It has never been easy to reconcile science and religion, autonomous reason and divine revelation in the long, rich and varied history of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim heritage and traditions. This has been most obvious and most acute in the European Christian lands and cultures that saw the birth of capitalism and the scientific revolution that have continued to develop until today. These same lands and cultures were also where the most dramatic, decisive and consequential epistemological, historical, cultural, legal and political battles between science and religion were fought, settled and then again unsettled. The consequences remain with us today both in the secular West as well as in the Muslim East. In the West, consider the passionate disputes over creationism, intelligent design and embryonic stem-cell research. Further, think of the supposedly scientific medical studies conducted to test the power of prayer to cure the sick, which are proceeding in some of the most scientifically and technologically advanced societies in the world, and in the United States, in particular.

In December 2005, an American Federal Judge ruled that ‘it was unconstitutional for a Pennsylvania school district to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology courses because intelligent design is a religious viewpoint that advances a particular version of Christianity.’ Earlier, both the Supreme Court and lower courts had already ruled against teaching creationism and so-called creation-science in the science classes of American public schools on the grounds that such doctrines violated the principle of the separation of church and state, involved supernatural explanations, and are not science in any recognizable sense of the term. In Oakland California, a group that promotes teaching evolution said that ‘the intelligent design advocates are expected to be much smarter in the future about concealing their religious intents’, and so the struggle continues.

In the Islamic world (as well as among Muslims everywhere else around the world) sharp debates and vociferous controversies over such issues as the Islamization of modern knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular, are taking place right now in some of the most scientifically backward and ignorant societies on Earth.