Written and Collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

Let me first of all applaud Dr. Yasir Qadhi for being one of the few Sunni Muslim scholars to study and understand the merits of theory of evolution.

Yasir Qadhi (also spelled Yasir Kazi^[3]) is an American Muslim scholar and writer of Pakistani descent and he is Dean of Academic Affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute, an Islamic educational institution. He has written books and has lectured on Islam and contemporary Muslim issues.^[2][4] A 2011 New York Times Magazine essay described Qadhi as “one of the most influential conservative clerics in American Islam”.^[5]

A cartoon to suggest evolution in the apes

Yasir Qadhi has come a long way in accepting the merits of modern science and implications of denying the new developments in biology.

But, I believe that when it comes to relating the facts of biological evolution and the Holy Quran, I could suggest a few improvements in what he has described in this video.

He suggests that we need to invoke God and the Holy Quran only when it comes to evolution of homo-sapiens, as the last domino in the story of life of millions of species of animals and plants, on the planet earth.  This is a seriously limited understanding of the Transcendent God of Islam, “All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds,” (Al Quran 1:2).  

In the three great monotheistic religions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, God is viewed as a supreme, transcendent being, beyond matter space and time, and yet the foundation of all that meets our senses that is described in terms of matter, space, and time. That is the Al Batin or the Hidden God of monotheism.  Furthermore, this God is not the god of deism, who created the world and then left it alone, or the god of pantheism, who is equated with all of existence. The Islamic and the Judeo-Christian God is a nanosecond-by-nanosecond participant in each event that takes place in every cubic nanometer of the universe.  He has full knowledge of all things.  God listens to every thought and participates in each action of his very special creation, a minute bit of organized matter called humanity that moves around on the surface of a tiny pebble in a vast universe.  The Holy Quran declares:

Allah’s is the Kingdom of the heavens and the earth; and to Allah are all affairs returned for final judgment. (Al Quran 57:6)

Whereas the nineteenth century physics was about to frame God out of physical understanding of the universe, the twentieth century physics has turned the tables in favor of Monotheism.

The developments of Quantum physics not only provide for our free will but also for moment by moment Providence of Omniscient and Omnipotent God of the Holy Quran:

He is the First and the Last, and the Manifest and the Hidden, and He knows all things full well.  He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in six periods, then He settled Himself on the Throne. He knows what enters the earth and what comes out of it, and what comes down from heaven and what goes up into it. And He is with you wheresoever you may be. And Allah sees all that you do. (Al Quran 57:4-5)

We should not try to limit Him, by deciding when in our contemporary or past world, He has provided for Providence for humans and when it was pure chance or philosophical necessity.  He is ever present and constantly Provident towards the needs of His creation.

He can influence our contemporary world, nanosecond by nanosecond, without breaking any laws of nature to grant prayers of any of His humble servants, in a similar fashion He has been operative in the history of our galaxy and our planet, since the Big Bang some 13 billion years ago.

To read more about Quantum physics and constant Providence by Allah, read some of my other articles:

Religion and Science: The Indispensable God-hypothesis

Albert Einstein’s search for God

Human Soul: The Final Frontier?

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