Degree

BS (Social Sciences & Liberal Arts)

Faculty / School

School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS)

Department

Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts

Date of Award

Spring 2026

Date of Submission

2026-07-02

Advisor

Dr. Amana Raquib, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences

Committee

Dr. Moiz Hasan, Assistant Professor and Foreign Language Coordinator

Project Type

SSLA Culminating Experience

Access Type

Restricted Access

Keywords

Science philosophy, Science and Islam, Science and religion, Ghazali, Ashraf Ali Thanvi

Abstract

In the Islam and Science discourse, discussion on the nature and limitations of scientific knowledge remains mostly missing, and instead an integration effort (forced reconciliations between Islam and science) is made, a reflection of an inherent subscription to Scientific Realism. There is little formal, accessible education science’s scope. In this absence, it is assumed that the scientific method can settle any question at all, even ones it is not equipped to, such as the cosmological.

This research studies the discourse on the engagement of science and Islam. It employs brief overview of the historical positionality on Science from Western Civilization to gain perspective for the current Muslim positionality on science. The first chapter builds the case for the instrumentalist method by identifying the epistemic problem. It works through a long period of the science-and-religion discourse, and studies the Scholastic, Cartesian and Newtonian scientific positions from the Christian civilization. From the Muslim civilization, it highlights the kalaam tradition as a robust intellectual resource for approaching the natural sciences. Then, the contemporary discourse on science and Islam is studied; including authors Guessoum, Shoaib Malik, Jalajel, Mansur Ali and others, and their positions on miracles, laws of nature, and human evolution. Telos was found to be a tool to further refine scientific positions with Godly telos.

Finally, the contemporary discourse is interpreted via the hermeneutical lens of the historical discourse, through al-Ghazali and Ashraf Ali Thanvi, on the wager that the epistemological architecture of the kalaam tradition can be used as a sophisticated regulator of reason even today. A convergence of themes was observed between the contemporary and historical discourse. Al-Ghazali and Thanvi’s frameworks ordered the crossing of categorical boundaries of empirical deductions and metaphysical truths back to being in line with Islamic cosmology.

Pages

iii, 57

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