Science in Muslim societies today

Family: Knowledge: science, medicine, astronomy and the rest · 6 entries

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Entries on this theme

Object

• The Elephant Clock

  A water clock designed by al-Jazari and described in his book of ingenious devices around 1206 CE; an emblem of Ayyubid-era engineering.

• Piri Reis map

  A world map drawn on gazelle skin in 1513 by the Ottoman admiral Piri Reis; the surviving fragment is kept at Topkapı and is the most famous Ottoman map.

Person

• Francis Bacon

  1561 CE · 968 AH†English thinker (1561–1626 as printed in the book) whose New Organon proposed the inductive, experimental method for the natural sciences; al-Azhar's book presents him as a founder of modern scientific method.

Work

• Alif the Unseen

  G. Willow Wilson's techno-fantasy of an Arab hacker and an ancient jinn manuscript — code, Sufism and the Arab Spring.

Screening Room

• Science and Islam

  Jim Al-Khalili's three-part BBC series on science in Islamic civilisation — from the House of Wisdom to the present.

• Lorong Waktu

  Indonesia's six-season Ramadan series about a scholar and children who travel through time exploring science and faith — a generational classic of religious television.

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Controversial topics

• Sexuality and gender diversity
• Converts and those who leave
• Images and figural art
• Takfir and its critics
• Dissent, heresy and freethought
• Conquest and its debates
• Violent extremism and the Muslim response
• Islam and atheism or secular thought