism versus Hylomorphism in the Kalam of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Islam & Science, Vol. 4 (Winter 2006) No. 2, 113-140. Cf. Dimitri Gutas, The Heritage of Avicenna: The Golden Age of Arabic Philosophy, ca. 1000-1350 in Jules Janssens and Daniel De Smet, eds., Avicenna and His Heritage: Acts of the International Colloquium, Leuven, September 811 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002), 81-97; Ayman Shihadeh, From al-Ghazali to al-Razi: 6th/12th Century Developments in Muslim Philosophical Theology in Arabic Science and Philosophy, Vol. 15 (2005), 141-179; and A. I. Sabra, Science and Philosophy in Medieval Islamic Theology: The Evidence of the Fourteenth Century in Zeitschrift fir Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 8 (1994), 1-42. See also A. I. Sabras important forthcoming Kalam Atomism as an Alternative Philosophy to Hellenizing Falsafa: An Interpretation of Asharite Kalam Ontology as reported on the website www.ou.edu/islamsci/Sabra-publications05.pdf. (33.) This is the so-called Sabras thesis; see A. I. Sabra, The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam in History of Science, 25 (1987), 223-243; reprinted in F. Jamil Ragep et al. eds., Tradition, Tramsmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-modern Science, held at the University of Oklahoma (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 3-27. (34.) See, for instance, Peter Gran, The Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979) for the case of the important but little studied, Shaykh Hasan alAttar (1766-1835) of Mamluk, Napoleonic and, later, Muhammad Ali Pashas Post-Napoleonic Egypt.

(35.) For instance, an early philosophico-scientific work of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi is entitled alMabahith al-Mashriqiyyah (The Eastern Researches), ed., Muhammad al-Mutasim biLlah alBaghdadi, 2 Vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1990). (36.) Shaykh Ahmad bin Muhammad Zayn al-Fatani (1856-1908), for instance, was a practicing surgeon, physician, medical researcher, and experimenter. He wrote medical treatises and encouraged his own countrymen, the Malay Muslims, to undertake scientific research into their own indigenous, medicinal resources. His student, Raja Haji Ahmad Tabib Riyaw, was also a medical author and known to make his own surgical instruments from bamboo. For detailed surveys of the sociohistorical background of these Malay-Islamic scholars who worked against a backdrop of increasing European and Siamese colonial encroachment, see Azyurmardi Azra, The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia: Network of Malay-Indonesian and Middle Eastern Ulama in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004); and Engseng Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility Across the Indian Ocean (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). (37.) In the case of the Malay-Islamic Far East, preliminary studies by Ustaz Haji Wan Muhammad Saghir Wan Abdullah and researchers affiliated with ASASI of the life and works of nineteenth-century Malay Ulama who wrote in both Arabic and Jawi show many of them to be practicing, accomplished physicians, astronomers, logicians, mathematicians and philosophers. Among them we have Shaykh Ahmad bin Abdul Latif (1855-1916) who wrote Rawdat alHussab and Alam al-Hussab ft Ilm al-Hisab (Kuala Lumpur: Khazanah al-Fataniyyah, 2002), both on mathematics; and Shaykh Ahmad bin Muhammad Zayn al-Fatani who wrote Luqtat alAjlan fi ma Tamassa ilayhi Hajat al-Insan and Tayyib al-Ihsan fi Tibb al-Insan (Kuala Lumpur: Khazanah al-Fataniyyah, 2005), both on medicine. For Egypt, a study that comes to mind is Peter Gran, The Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 17601840 op. cit; for India, Zaheer Baber, The Science of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization and Colonial Rule in India (Albany, NY. SUNY Press, 1996); and Frederic F. Clairmont, The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism: The Making of the Economic Gulag, rev. ed. (New York: Apex Press, 1996), especially Chapter 3 on The Indian Dossier. For the case of Muslims in China, see, for instance, the excellent historical overview by Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Seek Knowledge in China: Thinking Beyond the Abrahamic Box, Nawawi Foundation Paper, accessible online at www.nawawi.org/downloads/article5.pdf, accessed April 1 2007. One can only surmise the real extent of indigenous Chinese-Islamic contribution to Science and Civilization in China. The definitive, masterful study of Chinese science and technology from the earliest time till the modern era is Joseph Needham et al, Science and Civilization in China, 7 Vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954-2004). (38.) The underlying, broad theoretical framework for this thesis in the case of the Malay-Islamic world is Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Preliminary Statement of a General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago (Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1969). (39.) Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the World. The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive towards Global Uniformity, trans. Rosemary Morris (Oxford: Polity Press, 1996). In the case of Ottoman Turkey, Kemal Ataturk did what the occupying Western forces did not or

could not do: abolish the Caliphate and institutionalize the complete secularization of Turkey. A recent Malaysian case in point is the overly hostile and politically motivated takeover of The International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) by the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) in 2002, thus eliminating a once vibrant, internationally acknowledged, autonomous intellecto-cultural space for the pursuit of a genuinely authentic Islamization of sciences. The takeover is being contested in court by the Founder-Director with little indication so far of an amicable resolution of the case even after five long years. Justice delayed is certainly justice denied! (40.) Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the World: The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive towards Global Uniformity, op. cit. (41.) Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, op. cit. (42.) Recently, the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) in collaboration with Professor Fuat Sezgins Frankfurt-based Institute for Arab-Islamic science held a three-month exhibition of Arab-Islamic scientific instruments, artifacts and manuscripts in Kuala Lumpur. The exhibition was very successful in terms of generating attendance and media coverage, and invoking in the general Muslim public a sense of pensive nostalgia for the Islamic technoscientific past. However, without critical appreciation of the actual sociocultural operative context of these exhibited artifacts, such nostalgic feelings will soon fade away and never be translated into positive action for reviving Islamic science in the real world. For a catalogue of the exhibition in three languages, Malay, English and Arabic, see Fuat Sezgin, Scientific Excellence in Islamic Civilization: Islamic science Ahead of Its Time: Catalogue (Kuala Lumpur: MOSTI, 2006). (43.) George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vols. (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1927-48). (44.) (London: Warburg Institute, 1989). (45.) (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994). (46.) Roshdi Rashed, ed. with Regis Morelon, 3 vols. (London: Routledge, 1996). (47.) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994). (48.) Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, Vol. 1 ff. (Leiden: Brill, 1967 ff.; Institut fur Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften: Frankfurt am Main, 1995 ff.). (49.) www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm accessed March 26, 2007. (50.) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), a wide ranging, original study of the concept of ilm (knowledge, science) in the Islamic intellecto-religious tradition.

(51.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1952); cf. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul: A Brief Outline and a Framework for an Islamic Psychology and Epistemology (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1990), which also constitutes Chapter IV of the Prolegomena, 143-176; cf. Mohd Zaidi bin Ismail, The Sources of Knowledge in al-Ghazalis Thought. A Psychological Framework of Epistemology (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2002). (52.) www.muslimphilosophy.com/ accessed March 27, 2007. (53.) In this regard, see Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Innovation and Creativity in Islam, Nawawi Foundation Paper, accessible online at www.nawawi.org/downloads/article4.pdf, accessed April 1, 2007. (54.) Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). (55.) The Incoherence of the Philosophers, trans. Michael Marmura (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2000). (56.) Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. (New York: Princeton University Press, 1958), 3: 53-53. (57.) Trans. Majid Khadduri (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1961). (58.) Trans. Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. (New York: Princeton University Press, 1958). (59.) This new discpline may tentatively be called Principles of Islamic science or Usul al-Ilm alIslami in Arabic, or, to be more terminologically exact, Usul al-Ulum al-Tabiiyyah alIslamiyyah. It will serve to mediate the empirical application of fundamental insights drawn from Islamic philosophy of science to actual scientific research in any scientific disciplines whatsoever. In short, it is to be a rigorously articulated operative Islamic history and philosophy of science, a kind of systemic critical thinking as applied to Islamic science, conceived somewhat along the lines of Ronald N. Giere, Understanding Scientific Reasoning, 4th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1997). Gieres textbook is meant to guide students (and teachers), by close analyses of selected historical and contemporary case studies, to appreciate how the rarefied abstruse concepts so passionately debated amongst philosophers and historians of science are concretely grounded in, and hence relevant to, actual empirical scientific work. (60.) Or, epistemic. (61.) In the Kuhnian sense, in Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). (62.) In the Lakatosian sense, in Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, op. cit. For our purpose here, the Lakatosian research program has a more direct, operative relevance.

(63.) If medicine, then an Islamic Medicine Research Program (IMRP); if chemistry, then an Islamic Chemistry Research Program (ICRP); if agriculture, then an Islamic Agriculture Research Program (IARP); if physics, then an Islamic Physics Research Program (IPRP); if economics, then an Islamic Economics Research Program (IERP); if biology, then an Islamic Biology Research Program (IBRP); if psychology, then an Islamic Psychology Research Program (IPsyRP); if architecture, then an Islamic Architecture Research Program (IArcRP); and so on and so forth. Obviously we are not to Islamize every discipline and sub-discipline that is offered us in the academic market place, for it is an essential aspect of the general Islamic science Research Program (ISRP) that it functions to axiologically differentiate between those disciplines whose mastery is important for the welfare of the Ummah and those which are superflous, or, even worse, intellectual red herrings. Here, a creative, applicative re-reading of Bakars important study Classification of Knowledge in Islam will have a pivotal role to play. In this regard, see also al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 164 ff. (64.) Failures in the sense of what, from the perspective of hindsight, they could have further achieved but did not. (65.) Fussilat: 53; for al-haqq/al-haqiqah as truth-reality, see al-Attas, Prolegomena, 125 ff. (66.) e.g., al-Baqarah: 164. (67.) Al-Attas, Prolegomena, 122 ff. (68.) i.e., ratiocination within the ambit of intellection according to Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam, 21 ff; cf. al-Attas, Prolegomena, 122 ff. (69.) For a study of the concept of fitrah in the Islamic intellectual tradition, see Yasein Mohamed, Fitra: The Islamic Concept of Human Nature (London: Ta Ha Publishers, 1996). (70.) Yamine Mermer and Redha Ameur, Beyond the Modern: Said al-Nursis View of Science in Islam & Science, Vol. 2 (Winter 2004) No. 2, 119-160 passim; cf. Yamine Mermer, The Hermeneutical Dimension of Science: A Critical Analysis Based on Said Nursis Risale-iNur in The Muslim World Review, Special Issue: Said Nursi and the Turkish Experience, LXXXIX: 3-4 (July-October 1999), 27096 passim; c[pound sterling] Sukran Vahide, The Book of the Universe: Its Place and Development in Bediuzzamans Thought in A Contemporary Approach to Understanding the Quran: The Example of the Risale-i-Nur, Proceedings of the the International Symposium held in Istanbul 20-22 September (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyet: 1998), 466-483 passim. (71.) Science and Civilization in Islam, 21 ff. (72.) Prolegomena, 135-136. (73.) This refers to mans covenant with God mentioned in the Quran (al-Araf. 172). For a profound elaboration on the implications of this primordial covenant for the meaning and practice of religion in Islam, see al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 51 ff; idem, Prolegomena, 41 ff.

(74.) That is, the Divine essence, attributes and acts, and the unseen spiritual realities such as angels and jinns, including eschatological realities and events. (75.) Rabbana and khalaqta hadha batilan (O our Lord, you have not created this in vain , Al Imran: 191). (76.) In the past this verse may have inspired, for instance, the creation of oil-lamps in which the left-over soot was recycled into ink (brought to my attention by Naguib Mohd Nor, my aerospace engineering friend). Today we have the corresponding zero-waste and waste-to-wealth approaches in industrial and engineering processes gaining ground in the West and in Japan which can be appropriated by Muslim engineers within a comprehensive, well-articulated outlook towards the environment. This will necessitate, of course, the rejection of the so-called Gaia hypothesis underpinning the secular green movement in the West and Japan, and its replacement with an authentic, Islamic environmental ethical framework derived from the Islamic philosophy of nature; see, for instance, the relevant articles in Richard C. Foltz et. al., eds., Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). For a concrete application of authentic Islamic environmental ethics in the case of Zanzibars Muslim fishing community, see Sbah Ahmed, Inspiring Change in Zanzibar in EcoIslam, No. 1 (January 2006), accessible online through the website www.ifees.org.uk/newsletter_1_small.pdf. A more recent, similar case study is reported in Abdur-Razzaq Lubis et. al., Pioneering Islamic Environmental Practice in Indonesia in EcoIslam, No. 2 (September 2006), accessible online at www.ifees.org.uk/newsletter_ 2_small.pdf. (77.) al-Nahl: 69. (78.) al-Furqan: 47; al-Naba: 9. (79.) For a discussion, see Aisha Subhani, The Virtue of Sleep in Seasons, Semi-annual Journal of Zaytuna Institute, Vol. 3 (Spring 2006) No. 1, 67-73; and P. C. Morgan, Honey as Medicine, in Seasons, Semiannual Journal of Zaytuna Institute, Vol. 1 (Autumn-Winter 20032004) No. 2, 79-90. (80.) al-Anbiya: 107. For a beautiful commentary on this verse, see the Nawawi Foundation Paper by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Mercy, the Stamp of Creation, accessible online in pdf format at www.nawawi.org/downloads/articlel.pdf (81.) The best so far in English, by scholarly consensus, is Martin Lings, Mohammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (Allen and Unwin, 1983; Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1991; Kuala Lumpur: A. S. Noordeen, n.d.). (82.) Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic jurisprudence, 2nd rev. ed. (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1991); Kuala Lumpur: Ilmiah Publishers, 2000); cf. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Theories of Islamic Law: The Methodology of Ijtihad (Kuala Lumpur: The Other Press, 2002).

(83.) Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqi, Hadith Literature: Its Origin, Development, Special Features and Criticism, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993). (84.) The uninterrupted chain of authorities on which a tradition is based. (85.) Peculiar in the sense that many, if not most, of the problems of the Ummah today, in contrast to the pre-colonial past, are the direct results of the imposition, by insidious or direct means, of alien Western secular civilizational norms on traditional Muslim societies. Two very good examples of this contemporary intellecto-religious revival are Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Port in a Storm: A Fiqh Solution to the Qibla of North America (Amman: Wakeel Books, 2001); and Shaykh Afifi al-Akiti, Defending the Transgressed by Censuring the Reckless against the Killing of Civilians (UK: Aqsa Press, 2006; Germany: Warda Publications, 2006), the whole text of which is downloadable from the website wwwwarda.info/fatwa.pdf, accessed on April 1 2007. (86.) Adi Setia, Islamic science as a Scientific Research Program in Islam & Science, Vol. 3 (Summer 2005) No. 1, 93-101. (87.) Fussilat: 53. (88.) Al-Attas, Prolegomena, 2; Cf. the diagrams in al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 156-159. (89.) The basis of this shared epistemic objectivity is the mutual affirmation of a certain degree of methodological equivalence between Islamic and Western science, or between theistic and agnostic science; for a good discussion of this methodological issue see Stephen C. Meyer, The Methodological Equivalence of Design and Descent in J. P. Moreland, ed., The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 113-138. It is by virtue of this shared epistemic objectivity that the Greek sciences were appreciated by classical Muslim thinkers, that aspects of Islamic science and philosophy were appreciated by the Latin West, and that now we are witnessing amongst Muslims and westerners alike a general rethinking of modern science and technology and the quest for holistic, human- and nature-friendly alternatives. (90.) As pointed out by my colleagues, Dr. Zaini Othman and Dr. Mohd. Khialdin, this means that the concept of muamalah now largely restricted in the discipline of fiqh as applying to interactions and trans actions between human beings together with all its ethico juridical precepts (such as ha darar wa ha dirar, that is, no harming and no reciprocating harm) are to be critically extended to all human interactions with the natural environment, especially technoscientific interactions, since it is these which are having the greatest impact on nature and natural resources. (91.) For a beautiful commentary on the cosmic mercy of the Prophet, see the Nawawi Foundation Paper by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Mercy, the Stamp of Creation, accessible online in pdf format at www.nawawi.org/downloads/articlel.pdf. (92.) An eloquent indictment of Western technoscientific behavior toward nature by a Western observer is Donald Worster, Natures Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1988), where, on page 343, he says, The sudden acceleration of environmental damage throughout the world since World War Two has been largely the consequence of our scientific enterprise there can be no getting around the fact that science has made possible the modern devastation of nature. (93.) Pietro Croce, Vivisection or Science: An Investigation into Testing Drugs and Safeguarding Health (London: Zed Books, 1999), reviewed by Adi Setia in Islam & Science, Vol. 3 (Summer 2005) No. 1, 87-90; cf. Moneim A. Fadali, Animal Experimentation: A Harvest of Shame (Los Angeles: Hidden Springs Press, 1997), and Ray Greek, Sacred Cows and Golden Geese: The Human Cost of Experimenting on Animals (London: Continuum International, 2000). An informative, eye-opening monograph on the proper treatment of animals according to the traditional Islamic sources is, Al-Hafiz B. A. Masri, Animals in Islam (Petersfield, Hants: Athene Trust, 1989). (94.) A good starting point for delving into the operative context of the Islamic medical tradition is Fazlur Rahman, Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition: Change and Identity (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1998); cf. Franz Rosenthal, Science and Medicine in Islam: A Collection of Essays (Aldershot: Variorum, 1991); cf. Sheikh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani An-Nagshabandi, Natural Medicines, 21 ed. (London: Ta Ha Publishers, 1992). (95.) A. M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). (96.) On the case against Monsanto, see, for instance, the relevant articles in Brian Tokar, ed., Redesigning Life?: The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering (London: Zed Books, 2001), which is reviewed in Adi Setia, Islam & Science, Vol. 1 (Summer 2005) No. 3, 91-92. See also, Nicanor Perlas, Biotechnology or Sustainable Agriculture? in Kesturi, Journal of the Islamic Academy of Science Malaysia, Vol. 1 (June 1991) No. 1, 43-80. (97.) Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture, rev. ed. (Sisters Creek, Tasmania: Tagari Publications, 1997). (98.) A. M. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). For a powerful, impassioned indictment of the modern, big-business driven, state sponsored green revolution, see Vandana Shiva, The Violence of the Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics (Penang: Third World Network, 1997); see also idem, Monocultures of the Mind: Biodiversity, Biotechnology and the Third World (Penang: Third World Network, 1995). (99.) Larry Laudan, Science and Values (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984); R. Proctor, Value-Free Science?. Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); John Ziman, Reliable Knowledge: An Exploration of the Grounds for Belief in Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); idem, Public Knowledge: Essay Concerning the Social Dimension of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); idem, Real Science:

What It is and What It Means (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and many other works of like nature, especially Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (London: Routledge,1998), and also Brian Martin, The Bias of Science (Canberra: Society for Social Responsibility in Science, 1979). (100.) al-Hujurat: 6. (101.) al-Baqarah: 111. (102.) This consideration is particularly pertinent given the fact that much of post-World War 11 Western science operates within the broad policy matrix of the political economic report prepared for President Harry Truman by Vannevar Bush, who headed the Manhattan Project, entitled Science: The Endless Frontier; see Pietro Greco, Comment: John Ziman in Journal of Science Communication, Vol. 5 (December 2006) No. 4. See also the valuable collection of articles in Ziauddin Sardar, ed., The Revenge of Athena: Science, Exploitation and the Third World (London: Mansell, 1988). (103.) Mike Lancaster, Green Chemistry: An Introductory Text (Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2002); Paul T. Anastas and John C. Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000): V. K. Ahluwalia and M. Kidwai, New Trends in Green Chemistry (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, and New Delhi: Anamaya Publishers, 2004). For the twelve principles of green chemistry according to the American Chemical Society and the United States Environmental Protection Agency, see: http://www. chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/acsdisplay.html?DOC=greenchemistryi nstitute%5Cgc_principles.html, accessed March 27, 2007. (104.) A thorough going treatment of this educational institutional question is Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, The Educational Philosophy and Practice of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas: An Exposition of the Original Concept of Islamization (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1998), which expounds at length Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, The Concept of Education in Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1999), as concretely realised in the establishment of the International Institute of Islamic Thought & Civilization (ISTAC) in 1987. See also Wan Mohd Nor Daud, The Beacon on the Crest of a Hill: A Brief History and Philosophy of ISTAC (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1991), and Sharifah Shifa al-Attas, ISTAC Illuminated: A Pictorial Tour of the International Institute of Islamic Thought & Civilization (ISTAC) (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1998). A tertiary educational institute modeled on ISTAC is in the process of being established in Indonesia by the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought and Civilization (INSISTS); may Allah ease the way toward the realization of this noble goal, gamin! (105.) Science, Scientism, and the Liberal Arts in Islam & Science, Vol. 1 (December 2003) No. 2, 267-271. (106.) al-Shuara: 89. (107.) For an elaboration with regard to the determining of the order of priority of the sciences, see al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 164 ff.

(108.) This thesis shall, inshaa'Llah, be elucidated further through detailed analyses and syntheses of selected historical and contemporary case studies in a forthcoming monograph to be tentatively entitled The Islamic science Research Program: Principles and Practice. (109.) AlImran: 110. COPYRIGHT 2007 Center for Islam & Science Copyright 2007, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company. Posted in Adi Setia | No Comments

The inner dimension of going green: articulating an Islamic deep-ecology.

Monday, January 5th, 2009

Author: Setia, Adi Geographic Code: 9MALA Date: Dec 22, 2007 Words: 13603 Publication: Islam & Science ISSN: 1703-762X Our interaction with nature is clearly constrained and directed by such foundational ethical precepts as mercy, moderation, and gratitude, which, when systematically understood and applied, result in ecological health. But ethical precepts refer ultimately to human nature, and therefore ecological health is rooted in psychological health. From this deep-level perspective, environmental degradation is less a resource-problem than an attitude-problem. This psychoecological approach toward preserving and enhancing environmental health is explored by considering some pertinent aspects of Islamic socio-intellectual history and their relevance for re-articulating and re-applying authentic Islamic environmental ethical values in todays world. Keywords: Deep-ecology; psychology; human nature; resourceproblem; attitude-problem; greed as growth; prodigal consumption; stewardship of nature; hima; harim; mercy; gratitude; moderation; contentment. Introduction: Resource-problem or attitude-problem? Muslims interaction with nature (muamalah alam al-tabiah) (1) is clearly constrained and directed by such foundational religio-ethical precepts (2) as rahmah (mercy/kindness/compassion), (3) mizan/tawazun (balance/ moderation/equilibrium/harmony) (4) and shuhr (gratitude/thankfulness/ appreciation). (5) These precepts and the operative principles derivable from them, when systematically understood and implemented through the ethico-juridical discipline of fiqh al-biah (jurisprudence of the environment), (6) result in ecological health of the socio-natural environment. But ethical precepts refer ultimately to

human nature (tabiat al-nafs as opposed to tabi at al-kawn) and therefore ecological health is ultimately rooted in the psychological health of the human soul. (7) From this deep-ecological perspective, environmental degradation is less a resource-problem than an attitude-problem. This attitude-problem results from the general failure of the human ego (al-nafs al-ammarah bi al-su = the evil-commanding soul) (8) to forgo short-term gratification for long-term prosperity, hence its short-sighted inclination for the proximate and the fleeting at the expense of the ultimate and lasting: Nay, but you covet what is immediate and abandon what is later to come, (9) and hence forget to prepare and send forth provision for the morrow. (10) This psycho-ecological approach (11) toward preserving and enhancing environmental health is explored in thematic outline by considering some pertinent aspects of Islamic socio-intellectual history and their relevance for a systemic rearticulation and reapplication of authentic Islamic environmental ethical values in todays world at both the communal and governmental levels of socio-political organization. To walk lightly on the earth The faithful servants of the Beneficent are they who tread upon the earth gently. (12) To walk lightly (hawnan) upon the earth is the attitude of spiritual humility enjoined by the Quran on believers in regard to their temporal sojourn in the world. Thus reflective, thinking Muslims today can critically appropriate the secular, quasi-paganistic Gaian (13) notion of reducing ones ecological footprint (14) and re-ground it into an authentic Islamic eco-spiritual ethos of the environment. As elaborated by al-Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209), this is an ethos that is imbued with the religio-spiritual and ethico-moral qualities of mildness (rifq), gentleness (lin) and serenity (sakinah) combined with reverential humbleness (tawadu) and emotional fortitude (qarr). These are the people who are not arrogant (la yatakabbarun wa la yatajabbarun), nor are they who would seek to spread desolation (fasad) in the land, or who would seek domination by imposing themselves upon others on earth out of a false sense of superiority (azamah, fa hum la yuriduna uluwwan fil-ard). (15) This positive psycho-spiritual demeanour is contrasted with that of those who would walk with pertness (marahan) in the land, (16) in haughtiness and wanton abandon, as if they own the earth, indifferent to any sense of self-restraint or accountability to the Creator, the True Owner of all. This attitude of gentleness to the earth, to nature, to the natural environment is complemented by the true believers attitude of peacefulness to people, to societies, to communities, to cultures, for when the foolish (or ordinary folks) address them, they response with peace (qalu Salaman) They pass by senseless play with noble dignity (marru kiraman) for they are not drawn to vanity (and would much less partake thereof), and their nights are spent in quiet solitude of prayerful devotion to their Lord, prostrating and standing (sujjadan wa qiyaman). And in what they spend of their wealth, they are neither extravagant nor miserly, for temperance is their path of choice between the two extremes (wa kana bayna dhalika qawaman). Thus the qualities of gentleness to nature, peacefulness to people, moderation in consumption and devotion to the Lord of all things are integrated in their personality as a single harmonious whole. (17) Deep reflection and contemplation (18) on the meaning of these verses from the Chapter of the Criterion that separates truth from falsehood will bring the honest and clear-sighted among us to the following irrefutable conclusions about many aspects of modern life: we are harsh toward the natural environment; we are aggressive toward the cultural environment; (19) we are indulgent in

play and vanity hence we are mean and debased; we waste our nights in wanton heedlessness; and we are profligate in material living. In particular, we are also led to the following conclusions, for these are merely the unavoidable external outcomes of our uneven, antiQuranic attitudes: (i) modern economic development powered by science and technology desolates the land for the sake of material growth, even though we are not to be seduced by rivalry in worldly increase; (20) (ii) the so-called liberal modern economy imposes its ways (hence not strictly liberal), either directly or insidiously, on communities who opt for remaining faithful to their traditions, thus disrupting their communal peace and their way of life, even though there should be no compulsion in the way of life; (21) (iii) the economic wealth accumulated thereof feeds our addiction to ever new debased forms of sports, entertainment, and pastimes, even though we are to turn away from senseless play; (22) (iv) our nights are dissipated in mind-numbing dance beats of nightclubs, empty chatter in cafes or with eyes wide open glued zombie-like to the idiot boxes of televisions (23) and computers, (24) even though for us He has made the night a covering and sleep a repose; (25) (v) developmental rhetoric co-opts Islamic values and clueless Muslims to serve its monolithic, tunnel vision of growth, progress and the good life, thus vulgarizing spirituality by secularity, even though we are to barter not the signs of God for a trifling gain; (26) (vi) western technoeconomic efficiency is realized in the drive toward monoculturization of both the mental and physical landscapes (27) and global uniformity, (28) even though diversity in nature and culture is among the signs of God. (29) In the perceptive reflection of many honest thinkers and observers East and West, todays global ecosystemic desolation of both the cultural and the natural has been the consequence of a relatively recent history of human beings haughty, aggressive attitude toward both nature and culturea greed-as-growth motivated conceit that is further reinforced by the marvels of modern, western, euro-americocentric science and technology now permeating all parts of the world. (30) But the fact is that most people, Muslims especially, are not conscious of being haughty at all, so conditioned are their thinking by ideas of progress, growth, and development. This blunt statement comes as an unpleasant surprise for them (particularly businessmen, politicians, technocrats and scientists) and elicits the standard response, What, me haughty? But Ive been working all the while for the economic well-being of all! (31)a response of self-denial which brings to mind the verse concerning those whose effort goes astray in the life of the world, and yet they reckon that they do good work. (32) For, with regard to environmental crises such as global warming, these technocrats, economists (homo economicus), and businesspeople tend to think only in technoscientific and political economic (and hence prestige-generating and money-making) terms of renewable resources (renewable energy, (33) recycling, etc.), carbon-credits trading (34) or natural capitalism, (35)

and even geoengineering, (36) but we conveniently forget to think more seriously and deeper in terms of re-viewing, re-visioning and deconstructing our core attitude toward nature with a view toward a systemic radical reform of that attitude if it should be found wanting, self-contradictory, or even hypocritical. In short, what is needed is a renewal of our spiritual rather than physical resources. The case of the car (37) To clarify the above somewhat obscure point lets take a closer, analytical, and systemic look at the hydrocarbon car-fuel problem, (38) for it will show how the obviously negative attitudes of haughtiness, aggression and greed can be so insidiously sublimed and hence rendered positive (greed rationalized as growth; haughtiness as self-confidence and aggression as go-gettingness): Most of us would not see why anyone should be dead set against the car since its benefits are obvious. However, important thinkers like Seyyed Hossein Nasr, (39) Jerry Mander, (40) Ivan Ilich, (41) Theodore Roszak, (42) and Jacques Ellul (43) have argued that the beneficial facade of much of modern technology like the car is just that, a facade that tends to conceal its less beneficial, destructive, even dehumanizing aspects. Despite their criticisms, it is arguably conceivable that the gas-guzzling car could have been much less destructive to the general health of the social and natural environments if its use had been moderate (tawazun/tawassut) instead of excessive (israf/ifrat), and hence, wasteful (tabdhir). For instance, if the car had been the product of a political economic system premised on contentment (qanaah (44)) and temperance instead of greed/covetousness (tam) and growth (takathur/jam mal = rivalry in worldly increase/wealth accumulation), its use and hence its abuse would have been limited. But as things seem to stand now, one can only argue that the only viable long-term solution to the hydrocarbon car-fuel problem (i.e., rising petrol consumption in tandem with diminishing oil reserves) is simply systematic reduction, even elimination, of car use altogether (especially in urban areas) instead of opting for cheaper, renewable biofuels. Biofuels may be renewable and cheaper (although that is debatable (45)), but cars not only use fuel, they also use roads and highways, thus foreclosing other uses of large areas of precious land in the process. Land is certainly not renewable, especially once it is solidly paved over in concrete, and it certainly not getting cheaper by becoming scarcer. When a road cuts deep into a pristine verdant landscape, it doesnt only bring in cars but also all other cancers and viruses associated with the political economics of the car: loggers, land speculators, developers, miners, hunters, poachers, and planters with alien genetically modified crops and chemical intensive plantations. Hence we should view the car-problem as less a resource-problem than an attitudeproblem. This means that, at a personal level, the first thing to consider is whether the car is really needed. Maybe a good mountain bike will do instead. At the public policy level, cities, even old ones, can be systematically restructured so that public transport (buses, trams, trains, LRT=light rail transport, etc.) becomes the norm, as in the large city of Curituba, Brazil. (6) The car not only pollutes the air, it wastes precious open spaces and lands given over to multi-lane highways

cutting through pristine forests, verdant mountains, and fertile farmlands. It has been conservatively estimated that in the United States 100,000 square kilometres of land are already covered in roads. Imagine all the wildlife snuffed out in concrete, and this is without accounting for roadkills, year in and year outdeer, biawaks, (7) tapirs, and other hapless creatures too slow or too startled to get out of the way of these roaring, fuming speedsters. (48) Phillip Rush highlights this daily roadkilling disaster in a graphic, moving poem:
A startled look, a sudden dash To try and miss the impending crash; But all too late, a sullen thump, And yet another lifeless lump. We race along the roads at night, And stun the beasts with blinding light; We don't slow down, a solid thud, The corpse lies in a pool of blood. Possum, 'roo, and, now and then, Wallaby and native hen, Bandicoot and pretty quoll Are added to the mounting toll. On the road all that remains Are flattened bodies, blackened stains; Rotting flesh, a pungent smell--A common scene we know too well. Is it too much to ask of us To slow our car, or truck, or bus? To stem the slaughter all too rife That decimates our wildlife. (49)

Seeing roads criss-crossing the land, even in the most remote of regions, also brings to mind the beautiful song Born Free, so evocatively sung by Matt Monro, and a line therein: stay free where no walls divide you. So much for staying free where no highways divide you and the fruit trees on the far side of the forest. And of course more roads mean more people, more development, and, as John Denver would lament, more scars upon the land. (50) Cars generate roads, and roads in turn generate cars, and many other environmentally destructive things as well. Its a vicious circle no amount of biofuel will ever unravel. The problem here is underlying and systemic, as we will see if we look into the political economic history of the car and how it was and still is closely tied up with promoting the oil business. (51) Business people find oil, lots of it, and they want to sell lots of it, which is only possible if all people think that each and every person in the family (including the high school kid) must have a car to go anywhere, including to the roti canai stall across the street, and this is only possible if roads, miles and miles of them, are built for those cars to roar on. All this, in turn, is only possible if in the political economic decision-making process, private transport is emphasized (even subsidized!), and public transport marginalized. Furthermore, cars are socially alienating. People who like to go about in their neighborhood in their cars tend to forget to appreciate the gift of their legs and have few opportunities to say hello to each other, much less shake hands, even if they wanted to. Thus civic community and car culture, like water and oil, dont mix.

All that and more are considered and yet one still need a car, preferably a green-concept car like the much touted Toyota Prius, (52) if one can afford it. Right now, the only zero-waste green concept cars Im aware of are those powered by hydrogen fuel cells (in hydrogen out water, assuming the manufacturing process for those fuel cells is also green). Bio-petrol is not a good solution, because that means wasting food-plants like corn for fuel, and this criticism does not even approach its production process. In the case of the oil-palm agroindustry in Malaysia and Indonesia, bio-petrol will definitely entail devastation of more pristine jungles for oil-palm plantations to feed our greed (or the greed of China, India, or the European Union) for new cars every couple of years. Its much better in the short term to covert to LPG (liquified petroleum gas) by putting a gas tank in the trunk, if you have space to spare. Flying carpets are one answer to the car problem, for those who can manage it like the legendary Aladdin. But for most of us, as private citizens or policy makers, the answer is to reflect and think through things systematically. If we do that, we may come to realize that cars ultimately are not a civilizational neccessity. Great, greater, and longer-lasting civilizations (and more sustainable ones too) have come and gone before us without running on cars. As a matter of fact, the many incredible high civilizations of pre-Columbian America did not even run on wheels! (53) In short, the only way to solve the car-problem is to think out of the car-box, nay, out of the hydrocarbonic box altogether. Bio-petrol, fuel cells, etc., are only a stop-gap, ad hoc measure to buy us time in order that we may reflect on our true ethical values in relation to ourselves, to nature, to culture and to our Creator, and revive them in concrete practical life both in private and in public. In this particular case, all of us should reflect on the Quranic ethico-spiritual value of treading lightly on the earth in relation to the extent to which our modern car-culture (or other aspects of megatechnoculture) realizes or subverts this value. This means that we all have to carefully consider our lifestyle choices, whether in private or in public life, and their long term consequences for better or worse, so that we may make the best choice (ikhtiyar) and hence change our way of life for the better, (54) insha'Llah. The starting point is Reality, and it is precisely how we respond (i.e., be respons-ible) to that (ultimate/absolute) Reality in the temporal life of this world (dunya = proximate/relative reality, the reality that is brought near to sensible experience (55)) that will determine our solution to the car-problem and other problems regarding precisely how we should go about re-harmonizing our culture with nature, and hence with God, the Creator of nature. (56) For indeed, on that awesome day we shall all be asked concerning both our legitimate and illegitimate enjoyment of the fleeting pleasures of this world. (57) But as usual, only the people of intelligence (qaw-min yaqilun (58)) will take heed, for the signs of God are not meant for the fools who know only the outer aspects of the life of this world while of the next life they are heedless. (59) For them, the Genting Highland (or Disneyland) of heedless amusement is better than the Taman Negara (or Yellowstone) of remembrance and reconnection with nature, and hence, with God. (60)
Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of all things. That is the real world

that is behind this one, and everything we see here is like a shadow from that world. Black Elk (61)

Stewards, guardians, and trustees of the earth In the third part of Professor J. R. R. Tolkiens engrossing trilogy The Lord of the Rings, we are brought to the realm of Gondor ruled by a long line of stewards who could only govern in the name of the true heir to the throne, awaiting the eventual return of the king to his rightful rule over the land of the free. The last Steward of Gondor was overtaken by a false sense of superiority to lay claim to a royal right that was not his to claim. He could not bring himself to accept and submit to the imminent return of the king and hence plunged himself into a fiery death from the lofty height of his presumptuousness. Though the author himself denied it, in many ways The Lord of the Rings can be read as an eloquent and captivating allegory of the sorry state of western civilization in the world war decades of the twentieth century, rendered compellingly real to the readers imagination by one who had himself fought deep in the foul, muddy trenches of the Western Front and survived to express his experience of those dark and bloody years in the novel of the century. (62) What concerns us here is the twin notions of stewardship (khilafah) (63) and trusteeship (amanah) (64) and the manner of creative as opposed to dogmatic understandings of their meaning and significance in a way that can have real, immediate impacts on improving our private and public interaction with nature. If man is considered the vicegerent of God on earth, then it should follow that he is not only a steward responsible for safeguarding the rights of man but also the rights of nature, and especially so if preserving nature impacts, either directly or indirectly, human welfare. Human stewardship of earth cannot only be about rendering judgement of truth (al-hukm bil-haqq = to judge by the truth) (65) to humans but it is also, by extension, about being just to all inhabitants of earth, for the earth He has spread out for His creatures (al-anam). (66) Therefore, the earth is not only for man but also for nature and all things in their natural or fitri state, and hence true stewardship means to maintain and preserve the primordial equilibrium between the needs of man and the rights of other creatures to live out their lives on this earth, for He has set the balance that you exceed not the balance, and therefore observe the balance strictly and do not fall short thereof. (67) To press home this point, one can cite, for instance, the example of Sayyidina Umar, may God be pleased with him. He certainly did not see himself as a steward (khalifah) responsible only for implementing the Divine Law of justice with regard to human interactions with humans (muamalat al-nasi anfusahum) but also with regard to human interactions with animals (muamalat al-nasi al-anama):
Caliph Omar, one of the most distinguished of the Prophet's Companions, demonstrated exceptional compassion towards animals. In fact he would deal strongly with those who overloaded their 'beasts of burden'. He would actually go to the

extent of concealing himself from view and check that people were treating animals well. On one occasion he passed his hand over the wound of a camel intending to help heal the beast, saying, "I fear God may seek retributions from me for the pain you suffer." (68)

How many kings, presidents, ministers, and high officials of the countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) today can claim to have shown such heartfelt personal concern for animal or wildlife welfare as an integral, inseparable part of their public duties as stewards (khalaif) over the inhabitants, both human and non-human, of their realms? If there is among them even one such, he should immediately write about it that others may learn from him and set aside more lands as inviolable wildlife refuges, and thus revive the traditional Islamic environmental conservation institutions of hima (reserves) and harim (inviolable zones). (69) The Hima, as a system, is possibly the oldest known organized form of conservation [in] the world, according to Peter Vincent of Lancaster University. (70) This is a primary, direct, and one of the more effective ways to upgrade from the maqam of Oh, I see to the maqam of Yes, I do, to go from words to works, at least in the domain of conservation of the natural heritage of member countries of the OIC. One of the great paradoxes of the modern age is that in many instances peace and war are not what they seem. In war nature is left in peace, whereas in peace nature is attacked. During the long fight against the communist insurgents, the Malaysian Belum-Temengor region (71) was a security area off-limits to all forms of civilizational encroachment and hence its wildlife and the indigenous Orang Asli were left alone. But now, with the communists defeated for good, the area is exposed to all sorts of encroachment in the name of development and economic progress. As an unexpected consequence of war, the Ho Chi Minh Trail (72) in Cambodia has now become a refuge for tigers and elephants, and Koreas demilitarized zone (73) a sanctuary for flora and fauna not found elsewhere on the peninsular. Because of years of civil war resulting in the depopulation of the region, southern Sudan is now teeming with antelopes, eland, gazelles, giraffes, elephants, lions, and leopards, so much so that that part of the country is said to be Africas new Serengeti. (74) I believe that the OIC has a role to play in encouraging and helping the Sudanese people to appreciate, conserve, and manage this invaluable natural heritage in a naturally and culturally sustainable manner, based on the Islamic concept of hima (protected area). To resume, one has to say that the terrestrial desolation of the natural world is a clear indication of the spiritual desolation withinthe wasteland about us is but a reflection of the wasteland within. Having failed in the stewardship of his soul, man has now, through the pursuit of illusory progress, given up on the stewardship of the earth and of its inanimate, animate, and human inhabitants. He has clearly betrayed the Divine trust (amanah) which has been placed upon him and which he freely accepted by virtue of being endowed with a rational soul (nafs natiqah) capable of choice (ikhtiyar), i.e., capable of seeing in advance the consequences of his actions and hence capable of acting accordingly and being responsible for them before God. The word amanah is intricately connected with the notion of aman = security, in both its physical and spiritual dimensions. By betraying the duties of trusteeship, man not only endangers the security of those entrusted to his care, but he also forfeits the right to his own physical and spiritual security in this world and in the next. So is it any wonder that the age of economic growth

coincides so nicely with the age of insecurity and anxietythe age of unyielding despair so stoically proclaimed by Bertrand Russell? (75) Modern man has despaired of paradise and therefore has to create hell on earth. This is one reason why a secular and ultimately nihilistic (because it can never answer the question of individual death and hence is bereft of any real eschatological import) Gaian ethics of the environment is going to fail to compel true heartfelt caring for nature, at least among the majority of mankind, for to whom or to what shall the mortal transgressing and already despairing man be answerable or responsive? To an abstract, impotent judgment of history, even though it is doubtful whether theres much of a future left for someone in that future to write that history? To his children and grandchildren though he be long gone? How can he care for the opinions or even the sufferings of those who are seen only, and even now trained (through, inter alia, advertisements targeted at children), as future recruits into the religion of economism? To his own dead non-existent self? Hardly. Does it really matter to him how posterity will judge him when he is long dead and gone and not very likely to return (even through reincarnation) to personally face the music? One answer to that question is that man can be answerable to his conscience while he is still alive in this world, but the fact is that man simply does not fear his conscience. What is his astral conscience going to do? Whack his overly indulgent body? Shut down his overly rational, self-interested brain? Regardless, the pull of the immaterial conscience is not very strong in most people and hence can be ignored, for the attraction of the sensual pleasures of the material body is stronger still and more immediate, and what is more immediate is more real, so to hell with the future, since in the long run we are all dead (76) anyway. The religion of nihilism (a.k.a. secularism) simply has no stomach for a wishy-washy future, especially if it is too far into the future, and more especially if it is transfutural. (77) Hence the general tendency in Gaian ethics (as in the think Gaia approach of multinational corporations like Sanyo) is for superficial techno-fixes in order to sustain the economics of prodigal consumption, now colored green (or greenwashed) with (more or less) recycleable consumer goods (such as rechargeable batteries). (78) One can only envisage the recycling loop getting longer and wider. Natural resources from which consumer goods are produced can be depleted to exhaustion, but thats okay since the manufactured products themselves will not be depleted, thanks to the magic of recycling. Thereby linear open-ended progress is still safeguarded by simply doing the same thing over and over again! If only things were that simple, for as public policy analyst and recycling expert James DeLong has noted, recycling is a manufacturing process. And it can take just as much energy and create just as much pollution and wasteor even moreto disassemble something in the recycling process as to assemble it the first time around. (79) And, as Liza Featherstone points out, it is also very labor and stench intensive for trash sorters:
People are supposed to separate their garbage: recyclables in one bin and the other, usually far more gruesome, items in another. A lot of people can't seem to grasp this, hence the need for the Materials Recovery Facility, in which salvageable items are retrieved from unsorted garbage. Sorting through other people's trash to retrieve bottles and cans is such a nasty job that it should be handsomely paid. But it isn't--for just above minimum wage, these workers sift through dirty diapers, dead animals, used tampons and condoms, hypodermic needles

and rotting meat. Many newcomers to the job vomit from the stench. (80)

We dull over our senses with the mantra of recycling instead of truly aiming to restore and sustain environmental health by means of a thorough, radical rethinking of political economics, social culture, and personal attitude. Most businesses hop onto the green bandwagon simply because they see it as a growing social trend that could generate new markets for old products in new garb. It is still going to be business as usual (thank God!) but now under the banner of green or ecocapitalism, of which natural capitalism (81) is a rather compelling, and, I must say, even fruitful offshoot. But suppose going green turns out to be seeing red instead of improving the bottom linethen what happens? Sack the greenish CEO and get a new one who can go all the way back to pitch black by hook or by crook. Without digging deeper into the soul to find out what it truly aspires for, the greening of the world will be less than skin deep. The rite of atonement for the sin of excess (82) begins not with sorting out the garbage about us but the garbage within us. The rise of ecological psychology in the West is in recognition that the superficial, even hypocritical, free market and techno-scientific approaches (such as carbon trading) are not going to work. The solution is to be found at a deeper level by rekindling the innate human affinity and respect for nature that have been suppressed by two centuries of consumerist industrial civilization premised on indefinite growth, development, and progress. Instead of the present-day dogmatic economic mantra of limited resources chasing after unlimited wants, (83) a new economics of the future will have to be formulated, namely, one that is premised on the unlimited bounties of nature more than fulfilling the very limited needs of man, for if you count the blessings of Allah, you will not exhaust them. (84) Man, by nature (fitrah), is inclined to gratitude (shukr), to giving thanks for favors shown, but how can he be grateful and hence be contented (qanaah) if he is brainwashed by the economics of consumerism to believe that his material needs, wants and desires shall, nay, should, always grow and outgrow ever diminishing resources? If all his time is spent on material growth (takathur), how can there be time for spiritual purification (tazkiyah), and how can nature be given time to regenerate its bounties for itself and for man? If this material growth is realized at the expense of nature, how can he be a true steward (khalifah), a true trustee (amin) of the natural, fitri order? How can he keep and fulfill his solemn oath of trusteeship (amanah)? And if he betrays his trust, how can he be secure in his conscience and in his spirit, be immune from Divine punishment, and hence be at peace with himself, with fellow humans, with nature, and with God? Ecopsychology is in a way a deep-level perspective on going green by transforming peoples outlook toward the meaning of life and happiness through reconnecting them with the primordial rhythms of nature. But unless it involves a heartfelt certainty of personal responsibility before a personal God of justice and mercy, the Creator of both man and nature (as exemplified in the case of Umar above), it is unlikely to be truly transformative for most people over the long term. It will be too abstract, too speculative or too emotive and sentimental rather than cognitive, intellectual, and spiritual. It will go the way of other forms of modern holistic psychology like gestalt, humanistic, and transpersonal psychologies. Already it is reported that Ken Wilber, a prominent proponent of transpersonal psychology, has detached himself from the field to move

on to what he thinks to be a more integral psychological approach. (85) It certainly will not be compelling to Muslims who sincerely believe in personal responsibility before a personal God of justice and mercy whom they will most certainly meet on that day when wealth and children avail none save him who brings to Allah a sound heart. (86) For environmental concerns to engage the active involvement of more Muslims (especially Malaysian Muslims), (87) a contemporary Islamic deep-ecology will have to be systematically formulated by drawing upon the rich and still very much alive spiritual psychology of the DCfas which is premised on the concept and practice of ihsan, which is what tasawwuf is all about, namely, the beauty, excellence, and perfection of ones actions, inwardly and outwardly, with respect to ones own self, to others, to nature, and to God. To concretely illustrate this point one may invoke the psycho-spiritually touching story of the sixteenth century Turkish Sufi, Sunbul Efendi, who sent out his disciples to bring flowers to the zawiyah. While all of them returned with fine bouquets, one of them, Merkez Efendi, offered the master only a little withered flower, for, he said, all the others were engaged in the praise of God and I did not want to disturb them; this one, however, had just finished its dhikr, and so I brought it. Needless to say, he went on to become his masters successor as head of the zawiyah. (88) This story, among countless other similar ones gleanable from our rich socio-intellectual history, goes to show to the heedless, environmentally indifferent Muslims of today how traditional Islamic spiritual training and discipline has succeeded in imbuing believers hearts with a very palpable sense of the transcendent reality of the meaning implicit, nay, even explicit in verses such as There is not a thing but hymns His praise; (89) The stars and the trees adore; (90) All that is in the heavens and earth glorify Him; (91) and He is Whom all who are in the heavens and earth praise, and the birds in their flight (praise Him too). (92) With regard to the last verse, those of us who have watched and been touched by the beautiful film documentary on the 300,000 hectare Belum-Temengor rainforest complex (93) will remember forever afterwards the graceful flight of the hornbills, veritable poetry in motion, inviting us to share in their freedom and reach for the heavens and strive for what we can be instead of what we are. (94) Sadly, only the northern part of the forest complex is officially protected while the southern half, where most of the ten species of hornbillls make their homes, is still left wide open for desolation through the developmental process of logging, both legal and illegal, and acacia plantation for pulp to feed our paper-pushing, paper-trashing lifestyle. Isnt it amazing that despite our much vaunted natural and social sciences and our so-called knowledge economy, we still havent attained the liberating wisdom of thinking out of the conventional, western-inspired development-in-tandem-with-destruction box? As Dato Seri Azmi Khalid, the Malaysian minister for the environment, puts it, If Belum Temengor can be gazetted, it will be a big milestone for Perak and for Malaysia it will be for the good of Perak and for the good of the nation (95) And, I dare say, for the good of the Ummah too. If there are to be any positive outcomes of this august gathering of intellectual luminaries from all corners of the Islamic world, (96) then surely one of them must be the immediate gazetting, on the part of the highest political authorities of the realm, of all of the Belum-Temegor rainforest complex as a national park, a national hima, or, better still, as an international hima of

the Ummah, to be held inviolate for all posterity, from now till doomsday. For surely we cannot allow ourselves to be among those who say what they do not, (97) and who would want to be praised for what they have not done, (98) and especially so when the Creator Himself has designated Muslims, His vicegerents, His khulafa, to be Guardians of the Natural Order. (99) So the choice lies before us as people of free choice: either we act humbly in the name of the Lord, the True King, or we act haughtily in our own names as usurpers of the Royal Right and of the rights of His creatures entrusted to our care, in which latter case we shall be cast down from the lofty heights of our arrogance, reduced to the lowest of the low, (100) and the fiery doom of the Steward of Gondor shall be our lot! but they are peoples like unto you (101) The problem of the conflict between man and nature has been one of the intellectual concerns of the remarkable group of independent thinkers in the public interest called the Ikhwan alSafa (Fellowship of the Pure-Hearted), a veritable Club of Basra comparable in their self-critical altruistic idealism to the present-day Club of Rome, which commissioned the much maligned report Limits to Growth. (102) They lived ten long centuries ago yet their thoughts remain inspiringly fresh and alive to us who seek a light out of the present dark age of the Ummah and of Humanity in general. They penned an ecological fable entitled The Case of the Animals versus Man before the King of the Jinn. (103) Here we find elaborate classical allusions to the modern concepts of the balance of nature, of ecosystems and econiches, of biodiversity of the communities of plants and animals greater than the diversity of the races and nations of man, of ecological successions, and of natures economy manifested in the symbiotic web of interdependencies between species as reflective of Divine economy and plan. They deem it self-evident that it would be an evil for any species, even snakes, to be obliterated from the earth104 before its ecological life-span has run its course. After an elaborate and fair trial in which long, passionate, and eloquent arguments were delivered, heard, and considered from both parties, the King of the Jinn passed judgment, in the end, in favor of mankind, but only because among them were saints of God, the choice flower of his creation, the best, the purest, who are Gods elect, and that these folk have noble attributes, fair characters, pious acts, diverse sciences, sovereign insights, royal traits, just and holy lives, and wondrous ways , (105) who fulfill their duties of stewardship over nature under the overseership of God, to whom they will be accountable when [the] epoch of stewardship is at end. (106) It is made clear, then, that, though nature serves the needs of mankind, it also in its own way serves a higher end, an end which they partake of in communion with mankind, for there is not an animal in the earth nor a flying creature flying on two wings, but they are peoples like unto you, (107) and unto Allah pays adoration whosoever is in the heavens and whosoever is in the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the hills, and the trees, and the beasts, and many of mankind , (108) namely, the common end of adoring God and hymning His praise.

And as for those others of mankind who desire otherwise, unto them the doom is justly due. (109)
What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts soon happens to man. This we know. All things are connected. Man does not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it.

Chief Seattle (110) Neither in jest nor in vain A greener approach that goes beyond old-fashioned recycling as a strategy for renewing resources is to eliminate waste altogether (zero-waste) (111) and even transforming waste to wealth. (112) The last approach is really interesting, not only from the pragmatic technoeconomic point of view but, more importantly, from the intellectual, ontological point of view. If waste can be transformed into something useful that can generate wealth, then it must mean that the concept of waste is just that, a mental construct that does not correspond in any way to any physical reality in the extra-mental real world. Waste is purely a matter of subjective thought, not objective fact. In other words, what we call waste is merely a product of an arbitrary, short-sighted judgement on our part. Lets cite a simple, actual and very personal example to press home this profound, and yet, self-evident point: I was lecturing on aspects of Islamic Science in a hotel in Jakarta early last year. In front of me on the table was a glass of water covered by a nice round piece of paper boldly inscribed with the hotels logo, Hotel Shariah, in graceful cursive lettering. So very good, Islamic Science in an Islamic hotelwhat can be better? To illustrate a point I was trying to make, I told my audience that as long as I did not uncover the glass and drink from it, that nice piece of paper would be considered useful because it would continue to perform its assigned function of covering the glass. But once the water in the glass was drunk, there would no longer be any need to cover the glass and hence that (still very nice) piece of paper would be deemed useless and cast away into the waste-paper basket. But was there any actual physical change in the paper? Was it soiled by the mere action of me removing it from the glass and putting it on the table? No, of course not, but the cleaners would nevertheless come and discard that (still nice) piece of waste-paper. Another very personal yet rather common example: when we print on only one side of the paper by not setting the printer or copier to duplex mode, we arbitrarily condemn the other side to waste, though physically theres simply nothing wasteful or useless about that side. It was merely unlucky enough to escape being printed on. The computer age which rendered obsolete the old fashioned typewriter was supposed to usher in a bright new world of paper-less office management culture, but it did not reckon with problematic aspects of human nature. The computer and the printer allow people to write carelessly without facing the daunting prospects of manually retyping the whole thing from scratch. Mistakes are considered just so many

preliminary drafts to be printed out, checked and corrected in ink, and these inked corrections, and these alone, can then be easily be keyed into the body of the original draft to produce, after God-knows-how-many-drafts, the final copy. With the typewriter, people at least had to realize and respect the fact that typing is an artful skill and paper precious, so the typists of yore normally got it right the first time. Today most of the waste-papers produced by efficient offices consist of draft copies of shoddy typing, writing, and spelling skills. When something is made too easy for people (overly user-friendly), they take it for granted, and when they take it for granted, they waste it. Another reason people dont like to read and store stuff in soft copies; they like it hard, solid and filed in real metal cabinets, where the temptation to go from soft to solid to waste (of paper and space) is always present. Is it any wonder that computer makers are also printer makers? Computers create soft copies which are printed into hard copies which use up paper which is discarded as waste. The paper trail doesnt end in the computer age; if anything, it only grows longer, wider, and deeper. And that is actually downstream of the problem. If we take the trouble to follow the paper trail upstream all the way to its very source then well see the energy and chemical-intensive pulping factories, and then the loggers logging in plantation or virgin forests. Wasting paper is good for business because it makes the paper and pulp industry grow in double digit figures annually, which leads to the wasting away of biodiversified rainforests transformed to monoculturized, chemical-intensive plantation forests for making pulp for tissue paper, paper sachets, paper cups, and paper plates, of all things. Cant people learn to do with washable cotton handkerchiefs, sturdy ceramic cups and plates, and to take sugar the old-fashioned way from proper ceramic bowls of sugar? With the ubiquity of the internet, they can also learn to read the news online for free instead of buying newspapers. If they learn to do that, then they will contribute to the eventual scrapping of the acacia plantation project along the East-West Highway bisecting the Belum-Temengor rainforest. (113) We see how the paper and pulp industry as a whole feeds into the vanity and nihilism of consumer culture and the economics of prodigal consumption, which in turn is the biggest factor in the desolation of nature and the resulting depletion of its resources for man and wildlife. This is how waste papers and how other types of waste are created, in hotels (including Shari ones), in offices, in universities (including Islamic onesI should know, Im working in one), in conferences (including Islamic ones, but hopefully not in this one if thats not too much to hope for!), namely, created from a sterile, insensitive imagination that is heedless of the Quranic truth that nothing in nature is created in vain (ma khalaqta hadha batilan), (114) nor in jest (laibin), (115) but everything in truth (bil-haqq) (116) and perfection (ahsana/atqana kulla shay). (117) If that is the reality in nature, then why do we find so much that is in vain and in jest and wasted in the reality of our culture? Arent we supposed to imitate the Divine attributes (al-takhalluq bi akhlaqiLlah), that is, to harmonize our personal ethics with the Divine ethics manifested in the cosmos, in the biosphere and in our very own selves? So there is a real need for the ethics of the psyche to be in tune with the ethics of the cosmos. Not only is the modern economy predicated on profligate consumption, but also on prodigal flippancy, i.e., on the art of making container loads of money from the perpetual creation of evernew ways of generating and having fun, of indulging in multifarious entertainments of heedless abandon. Do you deem then that We had created you in frivolous play, and that you would not be

returned to Us? (118) Lets take the multibillion dollar Formula One racing franchise (in Malaysia its financed by Petronas, the national oil company, which is largely run and managed by Muslims). It is a sporting industry, but one that thrives by convincing millions of essentially non-sporting spectators that passively watching cars roar about in circles is fun. Lets take the multibillion cell-phone industry which makes billions by brainwashing people into believing that endless chatter is fun, even though the believers are those who shun vain conversation. (119) One big Malaysian telecommunications company, TMNet, actually promotes the joys of nonstop 24-hour chatting on its numerous supersized billboards. Or lets take the multibillion dollar advertising industry, without which newspapers, magazines, television stations, and even the internet would have to close shop. What is advertised? A lifestyle of dissipative consumption and vanity, with not a thought about the physical and spiritual garbage left behind. Its incredible how much money can be made out of a vacuum, the spiritual vacuum in the hearts of people who know only what is manifest of the life of this world, while of the Other Life they are heedless, (120) oblivious, clueless, indifferent. Just take a look at the economic underbelly of Dubai, then youll get the idea. (121) Thus the life of this world for the heedless is nothing but play and pastime, (122) but Muslims are commanded to transcend that situation by being remindful of the fact that the world is the seedbed of the Hereafter (al-dunya mazraat al-akhirah). It is the lifestyles of the prodigal and the heedlessthe economics of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses writ large, generating the fever of affluenza (123)which we have slavishly copied, either out of envy or admiration or both, from the Westthat produces so much waste and flippancy in Muslim societies. Muslims should disentangle themselves from that physical and psychological morass. For us, it will have to be a counter-economics of spiritual mindfulness of the fact that the cosmos and the earth were created neither in vain nor in jest. The word economics originally refers to the norms, the standards, and the rules of the home, and these are meant to preserve the physical and spiritual welfare of the household and all its members. The earth is in a way our household writ large and our duty as stewards of the natural order/ norm/standard of the earth is to promote the welfare of all its inhabitants, inanimate, animate, and human, for the Prophet, sallaLlahu alayhi wa sallam, was sent as a mercy to all the worlds (rahmatan lil-alamin), (124) and we are followers of this august Prophet, not of the nihilistic West. The world, including the conscientious of the West, is looking to us for a way out of the maelstrom of self-destruction, for we are the nation of the golden mean bearing witness over all mankind, (125) and we shall surely be answerable for our neglect of this civilizational duty.
Only after the last tree has been cut down Only after the last river has been poisoned Only after the last fish has been caught Only then will man find that money cannot be eaten.

Cree Indian prophecy (126) Conclusion: Reactive or Proactive Ethics? As is quite evident from the foregoing, the Islamic ethico-moral attitude towards nature is an intrinsic, proactive one, i.e., an essential, inseparable aspect of Islamic axiology or value system.

In their daily interaction with the natural and social environments, Muslims are commanded from the very beginning in the Quran and Sunnah to keep clean, to moderate consumption, to be merciful, considerate, and gentle, to avoid waste and to prevent harm, long before pollution, resource scarcity, and environmnetal degradation became palpable large-scale civilizational crises. The whole earth is viewed as a mosque, (127) and hence the ethics applicable to the mosque are also applicable to the earth. The whole universe, including the earth, is to be read as a Divine book of creation, corresponding to the Divine book of revelation, and hence the ethics applicable to the latter are also essentially applicable to the former, namely, the ethics of respect and reverence (ihtiram, hurmah, and adab). The very dust of the earth is viewed as pure and purifying and hence a full substitute for water for use in ritual ablutions. (128) These general ethico-moral injunctions are not merely feel-good abstract notions in the mind to assuage sentiments, but rather they are to be imbued into the heart, comprehended in the mind, and expressed in concrete action on the ground. Hence we find their implications explicated in great detail into objective operative juridical rules of conduct and behavior in the classical books of fiqh, the whole purpose of which are to maintain and promote a healthy socionatural environment through a harmonious balance between private and public interests. (129) In practice, this means that the pursuit of private interests are never allowed to supersede the preservation of public interests, and public interests here include the interests of the natural environment and of those, especially pastoral communities and wildlife, whose livelihood depends on it. Contemporary Islamic environmental legislation should creatively draw its precepts from this rich tradition of ecological fiqh. Only then can Muslims be compelled from within to take on a greater share of the responsibility of caring for culture and nature. In view of the foregoing, conscientious Muslims will have to reject the reactive ethics of the naughty boy who begins to reform himself, if ever, only after being whacked severely. For, if we delay reformation until whacking time, it may be far too late to initiate reforms, much less for them to take effect, to arrest and reverse the cascade of environment calamities now befalling the globe with increasing frequency and intensity. Corruption doth appear in the land and sea because of what the hands of men have wrought, that He may make them taste a part of that which they have done, in order that they may return. (130) On the whole, one can characterize western secular ecological ethics, or ecosophy, as reactive, i.e., extrinsic to the secular humanistic and utilitarian worldview, or, as Arne Naess terms it, shallow, (131) since the emphasis is on technics and resources rather than values and virtues. How can it be otherwise, when the utilitarian ideal and promise is to interrogate nature with power? (132) Even though that worldview is now a few centuries old, it is only very lately in the last five decades or so that any serious, systematic thought has been given by secular humanists to the ethics of human-nature interaction. If not for Rachel Carsons Silent Spring, (133) there would not now be much talk of green engineering or green chemistry. (134) If not for global warming, there would not have been any Kyoto Protocol on climate change. (135) If not for the Club of Romes warning of natural limits to economic growth, not much thought would have been given to the possibility, much less desirability, of economic downshifting or zerogrowth or steady-state economics.

Therefore, much of the sophisticated ecoethical thinking (or, rather, speculation) that arose in the wake of Silent Spring is a hastily improvised, ad hoc reactive ethics, more or less arbitrarily and reluctantly grafted onto an inherently unnatural (un-fitri) utilitarian ethos that had never really anticipated the ethical dimension of human economic and technoscientific impact on natures economy. The mainstream approach is still one of tacit or explicit technoeconomic co-option of ecological ethics into the higher ethics of the free market to generate the awkward hybrid of eco-capitalism, most exemplified perhaps in Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth, (136) and in the focus on carbon trading (by means of which the recent Hollywood Academy Award ceremony, was for the first time certified carbon-neutral). In short, eco-capitalism is, in the final analysis, still old-fashioned capitalism, only now armed and greened (or rather, greenwashed) with the eco-economic tools of green accountancy, (137) corporate social responsibility, natural capitalism, etc. But how can one truly green something that is at heart red in tooth and claw? While by all means we can and should work with the West in tackling environmental problems, including appropriating and integrating some of their eco-techniques into our socioreligious contexts, we have to: (1) be frank in emphasizing the radical ethico-spiritual shift rather than the superficial technoeconomic approach and thereby propose and implement solutions accordingly; and (2) systematically ground all our environmental work on authentic Islamic eco-ethical principles as outlined above (138) instead of submitting passively to alienating secular eco-philosophical categories (like the so-called Gaia hypothesis or the evolutionary geologian ecosophy of Thomas Berry (139)) incompatible with the metaphysics and worldview of Islam. Step number two is important if only to convince Muslims that environmental concerns are authentic Islamic concerns rather than merely a new-age green fad foreign to the Islamic ethos. Moreover, a heightened eco-conciousness can contribute to a more selective attitude toward the technoscientific and political economic aspects of western civilization. That way, hopefully, we can encourage more Muslims to be intellectually and actively engaged in local and regional environmental issues and thereby to contribute creatively and fruitfully to the global environmental debate in todays world at both the communal and governmental levels of socio-political organization.
The world is sweet and verdant green, and Allah appoints you to be His regents in it and will see how you acquit yourselves. (140)

(1.) Here it is proposed that the ethico-juridical principles in fiqh almuamalah governing transactions between humans, such as the concept of la darar wa la dirar (no harming and no reciprocating harm) be extended to govern human politicoeconomic and technoscientific interactions with nature. For a preliminary outline of a contemporary fiqh of the environment, see Mustafa Abu Sway, Fiqh al-Biah: Towards an Islamic Juriprudence of the Environment, lecture presented at Belfast mosque, February 1998, <http://www.iol.ie/~afifi/ Articles/environment.htm>; and Sheikh Muhammad Ridwan Gallant, The Objective (Maqasid) of the Shariah in the Protection of the Environment in Proceedings of the International Conference on Maqasid al-Shariah and Its Realization in Contemporary Societies (Kuala Lumpur: IIUM, 2006), English Papers, 416-440. S. Waqar Ahmed Husaini, Islamic Sciences (New Delhi: Goodword, 2002), has written on the importance of applying the systematic axiology of fiqh, especially as encapsulated in the theory of the objectives of the Divine Law (Maqasid of the Shariah) to technoscientific interaction with the environmnent. His thought is

critically well articulated with many useful insights, albeit with a palpable modernist slant. For some contemporary studies of the systematic axiology of fiqh, see Ahmad al-Raysuni, Imam alShatibis Theory of the Higher Objectives and Intents of Islamic Law, trans. Nancy Roberts (Kuala Lumpir: Islamic Book Trust, 2006); Muhammad Khalid Masud, Shatibis Philosophy of Islamic Law (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2000); Muhammad al-Tahir Ibn Ashur, Treatise on Maqasid al-Shariah, trans. Mohamed al-Taher al-Messawi (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2006). (2.) Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts of the Quran (repr. Kuala Lumpur: IBT, 2004). (3.) al-Anbiya: 107. For a beautiful exposition of the cosmic mercy of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wasSalam, see Umar Faruq Abdullah, Mercy, the Stamp of Creation, Nawawi Foundation Paper, <www. nawawi.org/downloads/article1.pdf>. (4.) al-Rahman: 7-9, and the commentary of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi thereof (Mafatih al-Ghayb, 10: 342 ff) in which he relates the balance to justice (adl, itidal); references are to the Beirut: Dar Ihya al-Turath al-Arabi, 1997 edition. (5.) On the meaning of gratitude see Abu al-Qasim Abd al-Karim ibn Talhah al-Qushayri, Principles of Sufism, trans. B. R. von Schlegell (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2004), 109113. On gratititude in relation to scientific appreciation of nature, see Adi Setia, Taskhir, finetuning, intelligent design and the scientific appreation of nature, Islam & Science (Summer 2004), 7-32. (6.) Mustafa Abu-Sway, Toward an Islamic Jurisprudence of the Environment. (7.) Al-Attas, The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1990); idem, The Meaning and Experience of Happiness in Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993). (8.) Ego or nafs, understood in Ghazalian spiritual psychology as the evil-commanding soul; see also T. J. Winter, trans. and intro. with notes, Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2001); Yasein Mohamed, The Path to Virtue: The Ethical Philosophy of al-Raghib al-Isfahani (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2006); idem., Human Nature in Islam (Kuala Lumpur: A. S. Noordeen, 1998); idem., Fitrah: The Islamic Concept of Human Nature (London: Ta Ha, 1996); Hamza Yusuf, Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms, and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart, translation and commentary of Imam al-Mawluds Matharat alQulub (Starlatch Press, 2004). (9.) al-Qiyamah: 20. (10.) al-Baqarah: 110, 223; al-Hashr: 18; al-Muzammil: 20. Cf. Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 1999), especially the psychological Chapter Two on Man as Individual, 37ff.; see also Toshihiko Izutsu, God and Man in the Quran: Semantics of the Quranic Weltanschauung (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2002).

(11.) Alternative terms include ecopsychology, organic psychology, humanistic psychology pertaining to alternative trends in modern psychology that seek achieve a holistic understanding of human nature with a view toward reharmonizing it with the natural environment. A serious comprehensive project in this regard is organicpsychology.com. Another but complementary approach is deep-ecology or ecosophy which is concerned about the metaphysical dimensions of ecology and environmentalism. See, for instance, W. Devall and G. Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, 1985), which is applied in the eco-educational approach and manual of Thom Henley and Kenny Peavy, As if the Earth Matters: Recommitting to Environmental Education (Bangkok: Linmark, 2006). There are many overlaps between these largely western secular ecological approaches and the traditional theocentric Islamic ecological outlook, so a good book on a critical comparative environmentalism will be most welcome, especially for getting more Muslims to be ecologically engaged and contribute substantially to a systemic re-greening of the world. (12.) al-Furqan: 63. All translations of the Quran are based on Muhammad Mamarduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Quran: Text and Explanatory Translation (Makkah: Muslim World League, 1977). (13.) James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, 3rd ed., (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). (14.) William Rees, Ecological footprints and appropriated carrying capacity: what urban economics leaves out, Environment and Urbanisation, vol. 4, no. 2 (October 1992). (15.) Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Tafsir al-kabir/Mafatih al-ghayb (Beirut: Dar Ihya al-Turath alArabi, 1995), 8: 480-481. (16.) Luqman: 18; Mafatih, 9: 122. (17.) al-Furqan: 63-64, 72-75; Mafatih, 480 ff. (18.) Malik Badri, Contemplation: An Islamic Psychospiritual Study (Kuala Lumpur: Medeena Books, 2000). (19.) For instance, the systematic destruction of historical religio-cultural sites in, of all places, Makkah and Madinah as reported by Mohamed Zakariya, Yousef Meri, Shafiq Morton, and Irfan Ahmed in the Dossier on Protecting Historical Sites/Preserving Heritage, Islamica Magazine, no. 15 (2006), 67 ff. (20.) al-Takathur, 8; al-Humazah: 1-4. One viable alternative to conventional growth economics is zero-growth or steady-state economics, in which the ideal is not the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, but the realization of human intellectual, moral amd spiritual potential; see Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish (Pluto Press, 2004); J. Matthew Sleeth, Serve God, Save the Planet (Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2006); Mark A. Burch, Stepping Lightly: Simplicity for People and the Planet (Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2000); Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1998); Cecile Andrews, The Circle of Simplicity:

Return to the Good Life (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1998). In practical terms, these greener economic alternatives have resulted in actual economic downshifting in which ordinary people voluntarily reduce their consumption and hence their incomes and expenditures, which would not have been possible unless on the psychological level the downshifters succeeded in inculcating an attitude of detachment from the material aspects of life. In short, downshifting implies a degree of that ethico-spiritual state of the heart called zuhd (detachment, abstinenence); on zuhd, see al-Qushayris Principles of Sufism (Kuala Lumpur: IBT Press, 2004), 40-46. (21.) al-Kafirun: 6; al-Baqarah: 256. As far as Muslims are concerned, the fact is that if we are not to impose even the true religion of Islam on non-Muslims, then why should it be allowed for the West to impose the patently false religion of economic neo-liberalism on the world through the guise of globalization and free trade agreements? On neoliberalism as a modern pseudoreligion see, for instance, Nik Heynen et al. (eds.), Neoliberal Environments: False Promises, Unnatural Consequences (London: Routledge, 2007); and Noam Chomsky, Profit over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999). (22.) al-Muminun: 3; al-Furqan: 72. (23.) Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (London: Harper Perennial, 1978). (24.) M. Shotton, Computer Addiction? A Study of Computer Dependency (Basingstoke: Taylor & Francis, 1989). (25.) al-Furqan: 47; al-Naba: 9-10. (26.) al-Baqarah: 41; al-Maidah: 44. (27.) Vandana Shiva, Monocultures of the Mind (Penang: Third World Network, 1995). (28.) Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the World: The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive toward Global Uniformity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996). (29.) al-Nur: 45; al-Rum: 22; al-Nahl: 11, 13; al-Zumar: 21; al-Fatir: 27-28; al-Hujurat: 13. (30.) Mother Nature in Crisis: Economics of Greed and Power is leading us to an environmental castastrophe in Aliran Monthly, vol. 25 (2005), issue 2. See also Donald Worster, Natures Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 331 ff. (31.) For deconstructing and debunking the modern-day political economic myths of development, growth and progress, see, among many others, Giovanni Monastra (ed.), Science and the Myth of Progress (World Wisdom, 2004); Majid Rahnema (ed.), The Post-Development Reader (London: Zed Books, 2001); Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (London: Zed Books, 2000); Wolfgang Sachs (ed.), The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power (London: Zed Books, 1999); Serge Latouche, The

Westernization of the World: The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive towards Global Uniformity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996); Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2001), 37 ff; idem., Islam and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993); idem., Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future (London: Mansell, 1985), 127 ff on The Dewesternization of Knowledge. See also Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish (Pluto Press, 2004); and Donella Meadows et al, Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2004). (32.) al-Kahf: 104. (33.) Ted Trainer, Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain Consumer Society (New York: Springer, 2007); see also the important, thought provoking article by the same author, Renewable Energy No Solution for Consumer Society at <http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/ vol3/vol3_no1_Trainer_renewable_energy.htm>, accessed October 9 2007. (34.) Emily Flynn Vencat, The Carbon Folly: Policymakers have settled on emissions trading as their favorite global-warming fix. But it isnt working, Newsweek International, March 12, 2007. For further critical discussions of the carbon credits trading issue, see <http://risingtide.org.uk/about>. (35.) Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (London: Earthscan, 1999). (36.) David G. Victor, Hot Air is Not Enough: As Global Warming Flummoxes Politicians, the Air Engineers will Rise, Newsweek (June 25, 2007). (37.) For the definitive study of the politcal economy of the car see Matthew Patterson, Automobile Politics: Ecology and Cultural Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). (38.) Adi Setia, Civic Society, Car-Culture dont Mix, Brunei Times, Features section, July 2007. (39.) Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968). (40.) Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1992). (41.) Ivan Illich, Energy & Equity, Le Monde, 1973; idem., Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). (42.) Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends (Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1989). (43.) Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Knopf, 1964; London: Jonathan Cape, 1965); see also rev. ed. (New York: Knopf/Vintage, 1967).

(44.) On the psycho-spiritual ethics of contentment and its relation to the realisation of the life that is good, see, for instance, the chapter on qanaah in al-Qushayri, Principles of Sufism, trans. B. R. von Schlegell (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2004), 109-113. (45.) On this debate, see, for instance, the study by EMPA, Biofuel does not necessarily mean ecologically friendly, accessible at <http://www. empa.ch/plugin/template/empa/3/60542/ /l=2>. Another concern is the threat to water and food security; see the Associated Press news release by Michael Casey, Biofuels Plans may cause Water Shortages, accessed at <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071011/ap_on_sc/asia_ biofuel_tough_choices_1;_ylt=AlHtgjtiBZH0WxDjub8jW2Q E1vAI>, October 11, 2007. An intimate overall evaluation of biofuels is Joel K. Bourne, Jr., Biofuels: Boon or Boondoggle, National Geographic, vol. 212, no. 4 (October 2007). (46.) Donella Meadows, The Best City in the World: Making a Solid Case for Better Urban Planning, Good Medicine (Fall 1994), 8, accessible at <http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC39/Meadows.htm>. (47.) Monitor lizards is a species of large lizard commonly found in Malaysia. (48.) Yin-da Edward Hseih, RoadsNatures Blight, <fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/S2006/yhsieh1/Paper3.htm>, accessed October 29, 2007; Liz Prize, New highways cause roadkills, Pencinta Alam: Branch Newsletter of the Malaysian Nature Society (July 2007), 7. (49.) <http://asauthors.org/web_of_poets/Rush/poems/roadkills.html>. (50.) In John Denvers country song Rocky Mountain High. (51.) Johann Hari, Big Oils Vendetta Against the Electric Car, The Independent, April 7, 2007, accessible at <http://www.commondreams. org/archive/2007/04/07/377/>. (52.) But Toyota is still very much in the very much more profitable gas-guzzling SUV business, e.g., the Highlander SUV, and so it turns out that the much hyped hybrid Prius is a glaring aspect of what the Greenies would call corporate greenwash; see George Monbiot and Merrick Godhaven, Greenwash Exposed: Toyota, <http://www.celsias.com/2007/09/19/greenwashexposed-toyota/>. (53.) Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., 500 Nations: An Illustrated History of North American Indians (New York: Gramercy, 1994). (54.) al-Attas, Nature of Man, 2 ff. (55.) al-Attas, Prolegomena, 329. (56.) On this theme see Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). See also S. C. Rockefeller and J. C. Elder, Spirit and Nature (Boston:

Beacon Press, 1992); and Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Muzaffar Iqbal, Islam, Science, Muslims and Technology: Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Conversation with Muzaffar Iqbal (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2007). (57.) al-Takathur: 8. The word al-takathur is translated by Pickthall as rivalry in worldly increase. (58.) al-Baqarah: 164. (59.) al-Rum: 7. (60.) Allusion to Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society (Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1989), 24-27. (61.) Cited in Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, xxxvi. For similar and other pointers to the car enigma, see Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred, 16-18, 43-44. (62.) Daniel Grotta, The Biography of J. R. R. Tolkien, Architect of Middle Earth (Philadelphia: Rummy Press, 1992). (63.) al-Baqarah: 30; Yunus: 14; al-Araf: 69; Sad: 26. According to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, a khalifah is one who succeeds another and stands in his place. In this particular context, the term is taken to refer to the prophet Adam, peace be on him, and his progeny is considered as AllAhs representatives or viceroys or vicegerents on earth, charged with implementing the sacred law (al-hukm) amongst those of His creatures who are of legal responsibility (mukallafin). For further elaboration, see Mafatih 2: 388 ff. (64.) al-Ahzab: 72. (65.) Sad: 26. (66.) al-Rahman: 10. The term al-anam can be taken in certain contexts to refer specifically to human beings, and in certain other contexts, like this one, to mean all earthly creatures; for an interesting discussion, see Mafatih, 10: The latter reference is evident in Shaykh al-Islam Izz alDin ibn Abd al-Salam (d. 660 H.), Qawaid al-Ahkam fi Masalih al-Anam (Cairo: Maktabah Kulliyyat al-Azhariyyah, 1968); the title of the work can be roughly translated as Legal Principles Pertaining to the Wellbeing of All Creatures. (67.) al-Rahman: 7-9. (68.) See Animal Care at <www.muslimheritage.com>, accessed August 12, 2007, which shows that traditional Muslim communities before the encroachment of Western civilizing norms had generally been imbued with the example of Umar in the way they interact with animals. For more on the treatment of animals in Islam, see Richard C. Foltz, Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006); and Al Hafiz B. A. Masri, Islamic Concern for Animals (Petersfield, UK: The Athene Trust, 1987).

(69.) For an account of the practical revival of these twin concepts of agro-natural conservation, especially in the case of Lebanon, see Assad Serhal and Amer R. Saidi, The Hima: An Ancient Conservation System for the Future, Society for the Protection of Nature in Lebanon, 2005, <http://www.iucn.org/places/wescana/documents/ hima_spnl_position_paper.pdf>. (70.) Ibid., 1. See also Abubakr Ahmed Bagader et al, Environmental Protection in Islam, IUCN Environmental Policy and Law Paper No. 20, 2nd rev. ed., 1994, <http://www.islamset.com/env/index.html>. (71.) Malaysian Nature Society, Next Steps for Belum Temengor Campaign, <http://64.91.240.155/bt/>; ibid., Why Belum-Temengor, <http:// 64.91.240.155/bt/why.htm>. (72.) Jerry Harmer, Ho Chi Minh Trail Area Safe for Wildlife, CBS News, March 3, 2007, <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/03/ap/tech/ mainD8NKSEJ00.shtml>. (73.) Donald Smith, Peace Prospects Imperil Koreas Wildlife Paradise, National Geographic News, June 23, 2000, <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/06/0623_korea.html>. (74.) Alexander Polier, Sudan, Africas New Serengeti: against all expectations, conservationists have found a vast migration of antelope, lions, leopards, eland and many other animalssome thought to have gone extinct, Newsweek, June 25, 2007, 36-37. (75.) A Free Mans Worship in Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (New York: Dover, 2004). (76.) Attributed to John Maynard Keynes, one of the most infleuntial architects of the modern economic system. (77.) The definitive Islamic critique of secularism is to be found in Syed Muhammad Naquib alAttas, Islam and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993). (78.) Jed Greer & Kenny Bruno, Greenwash: The Reality Behind Corporate Environmentalism (Penang: Third World Network, 1996); Peter Utting (ed.), The Greening of Business in Developing Countries: Rhetoric, Reality and Prospects (London: Zed Books, 2002); Joshua Karliner, A Brief History of Greenwash, CorpWatch, March 22, 2001, <http://www. corpwatch.org/article.php?id=243>. (79.) Betsy Hart, The Waste of Recycling, Jewish World Review, November 5, 1999, <http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/hart110599.asp>; see also Harvey Black, Rethinking Recycling, Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 103, no. 11 (November 1995), <http://www.ehponline. org/docs/1995/103-11/focus2.html>. Emphasis mine. (80.) The Ten Worst Jobs in America, Alternet, September 13, 2005, <http:// www.alternet.org/story/24927/>.

(81.) Paul Hawken et al, Natural Capitalism (London: Earthscan, 1999). For a very critical review of the book, see Malcolm Slesser, Misleading Us or Deluding Themselves, <http://www.feasta.org/documents/feastareview/ slesser.pdf>. (82.) John Tierny, Recycling is Garbage, New York Times, June 30, 1996, <http://www.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/garbage.html>. (83.) Lionel Robbins: An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1932). His definiton of economics as insatiable wants chasing after scarce resources is, with various modifications, standard in mainstream economics as represented in the (overly) popular, multieditioned textbook of Paul Samuelson, Economics, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973); see the very critical review by Murray N. Rothbard, Sizing Up Samuelson, <http:// www.mises.org/story/1542>. The textbook is now in its 18th edition. (84.) For a discussion of the meaning of this verse in relation to the Quran concept of taskhir as elaborated by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, see Adi Setia, Taskhir, Fine-tuning, Intelligent Design and the Scientific Appreciation of Nature. (85.) Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology (Boston: Shambala, 2000). (86.) al-Shuara: 89. (87.) Austin Arensberg, an independent researcher in applied Islamic environmental ethics, has noted the general lack of awareness among Malaysian Muslim environmentalists of the importance of knowing, relating, and extending Islamic ethical precepts to tackling and solving environmental problems arising in their own communities. See his A Handbook for Environmentalists in the Muslim World, accessible at <www.austinarensberg.com/?page_id=237>. (88.) Annemarie Schimmel, Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to Islam (New York: SUNY, 1994), 21. (89.) al-Isra: 44. (90.) al-Rahman: 6. (91.) al-Hashr: 24. (92.) al-Nur: 41 (93.) Temengor: Biodiversity in the Face of Danger, a DVD film documentary by Novista Sdn. Bhd., 2004 (www.novista.tv). (94.) From the song The Eagle and the Hawk by John Denver. (95.) As interviewed in Malaysian Naturalist, vol. 60-1 (2006), 29.

(96.) Reference to the international conference in which this paper was presented; see page 117. (97.) As-Saff: 3. The recent OIC Summit Declaration issued in Putrajaya, Malaysia, specifically mentions commitment to conservation of the natural environment. (98.) Al Imran: 188. (99.) Fazlun Khalid, Guardians of the Natural Order, Journal of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), Our Planet, vol. 8, no. 2 (July 1996). (100.) al-Tin, 5. (101.) al-Anam: 38. (102.) Donella H. Meadows et al, The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972). (103.) Translated from the Arabic with introduction and commentary by Lenn Evan Goodman (Boston: Twayne, 1978), 1 ff, 202, 258. See also the version trans. Rabbi Anson Laytner, The Animal Lawsuit against Humanity (Kentucky: Fons Vitae, 2005). (104.) Goodman, 11. (105.) Ibid., 202. (106.) Ibid., 258 n. 308. (107.) al-Anam: 38. (108.) al-Hajj: 18. (109.) Ibid. (110.) Cited in How to conserve our wildlife, The Star, June 12, 2007, Star Special III. (111.) See Zero Waste Alliance, <http://www.zerowaste.org/>. (112.) Waste Equals Wealth, Iran Daily, October 28, 2004, <http://www. irandaily.com/1383/2125/pdf/i6.pdf>; see also Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Waste to Wealth Program, <http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/ WtW_2006_Report.pdf>. (113.) Belum-Temengor: The Dollars and Sense in Logging, Malaysian Naturalist. (114.) Al Imran: 191. (115.) al-Dukhan: 38.

(116.) al-Dukhan: 39. (117.) al-Sajdah: 7; al-Naml: 88. (118.) al-Muminun: 115. (119.) al-Muminun: 3. (120.) al-Rum: 7. (121.) Afshin Molavi, Sudden City: A feverish dream of the future springs from the sands in Dubai, National Geograhic (January 2007), 94-113. (122.) Muhammad: 36; al-Anam: 32; al-Ankabut: 64. (123.) Clive Hamilton, Affluenza: When Too Much is not Enough (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2006). (124.) al-Anbiya: 107. (125.) al-Baqarah: 143. (126.) Cited in Andy Paul, Cant take the wild out of this boy, Malaysian Naturalist, vol. 60-4 (June 2007), 6. (127.) Hadith no. 323 in Sahih al-Bukhari (juilat li al-ardu masjidan wa tahuran = the earth has been made for me a place of prostration and a means of purification). (128.) Ibid.; for more on the ethico-juridical precepts pertaining to the mosque, see Badr al-Din bin Muhammad bin Bahadir al-Zarkashi, Ilam al-Sajid bi Ahkam al-Masajid (Beirut: Dar alKutub al-Ilmiyyah, 1995). (129.) As shown with numerous citations from the classical fiqh sources by Mohd Dani Muhamad, Unsur Perancangan Bandar dalam Pandangan Hidup Islam (Elements of Urban Planning in the Worldview of Islam), paper presented in the Seminar on Development without Disrupting the Environment: The Islamic Perspective, organized by the Institute for Islamic Understanding (IKIM), Kuala Lumpur, September 19-20, 2006. See also S. Waqar Ahmed Husaini, Islamic Sciences, 72 ff. This theme of reviving the environmental jurisprudence of traditional fiqh shall be taken up again in greater detail in a forthcoming article, inshaa'Llah. (130.) al-Rum: 41. According to Fakhr al-Din al-Razi in Mafatih al-ghayb in his commentary on this verse, corruption of the land at the hands of man is a result of their shirk or polytheism, and so in the modern context one may certainly point to the many polytheistic isms of the day driving the ecological desolation of the earth: scientism, economism, neoliberalism, progressivism, etc.

(131.) For a succint description of the ecosophy of Arne Naess, see Alan Drengson, Ecophilosophy, ecosophy and the deep ecological movement: an overview, <http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/ DrengEcophil.html>. (132.) Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, 192 ff. (133.) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962). For the influence of Silent Spring, see Priscilla Coit Murphy, What A Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005). (134.) P. T. Anastas and T. C. Williamson, Green chemistry: designing chemistry for the environment (Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1996). See also David T. Allen and David R. Shonnard, Green Engineering: Environmentally Conscious Design of Chemical Processes (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001). (135.) <http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf>. (136.) An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (New York: Rodale Books, 2006). An Inconvenient Truth can be considered the sequel to his earlier Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), which was also a bestseller. (137.) Or, environmental accountancy which aims to incorporate both economic and environmental information into its report. It is also called full-cost accounting. (138.) See also Abubakar Ahmad Bakadar et al, Islamic Principles for the Conservation of the Natural Environment, in A. R. Agwan (ed.), Islam and the Environment (New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1997); Ismail Hobson, Principles into Practice: Islamic Tradition, in Harfiyah Abdel Haleem (ed.), Islam and the Environment (London: Ta Ha, 1998), 90-102. Osman Bakar, Environmental Wisdom for Planet Earth: The Islamic Heritage (Kuala Lumpur: Center for Civilizational Dialogue, University of Malaya, 2007). (139.) Thomas Berry, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community (Sierra Club, 2006). For Seyyed Hossein Nasrs comments on Berry, see <http://www.crosscurrents.org/islamecology.htm>. (140.) Hadith cited by Ismail Hobson, Islams Guiding Principles for a Solution to Environmental Problems, op. cit., 34. Adi Setia is Assistant Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Department of General Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia. Email: adi_setia@iiu.edu.my. This is an amended and extended version of a paper originally presented at the International Conference on the Role of Islamic States in a Globalized World, July 17-18, organized by the Institute for Islamic Understanding (IKIM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For an extensive bibliography on various aspects of this topic, see Richard Foltz, et al, Islam and Ecology Bibliography, <http://environment.harvard.edu/religion/religion/islam/bibliography.html>. See also the many

relevant articles by various authors in Richard C. Foltz et al (eds.), Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). COPYRIGHT 2007 Center for Islam & Science Copyright 2007, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Posted in Adi Setia | No Comments

Time, motion, distance, and change in the Kalam of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi: a preliminary survey with special reference to the Matalib Aliyyah.
Monday, January 5th, 2009

Author: Setia, Adi Article Type: Essay Geographic Code: 1CANA Date: Jun 22, 2008 Words: 6983 Publication: Islam & Science ISSN: 1703-762X As a corollary to his argument for the atomic conception of the body (jism), al-Razi also argues for the atomic conception of time, motion, distance and change. Aspects of his argument are presented here through a translational survey of his Matalib Aliyyah. For him, if any of the five (body, time, motion, distance, change) is atomistic in structure, then all the others will have to be conceived in atomistic terms as well. Keywords: Fakhr al-Din al-Razi on time, motion, distance, change; kalam; Islamic philosophy; atomism; Matalib Aliyyah. Introduction In arguing for the atomic conception of the body, (1) Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209 CE) also has to argue for the atomic conception of time, motion, and distance, since, in a way, all four are mutually entailed. For al-Razi, if time, motion, and distance are discrete entities then, ipso facto, the physical, sensible body must also be composed of discrete minimal parts, and therefore the indivisible atom exists. Thus at the beginning of the eighteen-page fourth section of volume six of the Matalib entitled Arguments constructed from consideration of the nature of motion and time to show the existence of the indivisible atom, he says:
Know that we shall construct arguments to show that motion means consecutive obtainments (2) (husulat mutaaqibah) in adjoining spaces (ahyaz mutalasiqah) such that each obtainment is not receptive to division (al-qismah) at all. And we shall also construct arguments to show that time is composed of consecutive, successive adjoining present-instants (anat mutataliyah

mutalasiqah) such that each one of them is not at all receptive to division. Then we shall explain that once this view is established for motion or for time, it will then be imperative to conclude that the body is composed of parts that are not divisible (murakkab min al-ajza allati la yatajazza'). Know that time (al-zaman), motion (harakah) and distance (al-masafah) are three correlated entities (umur thalathah mutatabiqah), such that if it is established that one of them is composed of entities not receptive to division, then all three will be so established to be indivisible also. (3)

But what if one of the three is infinitely divisible? If so, then all three are also infinitely divisible and hence not discrete but continuous in structure. Al-Razi points out that this is the view of the philosophers, especially Aristotle and Ibn Sina, but that he will argue the case for the atomists. One of his arguments is taken from a separate treatise on the problem of the indivisible atom (fi masalah al-jawhar al-fard) which he has written specifically on the problem of the indivisible atom, and so he refers his readers to that work for further details. (4) Motion, Distance, and Change with Respect to the Atomic Minimal Part Al-Razi first argues for discrete motion by considering the sensible body that is initially in repose and then in motion. (5) For the sake of keeping the discussion light, his arguments are mostly paraphrased rather than translated verbatim here. The body is first motionless then is in motion and then stops moving, and throughout these past, present, and future moments of initial repose, intervening motion, and terminal repose, the body remains a body, which indicates that motion is something existent that is distinct from the existence of the body itself. Now something, i.e., motion, has occurred to the body at the intervening moment between its initial and terminal moments of repose. If nothing, i.e., no motion, has occurred then no (relatively) initial (i.e., past), intervening (i.e., present), and terminal (i.e., future) moments of the body would have been discerned. Therefore it is established that motion has occurred at that intervening present moment between the past initial and future terminal moments of repose. Now, that intervening present moment of motion can either be supposed to be composed of two parts or not so composed. The first supposition is invalid because when the first part obtains the second is yet to obtain, and when the second part obtains the first passes away; thus no single moment wholly obtains, but only either of the two parts thereof; therefore, only a half-moment obtains in either case. Now, if one of the two parts that obtains is again divisible into two subparts, then not even a whole half-moment obtains but only half of a half-moment, and so on. Hence if every subsequent half-parts is sub-divisible into further half-parts, then nothing that is a whole of any part obtains but only a part of a part of a part ad infinitum, and thus nothing whole of any thing or any part obtains. This is absurd, since at least one whole moment of motion must have obtained between the initial and terminal reposes. Therefore it is to be concluded that this intervening present moment of motion is a single complete motion not receptive to division, and likewise for each and every subsequent present motion-moment throughout the duration of the motion as long as the body is moving: each present moment of motion is a complete indivisible whole, and a seemingly continuous motion is but a series of consecutive and complete discrete motion-moments or motion-instants. (6) Thus al-Razi says:
It is established then that the present part of motion is not

receptive to division, and there is no doubt that when this present part ceases another part obtains and presents itself, and this part is also not divisible. Likewise is the case for the third and fourth [and all subsequent] parts until the end of the motion. This is a conclusive overwhelming demonstration to the effect that motion is tantamount to consecutive, adjoining obtainments such that every one of these obtainments is not receptive to division at all; and that is what is sought. (7)

His second argument is that of a cube dragged along a plane. (8) The cube is bounded by six planes, and each plane is bounded by four lines, and each line is bounded by two points. When the cube is dragged along a plane until it reaches the end of the plane, each one of its points in contact with the plane is also dragged along the plane and thus traces out a line from the beginning to the end of the plane. The point can then be said to be in contact with every part of the line which it traces. This means it did not skip any part of the line or else it would have contacted two parts without contacting the part separating between them, in turn entailing the invalid theory of the leap (al-tafrah). (9) So it is established that the point has contacted the whole length of the line it traced. But since it is known that a point is wholly in contact only with a single point on the line at any one time, it follows then that the point contacts every point of the line it traces, hence the traced line must be composed of consecutively adjoined points. Furthermore, these are indivisible points finite in number, for if the line is composed of an infinite number of indivisible points, it will never be traced out in finite time. Al-Razi then shows from the foregoing that the distance covered by the point tracing the line consists of indivisible units of space-distances, and therefore the motion of the point along the line consists of consecutive obtainments of the point in those units of spacedistances. His third arguments (10) may be summarized thus: motion is something extended (mumtadd) between the initial and terminal points of the distance (al-masafah) covered. But this extended something does not have objective external, entitative existence (la wujuda lahu fi al-ayan); what exists objectively is only a part of this extended-something at any given present moment of the motion, because both the past and future moments of the motion are non-existents with respect to the present moment of motion. So if it is said that motion is a single ever-divisible continuous whole from the beginning to the end of the distance covered, this will entail the nonexistent past motion-moment to be continuous with the non-existent future motion through the existent present motion-moment, but the mind can never accept that two non-existents can be in mutual continuity. His fourth argument is a variation on the first and proposes that the agent executes a succession of indivisible motion-units during the duration of his motion; however, if each motion-unit is sub-divisible into ever smaller sub-units, he will never execute the motion, and this contradicts sensible evidence. (11) His fifth argument (12) is of some interest here, for, like Aristotle and Ibn Sina, he connects the notion of motion with the notion of change. Motion as change in place or local change is comparable to change in quality or qualitative change (e.g., from black to white, hot to cold), change in quantity or quantitative change (e.g., from few to many, small to big) and change in

position or positional change (i.e., change or motion within the same place or location, e.g., revolution of the celestial spheres). However, he rejects the philosophers view that these changes can be either gradual or sudden, (13) and says that a thing changes all at once or not at all, there being no change at all in the gradual, little by little sense. This also means that an event either happens or ceases to happen all at once and not gradually. When a thing occurs it occurs wholely and not partially, for it cannot be that a part of it occurs and a part of it yet to occur, since a part of a thing is in either case not the thing itself; if a part of a thing is the thing itself, then in either case the thing is both occurring and not occurring at once, which is absurd.
That which occurs, occurs wholly, and that which thereafter ceases to occur, ceases to exist wholly; and these [occurrence and non-occurrence] are two mutually opposed situations, such that when one obtains the other does not obtain. This is the truth. Therefore the view that a thing occurs gradually or disappears gradually is an invalid, false view without substance at all for a sound mind. Once this is established, then it will be manifest that motion is tantamount to the obtainment of situations, each of which occurs abruptly and disappears abruptly. If the motion is in place [local motion] (harakah fi al-ayn) then it is tantamount to consecutive obtainments in adjoining spaces; and if the motion is in quality [qualitative change] (harakah f-al-kayf) then it is tantamount to consecutive [obtainments of] different, mutually exclusive qualities. Each of these obtainments does not exist except at a single present moment; likewise is the case of motion in quantity [quantitative change] (harakah fi al-kamm) and motion in position [positional change] (harakah fi alwad i).... Such change (al-taghayyur), alteration (al-tabaddul) and motion (al-harakah) are qualities (sifat) occurring in discrete consecutive succession, each of which does not exist except for a single present moment (anan wahidan), and this entails a succession of present-moments [or present-instants]. Once this is established, it is then of necessity that motion in place is a series of consecutive, indivisible obtainments (ibaratan an husulatin muta aqibatin ghayri munqasimatin), and that is what is sought. (14)

Time with Respect to the Atomic Minimal Part Al-Razis arguments for atomic time are structurally similar to his arguments for atomic motion, since he has already argued that the two are correlated. He conceives of time as composed of an uninterrupted, consecutive succession of nows or present-moments because only the presentmoment is observed and experienced at any one time and thus exists while the past-moment has ceased to exist and the future-moment is yet to exist. The past and the future can be considered as the two separate non-existents that are connected by virtue of the ever-present now, moreover since talk of past and future time only makes sense with reference to the concretely experienced present, the now. Thus the seemingly continuous, seamless flow of time is but the present now ever passing into the past to be ever replaced by the future-moment which then becomes present and now. In other words, time is but an uninterrupted series of discrete nows coming into and passing out of existence. He gives five arguments for atomic time in this section of the Matalib, (15) of which we shall discuss the first three.

His first argument for discrete atomic time is based on the above conception of the nature of the now or present-moment. The present-moment must, first of all, exist, otherwise it cannot become past or future, i.e., otherwise a past- or future-moment would be inconceivable. He thus says:
We know necessarily that the present (al-hadir) exists, for if it does not exist, then it would be impossible for it to become past or future, and for we know that the present-now is the end [terminal limit] of the past and the beginning [initial limit] of the future; if this present-now does not exist [as such] then it must be either the past or the future, but the past cannot be the end [terminal limit] of the past, and the future cannot be the end [terminal limit] of the past, [and also] the future cannot be the beginning [initial limit] of the future. And for we know the presence of something in the present-moment, but this knowledge is conditioned upon the the obtainment of that present-moment [itself].

He then goes on to argue that this now or present-moment must be a single indivisible whole that is either obtained altogether at once or not at all. If, however, this present-moment is divisible into two halves, then when the first half obtains, the second is yet to obtain, and vice versa. In either case only a half of the present-moment obtains while the present-moment as such does not obtain, and this entails that what is present is not quite present, but this is absurd. Therefore it is established that the present-moment as such is an indivisible whole. It follows from this that just as the present-moment obtains or comes to be all at once and not gradually, so it ceases to be all at once and not gradually. (16) While the first argument for time argues for the existence of the present-moment, that it is a single indivisible whole and that it obtains and ceases to obtain all at once and not gradually, the second argument (17) argues for the existence of a consecutive, uninterrupted succession of present-moments as constitutive of the flow of time. Thus he says:
This present-moment, when it ceases to be, must be followed by the obtainment of something else that is present, for if this does not obtain then the interruption of time will be entailed, which is impossible. Likewise the case for the second and third present-moments. This necessitates the thesis of an uninterrupted succession of present-moments ... As soon as the first present-moment ceases to be, the second present-moment must necessarily comes to be and must be present at the moment it obtains. (18)

In the third argument he rejects the view that time is a continuous quantity in which the presentmoment is merely a conjunction of the past-moment and the future-moment, since this would mean the conjunction of two non-existents, which is impossible. Hence time must be a discontinuous quantity consisting of whole units coming into being in uninterrupted succession, and therefore time must be composed of discrete present-moments. (19) Quiddity of Motion and Change

Some of al-Razis most interesting discussions of the problems of motion, change and repose are found in the Sharh Uyun al-Hikmah (SUH) within the context of his critical engagement with Ibn Sina, where these three problems are to some extent considered quite apart from their implications for the problem of the indivisible part. (20) For instance, in the context of his discussion of the Aristotelian-Avicennan category of place (al-ayn) al-Razi differentiates between the view of the philosophers and the view of the mutakallimin with regard to the reality of motion. While the latter say that motion means the obtainment of something in a place or space (hayyiz) after having obtained in another (i.e., different and previous) place, the former says that motion is translocating (al-intiqal) from a first (initial) place to another (subsequent) place. The mutakallimin see motion as a series of discretely obtained or accomplished movements, as having moved rather than moving, while the philosophers sees it as a continuous, progressive moving from one place to another. (21) As for repose, al-Razi says that the philosophers are agreed that it means the absence of motion from something whose state is to move, so for them repose is merely the negation of motion and in itself it has no positive existence. As for the mutakallimun, they view repose as something positive, as the obtainment of something in a place for more than one instance of time. However, al-Razi views this disagreement as merely verbal, and the two opposing viewpoints can be reconciled; for when the body is in repose at a place two things occur: first, cessation and absence of motion; second, persistence in that place. Viewed from the aspect of the former, repose is a negative quality, whereas from the aspect of the latter, repose is a positive quality. (22) In the Matalib, al-Razi gives an interesting argument for motion and repose as positive, existential attributes of the body:
We see the body being in repose after being in motion. The alternation of these two states together with the persistence of the essence [of the body] throughout the two states entails that either one of the two states is something existential. Once this is established, then of necessity each of the two states is something existential. This is so because motion means the first obtainment in the second place (al-husul al-awwal fi al-hayyiz al-thani), and repose means the second obtainment in the first place (al-husul al-thani fi al-hayyiz al-awwal). Hence motion and repose are alike with regard to wholeness of essence (mutasawiyan fi tamam al-mahiyyah), for each of the two refers to obtainment in space, only that the difference between them is that motion's obtainment in place is conditioned upon it being preceded by obtainment in another place, while repose's obtainment is conditioned upon it being preceded by obtainment in that [same] place. For a thing's being preceded by something else is an incidental attribute extrinsic to the quiddity, and attributes that are extrinsic to a quiddity do not impair that quiddity. Thus it is established that motion and repose are equivalent with regard to wholeness of essence; so if one of them is an existential attribute, then, of necessity, the other must also be likewise [i.e., be an existential attribute]. Therefore it is established by what we have said that motion and repose are each existential attribute (sifah mawjudah). (23)

The above passage may be reformulated as follows: motion and repose are positive, existential qualities or entitative accidents having autonomous or separate ontic status, because both are

obtainments or occurrences that happen to the body and are sensibly perceived: we can actually see and determine whether a body is in motion or repose and our mind judges intuitively that motion and repose are distinct from one another and from the body itself. Now, though motion and repose are both obtainments, they are so in two different senses. The first sense of obtainment pertains to motion, which is to obtain or to occur for the initial first time in a place B after having obtained in a previous place A. This implies that the observer, in order to judge that something is moving or rather has moved, has first to see the thing in place A and then in the next instant to see the same thing again for the first time in place B. But suppose he sees the same thing again for the second time in place B? If so, then this brings us to the second sense of obtainment, which pertains to repose, which is to obtain or occur for the second instant in the same place B. This implies that the observer, in order to judge that something is in repose (has persisted or remained and not moved) has first to see that thing at B at the immediately preceding instant and then to see it again at the same place B at the subsequent present instant. In short, motion means to be in two different but contiguous or adjacent places at two successive instants, whereas repose is to be in the same place at two successive instants. With regard to motion, if the observer was a philosopher, he would say that the thing moves or is moving from A to B; if a mutakallim, the thing has moved from A to B. With regard to repose, the former would say that the thing is not moving or is not in motion or lacks motion, while the latter would say that the thing persists or remains in its place. The former adheres to a continuous, progressive, or gradual (tadriji) conception of motion while the latter to a discontinuous, instantaneous (daf atan) conception of motion. The latters conception implies that motion can also be conceived as a series of instantaneous reposes (sukunat), a series of wholly completed obtainments, occurrences, or arrivals, but in successively different places and instants, for as soon as something has moved to a place it is no longer said to be moving. (24) Thus al-Razi says that motion and repose are of the same species of entities (min naw in wahidin) and that the contrast between them may be said to be merely verbal, i.e., conceptual and not actual. (25) However, if one of them, i.e., motion, has been proven to have positive existence (amr thubuti), then the other, i.e., repose, must also have positive existence, since both are of the same species, i.e., the species of obtainment. Thus they both have actual physical existence even though the difference between them may not be physical but only conceptual. (26) In both the Mabahith and SUH, al-Razi critically engages the philosophers definitions of motion (especially that of Ibn Sina), either as a gradual progression from potentiality to actuality, or as the first con summation (kamal awwal) of that which exists potentially insofar as it exists potentially. (27) Since both these definitions entails gradual transitional states between the initial state and the terminal state, al-Razi rejects them by saying that a thing either moves wholly and all at once (daf atan) or not at all, though in the Mabahith he seems not to have noticed the atomistic implications. Also in the SUH, al-Razi follows Ibn Sina in accepting the other three types of motion apart from local motion, namely, quantitative, qualitative and positional motions, but, contra Ibn Sina, he understands these motions in the atomistic nongradualistic sense of change from one state to another that is different from the initial state. Thus, in contrast to the philosophers view, for al-Razi instantaneous change or motion from one state to another is not restricted to generation and corruption, i.e., the transition from non-existence to existence and its reverse. Like Ibn Sina, al-Razi uses the terms change and motion interchangeably to refer to transition between states, and he thus says:

The quiddity of motion is change (al-taghayyur) from one state to [another] state, and there is no doubt that the state transited from (al-halat al-muntaqal minhu) is different from the state transited to (al-halat al-muntaqal ilayha) ... (28)

From the foregoing it is quite clear, and al-Razi too makes clear, that the concept of motion is inextricably linked to the concept of the entity (body or atom) which moves, and to the twin concepts of time and space (i.e., spatio-temporal dimensionality) in which motion occurs. Quiddity of Time In volume five of the Matalib, in a section entitled discussion on the quiddity of time, (29) alRazi briefly reviews the various philosophical views on the nature of time:
[The view] which is followed by Aristotle and accepted by the esteemed from among his followers like Abu Nasr al-Farabi and Abu Ali Ibn Sina is that it [time] is the measure of the motion of the Great Sphere (miqddr harakat al-falak al-a'zam). The shaykh Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi, author of the Mu'tabar, says that it is the measure of the extension of being (miqdar imtidad al-wujud). (30) Another group say that it is the very motion of the Great Sphere (nafs harakat al-falak al-a'zam). Yet another group says that there is no meaning to time apart from the mere measuring of time in accordance with what we interpret and discover as regards its meaning (mujarrad tawqit'ala ma fassarnahu wa kashafnahu 'an ma'nahu). Still another group says that just as the point (al-nuqtah) traces out by its motion a line, so similarly the present-instant (al-an) by its motion does time (al-anu yaf'alu bi harakatihi al-zamana).... A major group of ancient philosophers (al-hukama) say that time is a sempiternal, necessarily self-subsistent substance jawhar azali wajib al-wujud li dhatihi) which has no essential nor existential connection with either the celestial sphere or with motion. The celestial sphere, by its motion, merely measures out the parts of time (yugaddiru ajza'ahu), as in the case of the finjanah [hour-glass?] which due to its different states measures out the parts of the night and the day...." (31)

Thereafter he singles out from among those views the Aristotelian-Avicennan view for a lengthly argumentative refutation, probably because this is the dominant philosophical view which he also happens to dislike, being inclined as he does toward what he understands to be the view of Plato (al-Imam Aflatun), which to a large extent is reflected in Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi. (32) He first gives fifteen arguments spread over fourteen pages to refute the notion of time as the measure of motion and then allows three counter-arguments, each of which he follows with a response. The third argument serves to expose the circularity of the Avicennan definition of time and runs as follows:
The third argument for invalidating this view [of time as the measure of motion is]: that we say that if time is the measure of motion, then time would be an attribute (sifah) from among the attributes of motion, but every attribute is dependent (muhtajah) on the so attributed (al-mawsuf), [thus] entailing that time is

necessarily dependent on motion. However motion is [itself] dependent on time, for every motion is a transition (al-intiqal) from one state (halah) to another state, and the time of the state transited from is necessarily different from the time of the state transited to. And if such is the case then the quiddity of motion is not established unless time and its successive parts are established [first]. This situation would then demands that each of the two is dependent on the other, but this is an invalid and impossible circularity (al-dawr). (33)

Later on in a shorter seven-page section of the Matalib (34) he critically engages other philosophers views of time, especially the view of Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi, which he finds invalid, and the view of Plato which he sees as the philosophical view closest to the truth namely, that time is a self-subsisting entity essentially independent of celestial motion. (35) Then he explains and evaluates at some length and with considerable empathy (if not sympathy) the reasons underlying the view of those who argue that time is a necessarily self-subsistent entity, thus identifying time with God. Finally he makes explicit and unambigious his own personal view, as follows:
The closest [to the truth] from among these views [is the view in which] it is said: The evidences show that the necessarily self-subsistent is one, and it is established that the necessarily self-subsistent is necessarily existent in all its aspects (wajib al-wujud min jami al-jihatihi). This negates His being a substrate (mawrid) for changes and alterations. But duration (muddah) or time (zaman) is a substrate for changes and alterations with regard to the successive arrival (tawarud) upon it of the priorities (al-gabliyyat) and the posteriorities (al-ba diyyat), thus it is not necessarily self-subsistent in all respects, and hence not necessarily existent with respect to its essence but [only] possibly existent in its essence. As for Allah, He is the Existent Sanctified from [all] changes, Aloof from being touched by anything potential. This is what we say and upon it we are resolved, and Allah is the Guide. (36)

Time is obviously not God, but what then is the final, positive position of al-Razi with regard to the nature or quiddity of time, i.e., what time is rather than what time is not? For al-Razi time is not the measure of motion or change, hence not dependent on motion or change; therefore, if it has a positive entitative existence this existence is independent of the existence of motion and change, though, as the above passage shows, not independent of God. This would mean that time has no eternal, necessary existence but was brought into being with the world, created with the creation of the cosmos as an integral but autonomous cosmic component. As a matter of fact, in the Mafatih, (37) he talks of time as being just as created as space and as being possibly existent. This view would then be compatible with one of the three main interpretations of Platonic time in the Timaeus, namely that time began with the ordered kosmos, and there was nothing before that. (38) So when al-Razi says that time is an independent substance, he means independent not of God but of motion. Hence Zarkan need not have been too worried about al-Razis bestowing the honour of godhood on time. (39)

The next question that then arises for al-Razi concerns the role of this motion-independent time in relation to physical realities like motion, actions, and change, for time, though independent, is inextricably linked with all three. As a matter of fact, he compares time to space in the sense that just as the latter is a receptacle of entities, bodies, and atoms, so the former is a receptacle of actions, events, and accidents. (40) If time is not the measure of motion, then can it be the other way round, i.e., motion is the measure of time, or motion measures out the duration of time? He says that time obtains whether or not motion obtains, and that though the latter has no influence whatsoever on the existence of time per se, it functions to measure and to determine time just as various instruments are used to measure out the duration of the day into parts and halves, despite the obvious fact that these instruments do not generate nor existentiate time. So, similarly, celestial motions merely measure temporal duration, and moreover, motion occurs in time but not vice versa. (41) So it seems that for al-Razi, time is the objective indeterminate substance or physical dimension that is measured and hence determined or marked out by the accidents of motion and repose which inhere in it. Instead of time being the measure of motion, we now have the relation inversed: motion is the measure of time. Time (al-zaman) and its Cognates Al-Razi devotes an interesting five-page section in volume five of the Matalib (42) to clarify the semantic relations between time understood generically as al-zaman with its various (denotative) cognates like al-muddah (duration or temporal extension), al-waqat, al-sarmad, al-azal, al-abad, al-nahar (day-time), al-layl (night-time), al-yawm (day), al-saah (hour), al-hin, and al-ajal. This section may be summarized as follows: Al-muddah (duration or temporal extension) is time (al-zaman) insofar as it is extended or stretched out (yamtaddu, imtidad) by division into consecutive present-instants (al-anat alhadirah). Al-zaman (generic time) is the time that is measured by celestial or instrumental motion. Al-waqt (unit time) is the individual or special time that is linked to a particular event that is known to occur, like your saying: Ill meet you [at the time of] the appearance of the new moon. Al-nahar (day-time) is the time during which the sun rises and appears, whereas al-layl (night-time) is the time during which the sun has set. Al-dahr and al-sarmad (absolute time or unqualified time) are two names for time considered apart from or devoid of occurrences and changes. Al-azal is al-dahr al-mutagaddim (pre-eternal time) having no beginning and no intitial moment, whereas al-abad is al-dahr al-muta akhkhir (post-eternal time) having no ending or terminal moment. Al-Razi seems to have forgotten to define the remaining three cognates: al-sa ah, al-hin and alajal, but in the Mafatih these three are given definitions which are here summarized. Al-hin (unspecified temporal period) refers to an unspecified temporal period that can either be short or long, as when you say to a friend, Ive not seen you for some time. It can also mean an aggregate number of days just as the term al-ummah (nation) refers to an aggregation of people. (43) Al-ajal (appointed time) refers to the time appointed for terminating a temporal period such as the period or span of ones life. (44) Al-sa ah (instant) refers to the smallest unit of time. (45) As for asr, Al-Razi reports four opinions (aqwal) on its meaning in the Mafatih, the first of which equates it with dahr. The second deems it to refer to the two extremities of the daytime

(tarafay al-nahar), namely the morning when people arise to begin their work and the evening when they retire to end it and are then held to account for it. The third has it to mean the late afternoon prayer (salat al-asr), whose virtue is underlined by the fact that people in general have to turn away from their frenetic late afternoon preoccupations with trade and livelihood in order to perform it. The fourth interprets the verse wa al-asri to mean that Allah the Most High is swearing by the time of the Prophet (annahu qasama bi zaman al-Rasulalayhi al-salam), that is, by the specific era or age in which Mulhammad, sallaLlahu alayhi wa sallam, and his Ummah live, which is the last age of humankind before the end of days, like the late afternoon (asr) brilliance before the looming darkness of nightfall. (46) Conclusion From the foregoing we may conclude that al-Razi inclines to the views that (i) motion is the measure of time, (ii) time is not prior to the cosmos but begins with it, and (iii) time is the measure of existence. However, as the following quotation shows, he allows the question of the true conception of time to be left open for further investigation and surrenders its complete resolution to divine knowledge. In the SUH, (47) after a long drawn-out critical engagement with Ibn Sina regarding the true conception of time, he states his final, Platonic position, and spells out the precise relationship between al-sarmad, al-dahr, and al-zaman.
It is clear that the partisans of the view (48) (madhhab) of Aristotle (Aristatalis) that time is the measure of motion are not able to pursue further into any of the strictures of the inquiries regarding time except by referring to the view of Plato (al-Imam Aflatun). The closest view to the truth for me with regard to [the problem of] time in principle (fi al-mabda') is the view of the Imam Plato, which is that it [time] is an essentially autonomous, self-subsistent existent (mawjudun qa'imun bi nafsihi mustaqillun bi dhatihi). If we consider the relation of its essence to the essences of enduring, changeless existents, it is named al-sarmad by virtue of this consideration. And if we consider the relation of its essence to that before the occurrence of motions (al-harakat) and changes (al-taghayyurat) then that [time] is al-dahr al-dahir. And if we consider the relation of its essence to the changes [or changing things] being in conjunction (mutaqarinatan) with it [time], then that is what is named al-zaman. As for the view of Aristotle (Aristu) that time (al-zaman) measures (mugaddir) motion, you have already known by decisive arguments of its invalidity (fasadih). As for the view of the Imam Plato, it is closer to [what] the demonstrative sciences (al-'ulum al-burhaniyyah) [demand], and farther away from the darknesses of ambiguities. Yet, despite this, complete knowledge of the realities of things (haqa iq al-ashya') is but only with God the Sublime, the Transcendent. (49)

(1.) See Adi Setia, Atomism versus Hylomorphism in the Kalam of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, Islam & Science, Vol. 4 (Winter 2006) No. 2, 113-140. For a good general intellectual historical background, see Ayman Shihadeh, From al-Ghazali to al-Razi: 6th/12th Century Developments in Muslim Philosophical Theology, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, Vol. 15 (2005), 141-179.

For kalam atomism as a constructive response to falsafah, see A. I. Sabra, Kalam Atomism as an Alterantive Philosophy to Hellenizing Falsafa in James E. Montgomery, ed., Arabic Theology, Arabic Philosophy, from the Many to the One: Essays in Celebration of Richard M. Frank, Leuven-Paris-Dudley, MA 2006 (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 152), 199-272. For a review of past and recent research into kalam atomism, see Josef van Ess, 60 Years After: Shlomo Piness Beitrage and a Half Century of Research on Atomism in Islamic Theology, Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2002), Vol. 8, No. 2, 19-41. (2.) Or actualizations; see the index of technical terms in R. M. Frank, Beings and Their Attributes: The Teaching of the Basrian School of the Mutazila in the Classical Period (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1978), 181-200 on 189, s.v., hsl. (3.) Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqqa (ed.), Al-Matalib al- Aliyyah min al-Ilmi al-Ilahi, 9 vols. in 5 (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al- Arabi, 1987), Vol. 6, 29. (4.) Matalib, 6: 32. (5.) Matalib, 6: 30ff. (6.) Matalib, 6: 30-31. (7.) Matalib, 6: 31-32. (8.) Matalib, 6: 34-35. (9.) That is, of the Mu tazilite anti-atomist al-Nazzam; see Matalib, 6: 109ff, for critical discussions; cf. Alnoor Dhanani, The Physical Theory of Kalam (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 160ff; Shlomo Pines, Studies in Islamic Atomism, trans. Michael Schwarz and ed. Tzvi Langermann (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 13ff, 1407, 1507, 28n60; Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 514ff. (10.) Matalib, 6: 36. (11.) Matalib, 6: 36-37. (12.) Matalib, 6: 37-38. (13.) For them qualitative and quantitative changes are gradual, whereas existential change, from non-being to being and vice versa, as in generation and corruption, is sudden. In contrast, the atomistic view is that all change, without exception, is instantaneous and sudden, and occurs all at once or not at all. (14.) Matalib, 6: 38-39. (15.) Matalib, 6: 40ff.

(16.) Matalib, 6: 40-43. (17.) Matalib, 6: 43. (18.) Matalib, 6: 43. (19.) Matalib, 6: 43-44. (20.) Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqqa (ed.), Sharh Uyun al-Hikmah (SUH), 3 vols. in 1 (Tehran: Mu assasah al-Sadiq, 1415H), 1: 105-106, 2: 35ff, 2: 137ff, 2: 151ff. (21.) This discussion is taken up again later in further detail in SUH, 2: 36ff. Cf. Syamsuddin Arif, Ibn Sinas Cosmology: A Study of the Appropriation of Greek Philosophical Ideas in 11th Century Islam, doctoral dissertation (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2004), 33ff; cf. also Muhammad Altif al- Iraqi, Al-Falsafah al-tabi iyyah inda ibn Sina (Cairo: Dar al-Ma arif, 1971), 189ff; and Dhanani, 123ff. (22.) SUH, 1: 106. (23.) Matalib, 4: 288. (24.) Muhassal of afkar al-mutaqaddimin wa al-mutaakhkhirin min al-ulama wa al-hukamawa al-mutakallimin (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr al-Lubnani, 1992), 76-77; ibid. (Cairo: Maktabah alKulliyyat al-Azhariyyah, n.d.), 96; cf. Kitab al-arbain fi usul al-din (Hyderabad, 1934), 5. (25.) Ibid. (26.) Ibid. (27.) Muhammad al-Mu tasim bi Llah al-Baghdadi (ed.), Al-Mabahith al-mashriqiyyah, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al- Arabi, 1990), 1: 669ff; SUH, 36ff; cf. Arnaldez, haraka wa sukun in EI2. (28.) Matalib, 4: 262. (29.) Matalib, 5: 51ff. (30.) Cf. Abu al-Barakat al-Baghdadi, Kitab al-Mutabar (Hyderabad, 1939), 3: 39, where he says, If it were said that time is the measure of being (miqdar al-wujud), that would have been better than saying that it is the measure of motion, for it also measures repose; and the reposing and the moving both partake of being Abu al-Barakat devotes two sections in this work to the problem of time, one in the part on physics (2: 69ff), and the other in the section on metaphysics (3: 35ff). (31.) Matalib, 5: 52.

(32.) As reflected for instance in the thirteenth argument (Matalib, 5: 64) and in the Matalib, 5: 75ff. Pines notes F. al-Razis indebtedness to Abu al-Barakats Platonic views, and indeed F. al-Razi himself declares his adherence to Platos conception of time in many places in the SUH, 2: 119-150 passim, especially, 2: 148-149. Cf. Pines, 94-95. (33.) Matalib, 5: 58-59. (34.) Matalib, 5: 75-81. (35.) Matalib, 5: 76-77, 5: 91, 103-104; cf. SUH, 2: 148. (36.) Matalib, 5: 81. (37.) Mafatih, 1 (1): 163; 10 (29): 441. (38.) Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation &the Continuum (London: Duckworth, 1983), 268. (39.) Muhammad Salih al-Zarkan, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi wa arauhu al-kalamiyyah wa alfalsafiyyah (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1963), 457. (40.) Mafatih, 9 (25): 128; 9 (26): 275; 10 (28): 202. (41.) Matalib, 5: 104. (42.) Matalib, 5: 103-107; cf. SUH, 2: 148-149, and Pines, 57ff. (43.) Mafatih, 1 (3): 464-65; 6 (18): 453; 10 (30): 739. (44.) Mafatih, 3 (7): 91-92; 4 (12): 480-481; 5 (14): 234. (45.) Mafatih, 5 (14): 234. (46.) al-Tafsir al-Kabir (also known as Mafatih al-Ghayb), 32 vols. in 11 (Beirut: Dar IhyaalTurath al-Arabi, 1996), 11: 277-279. (47.) SUH, 119-150. (48.) Reading madhhab instead of adhhab, which is obviously an error. (49.) SUH, 2: 148-149; cf. R. M. Frank, The non-existent and the possible in classical Asharite Teaching, MIDEO, Vol. 24 (2000), 1-37 on 7-10. Adi Setia is Assistant Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Department of General Studies, International Islamic University, Malaysia. Email: adi_setia@iiu.edu.my. COPYRIGHT 2007 Center for Islam & Science

Copyright 2007, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.
surya.hadithuna.com/category/adi-setia

Samir Amin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search

) (born 3 September 1931) is an Egyptian economist. He Samir Amin (Arabic: currently lives in Dakar, Senegal.

Contents
[hide]
y y y y y y y

1 Biography 2 Work 3 Samir Amin's views on Political Islam 4 Footnotes 5 Publications by Samir Amin 6 Writings about Samir Amin 7 External links

[edit] Biography
Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a French mother (both medical doctors). He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French High School, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalaurat. From 1947 to 1957 he studied in Paris, gaining a diploma in political science (1952) before graduating in statistics (1956) and economics (1957). In his autobiography Itinraire intellectuel (1990) he wrote that in order to spend a substantial amount of time in "militant action" he could devote only a minimum of time to preparing for his university exams. Arriving in Paris, Amin joined the French Communist Party (PCF), but he later distanced himself from Soviet Marxism and associated himself for some time with Maoist circles. With other students he published a magazine entitled;tudiants Anticolonialistes. In 1957 he presented his thesis, supervised by Franois Perroux among others, originally titled The origins of underdevelopment - capitalist accumulation on a world scale but retitled The structural effects of the international integration of precapitalist economies. A theoretical study of the mechanism which creates so-called underdeveloped economies.

After finishing his thesis, Amin went back to Cairo, where he worked from 1957 to 1960 as a research officer for the government's "Institution for Economic Management". Subsequently Amin left Cairo, to become an adviser to the Ministry of Planning in Bamako (Mali) from 1960 to 1963. In 1963 he was offered a fellowship at the Institut Africain de Dveloppement conomique et de Planification (IDEP). Until 1970 he worked there as well as being a professor at the university of Poitiers, Dakar and Paris (of Paris VIII, Vincennes). In 1970 he became director of the IDEP, which he managed until 1980. In 1980 Amin left the IDEP and became a director of the Third World Forum in Dakar.

[edit] Work
Samir Amin has written more than 30 books including Imperialism & Unequal Development, Specters of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions, Obsolescent Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder and The Liberal Virus. His memoirs were published in October 2006. For Samir Amin (1997), the ascent and decline is largely determined in our age by the following five monopolies
1. the monopoly of technology, supported by military expenditures of the dominant nations 2. the monopoly of control over global finances and a strong position in the hierarchy of current account balances 3. the monopoly of access to natural resources 4. the monopoly over international communication and the media 5. the monopoly of the military means of mass destruction

The economic performance over the last few years teaches us an important lesson about the evolving mechanisms of the future Kondratieff cycle, that began in the mid-1980s. Let us recall, that for Dependency and World Systems theory in the tradition of Samir Amin (1975), there are four main characteristics of the peripheral societal formation:
y y y y

the predominance of agrarian capitalism in the national sector the formation of a local bourgeoisie, which is dependent from foreign capital, especially in the trading sector the tendency of bureaucratization specific and incomplete forms of proletarisation of the labor force

In partial accordance with liberal thought, (i) and (iii) explain the tendency towards low savings; thus there will be
y y

huge state sector deficits and, in addition, their twin chronic current account balance deficits

In the peripheral countries. High imports of the periphery, and hence, in the long run, capital imports, are the consequence of the already existing structural deformations of the role of peripheries in the world system, namely by

y y y y y

rapid urbanization, combined with an insufficient local production of food excessive expenditures of the local bureaucracies changes in income distribution to the benefit of the local elites (demonstration effects) insufficient growth of and structural imbalances in the industrial sector and the following reliance on foreign assistance

The history of periphery capitalism, Amin argues, is full of short-term miracles and long-term blocks, stagnation and even regression.

[edit] Samir Amin's views on Political Islam

According to Samir Amin, Islam leads its struggle on the terrain of culture, wherein "culture" is intended as "belongingness to one religion". Islamist militants are not actually interested in the discussion of dogmas which form religion but on the contrary they're concerned about the ritual assertion of membership in the community. Such a world's vision is therefore not only distressing as it conceals an immense poverty of thought, but it also justifies Imperialism's strategy of substituting a "conflict of cultures" for a conflict between the imperialist centres and the dominated peripheries. This importance attributed to culture allows Political Islam to obscure from every sphere of life the realistic social dichotomy between the working classes and the global capitalist system which oppresses and exploits the formers.[1] The militants of political Islam are only present in areas of conflict in order to furnish people with education and health care, through schools and health clinics. However, these are nothing more than works of charity and means of indoctrination, insofar as they are not means of support for the working class struggle against the system which is responsible for its misery. Besides, beyond being reactionary on definite matters (see the status of women in Islam) and responsible for fanatical excesses against non-Muslim citizen (such as the Copts in Egypt), political Islam even defends the sacred character of property and legimitises inequality and all the prerequisites of capitalist reproduction. One example is the Muslim Brotherhood's support in the Egyptian parliament for conservative and reactionary laws which empowers the rights of property owners, to the detriment of the small peasantry. Political Islam has also always found consent in the bourgeoisie of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as the latter abandoned an antiimperialist perspective and substituted it for an anti-western stance, which only takes into an impasse and therefore doesn't represent any obstacle to the developing imperialist control over the world system:) Hence, political Islam aligns itself in general with capitalism and imperialism, without providing the working classes with an effective and non-reactionary method of struggle against their exploitation. [2]
1.

It is important to note, however, that Amin is careful to distinguish his analysis of political islam from islamophobia, thus remaining sensitive to the anti-Muslim attitudes that currently affect Western Society.[3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samir_Amin - Cached

Samir Amin (Arabic: ) (born 3 September 1931) is an Egyptian economist. He currently lives in Dakar, Senegal.

Contents
y y y y y y y

1 Biography 2 Work 3 Samir Amin's views on Political Islam 4 Footnotes 5 Publications by Samir Amin 6 Writings about Samir Amin 7 External links

Biography
Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a French mother (both medical doctors). He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French High School, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalaurat. From 1947 to 1957 he studied in Paris, gaining a diploma in political science (1952) before graduating in statistics (1956) and economics (1957). In his autobiography Itinraire intellectuel (1990) he wrote that in order to spend a substantial amount of time in "militant action" he could devote only a minimum of time to preparing for his university exams. Arriving in Paris, Amin joined the French Communist Party (PCF), but he later distanced himself from Soviet Marxism and associated himself for some time with Maoist circles. With other students he published a magazine entitled;tudiants Anticolonialistes. In 1957 he presented his thesis, supervised by Franois Perroux among others, originally titled The origins of underdevelopment - capitalist accumulation on a world scale but retitled The structural effects of the international integration of precapitalist economies. A theoretical study of the mechanism which creates so-called underdeveloped economies. After finishing his thesis, Amin went back to Cairo, where he worked from 1957 to 1960 as a research officer for the government's "Institution for Economic Management". Subsequently Amin left Cairo, to become an adviser to the Ministry of Planning in Bamako (Mali) from 1960 to 1963. In 1963 he was offered a fellowship at the Institut Africain de Dveloppement conomique et de Planification (IDEP). Until 1970 he worked there as well as being a professor at the university of Poitiers, Dakar and Paris (of Paris VIII, Vincennes). In 1970 he became director of the IDEP, which he managed until 1980. In 1980 Amin left the IDEP and became a director of the Third World Forum in Dakar.

Work
Samir Amin has written more than 30 books including Imperialism & Unequal Development, Specters of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions, Obsolescent Capitalism:

Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder and The Liberal Virus. His memoirs were published in October 2006. For Samir Amin (1997), the ascent and decline is largely determined in our age by the following five monopolies
1. the monopoly of technology, supported by military expenditures of the dominant nations 2. the monopoly of control over global finances and a strong position in the hierarchy of current account balances 3. the monopoly of access to natural resources 4. the monopoly over international communication and the media 5. the monopoly of the military means of mass destruction

The economic performance over the last few years teaches us an important lesson about the evolving mechanisms of the future Kondratieff cycle, that began in the mid-1980s. Let us recall, that for Dependency and World Systems theory in the tradition of Samir Amin (1975), there are four main characteristics of the peripheral societal formation:
y y y y

the predominance of agrarian capitalism in the national sector the formation of a local bourgeoisie, which is dependent from foreign capital, especially in the trading sector the tendency of bureaucratization specific and incomplete forms of proletarisation of the labor force

In partial accordance with liberal thought, (i) and (iii) explain the tendency towards low savings; thus there will be
y y

huge state sector deficits and, in addition, their twin chronic current account balance deficits

In the peripheral countries. High imports of the periphery, and hence, in the long run, capital imports, are the consequence of the already existing structural deformations of the role of peripheries in the world system, namely by
y y y y y

rapid urbanization, combined with an insufficient local production of food excessive expenditures of the local bureaucracies changes in income distribution to the benefit of the local elites (demonstration effects) insufficient growth of and structural imbalances in the industrial sector and the following reliance on foreign assistance

The history of periphery capitalism, Amin argues, is full of short-term miracles and long-term blocks, stagnation and even regression.

Samir Amin's views on Political Islam

According to Samir Amin, Islam leads its struggle on the terrain of culture, wherein "culture" is intended as "belongingness to one religion". Islamist militants are not actually interested in the discussion of dogmas which form religion but on the contrary they're concerned about the ritual assertion of membership in the community. Such a world's vision is therefore not only distressing as it conceals an immense poverty of thought, but it also justifies Imperialism's strategy of substituting a "conflict of cultures" for a conflict between the imperialist centres and the dominated peripheries. This importance attributed to culture allows Political Islam to obscure from every sphere of life the realistic social dichotomy between the working classes and the global capitalist system which oppresses and exploits the formers.[1] The militants of political Islam are only present in areas of conflict in order to furnish people with education and health care, through schools and health clinics. However, these are nothing more than works of charity and means of indoctrination, insofar as they are not means of support for the working class struggle against the system which is responsible for its misery. Besides, beyond being reactionary on definite matters (see the status of women in Islam) and responsible for fanatical excesses against non-Muslim citizen (such as the Copts in Egypt), political Islam even defends the sacred character of property and legimitises inequality and all the prerequisites of capitalist reproduction. One example is the Muslim Brotherhood's support in the Egyptian parliament for conservative and reactionary laws which empowers the rights of property owners, to the detriment of the small peasantry. Political Islam has also always found consent in the bourgeoisie of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as the latter abandoned an antiimperialist perspective and substituted it for an anti-western stance, which only takes into an impasse and therefore doesn't represent any obstacle to the developing imperialist control over the world system. Hence, political Islam aligns itself in general with capitalism and imperialism, without providing the working classes with an effective and non-reactionary method of struggle against their exploitation. [2] It is important to note, however, that Amin is careful to distinguish his analysis of political islam from islamophobia, thus remaining sensitive to the anti-Muslim attitudes that currently affect Western Society.[3]

Footnotes
1. page 83, "The World We Wish To See; Revolutionary Objectives In The Twenty-First Century", Samir Amin and James Membrez, ISBN 1583671722, ISBN-13: 9781583671726, 9781583671726, Publishing Date: Jul 2008, Publisher: Monthly Review Press page 84, "The World We Wish To See; Revolutionary Objectives In The Twenty-First Century", 2. Samir Amin and James Membrez, ISBN 1583671722, ISBN-13: 9781583671726, 9781583671726, Publishing Date: Jul 2008, Publisher: Monthly Review Press 3. http://www.monthlyreview.org/090330amin.php

Publications by Samir Amin

y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y

y y y y y y y y y y

1957, Les effets structurels de l intgration internationale des conomies prcapitalistes. Une tude thorique du mcanisme qui a engendr les onomies dites sous-dveloppes (thesis) 1965, Trois expriences africaines de dveloppement: le Mali, la Guine et le Ghana 1966, L conomie du Maghreb, 2 vols. 1967, Le dveloppement du capitalisme en Cte d'Ivoire 1969, Le monde des affaires sngalais 1969, The Class struggle in Africa [1] 1970, Le Maghreb moderne (translation: The Magrheb in the Modern World) 1970, L accumulation l chelle mondiale (translation: Accumulation on a world scale) 1970, with C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Histoire conomique du Congo 1880-1968 1971, L Afrique de l Ouest bloque 1973, Le dveloppement ingal (translation: Unequal development) 1973, L change ingal et la loi de la valeur 1973, Neocolonialism in West Africa [2] 1973, 'Le developpement inegal. Essai sur les formations sociales du capitalisme peripherique' Paris: Editions de Minuit. 1973, L change ingal et la loi de la valeur 1974, with K. Vergopoulos): La question paysanne et le capitalisme 1975, with A. Faire, M. Hussein and G. Massiah): La crise de l imprialisme 1976, Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism New York: Monthly Review Press. 1976, L imprialisme et le dveloppement ingal (translation: Imperialism and unequal development) 1976, La nation arabe (translation: The Arab Nation) 1977, La loi de la valeur et le matrialisme historique (translation: The law of value and historical materialism) 1979, Classe et nation dans l histoire et la crise contemporaine (translation: Class and nation, historically and in the current crisis) 1980, L conomie arabe contemporaine (translation: The Arab economy today) 1981, L avenir du Maosme (translation: The Future of Maoism) 1982, Irak et Syrie 1960 - 1980 1982, with G. Arrighi, A. G. Frank and I. Wallerstein): La crise, quelle crise? (translation: Crisis, what crisis?) 1984, 'Was kommt nach der Neuen Internationalen Wirtschaftsordnung? Die Zukunft der Weltwirtschaft' in 'Rote Markierungen International' (Fischer H. and Jankowitsch P. (Eds.)), pp. 89 110, Vienna: Europaverlag. 1984, Transforming the world-economy? : nine critical essays on the new international economic order. 1985, La dconnexion (translation: Delinking: towards a polycentric world) 1988, Imprialisme et sous-dveloppement en Afrique (expanded edition of 1976) 1988, L eurocentrisme (translation: Eurocentrism) 1988, with F. Yachir): La Mditerrane dans le systme mondial 1989, La faillite du dveloppement en Afrique et dans le tiers monde] 1990, Transforming the revolution: social movements and the world system 1990, Itinraire intellectual; regards sur le demi-siecle 1945-90 (translation: Re-reading the postwar period: an Intellectual Itinerary) 1991, L Empire du chaos (translation: Empire of chaos) 1991, Les enjeux stratgiques en Mditerrane

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1991, with G. Arrighi, A. G. Frank et I. Wallerstein): Le grand tumulte 1992, 'Empire of Chaos' New York: Monthly Review Press. [3] 1994, L Ethnie l assaut des nations 1995, La gestion capitaliste de la crise 1996, Les dfis de la mondialisation 1997, Die Zukunft des Weltsystems. Herausforderungen der Globalisierung. Herausgegeben und aus dem Franzoesischen uebersetzt von Joachim Wilke Hamburg: VSA. 1997, Critique de l air du temps 1999, "Judaism, Christianity and Islam: An Introductory Approach to their Real or Supposed Specificities by a Non-Theologian" in "Global capitalism, liberation theology, and the social sciences: An analysis of the contradictions of modernity at the turn of the millennium" (Andreas Mueller, Arno Tausch and Paul Zulehner (Eds.)), Nova Science Publishers, Hauppauge, Commack, New York 1999, Spectres of capitalism: a critique of current intellectual fashions 2000, L hgmonisme des tats-Unis et l effacement du projet europen 2002, Mondialisation, comprehendre pour agir 2003, Obsolescent Capitalism 2004, The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World 2005, with Ali El Kenz, Europe and the Arab world; patterns and prospects for the new relationship 2006, Beyond US Hegemony: Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World 2008, with James Membrez, The World We Wish to See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century 2009, 'Aid for Development' in 'Aid to Africa: Redeemer or Coloniser?' Oxford: Pambazuka Press [4] 2010, 'Eurocentrism - Modernity, Religion and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism' 2nd edition, Oxford: Pambazuka Press [5] 2010, 'Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism?' Oxford: Pambazuka Press [6] 2010, 'Global History - a View from the South' Oxford: Pambazuka Press [7] 2011, 'Maldevelopment - Anatomy of a Global Failure' 2nd edition, Oxford: Pambazuka Press [8]

Writings about Samir Amin

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Aidan Forster-Carter: The Empirical Samir Amin, in S. Amin: The Arab Economy Today, London 1982, pp. 1 40 Duru Tobi: On Amin's Concepts - autocentric/ blocked development in Historical Perspectives, in: Economic Papers (Warsaw), Nr. 15, 1987, pp. 143 163 Fouhad Nohra: Thories du capitalisme mondial. Paris 1997 Gerald M. Meier, Dudley Seers (eds.): Pioneers in Development. Oxford 1984

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