Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Muzaffar Iqbal: Islam, Science, Muslims, and Technology: Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Conversation with Muzaffar Iqbal

Islam & Science, Winter, 2007 by Osman Bakar

Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Muzaffar Iqbal: Islam, Science, Muslims, and Technology: Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Conversation with Muzaffar Iqbal Sherwood Park: Al-Qalam Publishing * Selanor: Islamic Book Trust 2007, xii 12 pp., PB $24.95 ISBN 978-0-9738744-2-6

Ever since modern science and technology made their first impact on the Islamic world about two centuries ago, posing increasing challenges to Muslim life and thought as the decades passed, Muslims have been debating among themselves how best to respond to these Western creations. This ongoing debate has produced several distinct 'philosophical positions' on Islam and modern science and technology, which compete against each other for influence and dominance in society. Because of the pervasive nature of the impact of modern science and technology on traditional Muslim life and thought, Muslim responses have covered and addressed a broad range of issues related to their implications from all dimensions.

One of the most well-known of these responses in the post-colonial period is the one articulated by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. The philosophical position Nasr and his intellectual school have founded and articulated is well-known both in the Islamic world and in the West. It is not an exaggeration to say that, through his numerous writings and countless public lectures he has delivered throughout the world over the last five decades, Nasr has provided the most comprehensive intellectual response to modern science and technology that a Muslim scholar has ever presented in the entire history of the debate in question. Nasr's critique of modern science is profound and based on sound scholarship. He displays a deep knowledge of both the history and philosophy of modern western scientific thought and Islamic scientific tradition. He insists that Muslims should study and evaluate modern science from the perspective of Islamic tradition.

Nasr's clear philosophical position on modern science and technology can be summarized as follows:

(1) Modern science is not the only legitimate science of the natural order, but is simply a science of nature, legitimate only within the premises of its assumptions of the nature of both the known object and the thinking subject;

(2) Islamic civilization cannot simply emulate Western science and technology without destroying itself; to those who know well both the religion of Islam and the nature of modern science, it is very clear that modern science is a direct challenge to the Islamic worldview;

(3) Modern science and technology is not neutral or value-free; it imposes on humanity the worldview and the value system inherent in its operators.

Accordingly, Nasr argues, Muslims must confront modern science and technology with a deep sense of intellectual and moral responsibility and integrity in light of the Islamic intellectual tradition. He wants Muslims to master modern sciences and not to shun them. But, at the same time, he urges Muslims to come up with a positive Islamic critique of modern science on the basis of the Islamic intellectual tradition--a critique concerning both what it is and what it is not. As he sees it, it is the sacred duty of Muslim scholars, intellectuals, and scientists to create an authentic contemporary Islamic science.

Nasr has been consistent and steadfast in his critique of modern science and technology for the last fifty years. Writing from the perspective perennial philosophical tradition, his works expose numerous dimensions of what he strongly believes to be the destructive and dehumanizing aspects of modern science and technology. Many Muslims agree with his views, but there are also many who have criticized his alternative to modern science and technology--an authentic Islamic science--as being 'backward looking' and too impractical to be implemented in the contemporary world.

With this background, how should one react to Islam, Science, Muslims, and Technology: Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Conversation with Muzaffar Iqbal? As someone who has been closely following Nasr's writings on the subject, I must say that this is an interesting book for several reasons. Structurally divided into seven chapters arranged in three interrelated sections, the book explores the central theme of the relationship between Islam, science, Muslims, and technology. The sections appear to have been arranged in such a way as to invite readers to focus on the middle section, which contains four interview-style conversations between Nasr and Iqbal originally published in the journal Islam & Science but which have been thoroughly revised for this publication. These conversations are preceded by the first two chapters of the book: the first, by Muzaffar Iqbal, another leading scholar of Islam and science, serves more or less as their historical context; the second, "The Cosmos as Subject of Scientific Study" by Nasr, serves as their metaphysical and cosmological context or framework. The conversations are followed by one chapter entitled "The Islamic Worldview and Modern Science," which contains the text of Nasr's keynote address delivered at an international conference on science in Islamic polity held at Islamabad in 1995, the occasion that had brought Nasr and Iqbal together for the first time.