Teaching Science from an Islamic Perspective (Essay‪)‬

O humankind! Recall the blessings which Allah has bestowed upon you! Is there any creator, other than Allah, who can provide for your sustenance out of heaven and earth? There is no deity save Him; and yet, how turned away you are! (Q 35:3) There is no place on earth where the enterprise of science is now rooted in the Islamic view of the physical world. The physical world--which science studies systematically and in an accumulative manner, through a continuous and sustained process building on the work of previous generations, resulting in testable explanations and reliable knowledge which can be duplicated anywhere--can be conceived in many different ways, but all such approaches fold into two primary categories: (i) a theistic conception, involving a single creator who brought the world into existence from non-existence; and (ii) a conception in which there is no room for a creator, or which conceives the created world to be caused by more than one creator. These two categories are independent of time and place as well as of the person who conceives them.