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What could be the solution–we have talked about this before in a different context, in the context of technologies–but here I would like to focus on the biological origins, what could be done to clear things at least for Muslims? First, how can we have a critique of modern science in general, but specifically modern biology since we are talking about biology, and secondly, how can we make an effort that would bring together scientists and religious thinkers and produce a generation of Muslim thinkers who understand science and Islam in the sense in which you are talking about?
That will not happen unless what is called science today is, first of all, mastered and then integrated into the Islamic worldview. Western science carries with it philosophical and ideological baggage of which most scientists are not aware, especially Muslim scientists, and that is the great problem. Science becomes scientism, as has happened not only in the West but also in so much of the Islamic world–and we have discussed this issue together. I think that scientism is one of the great illnesses of the Islamic world today.

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Coming to the human state, let me start with this famous story: Once a person went to ‘Ali, may Allah be pleased with him, and said, “Ya ‘Ali, who was there before Adam?” And he said, “Adam”. “But who was there before that Adam?” And he said, “Adam. And if you continue to ask me this question to the Day of Judgment, I shall continue to say Adam.” Now, the human being has been a human being since the first arrival of human beings in the world. They have not evolved from other beings whose bones bear similarities to theirs. You could go take the bones of a chimpanzee and put his bones next to my bones after I die and there will be similarities, obviously, but that does not mean that the human body has evolved on the basis of purely material factors from the chimp. There is obviously a discontinuity that reveals the manifestation of a higher level of being.
The famous French anthropologist, J. Servier, an exceptional anthropologist, once wrote a book, L’Homme et l’invisible (meaning man and the invisible) wherein he showed, on purely anthropological and paleontological evidence, that the earliest human beings buried their dead or had some other ritual for the dead, which shows that they believed in immortality; they believed in another world and that means that in fact we have not evolved at all in a basic way. Yes, for example, we make better tools than some people on some island, from Sumatra or Borneo let us say, but so what? It is not that they are different in nature from us; I think that the modern world has amply shown this truth. Differences involve the question of nurture, environment, culture and so forth. We are all human beings. Different races have different characteristics. I am not a person to deny the reality of races. Certain races have special gifts in different arts, like the Chinese in painting, like the Africans in dancing or like the Whites in poetry. There is no doubt that there are different races and within each race there is a gamut of degrees of goodness and intelligence (even though goodness is not a scientific category but intelligence is) and different conditions under which these different abilities have been nurtured and used. Some cultures created an advanced architecture and others did not. The ancient Egyptians produced remarkable architecture, but in Sudan, which is a neighbor, there are no pyramids.
Now all of this can be shown scientifically without denying that God created us and having to insist that man has evolved in any basic way. And it is with the creative acts of God that we Muslims must begin. ‘Created’ means that He created a body into which He breathed His Spirit, which means He bestowed upon us pure intelligence and consciousness among other things. The fact that we can think independent of material things is itself sufficient proof of our immortality no matter what behaviorism says. The fact that our consciousness can reflect upon itself, that we are conscious of being conscious is a characteristic given to us by God. We are conscious before we leave this world and shall be conscious after we leave this world. The human being has a type of consciousness which the animals do not have. We are conscious of our death as well as being born and the question of where we were before birth and where we will be after death. All of these things have to do with the particularity of the human state and although we have continuity with the rest of creation, we also have a discontinuity. The great paradox of the modern world is that modern Western science emphasized the continuity while modern Western culture has emphasized discontinuity, so much as to enable modern man to destroy much of the rest of creation in the name of human welfare. What a paradox!
This is the situation in which we live and I think Muslims–as I have always said in other contexts–have a tremendous responsibility, because we are one of the very few civilizations left in the world which are not Western, which have also had a vast scientific and intellectual tradition, and who can provide alternatives. We are going to evolve ourselves into non-existence. Muslim thinkers must cling to the verities of the Qur’an and the Islamic intellectual tradition, master the modern sciences including biology as well as the Western criticisms of these sciences, and then provide an authentic Islamic interpretation of the data of these sciences without accepting the ideological basis of the interpretation of these data, this ideology being itself founded upon a specific philosophy that is not acceptable to genuine Islamic thought.
One more question. This question of creation and Adam and his children. One comes across Muslim thinkers who say that Adam evolved. With reference to the story in the Qur’an of Adam being in Jannah, they say Jannah was on this earth, and then they destroy the entire notion of hubut, and in terms of specific forms of human beings, the traditional understanding of Adam, all of this. What can you say to these modern interpretations within the Islamic world?
This is sheer blasphemy, one of the worst kinds of blasphemy, because it deprives Muslims of their eschatological hope. The jannah described by God in the Qur’an does not look like the earth as we know it even if originally the earth was a paradise (that is something else) and even if, when God first created the earth, it was called the terrestrial paradise in Christian theology. Islam also sees creation in its virgin state as a reflection of Firdaws or the Garden which is also jannah but it was not the jannah itself to which the soul of those imbued with goodness will go in the afterlife. Furthermore, God first put man in jannah but He also gave him free will. That is why he ate of the forbidden tree and fell down (hubict), here on earth.
So our position here on earth is always going to be a state of fall from perfection. And other religions share this idea like us and assert that we have descended, not ascended. That is the foundation of all ethics. Without our idea of descending from a perfection, there is no foundation for ethics, philosophically speaking. Why should we then be ethical if there is no higher norm?
And so this is a crucial matter and the Qur’anic verses are extremely clear on this question. Anyone who identifies paradise with some place in Africa where Adam gradually evolved is guilty of the worst kind of heresy theologically speaking. Such people are not serious Muslims anymore. It is so explicit in the Qur’an that in speaking of the Garden where Adam was first placed it is describing a state of being which possesses a perfection that the fallen Adam no longer possessed. The word hubict is a Qur’anic term and one cannot change it to anything else. If one does that, there is nothing left of one’s relationship with the Islamic tradition.
Hubut, they say, simply means to go from one place to another, without necessarily having any connotation of coming down, that is the Fall. They explain it etymologically and claim that the word itself does not contain the idea of the Fall, as the Qur’anic verse, “ihbitu misran …” (2:61).
I think it is our duty, those who can, to state categorically what the traditional positions are. And that has been my vocation in life. I am not afraid of anybody, not afraid of demotion, or anything like that when I speak of matters that are against the fashions of the day. We have to state clearly what our position is. There is a great intellectual struggle that is going on within the Islamic world especially in the relation between religion and science and we have to do what we can to steer it in the right direction; and that is not a small matter. May God help us in this momentous task.
Jazaka’Llahu khayran.
This is the transcript of an interview with Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr recorded in Edmonton, Canada on September 22, 2006. Seyyed Hossein Nasr is the University Professor of Islamic Studies at The George Washington University, Washington DC and President of the Foundation for Traditional Studies; Gelman Library 709R, 2130 H Street, NW, Washington DC 20052, USA. Email: zsirat@gwu.edu.
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