God says in the Qur’an, “…And We bestowed upon you [the ability to make use of] iron, in which there is awesome power as well as benefits for man…” (al-Hadid, 57:25).
Muhammad Asad, a modern commentator of the Qur’an, relates the verse to the fact that God has endowed mankind with the ability to derive benefits from the natural resources.
An outstanding symbol of this ability is man’s skill in making tools, which is unique among all animated being. “Apes can use tools, but only man can fabricate them”, states George Beadle, a Physiology Nobel laureate, in his The Language of Life.
The primary material for all tool-making and, indeed, for all human technology is iron. It is the one metal which is “by mass the most common element on Earth”, and which can be utilised for beneficial as well as destructive ends.
In iron—as stated in the above mentioned Qur’anic verse—there is “awesome power” (ba’s shadid), which is manifest in the manufacture of the weapons of war in general, and the modern “total” war in particular.
Are we not cognisant of the newest, large-scale weapons, and of the horrors of mass destruction that men can create with these nuclear, radiological, biological, and chemical technologies?
Friedrich Juenger, a German poet who volunteered for military service in the First World War observed the destructive bent of the war technological weaponry in terms of inhuman carnage: “[Man] is not even cut up like an animal that is taken to the butcher, nor neatly carved and disjointed like chicken: he is blown to pieces, crushed, torn to shreds.”
But there is an even more awesome power inherent in technology. This has been called by many thinkers such as Mumford, Berdyaev and Ortega, “the problem of technology”. While for many writers, the advance of technology is the primary source of human progress, for others, it is the cause of regress in the nature of man and his institutions (Charles Van Doren 1967).
This problem manifests itself more subtly in man’s generally ever-growing tendency to advance the development of an increasingly complicated technology. Mesmerised by the success conjured up by technology, humanity can do nothing to stop it. The reactions of some people to the advance of technology border even on insanity.
Placing the machine in the foreground of all human existence gradually estranges man from all inner connection with nature and even with himself. As observed by Mortimer Adler: “Of all the things in the universe, those which are most intelligible to us are the machines that we ourselves contrive and produce. We understand them better than we understand ourselves or any living organism that is besouled.”
Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher and law professor, observed how technology has in turn invaded and controlled science; indeed, it dominates all intellectual activity of any kind and subtly undertakes the conquest of all social, political, moral, and artistic arrangements.
It may be added that even as religion still plays an important role in some societies, it is largely formalistic; and from this deadening formalism cultural sterility ensues.
It is this consumptive aspect of technology which is warned in that Qur’anic verse—technology which rapaciously exploiting the earth and all that it contains including man.
The process of growing mechanization—which is so evident in modern life—and unimaginative way of thought jeopardise the very structure of human society. It thus contributes to a gradual dissolution of all moral and spiritual perceptions of divine guidance.
Indeed, Juenger and others see anxiety, nervousness, mental devastation and desolation, continuous nervous work destroying leisure—everywhere and increasingly. There are feelings of depression, of boredom, of futility, lack of purpose, nervousness and mechanical restlessness.
On this, Juenger echoes the prediction of Max Nordau, a physician and social critic, that the nerves of mankind will not stand up to the pressures of the modern world.
It is precisely to warn man of this danger that the Qur’an stresses the potential evil (ba’s) of technology if it is put to wrong use due to the user’s ignorance, stupidity and viciousness.
It is the danger of man’s allowing his dynamic technological ingenuity to run wild and thus to overwhelm his spiritual consciousness and ultimately, to destroy all possibility of individual, household and social happiness.