In the writings of Sayyid Ahmad Khan we meet with both types of naturalism...

In the writings of Sayyid Ahmad Khan we meet with both types of naturalism, mechanistic and antitheistic on the one hand and teleological and theistic on the other, and he often passes from the former to the latter without any thought to consistency or logic.

In the same article he says that “just as among us some people are religious and others irreligious, so among the naturalists there are several people who begin to think that when we find the laws of nature permeating every sphere of the universe, then there is nothing but nature, and so come to deny God. Perhaps such were the people whom our ancient Muslim thinkers called naturalists ( dahriyyun ).

But there are some people among the modern scien­tists who in their intensive researches in the laws of nature came to the con­clusion, on the basis of nature’s magnificent display of design, that there must be some designer, the Cause of causes, whom we usually call God.

These scientists traversed the same path as the youth of Chaldea, well known as Abraham, had followed.” Thus it is clear that Sayyid Ahmad starts with a mechanical and quantitative conception of nature and passes on to a teleo­logical interpretation of it without realizing the inconsistency involved. He interprets the experiences of Moses (as) and Abraham (as) in the same spirit. “None of the prophets,” he says, “came to realize God except through this process.

Moses (as) expressed his wish to see God; he got the reply: ‘By no means canst thou see Me but look upon the mount’ (7:143). What was on the mountain? It was nature, a manifestation of the law of nature. God could not manifest Himself direct; the way He pointed out was the way of nature….

When asked, ‘What art Thou?’ He invariably refers to the laws of nature and implies that it is He who changes night into day and day into night and gives life to the dead and death to the living.” Secondly, he refers to the spiritual experience of Abraham (as) as recorded in the Quran (3:75-79). “From nature he went to God, from the uniformity of the laws of the physical universe, he was able to transcend to the spiritual reality behind.

He saw the stars, the moon, the sun, that appear and disappear, rise and set according to fixed immutable laws, and was able to penetrate behind the veil of these laws of nature to their Author.