The previous project – “Science and Religion in Islam” – gathered an international research group of distinguished Muslim scholars focused on the nature of ultimate reality, as approached through diverse subtopics and across scientific and academic disciplines. The project included multimedia broadcasts of panel discussions for the French-speaking Muslim people of Europe and the Arab world. A conference titled “Science, Cultures, and the Future of Humanity” was held in Doha, Qatar, in May 2008 and was jointly organized by the Al Jazeera Center for Studies.

The “Science and Islam” project has thus undertaken the following tasks:

• To support the research of a large number of scholars in this field,
• To broadcast this new discourse in Muslim and international media,
• To organize international meetings: in Paris (at the Institut du Monde Arabe), at the University of Oxford and other institutions, culminating in Doha with an international conference in collaboration with Al-Jazeera.

Hence the bases of a new synthesis have been laid which can contribute to open a high-level dialogue between Islam and modernity, thus allowing the development of a unified and coherent understanding of the world, without conflict or dissonance.

Perspectives on the development of the field of Science & Islam

This success of the first project on Science & Islam has encouraged its principal leaders (Bruno Abdelhaq Guiderdoni, Nidhal Guessoum, Jean Staune) to consider a second one, it would follow up on the work that has been started but also deepen the thinking and widen the field of action in order to reach even more ambitious objectives.