The Future of Economics. M. Umer Chapra

CHAPTER 3

       Can Science be Built on a Religious Paradigm?

      (The Conflict of Reason and Revelation in the Muslim World and its Modern Implications)

      Science and religion deal with two entirely different levels of reality. The former deals with the physical universe which is perceptible by human senses, while the latter deals with a higher order of reality which is transcendental and beyond the sense experience. Their sources of knowledge also differ. Science relies primarily on human faculties, particularly reason, and seeks to acquire knowledge through observation and experiment; it tries to describe and analyze ‘what is’, to be able to predict what may happen in the future. When science deals with the physical universe, its description and analysis are more exact and its predictive power is greater. However, when it deals with human beings, who do not always behave in a standard manner, its description and analysis are less precise and its predictions are often inaccurate. By contrast, religion depends on Revelation as well as reason for its knowledge. Its ultimate objective is to help transform the human condition from ‘what is’ to the ideal or ‘what ought to be’, by bringing about individual and social change in conformity with its worldview and the values and institutions that it provides.

      Even though science and religion deal with two different levels of reality, the ultimate objective of both is common – improvements in human well-being. However, if the material and the spiritual aspects of the well-being that the two address are both important and also interrelated, then science and religion may be able to serve mankind more effectively by greater cooperation and coordination between them. While science can enable human beings to increase their mastery over the physical universe, religion can help foster the kind of human being who may be able to use the knowledge and power provided by science for the well-being, rather than the destruction, of mankind. Religion can help provide a proper perspective to science so that it does not forget its limitations or its ultimate objective. Science can help religion become more effective in realizing ‘what ought to be’ by a better analysis of ‘what is’, facilitating prediction, providing better technology, and enabling a more efficient use of all available resources.

      Conflict and confrontation are, thus, not necessarily ingrained in their nature. Science need not be anti-religion and religion need not be anti-science. However, their verdicts even with respect to their own field tend to have an impact on human attitudes towards the other’s field. Conflict may arise if science refuses to acknowledge its limitations, ignores the contribution that the moral and the transcendental can make to human well-being, and rejects outright all knowledge that cannot be attained by its own method, even though its method is not capable of acquiring, verifying, or even falsifying such knowledge. Conflict may also arise if religion makes propositions that are irrational and difficult for science to accept. If conflicts do arise, the best way to resolve them is through rational dialogue. If either of the two is intolerant, tries to curb criticism of its concepts, and uses force to impose its views on the other, then conflict may escalate, attitudes may harden, and the possibilities for cooperation decline.

      Even though a conflict is not necessary between science and religion, it has arisen in different societies. A number of factors have led to this conflict but it is not within the scope of this book to examine the reasons for this in all societies. It is commonly agreed that such a conflict did arise in the West. However, instead of resolving this conflict in a way that would help the development of science without weakening religion, the Enlightenment movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries adopted a hostile attitude towards religion and created a different epistemology for science, crowning reason as the supreme judge of all truth, rejecting all metaphysical beliefs that could not be ascertained by means of reason and sense perception, and denying any role for faith and intuition in human affairs. Economics was not an exception. It followed the same tangential path and gave birth, as seen earlier, to the concepts of rational economic man, positivism, and laissez faire, which did not fit into the worldview of Christianity.

      This raises the question of whether there was such a rationalist movement in the Muslim world and whether or not it led to a similar conflict? If so, what were the reasons for, and the consequences of this conflict? Is it possible that a similar conflict may arise again with the re-emergence of scientific inquiry in the so far dormant Muslim world? If a conflict does arise, will it change the epistemology of knowledge in the Muslim world in the same way as it did in the West, given the dominant influence of the West on the rest of the world? If the scientific worldview adopts the same anti-religious attitude in the Muslim world as it did in the West, then Islamic economics may lose its raison d’être.

THE RATIONALIST MOVEMENT IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

      The fact is that the Rationalist or Enlightenment movement arose even in the Muslim world in the second/eighth century, several centuries before it did in the West. There was also a conflict, but its alternative nature led to results which differed from those in the West. The conflict was not between science and Revelation; this was impossible because of Islam’s positive attitude towards science and the scientific method. The conflict was rather between Revelation and philosophical speculation. However, science and philosophy were closely related in the Muslim world in those days, just as they were in Europe until around 1700. The conflict was generated by the effort of the rationalists to use speculative reasoning to discuss subjects which were transcendent and beyond the scope of reason. This may not, however, have by itself vitiated the intellectual climate. What did the damage, as will be seen in greater detail both later on in this Chapter as well as in Chapter 6, was the effort of the rationalists to forcibly impose their views on an unwilling orthodoxy with the help of the coercive power of a political authority which did not enjoy the confidence of the people. The rationalists at that time consisted of two different groups of scholars from different intellectual backgrounds. These were the Muʿtazilites and the falāsifah (philosophers; singular faylasūf).

      The Muʿtazilites¹ were basically religious scholars and not philosophers. They were, however, well-versed in philosophy and the physical sciences and wished to provide convincing rational arguments for religious beliefs and practices, in contrast with the extreme conservatives who wanted people to accept these on the basis of blind faith. The rationalist approach had become necessary because of the rapid spread of Islam in territories previously under the influence of the materially more advanced and intellectually more sophisticated Sassanian and Byzantine civilizations. Without the adoption of such a rational approach, it would have been difficult to gain converts or even to save the common man from the adverse influence of heretics or zanādiqah (singular, zindīq). The rationalists also tried to determine the nature and causes of the various phenomena in human life and the universe around them. Here their objective was to show that God does not operate in an arbitrary manner. He is rather systematic and methodical and operates on the basis of certain principles, which it is possible for human beings to discover. They were, thereby, indirectly trying to lay down a solid foundation for science within the religious paradigm.

      To help them in this commendable task, they developed a systematic method of logical reasoning called ʿIlm al-Kalām.² Those who employed this method were called mutakallimūn, which literally means ‘reasoners’. This method was original to the Muslims and, as Gardet has put it, was