Question:
To what extent did Sufis or the Fuqaha accept the scientific method of the Islamic ‘Golden’ age?
Answer:
For us the Golden Age is as spelled out in the hadith:
خيرُ النّاسِ قَرْنِي، ثُمَّ الَّذِينَ يَلُونَهُم، ثُمَّ الَّذِينَ يَلُونَهُم
“The best of people are my time, then those that follow them, then those that follow them.”
The rest of the hadith mentions that, after that, lying and liars will spread everywhere. So the Islamic Golden Age means the first three generations (an-Nabi (s) and the Sahaba, the Tabi`in and the Taba`a al-Tabi`in). The other definition is borrowed from the western over-veneration of material science and man-made systems of knowledge, like the term Renaissance referring to a Rebirth; of what? of Greek and Roman knowledge. As long as science and logic bow to revealed knowledge they are fine. But insofar as they divorce themselves from revealed knowledge they go against fitra and are hollow tin rather than a golden age.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
