Towards An Islamic Critique of Anthropological Evolutionism
Authors: Ma’ruf A. Muhammad 
Published: December 2020

I. THE BIOLOGY-CULTURE CONNECTION IN THE HISTORYOF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHTThe story of modem anthropology is a story of the Euro-American attemptto discover the other than Euro-American human being. Within thatstory is the story of the intellectual self-discovery of the Euro-American;within that is the story of the discovery of racism; within that is the storyof political and ideological pressures on the processes of such discoveries;within that the amazing and wonderful story of the scientific discovery ofthe worldly nature of the human being - conceptualized generally: acrossall space and time, all colors and languages; and within that story is a storyof the social and natural sciences: of their methods, results, potentialities,and pitfalls.If there is a central theme that runs through all these stories within thestory, it is the story of the impact of Darwinian and post-Darwinian biologyon the social and human sciences. Modem anthropology is not much morethan an evolutionist form of humanism. Evolutionism is to be found in mosttypes of contemporary anthropological studies, as a central position or animplicit assumption. It is clearly axiomatic to thought, analysis, and interpretationin the discipline. As such it is a fundamental issue in the considerationof modem anthropology for inclusion in, and recasting for, Islamic educationalpurposes. The aim of this presentation is to consider briefly how theimpact of Darwin, and of biology after Darwin, on recent anthropologicalthought may be measured as a step toward developing an Islamic methodologyfor anthropological research and teaching.Since its publication in 1859 by Charles Darwin (and Alfred Russell),evolutionary theory has been refined and developed by virturally all life sciencedisciplines and a few other disciplines such as anthropology. Anthropdogyis rooted partly in the life sciences and partly in the social sciences. Humanevolutionary theory developed by anthropologists has gained wide acceptancein all sectors of the Western scientific establishment. Adherence to, and propagationof, an evolutionist world-view has become a symbol of the liberalistmission of Western science in the face of periodic opposition to it comingfrom conservative, evangelist, Christian fundamentalists, and politicians whorepresent them. A few of the anti-evolutionists are also scientists (Williams,1983). They have given leadership to the most recent form of antievolutionism,called scientific creationism. Within the scientific and educationalcommunity their view is at present a minority view; the dominant viewbeing the pro-evolutionary one. Among the Judeo-Christian population atlarge, in the United States, surveys indicate that about half of the people givecredence to the evolutionary view. The others either do not or do not care.An effect of post-Darwinian natural science on social science was to bringhuman evolution into focus as incorporating psychological, social, and culturalaspects in addition to the biological (see e.g. in Eiseley, 1958; Freeman, 1974;Harris, 1968; Opler, 1964; Reed, 1961; Stocking, 1968). The historical relationshipof bio-evolutionary theory to the social sciences in general andspecifically to anthropology, is complex. Nowadays it is one of the dependenceof the latter on the former. It has been argued, however, that in its formativeyears, Darwinian evolutionary theory was in fact an application of socialscience concepts to biology. Darwin himself acknowledged that the Malthusianstatement of the principle that human population, when unchecked, increasesin geometrical ratio while subsistence increases only in arithmeticalratio, influenced his idea of natural selection. The subsequent acceptance ofMendelian genetics, on which the modem form of evolutionism rests, quicklytransformed even the fundamental social science principles of the study ofhuman races and variation. The continuing success of the biological sciences ...