Who are the muslims?

Muslims come from all races, nationalities and cultures across the globe. They have varied languages, foods, dress, and customs; even the way they practice may differ. Yet they all consider themselves to be Muslim.

Less than 15% of Muslims live in the Arab world; a fifth are found in Sub-Saharan Africa; and the world’s largest Muslim community is in Indonesia. Substantial parts of Asia, and almost all Central Asian republics, are Muslims. Significant Muslim minorities are found in China, India, Russia, Europe, North America and South America.

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Who are the Muslims -

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Islam and science

the sleep has been long and deep. In 2005 Harvard University produced more scientific papers than 17 Arabic-speaking countries combined. The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims have produced only two Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics. Both moved to the West: the only living one, the chemist Ahmed Hassan Zewail, is at the California Institute of Technology. By contrast Jews, outnumbered 100 to one by Muslims, have won 79. The 57 countries in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference spend a puny 0.81% of GDP on research and development, about a third of the world average. America, which has the world’s biggest science budget, spends 2.9%; Israel lavishes 4.4%.

Many blame Islam’s supposed innate hostility to science. Some universities seem keener on prayer than study. Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, for example, has three mosques on campus, with a fourth planned, but no bookshop. Rote learning rather than critical thinking is the hallmark of higher education in many countries. The Saudi government supports books for Islamic schools such as “The Unchallengeable Miracles of the Qur’an: The Facts That Can’t Be Denied By Science” suggesting an inherent conflict between belief and reason.
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Many universities are timid about courses that touch even tangentially on politics or look at religion from a non-devotional standpoint. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a renowned Pakistani nuclear scientist, introduced a course on science and world affairs, including Islam’s relationship with science, at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the country’s most progressive universities. Students were keen, but Mr Hoodbhoy’s contract was not renewed when it ran out in December; for no proper reason, he says. (The university insists that the decision had nothing to do with the course content.)

But look more closely and two things are clear. A Muslim scientific awakening is under way. And the roots of scientific backwardness lie not with religious leaders, but with secular rulers, who are as stingy with cash as they are lavish with controls over independent thought.

The long view

The caricature of Islam’s endemic backwardness is easily dispelled. Between the eighth and the 13th centuries, while Europe stumbled through the dark ages, science thrived in Muslim lands. The Abbasid caliphs showered money on learning. The 11th century “Canon of Medicine” by Avicenna (pictured, with modern equipment he would have relished) was a standard medical text in Europe for hundreds of years. In the ninth century Muhammad al-Khwarizmi laid down the principles of algebra, a word derived from the name of his book, “Kitab al-Jabr”. Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham transformed the study of light and optics. Abu Raihan al-Biruni, a Persian, calculated the earth’s circumference to within 1%. And Muslim scholars did much to preserve the intellectual heritage of ancient Greece; centuries later it helped spark Europe’s scientific revolution.

Not only were science and Islam compatible, but religion could even spur scientific innovation. Accurately calculating the beginning of Ramadan (determined by the sighting of the new moon) motivated astronomers. The Hadith (the sayings of Muhammad) exhort believers to seek knowledge, “even as far as China”.

These scholars’ achievements are increasingly celebrated. Tens of thousands flocked to “1001 Inventions”, a touring exhibition about the golden age of Islamic science, in the Qatari capital, Doha, in the autumn. More importantly, however, rulers are realising the economic value of scientific research and have started to splurge accordingly. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which opened in 2009, has a $20 billion endowment that even rich American universities would envy.

Foreigners are already on their way there. Jean Fréchet, who heads research, is a French chemist tipped to win a Nobel prize. The Saudi newcomer boasts research collaborations with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and with Imperial College, London. The rulers of neighbouring Qatar are bumping up research spending from 0.8% to a planned 2.8% of GDP: depending on growth, that could reach $5 billion a year. Research spending in Turkey increased by over 10% each year between 2005 and 2010, by which year its cash outlays were twice Norway’s.

The tide of money is bearing a fleet of results. In the 2000 to 2009 period Turkey’s output of scientific papers rose from barely 5,000 to 22,000; with less cash, Iran’s went up 1,300, to nearly 15,000. Quantity does not imply quality, but the papers are getting better, too. Scientific journals, and not just the few based in the Islamic world, are citing these papers more frequently. A study in 2011 by Thomson Reuters, an information firm, shows that in the early 1990s other publishers cited scientific papers from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (the most prolific Muslim countries) four times less often than the global average. By 2009 it was only half as often. In the category of best-regarded mathematics papers, Iran now performs well above average, with 1.7% of its papers among the most-cited 1%, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia also doing well. Turkey scores highly on engineering.

Science and technology-related subjects, with their clear practical benefits, do best. Engineering dominates, with agricultural sciences not far behind. Medicine and chemistry are also popular. Value for money matters. Fazeel Mehmood Khan, who recently returned to Pakistan after doing a PhD in Germany on astrophysics and now works at the Government College University in Lahore, was told by his university’s vice-chancellor to stop chasing wild ideas (black holes, in his case) and do something useful.

Science is even crossing the region’s deepest divide. In 2000 SESAME, an international physics laboratory with the Middle East’s first particle accelerator, was set up in Jordan. It is modelled on CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory, which was created to bring together scientists from wartime foes. At SESAME Israeli boffins work with colleagues from places such as Iran and the Palestinian territories.

By the book

Science of the kind practised at SESAME throws up few challenges to Muslim doctrine (and in many cases is so abstruse that religious censors would struggle to understand it). But biology—especially with an evolutionary angle—is different. Many Muslims are troubled by the notion that humans share a common ancestor with apes. Research published in 2008 by Salman Hameed of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, a Pakistani astronomer who now studies Muslim attitudes to science, found that fewer than 20% in Indonesia, Malaysia or Pakistan believed in Darwin’s theories. In Egypt it was just 8%.

Yasir Qadhi, an American chemical engineer turned cleric (who has studied in both the United States and Saudi Arabia), wrestled with this issue at a London conference on Islam and evolution this month. He had no objection to applying evolutionary theory to other lifeforms. But he insisted that Adam and Eve did not have parents and did not evolve from other species. Any alternative argument is “scripturally indefensible,” he said. Some, especially in the diaspora, conflate human evolution with atheism: rejecting it becomes a defining part of being a Muslim. (Some Christians take a similar approach to the Bible.)

Though such disbelief may be couched in religious terms, culture and politics play a bigger role, says Mr Hameed. Poor school education in many countries leaves minds open to misapprehension. A growing Islamic creationist movement is at work too. A controversial Turkish preacher who goes by the name of Harun Yahya is in the forefront. His website spews pamphlets and books decrying Darwin. Unlike his American counterparts, however, he concedes that the universe is billions of years old (not 6,000 years).

But the barrier is not insuperable. Plenty of Muslim biologists have managed to reconcile their faith and their work. Fatimah Jackson, a biological anthropologist who converted to Islam, quotes Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founders of genetics, saying that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Science describes how things change; Islam, in a larger sense, explains why, she says.

Others take a similar line. “The Koran is not a science textbook,” says Rana Dajani, a Jordanian molecular biologist. “It provides people with guidelines as to how they should live their lives.” Interpretations of it, she argues, can evolve with new scientific discoveries. Koranic verses about the creation of man, for example, can now be read as providing support for evolution.

Other parts of the life sciences, often tricky for Christians, have proved unproblematic for Muslims. In America researchers wanting to use embryonic stem cells (which, as their name suggests, must be taken from human embryos, usually spares left over from fertility treatments) have had to battle pro-life Christian conservatives and a federal ban on funding for their field. But according to Islam, the soul does not enter the fetus until between 40 and 120 days after conception—so scientists at the Royan Institute in Iran are able to carry out stem-cell research without attracting censure.

But the kind of freedom that science demands is still rare in the Muslim world. With the rise of political Islam, including dogmatic Salafists who espouse a radical version of Islam, in such important countries as Egypt, some fear that it could be eroded further still. Others, however, remain hopeful. Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s president, is a former professor of engineering at Zagazig University, near Cairo. He has a PhD in materials science from the University of Southern California (his dissertation was entitled “High-Temperature Electrical Conductivity and Defect Structure of Donor-Doped Al2O{-3**”). He has promised that his government will spend more on research.

Released from the restrictive control of the former regimes, scientists in Arab countries see a chance for progress. Scientists in Tunisia say they are already seeing promising reforms in the way university posts are filled. People are being elected, rather than appointed by the regime. The political storms shaking the Middle East could promote not only democracy, but revive scientific freethinking, too.

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The Seven Earths

The Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad is the second revealed source of Islam.  Like the Quran, it contains scientific information unavailable 1400 years ago.  From these miracles is the “seven” earths, mentioned by the Prophet in several of his sayings.  From them are the following two:

Hadith 1

It was narrated on the authority of Abu Salamah that a dispute arose between him and some other people (about a piece of land).  When he told Aisha (the Prophet’s wife) about it, she said, ‘O Abu Salamah!  Avoid taking the land unjustly, for the Prophet said:

“Whoever usurps even one span of land of somebody, its depth through the seven earths will be collared to his neck.” (Saheeh Al-Bukhari, ‘Book of Oppression.’)

Hadith 2

Salim narrated on the authority of his father that the Prophet said:

“Whoever takes a piece of land of others unjustly, he will sink down the seven earths on the Day of Resurrection.” (Saheeh Al-Bukhari, ‘Book of Oppression.’)

The aforementioned hadith prohibits oppression in general, especially the taking of a piece of land belonging to others unjustly.  What might the seven earths refer to?

Conclusion

The layers of the earth coincide with the above mentioned hadith of the Prophet.  The miracle is in two matters:

(1)  The expression of the hadith, ‘He will sink down the seven earths on the Day of Resurrection,’ indicates the stratification of these “earths” around one center.

(2)  The accuracy with which the Prophet of Islam referred to the seven inner layers of earth.

The only way for a desert dweller to have known these facts 1400 years ago is through revelation from God.

References

Beatty, J. K. and A. Chaikin, eds.  The New Solar System.  Massachusetts: Sky Publishing, 3rd Edition, 1990.

Press, Frank and Raymond Siever.  Earth.  New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1986.

Seeds, Michael A. Horizons. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1995.

El-Najjar, Zaghloul.  Treasures In The Sunnah: A Scientific Approach: Cairo, Al-Falah Foundation, 2004.

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The Probability of Macroevolution

           

After the tremendous advancements and achievements made during the third millennium in the field of genetics, we are now in a better position to assess the chances for macroevolution of evolution theory to have occurred during the history of the universe.

Science has accomplished enormous progress and achievements in genetics since the turn of the 21stcentury.  Scientists have sequenced and mapped the entire genomes of more than 2800 organisms/species including human, and the count is on.[1]

Macroevolution of evolution theory tells us that humans, as well as other multicellular forms of life, have evolved from primitive single-celled organisms that fall under the kingdom of prokaryotes or even more primitive.[2]  Prokaryotes are single-celled organisms that have no true nucleus as their genome is not contained within a membrane nor distinct from the rest of the cell.  They are the earliest and most primitive forms of life found on earth.[3]  Is there a chance for this evolution to have taken place from a simple, single cell to a human being during the age of the universe?

The human genome[4]  contains approximately 3 billion chemical nucleotide base pairs (A, C, T, and G).[5]  Approximately 34 million nucleotide bases of the human genome encode for the production of proteins that are vital to all living processes.[6]  These 34 million nucleotides are called genes.  Proteins are made of amino acids.  Each amino acid is encoded for by a codon, and each codon is composed of 3 nucleotides.

You can think of nucleotides as alphabets of 4 letters pool, and codons as words of 3 letters length.

The sequence of these nucleotides within genes is what defines the characteristics and functions of a living organism and its nature; will it be a bacterium, a plant, a fly, a fish, or a human.  The sequence of this coding in human genes, as well as other organisms, is so sophisticated, precise, and well organized that it is comparable to the sequence of alphabets in a Shakespeare’s poem, a novel, a thesis, a computer program, or an encyclopedia of 2 million words (or 2 volumes).

According to macroevolution, this precise sequence, coding, has come into being by random mutations[7]  and natural selection.

Maximum Possible Mutations During the Age of the Universe

We will try to find out here the maximum number of mutations that can occur during the age of the universe based on assumptions that favor evolution.

The maximum number of mutations a human genome can undergo during its course of evolution from a single cell to a human is 3 billion mutations per generation since that is the largest size the genome of mammals has reached.  This is an extreme assumption in favor of evolution.  In reality, mutation rate ranges approximately between 0.003 and 350 mutations per genome per generation.[8]

The shortest generation time reported to date is the generation ofPseudomonas natriegens, a marine bacterium with a generation time of 9.8 minutes.[9]  Nevertheless, going once again to the utmost in favor of evolution, we can assume that we are getting a new generation every one second.  Thus, during the age of the universe,[10]  which is about 15 billion years,[11]  the maximum number of generations that can be reached is:

Universe age in years × Days per year × Seconds per day

15 billion × 365 × 86400

which equals less than 1018 generations (1 with 18 zeros after it).

The last piece of information needed to calculate the maximum number of possible mutations is the population of these single-celled organisms.  For that we will assume a very large number that leaves no place for more; the number of atoms in the observable universe that is about 1082.[12]

Thus, based on previous results and generous assumptions, the maximum number of mutations that may occur in the entire universe and during its age is:

Mutations per generation × Generations during universe age × Population

3 billion × 1018 × 1082

which equals less than 10110 mutations (1 with 110 zeros after it).

Number of Random Mutations Required for the Evolution into a Human

The genes of human genome consist of approximately 34 million nucleotides.[13]

The largest genome in simple, single-celled organisms, prokaryotes, is about 13 million nucleotides.[14]

Thus, there is a difference of at least 21 million nucleotides between prokaryote organisms and humans.  And for a single cell to evolve into a human, the evolutionary process needs to mutate –which may include insertion– at least 21 million nucleotides with the correct nucleotide base and in the correct sequence.

In genes, each amino acid –the building block of proteins that are vital to all living processes– is coded for by 3 nucleotides, which is called a codon.  21 million nucleotides means 7 million codons.

Random mutations have one of three effects: Neutral, Deleterious (harmful), or beneficial.  Only beneficial mutations can contribute to the evolutionary process.

In living organisms, there are 20 different amino acids and a stop code,[15]  thus, the total is 21.[16]  Any mutation will lead to one of these 20 amino acids or the stop code.[17]

Therefore, each mutation falling inside genes, the coding region of the genome,[18]  has a chance of approximately 1/21 of not altering the amino acid (i.e. coding for the same amino acid) and thus being a neutral mutation, and a chance of approximately 20/21 of altering the amino acid.[19]  70% of these 20/21 mutations are deleterious (harmful) mutations.[20]  Nevertheless, for the sake of evolution, we will assume that all mutations which are altering amino acids are beneficial mutations.  Thus, each mutation has a chance of approximately 20/21 of being beneficial.[21]

Therefore, the probability for 7 million codons to mutate randomly with beneficial mutations is:

Chance of mutation for being beneficial to the power of  Number of codons

20/21 to the power of  7 million

which equals 1 to more than 10100,000 (1 with 100,000 zeros after it).[22]

Could natural selection have enhanced the chances of mutations in our scenario?  Never, since what natural selection basically does is to sustain lineages with beneficial or neutral mutations and to eliminate lineages with harmful mutations.  Natural selection does not prevent beneficial mutations from being mutated again.  Moreover, in our scenario, we have already assumed that all mutations are either neutral or beneficial, and have ruled out harmful mutations.  Thus, natural selection cannot do any better in this scenario.

Conclusion

Therefore, we need more than 10100,000 (1 with 100,000 zeros after it) random mutations to occur so that a simple, single-celled organisms may evolve into a human, while we can only get less than 10110 (1 with 110 zeros after it) mutations during the age of the universe, even when the entire universe is a stage for this evolutionary process.

All these calculations were based on human genes –that constitute less than 2% of the genome– without taking into consideration the junk region that consumes approximately 98% of the human genome, which turned out not to be junk anymore.  The ENCODE Project Consortium was able to assign biochemical functions for 80% of the human genome and found that approximately 20% of it regulates the genes.  The results of the five-year ENCODE project were published in 2012 in the journals Nature, Science, Genome Biology and Genome Research.[23]  The ENCODE consortium’s 442 researchers, situated in 32 institutes around the world, used 300 years of computer time and five years in the lab to get their results.

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The Islamic Way of Life

In the Holy Quran, God teaches human beings that they were created in order to worship Him, and that the basis of all true worship is God-consciousness.  Since the teachings of Islam encompass all aspects of life and ethics, God-consciousness is encouraged in all human affairs.  Islam makes it clear that all human acts are acts of worship if they are done for God alone and in accordance to His Divine Law.  As such, worship in Islam is not limited to religious rituals. 

The teachings of Islam act as a mercy and a healing for the human soul, and such qualities as humility, sincerity, patience and charity are strongly encouraged.  Additionally, Islam condemns pride and self-righteousness, since Almighty God is the only judge of human righteousness. 

The Islamic view of the nature of man is also realistic and well-balanced.  Human beings are not believed to be inherently sinful, but are seen as equally capable of both good and evil. 

Islam also teaches that faith and action go hand-in-hand.  God has given people free-will, and the measure of one’s faith is one’s deeds and actions.  However, human beings have also been created weak and regularly fall into sin.  This is the nature of the human being as created by God in His Wisdom, and it is not inherently “corrupt” or in need of repair.  This is why the avenue of repentance is always open to all human beings, and Almighty God loves the repentant sinner more than one who does not sin at all. 

The true balance of an Islamic life is established by having a healthy fear of God as well as a sincere belief in His infinite Mercy.  A life without fear of God leads to sin and disobedience, while believing that we have sinned so much that God will not possibly forgive us only leads to despair.  In light of this, Islam teaches that only the misguided despair of the Mercy of their Lord. 

Additionally, the Holy Quran, which was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, contains a great deal of teachings about the life in the hereafter and the Day of Judgment.  Due to this, Muslims believe that all human beings will ultimately be judged by God for their beliefs and actions in their earthly lives.  In judging human beings, Almighty God will be both Merciful and Just, and people will only be judged for what they were capable of. 

Sufficient is it to say that Islam teaches that life is a test, and that all human beings will be accountable before God.  A sincere belief in the life of the hereafter is the key to leading a well-balanced and moral life.  Otherwise, life is viewed as an end in itself, which causes human beings to become more selfish, materialistic and immoral.

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