Are Muslims Correct There is No Conflict Between Islam and Science?

Executive Summary

• Muslims often say there is no conflict between Islam and science.
• We check the accuracy of this view.

Introduction

Muslims claim that there is no conflict between Islam and science. We review their claim and broach the topic of how much Muslims know about science.

About Our References

See our references for this article and related articles at this link.

No Conflict Between Islam and Science?

Claims like the following should cause one to become quite skeptical of the claims made on the Islamic Golden Age while reviewing claims by Muslims like the following.

Traditionally, Islam has encouraged science and learning. ”There is no conflict between Islam and science,” said Dr. Osman Bakar of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown.

”Knowledge is part of the creed,” added Dr. Farouk El-Baz, a geologist at Boston University, who was science adviser to President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt. ”When you know more, you see more evidence of God.” – New York Times

This is very politically correct, but it is false. There is no evidence for God. This shows how little Muslims understand science and why so few Muslim scientists. If you are talking about how science proves a god exists, you don’t understand the scientific method works. One must provide evidence to support a claim or hypothesis. What specific items are part of science that provide more evidence of a God? The quote does not say.

Furthermore, there is no freedom of speech in any Muslim country, so if you don’t say that you see evidence of God and that his name is Allah, you would like to be prosecuted under blasphemy laws. Science has nothing to do with Islam and any other religion.

All Religions Are an Impediment to Science

No religion can be used to inform science, and religions are pre-scientific, except for Scientology, which was developed recently but is still anti-scientific.

Whenever Christians attempt to interact with or contradict science to support a Christian teaching, they humiliate themselves and produce false science information as they suffer from the Dunning Kreuger Effect on the topic of science. That is, they know so little about science they don’t know how to undermine science. The type of video above effectively convinces other scientifically ignorant Christians that science supports their ideas, but it does not convince those with an understanding of science. 

Western and Christian societies made scientific progress because these societies could push Christianity out of the area. Islam has never accepted this restriction.

Can Science Exist Without Cause and Effect?

On a more specific point, we cover in the article How Muslim Society Rejected Greek Rationalism Roughly 200 Years After Learning it from the Persian Empire, Muslims are inconsistent with science. Muslim rejects cause and effect and dismisses it back in 850 AD. This statement by Dr. Osman Bakar is so false and calling it a lie does not capture the multiple dimensions of its deception.

Muslims Lying About Islam and Science Education

Islamic schooling completely undermines science education and leads to scientific ignorance. This has been brought to the UK by Muslims. Muslim teaching not only has a conflict with science, but it also obliterates science, and Islam cannot accept scientific debate. 

This video shows that Muslim teachers in the UK do not know enough about the topic of evolution to teach evolution. One repeatedly finds that Muslims score very poorly in science knowledge. It also shows the students being given entirely false scientific information. Muslims not only provide enormous science ignorance in Muslim societies but to the degree that Muslims control schooling in non-Muslim societies they will create ignorance there as well.

This Muslim provides not only a false answer to the theory of evolution, he even misstates that the theory of evolution is not a fact and that when it is proven it will become a fact, not a theory. 

Making Shooting Stars Consistent With Missles Shot From Demons?

In Islamic societies, you can not question anything said by Mohammed, or you are considered a heretic. For example, Mohammed stated that shooting stars were missiles shot at demons. How can you study astronomy and make your findings consistent with Islam? And remember, in Islamic societies, in addition to everything being required to be made compatible with Islam — and there are stiff penalties for doing anything that contradicts Islam.

Mohammed stated that the sun sets in a muddy spring of water. How can one study a solar system and make how it functions consistent with a sun setting in a muddy spring of water? 

This is explained in the following quotation.

Dr. Hoodbhoy said such groups had criticized the concept of cause and effect. Educational guidelines once issued by the Institute for Policy Studies in Pakistan, for example, included the recommendation that physical effects not be related to causes.

For example, it was not Islamic to say that combining hydrogen and oxygen makes water. ”You were supposed to say,” Dr. Hoodbhoy recounted, ”that when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together then by the will of Allah water was created.” – New York Times

Once again, this superimposes Allah on every chemical reaction, event movement of celestial bodies, every action of cells within plants and animals, and is not conducive to scientific inquiry.

Irrationalism as a Normal Part of Islamic Societies

Not only are Muslim societies more known for opposing science than scientific discovery, but their societies are also known for irrationality. See the following quotation.

State-owned Malaysian newspapers and television stations routinely run breathless stories about witch doctors (‘bomoh’), evil spirits and other forms of the supernatural. Visitors to Malaysia get a good laugh out of such quaint cultural practices, until they realize with a shock that Malaysian belief in such superstition is absolutely sincere.

But it’s not just here in Malaysia where this happens. In Saudi Arabia, witchcraft is considered very real and a capital offence. In Iran, laws are on the books that make ‘sorcery’ a crime. And in Iraq, many of the locals are absolutely convinced that American soldiers wear sunglasses that can see through clothing and have bases protected by force fields. A culture that is eager to embrace the supernatural takes a giant step away from rationality and deceives itself fundamentally. – American Renassiance

The Irrelevance of Muslim Science to the Rest of the World

Islam has a long and tangled history with science, but there’s one point that nearly everyone acknowledges: Science in the Muslim world is now in a sorry state. “It’s dismal,” says Taner Edis, a Turkish-American physicist at Truman State University, in Missouri. “Right now, if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice.”

Guessoum agrees: “It’s abysmal by all kinds of measures: how many books and publications are written or translated in the Muslim world; how many patents come from Muslim inventors; how Muslim students are performing in the international arena.”

Those Muslim countries have fewer than 10 scientists, engineers, and technicians for every 1,000 people, compared with the world average of 40, and 140 for the developed world. And they contribute only about 1 percent of the world’s published scientific papers. Another study of OIC nations found that scientists in 17 Arabic-speaking countries produced a total of 13,444 scientific publications in 2005, which was 2,000 fewer than what just Harvard University produced.

But Islamic societies have their distinct challenges. There’s no clear separation between church and state in most Muslim countries, so scientists lack the autonomy that they enjoy in the West. Muslim scientists must frequently contend with the scientific pronouncements of religious leaders, and in university classrooms, biology and physics professors often find themselves responding to questions about specific Quranic verses that refer to the natural world. – The Chronicle of Higher Education

With such appalling output, how can Muslims say there is no conflict between Islam and science?

Furthermore, the lack of Muslim contribution to global intellectual property generalizes to domains outside of science. Islam is negative for all manner of thinking.

Its Authoritarianism In Muslim Societies Not Islam That Interferes with Science?

The following quote is amusing.

Today’s scholars don’t blame Islam itself for the decline of science, but point instead to the culture of authority that pervades all aspects of the Muslim world, including science and religion. – The Chronicle of Higher Education

It is amusing because just in this article we have already covered multiple areas where Muslim specifically impedes scientific learning. Muslims are teaching schoolchildren that evolution is false because it contradicts Islamic documents. And yet “today’s scholars” don’t blame Islam itself?

That is flabbergasting. And it is insipid commentary.

Furthermore, Islam both teaches false information about science to the young, it also creates an authoritarian governing system. And Islam does not accept any separation between church and state. Do “today’s scholars” literally not see the correlation between Islam and authoritarian countries.

The idea “today’s scholars,” can’t or won’t see any of these things shows you how mind-controlled thought is in Muslim societies.

How Islam Discourages Innovation

Observe the following quotation regarding how Islam not only discourages scientific discovery but innovation.

Here in Malaysia, it is telling that the word in the Malay language for innovation (“inovasi”) did not exist until it came from English, quite recently, as a loan word. {snip} Islam already has a word for innovation, “bid’ah”. In Islam, this word is essentially the same in meaning as ‘heresy’, which is yet another capital crime under Islamic law. Hence creativity and individuality are utterly stifled in a totalitarian fashion, even in Muslim countries where Islamic law has not yet been fully implemented. Improvisation is also discouraged for similar reasons. – American Renassiance

How Islam Discourages the Development of Technical Skills

Islamic societies not only have a problem with scientific discovery, but they also have a problem developing technical skills. The Gulf countries bring in large numbers of foreign workers to maintain their oil infrastructure and other technology infrastructure. See the following quotation.

Rich, developed and successful countries like Germany, Japan and others do not just spring into existence. It takes the efforts of millions, skilled specialists toiling endlessly in dangerous and/or monotonous drudgery for decades, to build and also maintain the ever-growing complex web of systems that modern nations depend on to function. But Muslim countries, even the ones with trillions from oil revenue, have consistently failed to create large enough castes of technical specialists that modern nations must have. {snip} This trend is accelerating, paradoxically enough, at a time when the governments of the burgeoning Arab world are having an increasing problem just feeding their exploding populations. – American Renassiance

Given this, it seems odd that the coverage in the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education only focused narrowly on Islam interfering with science. If you can’t develop technical skills, your society has no potential of making scientific discoveries.

How Islam Defines Everything in Muslims Countries, and in Conquered Societies That Are Newly Muslim Controlled as Islami

Islam, basically, is a hegemony that spreads by trying to define everything by itself. It has rules for everything, and it makes its presence known in everything. But more fundamentally, it claims everything as its own. Science in Muslim majority country is Islamic science, economy in Muslim majority country is Islamic economy, art in Muslim majority country is Islamic art. That is why even the title “The Islamic Golden Age” is a repressive misnomer, and a reinforcement of Islamic hegemony. It can be the Middle Eastern and North African Golden Age, but to call it Islamic it means those territories belong to Islam and they are a sub-category of Islam. – Patheos

Conclusion

There is not only a massive conflict between Islam and science, but Islam also has a massive conflict with rational thought, which Islam rejected back in 850 AD, which is covered in the article How Muslim Society Rejected Greek Rationalism Roughly 200 Years After Learning it from the Persian Empire.

Performing science is virtually impossible in Islamic societies. And the scientific discoveries of the Islamic Golden Age were greatly exaggerated and mostly the work of dhimmis, non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, or Iranians. This is illustrated in the following quotation.

Muslim faith has probably always been bound up with science. In fact, many Muslims point to Islam’s golden age—which lasted roughly 500 years—as proof that there’s no conflict between Islam and science. – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Dhimmis are not Muslim. However, Muslims took credit for the discoveries made by dhimmis. However, dhimmis are generally killed, run out of Muslim societies, or converted to Islam. Therefore, when the dhimmis were squashed under oppressive Islamic rule, this caused the Great Golden Age of Islam to decline. This is natural because the Golden Age of Islam did not have much to do with Islam. What Muslims do not know is that the Golden Age of Islam has been massively exaggerated by Muslims to try to compensate for the poor history of Muslim societies. This is explained in the article How the Exaggeration of the Islamic Golden Age is an Example of Taqiyya.

This means Muslims are scratching their heads trying to figure out why innovation went into decline when the Golden Age of Islam is a type of fairy tale designed to trick western audiences and increase Muslim pride.