Author Archives: Mohamed Ghilan, M.D, Ph.D.
Apr
One of the most dangerous human qualities lies in our naivety about human nature. It is quite easy to condemn evil when we see it as observers or read about it after the fact. We pretend that we cannot fathom how humans can be so cruel and like to elevate ourselves on a pedestal of […]
Mar
Neuroscience is a fascinating field, and scientists working in this area have produced a great body of research that has a direct impact on numerous medical conditions. In addition, findings from brain studies continue to shed insight into the physiological underpinnings correlated with behaviour. However, too often we fall prey to our own success and […]
Jan
The topic of Islamic reform is of great importance to those who wish to see Islam have as little conflict as possible with secular liberal ideals. In this view, secular liberalism is the transcendent arbiter of Truth, and it represents an assumed moral progress towards an imagined utopia of human flourishing. This notion is founded […]
Dec
The Creed of Deliverance is a short poem composed by the great Moroccan scholar Imam Muhammad ibn Ja’far al-Kittānī. It contains the basic foundations of creed that were typically taught to young Muslim children as a premier text before they delved into more complex theological matters if that was the path they wanted to take. […]
Dec
The spectrum of human experience entails different modes of examination to gain an understanding of what makes us human and how to lead and live a life worth living. Appreciating this point sheds light on the essential futility of the debate between science and religion, which assumes a fundamental incommensurability between them. However, rather than an either/or dichotomy, recognizing what type of […]
Dec
Note: This vignette originally appeared as a topic of discussion in Andalus Book Club. The Western mind has been intellectually conditioned through the education system to by and large equate science with rationality and religion with mythology and superstition. The appeal of this set up lies in the idea that science deals with tangible material objects, whereas religion […]
Nov
The “Science vs. Religion” debate appears to be more of an issue for monotheistic religions than it is for those of the Far East. The claim that the universe was created by a God who is beyond the universe, coupled with what appears to be at times scientifically irreconcilable claims in sacred scriptures about the natural world, including human beings […]
Nov
In his short 1976 treatise Metaphor and Myth in Science and Religion Earl R. MacCormac undertakes a study on how language is used in science and religion. The idea he was tackling is the claim that scientific language is purely descriptive and factual, while religious language is neither. Where science provides an objective expression of the material […]
Oct
The ability to explain current events requires an essential ability to properly reference history if one is to offer a rational analysis for how we got here. One of the most frustrating things about this, however, is the far too prevalent tendency to oversimplify the factors contributing to the state of the present, and the comic book level […]
Oct
With their rise to the forefront of the social justice movement LGBTQ activists have done much work to assert their civil rights and individual freedom to live as equals to everyone else in a way that they believe to be an authentic to their sexual identities. As a necessary part of this effort was a […]
Oct
Books dealing with the social dynamics of colonization in general and those in African American studies in particular can offer an extremely informative perspective for Muslims today. One such example is the 1933 publication titled The Miseducation of the Negro by African American historian Carter Godwin Woodson. In this book Woodson dissects why despite having become “free” from […]
Oct
One of the most often cited reasons for leaving religion appeals to science. More specifically, Pew Research Center reports that many American “nones” lost their faith after they went away to college and learned about evolution. Contrary to the fields of physics and chemistry, biology stands apart in its impact on religious belief. This may […]
Sep
Sachiko Murata is not a widely known figure among Muslims. But she should be. Currently a professor of religion and Asian studies at Stony Brook University, where she teaches Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, she holds a PhD in Persian literature on the role of women in the Haft paykar, a poetical work by Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209). […]
Sep
The latest book from Sebastian Junger is a short, yet very thought-provoking read. Tribe is an exploration into human nature and the root cause of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suffered by soldiers after they return home. Junger attempts to shed light on a puzzling paradox. How come despite our constant search for peace we do not […]
The 1988 American action film Rambo III portrayed fictional events towards the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Despite the terrible acting the movie does serve as an important historical window into American attitudes about Muslims and Jihad at the time. At the beginning of it we follow the field officer with the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, Robert Griggs, […]
Sep
إن فكرة تصنيف الإسلام إلى راديكالي أو معتدل أو متطرف تعطي مصداقية لافتراض أن الإسلام لديه جانب متأصل في داخله يجعله خطرًا ويزيل المسؤولية من على كاهل الفرد ويلقيها على الدين نفسه وفي خضم المناقشات الجارية حول العلاقة بين الإسلام والعنف، وبالنظر إلى جميع الاختلافات بين تصنيفات الإسلام، يبقى سؤال رئيسي واحد دون إجابة: هل […]
Sep
The Reading Chair episodes are released on Sundays. In this series I take the viewer on a journey through some of my favourite books. The selections I go through are books that I believe challenge the current intellectual paradigm pervading our popular and academic culture. From a traditional perspective, the modern world operates on a number […]
Sep
Scattered Thoughts episodes are released Mondays-Thursdays. This is a series in which I share random reflections I have and give my thoughts on topics and questions you send me through my Facebook page. No topic is off limits here and I literally talk about anything and everything. That’s the whole point of calling it Scattered Thoughts. […]
Sep
This past May I wrote an article that garnered quite the storm from a good number of Muslims. The Halal Bubble and the Sunnah Imperative to Go Vegan was a treatise in which I went through relevant references from the Quran and Sunnah regarding what features a diet built on a foundation of Islamic ethics would look like […]
Aug
The following is an excerpt from Islam Between East and West by ‘Alija ‘Ali Izetbegović (1925–2003), which was first published in 1984. I shared a previous excerpt here titled The Meaning of Humanism. The best remark that can be made about this book is one that I came across in a review posted on Amazon in 2011 by Julia Simpson: […]
Jul
The following is an excerpt from Islam Between East and West by ‘Alija ‘Ali Izetbegović (1925–2003), which was first published in 1984. The best remark that can be made about this book is one that I came across in a review posted on Amazon in 2011 by Julia Simpson: “This is a heady distillation of intellectual Muslim thought, demonstrating […]