Usool at Tafseer

Description

This book presents fifteen chapters on galaxies, the solar system, and applied physics, and is illustrated by 48 colour pictures from NASA. Each chapter, quoting liberally from the Quran, demonstrates the integration (tawhid) of the facts and values derived from the Qur’an with modern human knowledge. The Quran legitimizes science and technology as essentially Islamic knowledge, thus making it the duty of every individual and society (fard ayn and fard kifayah) to understand and utilize them for the good of mankind and the environment. Islamic ijtihad and tafsir, being subject to human and temporal limitations, provide knowledge (ilm) which has probability but not the certainty of truth. Quranic verses are given technological explanations based on data from non-Muslim sources and NASA explorations, without implying that every modern “fact”, theory and scientific speculation is being “read into” the Quran as a matter of Islamization. The book is a model of tawhid the integration of the facts and values of Quranic revelation with those of modern technological advances. As such, it is crucial to Islamic acculturation, and as a counter to latter-day Muslim reductionism (taqiyyah) which has excluded the natural sciences, technology, and even socio-humanistic sciences from the Islamic purview. This book also shows how Islamization provides values by which to evaluate knowledge; thus astrology and environmentally harmful sciences and technology are un-Islamic,