Agora

Hypatia (played by Rachel Weisz) was a woman philosopher who was really obsessed on proving that earth moves. At the end of the story, she managed to do that.

My obsession was h/ever to prove that Quran had already provided the answer about the movement of earth. Instead of being stucked with philosophical debate on whether the earth moves or not and how does it move, there are many verses in the Quran which state that earth does move. So as the moon, the sun, the stars and other planets in this large universe.

We had to bear in mind h/ever, Quran was revealed long after Hypatia’s mind breaking’s finding. There might be allegation that what was written in the Quran was a copy of what was found by people before the coming of Islam. Fortunately, this allegation is refutable but it is not my intention to discuss it here.

Getting back to the main concern, the movie itself, Hypatia was an atheist. She believed in philosophy. At the time when Christianity emerged as the next religion, there were many obstacles faced by Hypatia in her course to fight for what she believed in inter alia, religious extremism and gender discrimination. Because of this, she was accused of witchcraft and was eventually killed. A tragic ending for such a brilliant scholar. Finding the truth at that time was considered a taboo. An offence against the word of God.

H/ver, if we looked into the verses of Quran concerning what was sought by Hypatia, we’ll find that Quran treat such thing differently. Quran encouraged us to seek knowledge. It is because of this encouragement, Muslims scholars were born. He created everything for one purpose. To understand. (See Quran 3:27, 22:61, 31:29, 35:13, 39:5, 50:7, 79:30, 21:33, 25:61-62, 36:38-40, 2:164, 2:258, 3:190, 6:96, 10:5, 14:33, 16:12, 36:38-40, 39:5, 91:1-4) .

On Hypatia accused of witchcraft...

A blatant move by the Christian at that time. It is not very clear from the movie how such accusation came about. Is it because she believed in something other than the Biblical God? Is it because she managed to influence not only one, but three men to support her either directly or silently? Prophet Muhammad was also accused of the same thing. Ironically, the reason being was because he preached the word of God. Hypatia said that the earth moves. Others believed otherwise. Prophet Muhammad preached the words of God which include the same thing. People still wanted to reject him. Get the point? People just don’t want to accept the truth.

On gender discrimination against Hypatia...

The Bible, as read by Bishop Cyril in the movie, wants woman to submit and keep silent. I believe the verse cited was interpreted literally and not thorough. I did not study Bible but I am against gender discrimination. Islam treats woman differently. We may make a slight comparison between Hypatia and Sayidatina Aishah R.A. (Prophet Muhammad PBUH wife) whereas after the death of the Prophet, Aishah became one of the references to study the traditions/sunnah of the Prophet. She was not killed nor treated with gender discrimination. She was even called Ummul Mukminin (The Mother of Believers) for her role.

On the fight between Jews and Christians...

The Jews claimed that without them there will be no Christians. Jesus was one of them. As such, they were more superior to the Christians. The Christians then counterclaimed by saying that the Jews slayed Jesus. As such, they should be condemned. The battle of egos went on and on until a war erupted between them. During the time of the Prophet Muhammad, after the pilgrimage to Madinah, the Christians and the Jews were not condemned. Instead, they were allowed to stay in the state of Madinah. Of course, there was an agreement between them to ensure the safety of the society as a whole. The first written constitution in history. The Constitution of Madinah. From this, we learnt that it is important to have written rules which lay down the basic rights and responsibilities of people inside a state. If not, there will be anarchy as what happened in Agora.