THE SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM THE REST OF LIFE

The Separation of Religion from the Rest of Life ~ 19 ~ impression that religion and science were opposed to each another, and that progress for one meant inevitable decline for the other. Knowledge, according to the Qur’an, should draw one closer to God (35:28), but as a result of Christian interpolations, knowledge came to make one, more distant from the Lord. The conflict between Christianity and scientific knowledge continued for about two hundred years. Then, in 1859, Charles Darwin published his famous book The Origin of Species. The Church was bitterly opposed to this book, but by now the Church’s power had waned. Compromise was reached in the form of secularization. Religion and Science were separated from one another. Religion came to be considered as a private matter. In all other walks of life man’s right to freedom was accepted: that he should be allowed to do what he liked and carry out research into whatever he deemed fit.