Pioneer Ismaili Blogger, Nasser Hadi Velshi, also known as Easy Nash, revives a post from his popular blog. Identifying a recently discovered and significant discovery from the world of Science, as he discusses the fusion of Science and Religion by Ismaili philosophers.
I would argue that the Philosophical Ismailism established by Ikhwan As Safa and eastern Persian Fatimid Ismaili cosmologists Al Sijistani and Nasir Khusraw is the only springboard relevant for the discovery of NEW scientific knowledge today and its link to Ismailism and Islam.
Every new discovery in Nature today is the unfolding of a new ayat (sign) in the Quran:
Quote from a letter written by our 48th Imam to a friend in 1952 under the title: ‘What have we forgotten in Islam?’
“Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God’s signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion.
[…] Alas, Islam which is a natural religion in which God’s miracles are the very law and order of nature drifted away and is still drifting away, even in Pakistan, from science which is the study of those very laws and orders of nature.……Islam is a natural religion of which the Ayats are the universe in which we live and move and have our being………..The God of the Quran is the one whose Ayats are the universe……”
The Noble Quran may be the final revelation but, while its written compilation may be finished, it is still not yet fully revealed. Only when the full nature of scientific discoveries about Nature is complete will we be able to say that all its ayats (signs) have been revealed. As of now we have barely scratched the surface of Nature’s wondrous secrets!
Here is a VERY, VERY significant discovery made very recently:
NEW, FIFTH FORCE DISCOVERED IN NATURE; MAJOR DISCOVERY!!
Up until now:
- Electromagnetic Force: Michael Faraday (1830), James Clerk Maxwell (1860).
- Gravity: Galileo Galilei (1400s), Isaac Newton (1500s), Albert Einstein (1905, 1916).
- Strong Nuclear Force (nuclear bomb): Niels Bohr, Earnest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck (1890-1925).
- Weak Nuclear Force (radioactive decay): Enrico Fermi (1933), Mohamed Abdus Salam (1968), Steven Weinberg (1968).
- A slower force field, doing what???? (2016)
- The Higgs Boson or Field was predicted mathematically by Peter Higgs in 1964 but only discovered by the Large Hadron Collider in 2013. It is neither a force nor a fundamental particle of matter; instead it bestows the property of mass onto all particles and objects in the cosmos.
THE HIGGS FIELD BESTOWS THE TERM MATTER ONTO ANY OBJECT OR EVENT IN THE COSMOS IT INTERACTS WITH. Perhaps a more accurate term to refer to it would be ‘field’. DOES THIS MEAN THAT ANY OBJECT OR EVENT IN THE COSMOS THAT DOES NOT INTERACT WITH THE HIGGS FIELD IS SPIRIT, NOT MATTER?!?
My favourite Ismaili Cosmologist, Abu Yakub Al Sijistani (d.971 CE) has it all covered: All These Forces Are Both Discrete Particles and Wave Force Fields; They Have a Dual Wave-particle Nature:
“Every particle of the Creation has a share of the Command of God, because every creature shares a part of the Command of God through which it has come to be there and by virtue of which it remains in being and the light of the Command of God shines in it. Understand this!”
Our 48th Imam stated it very succinctly: both idealistic knowledge to come closer to the maker of it all, but also practical knowledge that would benefit humanity:
“Nature is the great daily book of God whose secrets must be found and used for the well-being of humanity”
Ibn Sina stated as one of his aims:
“My profession is to be forever journeying, to travel about the Universe so that I may know all its conditions.”
The Large Hadron Collider is gearing up to search for two very significant particles. For that it has to really ramp up the kinds of energies it can release. So far it’s only major finds have been the Higg’s Particle and now the new 5th force particle in Nature. These are major but nothing compared to the next two being sought after.
But if it finds the two particles for dark matter and dark energy there will be a huge paradigm shift in the way people think about unseen reality and spirituality. Atheists use the argument that if you cannot see it it does not exist. Most scientists say the same thing: if it is not susceptible to experimentation it cannot exist or be studied.
If you look through the Hubble Telescope you will see a hundred billion galaxies, each with a hundred billion stars(suns). The amazing thing is that this visible universe covers only 5% of the total cosmos: dark invisible matter constitutes 25% of the remainder and dark invisible energy the remaining 70%!!! 95% of the total cosmos is made up of PHYSICAL particles that you cannot see. Powerful machines can easily pick up their existence and presence but not the human eye or the most powerful ground-based human telescope (based in the Chilean Andes Mountains).
If the Large Hadron Collider is able to find evidence of the physical existence of dark matter and/or dark energy then people will have to look at the unseen reality of spirituality differently and far less skeptically. This will ALL happen this century. Ismaili Scholars like Khalil Andani will have to follow these endeavours and developments very closely so he is ahead of the curve in his ability to explain this all within the Ismaili Tariqah:
“Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields”
Our Milky Way Galaxy is shaped like a spiral but what makes it shaped like a spiral is not the visible spiral arms containing galaxies but instead it is shaped into a spiral by the dark, invisible matter between the visible spiral arms. The spiral-shaped Milky Way Galaxy is embedded into and supported by the dark, invisible matter that forms its scaffolding.
The Large Hadron Collider in Europe is on the active search for the invisible particles that make up dark matter and dark energy!
Ismailimail 
“O Allah increase us in knowledge!” and thank you for the kindred spirits to share the delightful puzzles and diversions embedded in your “Signs”.
For me, another prickly puzzle peacefully solved i.e. the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, one of which includes home sweet home, flying at unimaginable speed for the rest of its worldly sojourn, planets of a feather flocking together around their mother Sun. Dark matter is a more elegant solution than I had imagined (without using super-computer generated simulation of gravity and black holes over billions of years). I hope that even if all of the anticipated discoveries happen this century, there will be more to come – maybe not quite anti-dark matter, but something sublime – Huwa La Huwa.
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Nice poetic comment! Were we at the University of Toronto together in the late 1970s Shiraz? You were the Mukhi of U of T JK?
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Useful Insights. Thanks for sharing
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