Creation of the Universe: Qur’anic Concepts and Scientific Theories

DATE/TIME
Wed., April 4, 2012

LOCATION
Iowa Memorial Union on the University of Iowa Campus
The Illinois Room (348)
125 North Madison St. (Google Map)
Iowa City, IA 52242

MODERATOR: Dr. Ali Hasan

Ali Hasan is an assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa.  His research and teaching interests include epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of mind.  He is also interested in the history of early modern Western philosophy, and the history of medieval Islamic philosophy.  His recent work on Islamic philosophy includes a comparison of Ibn Rush and Al-Ghazali’s views on the nature of God.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER and PANELIST: Dr. Nidhal Guessoum
Dr. Guessoum is an astrophysicist; he graduated from the University of California at San Diego (USA), spent extended periods of time as a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and has had on-going collaborations with various institutions, particularly in France, resulting in many papers, mostly in gamma-ray astrophysics. He is currently Professor and Interim Head of Physics at the American University of Sharjah, UAE.

In addition to his technical papers, Prof. Guessoum has published many articles on issues related to science, education, the Arab world, and Islam, and authored or co-authored several books, including: The Story of the Universe – from primitive conceptions to the Big Bang (in Arabic, 4 editions) and Islam’s Quantum Question – reconciling Muslim tradition and modern science (IB Tauris, 2011). He is also a columnist (at Gulf News, The Huffington Post, and for Nature Middle East) and a blogger. He was recently featured in a full-page article in Science (July 29, 2011). Prof. Guessoum has lectured at many renowned universities (Cambridge, Oxford, Cornell, Wisconsin) and has appeared in various international media, including Al-Jazeera, BBC, NPR, France 2, Le Monde, etc.

PANELISTS: Dr. Salman Hameed and John Farrell
Dr. Salman Hameed is the director of the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies (SSiMS) and assistant professor of integrated science & humanities at Hampshire College, Massachusetts. His primary research interest focuses on understanding the rise of creationism in the Islamic world and how Muslims view the relationship between science & religion. He is currently the lead investigator of a 3-year study on this topic, funded by the National Science Foundation. Salman also runs IRTIQA, a science & religion blog with an emphasis on scientific debates taking place in the Muslim world.

John Farrell is a writer and producer working in Boston. He is the author of The Day Without Yesterday: Lemaître, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology from Basic Books, an imprint of the Perseus Books Group. A graduate of Harvard College with a B.A. in English and American Literature, Farrell has written for Skeptic, Cosmos Magazine, New Scientist, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Manchester Guardian, TCSDaily , Salon, Huffington Post, First Things and The Tablet of London, and was a 2010 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science and Religion. As a producer, he has developed programs for various media companies and organizations, including the Boston ABC affiliate WCVB-TV, Simon & Shuster, Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Houghton Mifflin and Cengage Learning Company. In 2009, he was a media consultant to the Academy Award nominated film director Roland Joffe for the feature There Be Dragons, and has also written scripts for British film star Sir Christopher Lee.