Science in Islamic context.

Khalid bin Yazid, the grandson of Mua’wiya, Muhammad’s famous companion and 5th Caliph in Muslim history, is considered to be among the first Muslim alchemists. Tradition has it that he left his home in Damascus at the age of twenty and set out for Alexandria. Here he met his teacher Morienus, a Christian hermit of Jerusalem and learned the art of alchemy from him. Morienus was a protégé of Stephanus of Alexandria, a prominent Greek in the field of alchemy known for his famous work “On the Great and Sacred Art of Making Gold”

An example of the second is Dr. Bashiruddin Mehmood, a Pakistani scientist from country’s prestigious Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), who argued that as Djins are made of fire as told in the Quran, we should capture them and produce electricity from them. The fact is that no matter how hard people like Dr Mehmood, Hossein Nasar or Ziauddin Sardar try to prove it, Islamic science never existed.

The treatment meted out to these scientists is another point of concern. Muslims of today take pride in these medieval men without knowing how they were treated in their times. They were persecuted, jailed and tortured. They were silenced and rejected, their books were burnt and they were charged with blasphemy, heresy and apostasy. Some were killed. Ideologues like Ghazali, Taj-ad-Din-as-Subki and Ibn-as-Salah were there to provide a quasi-rational justification of this treatment. Hardly any proud Muslim knows the extent of this oppression. The list of ill-treated persons of letters is in no way short. Jamal-ud din Afghani wrote in one of his letters to the French scholar Renan: “AI-Sayuti tells that the Caliph al-Hadi put to death in Baghdad 5,000 philosophers in order to destroy sciences in Muslim countries down to their roots. Admitting that this historian exaggerated the number of victims, it remains nonetheless established that this persecution took place, and it is a bloody stain for the history of a religion as it is for the history of a people”.

The famous physician Al Razi was blinded by the torture he received. Andalusian polymath Ibn-e Rushd was tied to a post outside the central mosque and people were asked to spit on his face [5]. Al- Kindi received 50 lashes before a cheering crowd and Ibn-e-Sina had to spend a major portion of his life in hiding or on the run in order to avoid persecution. A nation with a history of persecuting their freethinkers cannot take pride in these men unless they openly disown and denounce their persecutors. On the contrary, ideological descendents of those persecuting mullahs still dominate the Muslim intellectual arena while heirs to the philosophies of these rationalists are still being hounded and cornered.