Islam’s extreme monotheism places significant obstacles in the way of science. Allah’s sovereignty is conceived as so uncompromising that it is nearly impossible for Muslims to speak of Allah “obeying laws” or anything else but himself. He is a sort of absolute despot. And since Muslims do not consider the cosmos to be in any strong sense independent of Allah’s will, it has been difficult for Islamic culture to look at the cosmos as obeying law. How then to birth a scientific culture? Everything that happens is supposed to be due to Allah’s absolute and arbitrary fiat, not to predictable law. Thus in response to the Judeo-Christian tradition’s tendency to ascribe non-arbitrary, lawful patterns to the divine, Muslims have historically complained that Allah is “unfettered,” not bound by any laws. This is also bound up with the way ethics and morality, in Islam, are not so much uncoverable by considering any non-arbitrary, lawful, or natural morality. One cannot as a strict Muslim look to one’s direct experience of inner conscience and of the world, in order to test the morality of an action. In Islam, morality is exemplified by whatever “Allah,” chose to direct Muhammad to do. Unfortunately, this leads many, not all Muslims, to define as “good” and “moral” not only whatever good Muhammad may have done, but also the evils he did: assassinating critics, torturing and executing prisoners, commanding his followers to spread Islamic law everywhere by force, deception and persuasion, and so on.
