Does Islam refute evolution?

Does Islam refute evolution?

Dr. Abdul Haque

 

This simple answer is …. absolutely not.

The misconception that evolution is against teachings of Islam is based on another misconception that evolution means that humans are descendants of monkeys and this notion is attributed towards Charles Darwin who, in fact, never said so.

Let us discuss this topic in detail.

The Holy Quran clearly mentions at multiple places that life started from water,e.g.,:

                 Surah Anbiya Ch 21 Verse 30:

  “We have created every living thing from water.”

If there was no evolution, from where the land animals and plants came which cannot live in water?

The life on land had to evolve from life in water.

In fact, the evolution is a “system” put in place by Almighty Allah to create diversity of life.

The Holy Quran refer to these “systems” in various chapters.

                 Surah Al-Rahman Chapter 55 verses 5-7:

   Sun and moon are moving according to a designated system. Herbs and trees do sajda to Him. He lifted the                   sky and created a system of justice.       

Surah Al-Mulk Chapter 67 verses 3-6:

  All creations of Allah, living or non-living, are perfect. Those who find fault in them are short of wisdom. All                  the universe is integrated into a flawless system and no flaw can be detected. 

Surah Al-Ankaboot Chapter 29 verses 20-29:

In these verses The Holy Quran invites the followers to “travel through the land and observe how He began                   creation”.

So, Muslims are required to pursue a journey of understanding, a journey that cannot begun by ignoring scientific evidence.

For argument sake, if we accept that there is no evolution and all the living creatures have emerged by themselves, their genetic make up should be totally different. Clearly, this is not the case.

There is genetic overlap everywhere, even where it is unthinkable.

Apparently, is there anything common in a human being and a banana? Their phenotypes are so distinct that obvious answer is “not at all”. But it is astonishing that there is 44.1% genetic similarity between humans and bananas. So we can say that they have evolved from a common ancestor.

This is what Charles Darwin actually said: “monkeys and humans have evolved from a common ancestor.”

So what is wrong in that? If humans and bananas can have a common ancestor, why not monkeys and humans have a common ancestor?

The matter of fact is that common ancestor of all living beings is the first unicellular organism probably an Archaea.

Evolution doesn’t take place overnight. Modern humans evolved over a period of more than 3.5 billion years, from the beginnings of life on Earth. We became human gradually, evolving new physical traits and behaviors on top of those inherited from earlier primates, mammals, vertebrates, and the oldest living organisms such as Archaea.

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But we know that in Darwin’s days the scientific knowledge was much less developed so I admit that he did not look as far as the first unicellular organism but to a common ancestor billions of years later.

Before moving on let us see what Charles Darwin exactly said.

Darwin, in his book “On the Origin of Species” (1859) makes almost no mention of human evolution. He did not claim that man was directly descended from apes as we know them today, but stated that the extinct ancestors of Homo sapiens would have to be classed among the primates.

He further proposed that species can change over time, that new species come from pre-existing species, and that all species share a common ancestor. In this model, each species has its own unique set of heritable (genetic) differences from the common ancestor, which have accumulated gradually over very long time periods.

Moreover, many will be surprised to learn that the noun “evolution” is not mentioned even once in the first editions of “On the Origin of Species” — Darwin spoke simply of “variation.”

Darwin’s work made it clear what the concept was that the humans and other primates descended from a “common progenitor”.

Humans and monkeys are both primates. But humans are not descended from monkeys or any other primate living today. We do share a common ape ancestor with chimpanzees. It lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. But humans and chimpanzees evolved differently from that same ancestor. All apes and monkeys share a more distant relative, which lived about 25 million years ago.

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When we talk of known history (study of past events by definition), it is at most 20,000 years old. At that time, the humans and monkeys were as distinct from each other as they are now. So it is not surprising that this topic is not discussed specifically in The Holy Quran or any other religious scripture.

One legitimate query can be that Adam was thrown out of Jannah (paradise) and sent to earth due to a misdeed so how he can fit in chain of evolution?

The subject that where the Garden of Eden was located, has been discussed in detail by one of the foremost religious scholars of our time, Javed Ahmed Ghamdi in his 50 minute speech “Qissa e Aadam-o-Iblees [Adam, Satan and Beginning of this World]”. He, with elaborate references from The Holy Quran proves that the garden from which Adam and Eve were expelled was on this Earth, not in Jannah.

It is also worth mentioning that Quran does not state that Eve was created from the rib of Adam. This is a common misunderstanding of an authentic hadith of Prophet Muhammad wherein he described women as “curved ribs” that should not be bent too far or they will break.

In Surah Al-Araf  (Chapter 7 verse 189) The Holy Quran states that Eve was created in the same way as                        Adam was created.

The irony is that this misconception that evolution defies teachings of Islam, spread by religious fatwas, has consumed not only common Muslims but also highly educated class. In a survey of Pakistani doctors in the United States, 20% refused to accept evolution. But even more surprising was the result of a similar survey in Malaysia where majority of medical doctors did not believe in evolution, especially with regard to humans.