Conference to examine Islam in the age of science
Conference: 18th annual Goshen College Conference on Religion and Science, with speaker Muzaffar Iqbal, founder and president of the Center for Islamic Sciences
Public lectures: Friday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m.: “Understanding the Islam and Science Nexus: A Discourse on Method,” and Saturday, March 10 at 10:30 a.m.: “God, Life, and the Cosmos in an Islamic Mirror”
Location: Goshen College’s Church-Chapel
Website: https://www.goshen.edu/religionscience/
Goshen College’s 18th annual Conference on Science and Religion will be held March 9-11 and will feature speaker Muzaffar Iqbal is the founder and president of the Center for Islamic Sciences in Canada.
The conference’s theme is “Islam’s Quantum Challenge: Living Islam in the Age of Science.” The conference comprises three lectures by Dr. Iqbal, as well as discussions (limited to registered attendees) and other activities.
Iqbal will offer two public lectures: “Understanding the Islam and Science Nexus: A Discourse on Method” on Friday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m., and “God, Life, and the Cosmos in an Islamic Mirror” on Saturday, March 10 at 10:30 a.m. Both lectures will take place in Goshen College’s Church-Chapel and are free.
Iqbal will present a third lecture, “Islam, Science, Muslims, and Technology: Contemporary Challenges,” on Sunday, March 11 at 10 a.m., which is limited to conference registrants.
Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal is the founder-president of the Center for Islamic Sciences, Canada, (previously, Center for Islam and Science); editor of Islamic Sciences, a semi-annual journal of Islamic perspectives on science and civilization, and general editor of the seven-volume Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, the first English-language reference work on the Qur’an based on fourteen centuries of Muslim reflection and scholarship. The first volume was published in January 2013.
Dr. Iqbal received his Ph.D. in chemistry (University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1983), and then left the field of experimental science to fully devote himself to study Islam.
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, he has lived in Canada and United States since 1979. He has held academic and research positions at the University of Saskatchewan (1979-1984), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984-85), and McGill University (1986).
From 1990-1999, he pursued research and study on Islam and its spiritual, intellectual and scientific traditions. He lived and worked in Pakistan, first as director of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC, now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH) (1991-96) and then as director of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences (1998-99).
From 1999-2001, Dr. Iqbal was program director for the Science-Religion Course Program of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), Berkeley, California.
Dr. Iqbal has written, translated, and edited twenty-one books and published nearly one hundred papers on Islam, and on the relationship between Islam and science, Islam and the West, the contemporary situation of Muslims, and the history of Islamic science. He co-translated volume VII of Tafhim al-Qur’an, an influential twentieth century tafsir (Islamic Foundation, 2001). He contributed, as consultant, to Concentric Circles—Nurturing Awe and Wonder in Early Childhood and is one of the founders of the Muslim Education Foundation (Canada), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing resources and services to educators, students and parents for a process of learning built on the Qur’anic worldview. He was the Series Editor for Ashgate’s four volume work Islam and Science: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives (2012).
The annual Goshen College Conference on Religion and Science is designed to provide discussion prompted by a leading thinker in the dialogue between religion and science. A single invited speaker presents three lectures, two of which are open to the public. Small, moderated discussion sessions provide conference participants an opportunity to address topics from the lectures in conversation with the speaker.
Conference participants include pastors and laypersons, academic scientists, mathematicians, theologians and students. Registration is still open for this conference.
Carl Helrich, professor emeritus of physics at Goshen College, serves as conference director. For more information about the conference or to register, visit www.goshen.edu/religionscience.