I have great respect for every human who spend time reflecting on God’s creation and attempt to provide new knowledge to humanity. Such are the people who reflect.  I have greater respect however for those who are open minded enough to admit that they made an error of judgement when they have done so.  Omar Ibn Alkhatab earned greater respect in the Islamic history of his famous statement [Omar got it wrong when a woman got it right]. It is here that the sincerity of hearts are tested and exposed, when we admit humbly our shortcoming!

I respect  Harun Yahia very much. Yet I can respectfully criticise his rejection of Darwin’s theory on many bases. It seems to me that Harun is mixed up between Darwin as a person and the Darwinian school, which thrived on his name after his departure. Darwin never claimed that there is no God. This has been the attempt of his atheist followers who tried to misuse his name to promote their atheism. No wise man would fail to recognise that Darwin rejected Christianity the way it is presented, but remained a believer in super power and creator. He also denied literally being an atheist. His work was scientific work, not theological. He was a man who reflected on God’s creation how he saw it, not how the Torah described it. He rejected the authenticity of the Torah of today to be literally divine, in the same manner we Muslims reject it, despite our faith that the original Torah was divine, but does not exist today in the original form as it was handed to Moses.

Harun based most of his ‘creation’ opinion on science, but failed to explore how the Qur’an described the creation! Even his scientific analysis was short sighted in many places. While he reflected on how a human is created from the composition of sperm and ovum, he failed to recognise that the whole process is in essence an evolutionary process at the level of each individual. He failed to recognise that it was Allah who introduced the concept of ‘evolution’ and ‘evolving stages’ as they are frequently described in the Qur’an. He failed to recognise that the evolution is a process, not ‘god’. It is how Allah created every thing in evolving manner. In fact the evolution represents the manifestation of the divine power and wisdom in creation.

While Harun opened too much fire against the person Darwin, mixing between him and his late followers who misused his name, he failed, like most Muslim scholars, to explore the detailed description of the process of conversion of the species of human ancestors ‘Adam’ to intelligent beings. The Qur’an never described that Adam was one person created in one mass of clay, but the name Adam was a mystery in the Qur’an until it was decoded recently to refer to the ‘convertible’ or ‘modifiable’ species of human ancestors into intelligent beings. Harun may enjoy attributing to Darwin what he did not claim or say, this will not change historical facts. It will only promote atheism, because the more Muslim scholars turn a blind eye on visible facts, the more Islam gets rejected as did the Christian society to Christianity before. Many scholars like Harun, will go to the pilgrimage, perform all the mystery rituals, semi naked, unkempt, not having shower for weeks, long hair and dirty nails, sleeping rough, yet they criticise Darwin for his honest declaration of not finding the missing link, the stage of the conversion of the ape man into intelligent beings, which is represented plainly in the Hajj or Islamic pilgrimage.

People may refuse the idea for envy, but the truth will remain that the Qur’an was the first to describe the evolution as revealed in this book, which no Arabic speaker could criticise despite its shocking revelations. The Author may not be as big and as famous as Harun Yahia, but that is how Allah works. Surprises come from where we expect them least.

I am completely supportive of the idea that Darwin Died Muslim unaware of that. He reflected on God’s creation, concluded that God is greater than what the bible presented and died on pure monotheism, ‘Millat Ibrahim’. Many may not like it, thus was the stand of the Catholic Church against Galileo. We don’t need to wait 500 years before we apologise to Darwin.

Wait and read this book which I have read in its first publication in Sudan:

www.shajaracode.com

Wassalam

Hashim

Alsalamu Alaykum....

Jazakum Allahu Khayran..

I am just reflecting on various books, dealing with a  hot subject of interst to many people today. It was  not intended to be discussion. I thought it would be of interst that people share their views about books they read and invited other people to read, not only posting links. Such views could be with or against as far as presented in polite manner. The idea presented is more relevant to particular named books, not the whole subject of Islam and science. However any further advise would be respected.

Wassalam

• (ئ ؤ إ أ and stand alone ء) hamza: indicates a glottal stop.
• (ــًــٍــٌ ) tanwīn (تنوين) symbols. Serve a grammatical role in Arabic. The sign ًـً is most commonly written in combination with ا (Alif), e.g. ـًا .
• (ـّـ) shadda: Gemination (doubling) of consonants.
• (ٱ ) waṣla: Indicates where an alif is not pronounced.
• (آ ) madda. A replacement for two alifs in a row. Read as a glottal stop followed by a long /aː/.
• (ــٰ) superscript alif (also "short" or "dagger alif". A rare replacement for "long" Alif in some words.
• ḥarakāt (In Arabic: حركات also called تشكيل tashkīl).
  • (ـَ ) fatḥa (a)
  • (ـِ ) kasra (i)
  • (ـُ ) ḍamma (u)
  • (ـْـ ) sukūn (no vowel)
• The ḥarakāt or vowel points serve two purposes:
  • They serve as a phonetical guide. They indicate the presence of short vowels (fatḥa, kasra, or ḍamma) or their absence (sukūn).
  • At the last letter of a word, the vowel point reflects the inflection case or conjugation mood.
    • For nouns, The ḍamma is for the nominative, fatḥa for the accusative, and kasra for the genitive.
    • For verbs, the ḍamma is for the imperfective, fatḥa for the perfective, and the sukūn is for verbs in the imperative or jussive moods.
• Vowel points or tashkīl should not be confused with consonant points or iʿjam (إعجام) - one, two or three dots written above or below a consonant to distinguish between letters of the same or similar form.