Islam’s Quantum Question: Reconciling Muslim Tradition and Modern Science | Dr. Nidhal Guessoum

While science in the Islamic civilization declined to very low levels, a new and potent ‘modern science’ emerged in Europe and spread to the rest of the world over the last few centuries. This ‘modern science’ brought a new ‘naturalistic’ methodology and new knowledge (theories, facts, descriptions of nature) that sometimes challenged the long-held traditional Islamic worldviews.

In this session of Science Club, Dr. Nidhal Guessoum will present the different proposals that have been made by Muslim thinkers on how to stand vis-à-vis modern science and its new theories and results. He will also present his own proposal on how modern science must be viewed and may be reconciled with the Islamic principles and beliefs, an approach which is analogous to Ibn Rushd’s harmonization of philosophy and faith/revelation. He will then briefly focus on the next phase of debates, i.e. the “challenges” that Muslim thinkers must address: the integration of methodological naturalism and evolution (biological and human) in the Islamic worldview, and other important topics. He will conclude with “the way forward”.

About the Speaker:

Nidhal Guessoum is an Algerian astrophysicist. He is a professor at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. In addition to his academic work, he writes about issues related to science, education, the Arab world, and Islam. Guessoum is also a columnist for Gulf News and The Huffington Post, and has made notable contributions to Nature Middle East. He has also appeared many times on international media outlets, including Al-Jazeera, BBC, NPR, France 2, Le Monde, and others.