Pathfinders

by Jim Al-Khalili

  Born in the Punjab in 1926, Abdus Salam has a name which is in fact a Western corruption (which he readily accepted for convenience) of a single first name, Abd al-Salām. As a Muslim, Salam’s life was to be for ever clouded by his adherence to a relatively obscure sect called the Ahmadis, of which there are believed to be around ten million members worldwide, almost half of them living in Pakistan. Although Salam was a pious Muslim, because of his non-orthodox religious convictions he was excommunicated by Pakistan in the 1970s. Despite this, he remained loyal to his country and worked tirelessly to promote science. But Salam’s dream of a scientific renaissance in the Islamic world was never realized and he left behind the following damning indictment: ‘Of all civilizations on this planet, science is weakest in the lands of Islam. The dangers of this weakness cannot be over-emphasized since the honourable survival of a society depends directly on its science and technology in the condition of the present age.’5

  It would be a gross mistake, however, to single out religious conservatism alone for the lack of scientific progress in the Muslim world. Far more telling are the antiquated administrative and bureaucratic systems many Muslim countries inherited long ago from their colonial masters and that have still not been replaced, along with the lack of political will to reform, tackle corruption and overhaul failing educational systems, institutions and attitudes. Fortunately, things are changing fast.

  If the religious conservatism of the Muslim world is to blame for backward attitudes towards science, we should also be wary about the rest of the world, where we find that science is coming under attack from many religions and belief systems. Even in the so-called ‘enlightened’ developed world we encounter an alarmingly large proportion of the populace that regards science with suspicion, even fear. This is exacerbated by the increasingly important role science plays in our lives, whether in technology, medical advances, tackling climate change and dwindling resources, or in addressing ever more fundamental questions about the universe and our place in it. Nowhere is the backlash against rational science seen more clearly than in the rise of creationism in the United States and parts of Western Europe. The current row between evolutionary biologists and advocates of intelligent design shows how the tensions between science and religion are far from being restricted to the Muslim world.

  Many people are afraid of science and even blame it for the world’s problems. Leaving aside the genuine rational worries many people have about the global catastrophe of climate change, pandemics or concerns over energy and water supplies – all of which can and will be addressed and solved only by responsible scientific solutions – many other worries, over GM crops producing Frankenstein food, hybrid embryo research producing Frankenstein babies, or nuclear power leaving future generations a legacy of toxic radioactive waste, are more often than not based on unfounded fears arising from a misunderstanding of the science involved. Add to these the rise in belief in the supernatural and paranormal, New Age therapies, horoscopes, UFOs and alien abductions, even conspiracy theorists denying the Apollo moon landings, and one is left with the feeling that the ‘reason versus revelation’ arguments that took place in early Islam look quite tame, indeed intellectually rigorous, in comparison.

  Nevertheless, there are undeniable tensions between science and religion in some parts of the Muslim world that must be addressed. Anti-scientific attitudes are easy to find in Muslim societies and are now flourishing on the Internet, with thousands of elaborately designed Islamic websites purporting to prove that the Qur’an predicts the Big Bang, black holes, quantum mechanics, even the notion of relativistic time dilation. When I discuss this with Muslim colleagues I always tell them of a fascinating encounter I had with two imams at a religious madrassa in Isfahan in Iran a few years ago. They both told me the same thing: that the Qur’an is not a textbook on mathematics or physics, or on medicine or astronomy. It is a book that tells a billion Muslims how to live their lives and to seek God’s wonders of creation by observing the world around them, by acquiring knowledge through scientific enquiry. This need never conflict with or threaten their spiritual beliefs.

  The problem is that many Muslims see modern science as a secular, even atheist, Western construct, and have forgotten the many wonderful contributions made by Muslim scholars a thousand years ago. They are unable to separate science from religion and therefore do not see (modern) science as indifferent or neutral with respect to Islamic teaching. Some prominent Islamic writers have even argued that scientific disciplines such as cosmology actually undermine the Islamic belief system.6 Science is attacked therefore on the grounds that it ‘seeks to explain natural phenomena without recourse to spiritual or metaphysical causes, but rather in terms of natural or material causes alone’. Well, yes, this is entirely what science is about and what it should be about; I can do no better than to refer back to that wonderful comment by al-Bīrūni which I quoted at the top of Chapter 12.

  Fortunately, this view is by no means universal. Many Muslims today completely reject the notion that science and religion are incompatible. In fact, given the current climate of tension and polarization between the Islamic world and the West, it is not surprising that many Muslims feel indignant when accused of not being culturally or intellectually equipped to raise their game when it comes to scientific achievements.

  To remind both Muslims and non-Muslims of a time when Islam and science were not at odds, albeit in a very different world, is crucial, not only for science to flourish once again in that part of the world, but as one of the many routes towards a future in which Muslims are able to feel not under threat from science, just as they were able to feel a thousand years ago.

  As for how this can be achieved, the obvious first step is serious financial investment. Clearly, bigger science budgets encourage greater scientific activity and it has been shown that, among Muslim countries, there is a strong positive correlation between the number of top universities in a country and its GDP. And many Muslim governments, from Malaysia to Nigeria, are currently investing quite astonishing sums of money in new and exciting projects in an attempt to create world-class research institutions. For instance, the rulers of several of the Gulf States are building new universities, with manpower imported from the West for both construction and staffing.

  But it is not simply a matter of throwing money at the problem. What is even more important is the political will to reform and to ensure real freedom of thinking. Nader Fergany, director of the Almishkat Centre for Research of Egypt, is the leading author of the Report on Arab Human Development. This report has stressed that what is needed above all else is a reform of scientific institutions, a respect for the freedoms of opinion and expression, ensuring high-quality education for all, and an accelerated transition to knowledge-based societies and the information age.7

  I shall end on a positive note and mention briefly three exciting new projects that have received considerable publicity in the Middle East. The first is a new science park that opened in the spring of 2009 in a sprawling metropolis called Education City on the outskirts of Doha, the capital of Qatar, which is home to a number of branch campuses of some of the world’s leading universities. The Qatar Science and Technology Park hopes to become a hub for high-tech companies from around the world that, one imagines, will try to emulate the success of California’s Silicon Valley.

  Just as ambitious is a brand-new $10 billion research university called KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) just completed on the west coast of Saudi Arabia near the city of Jeddah. It is an international research university that opened its doors for the first time in 2009 and has been heralded not only as a ‘living testament to the inspirational and transformational power of science and technology that will spread the great and noble virtue of learning’ but, more interestingly, as ‘the new House of Wisdom that will rekindle the great Arabic heritage of scientific enquiry’.8 Incredibly, the vast campus of this international research university, complete with state-of-t
he-art laboratories and a $1.5 billion budget for research facilities over its first five years, was built from scratch in less than three years. In a pioneering move, it is the first fully co-educational institution in Saudi Arabia, allowing women to sit alongside men in lecture halls rather than in separate rooms. It promises to provide researchers the freedom to be creative and to embody the very highest international standards of scholarship, research and education. These will be in four key areas relevant to Saudi Arabia’s plans to exploit solar energy and to develop crops that can survive the country’s hot, dry terrain. Many of the top universities in Europe and the United States have been clamouring to be associated with it for – one hopes – scholarly rather than financial motives.

  The final positive example is a project called SESAME, which will be the Middle East’s first major international research centre as a cooperative venture by scientists and governments in the region. The acronym stands for ‘Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East’. Synchrotron radiation is a form of high energy light that is emitted by electrically charged subatomic particles when they are accelerated in a magnetic field to near light speed. A number of synchrotron facilities have been built around the world and are used for a whole host of cutting-edge research work.

  When in 1997 Germany decided to decommission its synchrotron research facility BESSY, it agreed to donate its components to the SESAME project, which was quickly developed under the auspices of Unesco. It is now being built in Jordan, which had to fight off strong competition from other countries in the region. The research to be carried out at SESAME will include material science, molecular biology, nanotechnology, x-ray imaging, archaeological analysis and clinical medical applications. Its current membership, along with the hosts, includes Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Bahrain and Cyprus, and this group is likely to expand as several other countries join the collaboration. New science should start to be done in 2012.

  So, is there a brighter future ahead for science in the Islamic world? Of course, scientific researchers require more than just the latest, shiniest equipment and political rhetoric. The whole infrastructure of the research environment needs to be addressed, from laboratory technicians who understand how to use and maintain the equipment to the exercise of real intellectual freedom and a healthy scepticism and the courage to question experimental results, something that we found in abundance in Baghdad’s House of Wisdom and that was preached unambiguously by Ibn al-Haytham.

  Just spending vast sums of money will not be enough to reignite and rebuild a scientific culture in the Muslim world. In addition to this, a clear separation of science from theology must be ensured. On a recent visit to Iran, I visited the Royan Institute in Tehran where research in genetics, infertility treatment, stem-cell research and animal cloning is carried out in an atmosphere of openness that was quite dramatically at odds with my expectations. Much of the work at the Royan is therapeutic and centred on infertility treatment, but it was clear that their basic research in genetics was of a high standard.

  What struck me in particular was the way the authorities overseeing the research seem to have dealt with the ethical minefields of parts of the work. I spoke to one of the imams who sits on the institute’s ‘ethics committee’. He explained that every research project proposed must be justified to his committee to ensure that it does not conflict with Islamic teaching. Thus, while issues such as abortion are still restricted (it is allowed only when the mother’s life is in danger), research on human embryos is allowed.

  According to Islamic teaching, the foetus becomes a full human being only when it is ‘ensouled’ between forty and a hundred and twenty days from the moment of conception, and so the research at Royan on human embryonic stem cells is not seen as playing God, as it takes place at a much earlier stage. It is of course quite understandable that areas of science that touch upon ethical issues must be considered carefully and sensitively, and, in an Islamic state like Iran, ethical values and moral issues are guided by religious teaching. Nevertheless, for those of us in the secular West, a process whereby the science that can or cannot be pursued is decided by religion is viewed with foreboding, for it is not religion that should be guiding science, and religion should certainly not be seen to hold a monopoly on ethics and morality. We saw how astronomical research in the Islamic world began to wane, Ibn al-Shātir notwithstanding, once it became a mere service industry for Islam rather than a scholarly pursuit for its own sake. This is not the way to go.

  The Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, who is one of the most influential intellectuals in the Muslim world today,9 has stressed that censorship in today’s Muslim world is stronger than at any other time in history. A cultural renaissance leading to a knowledge-based society is urgently required if wider Muslim society is to accept and embrace not only the bricks and mortar of modern research laboratories along with the shiny particle accelerators and electron microscopes that they house, but that spirit of curiosity that drives mankind to try to understand nature, whether it is to marvel at divine creation or just to know how and why things are the way they are.

  The golden age of Arabic science did not last for just two hundred years. It began with Jābir ibn Hayyān in the eighth century and continued until al-Kāshi in the fifteenth – seven hundred years of rise and decline, with different centres across three continents taking their turn in the limelight to shine as bright as supernovas before dimming and bowing out. A scientific renaissance will not happen overnight and requires not only the political will but also and understanding of the meaning of both academic freedom and the scientific method itself. But if the Islamic world managed it before, it can do so again.

  1. Oil painting by Julius Koeckert (1827–1918) of Abbasid Caliph Harūn al-Rashīd and King Charlemagne.

  2. Hārūn al-Rashīd and the barber in a Turkish bath, a fifteenth-century oil painting.

  3. The author’s great-great-great uncle, Muhammad Al-Khalili, personal physician to the nineteenth-century reformist Shah Nasr al-Dīn Qajar.

  4. The author’s paternal grandfather (Jiddū), the writer and poet Merza Muhammad Sādiq Al-Khalili (1900–1969).

  5. A few of the members of the Al-Khalili clan in Najaf in 1950. The author’s father is in the back row (far left) and his grandfather is second from the right in the middle row.

  6. Baghdad’s al-Rashīd Street during a flood of the Tigris in 1950.

  7. The Baghdad district of Karradat Merriam, where the author was born, a few miles down river from the site of al-Ma’mūn’s palace.

  8. The author (left) and his brother on the balcony of their flat in al-Mansūr district of Baghdad in the mid 1960s.

  9. The author (second from left) as a child with his family in 1971 on Abū Nou’was Street along the Tigris.

  10. The author (front row, centre, holding plaque) in his class photo during his last year of primary school in Saddat al-Hindiyya.

  11. The eighth-century Abbāsid Palace of Ukhaidhir, south of Baghdad.

  12. The ruins of the tenth-century palace-city complex Medinat al-Zahrā’, outside Córdoba.

  13. The famous spiral cone minaret (malwiyyah) of the great Mosque of Sāmarra.

  14. A brass astrolabe from Saragossa, c. 1079–80.

  15. Description of the eye in Hunayn ibn Ishāq’s Ten Treaties on the Eye, originally composed around 860. This copy was made in Syria in 1197 and represents the earliest existing detailed drawing of the muscles of the eye.

  16. A thirteenth-century painting depicting a trickster performing a ‘cupping’ in front of a curious crowd of people in eleventh-century Baghdad. The scene is described in al-Harīri’s popular Maqāmāt (The Assemblies).

  17. A page from Ibn Sīna’s Canon of Medicine showing his description of the human skeleton.

  18. Medieval Muslim surgical instruments, taken from a fifteenth-century copy of al-Zahrāwi’s eleventh-century Kitab al-Tasrīf.

 
19. A Balkhi style map of northern Iraq, marking cities along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Kitab al-Masālik wa al-Mamālik (Book of Routes and Provinces), composed in the eleventh century by Abu Ishāq Ibrahim al-Istakhri.

  20. Al-Idrīsi’s twelfth-century map of the world. It is shown, as was the convention, with the north at the bottom and therefore needs to be turned round in order to take on a more familiar form.

  21. Ptolemy’s geocentric universe as it appears in a Latin translation of the Almagest, with the earth in the middle and the sun, planets and stars arranged in their circular orbits outside that of the moon.

  22. Copernicus’ heliocentric universe, with the sun replacing the earth at the centre. The moon correctly orbits the earth, but the stars still occupy the outermost orbit around the sun.

  23. Diagram of a solar eclipse from an eleventh-century manuscript of al-Karkhi (also known as al-Karaji)

  24. The little-known location of Ibn al-Shātir’s sundial on an outside ledge of one of the minarets of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.