ABSTRACT

Islam shares its cosmos with the other two monotheistic religions; in all three Abrahamic faiths, God is the originator of everything that exists. In Islam, this creative act of God, through a simple command, Kun (Be),1 became the subject matter of Islamic cosmogony which elucidates the modalities of creation. The Qur’anic creation theme, let us note, includes the physical as well as non-physical worlds-all ontologically linked and existentially dependent upon God.2 This intrinsic nexus between various levels of existence transforms the multiplicity of appearances into a unity. The ultimate foundation of their interrelatedness at the level of cosmic existence is their ontological dependence on God. Hence the world of nature is related to all other levels of creation. This common ontological foundation made it possible for the Islamic scientific tradition to forge links and share a language of discourse with other disciplines of knowledge which were all arranged in a hierarchy.