Non-Violence and Islam

age of progress and development. The time has come today for Islam to play a great constructive role, leading human history once again into a new age of progress. What is called scientific or technical progress is the result of the discovery of some of the great secrets of nature. But if nature and its mysteries have always existed in our world, why has there been such a long delay in their discovery? Why could not the scientific advancement of the last few hundred years have been made thousands of years ago? The reason was that in ancient times religion and science (divine knowledge and human knowledge) were linked with one another. Religious persecution had become an insuperable obstacle to the progress of science. Scientific enquiry was anathema to men of religion. What Islam did was separate religion (which had become, in essence, a set of irrational beliefs) from scientific research and investigation. For instance, eclipses of the sun and moon had been linked with human destiny. The Prophet Muhammad  declared that eclipses had nothing to do with the lot of human beings. These were astronomical events, not events pertaining to the fate of mankind. (Fathul Bari, 2/611) In this connection, an incident of the pollination of dates is recorded in the books of Hadith. The Prophet of Islam observed that in worldly matters such as these, “you should act according to your experience, as you know these matters better.” (Sahih Muslim bi Sharh An-Nawawi, 15/117) This meant delinking religion and science from one another. In this way scientific research acquired an atmosphere of freedom for its functioning. For the first time in human history science (human knowledge) could be developed freely