Alhamdulillah, we’re now moving into our fifth year at Al-Andalus Book Club and with that comes our fifth booklist. My tongue is incapable of expressing how grateful I am for this blessing; the conversations we’ve had and the ideas we’ve been able to develop over the years with each book we read.
2020 was a strange year. It was one that forced us back to fundamentals. Our relationships with God, ourselves, family and the world around us. One of the themes that dominated the past year was the nature of science and what expertise (if any) is required to discuss (with authority) an opinion in relation to science. What is science? How do we attain knowledge? Can we agree on any scientific fundamentals for discussion on which we can build knowledge and understanding? Intersecting with that we’ve seen discussions on God, reason and whether we can have science and religion speak to each other on these topics rather than as mutually exclusive areas of knowledge and practice.
It seemed fortuitous that one of the reasons I launched Al-Andalus Academy in January of 2020 was to offer courses that would synthesise our knowledge of the physical and spiritual world as Islamic civilizations have done in the past, without realizing that a pandemic would hit only a couple of months later that year and starkly bring these issues into focus.
With this in mind, this year’s booklist will focus on the nature of human reason and scientific inquiry and its relationship to Islam.
In this episode I’m sharing the recording of the first webinar for our first book of the year, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.
