Science is generally regarded and generally understood to be the rational pursuit of knowledge by empirical means - that is, through observation, experiment and the use of reason, or logic. Genuine scientific theories are only a rational explanation of what has been observed, in an experiment or via the senses, or what has been assumed to exist on the basis of observation, experiment or logical reasoning.

All reasoning, however, has to be based upon some fundamental assumptions, or some fundamental beliefs. These beliefs or assumptions, which underlie science by the nature of knowledge itself and by the nature of the pursuit of knowledge, concern the fundamental reality - the nature of what we call 'reality' (or existence) itself.

So far in the history of human thought, there have been two very different answers given to the nature of Reality. The first, though not the most ancient, is what we may call the humanist answer, and this underlies what has become to be called modern science. This answer is based upon the assumption that Reality is defined by us, as human beings and it really is a deification of the human individual: of human beings as Masters of the Earth, and masters of their own Destiny. The assumption here is that what is called the natural or physical world - observed, known or understood by our senses - is the fundamental reality. Thus, the science based upon this humanist - this atheistic - answer is the detached science so evident in the modern world: knowledge "pursued for the sake of knowledge" by scientists whose standards, practical and ethical, derive from humanity itself - from the deification of the individual.

The second, and perhaps the most ancient, answer may be called the Islamic, although it should more correctly be called the Muslim answer, for reasons which will become clear. This answer is based upon the belief that there is a hierarchy of realities, of which the observable and thus physical reality, of which we are part, is but one and perhaps the lowest one.
 

A glimpse of this Muslim answer occurs in the works of Aristotle. For Aristotle, the physical world of, for example, Nature is a wonderful, often beautiful, "striving-to-become" - a striving-to-become 'immortal'. That is, it strives for more order. Thus Aristotle said that the pursuit of understanding by the use of reason can and often does fill us, as human beings, with awe and joy - it inspires us, and raises us, as mortals, to a higher level. In contrast to this, Plato, for example, viewed the world and Nature as imperfect and often ugly. In the simplistic sense, Aristotle looked upward, toward what is immortal and infinite, while Plato looked outward from a human perspective toward an abstract, detached and almost lifeless 'perfection' or ideal which he believed formed reality itself.

Aristotle expressed some of the essentials of the Muslim answer: (i) that the cosmos (or Reality) exists independently of us and our consciousness, and thus independent of our senses; (ii) that our limited understanding of this 'external world' depends for the most part upon our senses - that is, on what we can see, hear or touch; (iii) that logical argument, or reason, is the means to knowledge and understanding of and about this 'external world'; (iv) that the cosmos is, of itself, a reasoned order subject to rational laws; (v) that the cosmos itself is infinite and eternal and of a higher order than us; (vi) that any speculation about the origin of the cosmos is meaningless because it is eternal; (vii) that by us apprehending and thus coming to know and understand the cosmos through reason can lead us to apprehend what is immortal and beyond us: that is, the infinite and eternal, the First Cause, or Prime Mover which is the origin of everything.
 

Islamic Science

The complete Muslim answer - hinted at by this brief Aristotelian glimpse - is that all being and all beings, including ourselves, relate to, were created from and are thus dependant upon the higher Being which is Allah (or 'God') and that Allah, the God, is Reality itself.

This belief in Allah, as Seyyed Hossein Nasr has explained⁽¹⁾, forms the foundation of Islamic science. For Islamic science, knowledge is a way to Allah - to 'God'. Science is but a means whereby we can come to know and understand the Signs of Allah - those things, those beings, including ourselves, which are part of the infinite cosmos, created by Allah, the Eternal, the Infinite. Thus, we go upward (to borrow the terms of the modern philosopher Heidegger) from being to Being itself. As we do, we are awed, and humbled, and become aware of our own place in Allah's creation.

Perhaps the best way to explain the difference between these two answers to the nature of Reality is in terms of Time. The modern, humanist, and atheistic answer insists that Time is causal, deterministic, and that this causal time is an expression of how physical reality 'works'. Hence the dependence of modern sciences like Physics on abstract ideas like motion and Space-Time. For it is this atheistic causal answer - with its restrictive view of the cosmos - which has formed the basis of the type of science which has come to dominate the West.

In complete contrast, the Muslim belief is that there is not only our lower, physical and thus causal Time, but another higher or 'acausal' Time⁽²⁾. This acausal Time is the Time of Being itself. This is the metaphysical reality which Heidegger strove to express, albeit obscurely, beginning with his work 'Being and Time', although he studiously avoided using the word 'God'.

What the two views amount to may be described by reference to ourselves. The Muslim view or belief seeks to place and define us, as individuals, in relation to Reality - in relation to Existence, to Being; that is, in relation to Allah and the whole cosmos. Thus, it provides us with a cosmic perspective. In contrast, the atheistic and modern view seeks to define Reality itself, and thus the cosmos, in terms of the individual - in terms of the feelings, the senses, the ideas which an individual can think. Hence, Western philosophy does argue and has argued that Reality is only knowable in terms of ourselves.

It is, however, the quest for knowledge - and thus science itself - which leads us, or which can lead us, to an apprehension of Reality, of Being itself, and thus to an understanding and acceptance of Islam, of Allah. For, this defining - this thinking - of ourselves in relation to Being, in relation to Allah, is the essence of Islam:  an acceptance of the Reality which is and thus a submission to the Being which is the essence behind the outward causal appearance of Reality.
 

Thus, the Physics of modern science describes only the aspect of Reality governed by, or seemingly determined by, causal Time, completely ignoring - and indeed rejecting the very notion of - the acausal Time which Islamic science insists does exist, beyond and above the lower physical world. Islamic science itself may be defined as the quest to know and understand, through reason, observation, and experimentation, the realms of both causal and acausal, and to seek to apprehend the Unity which lies beyond both.

There thus exists the quite exciting and tremendous challenge of scientists understanding the reality of this acausal Time and developing an entirely new Physics based upon this understanding of the acausal described as it can be in terms of acausal Space and acausal energy.

Furthermore, by understanding the difference between present science and Islamic science in terms of this division of Time we at once counter and dispel the criticism of many modern philosophers and scientists who by deifying the individual - and often modern science itself - scorn the very idea of 'God', the very notion of an Infinite, Eternal Creator whose proper name is Allah.
 

For too long the so-called 'superiority' of this causal science has gone unchallenged, particularly among the Muslim world. Indeed, many modernist Muslims - seeing how modern causal science and technology have changed the Western world and brought power and wealth - have often uncritically accepted this causal science and sought to find confirmation of the truths of Islam in modern scientific discoveries and modern scientific ideas. Thus, for instance, the many books and articles about how the Quran has been 'confirmed' by modern science. This is both dangerous and wrong. Dangerous, because it is a de facto acceptance of causal science with its limited humanist perspective and ever-changing theories; and wrong because the truth of Islam is above and beyond the limited causal perspective which underlies this modern causal science. Islam is beyond this causal science because the truth of Islam is the truth of the acausal, the truth of Being itself, the truth of Unity, of the One, which causal science does not concern itself with.

It is correct to say that the Islamic perspective - the perspective of the Unity beyond both causal and acausal - represents true science: a quest for knowledge based upon reason, experimentation, observation whose fundamental assumption is of a reality beyond that immediately accessible to our physical senses. What has become to be called modern (or Western) science, in contrast, has limited itself to only the causal aspect of reality - and  then to only that part which is immediately accessible to our senses. Because of this, Islamic science is both more profound and more human, for it effectively and rationally explains our own place in the cosmic scheme of things and thus enables us to understand our very humanity.
 

The Islamic Scientist

The basis of Islamic Science is Allah. Because of this, Islamic Science, in both its philosophy and its methodology (its practice and its application as technology) is fundamentally different from modern causal Science.

The difference is evident in the two types of Scientist. There is the modern scientist, who upholds and who practices causal science, and there is the true Islamic Scientist that is, someone who upholds and practices Islamic science. (At present, there are also Muslims who uphold and practice modern science). A true Islamic scientist is, by definition, a Muslim: a person who accepts the reality of Allah - who accepts that there is an Infinite, Eternal Being who created this world of ours, and all life on it, including ourselves.

Furthermore, being a Muslim, the Islamic scientist accepts that they, as individuals in their own lives, must strive to obey the will of Allah. That is, they accept that they have certain responsibilities and certain duties: to their own human nature, to their fellow Muslims and fellow human beings, and to Allah Himself. In all that they do, they are guided by Islam.

Thus, they would strive to live in an Islamic way, in the ethical way Islam has prescribed, using the reason and the will which they possess by virtue of being human. As scientists, they would strive to understand life and the cosmos itself. As Muslims, they would see this understanding as a path up toward Allah - as a means to know and understand the Signs of Allah, and use the understanding they acquire to better themselves, and their fellow Muslims. In their striving, both scientific and personal, they would not overstep the bounds prescribed by the ethics of Islam, for to do so would be wrong - contrary to the will of Allah.

All this arises because for Islam there is no fundamental division between 'science' and 'religion' - for they are the same, part of the unity which is the very cosmos itself. Thus, there is no conflict, for the Muslim scientist, between their deen (Way of Life - often wrongly translated as "faith") and their science: they are forms of the same thing, the Way of Life which is Al-Islam.

In the simple sense, the science of the Islamic scientist has a purpose, an intent, beyond the gratification of the individual (through reward, prestige or influence) and beyond the mere curiosity of the individual. The purpose is to bring the scientist nearer to Allah - to make the scientist a better Muslim - and to aid other Muslims in particular and humanity in general. In particular, Islamic science is fundamentally ethical because of its Islamic foundations.

For a Muslim, scientist or not, the ethical pursuit of knowledge is itself an act of worship, and an affirmation of our humanity - of our Allah-given faculty of reason.
 

In contrast, the archetypal causal scientist generally pursues knowledge either for its own sake (out of curiosity) or for some professional reward, with causal science having no ethical foundations whatsoever (with the sole exception of Medicine, which owes its ethics to a combination of ancient Greek philosophy and the influence of Islam, for it was the early Islamic civilization that preserved Greek medical learning and greatly extended it⁽³⁾).

What ethical standards as now exist in modern science have been recently and rather uncomfortably 'grafted on' often as a result of political concerns, such as environmentalism or 'animal rights'.
 
 

Muslim Being

Central to Islamic science is the Islamic belief that all beings in the cosmos are Muslim. That is, they all obey the will of their Creator, Allah - for it is in their nature, their very being, to do so⁽⁴⁾.

Thus, a planet, such as the Earth is exactly what Allah has commanded it to be: by its very being it obeys the will, the laws, of Allah. So does a creature, such as a bird, which lives on the Earth. Thus does the cosmos itself work in accordance with the will of Allah, its creator, and thus is it possible for us, as human beings endowed with reason, to discover the being of the creations of Allah and how they 'fit in' with the other beings which exist and which Allah has created. In imprecise terms - because all beings are Muslim, we can, through pursuing knowledge, discover the physical 'laws' which 'govern' the cosmos.

However, all beings in the physical world are both causal and acausal. That is, they exist in both the causal realm and the acausal realm, and a causal being and an acausal being. Their causal being is their physical existence, their 'outward' appearance or form which can be observed and quantified. Their acausal being is their inner Muslim nature. By apprehending this Muslim nature we can understand and know them as they truly are and thus understand and come to know their Creator, Allah. Thus, from a knowledge of beings we are led to Being - to Allah.

Every being by its very nature therefore is a Sign of Allah - and every being, because it is Muslim, thus praises Allah.

It is this Muslim, acausal, aspect of every being which modern science ignores but which Islamic science is founded upon. To truly know things, we have to know both the causal, or physical, nature of things with the causal laws involved, and also the acausal, or Muslim, nature of things, with the acausal laws involved. Only Islamic science provides this complete knowledge - for the Unity, the One, with which Islam deals and explains and is a guide to, is the unity of causal and acausal.
 

Our Human Nature

We, as human beings, are different from the other beings which we know on this Earth - for we have been endowed by Allah, the Creator, with both reason and free will. Thus, while we are born Muslim, as we grow and develop we can choose whether or not to obey the will of Allah. Indeed we have been created, on Earth, in order for us to make this choice. Our purpose is, like other beings, to obey the will of Allah, our Creator - to consciously acknowledge our true Muslim nature. If we do this, and live as Muslims by following the way of Islam, we can transcend after death to those realms which are beyond the phenomenal world with its limited causal time - we can proceed to the realms of acausal being, which Islam accepts as a fundamental reality.

If however we choose not to be Muslim - not to obey the will of Allah by not living in an Islamic way - then we will have destroyed our chance to transcend to the acausal realm, the realm of 'Heaven', of Paradise, of an eternal existence.

Of course, causal science totally rejects the idea of such an existence after death, saying it is unprovable. And it is unprovable in terms of the limited causal science that has become dominant in the West, based as it is on purely causal time. But the very nature of beings - the very Signs which these beings are - points beyond this limited causal perspective to acausal being itself.

"Do you not see how all beings that are in the heavens and on the Earth bow down in worship to Allah - the sun, the moon, the stars; the hills, the trees, the animals and even a great number among mankind?" (The Quran: Sura 22; Ayat 18)⁽⁵⁾
 
 
 

The Revelation of Allah and Acausal Time

Muslims believe that the Quran is the very word of Allah, revealed to the prophet Muhammad (Allahumma salli 'ala Muhammadin wa ali Muhammad⁽⁶⁾). Most modern scientists  would express scepticism about this. Firstly, they would say that this is only a belief, an article of faith, and as such has no 'scientific' basis - where of course by science they mean their own limited science with its limited causal perspective. Secondly, they would ask how 'God' - even if He exists - could communicate with a mortal, or even why He would bother. Thirdly, they would want some better 'confirmation' or proof - why did not 'God' write clear prophecies about the future, or describe in detail some piece of advanced technology that we might construct?

The answer of Islamic science to such questions is contained in the nature of acausal being itself, and to understand, or apprehend, the acausal is to understand how this Revelation can be in the way that it was. The mistake of causal science and causal modern philosophy is to try and apply the causal perspective, with its causal laws, to what is not-causal - to what is acausal - and to fundamentally separate 'science' from what causal science and philosophy regards as 'religion'. Beings do not have this division - they are a unity, in themselves, by their nature: a unity of causal and acausal. To understand the Revelation of the Quran we must understand or seek to understand Being - to understand the 'nature' of Allah. To do this, we must understand, we must apprehend, the acausal.

The reality is that Allah is everywhere - "He is closer to you than your jugular vein" as it says in the Quran (50; 16). We, as beings, already exist in the acausal - we are already and at every moment of our lives in the presence of Allah - although most of us are unaware of it, living as we do only in the causal time of moments, of ego, of desires. Every un-Islamic thing we do takes us further away from the acausal, from Allah. Every Islamic thing we do - every time we obey our Muslim nature and the will of Allah - we strengthen the acausal within ourselves and prepare for the moment when we shall leave the temporary temporal world of causal time forever.

Muhammad Yusuf

29 Jumad  ul-Awwal 1419 AH

It might be helpful to briefly try and explain the nature of the acausal itself. At present, this is difficult, since true Islamic science is still in its infancy.

However, it is to be hoped (Insha Allah) that scientists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, given an understanding of the basis and importance of Islamic science, will turn away from causal science with its limited causal perspective, and henceforward study and advance Islamic science itself. For Islamic science - the science of the unity of causal and acausal, of beings and Being - needs to be firmly established as a separate subject in its own right, and indeed as the one true Science which can lead us to true understanding and knowledge.

Thus, the explanation of the acausal which follows will of necessity be rudimentary and possibly mistaken. Hopefully (Insha Allah), it will soon be improved upon by those who possess greater understanding and more perspicacity than I possess.
 

Causal Time and Space:

First, it is necessary to try and describe the causal 'world' of matter, motion and causal time: that is the phenomenal world of Physics.

The traditional, and Western, description of causal, or ordinary, matter and its movement or change involves the use of a frame of reference, or geometrical co-ordinate system, whether this be an absolute one, as posited by Newton, or a relative one, as posited by modern Physics. Space is defined by this frame of reference - for space, in the physical sense, is said to exist between two objects, or points, which are themselves described by fixed co-ordinates of a frame of reference. Space is simply 'extension'. In this simple sense, causal time is the duration between the movement of an object, measured from some starting point in a frame of reference, to the measured end of that movement in the same frame of reference.

The notions of 'force' and 'energy' are used to describe changes which an object or objects can undergo, and such changes are dependant on the mass, velocity (or movement), rate of change of velocity and the distance of movement of the object or the other object(s) which affect or cause an object to so change. Force, and energy, are basically expressions of the changes of causal matter over causal time.

Modern physics assumes these things - force, space and time - exist, of themselves. That is, that space exists and that a particular force, for example the gravitational force due to a massive object, exists in the space around that massive object - or may even be some function of this abstract Space itself.

Whatever the reality of such concepts in actual, cosmic, terms, they have hitherto proved useful in describing the motion and behaviour of observed and observable physical matter, as they have provided a basic understanding of the known physical cosmos.

In the overall, cosmic sense, the Physics of causal matter, and the laws which form the basis of this Physics, should be considered to be a special, or limiting, case of the 'Muslim' or unitary cosmos described by the laws and processes and concepts of acausal matter and acausal time. That is, the laws, process and concepts of acausal matter and acausal time should also describe, as a limiting case, the laws, processes and concepts of known physical matter.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the modern theories of quantum mechanics and 'chaos' are just as much bound to causal concepts of Time and Space as the older theories such as that of Newton. Similarly, abstract mathematical models such as those of n-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry are also based upon the causal when applied to actual physical concepts: they always imply some sort of 'metric', some notion of causal Space. The thinking, the perception, the models and theories which result are still causal - still seeking to describe the cosmos in terms of a causal time and a concept of Space which is inherently causal. This is so because the very concept of Space, however described in current philosophical, physical or mathematical terms, is always defined through causality. Only when Time itself is defined as being both causal and acausal can Space itself be properly defined, with their being causal Space and acausal Space.
 
 

Acausal Matter and Acausal Time and Space:

It should be understood that there are two different types of 'acausal matter' (or acausal being) which exist. There is: (1) pure acausal matter (or more correctly pure acausal energy) which exists purely in the realm (or 'universe' or 'dimensions') of the acausal; and (2) that acausal matter (or acausal being) which by its nature, its very being, exists in both the acausal and the causal. An example of this second type is ourselves - for we by our nature have both a causal being (a physical body) and an acausal being, that is, a 'soul'⁽⁷⁾. An example of the first type would an acausal being - such as an 'Angel'.

Acausal matter of the second type - which exists partly in the causal - may be defined as ordinary, causal, matter plus an extra "acausal something" - rather like a charged particle is ordinary matter plus the extra "causal something" of electrical charge. For the present, and for convenience, we may call this extra "acausal something", acausal charge.

The basic properties of acausal matter are:

(1) An acausal object, or mass, can change without any external force acting upon it - that is, the change is implicit in that acausal matter, by virtue of its inherent acausal charge.

(2) The rate of change of an acausal object, or mass, is proportional to its acausal charge.

(3) The change of an acausal object can continue until all its acausal charge has been dissipated.

(4) Acausal charge is always conserved.

(5) An acausal object, or mass, is acted upon by all other acausal matter in the cosmos.

(6) Each acausal object in the physical cosmos attracts or repels every other acausal object in the physical cosmos with a magnitude which is proportional to the product of the acausal charges of those objects, and inversely proportional to the distance between them as measured in causal space.
 

Acausal time is implicit in acausal matter, because causal space, as such, does not exist for acausal matter - that is, such acausal matter cannot be described by a frame of reference in causal space. Separation, in the sense of physical, causal, space measured by moments of causal time or a duration of causal time, does not exist for acausal matter because such a separation implies causal time itself. Hence the principle that an acausal object or mass is acted upon by all other matter in the cosmos because all such matter can be considered to be 'joined together' - to be part of an indivisible whole, a unity. In the abstract and illustrative sense, we could say that all acausal matter exists in the physical world described by causal space and causal time as well as existing simultaneously in a different continuum described by acausal space and acausal time, with this 'acausal space' incapable of being described in terms of conventional physical space, either Euclidean or non-Euclidean. This 'acausal space' and this 'acausal time' are manifested by, and described by, acausal charge itself - that is, by the extra property which acausal matter possesses because it is acausal.

The properties of acausal matter, enumerated above, form the basis for the new Physics which describes acausal matter and its changes, and it is no coincidence that many of them express, for acausal charge, what the ordinary Physics expresses for ordinary matter and electric charge.

Furthermore, these basic properties of acausal matter enable us to really begin to understand, for the first time, the real nature of the cosmos, as they can show us the way toward developing a truly unitary, or Muslim, technology and an unitary or Muslim medicine capable of replacing the rather lifeless, primitive and often damaging medicine of the present which relies on traumatic surgery and often debilitating pharmaceutical compounds.
 
 
 

Detecting Acausal Charges:

The acausal charges should, if they exist - that is, if the suppositions above are correct - be capable of being physically detected. That is, they should be capable of being observed, by us, and should be capable of being measured quantitatively using some measuring device devised for such a purpose. Following such detection and measurement, observations of the behaviour of such acausal charges could be made. Such observations would then form the basis for theories describing the nature and the laws of such charges. The result would then be the construction of organic machines and equipment, following the invention of basic "machines" to generate, or produce, moving acausal charges.

A useful comparison to aid the understanding of such a process of discovery, measurement and theory, exists in the history of electricity. Static electricity was known for many centuries, but not understood until the concept of positive and negative charges was postulated. Later, instruments such as the gold-leaf electroscope were invented for detecting and measuring such charges. Other instruments, such as frictional machines and the Leyden jar, were invented for producing and accumulating, or storing, electric charges, and producing small 'galvanic currents' or electricity. Then the experimental scientist Faraday showed that 'galvanic currents', magnetism and static charges were all related, and produced what we now call an electro-magnetic generator to produce electricity. From such simple experimental beginnings, our world has been transformed by machines and equipment using electricity, and by the electronics which has developed from electricity.

It is may well be that acausal charges cannot be detected by equipment based on electricity - for electricity is purely a causal phenomena, describable in terms of causal Physics. To detect acausal charge and thus some acausal change, something acausal may have to be used. How this may be done, I personally have no idea.
 

However, to establish the new "unitary science" - and to develop the fundamental laws of the Physics of this new Islamic science - practical experiments need to be conducted and observations made. It is such practical experiments - at first to detect and measure the basic acausal charge - which may well be the next step forward.
 
 

1. Science and Civilization in Islam (Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, 1388 AH/1968 AD)

2. Acausal: that is, a-causal, meaning 'beyond and above the causal'. The nature of this acausal is discussed in the Appendix.

3. Through the School of Medicine at Jundishapur, and particularly the Bayt-ul-Hikma (the House of Wisdom) in Baghdad.

4. Islam means "submission to the will of Allah" and a Muslim is a being which submits to the will of Allah.  To be precise, all beings  are created in a state of natural purity - that is, fitrah. As human beings, endowed with consciousness, reason and the ability to change ourselves by an act of will, we are also born with this pure being. But as we grow, develope,  become influenced by our surroundings and other human beings, then make choices and so exercise our free will, this purity of being is mostly lost - and is only regained if and when we, as rational beings, consciously decide to embrace Islam, or , if we are born into a Muslim family, consciously re-affirm our submission to Allah.
Thus, while we may  for the sake of simplicity talk and write of beings, including human beings, being "born Muslim", it is technically correct to say/write "born/created in a pure state of fitrah".

5. A 'Sura' is a division of the Quran, usually translated as Chapter; 'Ayat' - rather than 'verse' - is the term used in the Quran to describe the divisions of a Sura, and means 'a sign'.

6. This is the Salawat (Blessing) and means: "Allah - Bless Muhammad and Muhammad's family". Muslims say or write this after saying or writing the name of Muhammad as a mark of respect.

7. See Concerning Angels, Jinn and Paradise.