A Review of “Creation AND/OR Evolution: An Islamic Perspective”
[ISBN 1-4134-6581-1].
282 pages; $31.99;
Author: T.O.Shanavas.
Publisher: XLIBRIS PUBLISHERS
International Plaza II, Suite 340
Philadelphia, PA 19113-1513
USA
Shanavas’ son asked: “Dad, you send me to the best school around our home to study science. You send me to the Islamic Center to study the Qur’an. Science says that human beings evolved from the world of apes, but the Islamic Center teaches us that humans were initially created in heaven and came to earth fully formed. What is the truth?” Creation AND/OR Evolution: An Islamic Perspective is the answer to the question.
In Creation AND/OR Evolution: An Islamic Perspective, Shanavas describes a novel concept of Islamic metaphysics of the future focusing on the phrase, Inshah Allah (God so will). Within the Islamic metaphysics of the future, all separately identifiable small or large components of the universe have self and subjectivity and the creation is a process. In this process, our short-lived and imperfect universe evolves as creatures of all varieties choose the divine proposals carried within arriving moments of future and objectify them into material realities.
It is reasonable to anticipate a chaotic universe, which evolves through practice of free choice. Yet, stunningly, in this potentially chaotic universe, which evolves through the practice of free choices of millions or billions of animate and inanimate creatures, order emerges. Shanavas brilliantly describes how the order evolves in universe where chance events are daily affairs.
Shanavas accepts chance events without rejecting Allah’s Providence. The author gives logical explanation for the existence of evil in the universe under a compassionate God.
Quoting Qur’anic verses, Shanavas systematically and methodically argues that Adam and Eve were created on the earth originally. With reference from pre-Darwin Muslim scholar, the author shows that the story of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib was a Judeo-Christian story imported to Islamic faith by Muslims converted from the People of the Book.
According to the author, the theory of evolution is no way anti-Islamic. Pre-Darwin Muslim scholars originally proposed the theory of evolution centuries before Charles Darwin. An American scientist, contemporary of Charles Darwin, described the theory as “the Muhammadan theory of Evolution.” Historically, Muslims were the first to record the discovery of human origin from the world of apes even though we know now that apes and human have common ancestor.
The book gives Islamic explanation for the birth of new species, mutation, fossils, and “missing links.” The author has meticulously recorded the references to every point that he makes in the book.
It is a ground breaking book.
Question to President Bush and the religious right: Whose, Christian or Muslim, intelligent design is to be taught in school?
|
