The Sacred Text and Scientific Conjectures: Muslims’ Encounter with Modern Science - Ali Paya

This book explores the high-stakes intersection of religion and modern science through a dynamic, little-known debate between two twentieth-century Muslim intellectuals: Ayatollah Mohammad Hossein Tabataba’i, the foremost Shi‘a Qur’anic commentator of his era, and Professor Sahabi, a pioneering geologist at the University of Tehran. Representing contrasting approaches to theology and modern scientific interpretation, the two thinkers confront a fundamental question of human origins: the Qur’anic account of human creation and its relationship to evolutionary theory.

Beyond this historic dialogue, the book develops a comprehensive framework for understanding the broader Muslim encounter with modern science. From the reception of the heliocentric model and evolutionary theory in Muslim societies to debates over “Islamised science” and the historical causes of relative scientific stagnation in Muslim-majority countries, this study offers a roadmap for navigating the tensions between tradition and modernity through the lens of critical rationalism.