Everyone talks so
much today of the danger of war and the pollution of air and water
that peace and ecology are the most fashionable words in people's
tongues. But the same people who are expected to diagnose these
problems wish to remove them through further conquest and
domination of nature. The problem lies in the destruction of the
equilibrium between man and nature as a result of the modern
materialistic conception of and a corrupt attitude toward man and
nature. Most people are reluctant to perceive that peace in human
society and with nature is possible through peace with the
spiritual order. To be at peace with the Earth one must be at
peace with himself and this is not possible without being at peace
with Heaven.
The
roots of the ecological problem
The dangers caused
by man’s domination over nature are too well known to need
explanation. Nature is no longer regarded as something sacred by
modern man as it was by man of the medieval ages, and it has
become devoid of any meaning. The void caused by the disappearance
of this indispensable aspect of human existence has continued to
exist within the souls of men to manifest itself in many ways,
sometimes violently and desperately.
It is largely the
domination of nature which has caused the rise of many problems
such as the congestion of modern city life, the exhaustion of
natural resources, the destruction of natural beauty, and the
abnormal rise in mental illnesses. It is the same domination of
nature together with giving complete freedom to the animal nature
within man that has made the problem of war so crucial.
The present day
encounter of man with nature, and all the modern problems
connected with it, carry within themselves elements connected with
Christian civilization. When Christianity came to replace or to
save the civilization of Antiquity, it found itself in a world in
which naturalism, empiricism and rationalism were prevalent.
Knowledge of a human order had become sanctified in this world,
and an excessive attraction to nature seemed to the Christian eye
a blasphemy that blinded men to the vision of God.
Christianity,
therefore, reacted against this naturalism and emphasized the
boundary between the supernatural and the natural. Christian
theologians neglected the theological and spiritual significance
of nature. They believed that nature could not teach man anything
about God and is therefore of no theological and spiritual
significance.
Although some
writers such as W. Temple, probably in order to apologize to human
reason and knowledge for the Inquisition, claim a close
relationship between Christianity and science by alleging that
Christianity is able to dominate matter precisely because, in
contrast to other religions, it is the most avowedly materialist
of all the great religions, Christianity has shown much negligence
regarding knowledge and certainty. The centuries beginning with
the Renaissance have witnessed endless controversies between
Christianity and science, and it is due to the Christian
opposition to human reason and knowledge and its depriving nature
of its spiritual significance that science has developed as a
fatal instrument in materialistic hands.
Islam
and nature
As for Islam, it is
the middle-of-the road religion. One finds in Islam an elaborate
hierarchy of knowledge integrated by the principle of Divine Unity
(al-Tawhid). There are juridical, social and theological sciences;
and there are gnostic and metaphysical ones all deriving their
principles from the source of revelation which is the Quran. Then
there have developed within Islamic civilization elaborate
philosophical, natural and mathematical sciences, each of which
has its source in one of the Beautiful Names of God. It is the
Name the All-healing that shines on Medicine; Geometry and
Engineering depend on the Names the All-just, the All-shaping and
the All-harmonizing, and Philosophy reflects the Name of the
All-wise, and so forth. On each level of knowledge nature is seen
in a particular light. For the jurists (fuqaha) and theologians (mutakallimun)
it is the background for human action. For the philosopher and
scientist it is a domain to be analyzed and understood. On the
metaphysical and gnostic level it is the object of contemplation
and the mirror reflecting suprasensible realities.
Moreover, the study
of nature has never been separated from gnosis, or the
metaphysical dimension of Islam throughout the Islamic history.
This is the reason why so many Muslim scientists like Avicenna,
Nasir al-Din Tusi and Jabir ibn al-Hayyan were either practicing
Sufis or were intellectually attached to the gnostic schools. In
Islam observation of nature and contemplation of it has always
represented a very important aspect of the spiritual journey of a
Muslim. Furthermore, there has been in Islam an intimate
connection between the sciences and other fields of Islamic
studies. This connection is to be found in the Quran itself,
which, as the Divine Scripture of Islam, corresponds to the
macrocosmic revelation which is the Universe. That is why Islam is
also the name of the Divine system of the Universe. The Book of
Islam is ‘the recorded Quran (al-Qur’an al-tadwini)’ and the
Universe, as a whole, is the ‘Quran of the creation (al-Quran
al-takwini)’. Likewise, man is also a Divine Book corresponding
to the Quran and the Universe. It is because of this that the term
used to signify the verses of the Quran or ayat also means
events taking place within the souls of men, and phenomena in the
world of nature. Man’s life is so mysteriously interrelated to
the natural phenomena that one who discerns these phenomena can
draw hundred-percent-true conclusions about the future of the
world; that is to say that the laws of history can be deduced from
what is going on in nature. To cite an example, the Quran says:
Surely your
Lord is God, Who has created the heavens and the earth in
six days - then mounted He to the Throne, covering the day
with the night, which pursues it urgently - and the sun, and
the moon, and the stars subservient, by His command. Verily,
His are the creation and the command. Blessed be God, the
Lord of all being. Call on your lord, humbly and secretly;
He loves not transgressors. Do not corruption in the land,
after it has been set right; and call on Him fearfully;
eagerly - surely the grace of God is nigh to the good-doers.
It is He Who looses the winds, bearing good tidings before
His grace, till, when they are charged with heavy clouds, We
drive it to a dead land and therewith send down water, and
bring forth therewith all the fruits. Even so We shall bring
forth the dead; haply you will remember. And the good land -
its vegetation comes forth by the leave of its Lord, and the
corrupt - it comes forth but scantily. Even so We turn about
signs for a people that are thankful. (7:54-58)
The verses above are
apparently about some natural phenomena, yet they mention the
Resurrection and the importance of prayer. Corruption in the land
is also forbidden in the verses above and man is warned that the
command of everything is God’s only and He has no partners
either in the creation or the command. Thus, the main principles
of faith, that is belief in the Oneness of God and the
Resurrection, are emphasized together with man being reminded once
more that his function or duty on the Earth is, as the Vicegerent
of God, prayer and to establish justice on the Earth, avoiding any
kind of corruption whatsoever and transgression of the Divine law.
Some other meanings,
though inner, are also hinted at in the verses above. The day and
the night symbolize the happy moments and misfortunes
respectively, which alternate in both a man’s and a nation’s
life. Second, since it is the symbol of the Divine Grace, rain is
mentioned in the verse as the grace of God which is nigh to the
good-doers. Thirdly, winds bearing the good tidings that rain is
about to come correspond to pioneers or leaders of a national
revival. The message with which they have come is likened to heavy
clouds of rain. Hearts without faith and minds devoid of good
judgment and sound reasoning are like dead lands which need rain
to be made fruitful. Just as the vegetation of good land comes
forth by the leave of its Lord, so hearts and minds propitious to
be fertilized by the Divine Message will certainly be the sources
from which faith, knowledge and virtues radiate. There will,
however, always be some minds and hearts like deserts which
receive little rain to produce any vegetation, and which never
benefit from the grace of Heaven.
Finally, the verses
in question console the believers who constitute a small oppressed
minority amongst a corrupt, wrongdoing community, with the good
tidings that victory is near to them so long as they keep striving
for God’s cause and seek help in patience and prayer.
Thus, revelation to
man is inseparable from the cosmic revelation which is also a book
of God. Islam, by refusing to separate man from nature, has
preserved an integral view of the universe and sees in the
arteries of the cosmic and natural order the flow of Divine grace.
From the bosom of nature man seeks to transcend nature and nature
herself can be an aid in this process provided man can learn to
contemplate it as a mirror reflecting a higher reality, as stated
in the Quran:
Surely in the
creation of the heavens and earth and in the alternation of
night and day there are signs for men possessed of minds,
who remember God and mention His name, standing and sitting
and on their sides, and reflect upon the creation of the
heavens and the earth: “Our Lord, You have not created
this for vanity. Glory be to Thee! Guard us against the
chastisement of the Fire. (3. 190-191)
Man’s
position in existence
Man occupies an
especial position in this world, and is at the axis and centre of
the cosmic milieu. By being taught the names of all things, he is
given the keys to knowledge of all things, and thus gains
domination over them, but he has been given this power only in his
capacity of being the Vicegerent (khalifa) of God on the Earth,
not as a rebel against Heaven.
In fact man is the
channel of grace for nature; through his active participation in
the spiritual world he brings light into the world of nature.
Because of his intimate connection with nature, man’s inner
state is reflected in the external order. This explains why, when
man’s inner being turns to darkness and chaos, nature is also
turned from harmony and beauty to disequilibrium and disorder. Man
sees in nature what he is himself, and penetrates into the inner
meaning of nature only by being able to delve into the inner
depths of his own being. Those who live only on the surface of
their being can study nature as something to be manipulated and
dominated; only he who has turned toward the inward dimension of
his existence can recognize nature as a symbol, and come to
understand it in the real sense.
This very concept of
man and nature and the presence of a metaphysical doctrine and the
hierarchy of knowledge enabled Islam to develop many sciences
which exerted the greatest influence upon Western science without
their disturbing the Islamic intellectual edifice. A man like
Avicenna could be a physician and Peripatetic philosopher and yet
expound his ‘Oriental philosophy’ which sought knowledge
through illumination. A Nasir al-Din al-Tusi could be the leading
mathematician and astronomer of his day and the author of an
outstanding treatise on Sufism. Muhy al-Din ibn al-‘Arabi could
be a leading personage in the most esoteric dimension of Sufism
and yet told about the expansion of the Universe and the motion of
objects. The Sufism of Jabir ibn al-Hayyan did not prevent him
from being the founder of al-Gebra and Chemistry. And Ibn Jarir
al-Tabari, who is one of the most outstanding figures in Islamic
Jurisprudence (Fiqh), History and Quranic Interpretation (Tafsir),
wrote eleven centuries ago about the winds’ fertilizing clouds
so that rain would fall. Ibrahem Haqqi of Erzurum, a well-known
Sufi master of the seventeenth century, was a brilliant astronomer
and mathematician of his age as well as a blessed specialist of
the occult sciences. The examples could be multiplied but these
suffice to demonstrate the principle of a hierarchy of knowledge
and the presence of a metaphysical dimension within Islam which
have satisfied the intellectual needs of men so that they have
never sought the satisfaction of their thirst for causality
outside the religion as has happened in the West.
Islam is the
universal order, the integral religion of harmony and the unique
system which is able to harmonize the physical with the
metaphysical, the rational with the ideal, and the corporeal with
the spiritual. All dimensions of man’s earthly life have
particular places of their own within the matrix of Islam in such
a way that each can perform its own function and enable man to be
at peace with himself, his community and nature, and ultimately to
gain happiness in both worlds.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Sayid Hussein Nasr, Man and
Nature, London,1968
- Three Muslim Sages, London,1964
- Science and Civilization in
Islam, London,1987
- Said Nursi, Sozler, (‘The
Words 1, The Words 2’), Istanbul,1958
- Lem’alar, Istanbul,1986
- Mektubat, (‘The Letters 1, The
Letters 2’), Istanbul,1990
- E.F. Schumacher, Small is
Beautiful, London,1972
- Scognamillo Giovanni, Batinin
Inanc Temelleri, Istanbul,1972
- Erich Fromm, Escape from
Freedom, (Turkish trans. Hurriyetten Kacis,1982.)
