Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality Paperback – 4 Oct. 1991

I have a tremendous amount respect for the author and this book. it takes a brave man to take a rational approach in places like pakistan where magical ideas and superstition are part of the fabric of the country.this book is a must read. highly recommended

A truely excellent book! recommended reading to everyone interested in the future of science and rationalism

I previously read a much earlier incarnation of this book so I was interested to see what had changed, if anything.The size of the work has significantly increased and it is much more of a balanced read.I've read the 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' twice and am currently reading Karl Popper's 'The Logic of Scientific Discovery'. It is important that the author emphasises what can be defined as 'Science' and the principle of falsifiability. I was surprised on reading Popper that whilst he stresses the principle of falsifiability he does also states that a hypothesis remains for ever potentially disapprovable, a point that is often missed. Arguably most of Science appears self-evident and we never expect that it will be disproved or to discover circumstances where it does not apply. Newtonian Physics must have appeared so before the advent of the 20th Century and the discovery of Relativity. To Hoodbhoy's credit he does touch upon the possibility of paradigm change when he covers the danger of proving Science from the Quran, rightly saying the an argument could be made to support a Scientific hypothesis that is replaced tomorrow. The key point being that the proofs never precede the scientific theory and so is evidently a worked back argument to make the verses in question fit the scientific model under scrutiny.Hoodbhoy rightly crticises the misguided attempts to islamise Science, which I believe that neither needs. If Scientific enquiry is properly conducted then I would agree that the principle of Science are self-policing. However Science is done by humans and even Secularists can have their own biases and agendas too. If some Muslims are guilty of trying to artifically steer to an end conclusion then this is just as true with some members of the Scientific community, Dawkins and his hypothesis of memes being an example of an obvious attempt to try to reach a pre-conceived end point. In relation to approaching any subject with pre-formed entrenched ideas, interested readers would find it interesting to read Rupert Sheldrake's 'The Science Delusion' and his own experience with Dawkins.Particularly interesting that Hoodbhoy points out that String Theory does not qualify as Science and in this there is an important balancer to the debate that wasn't in the earlier edition that I read.In the case of the author's critique of al-Ghazalli's Cause and Effect, I think a workable philosophical approach could have been suggested; such as if cause and effect are both created by God in the world, we see one preceeding the other and hence the justifiable convention of connecting the two. In fact in the traditions God ordering the fire not to burn Abraham (peace be upon him) implies the de-facto characteristic of burning and reinforces the justification of employing a model of cause and effect. In places in the book these expanded discussions would have improved the book. This isn't to say that Islamic authors dont need to rehabilitate some of their ways. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips in his book on Tawhid for example attacks the Conservation of Energy as a denial of God's Lordship, which is disingeneous, as he suggests that if you accept this then you have denied the attributes of God, which is not necesarily true as one can accept the Conservation of Energy as a working convention without denying that God can create or destroy as He wants. As humans we could not operate without accepting coherence in the world, Science could not be performed, and indeed many of the appealing arguments to 'men of understanding' in the Quran would become meaningless without coherence. So if this was the point intended it is correct but this did deserve a more thorough treatement in the book.As a Muslim it has sometimes been painful to watch poor fallacious argument put forward as a proof that then becomes a stick with which Muslims are beaten. I was in a masjid once where there was a flyer which acknowledged that the claimed sighting of the new moon was scientifically impossible but they had two witnesses who claimed that they had seen the the moon and so this proved science wrong. I have come across supposedly educated Muslims who believe that the Moon has its own light and so the concern over perspective within some portions of the Muslim community is justifiable and makes the debate even more pressing. Ghazalli picks up this issue in 'The Refutation of the Philosophers' where he says that when the (scientific) reality of the crescent and the waxing and waning of the moon has been clearly explained and provable by mathematics, a Muslim who continues to refute this, does not defend his religion but on the contrary actually harms it. So there is no doubt that this book is an important contribution to the ongoing debate.I have rated the book on content, if I was to rate it as a publication I would Have knocked off another star for the small font used which reading under some light conditions is difficult.Finally and I want to make this crystal clear, that the rating is based specifically on, and only on this book's content and is not necessarily a reflection of how I feel about Hoodbhoy's approach in general. Outside of a carefully edited book and in debate, he doesn't appear as strong, and in places not as convincing. I was almost agog in a debate I watched, that he was so eager to dismiss the literal great flood (of Noah), that he completely missed the quite reasonable assertion (suggested for example by Harun Yahya) that the flood was not literally global and that the animals were the usual domesticated animals (sheep, goat, cows etc) which would be necessary to start afresh. I almost feel, and I could be wrong, that some views expressed elsewhere but not in this book may have been deliberately omitted so as not to alienate some of the potential readers. Whatever you feel about this book I think it would be worth supplementing it with further research.