"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
Astronomy, the so-called “Science of the Universe” was a field of particular distinction in Islamic civilization-–in sharp contrast to the weakness of Islamic countries in the field of Space research today. In this field, as in others, intellectual leadership is never a static condition, but something which is always shifting and always dynamic(Aga Khan IV, Convocation, American University of Cairo, Cairo, Egypt, June 15th 2006)
"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)
"The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)
The above are 4 quotes and excerpts taken from:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
Religion and Science Blend in a Centuries-Old Ritual
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 31, 2008
HELWAN, Egypt, Aug. 30 -- In sync with the sun and the moon, the traditions of 1,400 years and the acts of Muslims all over the world, members of one of Egypt's seven official moon-sighting committees pulled into a parking lot high on a ridge overlooking hazy Cairo at sunset Saturday.
There were government astronomers in open-neck shirts, snapping open tripods to support their telescopes. Taking a preliminary look through the scopes at Cairo's western horizon, the astronomers didn't bother to announce what they saw at first glance: nothing.
There was a 70-year-old Muslim cleric, wearing glasses of stratified thicknesses, a gauzy black robe with gold tassels and a beatific smile. Declining a look through the telescopes, the cleric, Abdul Monim al-Berri, only sat and looked on, his presence as one of Egypt's leading religious scholars giving the gathering the stamp of religious approval. "I'm the legitimacy," he said.
And there was an al-Jazeera satellite news crew, trying to go live to tell the world the news from the parking lot, but having trouble with audio.
Frustrated, the network's reporter folded her arms across her chest and rocked back on her heels in the gravel, as she stared blindly at the sky.
Together, the committee members were on a mission: to look for the crescent moon that signals the start of Ramadan, Islam's holiest month, and to tell the world whether they had seen it.
From Senegal to Saudi Arabia and beyond, moon-spotting committees scaled minaret staircases and fanned out across deserts at twilight Saturday, as Muslims have since the founding of Islam in the 7th century, to look for a sliver of white in the sky.
Word from the committees would plunge the world's more than 1 billion Muslims into Ramadan.
For religiously observant Muslims, Ramadan is four weeks of daytime fasting and nighttime feasting with family and friends, interspersed with works of charity for the poor.
"This night of witness is extremely important for we Muslims. It is the night that unifies us all," Berri said.
In the parking lot, as around the world, ancient ways met with modern advances Saturday.
The prophet Muhammad said Muslims should begin fasting when they saw the crescent moon that opens the lunar month of Ramadan. But since the 7th century, science has provided the extras -- telescopes and observatories, for example.
The 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference even proposed to launch a satellite to monitor the moon for Ramadan.
Science has also allowed precise tracking of the moon and the sun, allowing astronomers to know in advance that the crescent moon starting Ramadan will be visible in the Middle East no sooner than Sunday.
In the parking lot and in most of the Middle East, technology deferred to religion. Astronomers went through the motions, at least, of looking for the crescent.
"It's a matter of Islamic law we have to be here. But it's 100 percent sure we're not going to see it today," Faleh Mohammed, head of one of Egypt's government astronomy institute, told the al-Jazeera reporter.
A rumor went through the crowd that Libya had announced the start of Ramadan -- different countries often pick different days for the start and squabble over each other's decisions.
Mohammed scoffed. "What do they see in Libya that we don't see with our telescopes?" he asked.
Mohammed Yousuf, an astronomer in his eighth year of moon-watch duty, rose from another telescope.
The last time a member of a moon-watch committee thought he had spotted a crescent moon at this point in the lunar month was in 1991, Yousuf said. Other members of the committee were able to convince the man he had seen light glancing off a bird's wings, and error was averted, Yousuf said.
Even in Muhammad's time, Yousuf recounted, a man who believed he had spotted the crescent moon was about to announce Ramadan to the world -- until a friend leaned in and removed a stray eyelash from the man's eye.
At the next telescope over, astronomer Ahmed Mohem Fathi grumbled at Cairo's pollution, thick enough to veil any moon.
By 6 p.m., Mohammed was speeding off, rushing toward a news conference in Cairo with some of Egypt's top religious and government officials to announce the findings.
The word of Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, would be: No moon Saturday, therefore the moon's appearance Sunday was inevitable, and Ramadan would start Monday.
Egyptian radio and television carried the grand mufti's announcement live. For many of Cairo's 16 million people, the joint broadcasts were a jolting reminder that Ramadan almost was upon them.
Traffic slowed to gridlock in a half-hour. Families rushed to buy food for the first of the month's lavish meals and aid baskets.
At 6:17 p.m., the same time when the crescent is expected to appear Sunday, the astronomers bent in earnest over their telescopes.
Bystanders fell silent.
The men stood in the hush, minute after minute, squinting at the rim where earth met sky.
In the silence, the rusty voice of a single old man rose from a mosque in the valley below.
Carrying out a ritual older than the moon-watch committees, the man called the faithful to evening prayers.
"Allah akbar," the mosque singer cried. "God is great."
From his chair in the parking lot, Berri raised his fingers to the sky as if to pinch the absent crescent moon.
He then brought his fingers to his mouth and kissed them.
"This is the best part, the mingling of science and religion," Berri said. "It's beautiful."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/30/AR2008083002297_pf.html
Related posts by me:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/289al-nitak-al-nilam-mintaka-betelgeuse.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/05/358islam-and-astronomy-vestiges-of-fine.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/273basics-on-vast-distances-and-sizes.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Friday, August 29, 2008
398)The brilliant maneuverings of the rational intellect of man: changing one cell type into another; Quotes of Aga Khan IV.
This is the story: All the cells in the human body have a full complement of genetic information in their nuclei but only specific genetic information is activated that will turn that particular cell into a specialised cell type, eg, a skin cell or a brain cell. Most of the rest of the full genetic complement of the cell is 'switched off'. Through decades of research scientists have found the genes that make the various 'on' switches that make one cell a skin cell and another a brain cell. By creating viruses that have these switching genes incorporated into their DNA, they now have been able to infect one type of pancreas cell(the alpha cell, the one that makes enzymes to break down the food we eat as it reaches the small intestine) with the virus, which then incorporates these unique 'on' switches into the pancreas cell's DNA, and turn it into another type of pancreas cell whose sole function it is to produce the life-sustaining hormone insulin(the beta cell). The implication of this for the millions of people worldwide who are diabetic is enormous! This is also a testament to the ingenuity and rational intellect of man. In the Islamic tradition, and in keeping with the ethos of this blogsite, that intellect is always subservient to a higher intellect:
"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, AKU, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, AKU Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
"In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
"A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations"(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique)
The above are 7 quotes and excerpts from:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
A cell of a different kind
MALCOLM RITTER
The Associated Press
August 27, 2008
NEW YORK — Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.
The cellular identity switch turned ordinary pancreas cells into the rarer type that churn out insulin, essential for preventing diabetes. Its implications, however, go beyond diabetes to a host of possibilities, scientists said.
It is the second advance in about a year to suggest that some day doctors may be able to use a patient's own cells to treat disease or injury without turning to stem cells from embryos.
The work is "a major leap" in reprogramming cells from one kind to another, said one expert not involved in the research, John Gearhart of the University of Pennsylvania.
That is because the feat was performed in living mice rather than a lab dish, the process was efficient and it was achieved directly without going through a middleman such as embryonic stem cells, he said.
The newly created cells made insulin in diabetic mice, although they were not cured. If the experiment's approach proves feasible, it may lead to treatments such as growing new heart cells after a heart attack or nerve cells to treat disorders such as Parkinson's disease.
Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, cautioned that the approach is not ready for people.
He and his colleagues report the research in a paper published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Basically, the identity switch comes about by a reprogramming process that changes the pattern of which genes are active and which are shut off.
Scientists have long hoped to find a way to reprogram a patient's cells to produce new ones. Research with stem cells, and with similar entities called iPS cells that were announced last year, has aimed to achieve this in a two-step process.
The first step results in a primitive and highly versatile cell. This intermediary is then guided to mature into whatever cell type scientists want. That guiding process has proved difficult to do efficiently, especially for creating insulin-producing cells, Dr. Gearhart noted.
In contrast, the new method holds the promise of going directly from one mature cell type to another. It's like a scientist becoming a lawyer without having to go back to kindergarten and grow up again, Dr. Melton said.
So, he said, scientists may some day be able to replace dead nerve or heart cells in people by converting some neighbouring cells. At the same time, he stressed that it is still important to study embryonic stem cells and iPS cells.
The Melton team started its work with pancreas cells that pump out gut enzymes used in digestion and turned them into pancreatic "beta" cells, which make insulin.
The researchers destroyed beta cells in mice with a poison, giving the mice diabetes. Then they injected the pancreas with viruses that slipped into the enzyme-making cells. These viruses delivered three genes that control the activity of other genes.
Just three days later, new insulin-secreting cells started to show up. By a week after that, more than a fifth of the virally infected cells started making insulin. That shows "an amazingly efficient effect," commented Richard Insel, executive vice-president of research at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Scientists found evidence that the newcomers were converts from mature enzyme-making cells. They identified the new cells as beta cells by their detailed appearance and behaviour, and Dr. Melton said they have continued functioning for months.
The new cells did not fully replenish the insulin supply, but maybe there were too few of them, or they were hampered by not forming clusters as ordinary beta cells do, researchers said.
The work brings "more excitement to the idea of using reprogramming as a way to treat diabetes," said researcher Mark Kay of Stanford University, who is studying the approach with liver cells.
Christopher Newgard, who studies beta cells at Duke University Medical Center, called the work convincing but cautioned that significant scientific questions remained about using the approach in treating disease.
Dr. Melton, who began his diabetes research in 1993 when his infant son was diagnosed with the illness, said he is obsessed with trying to find a new treatment or cure for Type 1 diabetes, in which beta cells are destroyed.
"I wake up every day thinking about how to make beta cells," he said.
Dr. Melton said he hopes drugs can replace the virus approach because of concern about injecting viruses into people.
As for converting other kinds of cells, scientists noted that the two cell types in the mouse experiment are closely related, and it remains to be shown whether the trick can be achieved with more distant combinations. In any case, scientists would have to deliver different reprogramming signals to other kinds of cells, he said.
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
"In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, AKU, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, AKU Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
"In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)
"....in Islam, but particularly Shia Islam, the role of the intellect is part of faith. That intellect is what seperates man from the rest of the physical world in which he lives.....This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives. Of that I am certain"(Aga Khan IV, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, August 17th 2007)
"The second great historical lesson to be learnt is that the Muslim world has always been wide open to every aspect of human existence. The sciences, society, art, the oceans, the environment and the cosmos have all contributed to the great moments in the history of Muslim civilisations. The Qur’an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God’s creation"(Closing Address by His Highness Aga Khan IV at the "Musée-Musées" Round Table Louvre Museum, Paris, France, October 17th 2007)
"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
"A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations"(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique)
The above are 7 quotes and excerpts from:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
A cell of a different kind
MALCOLM RITTER
The Associated Press
August 27, 2008
NEW YORK — Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.
The cellular identity switch turned ordinary pancreas cells into the rarer type that churn out insulin, essential for preventing diabetes. Its implications, however, go beyond diabetes to a host of possibilities, scientists said.
It is the second advance in about a year to suggest that some day doctors may be able to use a patient's own cells to treat disease or injury without turning to stem cells from embryos.
The work is "a major leap" in reprogramming cells from one kind to another, said one expert not involved in the research, John Gearhart of the University of Pennsylvania.
That is because the feat was performed in living mice rather than a lab dish, the process was efficient and it was achieved directly without going through a middleman such as embryonic stem cells, he said.
The newly created cells made insulin in diabetic mice, although they were not cured. If the experiment's approach proves feasible, it may lead to treatments such as growing new heart cells after a heart attack or nerve cells to treat disorders such as Parkinson's disease.
Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, cautioned that the approach is not ready for people.
He and his colleagues report the research in a paper published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.
Basically, the identity switch comes about by a reprogramming process that changes the pattern of which genes are active and which are shut off.
Scientists have long hoped to find a way to reprogram a patient's cells to produce new ones. Research with stem cells, and with similar entities called iPS cells that were announced last year, has aimed to achieve this in a two-step process.
The first step results in a primitive and highly versatile cell. This intermediary is then guided to mature into whatever cell type scientists want. That guiding process has proved difficult to do efficiently, especially for creating insulin-producing cells, Dr. Gearhart noted.
In contrast, the new method holds the promise of going directly from one mature cell type to another. It's like a scientist becoming a lawyer without having to go back to kindergarten and grow up again, Dr. Melton said.
So, he said, scientists may some day be able to replace dead nerve or heart cells in people by converting some neighbouring cells. At the same time, he stressed that it is still important to study embryonic stem cells and iPS cells.
The Melton team started its work with pancreas cells that pump out gut enzymes used in digestion and turned them into pancreatic "beta" cells, which make insulin.
The researchers destroyed beta cells in mice with a poison, giving the mice diabetes. Then they injected the pancreas with viruses that slipped into the enzyme-making cells. These viruses delivered three genes that control the activity of other genes.
Just three days later, new insulin-secreting cells started to show up. By a week after that, more than a fifth of the virally infected cells started making insulin. That shows "an amazingly efficient effect," commented Richard Insel, executive vice-president of research at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Scientists found evidence that the newcomers were converts from mature enzyme-making cells. They identified the new cells as beta cells by their detailed appearance and behaviour, and Dr. Melton said they have continued functioning for months.
The new cells did not fully replenish the insulin supply, but maybe there were too few of them, or they were hampered by not forming clusters as ordinary beta cells do, researchers said.
The work brings "more excitement to the idea of using reprogramming as a way to treat diabetes," said researcher Mark Kay of Stanford University, who is studying the approach with liver cells.
Christopher Newgard, who studies beta cells at Duke University Medical Center, called the work convincing but cautioned that significant scientific questions remained about using the approach in treating disease.
Dr. Melton, who began his diabetes research in 1993 when his infant son was diagnosed with the illness, said he is obsessed with trying to find a new treatment or cure for Type 1 diabetes, in which beta cells are destroyed.
"I wake up every day thinking about how to make beta cells," he said.
Dr. Melton said he hopes drugs can replace the virus approach because of concern about injecting viruses into people.
As for converting other kinds of cells, scientists noted that the two cell types in the mouse experiment are closely related, and it remains to be shown whether the trick can be achieved with more distant combinations. In any case, scientists would have to deliver different reprogramming signals to other kinds of cells, he said.
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql): Prophet Muhammad(circa 632CE)
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
397)Transcendence and Distinction: Metaphoric Process in Isma‘ili Muslim Thought, by Dr Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies.
This publication by the Institute of Ismaili Studies in their Academic papers section is the original article from which this seminal condensation from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy was extracted:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ismaili.htm
The original article below is an academic paper and hence is primarily intended for well-versed scholars of Islamic Studies to read. It is written in cogent, scholarly and precise language by its author Dr. Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK. Nevertheless, it is well worth reading a few times by a lay audience because I think it captures the excitement of the fertile and diverse intellectual climate that must have characterised Fatimid Ismaili Egypt and the century of Shiite Intellectual Renaissance that preceded it:
Transcendence and Distinction: Metaphoric Process in Isma‘ili Muslim Thought
Professor Azim Nanji
This is an edited version of an article that was originally published in God and Creation: An Ecumenical Symposium edited by David B. Burrell and Bernard McGinn, University of Notre Dame, 1990, pp 304-315.
Abstract:
This essay explores how writers of the Fatimid period of Isma‘ili history, during the tenth and eleventh centuries1, developed an approach that sought to reconcile an understanding of the transcendent and unique nature of God - embodied in the Qur’anic concept of tawhid - with a view of creation as both produced by, and yet distinct from, God. Such an approach, in common with the general discourse among certain other Muslim schools of thought, was concerned with developing rational tools of comprehension that could be applied to scriptural statements. The set of problems they dealt with had dimensions similar to those faced by other Muslim philosophers and theologians, as well as their Jewish and Christian counterparts, in developing various syntheses with philosophy, particularly in its Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic versions. The access to tools of inquiry afforded by the philosophical heritage of antiquity became, for those Muslims committed to rational discourse, a resource and an ally that they willingly co-opted in their quest to decipher truths they believed to be embedded in revelation.
The reflexive process engendered by the interaction of the two allowed various Muslim groups to articulate distinctive stances towards the relationship of reason and revelation that in turn led to them being identified with various developing theological orientations. Though in time historical and other factors led to the emergence of one or the other orientation as dominant, it is important to note, during this period, the shared intellectual climate, the commonality of issues, and the existence of a plurality of discourses, which provided the overall context of “exchange” amongst Muslims, and also between them, the “People of the Book” and the classical heritage. The “exchange” also enabled the discussion to take place within a common linguistic framework that had adapted the intellectual tools of discourse and which came to represent, as in the Isma‘ili case, a point of departure for the expression and elaboration of the received monotheistic doctrine of God.2
Download PDF version of article (52 KB)
Key Words:
Ta’wil, Qur’an, Isma‘ili, tafsir, hermeneutics, al-Kirmani, al-Sijistani, Mu‘tazilite, ays, lays, tawhid, al-khalq, cosmology, Neoplatonic thought, Rahat al-Aql, First Intellect, taqdis, kathrah, and tafawut.
Table of Contents
Understanding Transcendence: The Tools of Interpretation
Articulating Transcendence: God Beyond Being and Non-being
Manifesting Transcendence: Creation and Knowledge
He originates creation; then refashions it - for Him an easy task. His is the most Sublime Symbol in the heavens and the earth. (Qur’an 30:27)
Do you not perceive how God coins a metaphor? A Good Word, like a Good Tree, whose roots are deep, and whose branches reach into Heaven. (Qur’an 14:24-26)
Understanding Transcendence: The Tools of Interpretation
Among the tools of interpretation of scripture that are associated particularly with Shi‘i and Isma‘ili thought is that of ta’wil. This Qur’anic term, literally “going back to the first or beginning,” came to have the connotation of a form of hermeneutical discourse. Jean Pepin, in analysing the original Greek word hermeneuein, concludes that as used generally, the word has come to signify interpretation, and that hermeneutics today, commonly has as its synonym ‘exegesis’. However, the original meaning of hermeneuein, and other related words - or in any case their principal meaning - was not that at all, and was not far from being its exact contrary, if we grant that exegesis is a movement of penetration into the intention of a text or message.3
As set forth in Isma‘ili writings, the purpose and goal of ta’wil is to arrive at such an original understanding of scriptural texts by going beyond the formal, literal meaning of the text, neither limiting the total significance nor rejecting entirely the validity of such a formal reading, but affirming that the ultimate significance and totality of any text could only be grasped by the application of ta’wil. Such hermeneutics, in their view, complemented tafsir, the mode of formal interpretation in Muslim thought, and did not reflect a dichotomised way of viewing scripture. Rather, it attested to the divine use of language in multiple ways, particularly as exemplified in the Qur’anic verses cited above, through the use of “symbol” and figurative language.
Hermeneutical discourse in Isma‘ili thought thus extends the meaning of scripture, like branches reaching into Heaven, to identify the visible which glorifies Him, but it also seeks to penetrate to the roots, to retrieve and disclose that which appears invisible.
In his works, al-Risalah al Durriyah and Rahat al-‘Aql, the Fatimid philosopher Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani (d. 1021) juxtaposes a discussion of speech and language to his exposition of the concept of God and tawhid. He argues that languages grow out of words which are composed of letters which allow words to signify specific meanings. But words as well as languages are contingent and relative. Since God is not contingent but absolute, language, by its very nature, cannot appropriately define Him in a non-contingent way and take account of that which makes God different from all that is contingent. Thus, language in itself fails to define God as befitting His glory. Language, however, is a beginning, because it is the foremost tool for signifying and representing the possibility of what God is. The fact of being human and possessed of an intellect compels one to speak of and inquire about the agent from whom existentiation (or origination) comes forth. Thus, when one speaks of God, one does not necessarily describe Him as He is, but one has affirmed that He is indeed the originator of all that we employ to understand and describe His creation.
The appropriate mode of language which serves us best in this task is, according to al-Kirmani, figurative language. Such language, which employs analogy, metaphor and symbols, allows one to make distinctions and to establish differences in ways that a literal usage of language does not permit. It can also impel thought to seek new meanings and to develop the necessary tools of discourse to characterise these new meanings. Ta’wil, understood as metaphoric process, has the capacity to relate meaning to its beginnings - for that is not only the root sense of the word ta’wil itself, but also expresses the religious purpose for which such a metaphoric process is to be employed - as a journey to understanding God. This understanding starts as the ta’wil of the words used in the Qur’an , where God is indeed referred to as the “Sublime Symbol” thus legitimating the use of figurative language. In this sense, metaphoric language employs a special system of signs, the ultimate meaning of which is unveiled by the proper application of ta’wil.4
Articulating Transcendence: God Beyond Being and Non-being
The articulation of what David Burrell has referred to as the “grammar of divinity”5, that is, securing the distinction of God from the world, is also the shared starting point for the Isma‘ili formulation of tawhid, the Islamic belief in one God alone, who has no partner.
Among al-Kirmani’s predecessors, perhaps the most well-known Isma‘ili theologian was Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani (d. ca. 971). His works, building on previous Isma‘ili writings, enable us to see the formulation of a position in the context of the larger debate in the tenth century among Muslim theologians and philosophers. While discounting those outside the pale of monotheistic faith, whose beliefs, according to him, are polytheistic or anthropomorphic, he classifies others under several broad categories - those who ascribe to God the attributes He ascribes to Himself in the Book, but who do not wish to speculate unduly about these attributes; and those who argue in favour of speculation and wish to negate the attribution of human like qualities to God and therefore maintain that God can neither be defined, described, characterised, nor seen, nor be anywhere. He concludes that none of these positions allow one to accord to God the correct worship due to Him, nor do they allow for the articulation of transcendence in an appropriate manner. He states:
Whoever removes from his Creator descriptions, definitions and characteristics, falls into a hidden anthropomorphism, just as one who describes Him and characterises Him falls into overt anthropomorphism. (Sijistani, al-Maqalid, trans. Hunzai, p. 69)
In particular, he seeks to refute those who follow the Mu‘tazilite and descriptive attributes and argues that the ascribing of essential attributes, by perpetuating a duality between essence and attribute, would also lead to a plurality of eternal attributes. He argues further that the negation of specific attributes (knowledge, power, life, etc.) cannot be maintained, since human beings also have a share in such attributes. If these were to be denied, the negation would be incomplete, since the denial takes account only of characteristics of material creations (makhluqat) and not of spiritual entities (mubda’at). If one is to adopt the path of negation, he argues, then it must be a complete negation, denying that God has either material attributes or spiritual ones, thereby rendering him beyond existence (ays) and non-existence (lays).
In formulating such a sweeping concept of tawhid, Sijistani assumes three possible relations between God and His Creation: God can either resemble His creation entirely, in part, or not at all. In order to affirm the total distinction implied in tawhid, the third relation is the most appropriate, involving a total distinction from all forms of creation. Basing himself on a Qur’anic verse, “To Him belong the Creation (al-khalq) and the Command (al-amr)” (7:54), he divides all originated beings into (1) those that can be located in time and space, i.e., those that are formed (makhluqat), and (2) those that were originated through the act of command, all at once (daf’atan wahidah), and which are beyond time and space and are called (mubda’at). The former possess attributes, while the latter are entirely self-subsistent. The establishing and articulation of true transcendence (tanzih) must therefore deny both:
There does not exist a tanzih more brilliant and more noble than the one by which we establish the tanzih of our Mubdi’ (Originator) by using these words in which two negations, negation and a negation of negation (nafyun wa-nafyu nafyin), oppose each other. (Sijistani, al-Maqalid, trans. Hunzai, p.70)
Thus, the first negation disassociates God from all that can possess attributes, the second, from all who are “artributeless.” He is careful to avoid suggesting that even that which is without attributes, defined and non-defined, is God - in his schema God is beyond both, rendering Him absolutely unknowable and without any predicates.
Such a concept of tawhid immediately presents two problems for a Muslim: the first concerns how one might worship such a God; and the second, if He indeed so transcends His Creation, how is it that they came into existence? The “grammar of divinity” affirming distinction now leads in Isma‘ili thought to the “ladder of meaning” by which transcendence manifested through creation becomes “knowable.”
Manifesting Transcendence: Creation and Knowledge
Among the most serious charges laid against a doctrine of “creationism” - i.e., the assumption of a Creator as the ultimate cause, through a special act of creation - is that it assumes in the form of a complex deity the very thing that one wishes to explain, organised complexity. It is this relationship between Creator and creation, and the transformation that is implied in the former by the very occurrence of change, that constitutes the greatest intellectual knot that a rational theology must tackle.
It has been argued that Isma‘ili theology, particularly as expressed in the work of al-Sijistani, integrates a manifestational cosmology (analogous to some aspects of Stoic thought) within a Neoplatonic framework to create an alternative synthesis. The starting point of such a synthesis is the doctrine of ibda (derived from Qur’an 2:117). In its verbal form, it is taken to mean “originating instantaneously,” representing, as the late Henry Corbin has it, “l’instauration creatrice primordiale” to explain the notion in the Qur’an of God’s timeless command (Kun: “Be!”). Ibda therefore connotes, not a specific act of creation, but the dialogical mode through which a relationship between God and His creation can be affirmed - it articulates the process of beginning and sets the stage for developing a theology of the manifestation of transcendence in creation. By making creation emerge as a result of a process of origination (ibda), Sijistani hopes to maintain his distinction between God and creation by making Amr, God’s eternal expression of His will, the ultimate point of origin. In this sense, to quote Corbin again: “la philosophie premiere de l’ismaelisme n’est une metaphysique ni de l’ens, ni de l’esse, mais de l’esto.”?6 It can be said to express the distinction between God and creation even more sharply than the schema of emanationism associated with Plotinus.
Al-Kirmani attempts to distance the Isma‘ili view from the emanationist outlook and to resolve what he regards as the ambiguities in Sijistani’s formulation by arguing that the process of emanation and its source cannot be differentiated, strictly speaking. He cites as an analogy the light emanating from the sun, which, issuing from the fountain of the sun, partakes of the essence out of which it emanates, since at the point of emanation it is no different from the essence of the sun, its source. They are thus linked, though not identical, by being together in existence; and they could not logically be conceived of, one without the other. Such mutuality cannot be associated with God, for to conceive of existence as emanating from Him necessitates multiplicity in its source, which is its very essence. For al-Kirmani, then, the only absolute way in which creation and tawhid can be distinguished is through a much sharper definition of that which is originated through ibda, namely the First Existent or the First Intellect. He states:
It did not exist, then it came into existence via ibda and ikhtira, neither from a thing, nor upon a thing, nor in a thing, nor by a thing, nor for a thing and nor with a thing. (Kirmani, Rahat al-‘Aql, trans. Hunzai, p. 165)
Like the number one, it contains all other numbers, which depend on it for their existence. Yet it is independent and separate from them, and it is the source and the cause of all plurality. In order to establish the singularity of the First Intellect, he refers to what the ancient sages (hukama) have said:
From the First Existent, which is the First Cause, nothing comes into existence but a single existence ... or the Prime Mover moves only one, even though by it many are moved. (Kirmani, Rahat al-‘Aql, trans. Hunzai, p. 166)
Having used the arguments of the ancients for the purpose of validating his point, al-Kirmani is nevertheless quick to separate himself from the view that all these attributes can then be applied to God, for that would compromise his insistence on absolute transcendence. They can only apply to the First Intellect, which in his scheme now becomes the Source, that which is inherently the synthesis of the One and the many (Jami‘ li-l-wahdah wa al-kathrah). At this stage, anterior to time and space, the two qualities were in the First Intellect, but they comprise the dual dimension that relates the First Intellect to tawhid, as well as to the role by which its generative capacity can be manifested. With respect to God, the First Intellect exists to sanctify Him. Such sanctification (taqdis) on the part of the First Intellect reflects the nobler aspect of its dual dimension, where it is an affirmation of its own createdness and distinction from God. On the other hand, the sanctification generates a state of happiness and contentment within it, which produces actual and potential intellects, which in turn become the causes for the creation of the subsequent spiritual and material realms. Al-Kirmani distinguishes in the First Intellect between multiplicity and diversity. Though the forms within the Intellect can be said to be multiple, they do not yet possess this aspect, since no diversity or differentiation exists within the Intellect. His analogy for the actual intellect is the Qur’anic symbol of the “pen,” and of the potential intellect, the “tablet,” which become metaphors for form and matter, respectively.
Sijistani, in attempting to resolve the problem of explaining the First Intellect’s dual capacity for form and multiplicity, argues for a distinction between the concepts of multiplicity (kathrah) and diversity (tafawut). Extending the analogy of the pen, which contains all the subsequent forms of expression in writing - letters, words and names - before they appear in this differentiated form, he tries to argue that they are all one within the pen. Also, this singularity does not resemble any of the expressed forms as they appear subsequently in written form. Thus, each letter, prior to its manifestation, cannot be distinguished from the rest of the letters “preexisting” inside the pen. More interestingly, as Mohamed Alibhai shows in his analysis of Sijistanj’s epistemology, he makes the role of the Intellect analogous to that of the seed out of which the cosmos, in its spiritual as well as material form, develops. This metaphor, drawn from biology, suggests a process where the Intellect is manifested in the natural domain and participates in time. Such a view of creation seems to imply that the process of generation and development involves the Intellect’s participation as a “vital” principle in the cosmos progressively manifesting itself in both material and spiritual forms. The process by which this generation takes place is called inbi‘ath. Al-Kirmani, for example, employs two similes to illustrate this process, one from the natural order, one relating to human relations: the reflection of the sun in a mirror, and the blush on the cheek of the lover at the sight of the beloved. Inbi‘ath, manifestation, thus is contrasted with fayd, or emanation. The former, like the image of the sun in a mirror or a pool of water, is mere representation; it is from something and as figure can permit one to retrace it to the original. Such symbolism is particularly suited to evoking the sense of religiosity so central to the Islamic affirmation of distinction between God and creation. The rest of the intellects are manifested, one from the other, leading to the creation of the spheres, stars, and the physical world, including human beings.
In sum, the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda‘ represents the initial level, inbi‘ath, the secondary level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Isma‘ili formulation matter and spirit are united under a higher genus. Though they require different linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid.
When al-Muayyad fi-l-din al-Shirazi (d. 1077) interprets the Qur’anic verse “God created the heavens and earth in six days” (7:54),7he is concerned to show that the “days” stand figuratively for the six major cycles of Prophecy, each of which represents a journey to God. Their existence in time is not a function of priority or primacy; they merely succeed each other, like day and night. The believers in each of these cycles of prophecy are recipients of knowledge which assists in understanding tawhid. In Sijistani, there is a conception of two types of Prophecy, spiritual and material. The first relates to the human intellect, the second to human history embodied in the messages communicated through the various prophets. These messengers come to confirm that which the human intellect already knows, and human beings appropriately, by the acceptance of the message, corroborate the validity of each historical messenger. The actual intellect thus corroborates that which the potential intellect brings to it.
At a more philosophical level, for al-Kirmani an understanding of tawhid requires the believers to recognise that they must in some way “deconstruct” the First Intellect, divesting it of divinity. Ibda and then inbi‘ath reflect the “descending” arc of a circle, where God’s command creates the First Intellect, which is then manifested through successive existents down to the human intellect. The action of the believers can be seen to be the ascending arc, where each unit leading up to the First Intellect is divested of divinity until the process is completed on reaching the One itself. It is in this particular context that he cites a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad: “The believer is the muwahhid [literally, maker of the One] and God is muwahhid”- the believer, because he or she divests First Intellect of divinity, and God, because He originated the First Intellect as the symbol of the One. It is possible for the human intellect to comprehend this because God provides assistance to the human intellect through His “dual” messengers, making accessible the tools formalised in religious language and ritual, as well as those that reflect an intellectual and spiritual capacity for knowing.
This paper began with an emphasis on the symbolic mode of expression as a crucial means of apprehending God’s word and creation. It is perhaps appropriate that it conclude with a narrative from the Qur’an and it’s hermeneutic in Isma‘ili writings.
The Qur’anic account of Adam, his creation, fall and retrieval constitute for Ismaili thought what Henry Corbin has called “the drama in heaven.” In the Qur’an , Adam is taught “all the names” (Qur’an 2:31) by God and subsists in the heavenly state until the act of disobedience which causes him to be expelled to earth. The ta’wil of this story renders Adam as the homo spiritualis; the knowledge - “names” - endowed to him is the cognisance of the Primary and Secondary Intellects. His heavenly state is the result of the bliss engendered by his true worship and adoration, a mark of his awareness of the true meaning of tawhid mediated through the two Intellects above him. The fall injects the element of rupture into this primordial world, because Adam’s mistake is the failure to be constant in his recognition of the eternal, ontological anteriority of the Intellects that precede him. The refusal to recognise their status is also an act of violation of the proper testimony of tawhid. The transgression results in a regression. In order for him to retrieve his former status, he must pass back through the stages of his “fall” to recover “paradise.” This return becomes the human effort to journey to tawhid by learning to divest successively, at each level, elements that might mistakenly be attributed to the principle above. It is by returning to the beginning that Adam, in the sense that he symbolises all of humankind, recovers his original status. The cosmos becomes the instrument of the purification and the “theatre” in which the struggle must be played out. Corbin points out that the sense of nostalgia and repentance felt by the soul become the energising elements representing both the return to a paradisiacal past as well as a “conversion toward it.”8 Time, the dimension of creation that was engendered in the unfolding of the cosmos, becomes cyclical and is the archetype of its original form in the primordial world into which Adam was first placed.
The almost poetic language of this hermeneutical analysis is somewhat removed from the tone of the earlier writings of Sijistani and Kirmani, and it exemplifies the central role of metaphoric process in discovering and opening up new possibilities for reformulating scriptural meanings.
Quoting Nasir al din Tusi (d. 1274), who wrote during the Alamut period of Isma‘ili history, Corbin suggests that to come into this world should not be confused with corporeal presence in the world of existence; it is above all a mode of understanding this existence. To come into this world ... can have no significance other than to convert its metaphoric reality (majaz) into its True Reality(haqiqah).9
Notes
1. Many lsma‘ili writings of the Fatimid period have yet to be edited, let alone studied in the context of modern scholarship. But recent studies have begun to make more of them available to us. For al-Sijistani and al-Kirmani, I have drawn primarily from two recent studies: Mohamed Alibhai, Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani and “Kitab Sullam Al-Najat”: A Study in Islamic Neoplatonism (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1983); and F. M. Hunzai, The Concept of Tawhid in the Thought of Hamid al-din al-Kirmani (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1986). Another thesis - Paul Walker, Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani and the Development of Ismaili Neoplatonism (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1974) - as well as several articles by the author, based on the thesis, have also proved helpful. A comprehensive survey of Isma‘ili literature will be found in I. K. Poonawala, Bibliograpby of Ismaili Literature (Malibu: Urdena Publishers, 1977). For Isma‘ilism, see W. Madelung, “Ismailiyyah,” Encyclopaedia of Religion, Vol. 7; Azim Nanji, “Ismailism,” in Islamic Spirituality: Foundations, ed. S. H. Nasr (New York: Crossroads Publishing Co., 1987); and S. H. Nasr, ed. Ismaili Contributions to Islamic Culture (Tehran: 1977).
2. I would like to thank Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who responded formally to the paper at the symposium, for his helpful comments and for elaborating the overall Muslim intellectual context in which Isma‘ili thought can be set, as well as its subsequent influence on Muslim writers and thinkers.
3. Quoted by Eugene Vance, “Pas de trois: Narrative, Hermeneutic and Stricture in Medieval Poetics,” in Interpretation of Narrative, ed. M. J. Valdes and Owen Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 122.
4. Professor Nasr, commenting on the notion of ta’wil, suggested a definition that he attributed to the late Henry Corbin - “phenomenology.” My own sense of “metaphoric process” as a more comprehensive way of understanding the wider connotation of ta’wil is to see it at one level as suggesting a mode of reading the scriptural text and deciphering its verbal meaning, and also as a tool for disclosing an ultimate meaning which in the view of Isma‘ili writers represents “truth’” (haqq). There is thus one text, but it has two aspects: zahir and batin, a referential aspect and a fundamental one. In this connection, see Northrop Frye, The Great Code: Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), particularly chap. 3; and Mary Gerhart and Allan Russell, Metaphoric Process: The Creation of Scientific and Religious Understanding (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1984), which draws from the work of Paul Ricoeur.
5. David Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986) p. 2.
6. Henry Corbin, Nasir-e-Khosraw: Kitab-e-jami‘ al-Hikmatain (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1983), “Etude Prelirninaire,” p. 45.
7. For a further discussion, see Azim Nanji, “Toward a Hermeneutic of Qur’anic and other Narratives in Ismaili Thought,” in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. R. C. Martin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), pp. 167-68.
8. Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (London: Kegan Paul International, 1983), p. 42.
9. — —, p. 57.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=109742
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ismaili.htm
The original article below is an academic paper and hence is primarily intended for well-versed scholars of Islamic Studies to read. It is written in cogent, scholarly and precise language by its author Dr. Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, UK. Nevertheless, it is well worth reading a few times by a lay audience because I think it captures the excitement of the fertile and diverse intellectual climate that must have characterised Fatimid Ismaili Egypt and the century of Shiite Intellectual Renaissance that preceded it:
Transcendence and Distinction: Metaphoric Process in Isma‘ili Muslim Thought
Professor Azim Nanji
This is an edited version of an article that was originally published in God and Creation: An Ecumenical Symposium edited by David B. Burrell and Bernard McGinn, University of Notre Dame, 1990, pp 304-315.
Abstract:
This essay explores how writers of the Fatimid period of Isma‘ili history, during the tenth and eleventh centuries1, developed an approach that sought to reconcile an understanding of the transcendent and unique nature of God - embodied in the Qur’anic concept of tawhid - with a view of creation as both produced by, and yet distinct from, God. Such an approach, in common with the general discourse among certain other Muslim schools of thought, was concerned with developing rational tools of comprehension that could be applied to scriptural statements. The set of problems they dealt with had dimensions similar to those faced by other Muslim philosophers and theologians, as well as their Jewish and Christian counterparts, in developing various syntheses with philosophy, particularly in its Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic versions. The access to tools of inquiry afforded by the philosophical heritage of antiquity became, for those Muslims committed to rational discourse, a resource and an ally that they willingly co-opted in their quest to decipher truths they believed to be embedded in revelation.
The reflexive process engendered by the interaction of the two allowed various Muslim groups to articulate distinctive stances towards the relationship of reason and revelation that in turn led to them being identified with various developing theological orientations. Though in time historical and other factors led to the emergence of one or the other orientation as dominant, it is important to note, during this period, the shared intellectual climate, the commonality of issues, and the existence of a plurality of discourses, which provided the overall context of “exchange” amongst Muslims, and also between them, the “People of the Book” and the classical heritage. The “exchange” also enabled the discussion to take place within a common linguistic framework that had adapted the intellectual tools of discourse and which came to represent, as in the Isma‘ili case, a point of departure for the expression and elaboration of the received monotheistic doctrine of God.2
Download PDF version of article (52 KB)
Key Words:
Ta’wil, Qur’an, Isma‘ili, tafsir, hermeneutics, al-Kirmani, al-Sijistani, Mu‘tazilite, ays, lays, tawhid, al-khalq, cosmology, Neoplatonic thought, Rahat al-Aql, First Intellect, taqdis, kathrah, and tafawut.
Table of Contents
Understanding Transcendence: The Tools of Interpretation
Articulating Transcendence: God Beyond Being and Non-being
Manifesting Transcendence: Creation and Knowledge
He originates creation; then refashions it - for Him an easy task. His is the most Sublime Symbol in the heavens and the earth. (Qur’an 30:27)
Do you not perceive how God coins a metaphor? A Good Word, like a Good Tree, whose roots are deep, and whose branches reach into Heaven. (Qur’an 14:24-26)
Understanding Transcendence: The Tools of Interpretation
Among the tools of interpretation of scripture that are associated particularly with Shi‘i and Isma‘ili thought is that of ta’wil. This Qur’anic term, literally “going back to the first or beginning,” came to have the connotation of a form of hermeneutical discourse. Jean Pepin, in analysing the original Greek word hermeneuein, concludes that as used generally, the word has come to signify interpretation, and that hermeneutics today, commonly has as its synonym ‘exegesis’. However, the original meaning of hermeneuein, and other related words - or in any case their principal meaning - was not that at all, and was not far from being its exact contrary, if we grant that exegesis is a movement of penetration into the intention of a text or message.3
As set forth in Isma‘ili writings, the purpose and goal of ta’wil is to arrive at such an original understanding of scriptural texts by going beyond the formal, literal meaning of the text, neither limiting the total significance nor rejecting entirely the validity of such a formal reading, but affirming that the ultimate significance and totality of any text could only be grasped by the application of ta’wil. Such hermeneutics, in their view, complemented tafsir, the mode of formal interpretation in Muslim thought, and did not reflect a dichotomised way of viewing scripture. Rather, it attested to the divine use of language in multiple ways, particularly as exemplified in the Qur’anic verses cited above, through the use of “symbol” and figurative language.
Hermeneutical discourse in Isma‘ili thought thus extends the meaning of scripture, like branches reaching into Heaven, to identify the visible which glorifies Him, but it also seeks to penetrate to the roots, to retrieve and disclose that which appears invisible.
In his works, al-Risalah al Durriyah and Rahat al-‘Aql, the Fatimid philosopher Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani (d. 1021) juxtaposes a discussion of speech and language to his exposition of the concept of God and tawhid. He argues that languages grow out of words which are composed of letters which allow words to signify specific meanings. But words as well as languages are contingent and relative. Since God is not contingent but absolute, language, by its very nature, cannot appropriately define Him in a non-contingent way and take account of that which makes God different from all that is contingent. Thus, language in itself fails to define God as befitting His glory. Language, however, is a beginning, because it is the foremost tool for signifying and representing the possibility of what God is. The fact of being human and possessed of an intellect compels one to speak of and inquire about the agent from whom existentiation (or origination) comes forth. Thus, when one speaks of God, one does not necessarily describe Him as He is, but one has affirmed that He is indeed the originator of all that we employ to understand and describe His creation.
The appropriate mode of language which serves us best in this task is, according to al-Kirmani, figurative language. Such language, which employs analogy, metaphor and symbols, allows one to make distinctions and to establish differences in ways that a literal usage of language does not permit. It can also impel thought to seek new meanings and to develop the necessary tools of discourse to characterise these new meanings. Ta’wil, understood as metaphoric process, has the capacity to relate meaning to its beginnings - for that is not only the root sense of the word ta’wil itself, but also expresses the religious purpose for which such a metaphoric process is to be employed - as a journey to understanding God. This understanding starts as the ta’wil of the words used in the Qur’an , where God is indeed referred to as the “Sublime Symbol” thus legitimating the use of figurative language. In this sense, metaphoric language employs a special system of signs, the ultimate meaning of which is unveiled by the proper application of ta’wil.4
Articulating Transcendence: God Beyond Being and Non-being
The articulation of what David Burrell has referred to as the “grammar of divinity”5, that is, securing the distinction of God from the world, is also the shared starting point for the Isma‘ili formulation of tawhid, the Islamic belief in one God alone, who has no partner.
Among al-Kirmani’s predecessors, perhaps the most well-known Isma‘ili theologian was Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani (d. ca. 971). His works, building on previous Isma‘ili writings, enable us to see the formulation of a position in the context of the larger debate in the tenth century among Muslim theologians and philosophers. While discounting those outside the pale of monotheistic faith, whose beliefs, according to him, are polytheistic or anthropomorphic, he classifies others under several broad categories - those who ascribe to God the attributes He ascribes to Himself in the Book, but who do not wish to speculate unduly about these attributes; and those who argue in favour of speculation and wish to negate the attribution of human like qualities to God and therefore maintain that God can neither be defined, described, characterised, nor seen, nor be anywhere. He concludes that none of these positions allow one to accord to God the correct worship due to Him, nor do they allow for the articulation of transcendence in an appropriate manner. He states:
Whoever removes from his Creator descriptions, definitions and characteristics, falls into a hidden anthropomorphism, just as one who describes Him and characterises Him falls into overt anthropomorphism. (Sijistani, al-Maqalid, trans. Hunzai, p. 69)
In particular, he seeks to refute those who follow the Mu‘tazilite and descriptive attributes and argues that the ascribing of essential attributes, by perpetuating a duality between essence and attribute, would also lead to a plurality of eternal attributes. He argues further that the negation of specific attributes (knowledge, power, life, etc.) cannot be maintained, since human beings also have a share in such attributes. If these were to be denied, the negation would be incomplete, since the denial takes account only of characteristics of material creations (makhluqat) and not of spiritual entities (mubda’at). If one is to adopt the path of negation, he argues, then it must be a complete negation, denying that God has either material attributes or spiritual ones, thereby rendering him beyond existence (ays) and non-existence (lays).
In formulating such a sweeping concept of tawhid, Sijistani assumes three possible relations between God and His Creation: God can either resemble His creation entirely, in part, or not at all. In order to affirm the total distinction implied in tawhid, the third relation is the most appropriate, involving a total distinction from all forms of creation. Basing himself on a Qur’anic verse, “To Him belong the Creation (al-khalq) and the Command (al-amr)” (7:54), he divides all originated beings into (1) those that can be located in time and space, i.e., those that are formed (makhluqat), and (2) those that were originated through the act of command, all at once (daf’atan wahidah), and which are beyond time and space and are called (mubda’at). The former possess attributes, while the latter are entirely self-subsistent. The establishing and articulation of true transcendence (tanzih) must therefore deny both:
There does not exist a tanzih more brilliant and more noble than the one by which we establish the tanzih of our Mubdi’ (Originator) by using these words in which two negations, negation and a negation of negation (nafyun wa-nafyu nafyin), oppose each other. (Sijistani, al-Maqalid, trans. Hunzai, p.70)
Thus, the first negation disassociates God from all that can possess attributes, the second, from all who are “artributeless.” He is careful to avoid suggesting that even that which is without attributes, defined and non-defined, is God - in his schema God is beyond both, rendering Him absolutely unknowable and without any predicates.
Such a concept of tawhid immediately presents two problems for a Muslim: the first concerns how one might worship such a God; and the second, if He indeed so transcends His Creation, how is it that they came into existence? The “grammar of divinity” affirming distinction now leads in Isma‘ili thought to the “ladder of meaning” by which transcendence manifested through creation becomes “knowable.”
Manifesting Transcendence: Creation and Knowledge
Among the most serious charges laid against a doctrine of “creationism” - i.e., the assumption of a Creator as the ultimate cause, through a special act of creation - is that it assumes in the form of a complex deity the very thing that one wishes to explain, organised complexity. It is this relationship between Creator and creation, and the transformation that is implied in the former by the very occurrence of change, that constitutes the greatest intellectual knot that a rational theology must tackle.
It has been argued that Isma‘ili theology, particularly as expressed in the work of al-Sijistani, integrates a manifestational cosmology (analogous to some aspects of Stoic thought) within a Neoplatonic framework to create an alternative synthesis. The starting point of such a synthesis is the doctrine of ibda (derived from Qur’an 2:117). In its verbal form, it is taken to mean “originating instantaneously,” representing, as the late Henry Corbin has it, “l’instauration creatrice primordiale” to explain the notion in the Qur’an of God’s timeless command (Kun: “Be!”). Ibda therefore connotes, not a specific act of creation, but the dialogical mode through which a relationship between God and His creation can be affirmed - it articulates the process of beginning and sets the stage for developing a theology of the manifestation of transcendence in creation. By making creation emerge as a result of a process of origination (ibda), Sijistani hopes to maintain his distinction between God and creation by making Amr, God’s eternal expression of His will, the ultimate point of origin. In this sense, to quote Corbin again: “la philosophie premiere de l’ismaelisme n’est une metaphysique ni de l’ens, ni de l’esse, mais de l’esto.”?6 It can be said to express the distinction between God and creation even more sharply than the schema of emanationism associated with Plotinus.
Al-Kirmani attempts to distance the Isma‘ili view from the emanationist outlook and to resolve what he regards as the ambiguities in Sijistani’s formulation by arguing that the process of emanation and its source cannot be differentiated, strictly speaking. He cites as an analogy the light emanating from the sun, which, issuing from the fountain of the sun, partakes of the essence out of which it emanates, since at the point of emanation it is no different from the essence of the sun, its source. They are thus linked, though not identical, by being together in existence; and they could not logically be conceived of, one without the other. Such mutuality cannot be associated with God, for to conceive of existence as emanating from Him necessitates multiplicity in its source, which is its very essence. For al-Kirmani, then, the only absolute way in which creation and tawhid can be distinguished is through a much sharper definition of that which is originated through ibda, namely the First Existent or the First Intellect. He states:
It did not exist, then it came into existence via ibda and ikhtira, neither from a thing, nor upon a thing, nor in a thing, nor by a thing, nor for a thing and nor with a thing. (Kirmani, Rahat al-‘Aql, trans. Hunzai, p. 165)
Like the number one, it contains all other numbers, which depend on it for their existence. Yet it is independent and separate from them, and it is the source and the cause of all plurality. In order to establish the singularity of the First Intellect, he refers to what the ancient sages (hukama) have said:
From the First Existent, which is the First Cause, nothing comes into existence but a single existence ... or the Prime Mover moves only one, even though by it many are moved. (Kirmani, Rahat al-‘Aql, trans. Hunzai, p. 166)
Having used the arguments of the ancients for the purpose of validating his point, al-Kirmani is nevertheless quick to separate himself from the view that all these attributes can then be applied to God, for that would compromise his insistence on absolute transcendence. They can only apply to the First Intellect, which in his scheme now becomes the Source, that which is inherently the synthesis of the One and the many (Jami‘ li-l-wahdah wa al-kathrah). At this stage, anterior to time and space, the two qualities were in the First Intellect, but they comprise the dual dimension that relates the First Intellect to tawhid, as well as to the role by which its generative capacity can be manifested. With respect to God, the First Intellect exists to sanctify Him. Such sanctification (taqdis) on the part of the First Intellect reflects the nobler aspect of its dual dimension, where it is an affirmation of its own createdness and distinction from God. On the other hand, the sanctification generates a state of happiness and contentment within it, which produces actual and potential intellects, which in turn become the causes for the creation of the subsequent spiritual and material realms. Al-Kirmani distinguishes in the First Intellect between multiplicity and diversity. Though the forms within the Intellect can be said to be multiple, they do not yet possess this aspect, since no diversity or differentiation exists within the Intellect. His analogy for the actual intellect is the Qur’anic symbol of the “pen,” and of the potential intellect, the “tablet,” which become metaphors for form and matter, respectively.
Sijistani, in attempting to resolve the problem of explaining the First Intellect’s dual capacity for form and multiplicity, argues for a distinction between the concepts of multiplicity (kathrah) and diversity (tafawut). Extending the analogy of the pen, which contains all the subsequent forms of expression in writing - letters, words and names - before they appear in this differentiated form, he tries to argue that they are all one within the pen. Also, this singularity does not resemble any of the expressed forms as they appear subsequently in written form. Thus, each letter, prior to its manifestation, cannot be distinguished from the rest of the letters “preexisting” inside the pen. More interestingly, as Mohamed Alibhai shows in his analysis of Sijistanj’s epistemology, he makes the role of the Intellect analogous to that of the seed out of which the cosmos, in its spiritual as well as material form, develops. This metaphor, drawn from biology, suggests a process where the Intellect is manifested in the natural domain and participates in time. Such a view of creation seems to imply that the process of generation and development involves the Intellect’s participation as a “vital” principle in the cosmos progressively manifesting itself in both material and spiritual forms. The process by which this generation takes place is called inbi‘ath. Al-Kirmani, for example, employs two similes to illustrate this process, one from the natural order, one relating to human relations: the reflection of the sun in a mirror, and the blush on the cheek of the lover at the sight of the beloved. Inbi‘ath, manifestation, thus is contrasted with fayd, or emanation. The former, like the image of the sun in a mirror or a pool of water, is mere representation; it is from something and as figure can permit one to retrace it to the original. Such symbolism is particularly suited to evoking the sense of religiosity so central to the Islamic affirmation of distinction between God and creation. The rest of the intellects are manifested, one from the other, leading to the creation of the spheres, stars, and the physical world, including human beings.
In sum, the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda‘ represents the initial level, inbi‘ath, the secondary level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Isma‘ili formulation matter and spirit are united under a higher genus. Though they require different linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid.
When al-Muayyad fi-l-din al-Shirazi (d. 1077) interprets the Qur’anic verse “God created the heavens and earth in six days” (7:54),7he is concerned to show that the “days” stand figuratively for the six major cycles of Prophecy, each of which represents a journey to God. Their existence in time is not a function of priority or primacy; they merely succeed each other, like day and night. The believers in each of these cycles of prophecy are recipients of knowledge which assists in understanding tawhid. In Sijistani, there is a conception of two types of Prophecy, spiritual and material. The first relates to the human intellect, the second to human history embodied in the messages communicated through the various prophets. These messengers come to confirm that which the human intellect already knows, and human beings appropriately, by the acceptance of the message, corroborate the validity of each historical messenger. The actual intellect thus corroborates that which the potential intellect brings to it.
At a more philosophical level, for al-Kirmani an understanding of tawhid requires the believers to recognise that they must in some way “deconstruct” the First Intellect, divesting it of divinity. Ibda and then inbi‘ath reflect the “descending” arc of a circle, where God’s command creates the First Intellect, which is then manifested through successive existents down to the human intellect. The action of the believers can be seen to be the ascending arc, where each unit leading up to the First Intellect is divested of divinity until the process is completed on reaching the One itself. It is in this particular context that he cites a tradition of the Prophet Muhammad: “The believer is the muwahhid [literally, maker of the One] and God is muwahhid”- the believer, because he or she divests First Intellect of divinity, and God, because He originated the First Intellect as the symbol of the One. It is possible for the human intellect to comprehend this because God provides assistance to the human intellect through His “dual” messengers, making accessible the tools formalised in religious language and ritual, as well as those that reflect an intellectual and spiritual capacity for knowing.
This paper began with an emphasis on the symbolic mode of expression as a crucial means of apprehending God’s word and creation. It is perhaps appropriate that it conclude with a narrative from the Qur’an and it’s hermeneutic in Isma‘ili writings.
The Qur’anic account of Adam, his creation, fall and retrieval constitute for Ismaili thought what Henry Corbin has called “the drama in heaven.” In the Qur’an , Adam is taught “all the names” (Qur’an 2:31) by God and subsists in the heavenly state until the act of disobedience which causes him to be expelled to earth. The ta’wil of this story renders Adam as the homo spiritualis; the knowledge - “names” - endowed to him is the cognisance of the Primary and Secondary Intellects. His heavenly state is the result of the bliss engendered by his true worship and adoration, a mark of his awareness of the true meaning of tawhid mediated through the two Intellects above him. The fall injects the element of rupture into this primordial world, because Adam’s mistake is the failure to be constant in his recognition of the eternal, ontological anteriority of the Intellects that precede him. The refusal to recognise their status is also an act of violation of the proper testimony of tawhid. The transgression results in a regression. In order for him to retrieve his former status, he must pass back through the stages of his “fall” to recover “paradise.” This return becomes the human effort to journey to tawhid by learning to divest successively, at each level, elements that might mistakenly be attributed to the principle above. It is by returning to the beginning that Adam, in the sense that he symbolises all of humankind, recovers his original status. The cosmos becomes the instrument of the purification and the “theatre” in which the struggle must be played out. Corbin points out that the sense of nostalgia and repentance felt by the soul become the energising elements representing both the return to a paradisiacal past as well as a “conversion toward it.”8 Time, the dimension of creation that was engendered in the unfolding of the cosmos, becomes cyclical and is the archetype of its original form in the primordial world into which Adam was first placed.
The almost poetic language of this hermeneutical analysis is somewhat removed from the tone of the earlier writings of Sijistani and Kirmani, and it exemplifies the central role of metaphoric process in discovering and opening up new possibilities for reformulating scriptural meanings.
Quoting Nasir al din Tusi (d. 1274), who wrote during the Alamut period of Isma‘ili history, Corbin suggests that to come into this world should not be confused with corporeal presence in the world of existence; it is above all a mode of understanding this existence. To come into this world ... can have no significance other than to convert its metaphoric reality (majaz) into its True Reality(haqiqah).9
Notes
1. Many lsma‘ili writings of the Fatimid period have yet to be edited, let alone studied in the context of modern scholarship. But recent studies have begun to make more of them available to us. For al-Sijistani and al-Kirmani, I have drawn primarily from two recent studies: Mohamed Alibhai, Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani and “Kitab Sullam Al-Najat”: A Study in Islamic Neoplatonism (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1983); and F. M. Hunzai, The Concept of Tawhid in the Thought of Hamid al-din al-Kirmani (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1986). Another thesis - Paul Walker, Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani and the Development of Ismaili Neoplatonism (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1974) - as well as several articles by the author, based on the thesis, have also proved helpful. A comprehensive survey of Isma‘ili literature will be found in I. K. Poonawala, Bibliograpby of Ismaili Literature (Malibu: Urdena Publishers, 1977). For Isma‘ilism, see W. Madelung, “Ismailiyyah,” Encyclopaedia of Religion, Vol. 7; Azim Nanji, “Ismailism,” in Islamic Spirituality: Foundations, ed. S. H. Nasr (New York: Crossroads Publishing Co., 1987); and S. H. Nasr, ed. Ismaili Contributions to Islamic Culture (Tehran: 1977).
2. I would like to thank Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who responded formally to the paper at the symposium, for his helpful comments and for elaborating the overall Muslim intellectual context in which Isma‘ili thought can be set, as well as its subsequent influence on Muslim writers and thinkers.
3. Quoted by Eugene Vance, “Pas de trois: Narrative, Hermeneutic and Stricture in Medieval Poetics,” in Interpretation of Narrative, ed. M. J. Valdes and Owen Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 122.
4. Professor Nasr, commenting on the notion of ta’wil, suggested a definition that he attributed to the late Henry Corbin - “phenomenology.” My own sense of “metaphoric process” as a more comprehensive way of understanding the wider connotation of ta’wil is to see it at one level as suggesting a mode of reading the scriptural text and deciphering its verbal meaning, and also as a tool for disclosing an ultimate meaning which in the view of Isma‘ili writers represents “truth’” (haqq). There is thus one text, but it has two aspects: zahir and batin, a referential aspect and a fundamental one. In this connection, see Northrop Frye, The Great Code: Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), particularly chap. 3; and Mary Gerhart and Allan Russell, Metaphoric Process: The Creation of Scientific and Religious Understanding (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1984), which draws from the work of Paul Ricoeur.
5. David Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986) p. 2.
6. Henry Corbin, Nasir-e-Khosraw: Kitab-e-jami‘ al-Hikmatain (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1983), “Etude Prelirninaire,” p. 45.
7. For a further discussion, see Azim Nanji, “Toward a Hermeneutic of Qur’anic and other Narratives in Ismaili Thought,” in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, ed. R. C. Martin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985), pp. 167-68.
8. Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (London: Kegan Paul International, 1983), p. 42.
9. — —, p. 57.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=109742
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
396)All in a day's online musing: Predestination and Free Will for Subatomic Particles; The God Particle; Cat and Mouse in the Blood-Sport of Politics
1)I came accross this article and posted it:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_subatomic_particles_have_free_will?
Discussion went back and forth and then I posted this:
I posted that article on the free will of subatomic particles because a discussion on free will and predestination was already underway. I checked the only book I have on AlSijistani and there is no direct material on this subject but one can infer a few things:
"It is after all the human being alone among terrestrial creatures who responds to the appeal that the four roots(Universal Intellect,Universal Soul, Natiq and Asas) issue. Humans are the single creature in the entire lower world to answer the call of God's Oneness and thereby make use of the sources radiating from above"('Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary' by Paul Walker)
I think that the issue of free will, when properly applied, must lead to a choice of the above-quoted scenario. Even when Aga Khan IV talks about institutional free will and independent thinking at a Muslim educational institution, there is always a qualification at the end:
"An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University)
With regard to the tiniest subatomic particles being predetermined in the way they behave or not Aga Khan III said:
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
and,
"...The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy..."(Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 1995)
It would seem that whichever way the material subatomic particle "chooses" to spin its choice is ultimately being influenced("predetermined") or guided by the All-Powerful(spiritual) Soul of God that created the particle in the first place. The human mind is made up of trillions and trillions of such subatomic particles ready to spin or go bust. Hence the brilliant statement by Aga Khan III:
"In Islam the Faithful believe in Divine justice and are convinced that the solution of the great problem of predestination and free will is to be found in the compromise that God knows what man is going to do, but that man is free to do it or not"
and the admonishment about the suboptimal use of free will:
"The man of faith who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, itis man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
About "the creation" Prophet Muhammad(PBUH) said:
"The first(and only) thing created by God was the Intellect('aql)"(circa 632CE)
about which Al Sijistani elaborated:
"The first and only thing to issue, by a process of origination, through the Divine Command, from the Absolutely Transcendent Originator(Mubdi) was Intellect and everything else in creation is an emanation from Intellect"
Back and forth went the discussion and I eventually chimed in:
While Al Sijistani's work may not have a direct connection to psychology, specifically its clinical applications, his cosmology is all-encompassing and very cosmopolitan in my view. In describing his 4 root sources of the truth(Universal Intellect, Universal Soul, Natiq and Asas) he makes it clear that his is a vision for all humanity, not just the Ismailis and Muslims to whom he was prosletysing to:
"For Al Sijistani, the truth is known and its roots are four. Between God and the individual human thinker, there are exactly four sources that provide truth, that define and give meaning to existence, and that keep the whole universe-from the smallest particle to the grandest creation-in place and continuing to do what each was intended to do. These four are the pillars for the architecture of the intelligible universe as he, and the Ismailis who followed him, saw it. His vision is thus comprehensive and inclusive. Studying Al Sijistani's thought is inherently interesting if only for the breadth of his aspirations and the complexity of his way of viewing the structure of truth"(Paul Walker)
In his characterization of the Natiq(Speaking Prophet) he makes itclear he is referring to the 6 great prophets and, by implication, all the other great sages and 124,000 minor prophets sent to mankind. He even mentions pre-Alid Imams when discussing the Ismaili viewpoint specifically.
Related posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/284abu-yakub-al-sijistani-cosmologist.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/08/393the-particle-zoo-building-blocks-of.html
2)Someone then posted this about the "God Particle":
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080823/national/god_particle_1
to which I responded:
Higgs bosons are particles but they can also be looked at as a Higgs wave field: all matter has both particle-like properties as well as wave-like properties. A pinpoint laser beam of light shows light as a concentrated stream of particles whereas light that is shone through two slits cut into a cardboard will show a characteristic pattern of wave-like interference on the other side of the slits. Light therefore, a physical substance whose basic particle is called a photon, has both particle-like and wave-like properties. The same goes for all sub-atomic particles and all matter in fact.
We are all emersed in the Higgs field. Some have given the example of stretching your arm outward and then trying to move it back and forth-the inertia or resistance we experience in trying to do that movementis caused by the Higgs field. The discovery of the Higgs boson or field(which could happen as early as this year) will be a momentous one and will surely earn Mr Higgs, who predicted mathematically during the 1960s the presence of the Higgs particle in the universe, a Nobel prize. This is another example of how the universe is governed by the principles of mathematics. Most of the subatomic particles in the universe were first predicted mathematically long before they were actually discovered in real life. This mathematical and geometric symmetry in nature and the universe as well as in man-made structures from Islamic architecture and Islamic calligraphy are all symbolic of the abstraction of Allah the Transcendent in the Islamic tradition.
Related posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/319the-learning-of-mathematics-was.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/309harmonious-mathematical-reasoning.html
Somebody brought up String Theory and I replied:
Interesting that you should mention string theory because it is very relevant to the Higgs particle or wave field. We are all immersed in the Higgs field, which bestows the property of mass onto material objects. That is why it is referred to as the "God Particle":
"Since the mid-1980s theoretical physicists have suggested Superstring theory to bridge the gap between Einstein's theory of Relativity dealing with macroscopic objects(stars, planets,etc) and Quantum mechanics and theory, dealing with submicroscopic particles(atoms, protons, quarks, etc).The suggestion is that the Higgs field or boson is a field that we are all immersed in and that tiny strings(either straight or in loops, the most fundamental particles of matter), when they vibrate in a certain way or configuration, interact with the Higgs Field to produce the particles we have become familiar with, ie, quarks, neutrinos, photons, electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. Some have given the example of stretching your arm outward and then trying to move it back and forth-the inertia or resistance we experience in trying to do that movement is caused by the Higgs field."
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/superstring-theory.html
3)The Blood-Sport of Politics:
Finally, Somebody brought up the possibility of a Canadian federal election in the Fall and the game of chicken being played by the various political leaders, to which I chimed in:
Clearly, there is a game of chicken being played on both sides here. Over the past 8 months the Liberals have threatened to bring the Government down at each sitting(thereby violating the rule of a fixed election date set for Oct 2009 passed by ALL of Parliament and not just the Conservatives) yet backing down every time a vote of confidence was called for in the house. Now the Prime Minister has decided to join the game of chicken and he seems serious about breaking the same rule the Liberals have been threateniing to do at least 6 times since the beginning of the year. My impression is that politics is a blood-sport whether in Canada, the USA, Pakistan, India, France, Zimbabwe or anywhere else.
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_subatomic_particles_have_free_will?
Discussion went back and forth and then I posted this:
I posted that article on the free will of subatomic particles because a discussion on free will and predestination was already underway. I checked the only book I have on AlSijistani and there is no direct material on this subject but one can infer a few things:
"It is after all the human being alone among terrestrial creatures who responds to the appeal that the four roots(Universal Intellect,Universal Soul, Natiq and Asas) issue. Humans are the single creature in the entire lower world to answer the call of God's Oneness and thereby make use of the sources radiating from above"('Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary' by Paul Walker)
I think that the issue of free will, when properly applied, must lead to a choice of the above-quoted scenario. Even when Aga Khan IV talks about institutional free will and independent thinking at a Muslim educational institution, there is always a qualification at the end:
"An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University)
With regard to the tiniest subatomic particles being predetermined in the way they behave or not Aga Khan III said:
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
and,
"...The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy..."(Azim Nanji, Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 1995)
It would seem that whichever way the material subatomic particle "chooses" to spin its choice is ultimately being influenced("predetermined") or guided by the All-Powerful(spiritual) Soul of God that created the particle in the first place. The human mind is made up of trillions and trillions of such subatomic particles ready to spin or go bust. Hence the brilliant statement by Aga Khan III:
"In Islam the Faithful believe in Divine justice and are convinced that the solution of the great problem of predestination and free will is to be found in the compromise that God knows what man is going to do, but that man is free to do it or not"
and the admonishment about the suboptimal use of free will:
"The man of faith who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, itis man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation"(Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan University Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)
About "the creation" Prophet Muhammad(PBUH) said:
"The first(and only) thing created by God was the Intellect('aql)"(circa 632CE)
about which Al Sijistani elaborated:
"The first and only thing to issue, by a process of origination, through the Divine Command, from the Absolutely Transcendent Originator(Mubdi) was Intellect and everything else in creation is an emanation from Intellect"
Back and forth went the discussion and I eventually chimed in:
While Al Sijistani's work may not have a direct connection to psychology, specifically its clinical applications, his cosmology is all-encompassing and very cosmopolitan in my view. In describing his 4 root sources of the truth(Universal Intellect, Universal Soul, Natiq and Asas) he makes it clear that his is a vision for all humanity, not just the Ismailis and Muslims to whom he was prosletysing to:
"For Al Sijistani, the truth is known and its roots are four. Between God and the individual human thinker, there are exactly four sources that provide truth, that define and give meaning to existence, and that keep the whole universe-from the smallest particle to the grandest creation-in place and continuing to do what each was intended to do. These four are the pillars for the architecture of the intelligible universe as he, and the Ismailis who followed him, saw it. His vision is thus comprehensive and inclusive. Studying Al Sijistani's thought is inherently interesting if only for the breadth of his aspirations and the complexity of his way of viewing the structure of truth"(Paul Walker)
In his characterization of the Natiq(Speaking Prophet) he makes itclear he is referring to the 6 great prophets and, by implication, all the other great sages and 124,000 minor prophets sent to mankind. He even mentions pre-Alid Imams when discussing the Ismaili viewpoint specifically.
Related posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/284abu-yakub-al-sijistani-cosmologist.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/08/393the-particle-zoo-building-blocks-of.html
2)Someone then posted this about the "God Particle":
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080823/national/god_particle_1
to which I responded:
Higgs bosons are particles but they can also be looked at as a Higgs wave field: all matter has both particle-like properties as well as wave-like properties. A pinpoint laser beam of light shows light as a concentrated stream of particles whereas light that is shone through two slits cut into a cardboard will show a characteristic pattern of wave-like interference on the other side of the slits. Light therefore, a physical substance whose basic particle is called a photon, has both particle-like and wave-like properties. The same goes for all sub-atomic particles and all matter in fact.
We are all emersed in the Higgs field. Some have given the example of stretching your arm outward and then trying to move it back and forth-the inertia or resistance we experience in trying to do that movementis caused by the Higgs field. The discovery of the Higgs boson or field(which could happen as early as this year) will be a momentous one and will surely earn Mr Higgs, who predicted mathematically during the 1960s the presence of the Higgs particle in the universe, a Nobel prize. This is another example of how the universe is governed by the principles of mathematics. Most of the subatomic particles in the universe were first predicted mathematically long before they were actually discovered in real life. This mathematical and geometric symmetry in nature and the universe as well as in man-made structures from Islamic architecture and Islamic calligraphy are all symbolic of the abstraction of Allah the Transcendent in the Islamic tradition.
Related posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/319the-learning-of-mathematics-was.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/309harmonious-mathematical-reasoning.html
Somebody brought up String Theory and I replied:
Interesting that you should mention string theory because it is very relevant to the Higgs particle or wave field. We are all immersed in the Higgs field, which bestows the property of mass onto material objects. That is why it is referred to as the "God Particle":
"Since the mid-1980s theoretical physicists have suggested Superstring theory to bridge the gap between Einstein's theory of Relativity dealing with macroscopic objects(stars, planets,etc) and Quantum mechanics and theory, dealing with submicroscopic particles(atoms, protons, quarks, etc).The suggestion is that the Higgs field or boson is a field that we are all immersed in and that tiny strings(either straight or in loops, the most fundamental particles of matter), when they vibrate in a certain way or configuration, interact with the Higgs Field to produce the particles we have become familiar with, ie, quarks, neutrinos, photons, electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. Some have given the example of stretching your arm outward and then trying to move it back and forth-the inertia or resistance we experience in trying to do that movement is caused by the Higgs field."
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/superstring-theory.html
3)The Blood-Sport of Politics:
Finally, Somebody brought up the possibility of a Canadian federal election in the Fall and the game of chicken being played by the various political leaders, to which I chimed in:
Clearly, there is a game of chicken being played on both sides here. Over the past 8 months the Liberals have threatened to bring the Government down at each sitting(thereby violating the rule of a fixed election date set for Oct 2009 passed by ALL of Parliament and not just the Conservatives) yet backing down every time a vote of confidence was called for in the house. Now the Prime Minister has decided to join the game of chicken and he seems serious about breaking the same rule the Liberals have been threateniing to do at least 6 times since the beginning of the year. My impression is that politics is a blood-sport whether in Canada, the USA, Pakistan, India, France, Zimbabwe or anywhere else.
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
Sunday, August 24, 2008
395)A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash; Quotes of Aga Khans IV and III
The longstanding debate between evolution and creationism, between science and faith, rages on but it is crucially important for Muslims to undertand that this contentious debate involves Judeo-Christianity only and not Islam. Judeo-Christianity postulates a creation less than 10 thousand years old and one that is static, not continuous. Islam does not place a time frame on creation; more importantly, it postulates a dynamic, continuous creation and not a static one. Evolution by natural selection, being a continuous, never-ending process, is compatible with the Islamic view of creation as a continuous, dynamic event. The link between science and religion in Islam is clear and well-established and there is no conflict or clash between the two: in the Shia Ismaili Muslim view the material universe is part of the structure of truth, the ultimate nature of which it is the goal of religion to reach. This assertion is in keeping with Islam's fundamental tenet of Tawhid or One Absolute Reality(Monoreality):
"There is a fundamental difference between the Jewish idea of creation and that of Islam. The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine Will"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, AKU, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason"(Aga Khan IV, Spiegel Magazine interview, Germany, Oct 9th 2006)
"In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13 April 1984)
"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order......The God of the Quran is the One whose ayats(signs) are the universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)
The above 11 quotes and excerpts are taken from:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
August 24, 2008
A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash
New York Times
By AMY HARMON
ORANGE PARK, Fla. — David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote “Evolution” in the rectangle of light on the screen.
He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.
“If I do this wrong,” Mr. Campbell remembers thinking on that humid spring morning, “I’ll lose him.”
In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.
But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.
Some come armed with “Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution,” a document circulated on the Internet that highlights supposed weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Others scrawl their opposition on homework assignments. Many just tune out.
With a mandate to teach evolution but little guidance as to how, science teachers are contriving their own ways to turn a culture war into a lesson plan. How they fare may bear on whether a new generation of Americans embraces scientific evidence alongside religious belief.
“If you see something you don’t understand, you have to ask ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ ” Mr. Campbell often admonished his students at Ridgeview High School.
Yet their abiding mistrust in evolution, he feared, jeopardized their belief in the basic power of science to explain the natural world — and their ability to make sense of it themselves.
Passionate on the subject, Mr. Campbell had helped to devise the state’s new evolution standards, which will be phased in starting this fall. A former Navy flight instructor not used to pulling his punches, he fought hard for their passage. But with his students this spring, he found himself treading carefully, as he tried to bridge an ideological divide that stretches well beyond his classroom.
A Cartoon and a Challenge
He started with Mickey Mouse.
On the projector, Mr. Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928; one from his 1940 turn as the impish Sorcerer’s Apprentice; and another of the rounded, ingratiating charmer of Mouse Club fame.
“How,” he asked his students, “has Mickey changed?”
Natives of Disney World’s home state, they waved their hands and called out answers.
“His tail gets shorter,” Bryce volunteered.
“Bigger eyes!” someone else shouted.
“He looks happier,” one girl observed. “And cuter.”
Mr. Campbell smiled. “Mickey evolved,” he said. “And Mickey gets cuter because Walt Disney makes more money that way. That is ‘selection.’ ”
Later, he would get to the touchier part, about how the minute changes in organisms that drive biological change arise spontaneously, without direction. And how a struggle for existence among naturally varying individuals has helped to generate every species, living and extinct, on the planet.
For now, it was enough that they were listening.
He strode back to the projector, past his menagerie of snakes and baby turtles, and pointed to the word he had written in the beginning of class.
“Evolution has been the focus of a lot of debate in our state this year,” he said. “If you read the newspapers, everyone is arguing, ‘is it a theory, is it not a theory?’ The answer is, we can observe it. We can see it happen, just like you can see it in Mickey.”
Some students were nodding. As the bell rang, Mr. Campbell stood by the door, satisfied. But Bryce, heavyset with blond curls, left with a stage whisper as he slung his knapsack over his shoulder.
“I can see something else, too,” he said. “I can see that there’s no way I came from an ape.”
Fighting for a Mandate
As recently as three years ago, the guidelines that govern science education in more than a third of American public schools gave exceedingly short shrift to evolution, according to reviews by education experts. Some still do, science advocates contend. Just this summer, religious advocates lobbied successfully for a Louisiana law that protects the right of local schools to teach alternative theories for the origin of species, even though there are none that scientists recognize as valid. The Florida Legislature is expected to reopen debate on a similar bill this fall.
Even states that require teachers to cover the basics of evolution, like natural selection, rarely ask them to explain in any detail how humans, in particular, evolved from earlier life forms. That subject can be especially fraught for young people taught to believe that the basis for moral conduct lies in God’s having created man uniquely in his own image.
The poor treatment of evolution in some state education standards may reflect the public’s widely held creationist beliefs. In Gallup polls over the last 25 years, nearly half of American adults have consistently said they believe God created all living things in their present form, sometime in the last 10,000 years. But a 2005 defeat in federal court for a school board in Dover, Pa., that sought to cast doubt on evolution gave legal ammunition to evolution proponents on school boards and in statehouses across the country.
In its wake, Ohio removed a requirement that biology classes include “critical analysis” of evolution. Efforts to pass bills that implicitly condone the teaching of religious theories for life’s origins have failed in at least five states. And as science standards come up for regular review, other states have added material on evolution to student achievement tests, and required teachers to spend more time covering it.
When Florida’s last set of science standards came out in 1996, soon after Mr. Campbell took the teaching job at Ridgeview, he studied them in disbelief. Though they included the concept that biological “changes over time” occur, the word evolution was not mentioned.
He called his district science supervisor. “Is this really what they want us to teach for the next 10 years?” he demanded.
In 2000, when the independent Thomas B. Fordham Foundation evaluated the evolution education standards of all 50 states, Florida was among 12 to receive a grade of F. (Kansas, which drew international attention in 1999 for deleting all mention of evolution and later embracing supernatural theories, received an F-minus.)
Mr. Campbell, 52, who majored in biology while putting himself through Cornell University on a Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship, taught evolution anyway. But like nearly a third of biology teachers across the country, and more in his politically conservative district, he regularly heard from parents voicing complaints.
With no school policy to back him up, he spent less time on the subject than he would have liked. And he bit back his irritation at Teresa Yancey, a biology teacher down the hall who taught a unit she called “Evolution or NOT.”
Animals do adapt to their environments, Ms. Yancey tells her students, but evolution alone can hardly account for the appearance of wholly different life forms. She leaves it up to them to draw their own conclusions. But when pressed, she tells them, “I think God did it.”
Mr. Campbell was well aware of her opinion. “I don’t think we have this great massive change over time where we go from fish to amphibians, from monkeys to man,” she once told him. “We see lizards with different-shaped tails, we don’t see blizzards — the lizard bird.”
With some approximation of courtesy, Mr. Campbell reminded her that only a tiny fraction of organisms that ever lived had been preserved in fossils. Even so, he informed his own students, scientists have discovered thousands of fossils that provide evidence of one species transitioning into another — including feathered dinosaurs.
But at the inaugural meeting of the Florida Citizens for Science, which he co-founded in 2005, he vented his frustration. “The kids are getting hurt,” Mr. Campbell told teachers and parents. “We need to do something.”
The Dover decision in December of that year dealt a blow to “intelligent design,” which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone, and has been widely promoted by religious advocates since the Supreme Court’s 1987 ban on creationism in public schools. The federal judge in the case called the doctrine “creationism re-labeled,” and found the Dover school board had violated the constitutional separation of church and state by requiring teachers to mention it. The school district paid $1 million in legal costs.
Inspired, the Florida citizens group soon contacted similar groups in other states advocating better teaching of evolution. And in June 2007, when his supervisor invited Mr. Campbell to help draft Florida’s new standards, he quickly accepted.
During the next six months, he made the drive to three-day meetings in Orlando and Tallahassee six times. By January 2008 the Board of Education budget had run out. But the 30 teachers on the standards committee paid for their own gasoline to attend their last meeting.
Mr. Campbell quietly rejoiced in their final draft. Under the proposed new standards, high school students could be tested on how fossils and DNA provide evidence for evolution. Florida students would even be expected to learn how their own species fits into the tree of life.
Whether the state’s board of education would adopt them, however, was unclear. There were heated objections from some religious organizations and local school boards. In a stormy public comment session, Mr. Campbell defended his fellow writers against complaints that they had not included alternative explanations for life’s diversity, like intelligent design.
His attempt at humor came with an edge:
“We also failed to include astrology, alchemy and the concept of the moon being made of green cheese,” he said. “Because those aren’t science, either.”
The evening of the vote, Mr. Campbell learned by e-mail message from an education official that the words “scientific theory of” had been inserted in front of “evolution” to appease opponents on the board. Even so, the standards passed by only a 4-to-3 vote.
Mr. Campbell cringed at the wording, which seemed to suggest evolution was a kind of hunch instead of the only accepted scientific explanation for the great variety of life on Earth. But he turned off his computer without scrolling through all of the frustrated replies from other writers. The standards, he thought, were finally in place.
Now he just had to teach.
The Limits of Science
The morning after his Mickey Mouse gambit, he bounced a pink rubber Spalding ball on the classroom’s hard linoleum floor.
“Gravity,” he said. “I can do this until the end of the semester, and I can only assume that it will work the same way each time.”
He looked around the room. “Bryce, what is it called when natural laws are suspended — what do you call it when water changes into wine?”
“Miracle?” Bryce supplied.
Mr. Campbell nodded. The ball hit the floor again.
“Science explores nature by testing and gathering data,” he said. “It can’t tell you what’s right and wrong. It doesn’t address ethics. But it is not anti-religion. Science and religion just ask different questions.”
He grabbed the ball and held it still.
“Can anybody think of a question science can’t answer?”
“Is there a God?” shot back a boy near the window.
“Good,” said Mr. Campbell, an Anglican who attends church most Sundays. “Can’t test it. Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it. It’s not a question for science.”
Bryce raised his hand.
“But there is scientific proof that there is a God,” he said. “Over in Turkey there’s a piece of wood from Noah’s ark that came out of a glacier.”
Mr. Campbell chose his words carefully.
“If I could prove, tomorrow, that that chunk of wood is not from the ark, is not even 500 years old and not even from the right kind of tree — would that damage your religious faith at all?”
Bryce thought for a moment.
“No,” he said.
The room was unusually quiet.
“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks.”
“But I do,” he added, “expect you to understand it.”
The Lure of T. Rex
Over the next weeks, Mr. Campbell regaled his students with the array of evidence on which evolutionary theory is based. To see how diverse species are related, they studied the embryos of chickens and fish, and the anatomy of horses, cats, seals and bats.
To simulate natural selection, they pretended to be birds picking light-colored moths off tree bark newly darkened by soot.
But the dearth of questions made him uneasy.
“I still don’t have a good feeling on how well any of them are internalizing any of this,” he worried aloud.
When he was 5, Mr. Campbell’s aunt took him on a trip from his home in Connecticut to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. At the end of the day, she had to pry him away from the Tyrannosaurus rex.
If this didn’t hook them, he thought one Wednesday morning, admiring the cast of a T. rex brain case he set on one of the classroom’s long, black laboratory tables, nothing would. Carefully, he distributed several other fossils, including two he had collected himself.
He placed particular hope in the jaw of a 34-million-year-old horse ancestor. Through chance, selection and extinction, he had told his class, today’s powerfully muscled, shoulder-high horses had evolved from squat dog-sized creatures.
The diminutive jaw, from an early horse that stood about two feet tall, offered proof of how the species had changed over time. And maybe, if they accepted the evolution of Equus caballus, they could begin to contemplate the origin of Homo sapiens.
Mr. Campbell instructed the students to spend three minutes at each station. He watched Bryce and his partner, Allie Farris, look at the illustration of a modern horse jaw he had posted next to the fossil of its Mesohippus ancestor. Hovering, he kicked himself for not acquiring a real one to make the comparison more tangible. But they lingered, well past their time limit. Bryce pointed to the jaw in the picture and held the fossil up to his own mouth.
“It’s maybe the size of a dog’s jaw or a cat’s,” he said, measuring.
He looked at Allie. “That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?”
After class, Mr. Campbell fed the turtles. It was time for a test, he thought.
‘I Don’t Believe in This’
Bryce came to Ridgeview as a freshman from a Christian private school where he attended junior high.
At 16, Bryce, whose parents had made sure he read the Bible for an hour each Sunday as a child, no longer went to church. But he did make it to the predawn meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a national Christian sports organization whose mission statement defines the Bible as the “authoritative Word of God.” Life had been dark after his father died a year ago, he told the group, but things had been going better recently, and he attributed that to God’s help.
When the subject of evolution came up at a recent fellowship meeting, several of the students rolled their eyes.
“I think a big reason evolutionists believe what they believe is they don’t want to have to be ruled by God,” said Josh Rou, 17.
“Evolution is telling you that you’re like an animal,” Bryce agreed. “That’s why people stand strong with Christianity, because it teaches people to lead a good life and not do wrong.”
Doug Daugherty, 17, allowed that he liked science.
“I’ll watch the Discovery Channel and say ‘Ooh, that’s interesting,’ ” he said. “But there’s a difference between thinking something is interesting and believing it.”
The last question on the test Mr. Campbell passed out a week later asked students to explain two forms of evidence supporting evolutionary change and natural selection.
“I refuse to answer,” Bryce wrote. “I don’t believe in this.”
Losing Heart
Mr. Campbell looked at the calendar. Perhaps this semester, he thought, he would skip over the touchy subject of human origins. The new standards, after all, had not gone into effect. “Maybe I’ll just give them the fetal pig dissection,” he said with a sigh.
It wasn’t just Bryce. Many of the students, Mr. Campbell sensed, were not grasping the basic principles of biological evolution. If he forced them to look at themselves in the evolutionary mirror, he risked alienating them entirely.
The discovery that a copy of “Evolution Exposed,” published by the creationist organization Answers in Genesis, was circulating among the class did not raise his flagging spirits. The book lists each reference to evolution in the biology textbook Mr. Campbell uses and offers an explanation for why it is wrong.
Where the textbook states, for example, that “Homo sapiens appeared in Africa 200,000 years ago based on fossil and DNA evidence,” “Exposed” counters that “The fossil evidence of hominids (alleged human ancestors) is extremely limited.” A pastor at a local church, Mr. Campbell learned, had given a copy of “Exposed” to every graduating senior the previous year.
But the next week, at a meeting in Tallahassee where he sorted the new science standards into course descriptions for other teachers, the words he had helped write reverberated in his head.
“Evolution,” the standards said, “is the fundamental concept underlying all biology.”
When he got home, he dug out his slide illustrating the nearly exact match between human and chimpanzee chromosomes, and prepared for a contentious class.
Facing the Challenge
“True or false?” he barked the following week, wearing a tie emblazoned with the DNA double helix. “Humans evolved from chimpanzees.”
The students stared at him, unsure. “True,” some called out.
“False,” he said, correcting a common misconception. “But we do share a common ancestor.”
More gently now, he started into the story of how, five or six million years ago, a group of primates in Africa split. Some stayed in the forest and evolved into chimps; others — our ancestors — migrated to the grasslands.
On the projector, he placed a picture of the hand of a gibbon, another human cousin. “There’s the opposable thumb,” he said, wiggling his own. “But theirs is a longer hand because they live in trees, and their arms are very long.”
Mr. Campbell bent over, walking on the outer part of his foot. He had intended to mimic how arms became shorter and legs became longer. He planned to tell the class how our upright gait, built on a body plan inherited from tree-dwelling primates, made us prone to lower back pain. And how, over the last two million years, our jaws have grown shorter, which is why wisdom teeth so often need to be removed.
But too many hands had gone up.
He answered as fast as he could, his pulse quickening as it had rarely done since his days on his high school debate team.
“If that really happened,” Allie wanted to know, “wouldn’t you still see things evolving?”
“We do,” he said. “But this is happening over millions of years. With humans, if I’m lucky I might see four generations in my lifetime.”
Caitlin Johnson, 15, was next.
“If we had to have evolved from something,” she wanted to know, “then whatever we evolved from, where did IT evolve from?”
“It came from earlier primates,” Mr. Campbell replied.
“And where did those come from?”
“You can trace mammals back 250 million years,” he said. The first ones, he reminded them, were small, mouselike creatures that lived in the shadow of dinosaurs.
Other students were jumping in.
“Even if we did split off from chimps,” someone asked, “how come they stayed the same but we changed?”
“They didn’t stay the same,” Mr. Campbell answered. “They were smaller, more slender — they’ve changed a lot.”
Bryce had been listening, studying the hand of the monkey on the screen .
“How does our hand go from being that long to just a smaller hand?” he said. “I don’t see how that happens.”
“If a smaller hand is beneficial,” Mr. Campbell said, “individuals with small hands will have more children, while those with bigger hands will disappear.”
“But if we came from them, why are they still around?”
“Just because a new population evolves doesn’t mean the old one dies out,” Mr. Campbell said.
Bryce spoke again. This time it wasn’t a question.
“So it just doesn’t stop,” he said.
“No,” said Mr. Campbell. “If the environment is suitable, a species can go on for a long time.”
“What about us,” Bryce pursued. “Are we going to evolve?”
Mr. Campbell stopped, and took a breath.
“Yes,” he said. “Unless we go extinct.”
When the bell rang, he knew that he had not convinced Bryce, and perhaps many of the others. But that week, he gave the students an opportunity to answer the questions they had missed on the last test. Grading Bryce’s paper later in the quiet of his empty classroom, he saw that this time, the question that asked for evidence of evolutionary change had been answered.
Realated posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/317so-how-old-is-universe-anyway-6000.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/316the-debate-rages-onevolutionism.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/315creation-museum-pooh-poohs-500-years.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
"There is a fundamental difference between the Jewish idea of creation and that of Islam. The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine Will"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation"(Aga Khan IV, AKU, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)
"Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters...."(Aga Khan IV, Kampala, Uganda, August 22 2007)
"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason"(Aga Khan IV, Spiegel Magazine interview, Germany, Oct 9th 2006)
"In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy"(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)
"Science is a wonderful, powerful tool and research budgets are essential. But Science is only the beginning in the new age we are entering. Islam does not perceive the world as two seperate domains of mind and spirit, science and belief. Science and the search for knowledge are an expression of man's designated role in the universe, but they do not define that role totally....."(Aga Khan IV, McMaster University Convocation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, May 15th 1987)
“Muslims believe in an all-encompassing unit of man and nature. To them there is no fundamental division between the spiritual and the material while the whole world, whether it be the earth, sea or air, or the living creatures that inhabit them, is an expression of God’s creation.”(Aga Khan IV, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13 April 1984)
"Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields"(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)
"Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God"(Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)
"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order......The God of the Quran is the One whose ayats(signs) are the universe in which we live, move and have our being"(Aga Khan III, April 4th 1952)
The above 11 quotes and excerpts are taken from:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/09/400blogpost-four-hundred-knowledge.html
August 24, 2008
A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash
New York Times
By AMY HARMON
ORANGE PARK, Fla. — David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote “Evolution” in the rectangle of light on the screen.
He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football player who attended the 6 a.m. prayer meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the school gymnasium.
“If I do this wrong,” Mr. Campbell remembers thinking on that humid spring morning, “I’ll lose him.”
In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.
But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.
Some come armed with “Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution,” a document circulated on the Internet that highlights supposed weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Others scrawl their opposition on homework assignments. Many just tune out.
With a mandate to teach evolution but little guidance as to how, science teachers are contriving their own ways to turn a culture war into a lesson plan. How they fare may bear on whether a new generation of Americans embraces scientific evidence alongside religious belief.
“If you see something you don’t understand, you have to ask ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ ” Mr. Campbell often admonished his students at Ridgeview High School.
Yet their abiding mistrust in evolution, he feared, jeopardized their belief in the basic power of science to explain the natural world — and their ability to make sense of it themselves.
Passionate on the subject, Mr. Campbell had helped to devise the state’s new evolution standards, which will be phased in starting this fall. A former Navy flight instructor not used to pulling his punches, he fought hard for their passage. But with his students this spring, he found himself treading carefully, as he tried to bridge an ideological divide that stretches well beyond his classroom.
A Cartoon and a Challenge
He started with Mickey Mouse.
On the projector, Mr. Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928; one from his 1940 turn as the impish Sorcerer’s Apprentice; and another of the rounded, ingratiating charmer of Mouse Club fame.
“How,” he asked his students, “has Mickey changed?”
Natives of Disney World’s home state, they waved their hands and called out answers.
“His tail gets shorter,” Bryce volunteered.
“Bigger eyes!” someone else shouted.
“He looks happier,” one girl observed. “And cuter.”
Mr. Campbell smiled. “Mickey evolved,” he said. “And Mickey gets cuter because Walt Disney makes more money that way. That is ‘selection.’ ”
Later, he would get to the touchier part, about how the minute changes in organisms that drive biological change arise spontaneously, without direction. And how a struggle for existence among naturally varying individuals has helped to generate every species, living and extinct, on the planet.
For now, it was enough that they were listening.
He strode back to the projector, past his menagerie of snakes and baby turtles, and pointed to the word he had written in the beginning of class.
“Evolution has been the focus of a lot of debate in our state this year,” he said. “If you read the newspapers, everyone is arguing, ‘is it a theory, is it not a theory?’ The answer is, we can observe it. We can see it happen, just like you can see it in Mickey.”
Some students were nodding. As the bell rang, Mr. Campbell stood by the door, satisfied. But Bryce, heavyset with blond curls, left with a stage whisper as he slung his knapsack over his shoulder.
“I can see something else, too,” he said. “I can see that there’s no way I came from an ape.”
Fighting for a Mandate
As recently as three years ago, the guidelines that govern science education in more than a third of American public schools gave exceedingly short shrift to evolution, according to reviews by education experts. Some still do, science advocates contend. Just this summer, religious advocates lobbied successfully for a Louisiana law that protects the right of local schools to teach alternative theories for the origin of species, even though there are none that scientists recognize as valid. The Florida Legislature is expected to reopen debate on a similar bill this fall.
Even states that require teachers to cover the basics of evolution, like natural selection, rarely ask them to explain in any detail how humans, in particular, evolved from earlier life forms. That subject can be especially fraught for young people taught to believe that the basis for moral conduct lies in God’s having created man uniquely in his own image.
The poor treatment of evolution in some state education standards may reflect the public’s widely held creationist beliefs. In Gallup polls over the last 25 years, nearly half of American adults have consistently said they believe God created all living things in their present form, sometime in the last 10,000 years. But a 2005 defeat in federal court for a school board in Dover, Pa., that sought to cast doubt on evolution gave legal ammunition to evolution proponents on school boards and in statehouses across the country.
In its wake, Ohio removed a requirement that biology classes include “critical analysis” of evolution. Efforts to pass bills that implicitly condone the teaching of religious theories for life’s origins have failed in at least five states. And as science standards come up for regular review, other states have added material on evolution to student achievement tests, and required teachers to spend more time covering it.
When Florida’s last set of science standards came out in 1996, soon after Mr. Campbell took the teaching job at Ridgeview, he studied them in disbelief. Though they included the concept that biological “changes over time” occur, the word evolution was not mentioned.
He called his district science supervisor. “Is this really what they want us to teach for the next 10 years?” he demanded.
In 2000, when the independent Thomas B. Fordham Foundation evaluated the evolution education standards of all 50 states, Florida was among 12 to receive a grade of F. (Kansas, which drew international attention in 1999 for deleting all mention of evolution and later embracing supernatural theories, received an F-minus.)
Mr. Campbell, 52, who majored in biology while putting himself through Cornell University on a Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship, taught evolution anyway. But like nearly a third of biology teachers across the country, and more in his politically conservative district, he regularly heard from parents voicing complaints.
With no school policy to back him up, he spent less time on the subject than he would have liked. And he bit back his irritation at Teresa Yancey, a biology teacher down the hall who taught a unit she called “Evolution or NOT.”
Animals do adapt to their environments, Ms. Yancey tells her students, but evolution alone can hardly account for the appearance of wholly different life forms. She leaves it up to them to draw their own conclusions. But when pressed, she tells them, “I think God did it.”
Mr. Campbell was well aware of her opinion. “I don’t think we have this great massive change over time where we go from fish to amphibians, from monkeys to man,” she once told him. “We see lizards with different-shaped tails, we don’t see blizzards — the lizard bird.”
With some approximation of courtesy, Mr. Campbell reminded her that only a tiny fraction of organisms that ever lived had been preserved in fossils. Even so, he informed his own students, scientists have discovered thousands of fossils that provide evidence of one species transitioning into another — including feathered dinosaurs.
But at the inaugural meeting of the Florida Citizens for Science, which he co-founded in 2005, he vented his frustration. “The kids are getting hurt,” Mr. Campbell told teachers and parents. “We need to do something.”
The Dover decision in December of that year dealt a blow to “intelligent design,” which posits that life is too complex to be explained by evolution alone, and has been widely promoted by religious advocates since the Supreme Court’s 1987 ban on creationism in public schools. The federal judge in the case called the doctrine “creationism re-labeled,” and found the Dover school board had violated the constitutional separation of church and state by requiring teachers to mention it. The school district paid $1 million in legal costs.
Inspired, the Florida citizens group soon contacted similar groups in other states advocating better teaching of evolution. And in June 2007, when his supervisor invited Mr. Campbell to help draft Florida’s new standards, he quickly accepted.
During the next six months, he made the drive to three-day meetings in Orlando and Tallahassee six times. By January 2008 the Board of Education budget had run out. But the 30 teachers on the standards committee paid for their own gasoline to attend their last meeting.
Mr. Campbell quietly rejoiced in their final draft. Under the proposed new standards, high school students could be tested on how fossils and DNA provide evidence for evolution. Florida students would even be expected to learn how their own species fits into the tree of life.
Whether the state’s board of education would adopt them, however, was unclear. There were heated objections from some religious organizations and local school boards. In a stormy public comment session, Mr. Campbell defended his fellow writers against complaints that they had not included alternative explanations for life’s diversity, like intelligent design.
His attempt at humor came with an edge:
“We also failed to include astrology, alchemy and the concept of the moon being made of green cheese,” he said. “Because those aren’t science, either.”
The evening of the vote, Mr. Campbell learned by e-mail message from an education official that the words “scientific theory of” had been inserted in front of “evolution” to appease opponents on the board. Even so, the standards passed by only a 4-to-3 vote.
Mr. Campbell cringed at the wording, which seemed to suggest evolution was a kind of hunch instead of the only accepted scientific explanation for the great variety of life on Earth. But he turned off his computer without scrolling through all of the frustrated replies from other writers. The standards, he thought, were finally in place.
Now he just had to teach.
The Limits of Science
The morning after his Mickey Mouse gambit, he bounced a pink rubber Spalding ball on the classroom’s hard linoleum floor.
“Gravity,” he said. “I can do this until the end of the semester, and I can only assume that it will work the same way each time.”
He looked around the room. “Bryce, what is it called when natural laws are suspended — what do you call it when water changes into wine?”
“Miracle?” Bryce supplied.
Mr. Campbell nodded. The ball hit the floor again.
“Science explores nature by testing and gathering data,” he said. “It can’t tell you what’s right and wrong. It doesn’t address ethics. But it is not anti-religion. Science and religion just ask different questions.”
He grabbed the ball and held it still.
“Can anybody think of a question science can’t answer?”
“Is there a God?” shot back a boy near the window.
“Good,” said Mr. Campbell, an Anglican who attends church most Sundays. “Can’t test it. Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it. It’s not a question for science.”
Bryce raised his hand.
“But there is scientific proof that there is a God,” he said. “Over in Turkey there’s a piece of wood from Noah’s ark that came out of a glacier.”
Mr. Campbell chose his words carefully.
“If I could prove, tomorrow, that that chunk of wood is not from the ark, is not even 500 years old and not even from the right kind of tree — would that damage your religious faith at all?”
Bryce thought for a moment.
“No,” he said.
The room was unusually quiet.
“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks.”
“But I do,” he added, “expect you to understand it.”
The Lure of T. Rex
Over the next weeks, Mr. Campbell regaled his students with the array of evidence on which evolutionary theory is based. To see how diverse species are related, they studied the embryos of chickens and fish, and the anatomy of horses, cats, seals and bats.
To simulate natural selection, they pretended to be birds picking light-colored moths off tree bark newly darkened by soot.
But the dearth of questions made him uneasy.
“I still don’t have a good feeling on how well any of them are internalizing any of this,” he worried aloud.
When he was 5, Mr. Campbell’s aunt took him on a trip from his home in Connecticut to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. At the end of the day, she had to pry him away from the Tyrannosaurus rex.
If this didn’t hook them, he thought one Wednesday morning, admiring the cast of a T. rex brain case he set on one of the classroom’s long, black laboratory tables, nothing would. Carefully, he distributed several other fossils, including two he had collected himself.
He placed particular hope in the jaw of a 34-million-year-old horse ancestor. Through chance, selection and extinction, he had told his class, today’s powerfully muscled, shoulder-high horses had evolved from squat dog-sized creatures.
The diminutive jaw, from an early horse that stood about two feet tall, offered proof of how the species had changed over time. And maybe, if they accepted the evolution of Equus caballus, they could begin to contemplate the origin of Homo sapiens.
Mr. Campbell instructed the students to spend three minutes at each station. He watched Bryce and his partner, Allie Farris, look at the illustration of a modern horse jaw he had posted next to the fossil of its Mesohippus ancestor. Hovering, he kicked himself for not acquiring a real one to make the comparison more tangible. But they lingered, well past their time limit. Bryce pointed to the jaw in the picture and held the fossil up to his own mouth.
“It’s maybe the size of a dog’s jaw or a cat’s,” he said, measuring.
He looked at Allie. “That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?”
After class, Mr. Campbell fed the turtles. It was time for a test, he thought.
‘I Don’t Believe in This’
Bryce came to Ridgeview as a freshman from a Christian private school where he attended junior high.
At 16, Bryce, whose parents had made sure he read the Bible for an hour each Sunday as a child, no longer went to church. But he did make it to the predawn meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a national Christian sports organization whose mission statement defines the Bible as the “authoritative Word of God.” Life had been dark after his father died a year ago, he told the group, but things had been going better recently, and he attributed that to God’s help.
When the subject of evolution came up at a recent fellowship meeting, several of the students rolled their eyes.
“I think a big reason evolutionists believe what they believe is they don’t want to have to be ruled by God,” said Josh Rou, 17.
“Evolution is telling you that you’re like an animal,” Bryce agreed. “That’s why people stand strong with Christianity, because it teaches people to lead a good life and not do wrong.”
Doug Daugherty, 17, allowed that he liked science.
“I’ll watch the Discovery Channel and say ‘Ooh, that’s interesting,’ ” he said. “But there’s a difference between thinking something is interesting and believing it.”
The last question on the test Mr. Campbell passed out a week later asked students to explain two forms of evidence supporting evolutionary change and natural selection.
“I refuse to answer,” Bryce wrote. “I don’t believe in this.”
Losing Heart
Mr. Campbell looked at the calendar. Perhaps this semester, he thought, he would skip over the touchy subject of human origins. The new standards, after all, had not gone into effect. “Maybe I’ll just give them the fetal pig dissection,” he said with a sigh.
It wasn’t just Bryce. Many of the students, Mr. Campbell sensed, were not grasping the basic principles of biological evolution. If he forced them to look at themselves in the evolutionary mirror, he risked alienating them entirely.
The discovery that a copy of “Evolution Exposed,” published by the creationist organization Answers in Genesis, was circulating among the class did not raise his flagging spirits. The book lists each reference to evolution in the biology textbook Mr. Campbell uses and offers an explanation for why it is wrong.
Where the textbook states, for example, that “Homo sapiens appeared in Africa 200,000 years ago based on fossil and DNA evidence,” “Exposed” counters that “The fossil evidence of hominids (alleged human ancestors) is extremely limited.” A pastor at a local church, Mr. Campbell learned, had given a copy of “Exposed” to every graduating senior the previous year.
But the next week, at a meeting in Tallahassee where he sorted the new science standards into course descriptions for other teachers, the words he had helped write reverberated in his head.
“Evolution,” the standards said, “is the fundamental concept underlying all biology.”
When he got home, he dug out his slide illustrating the nearly exact match between human and chimpanzee chromosomes, and prepared for a contentious class.
Facing the Challenge
“True or false?” he barked the following week, wearing a tie emblazoned with the DNA double helix. “Humans evolved from chimpanzees.”
The students stared at him, unsure. “True,” some called out.
“False,” he said, correcting a common misconception. “But we do share a common ancestor.”
More gently now, he started into the story of how, five or six million years ago, a group of primates in Africa split. Some stayed in the forest and evolved into chimps; others — our ancestors — migrated to the grasslands.
On the projector, he placed a picture of the hand of a gibbon, another human cousin. “There’s the opposable thumb,” he said, wiggling his own. “But theirs is a longer hand because they live in trees, and their arms are very long.”
Mr. Campbell bent over, walking on the outer part of his foot. He had intended to mimic how arms became shorter and legs became longer. He planned to tell the class how our upright gait, built on a body plan inherited from tree-dwelling primates, made us prone to lower back pain. And how, over the last two million years, our jaws have grown shorter, which is why wisdom teeth so often need to be removed.
But too many hands had gone up.
He answered as fast as he could, his pulse quickening as it had rarely done since his days on his high school debate team.
“If that really happened,” Allie wanted to know, “wouldn’t you still see things evolving?”
“We do,” he said. “But this is happening over millions of years. With humans, if I’m lucky I might see four generations in my lifetime.”
Caitlin Johnson, 15, was next.
“If we had to have evolved from something,” she wanted to know, “then whatever we evolved from, where did IT evolve from?”
“It came from earlier primates,” Mr. Campbell replied.
“And where did those come from?”
“You can trace mammals back 250 million years,” he said. The first ones, he reminded them, were small, mouselike creatures that lived in the shadow of dinosaurs.
Other students were jumping in.
“Even if we did split off from chimps,” someone asked, “how come they stayed the same but we changed?”
“They didn’t stay the same,” Mr. Campbell answered. “They were smaller, more slender — they’ve changed a lot.”
Bryce had been listening, studying the hand of the monkey on the screen .
“How does our hand go from being that long to just a smaller hand?” he said. “I don’t see how that happens.”
“If a smaller hand is beneficial,” Mr. Campbell said, “individuals with small hands will have more children, while those with bigger hands will disappear.”
“But if we came from them, why are they still around?”
“Just because a new population evolves doesn’t mean the old one dies out,” Mr. Campbell said.
Bryce spoke again. This time it wasn’t a question.
“So it just doesn’t stop,” he said.
“No,” said Mr. Campbell. “If the environment is suitable, a species can go on for a long time.”
“What about us,” Bryce pursued. “Are we going to evolve?”
Mr. Campbell stopped, and took a breath.
“Yes,” he said. “Unless we go extinct.”
When the bell rang, he knew that he had not convinced Bryce, and perhaps many of the others. But that week, he gave the students an opportunity to answer the questions they had missed on the last test. Grading Bryce’s paper later in the quiet of his empty classroom, he saw that this time, the question that asked for evidence of evolutionary change had been answered.
Realated posts:
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/317so-how-old-is-universe-anyway-6000.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/316the-debate-rages-onevolutionism.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/315creation-museum-pooh-poohs-500-years.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
Saturday, August 23, 2008
394)A tribute to the burgeoning number of Phillipinos reading my blog: The Aga Khan Museum in Mindanao, Phillipines; speech of Aga Khan IV
It is a great feeling for me to witness the increasing number of cyberseekers from the Phillipines who are visiting and reading my blog on the link between science and religion in Islam. The much-visited and wildly popular ISMAILI MAIL website has made my job for this post much easier for it has put together an impressive array of articles and pictures on the attractive Aga Khan Museum at Mindanao State University:
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/aga-khan-museum-mindanao-helping-understand-maranao-culture-better/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/aga-khan-museum-mindanao-state-university/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/aga-khan-museum-of-islamic-arts-philippines/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/the-aga-khan-museum-at-mindanao-state-university/
This year we are jubilantly celebrating the Golden Jubilee of His Highness Aga Khan IV, the 50th anniversary of his accession to the hereditary Imamat of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. Just over 6 years into his mandate as Imam, on November 24th 1963, the Aga Khan visited the Phillipines and made a convocation address at Mindanao State University, where he endowed the Aga Khan Museum you see in the pictures provided by the links to the Ismaili Mail website. This was the speech he made on this occasion:
Presidential Address at the First Anniversary of Mindanao University
His Highness the Aga Khan
November 24, 1963
Manilla, Philippines
Download PDF version of speech (14.8 KB)
President Isidro, Senator Alonto, members of the Faculty, ladies and gentlemen,
Let me begin by saying how very honoured and happy I am to be with you on this great occasion. I appreciated enormously your kind words and wonderful receptions and hope that when I leave you this afternoon you will be sure that you have one more sincere friend and admirer of the University of Mindanao.
Strangely this will be the first convocation at which I will understand the address. When I graduated from Harvard, the laws required that the convocation address should be in Latin, so I had the unique honour of standing in boiling sun for forty five minutes listening to a speech of which I understood not one word. Maybe the Faculty did not appreciate the process of being slowly cooked to the rhythm of Latin words as the year after I left, it was allowed that the convocation address should be in English a more civilized process but even Harvard takes time to learn.
Having done my primary and secondary education in Switzerland and then gone to university in America, I have had perhaps a unique occasion to compare the standards of education of the Western world with those of the Middle East, Asia and Africa. As a result I am now deeply convinced that man's position in society, wherever he may be, will depend less and less upon his cultural or family heritage and more and more on the power and development of his mind.
In every society I have seen, it is the intellectual elite which is capturing the outstanding offices, the most interesting work, the best situations. This trend is, in fact, bound to be the case, so long as the world population continues to increase and we are forced to deeper and deeper specialisation.
The great Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates were created through the spread of the message of Islam and the conquering power of the Muslim armies, but once the waves of conquest were over, once the Muslim religion had spread from Arabia westwards to Southern France and eastwards to China, there arose the problem of organising and running the State.
If this state had been weak internally, I submit that it would have been rapidly overthrown. On the contrary it lived for centuries.
What was the power, what were the centres of force which provided the Caliphates with the material to govern? From whence came the unifying force which allowed these immense empires to weld together peoples of different languages, ethnic origins and cultures?
The Caliphates drew administrative machinery from some of the greatest centres of learning which have ever existed. The Universities in Damascus and Baghdad, and later those of Cairo, Tehran Cordova and Istanbul were centres of learning unparalleled anywhere else. Even in those days, once the brute force of the armies had been withdrawn it was the power of the intellectual elite which took over and governed, ran and maintained the State.
During the two Caliphates, the Muslim Universities were producing the best scholars, doctors, astronomers and philosophers. Today where are we? Have we institutions of learning which can compare with the Sorbonne, Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, M.I.T.?
Throughout my journeys I have been deeply pained to see the lack of initiative which my brother Muslims have shown in educational matters. In some circles there may have been a fear that modern education would tend to lessen the sharpness and deepness of our Faith. I am afraid that I must reject this with vehemence.
God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves.
I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us. I fully realise that one needs today tools with which to extend the realms of man's knowledge, and that generally speaking these tools are the possessions of the more advanced essentially Christian parts of the world. But what is the point in undergoing untold of misery for political independence if the result is no better than abject dependence intellectually and economically on one's old political masters.
Here you have at your disposal a tool which is being fashioned into an instrument for self-perfection. But it must never be thought, I submit, that this tool is or will become perfect. It will take all the vigilance of the founders, the faculty and the students to see that your standards are continually raised, that your instrument for learning is continually ameliorated so as to render you greater service at less cost in time and energy.
I hope that those students who came to this University, and that those students who will leave it for further studies, will approach their work with sharp vengeance - vengeance for the torpor and indifference of the past; vengeance for having temporarily lost their rightful position amongst the intellectual elite of the country.
We must, I suggest, use every opening available to us to make good the time and learning which we have lost, no matter if we turn to institutions steeped in foreign cultures so long as it is for our own improvement and in the process we do not lose our own identity. Not so long ago, after all, these cultures were turning to us.
If I have come to be with you today, it is to prove to you that you have brother Muslims in other parts of the world who are fighting the same battle as you if anything in more difficult circumstances under governments which are not always made up of ahl al-kitab or people of the Book, and that these Muslims are deeply conscious of the battle which you are waging. Their interest, however, is not limited to a simple consciousness of your difficulties; they wish to help you and to give you morally and materially all the support which they can muster.
Let us, therefore, put our backs to the wheel and show the state in which we live that we are determined to become first class citizens, nay leaders, not for the futile glory of leadership but to help this country become a better place in which to live and ensure that, even if we cannot reap the fruit of our labour, our children will be born to brighter horizons.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=101465
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/301selected-speech-excerpts-of-aga-khan.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/02/327comprehensive-quotes-of-aga-khan-iv.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/aga-khan-museum-mindanao-helping-understand-maranao-culture-better/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/aga-khan-museum-mindanao-state-university/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/03/27/aga-khan-museum-of-islamic-arts-philippines/
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2006/11/21/the-aga-khan-museum-at-mindanao-state-university/
This year we are jubilantly celebrating the Golden Jubilee of His Highness Aga Khan IV, the 50th anniversary of his accession to the hereditary Imamat of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. Just over 6 years into his mandate as Imam, on November 24th 1963, the Aga Khan visited the Phillipines and made a convocation address at Mindanao State University, where he endowed the Aga Khan Museum you see in the pictures provided by the links to the Ismaili Mail website. This was the speech he made on this occasion:
Presidential Address at the First Anniversary of Mindanao University
His Highness the Aga Khan
November 24, 1963
Manilla, Philippines
Download PDF version of speech (14.8 KB)
President Isidro, Senator Alonto, members of the Faculty, ladies and gentlemen,
Let me begin by saying how very honoured and happy I am to be with you on this great occasion. I appreciated enormously your kind words and wonderful receptions and hope that when I leave you this afternoon you will be sure that you have one more sincere friend and admirer of the University of Mindanao.
Strangely this will be the first convocation at which I will understand the address. When I graduated from Harvard, the laws required that the convocation address should be in Latin, so I had the unique honour of standing in boiling sun for forty five minutes listening to a speech of which I understood not one word. Maybe the Faculty did not appreciate the process of being slowly cooked to the rhythm of Latin words as the year after I left, it was allowed that the convocation address should be in English a more civilized process but even Harvard takes time to learn.
Having done my primary and secondary education in Switzerland and then gone to university in America, I have had perhaps a unique occasion to compare the standards of education of the Western world with those of the Middle East, Asia and Africa. As a result I am now deeply convinced that man's position in society, wherever he may be, will depend less and less upon his cultural or family heritage and more and more on the power and development of his mind.
In every society I have seen, it is the intellectual elite which is capturing the outstanding offices, the most interesting work, the best situations. This trend is, in fact, bound to be the case, so long as the world population continues to increase and we are forced to deeper and deeper specialisation.
The great Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates were created through the spread of the message of Islam and the conquering power of the Muslim armies, but once the waves of conquest were over, once the Muslim religion had spread from Arabia westwards to Southern France and eastwards to China, there arose the problem of organising and running the State.
If this state had been weak internally, I submit that it would have been rapidly overthrown. On the contrary it lived for centuries.
What was the power, what were the centres of force which provided the Caliphates with the material to govern? From whence came the unifying force which allowed these immense empires to weld together peoples of different languages, ethnic origins and cultures?
The Caliphates drew administrative machinery from some of the greatest centres of learning which have ever existed. The Universities in Damascus and Baghdad, and later those of Cairo, Tehran Cordova and Istanbul were centres of learning unparalleled anywhere else. Even in those days, once the brute force of the armies had been withdrawn it was the power of the intellectual elite which took over and governed, ran and maintained the State.
During the two Caliphates, the Muslim Universities were producing the best scholars, doctors, astronomers and philosophers. Today where are we? Have we institutions of learning which can compare with the Sorbonne, Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, M.I.T.?
Throughout my journeys I have been deeply pained to see the lack of initiative which my brother Muslims have shown in educational matters. In some circles there may have been a fear that modern education would tend to lessen the sharpness and deepness of our Faith. I am afraid that I must reject this with vehemence.
God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves.
I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us. I fully realise that one needs today tools with which to extend the realms of man's knowledge, and that generally speaking these tools are the possessions of the more advanced essentially Christian parts of the world. But what is the point in undergoing untold of misery for political independence if the result is no better than abject dependence intellectually and economically on one's old political masters.
Here you have at your disposal a tool which is being fashioned into an instrument for self-perfection. But it must never be thought, I submit, that this tool is or will become perfect. It will take all the vigilance of the founders, the faculty and the students to see that your standards are continually raised, that your instrument for learning is continually ameliorated so as to render you greater service at less cost in time and energy.
I hope that those students who came to this University, and that those students who will leave it for further studies, will approach their work with sharp vengeance - vengeance for the torpor and indifference of the past; vengeance for having temporarily lost their rightful position amongst the intellectual elite of the country.
We must, I suggest, use every opening available to us to make good the time and learning which we have lost, no matter if we turn to institutions steeped in foreign cultures so long as it is for our own improvement and in the process we do not lose our own identity. Not so long ago, after all, these cultures were turning to us.
If I have come to be with you today, it is to prove to you that you have brother Muslims in other parts of the world who are fighting the same battle as you if anything in more difficult circumstances under governments which are not always made up of ahl al-kitab or people of the Book, and that these Muslims are deeply conscious of the battle which you are waging. Their interest, however, is not limited to a simple consciousness of your difficulties; they wish to help you and to give you morally and materially all the support which they can muster.
Let us, therefore, put our backs to the wheel and show the state in which we live that we are determined to become first class citizens, nay leaders, not for the futile glory of leadership but to help this country become a better place in which to live and ensure that, even if we cannot reap the fruit of our labour, our children will be born to brighter horizons.
http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=101465
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/01/301selected-speech-excerpts-of-aga-khan.html
http://gonashgo.blogspot.com/2008/02/327comprehensive-quotes-of-aga-khan-iv.html
Easy Nash
The Qur'an itself repeatedly recommends Muslims to become better educated in order better to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
The Quran tells us that signs of Allah's Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation: Aga Khan IV(2007)
This notion of the capacity of the human intellect to understand and to admire the creation of Allah will bring you happiness in your everyday lives: Aga Khan IV(2007)
Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation: Aga Khan IV(2006)
The first and only thing created by God was the Intellect(Aql)(Prophet Muhammad, circa 632CE)
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