philosufi

Museum of Science and Technology in Islam

For those of us raised and living in the Western European way of life, Islam has been framed as a religion of backward desert-dwellers riding camels, whose primary goals in life include ensuring the whole world becomes backward desert-dwellers riding camels. To these caricatures, the quest for knowledge and expansion of one's worldview is haram, and never throughout time had these 1,600,000,000 two-dimensional, anti-learning, angry people ever given any importance to the thoughts, advancement, and civilization afforded by science.

This is bovine poo of the highest order. And it stinks.

For hundreds of years, Islam brought cutting-edge advancements in virtually every area of life and understanding the natural world. Astronomy. Biodiversity. Biology. Botany. Chemistry. Geology. Geomorphology. Meteorology. Navigation. Optics. Physiology. Robotics. Timekeeping. Zoology. (And that's just science. SCIENCE!)

One of these days I'll write about why the quest for knowledge and expansion has been hijacked by religious fanatics and cast as some kind of evil deed. Religion in general is regularly accused of being one of the greatest impediments to progress and rational society. (Ibn al-Haitham is one of the developers of the scientific method, more than 200 years before Europeans learned about it by reading his books. Betcha they didn't teach you that in atheist Sunday school.) But my father was a scientist, as were and are many members of my extended family. I'm an engineer by training (and a trainer by engineering). Trust me, there are Muslim scientists, doctors, engineers, educators of all sorts – and for many of them, their faith gives them the push to discover the workings of the universe.

Luckily – and with a huge amount of work – there now exists the Museum of Science and Technology in Islam, aka MOSTI, sponsored by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). MOSTI showcases the realms of study and knowledge in Islamic science using the idea of a Dar-ul-ilm or "House of Wisdom" for each major area, which parallels the basis of KAUST itself.

(Unluckily, while the museum is still in the starting stage, it's only open to KAUST's community and invited guests. But you can bet if I ever make it to Saudi Arabia, I'll be finagling my way into this one. I'm a science museum junkie. Ain't no rule stoppin' me, bub.)

MOSTI's dar-ul-ilms (yeah, that's not the plural, I know) are divided into nine clusters:

• The Introductory cluster: Why did Science Flourish in Islam?, which includes a 3-D fly through of the museum (see below)
• Seven technical clusters: Learning Institutions, Astronomy and Navigation, Technology, Chemistry, Art and Architecture, Mathematics, and Life and Environmental Sciences.
• The Exit cluster: The Revival of Islamic Science

The clusters include interactive displays, and some pretty mind-blowing working scale models of clocks and ingenious devices that'll make your jaw drop. Stunningest stunner? A scale model of Al-Jazari's Elephant Water Clock in the Technology cluster. (Deborah and I actually saw this in the Ontario Science Centre's Sultans of Science exhibit a couple of years ago. You might just have the word "ingenious" redefined after you see this man's inventions in real life.)

There's a massive interactive timeline stretched across a table using multi-touch technology that looks pretty amazing. It shows an overview of Islamic science and technology from 650 to 1650, and some more recent things too.

The displays make a point of acknowledging the famous female Muslim scientists too – this isn't all about the boys. The "Meeting the Polymaths" display in the Learning Institutions cluster highlights some of the most studied and knowledgeable scientists and natural philosophers in Islamic history.

One last thought (even though there is so much more in the museum itself): No tour of Muslim contributions to the advancement of humanity would be complete until you examine astronomy, navigation, chemistry, and mathematics. The museum picks up on various outstanding examples of how Muslim scientists examined, catalogued, measured, and represented the world in various ways from drawings on paper to the most ingenious mechanisms around. Muslim robots? Yeah, hundreds of years ago. Check 'em out!

If you find yourself in Saudi Arabia, please take the time to get yourself on the guest list and explore the museum. There are also various Muslim science exhibits that travel through the world. See those, too. Explore, listen, read, and think critically – what is it that changed? The Golden Age of Islam was hundreds of years ago because that was a time during which scientific inquiry was seen as a powerful, motivating force within the ummah. We shouldn't fear knowledge – we should embrace it. It will help us understand the secrets and blessings that God has left for us in the universe, and strengthen our own belief.

Enjoy this 3-D fly-through of MOSTI (click here to play in a separate window)

  

A narrated tour of the major subject areas of the museum (click here to play in a separate window):

 

Domo Arigato Mr. Salato: Virtual Spirituality

Douglas Adams once wrote about an Electric Monk, whose job was to believe you, no matter what. It wasn’t there to take your confessional, to offer advice, or anything else. Just to save you the labour of finding someone to believe you. Adams had a unique gift for creating Chindogu characters, and the Electric Monk’s endearing desire to uncritically believe you was one of his subversive, but underappreciated, highlights. The technology required to have a humanoid robot listen to you, believe you, and act upon your beliefs is of course, far beyond us right now, but what about the AI and robotic tech that’s near-term, or already here?

There have been automatons of varying quality, for hundreds of years, some pretending to be human, and others simply humanoid. Those pretending to be human can recite a sura or bust a rakat with the best of them. But does it qualify as fulfilling a religious duty? (Let’s flip this around to make it a more familiar question – if you’re human, and recite Qur’an or perform salat without knowing the meaning or reasons, what portion of your religious duty are you fulfilling?)

If, like the students at the International Islamic University of Malaysia, you program a robot to go through the motions of salat (see video below), what does it mean? Is any of your own intention transferred to the robot? Is the robot’s salat like that of angels – duty-bound, not one of choice like humans? Constant, repetitive, and just following orders? I remember when I was a kid, learning the stories of how humans came to be from an Islamic perspective. God created Adam and blessed him with free will, like the jinn. The angels were created simply to obey. It was pretty clear that the intentional prayers of Adam or Iblis would be worth far more than the automatic prayers of the angels.

We’re less than a month away from Hajj. Imagine you had a robot capable of crowd negotiation and carrying out the Hajj duties. You can perform Hajj for someone else; my father’s done that for his own father, who never had a chance to go. Could you one day have an Electric Monk perform Hajj on your behalf (assuming you couldn’t meet the criteria for going yourself)? Could you pilot a telepresence system through Hajj, maybe have it throw a few stones for you? This idea isn’t completely without precedent. For those who cannot walk, there’s a type of porter who will carry you through the various stations of Hajj, being, in effect, proxy legs.

This conversation ultimately leads to the very definition of humanity, but from two angles instead of the traditional one. The standard millennia-old approach involves a “who are we, what are we” line of questioning. The newer one, brought on by various humans-playing-God stories like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, involves something even atheists must grapple with: What of our component structure makes us human? An artificial tooth doesn’t detract from your humanity, and neither does a transplanted lung. Replace body parts with artificially created options, some of which are engineered to be better than the original, and the conversation changes. Artificial heart, iron lung, and hyper-engineered replacement legs are only the start. Once we've uncovered the brain's Application Programming Interface, we can start tinkering with memory and storage, and we’ll be at the point where we can codify information held in the brain. The end goal of course, is to put your brain on a hard drive. (What are the moral and ethical implications of life-caching? Who cares, when you can have cool toys like this?) There is significant support in Islam for organ donation, but I’m not aware of the current discourse on alteration with the intent of improvement beyond natural functional range.

When we do get to that stage, you’d better hope someone's opened up the gates of ijtihad. Like, yesterday.

(Click here to watch the video in another window.)

Wakeup Call: Using Qur’anic Verses as Ringtones

Here’s a cool problem: You’re a devout Muslim with an awesome mobile phone--a BlackBerry, of course. You’re smart and aware, not just because you have a BlackBerry, but because you’re conscientious enough to silence it long before salat (prayer).

But one day, you’ve got a lot on your mind, you forget to silence it, and you get a call. Your ringtone is, cleverly enough, the adhan (call to prayer). Suddenly--mass confusion! Did someone actually start the adhan? Some people stand up, some remain sitting, and the imam looks mildly annoyed. Oh, the humanity!

Or what if you’ve got an ayah (verse) as your ringtone, but answer the call before the ayah is complete and it meaningfully changes the message? Ouch.

We’ve come a long way--thankfully--since Für Elise. You’ve been able to choose your own ringtones for more than a decade now, and in the last few years most mobile phones allow you to use an MP3 or other arbitrary file as a ringtone. Of course, when the phone goes off, hilarity often ensues. Or at least eye rolling.

Back to the point. Does it make sense to use the adhan or an ayah as a ring tone? Let’s see…

1. Does it help your taqwa (God-consciousness)?
   
2. Are you performing ibadat (worship)?
   
3. Are you being respectful to the ideas represented by the adhan or Qur’anic verse?
   
4. What if it goes off while you’re taking a dump? (Don’t pretend it hasn’t happened.)

Now, you’re the one who’s answering these questions, but the mufti who lives in my mind says:

1. Maybe.
   
2. Questionable at best: see A Look at the Qur'an Ringtones Fatwa.
   
3. Umm…not really.
   
4. Mortification. Especially if it’s a touchscreen device. (See Fatwa on Cellphones: No Koran Verse Ringtones in the Toilet)
   

It’s not often that I agree with a range of right-of-spectrum muftis (scholars), but it really seems inappropriate (not to mention unnecessary) to use the adhan or an ayah as a ringtone, especially when there are more ringtones than you can shake a Sony Ericsson W910 at. And you know at least one of them will help you will keep you taqwacore (although you probably don't need that going off in the mosque, either...)

What do you think? Am I totally off my meds? Should al-Azhar University actually ask Egypt’s cellular companies to ban the ringtones? Do you use Qur'anic ayat or the adhan as your ring tone? What about the other kinds of material some muftis have suggested as alternates? The Egyptian fatwa suggests "religious songs or poems that praise the prophet" -- but some of these could still be problematic. What would be a good choice of ringtone if you wanted to be reminded of God?

Islamic Prayer Technology

 

Ramadan Mubarak! I thought I’d do a quick Philosufi roundup of some technology designed to make life a bit easier if you’re Muslim. Most of these solve hurdles that are unique to Muslims, although there’s certainly value to be found in a few even if you’re not one of the lucky one-point-something billion. My area of focus was electronic items, partially because they’re fun, but mostly because this is what we associate with technology today. Islamic cultures have historically developed a stunning range of innovative technologies during their prosperous times (see 1001 Inventions for a great overview).

El Sajjadah 1426
by SO::PDS/// Soner Ozenc Product Design Studio

If the world of Tron had a mosque, these would be its prayer rugs. It uses DuPont’s electroluminescent phosphor (“EL”) –technology – for its embroidery. (It behaves like glow paint, but it’s electronically controlled.) From designer Soner Ozenc (the last paragraph’s my favourite):

A prayer rug is a small and portable carpet that Muslims put on the floor when they perform their prayers. Its main function is to provide a clean and isolated platform for the prayer. With the specific patterns on its surface, it also aims to bring the atmosphere of a mosque to wherever they take it.

Muslims pray five times a day. The only product they need to perform their prayers is a prayer rug. And there is one thing they need to be careful about: the holy city of Mecca -the direction towards which they should perform their prayers.

It indicates the direction via the data coming from a compass module embedded inside it. The closer to the direction of Mecca it is turned, the brighter the patterns illuminate.

Next time you’re at a rave and it’s time for Tahajjud, how more perfect could it get?

eRug
by Wael Aboulsaadat

We read about this totally cool prayer rug in The Toronto Star a while back. Wael Aboulsaadat is a PhD student at the University of Toronto, looking at computer UIs in a religious practice context. His prayer rug can show you Qur'anic verses to help you recite and memorize, let you know when it’s time to pray, and help you find Mecca with its compass (future releases will have a 3-D Kaaba). The best part? The embedded sensors that watch your posture and movements. If you make a mistake, a gentle buzz goes off – just enough to alert you, but not enough to break your flow.

The same technology could easily be used for other religions that have prescribed actions and content. (We can see this technology applied in other narrow range-of-motion situations too, like a manufacturing line, or for a martial arts n00b.)

iTaskinator
by Productive Muslim

A task manager made by ProductiveMuslim for the iPhone, with a uniquely Muslim twist. It uses time-blocking (creating a block of time for your task and putting it into a calendar instead of just a list) and since it’s aware of local prayer times, it schedules work around them. (Shokran to Product Muslim for the pointer!)

iPray Lite
by Guided Ways Technologies Ltd.

One of thousands of apps and devices to help you find qibla and let you know it’s time to pray. All of them have some extra features of various sorts, like recitation, local time zone awareness, etc. There are so many of these it’s hard to understand, and I’m really not sure how one decides which prayer program to get. Got one you like? Let us know in the comments.

iQuran
by Guided Ways Technologies Ltd.

From the same company as the iPray Lite, “iQuran offers its users the Complete Quran in the Uthmani Font along with verse by verse translation and recitation. iQuran offers excellent usability options and extreme ease of use.” Like the prayer navigators, there are just thousands of ways for you to carry the Qur'an with you, everywhere you go.If you put one of these on your iPhone, does it change the nature of your device? Is it halal to put it in your pocket? If you get a phone call in the middle of recitation, does the ring cut off the verse and potentially change the meaning? What about bringing it into the bathroom with you? Since swiping your finger lets you jump to a particular verse, are you touching the Qur'an? Do you have to make wudu before using your iPhone? Does the presence of the full Qur'an with translation mean you need to think different?

Holy Quran Read Pen
by The Mission Technology (HK) Ltd.

Okay, now this is truly cool. I know it is, because Deborah said so. The Holy Quran Read Pen needs a better name, but despite that, I was seriously impressed with the product promise. This handheld pen-format device has 2GB memory in which it contains five complete voice recitations of the Qur'an, English & Urdu voice translations (plus optional Persian & French). It also comes with a Qur'an in Othmani script. But that’s not teh awesum. Here’s what is: The Read Pen can recite any page, surah or ayah by just touching the appropriate area in the Qur'an. Seriously.

They point out multiple benefits of this approach, two of which particularly stand out for me. For people with reading difficulties, learning disabilities, or dyslexia, they get immediate word support during recitation. For those who want to learn how to recite the Qur'an, but do not have a teacher, you can listen to it, and record your own recitation voice! You can compare your recitation with the pros.

Read Pen can even read your own Qur'an. Ship it to them, and they provide a transparent overlay with embedded code for the Read Pen to understand.

Note from Deborah: she totally thinks this product should be called the BIQra -- BIC + iqra ("read")!

Got cool stuff we should know about? Tell us!