Imitation of nature

Some scientists assert that the 21st century will be a century of biology. They are of the opinion that an ideal, peaceful community life is attainable by imitating nature. This kind of thinking is not new. There is a history of application of some socio-biological information about animal behaviour in some studies of human social behaviour, and the application in manmade artefacts of the design and structure of some living creatures (so-called bio-engineering). Adaptation of the structures which enable birds to fly in the design of planes is a well-known example.

Whether the sensitive measures in the human body, which is the most perfect of biological structures, and the ideal, economical balance in its bio-chemical and biological mechanisms, are applicable in the organization of human societies is a question that has attracted the attention of many scientists. If a living body is a perfect organism composed of billions of cells and millions of physiological and bio-chemical processes take place in it without any error or failure, and, in parallel with this, the living system itself both grows and reproduces and defends and repairs itself, then must it not be possible to apply such a system to a community of such living creatures?

Share of values

Although the brain and spinal marrow have the main functions in directing the operation of human or animal bodies that have a nervous system, the ‘lower’ systems such as stomach and intestines also make a contribution. Each of these organs or systems plays a significant part in the working and maintenance of a healthy body. However conspicuous the function of organs such as the brain, heart and liver, it cannot be said that any of the other organs like kidneys or stomach or intestines are less vital. Especially when we bear in mind that the existence of anything depends on the existence of all its parts, and that its death or non-existence may be effected by the lack of any of those parts, or that a single, cancerous cell may ultimately cause the death of a whole body, we realize that each part has a vital function in the operation and maintenance of the living whole.

The health of the parts is necessary to the health of the whole. If the stomach and intestines fail to secrete the necessary enzymes for digestion, however healthy the brain and heart are, you will die of hunger and lack of necessary energy. Likewise, if your pancreas does not work well enough to secrete the necessary insulin, it will cause the failure of the metabolism of sugar. If, again, fat accumulates in your veins because of a failure of even a single bio-chemical mechanism, then the health of your heart will not suffice for you to survive. These simple examples suffice to show that there is nothing unnecessary or superfluous in the system. Even if some organs have relatively greater value in maintaining the body, that does not mean that other organs are less valuable. The same should be the case with the health and maintenance of a community.

No negligence however little it may be

The least failure in any of the organs or systems of the body manifests itself as a pain or uneasiness. For example, a pain caused by a callous on your toe which prevents you from treading normally, may lead to pains in your waist or knees. An insignificant-seeming callous may upset the balance of your legs and waist vertebra.

The same is true for a community. Seemingly negligible failures in the life of a community may frequently give rise to great problems later on. The health of non-central parts of a community corresponding to such bodily extremities as the toe is almost as important as the health of those parts corresponding to the brain and heart in a body. If any defect or failure in any of the former is seen as negligible and attention needed to remove or remedy the problem is not given, it may lead to disorder of the whole system.

Economic structure

Inflation, shortage of means of livelihood (employment), poverty, insecurity, and social ills such as bribery and abuses, and social crimes such as theft, are among the primary diseases undermining the health of a community. Every duty to be done within the structure of a community is like the wheels or parts of a machine, each with a unique function and value of its own. Each of the parts of a social structure should contribute to economic development and take its share in that development in return, and on occasions of economic crisis, then each of those parts should share the responsibility and results. Again in this respect the working of a body can be imitated.

When a body cannot get sufficient food, its metabolic rate, the rate it uses up the food taken in, is reduced. The body, as it were, tightens its belt, adapts to a lower standard of living. It slows down its work- rate and uses energy economically to survive. A lower pulse rate uses body energy more economically.

A body works automatically in accordance with the rules its Maker has established for it. By contrast a community is composed of people having free will. Therefore, the imitation of a body by a community depends on its members disciplining themselves. They must know how to restrain their bodily urges and control some bad qualities common to men such as greed, selfishness and refusal to be content. In a biological system, the commands issuing from the central nervous system and the stimulants coming from glands take into account the structure, working system and endurance and tolerance capacity of each and every organ and tissue and their molecular structure. Also, since all sorts of stimuli and responses coming from organs and tissues are carried by the central nervous system with due care and attention, nothing wrong emerges in normal conditions. Thus, in order for a community to be as well ordered as a body, those who hold its reins, those who occupy the governmental positions should know all the units forming it well enough with all their compositions and needs and give due consideration to their reflections and the responses coming from them.

Sharing happiness and sorrows

If, for example, there is not sufficient sustenance in blood and the stomach and intestines suffer shortage of food, the brain never lets the body amuse itself or relax in pleasures and extravagance. Any pain or problem which emerges in any part of the body is shared by the whole body itself. If, by contrast, the leaders of a community indulge in luxuries and pleasures while some sections of it suffer from deprivation of the basic necessities of life, then it is not possible to talk of it being a healthy community.

The balance of income and output

It is inevitable for a body to grow fat and become diseased when too much food enters it and, by contrast, get thin and become diseased if it cannot get enough food. A healthy, balanced nourishment depends on the balance between the food taken and used up as energy. This balance of supply and demand or income and output changes according to the periods of babyhood, youth, full development and old age. Like the body, a community must be careful about establishing a balance of supply and demand. Unbalanced development, imbalance between income and output, and deepening of the gap between the rich and poor are some of the social diseases leading a community to disease or death.

System and energy

A system needs sufficient energy to survive and preserve its vitality and to develop. There is no difference in needing energy between an insect and a whale and between an elephant and a man, nor does a state or community differ from a factory or work-shop in needing and using it rationally. In order to be able to grow and make new syntheses for production, besides raw material, a living system is in dire need of energy. We can use the substances which we take by eating and drinking and will serve as building material for our bodies only by burning carbohydrates and fat to produce energy. A body which cannot take the kinds of food supplying energy loses its vitality. Tissues begin to separate and cells break down and die. Similarly, the amount of the energy a community needs for a good economic life and the cost of it are of vital importance for the health of that community. The more abundant and less expensive energy is, the more balanced and productive its economic life is.

Feed-back

One of the significant features of a living organism is, that it operates under control by a feed-back system. Every event in this system is connected with others, none of them being independent. If any substance increases above a certain measure, the increase is blocked up by a mechanism beginning to work just at that time. For example, in the process of the kidneys separating waste liquid from the blood to discard it from the body with some amount of water, the density of the waste substances in it such as urea, uric acid and superfluous salt is sensitively regulated. If it is hot and the body requires to be cooled through sweat, the kidneys hold more water and prevent dehydration. If, by contrast, it is cold and there is no need to sweat, this time, they discard more water and thereby regulate the inner balance of the body.

Maintenance of the balance of the body requires sensitivity to whatever happens within and outside the body. There are sufficient receptors in each of the sense organs, particularly the skin, in tendons and in the walls of the veins, to feel any change of heat, pressure, light, food and oxygen, etc., in the inner and outer environment, and inform the central nervous system accordingly. In this way, the body is adaptable to a wide range of conditions in the world.

Similarly, in order to maintain the order of a community, it must have the same adaptability. This is possible through a loose structure of bureaucracy, a sophisticated communication network and a well- ordered system established on well- working principles.

Co-ordination within the system

Co-ordination and making good each other’s shortcomings are important characteristics of a living body. For example, when we are eating or are full after eating, the veins in the stomach and intestines swell and more blood is pumped into them so that the stomach and intestines can work efficiently. While one is running or doing physical exercise, the muscles need more oxygen and glucose which are carried in the blood: the veins in internal organs become narrow so that more blood can be sent to the muscles. If someone unaware of this attempts to do severe physical exercise on a full stomach, the body will have to exert more effort to send blood to both the stomach and muscles and become exhausted, as well as causing the heart to become overworked and tire.

Similarly, co-ordination among its institutions and members, division of labour and putting things in order of importance are vital for the institutions of a healthy community as well as for the community itself. Just as too much heavy exercise or overeating may cause the brain to be left without sufficient blood or the kidneys to stop filtering, excessive expenditure on some sections of labour or discrimination between the sections or institutions of a community may result in great disruptions and uneasiness in it. 

Education and collective consciousness

Many more examples may be given for the correspondence between a living body and a community. We can take lessons from a living body to realize a healthy social life. However, what is particularly worthy of mention here is that while a body works automatically according to a magnificent program or system which requires infinite knowledge to prepare and establish — knowledge of the structure of all the cells, tissues and organs of the body and their way of working, and of the nature of their relation among themselves and the relation of the body with its near and remote environment, in short, knowledge of the whole of the universe — the members of a community have free will and therefore require to be disciplined and controlled. This is possible through a perfect educational system fully aware of the nature of man and his material, spiritual and social needs and having the necessary equipment to satisfy them.

So that he may survive and fulfil his functions among the creatures in the world, man is empowered with three principal faculties. These are his appetites — for the opposite sex, offspring, livelihood, commodities, etc.; his anger or forcefulness in defence and struggle; and his power of reasoning or intellect. In order that man may attain moral perfection by struggling against excess in the use of these three faculties, they are not restricted in nature. However, mans individual and collective happiness lies in his disciplining them for the sake of a harmonious, peaceful individual and social life. He also needs to be in transactions with his fellow-men to exchange the fruits of his skills and labour with those of others. This requires an overall justice in society. So, unless man disciplines his faculties, they may drive him to immorality, illicit sexual relationships, unlawful livelihood, tyranny, injustices, deception, falsehood, and other vices. To prevent the chaos and suffering that must follow undisciplined exercise of human powers and establish justice in society, man must submit to an authority that will guide and regulate his collective affairs. Seeing that there is a perfect harmony in the working of his body, a working which displays infinite knowledge, wisdom and consciousness, although his body is made up of parts completely unconscious, ignorant, deaf and blind, the authority to which man must submit must be the same as that which governs his body and environment. And, just as the body works, although unconsciously, in perfect co-ordination, the members of a community must endeavour to establish a like co-ordination and achieve an effective collective consciousness, that is, responsibility to and for each other.

Genetic counselling is the process whereby an individual or family obtain advice and information about a genetic condition that may affect the individual and family, their children and the wider community. The aim of such counselling is to enable appropriate decisions to be taken regarding marriage, reproduction, abortion, and health management.

Islamic teachings encourage counselling. The Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, said: The religion (i.e. Islam) is sincere counselling and good advice (Bukhari, Muslim). He also said: The counsellor should be trustworthy. Genetic counselling is a new field of medical practice that demands extensive knowledge of genetics, the management of genetic disease and how it impacts on the individual, the family and the community at large. The counsellor must therefore be knowledgeable in the field, otherwise he will be answerable. The Prophet said: If a person practises medicine without appropriate knowledge, then he is liable (Abu Dawud). Experts in Islamic law explain that the person must be proficient in the particular field of medicine he is practising; it is not sufficient to know general medicine, the person must have obtained the appropriate specialist training. The Prophet said: No man is wise except through experience (Bukhari, Muslim).

In addition to knowledge and proficiency, the counsellor needs also to be considerate, compassionate and able to guard the confidentiality of the information he is given. The Prophet said: Whoever guards the secrets of a Muslim, God will guard his secret in this life and on the Day of Resurrection (Muslim). And: God will show mercy to those who are merciful to people (Bukhari, Tirmidhi, Ahmad, and others). Being considerate and kind, and giving good advice to those who seek it, is the basis of Islamic ethics in general and medical ethics in particular. The worst thing of all is doing harm intentionally or even unintentionally, the former being a crime and the latter an offence. This rule is derived from the explicit injunction of the Prophet: Do no harm nor return harm with harm (Abu Dawud).

The genetic counsellor may not impose his views on his clients. Rather, he must let them reach their own decisions. The counsellor’s responsibility is to enable his clients’ responsibility by providing them with the necessary facts and information in plain language that they can understand easily and fully.

The Islamic creed places the highest value on personal freedom and hence upon personal responsibility for one’s actions. The genetic counsellor should therefore provide the best available information, and then give the most sincere advice without trying to impose it: the clients must reach any decision themselves.

Genetic diseases

Monogenic diseases, i.e. diseases inherited through one gene, constitute only 10-15% per cent of congenital diseases and malformations in the population as a whole, but account for a much larger percentage of childhood diseases: in many Western countries, for example, some 50% of all deaths of children up to age 15 are attributed to hereditary factors.

Many of the most common diseases world-wide, e.g. diabetes mellitus, hypertension, ischaemic heart disease and cancer, have a hereditary component. Many neurological and psychiatric ailments are either monogenic hereditary diseases or heredity is a major causative factor. Similarly, diseases of the blood are either directly caused by a monogenic hereditary factor, or other hereditary factors have a major causative role. Thalassemia and sickle cell anaemias are examples of autosomal diseases that cause malady and high morbidity in many countries, notably in the Mediterranean and Arab world.

Close-cousin marriages and their consequences

Consanguine or close-cousin marriages are commonplace in most Arab countries. The incidence of genetic diseases is correspondingly high; for example, 5-10% of the population as a whole carry the gene for thalassemia. Islamic teachings do not forbid but do discourage first cousin marriages – i.e. insofar as they are permitted at all, such marriages are only allowable exceptionally, not encouraged as the norm. It is narrated that when it was brought to the attention of ‘Umar ibn al Khattab, the second Caliph, that the children of the Bani Assayib were often weak and sickly, he advised this tribe to avoid close-cousin marriages and to seek spouses for their children from remote tribes; he said: ‘Marry from remote tribes, otherwise you will be weak and unhealthy.’

Responses in the Arab world

In the first half of this century, many Arab governments (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco and others) made a premarital medical examination mandatory. However, this had little effect on the incidence of consanguineous marriages or hereditary diseases as there were no means for searching out carriers of genetic diseases. In any case-as we are bound to note with deep regret-a medical certificate was often provided without even a routine medical examination.

Several recent symposia (for example, in Amman, Jordan, 10th August 1994) have discussed the implementation of a law making it obligatory to test for the thalassemia gene as a precondition for granting a marriage license. However, there are immense difficulties with this policy. The cost of such a test would be huge. Who would bear the cost? Most governments could not do so, and if they could, it would be by diverting funds from other more urgent medical needs. Individual citizens might decline the test or evade it on the grounds of poverty. If made compulsory, it is possible that medical certificates might be forged or false certificates sold for money. More serious is the question of personal autonomy: even if such tests could be funded and carried out with integrity, who could compel a couple, either or both of whom showed positive, not to marry? Attempting to do so would surely be, if at all practicable, wholly unethical.

In the case of such a couple, a number of alternatives might be put to them:

1 contraception or sterilization to avoid pregnancy;

2 adoption;

3 donation of a sperm or ovum or pre-embryo;

4 pre-implantation diagnosis;

5 diagnosis during pregnancy (e.g. chorion villus sampling, amniocentesis, blood tests from the expectant mother and the foetus, ultra sonography, etc.)

Each of these procedures needs to be scrutinized from an Islamic perspective:

1 Contraception and sterilization

Contraception is allowable under Islamic law as a temporary measure if the couple decide upon it and if there is no harm from the particular method used. Sterilization, however, is not acceptable unless there is danger to the mother’s health from pregnancy. Most couples long to have children and will not choose sterilization unless there is a serious impediment preventing safe procreation in their case. As infertile couples are willing to pay out huge sums of money and go to great lengths to have a child, it is impractical to expect couples carrying a recessive gene such as for thalassemia to opt for sterilization. Everyone of us carries some recessive genes and no-one will choose celibacy or sterilization for that reason alone.

We may note that there is support for sterilization from at least some of our jurists in the situation where a couple have already had some congenitally affected children and some not so affected, in which case they might accept this option.

2 Adoption

Adoption was abrogated by the Qur’an, and in Islamic law adoptive parents are not recognized as parents in the way that natural parents are. The child must be attached in lineage to his or her natural parents, and legitimate pregnancy is, according to the law, only within wedlock. The Qur’an says:

He did not make your adopted ones your sons. That is only a saying from your mouths which has no reality. Call them by [the names of] their [true] fathers. That is just in the sight of God. But if you do not know their fathers, call them your brothers in faith or your mawlas. There is no blame on you if you are mistaken. What counts is the intention of your hearts, and Allah is oft- forgiving and most merciful. (33, 4-5)

Bringing up orphans is a highly commended act of charity, encouraged by Islamic teachings, but even then the lineage of the child must remain to his or her natural father. Therefore, while a couple who are carriers of a lethal gene or a gene that carries a risk of great malady and morbidity for their offspring cannot become natural parents, they can nevertheless adopt one or more orphans in the sense that they can look after and care for them and have all the rewards of bringing them up.

3 Donation of a sperm, ovum or pre-embryo

In the West, a new technology of procreation is being made available to infertile couples. This technology, making use of semen banks and in vitro fertilization techniques, may involve donated sperm or ova, a donated pre-embryo (blastula or morulla), or, in the case of surrogate motherhood, a None of this technology is acceptable in the view of Islamic teachings which recognize procreation only within the bounds of wedlock excluding any third party from the process. Therefore, a Muslim couple who are carrying a lethal gene or serious disease gene cannot make use of either donated sperm or ova or pre-embryos or surrogate motherhood. These methods are refuted by all Islamic jurists on the grounds that procreation must be limited to the spouses alone, without the intervention of third parties.

4 Pre-implantation diagnosis

Advances in medical technology over the last decade or so have made it possible, at least in some specialist clinics, to remove one or more cells from donated womb, the blastula (pre-embryo) prior to its implantation in the womb. A husband’s semen is allowed to fertilize in vitro the ovum taken from his wife; when fertilization occurs, the zygote is allowed to grow to the blastula or morulla stage – this happens a few days after fertilization. If genetic disease or chromosomal abnormality (e.g. triosomy 13, 18 or 21) is suspected, one or more cells are taken from the blastula for appropriate testing. If the blastula is shown to have the defective gene or chromosome, it is discarded and another one tested. Only the unblemished blastula is reimplanted.

The main disadvantage of this technology is the low rate of success after reimplantation (pregnancy rate 30% in the best centres; while take-home-baby rate is around 15%). The merit of the method is that it avoids abortion. The technique is also paving the way for gene therapy and manipulation at an early stage: as yet unfeasible, this will surely be possible in the near future. However, along with the technical problems facing gene therapy, there are also a number of ethical problems (see below).

5 Diagnosis during pregnancy

Better and more accurate diagnoses of congenital malformations, genetic diseases and chromosomal abnormalities are becoming available with the tremendous advances in medical technology.

Simple blood tests from the expectant mother can help the diagnosis of, for example, alpha feto proteins in cases of neural tube defects, viz. anencephaly and spina bifida. Ultrasound can detect many dysmorphic abnormalities as well as congenital defects of the heart, brain and kidneys. CVS or chorion villus sampling, which can be done during the 8th week of pregnancy, can detect genetic and chromosomal defects when suspected. So too can amniocentesis but at a much later stage of pregnancy, between the 14th and 16th weeks. The advantage of early diagnosis by CVS is offset by higher percentage of abortions and complications (2-3%), compared to amniocentesis which is safer albeit giving a much later diagnosis. The couple are offered the choice of abortion when a serious congenital or hereditary disease is discovered.

The Islamic Jurisprudence Council of the Islamic World League in its 12th session (Makka, 10- 17 February 1990) agreed a fatwa by majority vote which allows the option of abortion to the parents on the condition that the pregnancy is less than 120 days old (computed from fertilization and not last menstrual cycle); that a committee of specialist experts have decided that the foetus is grossly malformed and that its life would be a calamity for the foetus and for the family; and that the malformation is very serious and neither treatable nor manageable. On the basis of this fatwa, abortions of foetuses with serious congenital diseases are carried out in the hospitals in Saudi Arabia.

Unanswered ethical questions and dilemmas

There are many dilemmas. Is it allowable to abort a foetus showing Downs syndrome although even with this condition it is possible to live a quiet, peaceful life? If the Huntington’s disease gene is detected, is an abortion justified, although the disease will not appear until age forty or even sixty? Is it permissible to abort those who are homozygous for sickle cell disease or thassalemia or phenyl ketonuria or homocystinuria? For the last two diseases mentioned there is a treatment, namely to avoid foods that contain phenyl alanine or methionme. There is some treatment possible also for the haemolytic anaemias, namely blood transfusion and iron chelation therapy (desferrio-xamine injections).

It is greatly to be hoped that in the not too distant future advances in gene therapy will remove the need to consider abortion in such cases. In the meantime, the best policy is to encourage couples considering marriage to have pre-marital medical examinations for the infectious and hereditary diseases common in their community. It is also important to educate people more effectively and actively about the dangers of consanguineous marriages which, as noted earlier, are very common in most Arab countries.

Genetic counselling is the process whereby an individual or family obtain advice and information about a genetic condition that may affect the individual and family, their children and the wider community. The aim of such counselling is to enable appropriate decisions to be taken regarding marriage, reproduction, abortion, and health management.

Islamic teachings encourage counselling. The Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings, said: The religion (i.e. Islam) is sincere counselling and good advice (Bukhari, Muslim). He also said: The counsellor should be trustworthy. Genetic counselling is a new field of medical practice that demands extensive knowledge of genetics, the management of genetic disease and how it impacts on the individual, the family and the community at large. The counsellor must therefore be knowledgeable in the field, otherwise he will be answerable. The Prophet said: If a person practises medicine without appropriate knowledge, then he is liable (Abu Dawud). Experts in Islamic law explain that the person must be proficient in the particular field of medicine he is practising; it is not sufficient to know general medicine, the person must have obtained the appropriate specialist training. The Prophet said: No man is wise except through experience (Bukhari, Muslim).

In addition to knowledge and proficiency, the counsellor needs also to be considerate, compassionate and able to guard the confidentiality of the information he is given. The Prophet said: Whoever guards the secrets of a Muslim, God will guard his secret in this life and on the Day of Resurrection (Muslim). And: God will show mercy to those who are merciful to people (Bukhari, Tirmidhi, Ahmad, and others). Being considerate and kind, and giving good advice to those who seek it, is the basis of Islamic ethics in general and medical ethics in particular. The worst thing of all is doing harm intentionally or even unintentionally, the former being a crime and the latter an offence. This rule is derived from the explicit injunction of the Prophet: Do no harm nor return harm with harm (Abu Dawud).

The genetic counsellor may not impose his views on his clients. Rather, he must let them reach their own decisions. The counsellor’s responsibility is to enable his clients’ responsibility by providing them with the necessary facts and information in plain language that they can understand easily and fully.

The Islamic creed places the highest value on personal freedom and hence upon personal responsibility for one’s actions. The genetic counsellor should therefore provide the best available information, and then give the most sincere advice without trying to impose it: the clients must reach any decision themselves.

Genetic diseases

Monogenic diseases, i.e. diseases inherited through one gene, constitute only 10-15% per cent of congenital diseases and malformations in the population as a whole, but account for a much larger percentage of childhood diseases: in many Western countries, for example, some 50% of all deaths of children up to age 15 are attributed to hereditary factors.

Many of the most common diseases world-wide, e.g. diabetes mellitus, hypertension, ischaemic heart disease and cancer, have a hereditary component. Many neurological and psychiatric ailments are either monogenic hereditary diseases or heredity is a major causative factor. Similarly, diseases of the blood are either directly caused by a monogenic hereditary factor, or other hereditary factors have a major causative role. Thalassemia and sickle cell anaemias are examples of autosomal diseases that cause malady and high morbidity in many countries, notably in the Mediterranean and Arab world.

Close-cousin marriages and their consequences

Consanguine or close-cousin marriages are commonplace in most Arab countries. The incidence of genetic diseases is correspondingly high; for example, 5-10% of the population as a whole carry the gene for thalassemia. Islamic teachings do not forbid but do discourage first cousin marriages – i.e. insofar as they are permitted at all, such marriages are only allowable exceptionally, not encouraged as the norm. It is narrated that when it was brought to the attention of ‘Umar ibn al Khattab, the second Caliph, that the children of the Bani Assayib were often weak and sickly, he advised this tribe to avoid close-cousin marriages and to seek spouses for their children from remote tribes; he said: ‘Marry from remote tribes, otherwise you will be weak and unhealthy.’

Responses in the Arab world

In the first half of this century, many Arab governments (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco and others) made a premarital medical examination mandatory. However, this had little effect on the incidence of consanguineous marriages or hereditary diseases as there were no means for searching out carriers of genetic diseases. In any case-as we are bound to note with deep regret-a medical certificate was often provided without even a routine medical examination.

Several recent symposia (for example, in Amman, Jordan, 10th August 1994) have discussed the implementation of a law making it obligatory to test for the thalassemia gene as a precondition for granting a marriage license. However, there are immense difficulties with this policy. The cost of such a test would be huge. Who would bear the cost? Most governments could not do so, and if they could, it would be by diverting funds from other more urgent medical needs. Individual citizens might decline the test or evade it on the grounds of poverty. If made compulsory, it is possible that medical certificates might be forged or false certificates sold for money. More serious is the question of personal autonomy: even if such tests could be funded and carried out with integrity, who could compel a couple, either or both of whom showed positive, not to marry? Attempting to do so would surely be, if at all practicable, wholly unethical.

In the case of such a couple, a number of alternatives might be put to them:

1. contraception or sterilization to avoid pregnancy;
2. adoption;
3. donation of a sperm or ovum or pre-embryo;
4. pre-implantation diagnosis;
5. diagnosis during pregnancy (e.g. chorion villus sampling, amniocentesis, blood tests from the expectant mother and the foetus, ultra sonography, etc.)

Each of these procedures needs to be scrutinized from an Islamic perspective:

1. Contraception and sterilization

Contraception is allowable under Islamic law as a temporary measure if the couple decide upon it and if there is no harm from the particular method used. Sterilization, however, is not acceptable unless there is danger to the mother’s health from pregnancy. Most couples long to have children and will not choose sterilization unless there is a serious impediment preventing safe procreation in their case. As infertile couples are willing to pay out huge sums of money and go to great lengths to have a child, it is impractical to expect couples carrying a recessive gene such as for thalassemia to opt for sterilization. Everyone of us carries some recessive genes and no-one will choose celibacy or sterilization for that reason alone.

We may note that there is support for sterilization from at least some of our jurists in the situation where a couple have already had some congenitally affected children and some not so affected, in which case they might accept this option.

2. Adoption

Adoption was abrogated by the Qur’an, and in Islamic law adoptive parents are not recognized as parents in the way that natural parents are. The child must be attached in lineage to his or her natural parents, and legitimate pregnancy is, according to the law, only within wedlock. The Qur’an says:

He did not make your adopted ones your sons. That is only a saying from your mouths which has no reality. Call them by [the names of] their [true] fathers. That is just in the sight of God. But if you do not know their fathers, call them your brothers in faith or your mawlas. There is no blame on you if you are mistaken. What counts is the intention of your hearts, and Allah is oft- forgiving and most merciful. (33, 4-5)

Bringing up orphans is a highly commended act of charity, encouraged by Islamic teachings, but even then the lineage of the child must remain to his or her natural father. Therefore, while a couple who are carriers of a lethal gene or a gene that carries a risk of great malady and morbidity for their offspring cannot become natural parents, they can nevertheless adopt one or more orphans in the sense that they can look after and care for them and have all the rewards of bringing them up.

3. Donation of a sperm, ovum or pre-embryo

In the West, a new technology of procreation is being made available to infertile couples. This technology, making use of semen banks and in vitro fertilization techniques, may involve donated sperm or ova, a donated pre-embryo (blastula or morulla), or, in the case of surrogate motherhood, a None of this technology is acceptable in the view of Islamic teachings which recognize procreation only within the bounds of wedlock excluding any third party from the process. Therefore, a Muslim couple who are carrying a lethal gene or serious disease gene cannot make use of either donated sperm or ova or pre-embryos or surrogate motherhood. These methods are refuted by all Islamic jurists on the grounds that procreation must be limited to the spouses alone, without the intervention of third parties.

4. Pre-implantation diagnosis

Advances in medical technology over the last decade or so have made it possible, at least in some specialist clinics, to remove one or more cells from donated womb, the blastula (pre-embryo) prior to its implantation in the womb. A husband’s semen is allowed to fertilize in vitro the ovum taken from his wife; when fertilization occurs, the zygote is allowed to grow to the blastula or morulla stage – this happens a few days after fertilization. If genetic disease or chromosomal abnormality (e.g. triosomy 13, 18 or 21) is suspected, one or more cells are taken from the blastula for appropriate testing. If the blastula is shown to have the defective gene or chromosome, it is discarded and another one tested. Only the unblemished blastula is reimplanted.

The main disadvantage of this technology is the low rate of success after reimplantation (pregnancy rate 30% in the best centres; while take-home-baby rate is around 15%). The merit of the method is that it avoids abortion. The technique is also paving the way for gene therapy and manipulation at an early stage: as yet unfeasible, this will surely be possible in the near future. However, along with the technical problems facing gene therapy, there are also a number of ethical problems (see below).

5. Diagnosis during pregnancy

Better and more accurate diagnoses of congenital malformations, genetic diseases and chromosomal abnormalities are becoming available with the tremendous advances in medical technology.

Simple blood tests from the expectant mother can help the diagnosis of, for example, alpha feto proteins in cases of neural tube defects, viz. anencephaly and spina bifida. Ultrasound can detect many dysmorphic abnormalities as well as congenital defects of the heart, brain and kidneys. CVS or chorion villus sampling, which can be done during the 8th week of pregnancy, can detect genetic and chromosomal defects when suspected. So too can amniocentesis but at a much later stage of pregnancy, between the 14th and 16th weeks. The advantage of early diagnosis by CVS is offset by higher percentage of abortions and complications (2-3%), compared to amniocentesis which is safer albeit giving a much later diagnosis. The couple are offered the choice of abortion when a serious congenital or hereditary disease is discovered.

The Islamic Jurisprudence Council of the Islamic World League in its 12th session (Makka, 10- 17 February 1990) agreed a fatwa by majority vote which allows the option of abortion to the parents on the condition that the pregnancy is less than 120 days old (computed from fertilization and not last menstrual cycle); that a committee of specialist experts have decided that the foetus is grossly malformed and that its life would be a calamity for the foetus and for the family; and that the malformation is very serious and neither treatable nor manageable. On the basis of this fatwa, abortions of foetuses with serious congenital diseases are carried out in the hospitals in Saudi Arabia.

Unanswered ethical questions and dilemmas

There are many dilemmas. Is it allowable to abort a foetus showing Downs syndrome although even with this condition it is possible to live a quiet, peaceful life? If the Huntington’s disease gene is detected, is an abortion justified, although the disease will not appear until age forty or even sixty? Is it permissible to abort those who are homozygous for sickle cell disease or thassalemia or phenyl ketonuria or homocystinuria? For the last two diseases mentioned there is a treatment, namely to avoid foods that contain phenyl alanine or methionme. There is some treatment possible also for the haemolytic anaemias, namely blood transfusion and iron chelation therapy (desferrio-xamine injections).

It is greatly to be hoped that in the not too distant future advances in gene therapy will remove the need to consider abortion in such cases. In the meantime, the best policy is to encourage couples considering marriage to have pre-marital medical examinations for the infectious and hereditary diseases common in their community. It is also important to educate people more effectively and actively about the dangers of consanguineous marriages which, as noted earlier, are very common in most Arab countries.

See what is written in these luminous missives of Wisdom:

They are all delivering together this beneficient discourse:

“Each of us is a radiant proof

for the majestic sovereignty of an All-Powerful One of glory.

We bear witness to the existence of the Maker

and also to His Unity and Power.

We are His subtle miracles gilding the face of the skies,

for the angels to make excursions on.

We are the innumerable discerning eyes of the heavens Directed to Paradise, and overseeing the earth.

We are the exquisite fruits

Attached to the heavenly branch of the tree of creation;

And to the twigs of the Milky Way, attached by

The hand of wisdom of the Majestic, All-Gracious Being.

For the inhabitants of the heavens, we are travelling mosques,

revolving houses and exalted homes, light-diffusing lamps, mighty ships, planes.

We are miracles of the Power of the All-Powerful One of Perfection, the All-Wise One off Majesty;

each of us is a wonder of His creative art, a rarity of His Wisdom, a marvel of His creation, a world of light.

To the man who is truly human,

We present hundreds of thousands of proofs in hundreds of thousands of tongues;

The eye of the atheist, may it be blind, never sees our faces,

nor do his ears hear our speech; we are signs that speak the truth.

On us is the same stamp and seal.

We obey our Lord and glorify Him, and mention Him in worship.

We are ecstatic lovers in the widest circle of the Milky Way, the circle reciting our Lord’s Names.

(Said Nursi, The Words I, pp. 293-4.) 

V. Tunniclife was quoted in The Fountain, Jan. Mar. 1996, No 13, p.36:

All life requires energy, nearly all life on earth looks to the sun as the source. But solar energy not the only kind of energy available on the earth. Consider the energy that drives the movement and eruption of the planet’s crust. When you look at an active volcano, you are witnessing the escape of heat that has been produced by radioactive decay in the earth’s interior and is finally reaching the surface. Why should there not be biological communities associated with the same nuclear energy that moves continents and makes mountains? And why could not whole communities be fuelled by chemical, rather than, solar energy?

Most of us associate the escape of heat from the interior of the earth with violent events and unstable physical conditions, with extreme high temperatures and the release of toxic gasses-circumstances that are hardly conducive to life.

The notion that biological communities might spring up in a geologically active environment seemed fantastic. And until recently, few organisms were known to survive without a direct or indirect way to tap the sun’s energy. But such communities do exist, and they represent one of the most startling discoveries of 20th-century biology. They live in the deep ocean, under conditions that are both severe and variable.

This ‘startling’ discovery of modern biology contains clues to some other realities, which sciences should consider. The Qur’an declares:

Surely, We have adorned the world’s heaven with lamps, and We have made them missiles for the devils. (al-Mulk, 67.5)

The ‘startling’ discovery of biology suggests that just as the earth does, the heavens should also have inhabitants of their own. Indeed, reality also requires it to be so, for, as Said Nursi writes (The Words 1, Izmir 1997, pp. 233-42), despite its small size and relative insignificance, the earth being alternately emptied and filled with living and conscious beings suggests-rather, it shows evidently-that the heavens too, which have magnificent constellations and are like decorated palaces, must also be filled with conscious and percipient beings. For the Creator has embellished and ornamented the universe with innumerable decorations, beauties, and inscriptions, and this evidently requires the existence of contemplative and appreciative eyes that will observe and be delighted. Certainly, beauty requires a lover, and food is given to the hungry. Men and jinn are able to perform only a millionth of this boundless duty, this glorious viewing, and this comprehensive worship. This means that countless sorts of angels and spirit beings are necessary to perform these infinite and diverse duties and acts of worship.

The Creator Who continuously creates subtle life and enlightened, percipient beings from dense earth and turbid water, must certainly have created conscious beings from light and even from darkness which are worthier to have a higher life and spirit, and created them in great abundance. In the language of Islam, those inhabitants of various kinds are called angels.

The earth and the heavens are connected to each other like two countries under one government. There are important relations and transactions between them. Things necessary for the earth like light, heat, blessings, and forms of mercy like rain, come, rather, are being sent, from the sky. Also, as unanimously confirmed by all the heavenly religions, which are founded on Revelation, and as is agreed upon by all the saintly scholars who unveil the secret truths of creation on the basis of what they have witnessed, the angels and spirit beings descend to the earth from the heavens. From this, it may be concluded almost as certainly as if it were directly sensed that for the inhabitants of the earth there is a way to ascend to the heavens.

Indeed, everyone can always travel to the heavens through his mind, vision and imagination. So too, freed from or purified of the gross heaviness of their carnal and material being, the spirits of the Prophets and saints travel there by God’s leave, and the spirits of the ordinary people do so after their death. Since those who are lightened’ and have acquired ‘subtlety’ and spiritual refinement travel there, for sure, certain inhabitants of the earth and the air who are clothed in an ‘ideal’ body or energetic envelope or immaterial form, and are light and subtle like spirits, may go to the heavens. Since there is journeying between the earth and the heavens, and important necessities for the earth are sent from the heavens; and since pure spirits travel to the heavens, for sure, imitating the pure spirits, the evil spirits too will attempt to travel to the heavenly abode. For, physically, they are light and subtle. However, they will certainly be repulsed and repelled, for by nature they are evil and unclean. Again, as the silence and tranquillity, the order and serene regularity of the heavens, and their vastness and radiance, show, their inhabitants are not like those of the earth; they are all obedient to God and do whatever He commands them.There is nothing to cause quarrels or disputes among them because they are innocent, their realm is vast, their nature is pure, and their stations are fixed. So, when devils or evil spirit beings attempt to ascend the heavens, the pure inhabitants of the heavens are mobilized to repel them from the heavens.

Without doubt, there must be a sign or reflection in the visible, material world of this important interaction and contest. For the wisdom of the sovereignty of Divine Lordship requires that the Lord should put a sign, an indication, for conscious beings, particularly for man, whose most important duty is witnessing, supervising, and acting as a herald to, His significant disposals in the realm of the Unseen. This is just as He has made rain a sign for men to explain, in physical terms, His countless miracles in spring, and also made apparent (natural) causes the pointers to the wonders of His art, so that He may call the inhabitants of the visible, material world to witness them, indeed to attract the attentive gaze of all the inhabitants of the vast heavens and the earth to that amazing exhibition. That is, He displays the vast heavens as a castle or city arrayed with towers on which sentries are posted, so that those inhabitants of the heavens and earth may reflect on the majesty of His Lordship.

Since wisdom requires the announcement of this elevated contest, there will surely be a sign for it. However, other than some stars being used as ‘missiles’ against the devils, no event among those of the atmosphere and heavens seems to be appropriate to this announcement. For it is evident how suitable for the repulsion of the devils are these stellar events, which resemble missiles and signal rockets fired from the formidable bastions of high castles. Further, unlike other events taking place in the heavens, no other function is known for such stellar events. In addition, this function has been known widely since the time of Adam, and witnessed by those who know the reality of things and events.

Like angels and other creatures, stars also have many different varieties. Some are extremely small, and some are extremely large. Everything that shines in the sky can be called a star. One sort of stars the Majestic Creator, the Gracious Maker, has created as a sort of jewels on the face of the sky or like the shining fruits of a vast tree. He has also made them the places of excursion or mounts or dwelling-places for His angels. He has made one sort of small stars missiles to drive off devils and kill them. Thus, firing these shooting stars to repulse devils may have three meanings:

The first: It is a sign that the law of contest is in force also in the most vast sphere of existence.

The second: It indicates that in the heavens there are watchful guards and obedient inhabitants, Divine forces, who do not like the earthly evil-doers to mix with and eavesdrop on them.

The third: The spying satans, who are the representatives of the foulness and wickedness on the earth, attempt to soil the clean and pure realm of the heavens inhabited by pure beings, and spy on the talk of their inhabitants in the name of evil spirits [unbelieving jinn and their human companions trying to mislead people especially through sorcery, mediumship and soothsaying]. Shooting stars are fired to prevent them and repulse them from the doors of the heavens.

The Perseid meteor shower observed in almost every year suggests that those meteors are shot for certain, important purposes. For they surprise observers by showing great diversity. The observations made as recently as 1993, demonstrate that the structure of the shower is yet poorly known.

According to information given by the International Meteor Organization about the events of the 1993 shower (Astronomy, October 1993), the first results posted for the night of 11/12 August came from Japan. Up to 20:30 (all times UT), 11 August, the meteor rates were found to be normal. A zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) of 40 meteors per hour (m/h) was tentatively assigned to the shower at this time.

Preliminary data from European observers indicated that the rates had gradually increased to ZHR of order 100 m/h between 20:00, 11 August and 01:00, 12 August. Observers in France reported a noticeable increase in rates after 00:30, 12 August, with the rate being about twice that of ‘normal’. The rates continued to climb between 01:00 and 03:00. A preliminary ZHR of 200 50 was ascribed to this period. The rates appeared to reach a maximum between 03:00 and 03:30. The ZHR at maximum was estimated to be of the order of 500. Observations from the Canary Islands indicated that the rates began to decline after 04:00.

Higher than normal rates were also reported from many observers in the United States and Japan. As commented by Martin Beech in Astronomy, p.11, the results clearly indicated that the shower did not behave as predicted. Speculation about a possible meteor storm proved incorrect. Another unexpected feature in 1993 was the high number of bright fireballs observed. Observers reported something like five times the normal level of Perseid fireballs on the night of 11/12 August The Perseid shower once again demonstrated how difficult it is to predict meteor shower activity.

A. Cressy Morrison (Man Does Not Stand Alone, New York, 1945, p.100) mentions, as a typical human characteristic, the reluctance to give up fixed ideas, the stubborn resistance to accepting unfamiliar truths. The early Greeks knew the earth was a sphere, but it took two thousand years to convince men that this fact is true. New ideas encounter opposition, ridicule and abuse, but truth survives and is verified. Neither scientific studies nor developments in science can offer any excuse not to accept God. What we observe in nature and what we obtain from it must encourage us to know Him more closely and see the strong bridge between science and religion, the world and the Hereafter, and between the reason and the spirit.

At the end of the 1950s, Richard Feynman (1961, pp.282-96) described the possibility of building computers that were ‘sub-microscopic’. More recently, several people have advocated the realization of massively parallel computation using the techniques and chemistry of molecular biology.

At the end of 1994 Leonard Adleman published a paper on ‘Molecular Computation of Solutions of Combinatorial Problems’ (Science, vol.266, pp.1021 – 24). He explained how a problem could be set up by synthesizing DNA molecules with a particular sequence, and solved by letting the DNA molecules react in a test tube, producing a molecule whose sequence is the answer. In the same paper he recounted how he had put this theory into practice by solving a standard problem with a DNA reaction system. Adleman called his DNA computer the TT-100, for test tube filled with 100 microlitres of fluid, which is all it took for the reactions to occur.

Since then, many advances have been proposed to refine the protocol for programming a DNA computer to reduce the complexity of the operations and eliminate errors (see Lipton, n.d.; and Boneh and Lipton, nd.). Despite their respective complexities, biological and mathematical operations have some similarities:

The very complex structure of a living being is the result of applying simple operations to initial information encoded in a DNA sequence.

The result f(w) of applying a computable function to an argument can be obtained by applying a combination of basic simple functions to w.

For the same reasons that DNA was probably selected for living organisms as a genetic material, its stability and predictability in reactions, DNA strings can also be used to encode information for mathematical systems.

Conventional computers represent information in terms of 0’s and l’s, physically expressed in terms of the flow of electrons through logical circuits. Builders of DNA computers represent information in terms of the chemical units of DNA. Calculating with an ordinary computer is done with a program that instructs electrons to travel on particular paths; with a DNA computer, calculation requires synthesizing particular sequences of DNA and letting them react in a test tube. In a scheme devised by Lipton (n.d.), the logical command AND is performed by separating DNA strands according to their sequences, and the command OR is done by pouring together DNA solutions containing specific sequences.

‘It will fill a bathtub, not the universe,’ says Lipton, ‘and it will be incredibly cheap to build.’ A pound of DNA in 1,000 quarts of fluid, about three-feet square, will hold more memory than all the computers ever made. The chemicals are inexpensive; DNA runs virtually on its own power, and the soup, with a little splicing, can be re-used from one experiment to the next. Lipton estimates that a superparallel DNA computer, offering trillions of processors working simultaneously, could be built for $100,000.

The fastest supercomputers can currently perform 1000 million instructions per second (MIPS); a single DNA molecule requires approximately 1000 seconds to perform an instruction (.001 MIPS). Obviously, if you want to perform one calculation at a time (serial logic), DNA computers are not a viable option. However, if one wanted to perform many calculations simultaneously (parallel logic), a computer such as the one described above can easily perform 1014 MIPS. DNA computers also require less energy and space. While existing supercomputers operate 109 operations per joule, a DNA computer could perform 2 x 1019 operations per joule (many times more efficient). Data can be stored on DNA at a density of approximately 1 bit per cubic nm, while existing storage media require 1012 cubic nm to store 1 bit (Adleman, 1995).

Thus, the potential of molecular computation is impressive. However, it is too early for either great optimism or great pessimism. It is possible that DNA computers will become more common for solving very complex problems and DNA computers may also become automated. In addition to the direct benefits of using DNA computers for performing complex computations, some of the operations of DNA computers already have (Adleman, 1995), and more could be, used in molecular and biochemical research.

References

• Adleman,L.(1994).’Moleculer computation of solutions to combinatorial problems’,Science,vol.266,pp.1021-24.
• Adleman,L.(1995 ‘On constructing a moleculer computer’:ftp://usc.edu/pub/csinfo/papers/adleman/molecular_coputer.ps
• Boneh,D.&Lipton,R.J.’Making DNA computers error resitant’.(Unpublished manuscript.)
• Feynman,R.P. (1961)’Minaturization’,in D.H.Gilbert (ed.)Reinhold,New York.
• Lipton,R.J.(n.d.)’Speeding up computations via molecular biology’:ftp://ftp.cs.princeton.edu/pub/people/rjl/bio.ps

Economic Individualism and Secularization

The wider context of Robinson Crusoe

Crusoe’s relationship with God is sincere, intense and actively personal. It is also general and subjective. He does not read the resources he uses as ‘signs of God’; only the general fact that they are available to him to work with is a ‘sign from God’, a helping hand from Providence. He has no objective relation with the world as given to him which might inspire him to call a halt to his efforts at economic ‘improvement’. He finds money on the shipwreck and reflects on its uselessness to him, but he keeps it anyway, in case. He keeps it because he continually hopes for the means (a labour force) to do more with his island colony. There is no reason for doing more other than that he simply can do more, and the inward hope that his striving will please God. Once economic individualism dominates the structures within which economic activity is undertaken, the urge to increase surpluses ceases to operate as a purpose and can never be satisfied. Instead, it operates like a mechanical process, a force that goes on ‘improving’ resources until either the resources are exhausted, or they are taken over by a rival force. The history of nation-states or empires founded upon the ideology of economic individualism corroborates in the outer world, as it were, what Crusoe experiences in the solitude of his island prison/garden. And that experience is also corroborated in our epoch by the ruin of this planet: no moral argument, no inward initiative from within an individual conscience, however sincere, suffices to prevent the degradation of resources by economic ‘improvement’; the only force capable of preventing it is the external, mechanical one of scarcity: the resources become too expensive to ‘improve’. Where conservation is the cheaper option, it is adopted: where it is not, the ‘improvement’ goes on relentlessly. The logic is not moral but economic.

More grave is the issue of secularization itself. Though people conceive of it as something willed and chosen by individuals or societies, it too has the unrelenting quality of a mechanical process and individuals and societies are passive in relation to it. The secularization of knowledge was already well under way by the time Crusoe was written. At the collective level, knowledge becomes divorced from understanding and wisdom, and married to the quest for power or technology in the service of economic surpluses. (See box p.36 ‘From Faust to Frankenstein’ for an impressionistic sketch of the process.) The science of medicine, once devoted to the service of health, is now reduced to an increasingly efficient technology for responding to ill-health. Perhaps most dramatic of all has been the secularization of the law. The laws (however established) used to express a people’s collective will to enforce those of their traditional (religious or moral) values which were capable of enforcement. It used to be a recognized objective of the laws that they should improve the people morally. In European societies the laws of the Church, always distinct from the laws of the monarch, were nevertheless the basis of the typically unwritten or common law of custom and practice, and enforced by the monarch. Gradually, the law has been deprived of moral purpose and is increasingly seen as a merely administrative device to regulate the commercial or contractual relations between individuals. In England, this particular transition was formally stated after the long-running debate in the 1950s about the legalization of homosexual acts: it was concluded that the state had no business to intervene in the moral choices of consenting adults; the state has no role as moral guide. One could go on multiplying instances of secularization – the family become a temporary aggregate of distinct economic units, consuming or productive; social belonging become an abstract relationship of citizen and state – and that is the point, that the process continues, dividing the individual again and again from all traditional values with meaning and authority.

But, one wants to protest, the man Crusoe is yet himself in himself, a conscience intact. Religious experience, the individual’s most interior relation, his being under the gaze and care of His Creator, that, surely that, is invulnerable to secularization? Unfortunately not.

The secularization of religious experience

Crusoe is, as we noted, actively personal and direct in his address to God. But this addressing God and reflecting upon His Word, the Scripture, is conditional upon the authority of that Scripture as His Word. The Protestant revolt against the Catholic Church hinged essentially upon limiting the Church’s authority to determine the meaning of the Scripture and, thus, its authority to intervene between the individual believer and his understanding of the Scripture. The authority of the Scripture itself remained intact or was even strengthened through the Reformation.

By the time of Crusoe, the English Protestant dream of creating a commonwealth of individual believers, tolerant of minor variations in each other’s practices of worship, a fellowship in Christ of social and moral equals, had long since turned to ashes. By the early 18th century, all that the Non-Conformists expected for or from the state was to be left alone – non-persecution, and freedom of worship: those who had despaired of toleration in England were already settled in the New World. The Scripture was powerless to influence collective affairs but it remained effective in informing and building individual conscience – as we see in the character of Crusoe. The authority of Scripture was still intact.

However, by the late 18th century, techniques of textual criticism evolved to analyse the history of classical works such as Homer’s epics began to be applied to the Bible. That, combined with the growing rift between scientific accuracies about certain natural phenomena and the claims made about them in the Bible, led to the crumbling of the authority of the Scripture and of the appeal of books embedded in that authority, such as Pilgrim’s Progress and the religious reflections in Robinson Crusoe.

The authority of the Bible is now affirmed by ‘a leap of faith’ in spite of reason, and reason always fights back. Religious experience is reduced to psychology and emotion, the quest not for understanding but for consolation. People find consolation in belonging, there is a market for it, and the need is supplied by the growth of mini-churches and cults. People find consolation also in escapist entertainment and in self- indulgence. Consequently we see even the established, traditional churches re-arranging schedules, furnishings, and their rites and services, to approximate church-going to an expedition to the supermarket or to some musical or other entertainment. The argument that this trend is the church coming back to its flock, working in the idioms of the ordinary people, is an unworthy self-delusion. The truth is that religious experience has been secularised: contemplation and prayer have been annulled or altered into a sort of ‘feeling – good’ which can be as well gratified by joining a club or cult or by buying something as by church-going. No doubt, going to church at all may yet preserve a link with traditions of prayer and contemplation, however feeble the link, and is therefore to be respected as the crumb of comfort better than the half- loaf better than none.

In conclusion

Robinson Crusoe has been popular because the situation of an enterprising, practically-minded, hard-working individual making something of himself in a foreign land serves as a sort of founding myth for the energies underlying European imperialist expansion and the structures of thought and policy related to economic individualism. The novel exceeds the myth insofar as it records the individual’s progress in self-discovery and self-mastery, his improvement in conscience and character. To some extent, the personal, moral quail- ties of the individual rescue the myth from its ugliest implications. However, the situation of the novel – a solitary individual achieving an economic surplus on an uninhabited island – is fundamentally nonsensical. The concept of surplus presupposes other individuals with whom economic transactions are possible. Crusoe knows that he may, and by Providence he will, join others to his little economic empire to make it grow into a big empire. First there is the warning footprint and then, in the end, the ship arrives and he is re-connected to the world. Once that re-connection is made, as we have explained, and we re-enter the wider context of European history, individual self-mastery is ineffective (or, more precisely, irrelevant) to direct or contain the processes of economic individualism. Little by little, all traditional concepts, values, structures and relationships are secularized and lose their authority and appeal. Nothing is sacred – not the king, nor the head of church, nor the Scripture, nor religion – not even conscience, which is only the old name for a consciousness that is uneasy, in need of soothing or distracting.

The individual represented as an economic unit has become, for the human conscience, an almost uninhabitable, unworkable island, and that island, once in contact with the economic mainland, is not a garden. The idea that it could be is the wish-fulfilling quality of the book so delightful in boyhood and to an adult mind in need of plain truth so profoundly vexing. Mercifully, Robinson Crusoe is not the only vision of a man surviving alone on an uninhabited island. By a curious coincidence, this other vision, originally in Arabic, was published in English in Defoe’s own London in 1708, the very year that Selkirk returned to England and recounted the adventures upon which Crusoe is based. Like Crusoe, this book was composed towards the end of its author’s life. The author’s name is lbn Tufayl, and his book, a brilliant philosophical allegory (not a novel) is called after its hero: Hayy bin Yaqzan. (See next issue for concluding article in this series.)

FROM FAUST TO FRANKENSTEIN

The story of Faust, though not so central as Robinson Crusoe, is nevertheless also at the core of the modern European imagination. It grew up around a historical figure who lived in Germany in the 14th/15th century and was alleged to have encyclopedic learning and supernatural powers. Some called him a charlatan; others thought he had made a contract with the devil – his soul in exchange for knowledge. Here was an early ‘Renaissance man’, the European equivalent of the great polymaths of the Islamic world known to Europeans by their Latinised names as Averroes, Avicenna, Alhazen, etc. The earlier of the two most famous treatments of the Faust story is the dramatisation (c.1589) by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Marlowe. In this version, Faust is cheated by the devil. Instead of knowledge of the mysteries of physical or human nature, Faust acquires knowledge corrupted into trivial kinds of worldly power and pleasure. He acquires, in modern idiom, not science but technology. Moreover, having lost his soul, Faust has lost the impulse to do good with his new powers – he degenerates into a common sorcerer or conjurer doing tricks to amuse kings and courtiers. He passionately desires to repent but it is too late: the playwright allows him a magnificent speech before the devils carry him off to eternal damnation. Despite the Renaissance date of Marlowe’s play, the religious horror at Faust’s contract with the devil is unmistakably medieval-Christian. Perhaps, in the medieval-Christian imagination, scholarly curiosity about nature was associated with the (then) intellectually more dynamic Islamic world. Just as in cheap romantic fictions the ‘tall, dark stranger’ is repelling as well as alluring, the superior achievements of the Muslims in crafts and commerce, in geographical and scientific explorations, etc., had to be (in order to contain the envious fascination they aroused) condemned as the product of a bargain with the devil.

Behind the legend lies the chilling assumption that the human potential for knowledge is less of a Divine favour than a Divine punishment. God, by definition Good and Benevolent, Who created man in His image, nevertheless andowed man with an overwhelming curiosity that must lead to his perdition: knowledge must be ‘stolen’ as fire was stolen for mankind by Prometheus, a crime for which the gods punish him eternally. In Marlowe’s version, Faust is unequivocally damned, partly a tragic figure, but mostly a fool: his bargain does not benefit mankind. In Goethe’s two- part poem on the same theme (1808;1832), Faust is ultimately saved, because his motives, to advance human knowledge, were noble. What has intervened between the two treatments of the same story is the secularisation of European ways of thought, the functional irrelevance of religious doctrines that once presumed to direct or limit curiosity. Among later Faust- types are the horror-film surgeons who advance the frontiers of medical science by practising their skills on corpses plundered from fresh graves in the dead of night: the religious horror at this desecration is merely a literary affectation and, in effect, comic. While the power of religion, that is, its ultimate truth, is acknowledged, in practice Europeanised people rely on the accuracies of scientific knowledge; science and religion are seen to be in competition and science wins.

Frankenstein and his monster

The most popular version of Faust, one contiunally revived and renewed, is the early 19th century horror story, Frankenstein. By that date, the reliable triumphs of experimental, mathematical physics had convinced people that all knowledge should be modelled upon physics, including biology. Thus, it came to be believed that life is not an inherently supernatural quality given directly by God to each living being, but instead a ‘natural force’ that must in principle be capable of being isolated, calculated, contained and reproduced by man. So, the brilliant young Dr. Frankenstein stitches together bits of different human corpses and exposes them to the ‘natural force’ of electrical energy: the result is the familiar monster with the bolt through his neck. Frankenstein regrets his experiment and perishes with his suffering, pitiable monster. We are supposed to be appalled by his presumption in daring to mimic the miracle of life. But there is little question where the sympathy of the fiction lies: those who counselled Frankenstein against the attempt are presented as dull moral conformists, Frankenstein as the damned, doomed hero – Faust without a devil to blame. If the story regrets what Frankenstein did, it is only because the experiment failed. If European imagination regrets Frankenstein’s arrogant daring, it is because society and its laws prevented the genius from doing enough experiments to get his work right.

AMERICAN SCIENTIST TO BREAK THE LAW AND CLONE HUMAN BEINGS 

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that an American scientist has recently announced that, in spite of the legal prohibition against such experiment, he will clone a human being.

There have been expressions of public horor at this announcement: we can be sure, therefore, that a science fiction novel or film will sooner or later represent this American as an intellectual hero pushing back the frontiers of human knowledge and power. And the rest of us will be cast in the role of the Indians, the savages, who (with their bows and arrows) try in vain to hold back the ‘progress’ of civilization.

Satan was, like the jinn with whom he mostly kept company, was also created from ‘fire’. Before he was put to the test of obedience and sincerity through Adam, he had been in the company of angels; acting and worshipping as they did. Unlike the angels who do whatever they are commanded and never rebel against God (al-Mulk, 66.6), Satan (called Iblis prior to his disobedience to God’s command to fall prostrate before Adam) has free will to choose his own path of conduct. When God tested him together with the angels and commanded him to fall prostrate before Adam (i.e. before man), the seeds of self-conceit and disobedience in his nature burst up to swallow him, and he responded in his vanity: ‘I am better than him. You created me from fire, whilst him you did create of clay’(Sad, 38.76).

Satan was created for important purposes. For, first of all, had it not been for Satan who continually tries to seduce man, the creation of man would have been meaningless and futile. God has innumerable servants who, like angels, have no capacity to rebel and therefore do whatever they are commanded. In fact, the existence of an absolute Divine Being Who has many beautiful Names and Attributes (the Creator, the All-Merciful, the All- Providing, the All-Living and Giver of Life, the All- Beautiful and the All-Powerful, etc.) requires, not by way of any external necessity which is inconceivable, but due to the essential nature of his Names, that His Names be manifest. And it is only through man that He manifested all of those Names. Since He has freewill, He also bestowed on man free will. Having free will means to always make a choice between two alternatives. In addition, God has endowed man with great potentials. It is both to develop those potentials and make the necessary choice between the alternatives appearing before him, that man continually experiences a struggle both within him and in the outer world. Just as God sends hawks upon sparrows so that the latter can develop their potential to escape, He created Satan and allowed him to tempt man so that man, by trying to escape his temptations, can rise spiritually and strengthen his will power. As hunger stimulates man or animals to further exertions and discovery of new ways to be satisfied, and fear inspires in them new ways of defence, the temptations of Satan cause man to develop his potentials and to always be alert against sins.

Angels do not rise to the higher spiritual ranks because Satan cannot try to tempt them and cause them to deviate; the animals also have fixed stations- they neither attain to a higher station nor are abased to a lower one. But in the domain of mankind the number of ranks or stations is infinite; a man can rise to the highest of the high, just as he can fall down to the lowest of the low. There is an infinitely long line of spiritual evolution between the ranks of the greatest of the Prophets and saints down to those of men like Pharaoh and Nimrod. Therefore, it cannot be claimed that the creation of Satan is an evil. Although Satan himself is an evil creature, besides the important purposes for his creation which have just been discussed, God’s creation involves the whole universe, and should be understood in relation to the results, not only with respect to the acts themselves. Whatever God does or creates is good and beautiful either in itself or in its effects. For example, rain produces many effects, almost all useful to mankind. Likewise, fire has many uses for man. If some suffer harm because of water or fire owing to their misuse of them, it cannot be claimed that the creation of fire or water is not wholly good. Similarly, the main purpose for the creation of Satan is to enable man to develop his potentials, strengthen his will power by resistance to his temptations and to rise to higher spiritual ranks. If it is still argued that many people-even more than the good ones-fall into unbelief and therefore earn the punishment of Hell through the temptation of Satan, my answer would be as follows:

Although Satan was created for many good, universal purposes some of which have just been discussed, a lot of people may unfortunately be deceived by him. But Satan only whispers and suggests, he has no ability, nor power, to force man to commit some wrong or sinful action. If a man is so weak as to be deceived into Satan’s false promises and allows himself to be dragged down following his footsteps, then it is by his own fault that he earns the punishment of Hell by misusing an important faculty on which God conferred existence so that man can develop his potentials and be elevated to the highest of the high. What a man must do is to use his free will, on which his humanity mostly rests, and by which man has been given the highest position in creation, properly and in the direction of his intellectual and spiritual evolution. Otherwise, he must complain about being honoured with free will and therefore complain about his humanity.

Secondly, quality is much more important than quantity, so, rather than quantitative values, we should take qualitative values into consideration in our judgement. For example, a hundred date stones are only one hundred pence in value as long as they remain as seeds and are not buried under the soil to grow through certain biochemical processes into palm trees. But even if only twenty out of the hundred grow into twenty trees as the result of germination under the soil while the rest rot because of over-watering, can one argue that it is an evil to plant and water them? Every sensible person will certainly agree that it is wholly good to have twenty trees in exchange for twenty stones, since twenty trees will give twenty thousand stones.

Again, a hundred peahen eggs are worth, let’s say, five hundred pence. But if the peahen sits on them and consequently twenty chicks hatch out, with the other eighty spoiled, who will account it an evil to risk eighty eggs being spoiled in return for twenty birds? On the contrary, it is wholly good to have twenty birds at the expense of eighty eggs worth four hundred pence because the twenty birds will not only be worth eighty pounds but some of them also lay more eggs.

It is in just this way that mankind, by fighting against Satan and their evil-commanding selves, have lost worthless members of their race, greater in quantity but poorer in quality, in exchange for thousands of Prophets, thousands of saints and millions of men of wisdom, knowledge, sincerity and good morals, who are the sun, moon and stars of the human world.

Involuntary thoughts and fancies occurring to man

Some evil thoughts and fancies or associations of ideas which occur to a man involuntarily, are usually the result of Satan’s whispering. Like the two poles in a battery, there are two central points or poles in man’s heart (by ‘heart’ we mean the seat or centre of spiritual intellect). One receives angelic inspiration, the other is vulnerable to Satan’s whispering.

When a believer deepens in belief and devotion, and if he is scrupulous and delicate in feeling, Satan attacks him from different directions. Satan does not try to tempt those who follow him voluntarily, who have indulged themselves in passing fancies and bodily pleasures. He usually aims at those sincere, devout believers who are in the course of rising to higher and higher spiritual ranks. He whispers to sinful unbelievers new, original ideas in the name of unbelief and teaches them new ways of struggling with the true religion and devout believers.

The meaning of Satan’s coming upon man from different directions

We read in the Qur’an (al-A ‘raf, 7.17) that when God cursed Satan because of his haughty disobedience, Satan asked God to give him respite until the Day of Judgement and allow him to try to seduce human beings. When God gave him permission to try to seduce man for the reasons we have just discussed, Satan retorted: ‘Then I shall came upon them from before them and from behind them and from their right and from their left, and you will not find most of them grateful’.

The verse means that Satan does everything he can to seduce man. Man is a very complex being: as was pointed out before, God has manifested on him all His Names. The world is an arena of testing for him. He is sent to the world to be trained so that he can be a mirror to God and earn eternal happiness. God has endowed him with innumerable feelings, faculties and potentials, which must be trained and developed. If certain of these feelings and faculties, like intellect, anger, greed, obstinacy and lust, are not trained and directed to lofty goals, and are used in wrong ways for disagreeable purposes, and if man’s natural desires and animal appetites are not restricted and satisfied in lawful ways, they will be perilous for man with respect both to his worldly and his eternal life, causing him to be reduced to ‘the lowest of the low’. Satan approaches man from his left and tries, making use of that animal aspect of his and working on those feelings and faculties of his, to tempt him to commit all kinds of sins and crimes. When he approaches man from before him, he drives him to despair of his future and whispers to him that the Day of Judgement will never come, and whatever religions tell about the Hereafter is mere fiction. He also suggests that religion has long been a thing of the past and therefore no longer has anything to say for the present or the future. When he comes upon man from behind him, he tries to make him deny Prophethood and other essentials of belief, like God’s existence and Unity, Divine Scriptures and angels. Through such whispers and suggestions, Satan tries to cut all the connections of a man with religion and tempt him to all kinds of sinful acts.

Satan cannot be successful in his attempts to seduce a devout, practising believer by coming upon him from behind or before him or from his left. Instead, he tries to approach him from his right and tempt him to display and ostentation and into pride in his virtue and his good deeds. He whispers to him how good a believer he is and gradually throws him to perdition through self-conceit and the desire to be praised by others for his good deeds. For example, if a believer does the supererogatory late night prayer (tahajjud) and then proclaims it everywhere with the desire to be praised by others, and if he attributes to himself his accomplishments and good deeds and criticizes others behind their back, it means that he has fallen under the infulence of Satan. This is perilous for a believer, so a believer must be incessantly alert to Satan’s coming upon him from his right.

Another of Satan’s guiles is that he shows unimportant things as important and vice versa. If a believer disputes with other Muslims in the mosque over a secondary matter such as whether it is permissible to use a rosary when glorifying God after the daily prescribed prayers, while the young in his community are being dragged along ways of unbelief like materialism or are drowning in the swamp of immorality, this too is an indication that Satan has succeeded in his attempts to seduce him.

Satan’s whispering disagreeable thoughts and fancies

If Satan is unsuccessful in all his attempts to seduce a devout believer, then he whispers to him some disagreeable thoughts and fancies. For example, through associations of ideas, he drives him to have some unpleasant conceptions of the Divine Being or to conceive of unbelief or disobedience. If the believer dwells on them, Satan pesters him with such thoughts and conceptions until he falls into doubt about his belief or despairs of a virtuous life.

Another kind of Satan’s suggestions is that he drives a good, devout believer into suspicions about the correctness or validity of his religious acts. For example, he causes him to have suspicions about whether he has done his prayer perfectly or washed his hands or face completely in ritual ablution or about how many times he has washed the parts of the body that must be washed.

A believer who is pestered by Satan with this kind of involuntary thoughts and fancies and doubts, should know that they do indeed occur to him involuntarily, that is, without his heart having any part in them. He should also be certain that just as pirates attack ships carrying valuable treasures, and thieves attempt to rob rich people, and world-powers try to take control of rich countries, as a last, desperate attempt to seduce him, Satan attacks a good, practising believer with the weapon of evil suggestions. A believer’s heart is troubled with such thoughts or suggestions. This is like increase in body temperature of a sick person: as is known, antibodies are formed in the blood of a patient to inhibit or destroy harmful bacteria or germs and this causes the body’s temperature to rise. Similarly, a believer’s heart is troubled with the evil suggestions of Satan and takes up the attitude of fighting against them. This shows that such thoughts and suggestions are not generated by the heart, nor does the heart approve or adopt them. So, just as the reflection of something foul in a mirror is not foul and does not make you dirty, and just as the reflection of a snake does not bite, so too conceiving of unbelief does not mean to unbelieve and, for example, imagining cursing is not really cursing. In some sense, it can even be said that the evil suggestions of Satan are beneficial to the believed For the believer always remains alert to Satan’s temptations and continues his struggle against his carnal self and Satan, which causes him to take further and further steps toward the highest of the high.

The real nature of Satan’s whisperings and how one can keep free of his evil suggestions

In fact, in the words of the Qur’an, the guile of Satan is ever feeble (al-Nisa’, 4.76). It is like a cobweb appearing before you while you are walking between two walls. Just as you do not hold back from going on because of that cobweb, you should not also give much importance to Satan’s guiles. He only suggests or whispers; he gilds sinful acts and presents them in ‘falsely ornamented wrappers’, so a believer must never be deceived into accepting his invitations. When he attempts to whisper evil thoughts as a last resort a believer should be certain that this is the weakest of his strategies and never dwell on them. If he dwells on them and blows them up, then he may be defeated by Satan. Like a commander who, deceived by hallucinations due to fear, dispatches his army to the two wings and leaves the centre exposed to the attack of the enemy, he exhausts his power of perseverance and resolve in fighting against Satan and his carnal self on resisting unintentional fancies or scruples whispered by Satan, and in the end, he becomes too weak to fight against the real temptations of Satan and of his carnal self.

In order to keep free from the evil suggestions of Satan, one should be distant from the attractive field of Satan and sins. Heedlessness and neglect of worship are like an invitation to the ‘arrows’ of Satan. The Qur’an declares:

Whose sight is dim to the remembrance of the All- Merciful, We assign unto him a devil who becomes his comrade. (al-Zukhruf, 43.36)

Remembrance of the All- Merciful, noble or sacred phenomena and a regular, religious life protect a man from being defence- less against Satan’s attacks. Again, the Qur’an advises:

If a suggestion from Satan occurs to you, then seek refuge in God. He is All- Hearing, All-Knowing. Those who fear God and ward off (evil), when a passing notion from Satan troubles them, they remember, and behold! they see! (al-A ‘raf, 7.200-1)

God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, advised:

When you are angry, if you are standing, sit down; if you are sitting, lie down or stand up and do wudu. On the way back from a mittary expedition, the Prophet called a halt to rest at a certain place. They were so tired that they failed to wake up before sunrise to do the dawn prayer in time. When they woke up, the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, commanded: Leave here at once. Satan rules here. The Prophet also says that Satan flees the call to prayer (adhan).

Satan sometimes tries to tempt one through association of obscene scenes. He obsesses one with suggestions of or calls to illicit pleasures. On such occasions, a man should try to persuade himself that any illicit pleasure will certainly result in fits of remorse and may endanger his afterlife, or even his mortal life. He should know that, as the Qur’an states, the life of the world is but a passing plaything and comfort of illusion and the real or true life is the life of the Hereafter. When some showed reluctance in taking part in the expedition to Tabuk, in the time of the Prophet, because of the scorching heat of summer, God warned them: The heat of Hell is much more intense, if they would but understand (al-Tawba, 9.81) 

‘I know that Muhammad is a Prophet. However, we-the Banu Makhzum-and the Hashimites have competed in all affairs. They have commanded armies, so have we. They have offered food and drink to pilgrims, so have we. They have carried the standard of the Quraysh, so have we. But now, they have one who claims that he receives tidings from the heavens. Since another similar one will not arise among us, I will never believe in him.’

However, the Qur’an came, forbidding discrimination on the basis of race or colour or tribe, and enjoining all believers to be as brothers:

Surely, all believers are brothers, so reconcile your brothers and fear God, so that you may deserve mercy.

History has never seen another – era more blessed than the age of the Prophet when people treated one another more lovingly and sincerely than brothers in blood.

When the Makkan Muslims had to emigrate to Madina, the Madman Muslims, who would be called the Helpers, welcomed their Makkan brothers in religion so warmly that they shared with them whatever they had. The Messenger established brotherhood among them. He made Sa’d ibn al-Rabi’ a brother with ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Awf. Sa’d ibn al-Rabi’ took ‘Abd al-Rahman to his house and, presenting his two wives, said: ‘Brother, you came here only for God’s sake leaving whatever you had in Makka. This is my house and these are my wives. You can use my house and whatever is in it just as you wish. You may also choose one of my wives. If she agrees, I will divorce her so that you may marry her.’,

‘Abd al-Rahman answered:

‘Brother, may God bless your house and your wives! Please show me the way to the market. There I’ll buy a rope and use it to bundle wood to sell in the market.’

As another incident to show the solidarity among the believers in the Age of Bliss, Abu Talha, who was among the Helpers, was in the Mosque while the Messenger was communicating to his Companions the newly revealed verse: You will never be able to attain (the rank of) perfect goodness unless you give (as charity) out of what you love. Abu Talha stood up and said: ‘What I love the most among my worldly belongings is my orchard of 600 datepalm trees, which you know. As of now, it is no longer mine; I put it at your disposal. You can use it as you wish. You can share it among the poor just as you wish.’

Then he left for home. His wife was sitting under a tree in that same orchard. She called to her husband who remained standing outside the wall surrounding the orchard:

– Abu Talha, why are you standing there? Come here!

– I cannot. .You must take your things and leave the orchard!

– Why?

– This orchard is no longer ours. It belongs to the poor people of Madina.

– Did you give it as charity only on your own behalf or on behalf of us both?

– On behalf of us both.

– May God be pleased with you. Whenever I saw the poor, I wondered whether we ought not to give this orchard as charity to them, but I dared not say that to you as I did not know whether you would be willing to do that. May God accept good from us. I am just leaving.

Cartesian dualism

The name of Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher (1596-1650), is most famously associated with this dualism in Western culture. His ideas contributed to the almost complete separation of intellectual and scientific activities from religion and, in later centuries, to the Enlightenment, the mechanistic view of life, positivism and materialism. Cartesianism provided a shelter for those who searched for religion in life beside science; it also gave rise to many misconceptions about the relationship between life, religion and science. The intellectuals or philosophers who did not want to forsake either religion or scientific reasoning appealed to Cartesian dualism to justify their position. This manner of defending religion against scientific materialism still prevails among certain Muslim intellectuals. According to them, there is a world of qualities separate from a world of quantities. Science has the authority in the world of quantities and uses observation, measurement and experiment, while in the world of qualities, where observation, experiment and measurement do not apply, religion has the right to speak. So, being religious can never be contradictory to being scientific, but then religion and science have nothing to do with each other.

Cartesian dualism gives science superiority over religion

Although intended to defend religion against science, Cartesian dualism gives science superiority over religion and primacy in practical life and thought, restricting religion to a set of blindly held beliefs not subject to research, verification and reasoning and practically irrelevant to the world and ‘worldly life’. This attitude misrepresents religion as only a matter of believing or unbelieving, with the consequence that there is not much difference between accepting a ‘true’ religion and believing in any religion whatever, even in myths and superstitions. It is this dualism which lies behind modern trends that see religion- without making any discrimination between God- revealed and man-made ones- as a set of dogmas inaccessible to reason, and quite cut off from science and the perceptible world.

However, religion, especially Islam as the last and perfected form of the God-revealed religions, demands, rather than believing blindly, both rational and spiritual conviction based on thinking, reasoning, searching and verification. Although it is acceptable to enter religion through the gate of imitation, it is never advisable to remain content with belief coming from imitating others. The verses in the Qur’an related to legal issues do not exceed 300, while there are more than 700 verses urging people to study ‘natural’ phenomena, to think, reason, search, observe, take lessons, reflect and verify. The verses concluding with Will you not use your reason; will you not think; will you not reflect; will you not take lessons; take lessons, O men of insight, and so on, and the Qur’anic condemnation of unbelievers as people having no intellects with which to think and reflect, no eyes with which to see and no ears with which to hear, are serious warnings for those who see religion as a set of blindly held beliefs and who are unable to discern the essential and unbreakable connection between religion and life, nature, reason and scientific activities.

Modern science takes the natural world as its field of study. The restriction of science by Cartesian dualism to the material, observable realm of existence, disallowing it to admit that there may be other realms of existence and fields of study, may well be regarded as a way of keeping scientific inquiry ‘factual’ and ‘objective’. However, this attitude frequently leads to the view that study of the realms or subjects beyond the material, and the conclusions drawn from that study, are unscientific’ and therefore require neither research nor verification but only belief. It also carries many into agnosticism, to either deny or not affirm the more profound and broader dimensions of existence beyond the material. Whereas what a truly objective science should do is either to accept that there may be many other truths and realms the existence of which it is unable to discover by its present methods or change its tactics and techniques and equip itself with the methods necessary to discover those realms. As long as science persists with its rigidly empirical approach and methods, it will never be able to comprehend the full reality of existence. It is quite unfortunate for science that it reduces man, as it does the universe, to his physical existence and tries to explain all his intellectual and spiritual activities in wholly physical terms.

Modern science deals with nature as structured but aimless or meaningless concurrence of material things. Basically, there is not much difference between this attitude toward nature and Christianity’s condemning it as a veil separating man from God. By contrast, Islam presents natural phenomena, not the supra-natural ones the existence and reality of which science either rejects or regards as unknowable by ‘scientific’ methods, as evidences of its truth or reality and calls people to study and reflect on them and thereby collect the nectar of belief. Nature, according to Islam, is the realm where God’s Beautiful Names are manifested and therefore a set of ‘ladders of light’ by which to reach God. Having originated from God’s Attributes of Will and Power, nature is the ‘created’ counterpart of the Qur’an, which originated in the Divine Attribute of Speech. So, nature is a book like the Qur’an, or it may be regarded as a city or palace, with the Qur’an being a sacred pamphlet explaining its meaning and how to dwell in and benefit from it. Man is the third counterpart of these two books, equipped with consciousness and will. This is why many Muslim scientists such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Zahrawi, Ibrahim Haqqi, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Ak Shamsaddin were practising Sufis and well-versed in religious sciences.

Nature is an exhibition of evidences of Divine Unity

As nature has a sanctity on account of its being the result of the manifestations of the Divine Beautiful Names and a collection of mirrors reflecting the Divine Names and Attributes, the order and constancy in it are two significant proofs of Divine Unity. It is this order and constancy to which science owes its existence. The perfect order observed in the universe is the result of the fact that with all its parts and minutest particles, the whole of the universe is the work of a Single Creator. This is why there is an interrelatedness, co-operation or mutual helping and solidarity among all the parts of the universe and the creatures in it. For example, in order for a single fruit, an apple, for example, to come into existence, earth, air, water, the sun and the properties of the seed of the apple-tree and the tree itself such as germination, growth, photosynthesis and bearing fruit, must all co-operate. This means that the existence of a single fruit depends on the co-operation of the whole universe. The order and constancy in whatever takes place in the universe is the origin of what science calls ‘natural laws’. That is, natural laws, the name that science gives to the elements or properties of the order and constancy in the universe on which science is based, have only nominal existence. What science calls laws may well be the works or activities of God through the agency of angels-through the agency of angels because the Dignity and Grandeur of Divinity requires the agency of some beings like angels or of causes in order that people do not attribute directly to God what is disagreeable to them and accuse the Almighty thereof. Because of its obdurate refusal not to make space for religion in its procedures, science attributes the miraculuous, purposeful creation and existence and the order, harmony and constancy prevailing therein, which manifestly require the existence of an absolute, eternal knowledge, power and will, either to blind, unconscious, ignorant and inanimate ‘laws’ with only nominal, not real, existence, or to nature itself, which is actually a passive and recipient, not an active agent, an object not a subject, and devoid of consciousness, knowledge and will. Or it attempts to explain existence and life with notions such as chance and necessity. The reason for this compound ignorance of science is that it regards religion as a set of dogmas requiring blind belief and therefore unscientific or irreconcilable with itself. This unforgivable attitude of science and its denial of the existence of the supranatural dimension of creation or its agnosticism are the result of separating science and religion.

Science separated from religion

When separated from religion, science loses its real identity and aim. The aim of science is or must be, studying existence in the light of Divine guidance to understand it, to use the universe as a collection of ladders to reach the ‘heaven’ of belief and, disposing things in accordance with that belief, improve the world, thereby helping man fulfil his function of Divine vicegerency on the earth. This is what the Qur’an teaches.

As we read in the Qur’an (2.30-31), when God told angels that He would appoint a vicegerent on the earth, since vicegerency requires will, knowledge and power, the angels inferred that he would do corruption, cause sedition and shed blood, and responded: We glorify You with Your praise and proclaim Your Holiness. The Almighty answered them: I know what you know not. He instructed man in the ‘names’, that is, the names and reality of things and therefore the keys of knowledge and the ways of mastery over things. As He made man superior to angels through knowledge of things, He regarded ‘scientific’ studies to understand creation and fulfil the role of vicegerent as equal to the glorification and praise of angels. This means that scientific studies done for the sake of understanding creation and thereby recognizing the Creator and improving the world, establishing peace and justice there, are acts of worship. So, Islam gives to science and scientific studies a sacred meaning and religious dimension.

Also, the revelation of the Qur’an began with the command Read!. Having come at a time when there was yet nothing written to read, this command is significant. This order continues, in the name of the Lord Who creates (al‘Alaq, 96.1), which means that man should study creation and do that in the name of the Lord. The original of the word translated as the Lord is Rabb, which means One Who brings up, educates, trains, sustains and raises. This signifies that creation is under the ‘Lordship’ of God and man should study it with all its aspects of coming into existence, growing and functioning. This is what science does.

The second, important connotation of the first revelation is that, as mentioned above, man should study creation in the name of God, that is, to please Him and in accordance with the rules He has established. This means that any scientific study should not be contrary to the religious and moral injunctions, and therefore not be made in a way to harm people, change creation and the order of the universe. When made to discover the Divine ‘laws’ in nature and dispose it within the limits of Divine permission, any scientific study will not cause the environmental pollution, the death of millions of people and destruction of cities and, in short, corruption on the earth.

Islam never prevents scientific studies; what it does is to appoint for science moral aims and put moral restrictions on it. It aims to urge scientific studies to be for the benefit of mankind as well as other creatures and, by ordering them to be done in the name of God, it raises them to the rank of acts of worship.

When science is separated from religion, although it has brought wealth and material well-being to a very small minority in the world, as especially the last two centuries have witnessed, it can cause, besides world-wide insecurity, unhappiness and unease brought about by scientific materialism, a brutal oppression and colonialism, wide rifts between the poor and wealthy, unending global or regional wars during which millions die or are left homeless or orphaned or widowed, merciless rivalry among the classes of people and dangerous levels of environmental pollution. The separation of science and religion has brought to mankind nothing but great disasters. 

Prophets were also masters and forerunners with respect to scientific discoveries and progress

It is another evidence of the inseparability of science and religion that-even if secular science does not admit it- as an historical fact, Prophets were forerunners with respect to scientific discoveries and mankind’s material progress. For example, some interpreters of the Qur’an infer from the verse when Our command was issued and the oven boiled… (11.40), that the Ark the Prophet Noah constructed through God’s guidance was a steamship. Sailors regard the Prophet Noah, upon him be peace, as their first teacher or patron. Similarly, the Prophet Joseph was the first to make a clock and therefore was considered as the first teacher of clock-makers, and the Prophet Enoch as that of tailors.

However, secular or materialistic science does not regard Divine Revelation as a source of knowledge or revealed knowledge as scientific. It considers, for example, the Flood, mentioned in all the Divine Scriptures and oral (unrecorded) histories of all peoples, as a myth. If this event cannot be established through ‘scientific’ methods, it will not be scientific and those who regard the methods of science as the only, reliable methods to arrive at truth will continue to approach the Divine Scriptures with doubts. This amounts to the denial of Divine Revelation and God-revealed religions. Also, this will also cause many historical facts and events to remain veiled. Furthermore, it is impossible to study and teach correctly the history of, especially, the Middle East-Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Iran, etc.-without considering the life-histories of the Prophets mentioned in the Qur’an. Despite this, by not admitting the ‘scientific’ reliability of Divine Revelation, secular or materialistic science causes many truths to be taught as though they were falsehoods and many falsehoods to be presented as truths, and many realities to remain veiled. For example, the Assyrians who lived in Iraq are presented as having been a pagan people. Whereas we read in the Qur’an (And We sent him to a hundred thousand or more-37.147) that more than one hundred thousand people believed in the Prophet Jonah, who, according to the account of the Bible, lived in Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrians.

The separation of science and religion and assigning to each a different realm of competence or relevance is responsible for religion being seen as a set of myths and dogmas-blind beliefs- and science remaining in the darkness of materialism. So, as it is absolutely necessary to ‘wed’ and harmonize mind and heart or the intellect and spirit, it is also of vital importance to harmonize science and religion.

In the works of philosophers and historians and in the minds of ordinary people, there have been, down the ages, many different conceptions of what freedom actually means. They have not agreed on whether it is a moral ideal or a romantic aspiration, a political posture (propaganda) or a set of rights and duties expressible in legal terms.

At the present time, and for the vast majority of people world-wide, freedom is associated with a particular personal life-style. And the life-style they think of as ‘free’ is imaged in the norms and manners that evolved over the last hundred years or so in Western societies and were vigorously exported by them to all other societies. During this period, almost all movements for freedom throughout the world have focused on economic and political rights, sometimes mixed up with nationalist aspirations, but always insisting upon a rejection of the norms and values of the past. Especially in Muslim countries, the ideologues of these movements have accused religion, and the traditional values associated with it, of preventing freedom of thought and impeding the march of ‘progress’.

There has been an exceptionally fierce hostility among those ideologues – after all, they were consciously importing foreign values – to their own cultural past. Because of that hostility, they were uncritical not only in approving the values they sought to import but also in their attitudes to their own history. They often falsified their own cultural past, denying its values and genuine achievements, in order to be able to condemn and reject it outright. Outright rejection is always easier than careful thought, than painstakingly and patiently conceived reform. The result has been that Muslim societies have gained very little from these freedom movements and lost a very great deal.

The ground of this failure, and it needs to be admitted as a failure, is the narrow kind of ‘progress’ which freedom from the authority of religion is alleged to secure. Progress is defined in crudely material terms as economic prosperity for whose sake (and not for other reasons) certain political freedoms are deemed desirable or necessary. Economic issues are given so much prominence in collective life that collective life is reduced to economic relationships alone. Man is seen and presented merely as homo economicus, a producing and consuming animal. Literature and, more powerfully, film and television images have been used to propagate that view, and to spread, rather than its virtues, the vices of modern civilisation. The reach of those images, given the sheer scale and power of modern communications, touches all societies and persons and all places – private bedrooms as well as the more shared family space of living-rooms and kitchens. It is hard for the mass of ordinary people to escape from this invasion. Its consequence is to distract people from who and what they are, to separate them from each other, to alienate them from themselves.

By means of this media invasion of private dwellings and public cultural space, and also by means of the educational systems and curricula imposed in Muslim countries, the minds of the people have been emptied of what they used to know and care about. Their minds have been preoccupied instead with what is trivial and irrelevant. We find them showing interest in, even concern for, private goings-on in the lives of far-off individuals made international celebrities by the media, while they are quite ignorant and unconcerned about the conditions of their local and national community, their neighbours, sometimes even other members of their own family. They have been turned into a sort of cultural orphans and therefore weakened. And in that weakness it is easier for them to copy blindly whatever is represented to them as ‘modern’ than to question it. It is easier for them to imitate a life-style represented as ‘progressive’ and ‘free’ than to ask if it is truly progressive, truly free. They have become so infatuated with it that it is hard to see how they can adopt a serious, reflective attitude as befits free human beings, in the true sense of the word ‘free’.

The fashions and crazes that nowadays infatuate the mass of people in almost all societies have undermined the values and traditions which both distinguished them as human societies and gave them their cohesion and identity. Whereas, in the past, perennial values taught or inspired by religion guided their behaviour, people now allow themselves to be guided by adolescent fantasies, transient desires, childish impulsiveness. Whereas, in the past, they confessed to religious belief and felt concerned about the meaning and purpose of their lives, they now confess to uncertainty or atheism, to cynicism or indifference, some even pretend to welcome aimlessness and lack of meaning.

Since man has been represented in modern civilization as merely a composition of flesh and bones certain to decompose and perish eternally, only the pleasures of flesh and bones are considered worthy of concern, and nothing much matters except to have the means to indulge those pleasures.

But this representation of man is false; spiritual needs and the longing for eternity are a reality, the reality that defines us as human. Denial of that reality leads to a sickness in the very being of man, which has consequences for the whole pattern of his living. If an individual came to believe that he had only one leg and used only that one, the muscles in his other leg would atrophy and its sickness would affect the strong leg until, tired of hopping, he would fall down helpless. In the same way, many people, deprived of nourishment for their spiritual needs and suffering the artificially stimulated stresses of modem civilization, fall helplessly into the self-disgust of intoxication, drug- abuse and other crimes. Some do so from their early youth, in the pathetic hope of escaping from meaninglessness into excitement. But such excitement is, alas, more poison feeding the disease, at best a temporary abatement of the pain and certainly not a cure.

Sexual excitement in particular has been given more prominence in the public domain in modern societies than at any time in history. There is so much of it in advertising that one would suppose that nothing could be sold without a reference to it. The incessant incitement to sexuality is such that even the most disciplined persons are at times troubled by it, and the less disciplined tempted into thoughts or actions that lead to misery and remorse. It was once claimed, according to a simple version of Freud’s theory of sexuality, that all the achievements of human culture are really the result of frustration or sublimation of the sexual instinct. But that particular nonsense is not the reason why advertisers devote so much of their material to sexual imagery or innuendo. They do so for another reason. During adolescence, awakening of sexuality is a part of the process by which an individual realizes his separateness from his parents and is biologically prepared to function as a potential parent. The social side of the same preparation is through the individual’s experience of family life as a dependent, followed by the disciplines and responsibilities of marriage. Civilized within the social bonds of wedlock, the sexual instinct is married to affection and mutual responsibility between husband and wife, and then to affection and mutual responsibility for their children. Outside of wedlock, sexuality is bound to selfhood and intensifies selfish competitiveness, a

brutal lust to gratify one’s own needs regardless of any consequences to others. In that state of intense selfish desire, the individual is weak and vulnerable: the seductive illusion propagated by the advertisers is that by purchasing such and such a product one will be nearer to gratifying that selfish desire. Thereafter, as we know, people who are seduced by advertising of this kind, buy again and again, always to no avail. Sales go up, and so does stress associated with frustration and repeated failure. The more ‘modern a society has become, the more exaggerated the condition of adolescence among its population – notably, there is more aggressive and more prolonged rejection of parents, more ‘youthful rebellion’ – also the highest increase in violent crimes against persons and property, alongside collapse of the institution of the family.

It is surely an outrage against reason to give to this life-style-one that urges irresponsibility and selfish indulgence of animal appetites – the name of freedom. How can an ethos which exaggerates and exploits human weakness be said to enhance and improve one’s life choices? A rich person continually struggling to satisfy expensive appetites is no more ‘free’ than a poor man struggling to satisfy his hunger – the poor one at least has the dignity of a good reason for his stress. It is ironic that in the societies most dedicated to consumerism, people are not attached to their goods for long; because they buy regardless of need, they do not keep what they buy but discard it and replace with a new purchase. In effect they enjoy no better security with their goods than the poorest nomads who own very little. Again, the nomads have the dignity of owning only what they need and can transport easily and what, like all of us (whatever our level of ‘civilization’) they must forsake when they die.

Pollution of the environment is human folly on a grand scale. Because of that scale its consequences take a long time to emerge and are then very grave. In the same way, freedom as it is currently being promoted is a huge folly whose long-term consequences are very grave. Many societies, as we noted, are already suffering from seemingly irreversible increases in violent crime. This is a consequence of educating people to indulge selfish impulses. The sense of community, of belonging to a family and a locale, has been eroded. Where people do not feel they belong, mutual responsibility and caring disappears from their relationships, emotional or social or political or economic. This puts a great burden on the task of regulating the way people live together. If families do not care for their young, the state must do so; if the people will not voluntarily comply with the laws of their community, the laws must be enforced at vastly greater expense. In those Western cities which can afford to use such devices, the urban centres are peppered with closed-circuit television cameras designed to deter would-be offenders and to assure non-offenders that they may do their shopping or other business without fear of molestation.

Is this the goal towards which the unthinking reformers and champions of Western-style freedom will lead the people of the Islamic world? Are Muslims too going to succumb to the degradation of widespread abuse of intoxicants and excessive levels of crime? And if they are, what are they going to get for paying so high a price? A freedom that means letting people do whatever they wish, moment by moment, to gratify their animal impulses? A freedom that brings with it the diseases that flow from emotional and psychological stress and over-indulgence? A freedom that brings with it the crippling disability of unbelief, the emptiness and dread of having no relation with ultimacy and meaning, no relation with God, and the utter disorientation of values so that people will ardently champion animal rights while despising devotion to God, self-discipline and moral virtue? If this concept of freedom should prevail, it means that ever more individuals will lapse into criminality and abuse of themselves and others, while social political instability within and between societies will become impossibly difficult to contain. It need not do so. The other way of freedom is always open; the way that recognizes and affirms human liability and responsibility before God.

True freedom means that the human spirit does not reject noble feelings and aspirations as the illusions of the past, that it does reject enslavement selfish appetites in favour of to those forms of service, most particularly service of others and of God, which enable the spirit to transcend self- hood. True freedom is disciplined freedom. It wears the diamond chain of religion and morals and the golden collar of sound thinking. True freedom is to declare to man that he is free to do whatever he wants, provided that he does no harm to himself, bodily or spiritual, and none to others. True freedom, the freedom of moral responsibility, is the distinguishing mark of being human; it motivates and enlivens the conscience, and moves aside impediments to the spirit. It acknowledges religious belief and feelings, and is the ground for virtue, wisdom and understanding.

Many an individual, actually imprisoned or in chains, is free in conscience and never feels captivity. Many another, despite the grand spaces of palaces and gardens, does not taste the true meaning of freedom. The freedom to be a powerfully capable animal is in fact to chain the human spirit. True freedom consists in putting chains on animal desires while letting the spirit and mind free to enable man to fly in the infinite space of the spirit on the wings of belief, morality and knowledge and spiritual contentment.