Dear Ansar,

I will ask Salim your question the next time we get in touch.

You did not really answer my question. I want to know more than simply if Salim's claim truly contradicts your claim about knowledgeable Muslims. I want to also know on your part (incredibly unlikely as it may be):

would acknowledging that Salim memorized the Qur'an at a very young age and establishing that he obtained highly respectable ijazahs from honored, acknowledged Islamic scholars, as well as the Ph.D, entail acknowledging that Islam has a flaw? –

Would it be acknowledging such a flaw? Or, would you conclude it is indeed possible to undergo a highly rigorous, very respectable Islamic education and obtain the highest certifications, yet not possess eeman. If the latter is not possible, then, in principle, it would seem that in order to accept and acknowledge Salim's evidence purporting to establish his credentials, you would have to find flaw in Islam. This point is crucial to the discussion.

Respectfully,

Sharvy

No it would not and I have explained why multiple times. I have pointed out why the degrees would not make one an automatic Islamic scholar. I have mentioned multiple times that we have to be able to assess their education directly. But the point of the matter is that someone with even a basic Islamic education, let alone erudition, would not have such misconceptions - the only time people apostate is either from ignorance or due to sociopolitical reasons. Salim's example is a dead one because there is no way for me to assess his reasons for leaving or his Islamic education. That is why the entire discussion on Salim is pointless. You aren't able to provide me the information necessary, I can't contact him, you've admitted to providing me with contradictory information [unintentionally of course], and so on. You are only repeating the same points and asking me about him - I don't know Salim or his reasons for leaving the religion and since I will never find out there is no point in asking me about him.

And then you are asking me, essentially, what if my claim is false - What if there are knowledgeable people who have left Islam and think Islam is flawed?
The problem is you haven't done anything to counter my claim much less to disprove it so it's like asking me, "what if Islam is false?" - what do you want me to say? I can challenge someone to support their claim that Islam is false or that my claim is false and they will fail, because neither are false. If you could disprove my claims, then we would worry about the implications. If you can't, then there is no point.

Peace.

Hi Ansar,

Here's the way I'm beginning to see this issue. According to you it is virtually impossible to have a sound, rigorous, proper Muslim upbringing, and then go on to get advanced certifications and not obtain eeman. More over you agreed it was impossible for Salim to have had eeman and have left Isam becauses he found the doctrine flawed. To claim that was possible would itself be challenge to the truth Islam.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I want to make sure that I fully understand your point of view: On the Islamic view, as a means of establishing truth, evidence and science are fine as far as they go, but they are feeble and pale by comparison with the mind of a scholar guided by eeman and scripture in the search for knowledge. Belief formed on the basis of evidence or science is always a mere extrapolation and profoundly subject to error. For any evidence set, there are always a range of competing extrapolations that one can draw from the evidence - all subject to error with the sole exception of a mind guided by scripture and the Divine grace of eeman. Thus it would be foolish and incomprehensible for Muslim like Salim to forsake the true path and reject the Word of Allah based on some frail human extrapolation in the name of the rickety contraption that humans call "science". So if a few people in white coats want to extrapolate the claim that humans and apes both directly evolved from a common ancestor from the evidence - what of it? All such extrapolations are just that - and are inherently weak and error prone. If the Qur'an teaches us that all humans descended from Adam (pbuh) and Eve and that Adam and Eve were created directly by God, separate from any other animal, then it is absurd and unreasonable to place any trust in the "scientific" claim. At best, and in its proper place, science is an adjunct to knowledge as revealed by Allah through the Prophet (pbuh) and it is the height of irrational hubris to ever put the word of science above the Word of Allah.

Have I correctly characterized your position on the matter?

Peace,

Sharvy

No, I never said that. I said to be a genuine Islamic scholar one must have eeman in God.
No, my position is that apostasy has only ever occured from ignorance or due to sociopolitical reasons. I can't comment on Salim since I do not have information about him or even a remote understanding of his reasons for leaving.
No, I never said that either.
No, absolutely not. I never said we should accept the word of a scholar over a scientist because the former has eeman. I don't know where you are getting these absurd ideas from. I am saying that no matter what religion one belongs to, one must understand the scientific methodolgy properly - science is not a search for truth; science is a search for ways of explaining observable phenomena in our universe. Those points you mentioned earlier about the evolution theory actually betray a poor understanding of science. I am not calling for people to belittle or reject science, I am calling for people to gain a proper understanding of science!

The problem in your quote when you say evidence and science are fine as far as they go is that NEITHER evidence nor science are being questioned here! I am all for an evidence-based approach to all discussions but what I pointed out (twice) was that we are not talking about evidence, but an individual's extrapolation from that evidence. And I gave numerous examples of this, I'm not sure why they were ignored. You have the example with respect to the theories on light - Newton decided on the basis of the observations that light is a particle, Huygens thought it was a wave. So it has nothing to do with evidence it has to do with how we interpret that evidence.

As for your mention of science (evidence and science are fine as far as they go), again it has nothing to do with accepting or rejecting science. I explained earlier that science is not an entity that researches and concludes matters. When Newton's theory which dominated for over a century was proven wrong does that mean that science was proven wrong?
No, I never said that either. In fact it is specifically against Islam to ascribe infallibility to human beings outside of the Prophets. You've fallen into the fallacy of assuming that the intents and purposes of religion and science are the same when they are manifestly not. Islam teaches us how to live our life and how to draw closer to our Creator through righteous deeds as we are accountable in this life for all that we do. Meanwhile, the goal in science is to provide complete and useful explanations for the observable phenomena around us.
No again. Those are your words not mine. Why would I call my major field of interest a 'rickety contraption'? Do you assume Muslims are ignorant and backward people who regard science with disdain? Nothing could be further from the truth.
My position is that Salim has failed to show any contradiction between science and Islam.
No, I specifically quoted a fatwa for you that explained that biological evolution stands or falls on the basis of scientific evidence.

Therefore, with respect to other living things, the Qur’ân and Sunnah neither confirm nor deny the theory of biological evolution or the process referred to as natural selection. The question of evolution remains purely a matter of scientific enquiry. The theory of evolution must stand or fall on its own scientific merits – and that means the physical evidence that either confirms the theory or conflicts with it.

What could be more clear than that?

I regret to inform that I have never seen such a blatant misrepresentation of another's position.

Regards

Dear Ansar,

I am so sorry that I misrepresented your position – I did not intend to – and that is why I asked. But you have to understand that you and I come from different cultures and circumstances, and I can assure you that your responses to me are just as confusing as mine are apparently to you. I should add that while I do have expertise in philosophy of religion, my main area of expertise is philosophy of science and the theory of evolution in particular. While we most likely will not agree on many fundamental issues, I do think it is worth the effort to understand the other's viewpoint. At least we should both be clear on what we are disagreeing with. So if you are willing, I would like to start with each of us clarifying our view on the role and status of science – I really do not understand the role of science as explained by you and the fatwa.

The way I put it is that science is not searching for certainty or absolute truth, but the most probable truth given our current state of evidence and knowledge. It not just searching for "ways of explaining observable phenomena in our universe." For example it is an axiom of philosophy of science that for any given dataset, there are theoretically an infinite number of competing hypotheses (or extrapolations) that will account for, and in that sense explain, the data. Each competing hypothesis is theoretically a "way" of explaining the given observations. But it is up to science to choose the best or better of those possible explanations. There are indeed properties like parsimony, that you earlier alluded to, which scientists use to choose the best explanation. But ultimately one must ask why is a more parsimonious explanation or hypothesis preferable or better. Ultimately one must link parsimony to probable truth in order to both make sense of why that quality is important and to understand what explanatory parsimony or simplicity is, and how to identify it.

Some scientific disputes are matters of fundamental differences in how the disputing parties interpret mutually agreed upon evidence. But in other cases disputes arise because the two sides cannot agree on what count as relevant evidence or observations.

No, but it's fair to say that contemporary science and physics overwhelming rejects classical Newtonian physics as flawed and inaccurate. Properly understood, it's fair to say that contemporary physics has "concluded" as much – as long as one does not read certainty into that claim and understands it as meaning that on the basis of current evidence and knowledge, professional scientists can reasonably conclude (with high probability) that Einsteinian physics is more accurate than Newtonian physics. In that sense, science has "researched and concluded the matter." Doesn't the same sort of thing happen in various schools of Islam? Some respected body of scholars issues a fatwa and reaches conclusions on various issues of concern to Muslims. The US's most elite body of scientists – the National Association of Science (membership only offered to the nation's most accomplished scientists) – has recently issued an institutional report endorsing the reality of global warming. That does represent an important consensus and speaks for the conclusions that "science" has established, as opposed to this or that scientist.

A lot can be more clear. The fatwa seems to be saying: Islam takes no position on the theory of evolution in general, but it does take a position on the status of humans within that theory. You are willing to grant that theory of biological evolution stands or falls on the basis of the evidence gathered by practicing scientists. Please grant for the sake of argument that this evidence strongly supports the theory. Grant for example that the current evidence that chimpanzees and baboons directly evolved from a common ancestor is overwhelming. If so, than the current evidence also overwhelmingly establishes that humans and chimpanzees directly evolved from a common ancestor – as far as science is concerned, THE TWO CLAIMS ARE PRECISELY ON PAR. Both claims are equally supported by detailed genetic, fossil, geologic distribution, and morphological data – of exactly the same sort. And it is hardly appropriate to a priori insist that the two claims are not evidentially on par, without in detail addressing the evidence. So it doesn't make sense for you and the Fatwa committee of Shaykh Abdul-Wahhab At-Turayri to claim that it is fine for a Muslim to accept on the basis of science that chimps and baboons have a common ancestor, but they must not apply the same evidential standards to the claim that humans and chimps have a common ancestor. And then add – oh, by the way, good science and Islam can never lead to opposing, conflicting conclusions. But what is that supposed to mean when the fatwa is instructing Muslims to ignore scientific evidential standards if they support the conclusion that humans were not independently created by God. Yes Ansar, a lot can be made more clear.

Respectfully,

Sharvy

Originally Posted by Ansar Al-'Adl

Thus we find that, in the history of Islam, no knowledgeable Muslim has ever left Islam. The only cases we find of former Muslims are people who were never practicing Muslims in the first place, nor did they ever have a good understanding of Islam.

This is one of those unchallangable claims. Personaly, I agree with the intent of the claim. However, it is not a legitimate claim as written. As it is written, the answer is written within within the statement and the only validation of the fact is the statement itself. Although it is a good and I believe true statement, it is not written in a challangable or debatable form. The inference of the statement is that a knowledgable Muslim is one who never leaves the faith. Therefore by projection we come to the conclusion that if a person leaves the faith he is not a knowledgable Muslim.

In my round about way, I am saying that this is not a debatable statement.

Hello Sharvy,
It is up to scientists; science is not an entity that chooses, but I assume you meant scientists.
The only thing we have concluded is that Newton was wrong, Huygens was wrong and everyone else was wrong. We still are searching for a better answer.
In Islam there is no new evidence. In science new evidence comes up all the time.
Global warming is a phenomenon, not a theory.
What Islam says is something that science is incapable of either proving or disproving. Just like I cannot prove that I had a headache last week, it is impossible for us to make a definitive claim about a time from which we have no evidence. There is no scientific evidence that opposes the Islamic belief. There may be some scientists who do, but we need to be able to distinguish between what scientific evidence is, and what interpretations people draw from that.
But that is the problem. There is no way for scientists to determine whether Adam and Eve existed or not. They can note simmilarities between various species and construct phylogenetic trees to illustrate that, but it brings us no closer to determining whether Adam and Eve existed or not. The belief in Adam and Eve is not a scientific claim because it is neither verifiable nor falsifiable with scientific evidence.

Let's take an example from math. If I told you that part of a pattern was {...1,2,3...} you might assume that it is an arithmetic sequence and the next number is four. All evidence (current terms) we have support the notion that it is an arithmetic sequence. But they could just as likely be from the Fibonacci sequence. The first pattern is simpler so we might be inclined to accept it, but it can just as easily be wrong. So when you say that all the evidence supports the evolution of humans, what you mean is that so far there is no scientific evidence that contradicts it. I could say exactly the same thing with respect to the Islamic belief.
The evidence that we don't have for humans is speciation.
There is no good science or bad science. Science and scientific evidence does not contradict Islam. The opinion and ideas of some scientists may, but then again that is not immune to cultural influence either. Just consider the case of homosexuality.
No it does not say this at all.

Regards

Hi Woodrow,

Naturally I agree with you. Suppose my friend Salim were to present Ansar with solid credentials of holding respectable ijazahs and a reputable PhD in Islamic theology, and then submit himself to interrogation. I am virtually certain that Ansar would find his reasons for rejecting Islam to be weak and absurd – because Ansar has already said as much. At that point one of two things would happen:

1. Ansar would accept the evidence that Salim really did receive a solid Muslim education and training but conclude that he never possessed eeman and was therefore not a genuine Islamic scholar. Or,

2. He might simply refuse to accept that Salim could have had the education and upbringing he claims – finding it highly implausible that a Muslim with such an upbringing could reject Islamic because he became an atheist. Since the claim that Salim had such an education is an "extrapolation" from the evidence, Ansar might well find it more plausible to extrapolate that Salim's credentials are an elaborate hoax. After all, it is possible that, for example, the CIA would try to poison Islam with such imposters and sow dissension, isn't it? (Just an example Ansar - I not claiming you would use it.)

I say "might", but I just don't know. But I am reasonably sure that Ansar will not accept any extrapolation from the evidence that would contradict his claim that a "knowledgeable" Muslim could reject Islam. I know that Ansar will be very cross with me for voicing these suspicions because he hasn't actually made such claims. He will protest that's he has no coherent idea why Salim left Islam. Be that as it may, from the extensive dialogue we've had on this topic, that's the way I see it.

Peace,

Sharvy

Hi Sharvy,
But that wouldnn't have anything to do with my claim. My claim is that apostasy has occured from either ignorance or sociopolitical reasons and 1400 years of history testify to this. As for Salim, I would sincerely like to discuss with him to find out, first of all whether he exists, and secondly his reasons to know why he abandoned the religion to see whether it was from ignorance or sociopolitical reasons. So far the discussion has been

Ansar - Apostasy has only ever occured from ignorance or due to socipolitical reasons. The notion of an educated Muslim leaving Islam because they found it deficient is absolutely unheard of.
Sharvy - I know an ex-Muslim who was a very well educated Muslim with several degrees and qualifications and he left Islam becuase he thought it was flawed, so you're claim is wrong.
Ansar - Alright, what was his academic background and what were his reasons for leaving?
Sharvy - Well he knows his reasons best and as for his background, all I know is he has a lot of degrees, therefore he's a superduper Islamic scholar.
Ansar - That doesn't really contribute very much to the discussion, does it? I guess he's a null example then if we don't have the details.

That's how I see the discussion - we don't know if Salim contradicts my claim or not, you've just been asking 'What if he does...?' which is of no concern to me since it has not even been shown if he contradicts my claim or not. So this is why this debate hasn't gone anywhere and my original assertion has remained untouched.
His education would be evident from simple questions. I could only reject his claims if he was incapable of answering the questions and displayed obvious misconceptions about Islam.

Regards


br. Woodrow,
It would be debatable if someone could bring forward logical arguments or evidence to counter it. In this case, neither of the two have been done so yes, the discussion in this regard is futile.

The only problem I really have with the discussion is the mechanics. But, in reality I have no suggestions as to what could be done to have brought abought genuine 2 way dialogue. My apologies, I violated one of my own rules, which is to never critique, unless I know I can provide a valid alternative.

However, I see the thread as being valuable and knowledge is being exchanged. Perhaps, that is the purpose of this thread, Inshallah

Dear Ansar,

This is a shallow mischaracterization of what I’ve told you. I’ve told you specifically which degrees Salim holds: He has ijazah in hadith from Muhammad At-Thayib An-Naggar, and ijazah in usul al-fiqh from Badawi Abdul Latif 'Awadh – two prominent Islamic scholars on the faculty of al-Azar at the time. He also holds a PhD in Islamic theology from that same institution. Moreover, I’ve told you his reasons for leaving: they were intellectual and not socio-political. He left because due to his contemplation of science, philosophy, and the evidence, he gave up the Islamic conception of science, became an atheist and an evolutionist and found flaw in Islamic doctrine, such as the claim that Adam and Eve, if they existed, did not share a common ancestor with apes and chimpanzees. (It doesn’t matter if science can or cannot verify the specific existence of Adam and Eve. Contemporary evolutionary science is claiming that all humans alive today shared a common ancestor with chimps. On the Islamic doctrine, as described in the fatwa, that can’t possibly be true – there is a conflict. Salim and I are both convinced that the evidence for human speciation is just as strong as the evidence for chimp speciation – which is considerable indeed.) Now Ansar, I grant that you find these reasons flimsy and incomprehensible for someone who claims to have had a sound Islamic education – but nevertheless, that is what happened.

What do you think Woodrow? Have I given Ansar no detailed characterization as to what qualifications Salim had and why he left Islam? You seem like a fair-minded person.

There is another issue that I am interested in: if Salim comes forth and identifies himself publicly or privately to you Ansar, would you then have a religious obligation to notify his family in Egypt of his apostasy, if you are so able? Would his family then have an obligation to shun him?

Respectfully,

Sharvy