Islam and Modern Life — Page 4
ISLAM AND MODE RN LIFE 4 in the moral and spiritual field, but that if in the scriptures anything was supposed to be laid down with regard to the working of the laws of nature, if further experience or experiment or research appeared to disclose an operation of those laws which wa s supposed to be in conflict with what revelation may have laid down, then people said, well here is a conflict. Here is the word of God on one side saying this matter is so. Here is this man who is saying this is not so. And therefore, this conflict took on a sharpened attitude, and there was great controversy as we know through several centuries. Incidents like the trial of Galileo by the holy office were illustrations of this conflict between science and religion. Or later, much later, the attitude in or dinary social circles which was adopted towards Darwin was also an illustration of this conflict. Now I am not going to explain to you the theory of evolution or how far it is well founded and how far it is subject to modification. I merely mention these t wo as examples as to how this conflict arose. Now in the West, this supposed conflict, I am calling it supposed conflict and imagined conflict because my main thesis is that there is no, from the point of view of religion as such, or capital. Not any particular concept of religion, but religion. There is no such conflict, can be none. But anyway, this supposed conflict in the West was resolved, it actually was not resolved, it was really bypassed, or it was masked, by the assumption which gradually gained acceptance that science and religion operate wi thin their own special spheres. These spheres are well defined, but they do not overlap. That is to say, a division was supposed to have been carried out to say that religion is concerned with the