The Natural Sciences
Date Posted: Wednesday, March 10, 2004
To raise the question of the relation of Islam to the natural order is to seek Islam's answer to three different inquiries at once: What is nature? How is nature knowable? How is nature to be used? The first is a question of metaphysics; the second, of epistemology or science of nature; the third, of axiology and ethics. In the view of Islam, the three parts are interdependent. The answer given to one is not only relevant to but determines the other two. Together, the three inquiries constitute an integral theory of nature peculiar to Islam.
WHAT IS NATURE?
Islam takes nature very seriously. A large portion of the Qur'an deals with nature, whether directly or indirectly. The nature of nature is determined by five principles: profanity, createdness, orderliness, purposiveness and subservience.
Profanity
The living religions of the world can be divided between those that see nature as sacred – the naturalist – and those that see nature as profane the transcendentalist. Taoism, Mahayana Buddhism, Hinduism, and archaic religions fall in the first category; Theravada Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam fall in the second. Common to the first group is the view that God and nature are distinguishable only in the mind; that in reality they are one and the same. Nature, they all claim, is indeed God, or Ultimate Reality, or the Absolute; but the modality in which God and nature are presented and understood may be different.
This association is often expressed in myth, because the language of myth readily lends itself to such expression. Under its terms, naturalistic religions hold nature to be numinous, that is, mysterious, terrifying, and fascinating. Mystery (hiddenness, incomprehensibleness, impenetrability), almightiness (overwhelming power, absolute superiority, awesomeness), and sublimity (beauty, attractiveness, and moving power) are all qualities ascribed to nature. In some naturalistic religions the net balance is condemnation of nature as evil, demonic, a degradation of the Absolute; in others, the net balance is approbation, love, and respect. Both prescribe adoration: the one out of reverential fear, the other out of reverential love.
A wall of difference separates the naturalistic religions from those of transcendence. In the latter, nature is profane, the opposite of the sacred. It is devoid of numinous qualities. It is neither terrifying nor mysterious nor fascinating. It is itself, an inexorable process of generation and decay, a clockwork whose power is inherent in itself. Whether in its totality, in 'Umar its elements or species, or in its individual objects, nature is always itself, not-God, not-sacred, not-Ultimate Reality. As the religions of transcendence divide between theistic and non-theistic varieties, nature is regarded as either eternal or ephemeral, as either good or evil. For Theravada Buddhism, nature is eternal but evil. Tanha, the desire or tendency to change, and suffering constitute its essence. For Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, nature is ephemeral. In itself, it is good; but with reference to what man makes of it, or how he conducts himself toward it, it can become either good or evil. Generally, this is the substance of agreement among the transcendentalist religions in the matter of nature. Certainly, differences among is them qualify their transcendentalist position, diluting and compromising, or strengthening and emphasizing it. Islam stands at the extreme end of this spectrum where the profanity of nature is complete and absolute. Nothing is sacred but the sacred, namely, God; and everything else is profane, totally profane in all its aspects. That is the meaning of the Islamic profession of faith, La ilaha illa Allah (Qur'an 3:18). To attribute sacredness to nature or to anything in it is to commit shirk or association of other beings with God. Islam condemned predication of sacredness to nature in no uncertain terms. To make of His creatures a part of Him (Qur’an 43:15), to call upon anything other than God for help (39:43), to adore any part of nature beside God (40:66), to claim a genealogical connection between Him and humans or jinn (37:158), to take from the earth anything as divine (2 1:2 1) – is the capital crime, the unpardonable sin (4:48, 116). In Muslim eyes, shirk or the ascription of any sacredness to the profane, to anything in creation, is the vilest abomination. When in mystical transport, Mansur al Hallaj claimed that sacredness belonged to him, he was subjected instantly to the worst possible punishment – crucifixion. Previously, when ibn al Khattab, under the shock of the Prophet's death, claimed some non-profane status for him, Abu Bakr pushed him aside from the pulpit and said, to the approval and delight of all Muslims: "Whoever worshipped Muhammad, let him know that Muhammad is dead. But whoever worshipped God alone, let him know that God is eternal and never dies" (Ibn Hisham, Sirat Rasul Allah, vol. IV, p. 1070).
Createdness
Nature, in Islam, is a creature of God, created ex nihilo, by the sheer commandment of God for it to be. It is absolutely different and other than God Who is defined as "the totally other" or laysa ka mithlihi shay' (Qur'an 42:11). The otherness of God, meaning that reality is dual, one realm being occupied exclusively by God, the transcendent Creator, and the other by all else, the creation, is the most emphatic lesson Islam had taught. To confuse the creature with the Creator, the Qur'an teaches, is a terrible mistake because God alone is Creator (13:16). If there were more than one unique Creator, heaven and earth, Creator and creature, would have fallen to the ground and dissolved (21:22). God alone creates and recreates; and no one else does (10:34). Heaven and earth and all that is in them are creatures, partaking of creatureliness, that is, of coming into being and passing away under all the relativities of space and time (11:7; 46:3). All creatures were created out of nothing, commanded to be and they were (2:118; 3:47, 59; 6:73: 16:40; etc.). God is indeed capable of destroying creation and creating it all again in an instant (30:40, 10:34). His creation is not a generative act ["He has no counterpart, no female co-worker. . . He never begets, and is never begotten. He has neither match nor parallel" (6:101-103; 112:1-4)] but a mere command (36:80-83).
Orderliness
Islam holds nature to be an orderly realm: an event occurs as a result of its cause; in turn, its occurrence is the cause of another event. The same events point to the same causes, and the same causes point to the same consequences (Qur'an 65:3, 36:12). Nature is, furthermore, a complete order, because all events follow the same laws and nothing stands outside of them. Indeed, for a creature to be at all, it is to be in nature, to fall under its inexorable laws. To be other than nature or to stand outside of its laws is to be God and Creator of nature. This order was implanted in nature by God, the Creator, Who created and fashioned it as it is. Nothing in it escapes His knowledge, and everything in it stands under the laws pertinent to it. That is what gives it its orderliness. The causal efficacy of each creature is measured; and so are its effect and time. Nature is thus a complete and integral system of causes and effects without flaw, without gap, perfectly patterned by its Creator. "Look into His creation for any discrepancy! And look again! Do you find any gap in its system? Look again! Your sight, having found none, will return to you humbled" (Qur'an 67:3-4). This perfection will qualify nature as long as it exists; for God's creation will always be the same. The reason is that the patterns of God are immutable (48:23). He does not change His ways because He stands beyond change.
Purposiveness
Each of the objects that constitute nature has been assigned a purpose that it must, and will, fulfill. "God created everything and assigned to it its qadar," or measure, destiny, role, and purpose (Qur’an 25:2, 87:3). Such purpose is built into the object as its nature, toward which it moves with inexorable necessity. It may be obvious and well-known or hidden and almost unknowable. But it is certainly there, a "qadaran maqdura," specific and precise (Qur'an 33:38). Purposiveness is the other side of orderliness. The very same relation of two objects in nature is causality when viewed theoretically and purposefulness when viewed axiologically. Better still, as our philosophers have said, notably Ibn Sina, the relation in toto is called causality, but within it, the formal, material, efficient, and final or purposive aspects are clearly discernible. Purpose pervades the whole of creation without exception. Such exception would fall outside God's knowledge and providence and would constitute a denial of divine unity and ultimacy. The Qur’an affirms: "We have not created heaven and earth and all that stands between them in sport.. . . [Rather] We have created them in righteousness . . . for the purpose of confuting evil and error with truth and value" (44:38, 21:16). As object in nature, man is, in the Islamic view, equally purposive; for he is an integral part of the finalistic system that is creation. Indeed, Islam declares him to be the purpose of all the finalistic chains of nature. This constitutes his ecological interdependence with all that is in nature.
Subservience
Islam further affirms that purposiveness is not only an attribute of every object in nature but is also a predicate of the totality of nature. God did not create the world (in the Qur'an, "heaven and earth") in vain but for a purpose, namely, that man may do the good works (Qur'an 11:7, 18:7, 67:2). Islam therefore affirms an end, a purpose to creation, and conceives of that purpose as the moral works of man. To this end, God provided the necessary instruments. He equipped man with eyes and sight, with hearing and language, and with reason and understanding, so that he would be able to perform in the world (17:36, 46:26, 22:46). As to those who neglect to use this God-given equipment with which to understand nature, Islam declares them worthy of chastisement.
The subservience of nature to man means that the purpose that God assigned to each object is ultimately to lead to man's good, that man can use it to achieve felicity. It also means that God has made nature malleable, capable of receiving the causal efficacy of man, of keeping its causal threads open to further determination by him, and to make his input successful in bringing about the desired objective of human action. This is what the Qur'an has expressed by the idea of taskhir. Sun, stars and moon, heaven and earth, animals, plants and things, clouds, air and all the elements are all subservient to man (Qur'an 13:2, 31:20, 22:65, etc.). It is man's title to use nature as he pleases. For taskhir of nature is not only for survival but for zinah or pleasure as well (37:6). Indeed, the teleological system of nature itself is purposive in the higher sense of fulfilling the instrumental ends necessary for man's moral exercise. Such higher instrumentalism of nature is impossible without nature's orderliness. Nature, therefore, is essentially good; and its goodness is its perfect instrumentality to man's actualization of value, which in turn is the purpose of creation. The Qur'an affirmed that God created men only to serve Him (51:56), and defined that service as a divine trust which neither angels (2:30), nor heaven, earth, and mountains could carry because it requires moral freedom. According to Islam, this is the meaning of human life, of time and history: man is God's khalifah or vicegerent on earth, to the end of realizing the moral values that are the higher part of God's will. This significance of man is indeed cosmic, since the cosmos itself was created for his sake.
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