The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades):portrays Allah as absolutely sovereign and bound by nothing. This
sovereig nty was so absol ute that it precl uded a key assump tion that
helpe dfoster the development of science in Europe: Jews and Christia ns
believethat God is good, and that His goodness is consistent. Therefore, He
created the universe according to rational laws that can be discovered,
making scientific investigation worthwhile. Saint Thomas Aquinasexplains
Since the princ iples of certai n scien ces—of logic , geomet ry,
and arithmetic, for instance—are derived exclusively from the
formal principals of things, upon which their essence depends,
it follows that God cannot make the contraries of these
principles : Hecan not make the gen us not to be pre dic abl e
of the species, nor lines drawnfrom a circle's center to its
circumference not to be equal, nor the three angles of a
rectili near triangle nottobe equal totworight angles."But in Islam, Allah is absolutely free. Al-Ghazali and others took issue
wit h the ver y ide a tha t the re were laws of natu re; tha t woul d be
bla sphemy, a denial of Allah's freedom." To say that he created theuniverse
according to consistent, rational laws, or that he "cannot" do something—
as Aquinas affirms here—would be to bind his absolute sovereignty. His
willcontrols all, but is inscrutable.
Thus modem science developed in Christian Europe rather than inthe
House of Islam. In the Islamic world, Allah killed science.
But all is not lost: Some things
for which we can thank Islam
All this doesn 't mean, howeve r, that Islam canno t be given some credi t
forintellectual, scientific, or artistic attainment. In fact, we can credit the
House of Islam with two landmark achievements: the opening of the New
World and the Renaissance in Europe.