Abstract
Ziauddin Sardar has argued that science is not value-free and looks to the Muslim world for an ‘indigenous science’ that reflects Islamic values. This ‘Islamization’ of knowledge has its origins with the Traditionalist, or Perennialist, school of thought with René Guénon (1866–1951) and Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998), and then passed on to the mighty figure of Hossein Nasr (b. 1933), who champions a totalising of all knowledge under the umbrella of Islam. That is, science, history, anthropology, philosophy, and so on are all to be found—and sought—in divine revelation, as this constitutes perennial truth. Therefore, the claims of modernity, which would include evolutionary theory, are to be disputed if they are not part of this perennial truth. The Islamic scholar of science and religion Stefano Bigliardi, who has devoted a number of years examining the debates on Islam and science, claims that we can now talk of a ‘new generation’ of scientific thinkers.
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Notes
- 1.
It is worth pointing out that, whilst Ibn Taymiyyah is often cited in the modern era, he was perhaps something of a minority figure during his own time and for quite some centuries after (see Rapoport and Ahmed 2010, Introduction p. 6). All the more reason to not give the relatively recent prescriptive approach to Islam as much attention as it seems to get.
- 2.
Note: All quotes from the Qur’an are from the translation by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, Oxford University Press, 2005.
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Jackson, R. (2020). The Perennial Human and Beyond. In: Muslim and Supermuslim. Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and its Successors. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37093-0_5
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