Just as we learned that "Darwin" never said that apes evolved into humans, nor that "man was originally an ape".. and that by "survival of the fittest" he meant.. the one most capable of reproducing...

Today we were supposed to talk about Darwin's finches.. and the animals of the Galapagos Islands.. but today we will cut the thread of our talk about evolution and continue the series later, so that we can talk about something else.. but in the same scope..

Theories like relativity and evolution and quantum.. are what develop the world we know.. we learn more about time and the relationship of motion to time.. and the relationship of time to place..

We improve the mechanisms and equipment we use.. the theory of evolution lets us protect ourselves from deadly mutations.. ones that make cockroaches 200 times bigger or the size of house cats for instance.. and we learn to fight the pests that kill crops.. and we understand more about cancers and bacterial mutations and viral replication...

The word "theory" in common language means "an unconfirmed hypothesis".. and in science, its meaning is completely different.. it means "a body of reasons and experiments and observations that led us to a certain result.. and is at all times open to development and amendment if new findings appear"...

Theories like evolution and relativity are studied by laboratories and research centres all over the world all the time, and there are teams of scientists who do not sleep, trying to implement them and apply them and benefit from them in every field.. and another team circles around them trying to find gaps in them so as to develop them or come up with something better..

That is in the whole world...

As for our happy Arab world.. the matter turned, in a way I do not understand.. and as if by magic.. into a question of jurisprudence and religious law...

So when I wrote about relativity, some people, in good faith.. went and tried to prove that angels travel at the speed of light.. and that devils move across space by travelling through spacetime.. in light of Einstein's theory..

Well, if a scientist came along and overturned the scales of physics and proved that relativity was wrong (and that is possible, by the way).. what would you do?? Would the holy books become wrong?

And when I spoke about Darwinism.. I got messages of takfir; more than the population of Qatar, on the basis that the gentlemen who sent the messages, attended the creation of their father Adam.. and saw the creation process as it was happening and knew whether it happened in stages or not..

And although the Lord of the Worlds said in His noble Book "What is the matter with you, that you do not attribute to Allah due grandeur, while He has created you in stages" (Nuh 13, 14).. they still see that this talk is not correct.. and that there are no stages in the creation process.. and that it happened in one go...

Some of them told me: "the stages" here mean the formation of the fetus in the womb.. as the exegetes said.. and any talk other than that is unbelief..

And that is an amazing conclusion.. he is no longer relying on the Quranic text at all..

He is relying on what "the exegetes said in their interpretation of the text".. on the basis that these exegetes are gods.. who never err.. and that their human interpretation is a "sacred text" in itself.. and on the basis that interpretation is rigid and fossilized.. with no diversity and no independent reasoning.. and that the great imams never differed over it.. and on the basis that the noble verse "and none knows its interpretation except Allah" - which affirms that all our interpretations until the Day of Resurrection are mere efforts of reasoning.. that may err and may be right - means nothing to him...

And the truth is, if I came to you from just one century ago.. and told you "I can hear a prayer from someone praying at the far end of the Earth".. you would have accused me of unbelief.. while today there are means of communication that let me hear someone praying from the surface of Mars...

And why go far? Less than sixty years ago.. if I came and told you I was able to "know what is in the wombs".. you would have accused me of unbelief and madness...

People completely rejected the idea that a doctor could know the sex of the fetus in its mother's womb.. and they said this was among the unseen things that God reserved for Himself, "and He knows what is in the wombs".. and with time the matter became an established scientific fact.. beyond dispute.. and with a cheap examination.. in any small gynaecology clinic.. a doctor can use a sonar machine and tell you the sex of the fetus in any womb..

Here the interpretation evolved.. and the exegetes began to say "no.. then what the noble verse means is the fate and future life of whoever is in the wombs, and not just the sex"..

The interpretation evolved and kept up with the age.. either you keep up with the age.. or you stand still and go live with the Bushmen tribes.. there is no third option.. there are people, by the way.. who still think the Earth is flat and does not rotate, nor round nor anything.. because of "Ibn Baz's" interpretation...

These are people living outside of time...

And the truth is I can imagine the scene, seeing today in 2017.. a state arming itself by buying horses and saddles.. because God, glorified and exalted, said "and of the tethered horses".. and did not mention tanks or the air force.. though He, glorified, was able to...

But once again the interpretation evolved.. and "tethered horses" came to mean any war machine used in wars for transport and riding and rapid movement.. just as horses were used in bygone ages..

As for the other messages.. they rejected evolution entirely because it is "a theory from a non-Muslim.. meaning an infidel".. on the basis that "Darwin" was an infidel.. and therefore his theory must be rejected out of hand.. and not discussed or learned or benefited from at all...

And the strange thing is that the sender of the message was vaccinated as a child against polio with a vaccine made by the Jew "Jonas Salk".. and was vaccinated against smallpox with a vaccine made by the Christian "Edward Jenner".. and he uses the antibiotics discovered by the Catholic Alexander Fleming.. and he eats vegetables summer and winter thanks to the experiments of the monk "Gregor Mendel".. and he sits at a computer made by atheists at Intel.. under the light of a lamp made by Buddhists in China.. and then he rejects the theory of evolution because its author is not a Muslim...!

Measuring science against religion and trying to use one of them to negate or prove the other is failure beyond failure..

And the Christians did not see the Messiah (PBUH) raising the dead.. nor did the Jews see Moses (PBUH) splitting the sea.. and yet they believed in him..

Nor did we, as Muslims, witness these miracles.. nor did we see the angels fighting alongside the Prophet (PBUH).. and yet we believed in all of it.. we believed that Jesus raised the dead and healed the blind and the lepers, and that Moses split the sea.. and that there was an Isra and Mi'raj...

We believed in it while it is "unseen".. that is why our Lord said of the believers "Those who believe in ((the unseen)) and establish prayer" (Al-Baqarah 3).. meaning we believed in something unseen that we have not seen and will not see.. and it needs no proof, nor do we look for proof for it...

I am a man who believes in "the unseen".. and my faith is strong.. it does not shake.. You see yourself as the opposite.. and you are afraid science will shake your faith.. that is your problem, not mine..

Faith is absolute unseen.. and science requires proof.. and the two are not against each other.. nor does either of them exist to negate the other..

And mixing science with religion.. and trying to use one of them to prove or negate the other.. is exactly what Darwin's enemies did in the 19th century... meaning your honours are living with a 19th-century mentality.. meaning, God bless, you only need another two or three centuries and you will take us back to the Middle Ages...

And your strange thinking is matched by its like from the other camp.. so out came Richard Dawkins - a very eminent, great scientist - telling us "since the Bible did not mention evolution, then God does not exist".. and he entered a terrible war with the Church.. that is still going on to this day...

And "Dawkins's" talk contains an astonishing logical fallacy.. that should not come from a scientist of that weight.. but his whims and personal convictions got involved in his scientific path.. and opened the door for a donkey from the opposing camp to assert to us with certainty.. that there is no such thing as travel through spacetime "because we have not seen it" and there is no evolution because "no creature turned into another creature" and there is no life, even very primitive bacterial life, anywhere in the universe because "science has not proven it"...

And he dragged himself and dragged us into sour, endless squabbles.. even though the matter has nothing whatsoever to do with the Bible or any other holy book...

By the way, in the opposing camp.. which imagines that it thinks in a scientific manner.. you can doubt anything.. and criticise any person and any theory.. because that is the path of scientific progress.. (and that is indeed true).. but you cannot criticise "Dawkins"..

The matter is similar to a situation that in fact happened to a friend of mine, a "university professor".. who suddenly decided to stop treatment.. and resort to alternative medicine and entered a whirlpool of nonsense and quackery.. because "medicine has failed.. they still do not know how to cure cancer"..

What the two camps are doing is a famous logical fallacy called "the appeal to the unknown, or the burden of proof fallacy, argumentum ad ignorantiam"...

Evolution and relativity are scientific subjects.. science means a calculator and a computer and fossils and layers of earth and a ruler and a compass and a microscope and a spectroscope and Petri dishes and a Bunsen burner and a test tube..

What exactly does that have to do with faith and unbelief and interpretations of sacred texts written by people more than 14 centuries ago?

And the truth is that the behaviour of the two camps.. is what drove non-believers away from religion.. and drove some religious people away from science.....

Because it is not logical for me to see something with my own eyes and for you to tell me "no, that is wrong, because Ibn Taymiyyah said the opposite 700 years ago".. nor is it logical for you to tell me in a chat "your holy book did not mention rockets.. so it is an invented book"...

A friend once messaged me saying that gravity is an illusion.. because our Lord said "the birds made subservient in the sky, none holds them up except Allah".. and therefore the explanation is not that our Lord holds them up through His control over creatures and nature.. no, He holds them up because there is no gravity in the first place...!

Even though our Lord made a miniature model of the Earth and showed him how gravity works and put it in his hand in the form of the magnet ball you can buy from any bookshop or toy shop for three piastres...!

Are Ibn Taymiyyah and Al-Qurtubi and interpretations that are ten centuries old.. the judges over Darwin and Einstein and antibiotics??

And the truth is it was an opportunity for me, as a man who believes in God and His angels and His books and all His messengers.. to impose on whoever reads my views on life my own creed by force while I research evolution.. and tell him "no, God exists and you must believe like me"..

But the truth is that this is science.. and if scientific research loses its objectivity.. and gets mixed with personal whims.. and I go "I will try to prove such and such in order to prove there is a God just as I believe".. and "no, I will try to prove such and such in order to deny the existence of God as I believe".. then scientific research has gone down the drain.. and is no longer scientific research.. it has become "nonsense" and backwardness and a waste of time...

You believe.. you disbelieve.. you are Muslim or Christian or Jewish.. you found a sect to worship frogs or snail shells.. you are free..what is it to me?

That is a personal matter.. it does not concern me at all.. but what exactly does that have to do with science??

Meaning, what have my faith or your lack of faith.. contributed to the development of laser science, for instance??!

So I wish we would wake up from these stories.. because they have truly put us at the tail of the nations on the surface of this poor planet.. and all that is left is for us to wear feathers and dance with spears around the fire at night..

We have ended up stuck between the hardline "Al-Huwayni".. and another "Huwayni" who is just an atheist.. and our life has to go the way of one of the two.. and we either prove or negate science through religion.. or prove or negate it through atheism..

And these two teams of "scholars", God bless.. the bulk of their concerns in life is "what should the woman wear".. and the other team says "no, the woman is supposed to take it off"...

The camp of the religious-extremism fools.. pushed people forcefully towards turning away from religion and towards dissolution "on the grounds that this is atheism and freedom, like so".. and the camp of the militant-atheism fools.. pushed people towards extremism and terrorism...

So what exactly is the magnificent service you are rendering to science and to the benefit of people??

O our brothers of Al-Azhar and the Church.. our tongues are hanging out waiting for you to renew the religious discourse.. instead of sitting there making me hashtags like "Al-Azhar is coming" and "Al-Morsi Abu Al-Abbas is going"..

I wish you would make people understand these things.. and teach them the meaning of renewal and leaping forward with science.. and wipe the superstitions of "Zaghloul El-Naggar" from their minds.. and write regular series and make educational programmes...

Unless the current situation and this way of thinking are to your honours' liking...