ISLAM AND SCIENCE

learning, Muslims created a society that in the Middle Ages was the scientific center of the world. The Arabic language was synonymous with learning and science for 500 hundred years, a golden age that can count among its credits the precursors to modern universities, algebra, the names of the stars and even the notion of science as an empirical inquiry." “Nothing in Europe could hold a candle to what was going on in the Islamic world until about 1600,’’ said Dr. Jamil Ragep, a professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma. It was the infusion of this knowledge into Western Europe, historians say, that fueled the Renaissance and the scientific revolution." Science does not negate the Creator, as its goal is to understand and explain the natural phenomena. It makes no claim to account for the underlying reason of the events. This is a prerogative of the divine revelation to satisfy the natural urge of human beings to find meaning and purpose of the creation, including themselves. This is reiterated thus: In the attempt to explain (the) fact of terrestrial gravitation Newton made no advance, and we of today are scarcely more enlightened than the man of the Stone Age. Like the man of the Stone Age, we know that an arrow shot into the sky falls back to the earth. We can calculate, as he could not do, the arc it will describe and the exact speed of its fall; but as to why it returns to earth at all, the greatest philosopher of today is almost as much in the dark as was the first primitive bowman that ever made the experiment. (A History of Science, Vol. 1) The nature of human intellect and his urges demand that his mental prowess is guided by a divine guidance. Islamic scripture, the Quran, is the preserved revelation from the Creator to guide man about the meaning and purpose of his existence. o The nature of human intellect and his urges demand that his mental prowess is guided by a divine guidance. Islamic scripture, the Quran, is the preserved revelation from the Creator to guide man about the meaning and purpose of his existence.