Toward a Natural Kalām for Science–Religion Engagement: Al-Ghazālī and the Natural Sciences
Abstract
This article proposes a pluralistic framework for the science–religion relationship—termed Natural Kalām—by drawing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s engagement with the natural sciences. It situates this proposal in relation to two influential nineteenth-century narratives that continue to shape contemporary discussions—the conflict thesis between science and religion and the “decline” narrative of Islamic civilization. Contemporary science–religion scholarship has largely moved beyond the conflict thesis toward models such as dialogue, independence, and integration; yet these approaches face two persistent difficulties: treating “science” as a single ahistorical category and assuming a fixed framework governing its relation to religion. Through a close reading of al-Ghazālī’s writings, this study reconstructs his methodological stance into a pluralistic framework in which scientific questions are engaged according to the nature of their subject matter rather than through a single predetermined model of the science–religion relationship.
Full text article
Generated from XML file
References
Adamson, P. (2016). Philosophy in the Islamic world: A history of philosophy without any gaps. Oxford University Press.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1904). Fātiḥat al-ʿulūm. al-Maṭbaʿa al-Ḥusaynīya al-Miṣriyya.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1925). Kīmiyāʾ al-saʿāda wa-yalīhā al-risāla al-laduniyya (2nd ed.). Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1964). Mīzān al-ʿamal (S. Dunyā, Ed.). Dār al-Maʿārif.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1986). Jawāhir al-Qurʾān. Dār Iḥyāʾ al-ʿUlūm.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1988). Miʿrāj al-quds fī madārij maʿrifat al-nafs. Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1992). Al-Mustaṣfā min ʿilm al-uṣūl. Sharikat al-Madīna li-l-Ṭibāʿa.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (2000). Maqāṣid al-falāsifa. Maṭbaʿat al-Ṣabāḥ.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (2011). Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn. Dār al-Minhāj.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (n.d.). Al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād (A. M. ʿA. al-Sharfāwī, Ed.). Dār al-Minhāj.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (n.d.). Al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl. Dār al-Andalus.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (n.d.). Tahāfut al-falāsifa (S. Dunyā, Ed.). Dār al-Maʿārif.
Al-Sanūsī, M. ibn Y. (2019). Sharḥ al-ʿaqīda al-ṣughrā (A. M. al-Sharfāwī, Ed.). Dār al-Taqwā.
Altaie, B. (2019). Islam and natural philosophy: Principles of Daqīq al-Kalām. Routledge.
Altaie, B. (2023). Natural philosophy of Imam Al-Ghazali. Beacon Books and Media.
Badawī, ʿA. al-R. (1977). Muʾallafāt al-Ghazālī. Wikālat al-Maṭbūʿāt.
Barbour, I. G. (1966). Issues in science and religion. Prentice-Hall.
Barbour, I. G. (1990). Religion in an age of science. HarperCollins.
Barbour, I. G. (2000). When science meets religion. HarperOne.
Barbour, I. G. (2002). Nature, human nature, and God. Fortress Press.
Born, M. (1949). Natural philosophy of cause and chance. Clarendon Press.
Brentjes, S. (2018). Teaching and learning the sciences in Islamicate societies (800–1700). Brepols.
Brooke, J. H. (1991). Science and religion: Some historical perspectives. Cambridge University Press.
Draper, J. W. (2009). History of the conflict between religion and science. Cambridge University Press.
Feynman, R. P., Leighton, R. B., & Sands, M. (2011). The Feynman lectures on physics (New Millennium ed., Vol. 3). Basic Books.
Frank, R. M. (1992). Creation and the cosmic system: Al-Ghazālī and Avicenna. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.
Frank, R. M. (1994). Al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarite school. Duke University Press.
Goichon, A. M. (1942). Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī: Refutation des matérialistes. In Les Joyaux de l’Orient (Vol. 11, pp. 174–185). Librairie Orientaliste.
Golshani, M. (2003). Min al-ʿilm al-ʿilmānī ilā al-ʿilm al-dīnī. Dār al-Hādī.
Gould, S. J. (1999). Rocks of ages: Science and religion in the fullness of life. Ballantine Books.
Griffel, F. (2011). The Western reception of al-Ghazālī’s cosmology from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Dîvân: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi, 16(30), 33–62.
Guessoum, N. (2011). Islam’s quantum question: Reconciling Muslim tradition and modern science. I.B. Tauris.
Gutas, D. (1998). Greek thought, Arabic culture: The Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and early ʿAbbāsid society. Routledge.
Gutas, D. (2002). The study of Arabic philosophy in the twentieth century. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 29(1), 5–25.
Haq, S. N. (2009). That medieval Islamic culture was inhospitable to science. In R. L. Numbers (Ed.), Galileo goes to jail and other myths about science and religion (pp. 35–42). Harvard University Press.
Harding, K. (1993). Causality then and now: Al-Ghazali and quantum theory. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 10.
Harrison, P. (2015). The territories of science and religion. University of Chicago Press.
Harrison, P. (2022). Science and religion as historical traditions. In P. Harrison & J. Milbank (Eds.), After science and religion (pp. 15–34). Cambridge University Press.
Harrison, P. (Ed.). (2010). The Cambridge companion to science and religion. Cambridge University Press.
Harrison, P., & Tyson, P. (2022). Introduction. In P. Harrison & J. Milbank (Eds.), After science and religion (pp. 1–2). Cambridge University Press.
Haught, J. F., & Selk, E. E. (1996). Science and religion: From conflict to conversation. American Journal of Physics, 64(12), 1532–1537.
Hawking, S., & Mlodinow, L. (2010). The grand design. Bantam Books.
Heisenberg, W. (1958). Physics and philosophy. Harper & Brothers.
Ibn Khaldūn, ʿA. al-R. (2014). Al-Muqaddima. Dār Nahḍat Miṣr.
Lightman, B. (2022). The nineteenth-century origins of the problem. In P. Harrison & J. Milbank (Eds.), After science and religion (pp. 35–60). Cambridge University Press.
Lightman, B. (Ed.). (2019). Rethinking history, science, and religion. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Malik, S. A. (2021). Al-Ghazālī. In S. Bullivant & M. Ruse (Eds.), The Cambridge history of atheism (pp. 291–307). Cambridge University Press.
Malik, S. A., & Muhtaroglu, N. (2022). How much should or can science impact theological formulations? An Ashʿarī perspective on theology of nature. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 18(2), 8–35.
Marmura, M. E. (1995). Ghazalian causes and intermediaries. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 115, 89–100.
Marmura, M. E. (2002). Ghazali and Ashʿarism revisited. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 12, 91–110.
Marmura, M. E. (2005). Ghazālī and demonstrative science. In M. E. Marmura, Probing in Islamic philosophy: Studies in the philosophies of Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali and other major Muslim thinkers (pp. 189–207). Global Academic Publishing.
Munk, S. (1859). Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe. A. Franck.
Northcott, M. S. (2014). A political theology of climate change. SPCK.
Northcott, M. S. (2022). Religion and the science of climate destabilisation. In P. Harrison & P. Tyson (Eds.), New directions in theology and science: Beyond dialogue (pp. 56–72). Routledge.
Perez Sheldon, M., Ragab, A., & Keel, T. (Eds.). (2023). Critical approaches to science and religion. Columbia University Press.
Perez, M., Keel, T., & Ragab, A. (2026). Roundtable on critical approaches to science and religion. Zygon, 60(4), 1316–1324.
Perry, J., & Leidenhag, J. (2023). Science-engaged theology. Cambridge University Press.
Plutarch. (1916). Lives (Vol. 3). William Heinemann.
Polkinghorne, J. (2011). Science and religion in quest of truth. Yale University Press.
Rashed, R. (1997). Histoire des sciences arabes. Éditions du Seuil.
Renan, E. (1882). Averroès et l’averroïsme. Calmann Lévy.
Renan, E. (1883). L’islamisme et la science. Calmann Lévy.
Renan, E. (n.d.). L’Islam et la science. L’Archange Minotaure.
Sabra, A. I. (1987). The appropriation and subsequent naturalization of Greek science in medieval Islam: A preliminary statement. History of Science, 25(3), 223–243.
Saliba, G. (2007). Islamic science and the making of the European Renaissance. MIT Press.
Savage-Smith, E. (1995). Attitudes toward dissection in medieval Islam. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 50(1), 67–110.
Tyson, N. deGrasse. (2012). The intellectual collapse of Islam [Video]. YouTube.
Tyson, N. deGrasse. (2020). The golden age of Islam explained [Video]. YouTube.
Tyson, P. (2022). Introduction: After science and religion? In P. Harrison & J. Milbank (Eds.), After science and religion: Fresh perspectives from philosophy and theology (pp. 1–12). Cambridge University Press.
Weinberg, S. (2011). Lake views: This world and the universe. Belknap Press.
White, A. D. (2009). A history of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom. Cambridge University Press.
Wildman, W. J. (2004). The divine action project, 1988–2003. Theology and Science, 2(1), 31–75.
Wildman, W. J. (2005). Further reflections on the divine action project. Theology and Science, 3(1), 71–83.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1904). Fātiḥat al-ʿulūm. al-Maṭbaʿa al-Ḥusaynīya al-Miṣriyya.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1925). Kīmiyāʾ al-saʿāda wa-yalīhā al-risāla al-laduniyya (2nd ed.). Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1964). Mīzān al-ʿamal (S. Dunyā, Ed.). Dār al-Maʿārif.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1986). Jawāhir al-Qurʾān. Dār Iḥyāʾ al-ʿUlūm.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1988). Miʿrāj al-quds fī madārij maʿrifat al-nafs. Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (1992). Al-Mustaṣfā min ʿilm al-uṣūl. Sharikat al-Madīna li-l-Ṭibāʿa.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (2000). Maqāṣid al-falāsifa. Maṭbaʿat al-Ṣabāḥ.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (2011). Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn. Dār al-Minhāj.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (n.d.). Al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād (A. M. ʿA. al-Sharfāwī, Ed.). Dār al-Minhāj.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (n.d.). Al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl. Dār al-Andalus.
Al-Ghazālī, A. Ḥ. (n.d.). Tahāfut al-falāsifa (S. Dunyā, Ed.). Dār al-Maʿārif.
Al-Sanūsī, M. ibn Y. (2019). Sharḥ al-ʿaqīda al-ṣughrā (A. M. al-Sharfāwī, Ed.). Dār al-Taqwā.
Altaie, B. (2019). Islam and natural philosophy: Principles of Daqīq al-Kalām. Routledge.
Altaie, B. (2023). Natural philosophy of Imam Al-Ghazali. Beacon Books and Media.
Badawī, ʿA. al-R. (1977). Muʾallafāt al-Ghazālī. Wikālat al-Maṭbūʿāt.
Barbour, I. G. (1966). Issues in science and religion. Prentice-Hall.
Barbour, I. G. (1990). Religion in an age of science. HarperCollins.
Barbour, I. G. (2000). When science meets religion. HarperOne.
Barbour, I. G. (2002). Nature, human nature, and God. Fortress Press.
Born, M. (1949). Natural philosophy of cause and chance. Clarendon Press.
Brentjes, S. (2018). Teaching and learning the sciences in Islamicate societies (800–1700). Brepols.
Brooke, J. H. (1991). Science and religion: Some historical perspectives. Cambridge University Press.
Draper, J. W. (2009). History of the conflict between religion and science. Cambridge University Press.
Feynman, R. P., Leighton, R. B., & Sands, M. (2011). The Feynman lectures on physics (New Millennium ed., Vol. 3). Basic Books.
Frank, R. M. (1992). Creation and the cosmic system: Al-Ghazālī and Avicenna. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.
Frank, R. M. (1994). Al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarite school. Duke University Press.
Goichon, A. M. (1942). Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī: Refutation des matérialistes. In Les Joyaux de l’Orient (Vol. 11, pp. 174–185). Librairie Orientaliste.
Golshani, M. (2003). Min al-ʿilm al-ʿilmānī ilā al-ʿilm al-dīnī. Dār al-Hādī.
Gould, S. J. (1999). Rocks of ages: Science and religion in the fullness of life. Ballantine Books.
Griffel, F. (2011). The Western reception of al-Ghazālī’s cosmology from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Dîvân: Disiplinlerarası Çalışmalar Dergisi, 16(30), 33–62.
Guessoum, N. (2011). Islam’s quantum question: Reconciling Muslim tradition and modern science. I.B. Tauris.
Gutas, D. (1998). Greek thought, Arabic culture: The Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and early ʿAbbāsid society. Routledge.
Gutas, D. (2002). The study of Arabic philosophy in the twentieth century. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 29(1), 5–25.
Haq, S. N. (2009). That medieval Islamic culture was inhospitable to science. In R. L. Numbers (Ed.), Galileo goes to jail and other myths about science and religion (pp. 35–42). Harvard University Press.
Harding, K. (1993). Causality then and now: Al-Ghazali and quantum theory. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 10.
Harrison, P. (2015). The territories of science and religion. University of Chicago Press.
Harrison, P. (2022). Science and religion as historical traditions. In P. Harrison & J. Milbank (Eds.), After science and religion (pp. 15–34). Cambridge University Press.
Harrison, P. (Ed.). (2010). The Cambridge companion to science and religion. Cambridge University Press.
Harrison, P., & Tyson, P. (2022). Introduction. In P. Harrison & J. Milbank (Eds.), After science and religion (pp. 1–2). Cambridge University Press.
Haught, J. F., & Selk, E. E. (1996). Science and religion: From conflict to conversation. American Journal of Physics, 64(12), 1532–1537.
Hawking, S., & Mlodinow, L. (2010). The grand design. Bantam Books.
Heisenberg, W. (1958). Physics and philosophy. Harper & Brothers.
Ibn Khaldūn, ʿA. al-R. (2014). Al-Muqaddima. Dār Nahḍat Miṣr.
Lightman, B. (2022). The nineteenth-century origins of the problem. In P. Harrison & J. Milbank (Eds.), After science and religion (pp. 35–60). Cambridge University Press.
Lightman, B. (Ed.). (2019). Rethinking history, science, and religion. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Malik, S. A. (2021). Al-Ghazālī. In S. Bullivant & M. Ruse (Eds.), The Cambridge history of atheism (pp. 291–307). Cambridge University Press.
Malik, S. A., & Muhtaroglu, N. (2022). How much should or can science impact theological formulations? An Ashʿarī perspective on theology of nature. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 18(2), 8–35.
Marmura, M. E. (1995). Ghazalian causes and intermediaries. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 115, 89–100.
Marmura, M. E. (2002). Ghazali and Ashʿarism revisited. Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 12, 91–110.
Marmura, M. E. (2005). Ghazālī and demonstrative science. In M. E. Marmura, Probing in Islamic philosophy: Studies in the philosophies of Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali and other major Muslim thinkers (pp. 189–207). Global Academic Publishing.
Munk, S. (1859). Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe. A. Franck.
Northcott, M. S. (2014). A political theology of climate change. SPCK.
Northcott, M. S. (2022). Religion and the science of climate destabilisation. In P. Harrison & P. Tyson (Eds.), New directions in theology and science: Beyond dialogue (pp. 56–72). Routledge.
Perez Sheldon, M., Ragab, A., & Keel, T. (Eds.). (2023). Critical approaches to science and religion. Columbia University Press.
Perez, M., Keel, T., & Ragab, A. (2026). Roundtable on critical approaches to science and religion. Zygon, 60(4), 1316–1324.
Perry, J., & Leidenhag, J. (2023). Science-engaged theology. Cambridge University Press.
Plutarch. (1916). Lives (Vol. 3). William Heinemann.
Polkinghorne, J. (2011). Science and religion in quest of truth. Yale University Press.
Rashed, R. (1997). Histoire des sciences arabes. Éditions du Seuil.
Renan, E. (1882). Averroès et l’averroïsme. Calmann Lévy.
Renan, E. (1883). L’islamisme et la science. Calmann Lévy.
Renan, E. (n.d.). L’Islam et la science. L’Archange Minotaure.
Sabra, A. I. (1987). The appropriation and subsequent naturalization of Greek science in medieval Islam: A preliminary statement. History of Science, 25(3), 223–243.
Saliba, G. (2007). Islamic science and the making of the European Renaissance. MIT Press.
Savage-Smith, E. (1995). Attitudes toward dissection in medieval Islam. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 50(1), 67–110.
Tyson, N. deGrasse. (2012). The intellectual collapse of Islam [Video]. YouTube.
Tyson, N. deGrasse. (2020). The golden age of Islam explained [Video]. YouTube.
Tyson, P. (2022). Introduction: After science and religion? In P. Harrison & J. Milbank (Eds.), After science and religion: Fresh perspectives from philosophy and theology (pp. 1–12). Cambridge University Press.
Weinberg, S. (2011). Lake views: This world and the universe. Belknap Press.
White, A. D. (2009). A history of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom. Cambridge University Press.
Wildman, W. J. (2004). The divine action project, 1988–2003. Theology and Science, 2(1), 31–75.
Wildman, W. J. (2005). Further reflections on the divine action project. Theology and Science, 3(1), 71–83.
Authors
خلال م. أ. (2026). Toward a Natural Kalām for Science–Religion Engagement: Al-Ghazālī and the Natural Sciences. Nama Journal of Islamic Sciences and Humanities, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.59151/namajournal.v10i3.572
Copyright (c) 2026 Mohamed Amine Khoulal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
yright and License
Researchers always have copyright. The research published in the Journal is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. This means that every person can download, read and use the research, provided that he/she relates it to its author appropriately, stating any amendments made. This work cannot be used for commercial purposes.