The colossal amount of academic work which was done by our learned ancestors in the field of Qur’anic exegesis is highly valuable, but these tafaseer — on account of a paucity of scientific knowledge in that era — often contain errors in the explanation of the Qur’anic allusions to natural and physical phenomena. The human errors in exegesis should never be mistaken for ‘‘errors’’ in the Divine text. Instead, our interpretations of the Qur’anic references to natural processes — for example, the in utero development of the fetus and the appearance of first man on earth — need to be carefully reconsidered and revised in the light of modern scientific knowledge. Religion and science are, in fact, close allies in the search for truth and not adversaries or antagonists. Both strive to reach the ultimate realities of existence. However, while science uses a cold and dry inductive method and can, by definition, arrive only at partial truths regarding the observable universe, religion uses an intuitive and direct approach to knowledge and arrives at the whole truth, which includes the invisible and transcendent realities. Furthermore, since the material and the spiritual, or the physical and the metaphysical, are two aspects of the same reality, at least some degree of overlap between scientific and religious knowledge is inevitable. Thus, the facts uncovered by science can help us understand more clearly the truths revealed by religion, and, in the same way, various religious insights can help supply the missing pieces in the puzzles of scientific knowledge, thereby paving the way to a more holistic, coherent, and integrated view of reality. In the present article we shall apply this approach to the problem of human evolution. Without showing any disrespect or irreverence to them, it may be pointed out that our religious scholars have, during the last couple of centuries or so, restricted themselves within a rather narrow circle of activity, which is essentially concerned with defending the dogmatic and ritualistic framework of Islam. While this in itself is a valuable service, what is really needed is revival and reconstruction of different aspects of the Islamic ideology in contemporary idiom. A proper reconstruction of Islamic theology, for example, would require a thorough study of the developments in the scientific and philosophical thought, especially during the last 500 years, along with a firm grasp over — or at least a comparable understanding of — the traditional Islamic sources, most importantly the Holy Qur’an itself. In order to take a stand against those modern philosophies which are seeking to destroy the foundations of Islamic faith, we need first to clearly discriminate between what is and what is not in accordance with the spirit of the Qur’an, and then to refute the part that is against the Qur’anic spirit and to accept and incorporate the part that is harmonious with the Qur’anic spirit into a contemporary interpretation of Islamic theology. It is important to recognize the fact that rejecting an idea as false which is actually compatible with the Qur’anic spirit is as serious a mistake as accepting an idea which is not consistent with the Qur’anic world-view. With reference to cosmic and human evolution, as we shall see, the right position is to accept as true the general notion of progress and development in the universe as well as the idea of the evolution of human beings from lower life forms, but to reject and refute the theory that all this happened as a result of blind and purposeless ‘‘force’’ of Natural Selection.
Evolution is generally considered to be totally incompatible with the Islamic understanding of reality. This, however, happens to be a superficial judgment. Upon deeper reflection, the idea of evolution, and of gradual development and progress from one stage to the next, comes out as central to the Islamic world-view. Although the idea of evolution sprouts from the Holy Qur’an itself, many of the present-day Muslim scholars find this notion hard to swallow, particularly with reference to biological evolution. The reason for their abhorrence is probably the fact that the very conception of evolution brings up in their minds the appalling image of an ape squatting in man’s family tree, something which they consider as diametrically opposed to the Qur’anic concept of human dignity. However, we shall try to show in the present article that it is quite possible to believe in the universal phenomenon of evolution, including the evolution of man from lower animals, without having to surrender the faith in the creative activity of Almighty Allah (SWT) and without subscribing to the degrading philosophy of Darwinism. This is possible because of the following reasons: In the first place, evolution is not synonymous with Darwinism; Secondly, although evolution is a universal fact — which can be established through the study of comparative morphology, paleontology, embryology, anthropology, and genetics — the theory which is commonly propounded to explain its mechanism, i.e., Natural Selection, is by no means a secure and scientifically proven fact; and, finally, because the Islamic concept of human dignity is based on the presence in man of a non-physical soul and has nothing to do with his physical body. The immediate response of the orthodox Muslim scholars to the idea of human evolution, when it first arrived from the West in the Muslim world during the late nineteenth century, was one of outright and total rejection. The conflict between the schools of Deoband and Aligarh in British India imitated a somewhat similar friction in the Western world between the Scientific/Rationalist and the Religious/Traditionalist schools of thought. However, it is our contention that no inherent dichotomy exists between the rational and the religious, particularly the Qur’anic, worldviews, other than an artificial and temporary discrepancy which arises out of either the lacunae in the available scientific knowledge or a misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the knowledge revealed by Almighty Allah (SWT).
