Speaking at the Oxford Union on 11th Feb 2011, Dr Zakir Naik addressed the audience via satellite link from his television network, ‘Peace TV’, located in Dubai. Prevented from entering the UK by Home Secretary, Theresa May, Zakir used a considerable proportion of his time to admonish the British Government and the British press for his treatment, insisting that he was ‘quoted out of context’.
While I advocate for freedom of speech, and believe Zakir’s has a right to speak his mind without fear of prosecution – context will not save the contemptible statements that lead to his ban.
What context, do you suppose, makes these comments seem morally sane?
‘If [Osama Bin Laden] is terrorizing America, the terrorist, biggest terrorist, then I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist. The thing is that if he is terrorizing a terrorist – he’s following Islam!’
Or these:
If the person who reverts – who was a Muslim, then converts, becomes a non-muslim – and propagates his faith, and speaks against Islam, and if it’s Islamic rule – then the person should be put to death.
In Naik’s opinion, if the British Government bans you from their country for saying something they don’t like, then that’s morally wrong. But say something an Islamic State doesn’t like, and Naik thinks it’s their duty to put you to death.
—————-
Much of Zakir’s beliefs are a consequence of his strong affiliation with a Salafi rhetoric – a relatively modern Sunni sect which preaches a desire to restore the Islamic world to the golden age of its foundation.
This form of belief, of course, has counterparts in many other religions. Whether it be the Garden of Eden in the Judea-Christian tradition, or the Satya Yuga in Hinduism – there seems to be a common suspicion amongst humanity that we are in decay; in want of utopian remedy.
The particular utopia that Naik seeks is one where every Jew and Christian realizes they are Muslims too. Thus, we are told that Islam was not founded by Muhammad, but was around since the beginning of time.
The glorious Quran is the last and final revelation of almighty god which was revealed to the last and final messenger, prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). [3:42]
He employs this style of chicanery on the personal level too – maintaining in other speeches that everyone is born a Muslim (in submission to God). Therefore, he suggests, there are no ‘converts’ to Islam, but only ‘reverts’.
—————-
We find similar types of belief in politics as well.
The soft-primitivism of Gandhi, for example, had him throw the technological baby out with the colonial bath-water. While advocating for the spinning wheel on the Indian flag, his Luddite approach to independence fostered a distrust of technology for generations to come, hindering the well-being of his country.
In wealthier climates, we find a similar sentiment, but approached from a position of complacency instead of desperation. People so unfamiliar with the drudge and suffering of existence that they extol the value of a ‘natural’ life. This desire exhibits in many forms, usually focusing on the purchasing choices available in: healthcare, food, drink, cosmetics, and clothes – to name the most common.
Some of this moralization of consumer products is motivated from ritual ideas about purity (see Jonathan Haidt’s lecture to TED for more about this). Some is motivated from a concern for the environment.
But some is also motivated from a misunderstanding of the moral worth of scientific accomplishment, and the romanticization of nature. A belief that technology is a sign we have fallen from grace.
—————-
In the United States, we find a fusion between the religious and political forms of primitivism.
The Christian right have found that their theocratic policies gain significant ground when supported by fictional biographies of the United States’ founders. To this end, Christian fundamentalist David Barton has spent much of his life rewriting the lives of the Constitutional framers.
Recently, speaking on Glenn Beck’s online TV channel about the growing support for gun control in the US, Barton claimed that there were very few gun accidents in the first few years of the Union.
These revisionist accounts claim that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington said, well… anything Barton wants them to have said. Peppered with a generous helping of erroneous footnotes, Barton’s books serve annual dollops of authoritarianism to the ill-educated Christian patriot, always hungry for their dreams to be satiated.
—————-
The Islamic Salafi tradition is much the same. In the same industry of pseudo-history, these preachers idealize early Islam for political gain.
Naik’s Oxford Union speech spends much time trying to convince the audience that the Quran allowed 7th century Muslims to be as knowledgeable as we are today. He begins this narrative with the following schema:
For any book to claim it is the word of God, for any book to prove that is the revelations of Almighty God, it should stand the test of time. Previously, in the olden days, it was the age of miracles. The glorious Quran is the miracle of miracles. Later on came the age of literature and poetry. Muslim and non-Muslim Arabic scholars alike, they acclaim the glorious Quran to be the best Arabic literature available on the face of the Earth. … Today is not the age of literature and poetry. Today is the age of science and technology. So let us analyze whether this glorious Quran is compatible or incompatible with modern science. [4:22]
In philosophical circles, this type of argument is classified as ‘Bucaillism’, after the French Islamic apologist Maurice Bucalle. He believed that, while the Old Testament was rife with contradictions of observable facts, the Quran was void of empirical error. Many consider the publication of his 1976 book ‘The Bible, the Quran and Science’ to be the first attempt at such an argument. And modern renderings are little different from Bucalle’s first attempt.
—————-
However, Naik’s opening preamble does not make clear the boldness of his argument. Like Bucalle before him, Naik is not merely claiming the Quran is compatible with the latest scientific theories. They claim that the Quran’s empirical content proves its divine origin.
To this end, Naik provides a long and tedious list of so-called ‘scientific miracles of the Quran‘. Ideas thought to be so advanced for the era, they are judged to be unequivocal demonstrations that the Quran’s author was Allah, and not Muhammad.
Here is Naik’s list of supposed miracles (numbers in brackets are the chapter and verse references for the Quran):
- The Big Bang (21:30).
- That the Earth is an oblate spheroid (79:13).
- That the moon reflects its own light (25:61).
- That the sun rotates on its own axis (21:33).
- The water cycle (39:21, 30:24, 23:18, 15:22, 24:43, 30:24, 7:57, 13:17, 25:48-49, 35:9, 36:34, 45:5, 50:8-9 56:68-70…).
- Salt and fresh water do not mix (25:53).
- Every living creature is 50-90% water (21:30).
- Sexual reproduction of plants (20:53).
- Animals live in communities (6:38).
- Full descriptions of the lifestyle bee (16:6-69), spiders (29:41), and ants (27:17-18).
- Healing properties of honey (16:68-69).
- A description of production of milk and blood circulation (16:66).
- Embryology (23:12-14).
Many other Islamic preachers and institutions reel off similar lists, all of which are only slight variations on Bucalle’s original theme.
—————-
What are we to make of these claims?
First of all, it is important to understand the peculiar use of the word ‘miracle’ here.
In a Christian context, the word ‘miracle’ is most contentious when speaking about the resurrection of Jesus. For many, this is the ‘proof’ that Jesus was divine, because he was able to alter Natural Law.
Implicit in such a belief are a number of ill-considered assumptions.
Firstly, to suppose you know when a Law of Nature has been interrupted is also to suppose you know what the true Laws of Nature actually are. Furthermore, it implies you have observed the miraculous event with enough detail to judge it to be a contradiction of these Laws.
Thus claiming to know that such miraculous event have occurred is a deeply arrogant belief.
Believers claim that no 6th century human could possible know what the Quran asserts. Therefore, it is a ‘miraculous’ document, in the sense that Allah’s revelation to Muhammad produced a document that, left to themselves, no Bronze age community would be able to produce. Quranic miracles are epistemological miracles. They make no claim to miraculous events, but to miraculous knowledge.
—————-
Miraculous knowledge has, as far as I can see, two main problems.
Like Christian claims miraculous events, Muslim belief in miraculous knowledge is symptomatic of a false view of knowledge. Both ideas appeal to our latest scientific theories – our universal hypotheses – and wrongly assume that they are true.
Naik attempts to solve this trouble in his talk by qualifying that:
The glorious Quran has more than 6,000 signs, … 6,000 verses – out of which, more than 1,000 speak about science. As far as my talk today is concerned, I will only be speaking about scientific facts. I will not be speaking about scientific hypotheses and theories… [5:59]
However, this just reveals a misunderstanding of the philosophy of science. There is no clear separation between theories and facts. A fact can only be interpreted from a perspective of universal hypotheses. For instance, the mass of the electron – an apparent ‘fact’ – makes no sense to someone who supposes it is a wave. Thus, miraculous knowledge, even if it is about ‘facts’, references our latest scientific universal hypotheses.
—————-
The second problem, I think, is that miraculous knowledge deeply underestimates the abilities of ancient civilizations. Of course, to a non-believer, some of the claims are patently ridiculous.
For example, one website, in the spirit of Bucalle, claims that the Quran contains knowledge of the accelerating universe - a theory researched by two groups of astronomers who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics. Based on decades of theoretical and experimental research, this idea is yet to be successfully incorporated into our wider understanding of the universe. We’ve given a name to the problem – ‘dark energy’ – but a good explanation is yet to be found.
Are we to suppose that this knowledge was revealed to Muhammad by Allah? And was Muhammad able to understand this knowledge?
It is on this second question that Naik parts ways with Bucalle. Bucalle was of the view that these ‘scientific’ verses could only be understood in light of modern theories:
For many centuries, humankind was unable to study certain data contained in the verses of the Qur’an because they did not possess sufficient scientific means. It is only today that numerous verses of the Qur’an dealing with natural phenomena have become comprehensible.
Bucalle, Maurice “The Quran and Modern Science” pamphlet
For Naik, early Muslim scientific achievements were a direct consequence of Quranic instruction:
… the Arabs were advance in the field of astronomy. But… the Arabs came advanced in the field of astronomy a few hundred years after the Quran was revealed. So it is from the Quran that the Arabs learned about astronomy, and not vice versa. [10:21]
Therefore, Naik scoffs that early Quranic scholars knew empirical facts that Western scientists have only recently discovered through clumsy and laborious study.
But both Naik’s and Bucalle’s views assume that it is impossible for early Muslims to have known these things. First of all , the assumption is paradoxically insulting to the age they wish to idealize.
Also, in some instances, it is patently false on historical grounds. For example, one has to wonder why early Muslims were experimenting so much in the field of astronomy. Did they not trust their Quran to tell them the truth? And, in the field of astronomy at least, we know that Ancient Greek scholars knew much about our solar system – including that the Earth is a spherical, and the heliocentric system.
Naik’s untutored view on this is revealed when he tells his Oxford audience that Francis Drake proved the Earth was spherical by circumnavigating it in 1780. What of Eratosthenes calculation of the circumference of the Earth, measured to within an accuracy of 2%, 2000 years before Drake made his voyage?
—————-
I will refrain from other refutations of the supposed miraculous knowledge, as there are plenty of very thorough critiques available.
For a full list of supposed scientific miracles, and their refutations, read: ‘Miracles of Quran Exposed‘ by Amar Khan
For a satire of the belief, there is a very amusing WikiIslam entry, which demonstrates that, with sufficient imagination, miraculous knowledge can be extracted with equal density from any ancient text (they choose Virgil’s Georgics).
—————-
But I do have a wider criticism.
In December 2012, this was the poster that would greet travelers at Waterloo Station, London.
Sometime last year, I lampooned this claim, making my own posters here on this blog:
Unfortunately, some people misunderstood the satire, and the poster was shared on Islamic education websites.
What I meant to say was that these quotations are interpreted in light of the latest scientific theory, and usually by people who do not understand it. What will happen in, say a few hundred years if Einstein relativity is replaced by an improved theory? What if the expansion of the universe is interpreted entirely differently in the future, and not an ‘expansion’ after all?
Of course, the mistake is that ‘miraculous knowledge’ proponents think they refer to Natural Law, when they really refer to latest scientific hypothesis. When the best theories change, the claims of miraculous knowledge will also need to alter.
A difficult concept for people who are unfamiliar with doubt and inquiry, and comfortable with certainty and security.
—————-
It should also be noted that belief in ‘miraculous knowledge’ is not a fringe opinion. That many Muslims believe this about their holy book is a symptom of a wider scientific illiteracy. In this respect, perhaps Naik is correct: Islam is in decline.
And many non-Muslims historians agree with Naik that the Golden-Age of Islam was during the first few centuries after its conception. But is not for their knowledge, or moral opinions that this era gains admiration.
It was their approach to knowledge that was extraordinary. For the same reason, the pre-Socratic philosophers are considered to be the Golden-Age of Ancient Greek philosophy.
What both traditions shared was an appreciation that a commitment to inquiry is ultimately more valuable than any particular set of knowledge claims. The tradition they passed to the next generation was of the process of criticism, in stark contrast to the dogmas that most tradition bequeath to the next generation.
If Islam is truly to strive for Arcadia, then they better foster a culture of criticism towards their own dogmatic beliefs – starting with ‘miraculous knowledge’.
