The idea of gradual and orderly change or evolution can be traced to the beginning of Greek philosophy, when Heraclitus said that everything moves and everything changes. Aristotle not only taught the idea of evolution, but also provided a theory of its causes. The Roman poet Lucretius gave the theory of gradual development of animal life from the simplest first beginnings to more complex forms. However, in modern times, it was the French naturalist J. B. Lamarck (1744-1829) who formulated a complete theory of species’ transformation. According to him, in any living creature, organs improve in effectiveness if used and deteriorate if not used, and this improvement or deterioration will be passed on to its offspring. Explaining his views, Lamarck said that all life has an innate drive for perfection which leads to evolution of organism. In order to deal with changed environmental conditions, the animal brings about a change in its habits, involving the greater use of some organs (resulting in their growth), and reduced use of some other organs (causing their degeneration). Such modifications or acquired characters are inherited by the offspring, leading to the process of transformation. This theory, though simple and convincing, was based upon a flimsy foundation, as the notion of the inheritance of acquired characters could not be proved.
During the middle of nineteenth century, we find the idea of organic evolution quite common in Europe, though a solid mechanism of its causation was still lacking. Men like William Wells, Edmond Blyth, Patrick Matthew, and Alfred Wallace worked on the idea of evolution after Lamarck. It is interesting to note that many naturalists during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were clergymen, and that they tended to see the study of nature as a sure way to a greater appreciation of the Divine Creative activities. The enmity between religion and science had not yet entered the field of biology. The prevalent idea was that the atheist has to be willfully blind to ignore the clear signs of God’s existence everywhere in the living world. It was generally believed by the naturalists that the existence of God can be inferred from the evidence of the exquisite design in nature, including the fact that organisms are so perfectly adapted to their environment. Even when some of the biologists of skeptical tendencies could not agree with all of the doctrines of the established Church, they would still remain, more or less, within the boundaries of theism. All this changed, of course, with the advent of Darwin.
Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England, in the year 1809, and came from a prosperous and educated family. In 1825, he was sent to Edinburgh to study medicine, the theoretical side of which he found dull, the practical part — especially surgery — he found horrifying. After he abandoned this endeavor in 1827, Darwin’s father sent him to Cambridge to prepare for the ministry, and he received his degree in 1831. He was, however more fascinated by geology and natural history than by theology. Professor Henslow of Cambridge secured an invitation for Darwin to join, as a naturalist, the ship H.M.S. Beagle on a voyage to survey the coast of South America. The five-year voyage of the Beagle turned out to be the most important event of his life, and, some argue, of the entire history of biology.
Darwin based his theory of the mechanism of evolution on the ideas propounded by Thomas Malthus in 1798. Malthus has argued that the unchecked rate of increase of any population far exceeded that of food production. Under these circumstances, population will grow until it reaches the limits of the food supply, and thereafter poverty, starvation, and death will be inevitable. Darwin is also known to have studied Auguste Comte and Adam Smith, and it has been argued that he simply applied the latter’s economic theory to the world of living organisms. The mechanism of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin in his major works — “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’’ (1859) and ‘‘The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex’’ (1871) — can be briefly described thus:
Every species of animal is enormously prolific, tending to increase in geometric ratio; as a result, there is neither room nor food enough for all. Hence there follows a struggle for existence in which only those individuals survive who are best adapted to their environment. This happens because there are slight variations in structure or function between different individuals of the same species. Those having favorable variations will be selected and preserved. They will live, thrive, and propagate, transmitting their favorable variations to their offspring. Those with less favorable variations would be unable to reproduce themselves in sufficient numbers and will, consequently, perish. The phrase Survival of the Fittest actually came from philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who had speculated on evolution well before Darwin’s theories became known, and had pounced eagerly on Darwin’s thesis. In addition to Spencer, Thomas Huxley and Ernst Haeckel also played significant roles in preparing the ground for Darwin’s second book, in which the author proposed that man is a descendent of ape-like creatures.
There were serious errors and major gaps in the Darwinian hypothesis of Natural Selection, as a result of which most early criticisms were based on scientific arguments. Some of the gaps in Darwin’s theory were filled by others in the period following his death in 1882. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) had discovered the laws relating to inheritance as early as 1865, but his work remained unknown until Hugo de Vries, in 1900, studied his papers and described the phenomenon of ‘‘mutation’’, or sudden changes in the chromosomes that comprise the agents of inheritance, the ‘‘genes.’’ He proposed that evolution occurs, not as a result of Darwin’s fluctuating variations, but due to sudden changes in the germ cells leading to the development of a new species which is distinct from the beginning. The discovery of the structure and dynamics of DNA in 1953 by Francis Crick and James Watson led to further elucidation of the theory of Natural Selection. Mutation is now defined as a random change in one or more of the bases in DNA; such a change is inherited only if it occurs in the cells that give rise to gametes.
Although debates about the details of Darwin’s view continue, the broad outline given by him is still very much in vogue. The mainstream view about evolution is sometimes called Neo-Darwinism (a synthesis between genetic theory and Natural Selection). It is said that defects and errors routinely occur in the ‘‘copying’’ process of DNA in the nuclei of the reproductive cells, and that some of these defects or errors produce minor variations in different members of the same species. Then Natural Selection comes into action and favors some of these variations while rejecting others, leading to the survival of the organisms that are more adapted to their environment as a result of these chance variations, and the extinction of those organisms whose variations are counterproductive in relation to their environment. Since these minor variations occur due to changes in the DNA itself, they are transmitted to the offspring, and, over a period of time, a number of changes accumulate, which lead to the emergence of a totally different species. A related theory is that of Neo-Lamarckism, according to which suddenly and exceptionally acquired characteristics are not inherited, but the action of some external stimulus, continuing through many generations, ultimately affects the genes, and the acquired character is then inherited.
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).
