Let us start with two irreducible truths. One, Quran, the holy book of Islam, proclaims the Oneness (Wahada) of Allah/God. God is neither he nor she; in human terms God cannot be categorized sufficiently clearly. God is the creator of all things present. Two, the Origin of Species is a treatise written by Charles Darwin which shows the relationship and the evolution of various kinds of living organisms present on Earth. His theory is also called Theory of Natural Selection. In Origin Darwin discusses the origin and diversity of living systems in a purely scientific manner. He is not interested if the living forms were created in the beginning by God – neither he is interested in showing that God did not create them. He is an agnostic in a disinterest scientific way.
Quran is largely, though not exclusively, about the relationship of man to God; how should a momin (believer) should pray to God and devote himself entirely for Allah’s rewards which comes only when a momin is a totally devoted supplicant. Apart from God’s praise and possible rewards emanating, Quran also gives some injunctions and instructions. However these ‘orders’ are given under certain conditions and largely what happened during prophet Muhammed’s life and also in the lives of other Semitic prophets. One should remember a simple fact that is an Abrahamic religion, as are Judaism and Christianity. Quran recognizes Prophet Abraham as the forefather of the religious system. Abraham preached certain values concerning God and man. He was a prophet and in Abrahamic tradition he was in contact with the All-Powerful God which gave proper instructions through an angel. That’s why he is a messenger of God (Paighamber/Nabi). When Prophet Moses preached the religion, especially when he took the Jews out of Egypt and went up the Sinai Mountain and brought down the Ten Commandments which he proclaimed was given to him by God/Yahweh. The religion later became Judaism. Later on when Jesus Christ, the messiah, preached the religion as a Nabi it was collected in four gospels by his disciples and is called Christianity. These two religions also collected the stories of other Prophets which produced a vast Abrahamic tradition. In one of these stories Adam (the forefather of human kind) being the original Nabi as ordained by God is thrown out of paradise on to earth with his wife Eve. There are many such stories which, as the biblical Higher Criticism, has shown is at least partially correct. Some of these stories and traditions are narrated in Quran; and it would be foolish on our part to analyze it in a modern rational way. History is filled up with narratives which a rational person can easily doubt but as well cannot doubt, for history is a continuing process in which narratives are linked to each other without big gaps. We should state here that as Prophet Muhammad and Muslims believe Quran is the message sent by God through his angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad through a wahi (inner divine message). The Prophet recited those portions of Quran when the wahi was completed and instructed his companions to put them at appropriate places in various Suras of Quran. The messages are, as we said earlier, are of different kinds, largely dealing with the relation of individuals with Allah. Some of the other messages are instructions as what to do under particular social and political circumstances. Muslim scholars during their exegesis and commentaries have clearly indicated when, at what occasion, such particular instructions were given. Some of these instructions it seems is, if we may say so, eternal; e.g. not to eat pork. However others were meant for particular occasions. One of the prime examples is Jihad, is so called religious war. If we look closely at this concept Jihad is purely a defensive war and is largely to be fought to protect the Muslim community, which had collected around the Prophet when he was alive and running the community on a largely secular basis in which other religious communities were not discriminated and their religious and social traditions were not interfered with. Though, we must say, that the Prophet invited them to come into Muslim fold but without any coercion.
The Muslim community or the clerics and scholars developed Sharia (the codified Muslim – Islamic legal system) largely only after about 100 years after the Prophet’s demise. At that time the Muslims have gone out of Arabia and into the vast Middle Eastern region and were highly ambitious, forceful and insistent. In this legal system Faqih (the jury-consultants) turned much more rigid and heavy handed in observing the Sharia. A simple example is that of Zanah (the fornication between human males and females). In Sharia it is said that such fornicators should be stoned to death; and we should remember that this punishment has largely being in existence throughout the Abrahamic religious fervor. The Prophet in a Hadith (Tradition) was very kind to towards women which has committed this crime. He was eventually forced by the culprit to get her stoned to die. Under the present circumstances the Faqih should not give such punishment without taking into consideration the specific circumstances under which the crime has been committed. Islam is a religion of peace and is not much interested in killing humans. Similarly the institution of Riba (monitory interest) is largely forbidden in Quran. However if we look at this institution we can discern that in the time of the Prophet such practice was largely undertaken by Jewish money lenders, and of course they were highly avarice filled and cruel in their dealings. Perhaps Riba has to be much more clearly defined under the present circumstances when people deposit their earnings in banks and get some interest due to profit made by the banks through the money deposited by a depositor.
What we are trying to describe here is that Quran, and hence Islam, is not largely interested in giving punishments to momins. Of course Quran wants that Muslims should live in a community where there is justice, fair play, equal opportunity and least trace of discrimination. Quran and Prophet Muhammad established a state in Medina which was largely secular. This state expanded during first to Caliphs, especially during the caliphate of the second Caliph Umar. His unfortunate assassination and later assassination of the third Caliph Uthman brought a great disturbance and change in the socio-political values of the state. One can say the Muslim world did not remain Islamic in true sense of the word. The upper class Muslims at that time largely under Qabail (clan) system who wanted to rule over the Muslim state. Under circumstances which took place at that time the instructions which are given in Quran seems largely irrelevant for the Islam as we know through Quran and prophet’s traditions was not enforced. Hence it seems clear that in modern times when the world has become a vast global village we have to be very careful in following the instructions of Quran in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-social milieu.
As was indicated earlier, truly speaking, the Origin does not deal with the God problem: if God is the creator of all living things or not. Later, Darwin produced a new treatise called The Descent of Man, in which he discusses how human species came into existence. As the Theory of Natural Selection proposes all the living entities are somehow related to each other, for they originated from a primitive living cell. The diversification and amplification of the living system produced a number of branches and twigs from a tree. Darwin shows that the branch which ultimately gave rise to primitive apes (as we understand it now this branch separated from the tree about 500 million years ago) is responsible for further branching and gave rise to the apes which we see now and also the proto-humans or hominids which on further evolutionary ascent gave rise to the modern man which is called Homo Sapiens. Apart from the fact that since Darwin’s time so much evidence has accumulated which broadly agrees with what Darwin proposed; this Darwinian theory gave rise to a popular belief, especially among religiously oriented people that Charles Darwin thinks that apes ultimately are our forefathers. This to say the least is patently untrue. Of course Darwin nowhere asserts the proposition that, in biblical term, God created humans. Simply because his science is not interested in that proposition and furthermore all the evidences led to his conclusion. It is now almost scientifically valid that the branch which ultimately produced by further branching to modern apes also gave rise to modern humans. We have a number of evidences including, fossil remains which confirm Darwin’s basic idea. The genome of all the living things contain DNA as genetic material and genomes of all the living systems it seems are intimately related to each other; in other words genetic-wise they are linked to each other.
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