The Contemporary Debate on the Harmony between Islam and Science: Emergence and Challenges of a New Generation

Abstract

That Islam and science enjoy a harmonious relationship is frequently endorsed in learned as well in popular debates. Amongst the first scholars who have studied such ideas and their diffusion from an external perspective are Leif Stenberg and contributors to the special issue of Social Epistemology, both published in 1996. Drawing on Stenberg’s study, I argue that we can identify the emergence of a “new generation” of authors considering conceptual shifts at work in some contemporary authors. In the first section, I recall the ideas commonly evoked in order to substantiate the claim that Islam and science are in harmony, and their entanglement. In the second section, I reconstruct Stenberg’s analysis. In the third section, I trace a picture of the contemporary landscape; I linger on the two most systematic criticisms so far levelled at the advocates of the harmony between Islam and science, those of Hoodbhoy and Edis. In the fourth section, I narrow the expression “new generation” by referring to four specific authors, here taken as paradigmatic. Their works share substantial traits. I regard each one of these traits as a necessary but not sufficient condition to belong to the “new generation”, and their possession as demarcating the “new generation” both from older contributions and those that presently just extend them. In the fifth section, I touch upon challenges for and of the new generation: three sets of intertwined difficulties faced by the authors belonging to the “new generation” itself and by the scholars interested in studying the debate from a neutral point of view.

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