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A Critique of Darwin’s The Descent of Man by a Muslim Scholar in 1912: Muḥammad-Riḍā Iṣfahānī's Examination of the Anatomical and Embryological Similarities Between Human and Other Animals

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Abstract

The cliché of the clergymen or the religious scholars battling against modern science oversimplifies the history of the encounter between modern science and religion, especially in the case of non-Western societies. Many religious scholars, Muslim and Christian, not only did not oppose modern science but used it instrumentally to propagate their religions. Marwa Elshakry, in her brilliant study of Darwin's opinions among the Arab World, concentrates more on Arab Christians and Sunni Muslims rather than on Shiite Muslims. Muḥammad-Riḍā Iṣfahānī, a Shiite clergyman educated in Islamic theology in Najaf, composed A Critique of Darwin's Philosophy in 1912 as a review of the theory of evolution. However, even before the publication of this book, controversy concerning this topic had been raging in the Arab World for decades. Under the influence of Muslim scholars (Sunni and Shiite) to reconcile modern science with Islam, Iṣfahānī did his best to gather knowledge of modern biology. He applied his self-taught knowledge of modern biology to find new solutions to the difficulties of establishing a dialogue between Islam and modern science. Thanks to the rationalism of his premodern scientific education, Iṣfahānī was more sympathetic towards science than many of his Arab counterparts and able to deeply engage in these debates. Iṣfahānī believed that the theory of evolution in nonhumans did not contradict Islamic discourse nor experimental and rational facts. Nevertheless, he denied the theory of human evolution as a nonscientific hypothesis. He justified his opinion through a detailed refutation of Darwin's heuristic evidence for human evolution in the first chapter of Descent of Man, such as the similarities between anatomy, embryology, and vestigial organs in humans and other animals. He also referred to other Western evolutionists of his time, such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Rudolf Virchow, who also rejected human evolution, and added some other scientific refutations of his own. Undoubtedly, Iṣfahānī's final aim was to demonstrate the possibility of reconciliation between religion in general, and Islam in particular, with modern science. This article provides a detailed consideration of Iṣfahānī's opinions, identifying his Arabic sources and comparing them to the original non-Arabic sources. I also examine the scientific details of Iṣfahānī's achievements and the roots of his misunderstandings.

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Fig. 1
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Source Jamāl al-Dīn Afghānī: www.irdc.ir/files/fa/news/1395/11/23/2294_294.jpg

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Source Muḥammad-Ḥusayn Shahristānī: www.varesoon.ir/pictures-of-shiite-clerics/image.raw?view=image&type=orig&id=20679. Hibat al-Dīn Shahristānī: www.irdc.ir/files/fa/news/1395/11/23/2294_294.jpg. Muḥammad-Riḍā Iṣfahānī: www.varesoon.ir/pictures-of-shiite-clerics-sp-19361/image.raw?view=image&type=orig&id=11983

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Source Nāsir Makārim-Shīrāzī and his colleagues: www.mohammadieshtehardi.ir/index_file/pic/p6.jpg

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Source Muḥammad-Riḍā al-Najafī al-Iṣfahānī: www.mtif.ir/thumbnail.php?table=pic&full_size=1&id=4871

Fig. 9

Source Rūhallāh Khomeini: www.statics.imam-khomeini.ir/fa/Files/NewsAttachment/2016/aks-0000-hn-aks-101,1-2.jpg

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Notes

  1. Shumayyil probably translated the book from the French translation (Büchner 1869).

  2. It has often been said that the theory of evolution appeared in Persian for the first time in Taqī-Khān Kāshānī's Zoology (Jāniwarnāma) (1870), as, for example, was claimed by Adamiat (1977, pp. 24–26). However, Khosravi has recently shown that there is no trace of the theory of evolution in this book. He claims that historians like Adamiat mistook the Linnaean hierarchy of life that was mentioned in Jāniwarnāma as referring to the theory of evolution (Khosravi 2014).

  3. Bezirgan anachronistically judges Afghānī's empirical support as “absurd utterances about Darwinism” (Bezirgan 1988, p. 384), while Wilhelm His (1831–1904), a German experimental biologist and an opponent of the inheritance of acquired characters, similarly asserted, as had Afghānī, that thousands of years of circumcision had not altered bodily form (Montgomery 1988, p. 102). Bezirgan tried to justify Afghani's “deliberate attempt to caricature Darwin” on the ground of his passionate opposition towards Westernization. Nevertheless, Bezirgan rightly shows that Afghānī later changed his mind about Darwinism and became an advocate for evolution as a theory, one that, he believed, had previously been proposed by classical Islamic philosophers.

  4. Arjomand's evidence only covers the Shaykhist leaders, who were considered as heretics by the mainstream of Uṣūlī Shiite ulama.

  5. It seems that Iṣfahānī was not happy with the quality of publication of his book in Baghdad. In a letter to Muḥammad-Husayn Kāshif al-Ghiṭaʾ (1877–1953), one of the leading ulama of Iraq, he blamed the Iraqi publisher for misprints. Sending six volumes of his book to Kāshif al-Ghiṭaʾ, he asked for his help to publish it in Cairo (Naji al-Iṣfahānī 2010, p. 83).

  6. This claim, at least for some of them, has largely been discarded on historical grounds. For example, for Darwin, see Bowler (1989, pp.154–155).

  7. For a brief survey of other parts this work, see Ziadat (1986, pp. 95–98).

  8. Ziadat wrongly asserted that “Iṣfahānī was almost ready to divide science from religion” (1986, p. 97).

  9. See al-Kulaynī (1407 H., vol. 1, p. 183); Muhammad Sarwar translates this phrase as “Allah did not want to permit things to work without their means and reasons” (vol. 1, part 4, Chap. 7, p. 147, hadith 7), but it appears that by “Asbāb,” Iṣfahānī means “causes” rather than “reasons.”

  10. See Ziadat (1986, p. 102). I think that the term taḥsīn probably comes from Quran 32:7: “alladhī aḥsana kulla shayʾ khalaqahu” (“Who made all things beautiful which He created”).

  11. In 1913, someone with the name of ʿAli ibn Muḥammad al-Iṣfahānī asked al-Hilāl: “who is Virchow who rejected Darwin's opinions and what was his idea?” (al-Hilāl 1913, p. 235). It seems that Virchow's scientific position as an opponent of Darwin was interesting for many Iranian-Arab readers.

  12. Iṣfahānī had access to Wallace's opinion through several articles in Arabic periodicals, such as al-Muqtaṭaf (1882, p. 126).

  13. For example, see Q38:72.

  14. Saʿd used the word “adilla” (1904, p. 147).

  15. Iṣfahānī added that he could not find any demonstration for this hypothesis in physiological books.

  16. Probably he means Arthur Milnes Marshall (1852–1893). See the Arabic version of Marshall's ideas (1890, pp. 97–102).

  17. Haeckel knew that this is not a law without any exception (Montgomery 1988, p. 109).

  18. The name “Virchow” was wrongly typeset as “Qirshū” (قرشو) (p. 97), probably due to the similarity of the letters Fā (ف) and Qāf (ق) in the Arabic alphabet.

  19. It is noteworthy that after the discovery of the first specimens of Neanderthals in 1856, similar doubts were expressed by some biologists (Bowler 1989, p. 231). Among others, Virchow considered the Neanderthal skull segment as merely pathological (Montgomery 1988, p. 96).

  20. He refers to a British individual he called “Lānj” (p. 98).

  21. He refers to Büchner. See Shumayyil's translation of Büchner (1910, p. 163).

  22. Referring to Richard L. Garner (1825–1894). See an article with similar content in al-Muqtaṭaf (1893, p. 710–711).

  23. In the course of writing this paper, I provided some references to historians who claimed this opposition, such as Arjomand (1997) and Bezirgan (1988).

  24. Of course there were some ulama among other Islamic sects, such as Abdulaziz ibn Bāz (1910–1999), a Wahhābī from Saudi Arabia, who refuted modern scientific theories such as heliocentrism and evolution at all (Determann 2015, p. 10).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all who helped me to prepare this paper, especially Sepideh Barzegar-Fallah, Mohammad-Mahdi Sadr-Forati, Ata Kalirad, and Mohsen Feizbakhsh for their helps and their useful suggestions. I also thank Hasan Miandari, Kamran Arjomand, Erfan Khosravi, Mohammad Masumi, Fatemeh Arbabifar, and Ayatollah Hādī Najafī-Iṣfahānī.

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Gamini, AM. A Critique of Darwin’s The Descent of Man by a Muslim Scholar in 1912: Muḥammad-Riḍā Iṣfahānī's Examination of the Anatomical and Embryological Similarities Between Human and Other Animals. J Hist Biol 54, 485–511 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-021-09641-w

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