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Does Islam Actually Oppose Science? | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine
The clash between Islam and science never existed. Islam has always balanced knowledge and ethics with modern advancements and progress, so why is the Muslim world today struggling?
Watch as Imam Tom breaks down the claim that Islam is “backwards” and anti-science, showing that the instability of Muslim countries has nothing to do with reason and everything to do with politics and colonialism.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
What images come to mind when you think of the Muslim world? If you pay attention to the corporate media, it's probably sand dunes and camels or maybe it's even
war-torn areas, places that there's scarcity and chaos. Well, a lot of this imagery, there's a subtle subtext going on. There's the assumption that Islam is to blame, that these places just can't get their act together because Islam is
backwards and it's superstitious and it's anti-rational against science, all of these things. Now, this claim is historically false. It's also theologically illiterate and perhaps more importantly, it's politically
motivated. Today, we're gonna break down Islam's actual relationship with specifically science and how Muslim civilization led the world in scientific progress and why modern instability has everything to do with
geopolitics, not with Islam being backwards. The first point is that Islam has never had a war against science. Unlike medieval Christianity, which had very famous battles between the church and scientists such as Galileo and
Copernicus, think the Inquisition, Islam never developed an institution that claimed monopoly over the truth. We don't have a centralized church hierarchy like medieval Christianity did. There was no Islamic Pope, there was no central
authority banning books, no doctrine insisting that the earth was the center of the universe. Knowledge production was decentralized and largely uncensored. And beyond that, learning is a religious and moral imperative. Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala repeatedly calls in the Qur'an for people to observe, reflect, and analyze, to study the natural world. Allah says, [Ali 'Imran 3:191], Do they not reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth? And Allah
says, [Al-'Ankabut 29:20], Say, travel through the land and observe. Muslim scholars saw knowledge, whether scripture or knowledge of nature, as part of a single truth that was created by God. Studying the universe wasn't a rebellion
against religion, it was rather an act of worship. That's why early Muslims didn't fear science, in fact, they cultivated it. From the 8th to 15th centuries, Muslim majority regions were actually the scientific powerhouses of the world. They
weren't influenced by science, they were producers of science. Some highlights, Ibn al-Haytham invented the scientific method, centuries before Bacon did. Al-Khwarizmi, he founded algebra and influenced the development of algorithms.
Ibn Sina wrote the Canon of Medicine, which served as Europe's primary medical textbook for 500 years. Al-Biruni measured the Earth's radius with astonishing accuracy, and Muslim astronomers corrected Greek models and
built observatories that were unmatched until modern times. These achievements weren't accidents, they weren't anomalies, they came from an entire worldview that saw rationality and revelation as complementary, not as
contradicting. Islamic civilization believed that knowledge was a communal obligation, that the intellect was a divine gift, and that nature is a primary sign pointing to the Creator. That framework produced scientific
flourishing, and those societies reaped the benefits in terms of standard of living and quality of life. But it wasn't just about science, it was also about science grounded in ethics. Islam provided the balance between worldly
advancement and without compromising on ethical or moral clarity. So then, okay, why is the Muslim world struggling today? Well, anti-Islamic propaganda wants to communicate just one conclusion, that Muslim societies are underdeveloped
because Islam is incompatible with science and reason. This is fake news. Rooted in colonial arrogance and modern geopolitics rather than history, the real causes of today's instability are well documented. We'll give three. One,
colonialism. Colonialism shattered political, educational, and economic structures. European powers didn't just extract wealth, they also dismantled the indigenous institutions that were on the ground. They redrew borders and they
imposed puppet rulers. Number two, post-colonial interference continues to destabilize the region. From coups, to sanctions, to proxy wars, the Muslim world has endured a century of external manipulation. And three, conflict drains
resources and disrupts scientific development. No nation, whether it's a Muslim nation or not, can build Nobel Prize-winning labs while they're under occupation, or under a bombardment, or they're under the clasp of a dictatorship
supported by foreign powers. None of this has anything to do with opposing science. It has everything to do with geopolitics. Meanwhile, whenever Muslim regions do regain stability, such as Turkey or Malaysia, scientific progress
rebounds very rapidly because the capacity was always there. So where do these false ideas come from if they're not true? Again, we'll go three main sources. One is Enlightenment-era anti-Muslim polemics. There were people,
European writers, that were writing against Islam, trying to dismantle it and refute it. And they would, let's say, stretch the truth in order to do so. So they would try to portray Islam as irrational to justify their colonial
domination. And this narrative still shapes textbooks today. The second reason is selective images of modern conflict. So Western audiences only see war zones, and they assume that that represents Islam, not the consequences of political
or military intervention. And three, the projection of Christianity and Christian history onto Islam. Critics assume that Islam had the same battle with reason that Christianity did, even though Islamic civilization preserved Greek
works at the same time that Europeans burned them. These myths are repeated because they support an agenda. That's to portray Muslims as backwards, and that is part of dehumanizing them. Because when you dehumanize Muslims, you can justify
the discrimination against Muslims and rationalize foreign policies that harm Muslim societies. In truth, Islam and science are not enemies. They are rather allies. When you look at Islamic scripture, Islamic history, and the
Islamic intellectual tradition, the conclusion is very simple. Islam encourages scientific inquiry. Muslim civilization advanced global science for centuries. Modern Muslim underdevelopment is primarily caused by politics. And it's
very important to realize that in the time in which we live, where atheistic science, completely unbound by any ethical or moral law, has wrought havoc upon the creation of God. Whether it's nuclear weapons, whether it's AI or tech
surveillance, and the emerging techno-feudalism that many people are concerned about, the balance between advancement and ethics that Islam provided is needed now more than ever.

















































