As-Salām ‘Alaykum - On the Qur’an and Science: How Scholars Approached Them

As-salām ‘alaykum. So the question is: What if a scientific claim seems to contradict the Qur’an? First, if you know Islamic history, you know a basic fact: Islam has never been hostile to learning or discovery. It encourages seeking knowledge. The scientific approach was influenced by Muslim scholars like Ibn al-Haytham, so Muslims were using scientific reasoning from early on. Many people make the same mistake when they worry about this issue. That’s why Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah wrote his work addressing the supposed conflict between reason and revelation. He put it like this: when revelation that is certain and rational certainty meet, they do not truly conflict; if one side is certain and the other is speculative, the certain one comes first; and if both sides are speculative, the Qur’anic understanding is given priority until the scientific case is firmly established or falls apart. To be clear, when we say “speculative” about the Qur’an, we don’t mean the verse itself is doubtful - rather we mean the human interpretation is uncertain (for example, scholars differed on the order of creation of the heavens and the earth because the text doesn’t fix that detail). So often the real comparison is: our uncertain interpretation versus a scientific theory that is not yet proven. It’s impressive this was explained over 800 years ago. Muslim scholars understood scientific method and objective thinking, so apparent conflicts usually come from tentative Qur’anic interpretations or from unproven scientific theories - that’s what “ظنيّ” refers to. But where there are clear, established facts (not speculative ideas), the Qur’an - understood by the consensus on clear verses - and reliable science have not contradicted each other from the Prophet’s time until now. That ongoing consistency is one of the signs of the truth of Islam.