Does science make belief in God obsolete? – Conversation 3

A series of conversations among leading scientists and scholars.

Conversation 3 - Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy

 

Not necessarily.

But you must find a science-friendly, science-compatible God. First, try the pantheon of available Creators. Inspect thoroughly. If none fits the bill, invent one. The God of your choice must be a stickler for divine principles. Science does not take kindly to a deity who, if piqued or euphoric, sets aside seismological or cosmological principles and causes the moon to shiver, the earth to split asunder, or the universe to suddenly reverse its expansion. This God must, among other things, be stoically indifferent to supplications for changing local meteorological conditions, the task having already been assigned to the discipline of fluid dynamics. Therefore, indigenous peoples, even if they dance with great energy around totem poles, shall not cause even a drop of rain to fall on parched soil. Your rule-abiding and science-respecting God equally well dispenses with tearful Christians singing the Book of Job, pious Hindus feverishly reciting the havan yajna, or earnest Muslims performing the salat-i-istisqa as they face the Holy Ka'aba. The equations of fluid flow, not the number of earnest supplicants or quality of their prayers, determine weather outcomes. This is slightly unfortunate because one could imagine joining the faithful of all religions in a huge simultaneous global prayer that wipes away the pernicious effects of anthropogenic global climate change. Your chosen God cannot entertain private petitions for good health and longevity, prevent an air crash, or send woe upon demand to the enemy. Mindful of microbiology and physiology, She cannot cure leprosy by dipping the afflicted in rivers or have humans remain in unscathed condition after being devoured by a huge fish. Faster-than-light travel is also out of the question, even for prophets and special messengers. Instead, She must run the world lawfully and unto the letter, closely following the Book of Nature. A scientific Creator should certainly know an awful lot of science. To differentiate between the countless universes offered by superstring theory is a headache. Fine-tuning chemistry to generate complex proteins, and then initiating a cascade of mutations that turn microbe to man, is also no trivial matter. But bear in mind that there are definite limits to divine knowledge: God can know only the knowable. Omniscience and science do not go well with each other. The difficulty with omniscience—even with regard to a particle as humble as the electron—has been recognized as an issue since the 1920s. Subatomic particles show a vexing, subtle elusiveness that defeats even the most sophisticated effort to measure certain of their properties. Unpredictability is intrinsic to quantum mechanics, the branch of physics which all particles are empirically seen to obey. This discovery so disturbed Albert Einstein that he rejected quantum mechanics, pronouncing that God could not "play dice with the universe." But it turned out that Einstein's objections were flawed—uncertainty is deeply fundamental. Thus, any science-abiding deity we choose may be incompletely informed on at least some aspects of nature. Is one being excessively audacious, perhaps impertinent, in setting down terms of reference for a Divine entity? Not really. Humans have always chosen their objects of worship. Smarter humans go for smarter Gods. Anthropomorphic representations—such as a God with octopus arms—are a bit out of fashion today but were enormously popular just a few centuries ago. As well, some people might object to binding God and human to the same rules of logic, or perhaps even sharing the same space-time manifold. But if we drop this essential demand then little shall remain. Reason and evidence would lose meaning and be replaced by tradition, authority, and revelation. It would then be wrong for us to have 2 + 2 = 5, but okay for God. Centuries of human progress would come to naught. Let's face it: the day of the Sky God is long gone. In the Age of Science, religion has been downsized, and the medieval God of classical religions has lost repute and territory. Today people pay lip service to trusting that God but they still swallow antibiotics when sick. Muslim-run airlines start a plane journey with prayers but ask passengers to buckle-up anyway, and most suspect that people who appear to rise miraculously from the dead were probably not quite dead to begin with. These days if you hear a voice telling you to sacrifice your only son, you would probably report it to the authorities instead of taking the poor lad up a mountain. The old trust is disappearing. Nevertheless, there remains the tantalizing prospect of a divine power somewhere "out there" who runs a mysterious, but scrupulously miracle-free, universe. In this universe, God may choose to act in ingenious ways that seem miraculous. Yet these "miracles" need not violate physical laws. Extraordinary, but legitimate, interventions in the physical world permit quantum tunneling through cosmic worm holes or certain symmetries to snap spontaneously. It would be perfectly fair for a science-savvy God to use nonlinear dynamics so that tiny fluctuations quickly build up to earthshaking results—the famous "butterfly effect" of deterministic chaos theory. Nietzsche and the theothanatologists were plain wrong—God is neither dead nor about to die. Even as the divine habitat shrinks before the aggressive encroachment of science, the quantum foam of space-time creates spare universes aplenty, offering space both for a science-friendly God as well as for self-described "deeply religious non-believers" like Einstein. Many eminent practitioners of science have successfully persuaded themselves that there is no logical contradiction between faith and belief by finding a suitable God, or by clothing a traditional God appropriately. Unsure of why they happen to exist, humans are likely to scour the heavens forever in search of meaning. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy is chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, and is the author of Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality.

In death's shadow

Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

“CAN a person who is Muslim choose a religion other than Islam?” When Egypt’s grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, pondered that dilemma in an article published last year, many of his co-religionists were shocked that the question could even be asked.

And they were even more scandalised by his conclusion. The answer, he wrote, was yes, they can, in the light of three verses in the Koran: first, “Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion”; second, “Whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve”; and, most famously, “There is no compulsion in religion.”

The sheikh’s pronouncement was certainly not that of a wet liberal; he agrees that anyone who deserts Islam is committing a sin and will pay a price in the hereafter, and also that in some historical circumstances (presumably war between Muslims and non-Muslims) an individual’s sin may also amount to “sedition against one’s society”. But his opinion caused a sensation because it went against the political and judicial trends in many parts of the Muslim world, and also against the mood in places where Muslims feel defensive.

In the West, many prominent Muslims would agree with the mufti’s scripturally-based view that leaving Islam is a matter between the believer and God, not for the state. But awkwardly, the main traditions of scholarship and jurisprudence in Islam—both the Shia school and the four main Sunni ones—draw on Hadiths (words and deeds ascribed with varying credibility to Muhammad) to argue in support of death for apostates. And in recent years sentiment in the Muslim world has been hardening. In every big “apostasy” case, the authorities have faced pressure from sections of public opinion, and from Islamist factions, to take the toughest possible stance.

In Malaysia, people who try to desert Islam can face compulsory “re-education”. Under the far harsher regime of Afghanistan, death for apostasy is still on the statute book, despite the country’s American-backed “liberation” from the tyranny of the Taliban. The Western world realised this when Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who had lived in Germany, was sentenced to die after police found him with a Bible. After pressure from Western governments, he was allowed to go to Italy. What especially startled Westerners was the fact that Afghanistan’s parliament, a product of the democracy for which NATO soldiers are dying, tried to bar Mr Rahman’s exit, and that street protests called for his execution.

The fact that he fled to Italy is one of the factors that have made the issue of Muslim-Christian conversion a hot topic in that country. There are several others. During this year’s Easter celebrations, Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born journalist who is now a columnist in Italy, was publicly baptised as a Catholic by Pope Benedict; the convert hailed his “liberation” from Islam, and has used his column to celebrate other cases of Muslims becoming Christian. To the delight of some Catholics and the dismay of others, he has defended the right of Christians to proselytise among Muslims, and denounced liberal churchmen who are “soft” on Islam.

Muslims in Italy and elsewhere have called Mr Allam a provocateur and chided Pope Benedict for abetting him. But given that many of Italy’s Muslims are converts (and beneficiaries of Europe’s tolerance), Mr Allam says his critics are hypocrites, denying him a liberty which they themselves have enjoyed.

If there is any issue on which Islam’s diaspora—experiencing the relative calmness of inter-faith relations in the West—might be able to give a clearer moral lead, it is surely this one. But even in the West, speaking out for the legal and civil right to “apostasise” can carry a cost. Usama Hasan, an influential young British imam, recently made the case for the right to change religions—only to find himself furiously denounced and threatened on Islamist websites, many of them produced in the West.

Moroccan theologian: Muslim girls can wed at nine

Sheikh Maghraoui reiterates his claims are based on Prophet Mohammad’s sayings.

RABAT - A Moroccan theologian repeated his claims that Muslim girls could marry as early as nine years old, arguing it was sanctioned by the Prophet Mohammed.

"The marriage of nine-year-old girls is not forbidden because according to the Hadith (the Prophet Mohammed's sayings), Mohammed married Aisha when she was only seven-years-old and he consummated his union when she was nine," wrote Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman Al-Maghraoui on his website (Maghrawi.net).

"I am a confirmed theologian and I have not made this up. It is the prophet who said it before me," said the Marrakesh-based founder of a religious association.

"Those who criticise me, like the press or Moroccan television as well as the lawyer who filed the complaint (against me), are part of a secular attack against the Islamic nation and its theologians," he added.

Earlier this month, Rabat-based lawyer Mourad Bekkouri filed a complaint against Sheikh Maghraoui and his fatwa, which he said damages children's human rights, and the family and criminal code by increasing the risk of rape.

He said the theologian is undermining Islam and its followers and that he had requested the state prosecutor to speed up the case.

His views were backed by the left-wing newspaper Al Ittihad Al Ichtiraki, which claimed that "vicious theologians are today capable of putting religion in the service of paedophilia."

The views of Maghraoui, which contradict the teachings of mainstream Islam and the interpretation of the life Prophet Mohammed, has sparked anger and criticism among pious Muslims, who accused him of deliberately attempting to distort Islam.

Republished from: Middle East Online

Saudi cleric favours one-eye veil

A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.

The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies.

The niqab is more common in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but women in much of the Muslim Middle East wear a headscarf which covers only their hair.

Sheikh Habadan, an ultra-conservative cleric who is said to have wide influence among religious Saudis, was answering questions on the Muslim satellite channel al-Majd.

Republished from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7651231.stm

Rushdie unrepentant about Satanic Verses

1st October 2008

Twenty years after the publication of the book that almost cost him his life, Sir Salman Rushdie is still glad that he wrote The Satanic Verses.

In the second of a series of interviews with leading cultural figures filmed exclusively for The Times, he tells Clive James that he “wouldn’t not have wanted” to be the writer asking the big questions about religion and civilisation posed by the book.

His remarks are uncomfortably pertinent, coming at a time when Muslim extremists have again driven a literary figure into hiding. This time the victim is Martin Rynja, a Dutch-born London publisher who had agreed to release The Jewel of Medina, a controversial novel by Sherry Jones about the Prophet Muhammad’s relationship with his nine-year-old bride, Aisha.

Mr Rynja’s home in Islington was firebombed in the early hours on Saturday. Undercover police tipped him off hours earlier and arrested three men from East London.

Rushdie criticised Random House, his own publisher, in August for refusing to publish the book in the United States , calling it “censorship by fear.”

The interview stretches beyond the fatwa against Rushdie. It ranges from the partition of India to how he played air-guitar Elvis on a squash racket when a child in Bombay.

Rushdie says he is an atheist who finds dead religions “much more attractive” but says he has nothing against true believers until their faith spills over into the public sphere and becomes “my business”.

The Times first reviewed The Satanic Verses 20 years ago today. The review carried no hint of the controversy to come but praised the book as “better than Midnight’s Children”, Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning second novel.

The first sign of serious trouble came four days later when India banned the book after complaints that it was offensive to Muslims and protests began in Muslim communities around the world.

In February 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini, then supreme leader of Iran, issued a fatwa calling on all Muslims to murder Rushdie, and the writer went into hiding for the best part of ten years.

Rushdie says: “The question I’m always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history or does history make us? Do we shape the world or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question and one that I have always tried to ask. In that sense I wouldn’t not have wanted to be the writer that asked it.”

During his time in hiding there were explosions at bookshops in London, York and High Wycombe, the book’s Japanese translator was stabbed to death, its Italian translator survived a stabbing, its Norwegian publisher narrowly escaped an attempt on his life and 37 people died after a gang set fire to a Turkish hotel where the Turkish translator was staying (he survived).

The writer is more relaxed about his security today but the fatwa cannot be annulled, and when he was knighted last year protests in Pakistan and Malaysia called for his death. No wonder Rushdie prefers “dead religions”.

Republished from: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/clive_james/article4856150.ece

Saudi Arabia: Shia Minority Treated as Second-Class Citizens

Wahhabi Authorities Discriminate Against Ismaili Citizens

(London, September 22, 2008) – The Saudi government should end its systematic discrimination against its Ismaili religious minority, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch called upon the government to set up a national institution empowered to recommend remedies for discriminatory policies and responding to individual claims.

The 90-page report, “The Ismailis of Najran: Second-Class Saudi Citizens,” based on more than 150 interviews and reviews of official documents, documents a pattern of discrimination against the Ismailis in the areas of government employment, education, religious freedom, and the justice system.

“The Saudi government preaches religious tolerance abroad, but it has consistently penalized its Ismaili citizens for their religious beliefs,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should stop treating Ismailis as second-class in employment, the justice system, and education.”

At least several hundred thousand, and perhaps as many as 1 million, Ismailis live in Saudi Arabia, part of the Shia minority in the Sunni-dominated country of 28 million. Most Ismailis live in Najran province, on Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border with Yemen, where tensions have been growing in recent years.

Saudi Arabia conquered Najran following a brief war with Yemen in 1934, incorporating into the kingdom the local Sulaimani Ismailis, one strand of Ismaili belief. Najran has been home to the highest Sulaimani Ismaili cleric, the Absolute Guide, since the 17th century.

Despite more than 70 years of shared history, Saudi authorities at the highest levels continue to propagate hate speech against this religious minority. In April 2007, the Council of Senior Religious Scholars, the body tasked with officially interpreting Islamic faith, ritual, and law, termed Ismailis “corrupt infidels, debauched atheists.” In August 2006, Saudi Arabia’s highest judge, Shaikh Salih al-Luhaidan, declared to an audience of hundreds that Ismailis “outwardly appear Islamic, but inwardly, they are infidels.” Other Saudi officials did not rebut or disown those statements.

Growing tension since the mid-1990s between Ismailis and Najran’s governor, Prince Mish’al bin Sa’ud bin Abd al-‘Aziz, led to clashes in April 2000, after the authorities arrested an Ismaili cleric they accused of “sorcery.” Security forces arrested hundreds of Ismailis, and tortured and secretly tried dozens of others. The authorities then purged some 400 Ismailis from the local bureaucracy.

Since then, local officials who have been sent to Najran from other parts of the country and reflecting the country’s dominant conservative Wahhabi Muslim ideology, have continued to discriminate against Ismailis in employment, education and the justice system, and interfered with their ability to practice their religion.

Only one of the 35 department heads of the Najran provincial government is an Ismaili. Almost no Ismailis work as senior security personnel or as religion teachers. Saudi textbooks teach that the Ismaili faith is a sin of “major polytheism,” tantamount to excommunication. Wahhabi teachers in Najran insult Ismaili pupils’ faith and try to convert them to Sunni Islam, even using threats of class failure and flogging.

Ismailis are not free to pass their religious teachings on to new generations. The authorities have at times exiled the Absolute Guide from Najran or placed him under house arrest. Saudi authorities also ban the import or production of Ismaili religious literature. Ismailis face obstacles in obtaining permits to build new mosques or expand existing ones, whereas the state funds and builds Sunni mosques in Najran, even in areas without a Sunni population.

The country’s Sharia judges, following Wahhabi beliefs, routinely discriminate against Ismailis on the basis of their faith. In March 2006, a judge annulled the marriage of an Ismaili man to a Sunni woman, saying that the man lacked religious qualification. In May 2006, another judge barred an Ismaili lawyer from representing his Sunni client.

“State-sponsored and officially tolerated discrimination against the Ismailis of Najran seriously threatens their identity and denies them basic rights,” Stork said. “The authorities are shutting them out from education, government employment, and professions.”

In July 2008, King Abdullah opened a well-publicized interfaith conference in Spain initiated by Saudi Arabia and attended by Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist religious leaders.

“The measure of Saudi religious tolerance will be its practice at home, not only what it preaches abroad,” Stork said.

Republished from:
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/09/22/saudia19804.htm

Pakistan's rising 'Taliban' hits women's health

Christina Lamb and Mohammed Shehzad, Peshawar

MALE doctors and technicians have been banned from carrying out ultrasound examinations and using electrocardiographs (ECG) on female patients by the Islamist government of Pakistan’s North West Frontier province in its latest step towards “Talibanisation”.

The ban effectively excludes all women from undergoing such crucial medical examinations as the province has only one female ECG technician and none trained in ultrasound.

“We think that men could derive sexual pleasure from women’s bodies while conducting ECG or ultrasound,” explained Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, the provincial general secretary of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the six-party religious alliance which now governs the North West Frontier.

“Similarly some women could lure men under the pretext of ECG or ultrasound. Therefore to uphold the supreme values of Islam, the MMA has decided to impose the ban in line with the May 8 resolution of the province’s assembly that nothing repugnant to Islam will be allowed.”

The ban is the latest in a series of Taliban-style measures imposed by the MMA since its surprising victory last October after General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, came under western pressure to allow elections.

The clerics have already banned public dancing and music, kite flying and satellite television. They have closed cinemas, photographic shops and beauty parlours, and have torn down billboards displaying female images.

The bans are disturbingly similar to those imposed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which was intent on turning the clock back to the time of the prophet Muhammad in the 7th century.

Several MMA leaders were strong backers of the Taliban, running madrassas, or religious schools, that provided fighters to help Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader.

In June the frontier government imposed sharia, or Islamic law, with penalties such as stoning to death, in defiance of Musharraf who denounced the so-called Talibanisation of his country and attacked MMA attempts to make women wear head-to-toe veils.

“This reflects shallow-mindedness,” he said in an interview. “We do not want a backward and intolerant Islam. If we follow the intolerant version of Islam we cannot progress.”

However, it was the Pakistan military that for years encouraged the growth of Islamic militant groups, using them to fight in Kashmir, or to provoke sectarian clashes, which military rulers used as an excuse to prolong their stay in power.

It is widely believed that the MMA was given a helping hand in last year’s elections, which backfired when the strong anti-Americanism in the province resulted in the religious parties doing far better than expected.

The province borders Afghanistan and there has been widespread outrage at Pakistan allowing American forces onto their land to search for Osama Bin Laden and members of the Al-Qaeda network.

The bazaars of the old city of Peshawar, the provincial capital, sell posters of Bin Laden and sweets and dates in boxes bearing his picture.

The ban on men carrying out ultrasound and ECGs means that women are now forced to travel outside the province to Rawalpindi, a long and costly journey, requiring their husbands to miss at least a day off work to accompany them.

“The so-called apostles of Islam are unaware of the facts and figures related to the dismal state of health in our country,” complained one surgeon in Peshawar.

He pointed out that not only are there no female ultrasound technicians in the North West Frontier province but also no female anaesthetists, dispensers or theatre technicians.

“Women are operated on in the presence of male staff. They are anaesthetised and undressed for surgery by men. Even if female surgeons operate on them, male staff are indispensable during the operation. If we started following the MMA’s orders then all the women will die in the operating theatre,” said the surgeon.

Human rights activists are concerned that the ban will result in more stillborn babies and deaths in pregnancy. Pakistan already has one of the world’s highest rates of deaths in pregnancy, with an estimated 30,000 women dying in childbirth each year.

Republished from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1060071.ece