DICID participates in Cultural Symposium at the 31st Doha International Book Fair 2022

24 Jan DICID participates in Cultural Symposium at the 31st Doha International Book Fair 2022

Within the activities of the Doha International Book Fair in its thirty-first session, under the slogan “Knowledge is Light”, held under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture and the Qatar Cultural and Heritage Events Center, The Doha International Book Center organized a cultural symposium to discuss the book, “The Link between Religion and Science in the Light of the Noble Qur’an”, hosting a discussion with the author of the book, Dr. Badrane Benlahcene, associate professor and researcher at the Ibn Khaldun Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, and Professor of comparative religion.

Dr. Ahmed Abdelrahim, senior researcher at the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue, moderated the symposium. It was attended by a number of exhibition visitors, directors of publishing houses interested in issues of dialogue and religions, intellectuals, and a group of academics.

At the beginning of his speech, Dr. Badrane Benlahcene briefed the audience on his book; how the idea of writing it came to him, and the group to which the book was directed to. He said: “All the chapters of this book revolve around one axis, which is religion and science in the light of the Holy Qur’an. It deals with the connection between religion (Islam) and science. It considers various issues of knowledge, thought, reading, reason and understanding, the integration of perceptual powers, the expansiveness of existence and the limitations of the conscience, the connection of knowledge with work, and other issues that we consider as gifts the Holy Qur’an provides us. The articles of the book aim at establishing a cultural awareness that transforms science to a culture that includes everyone, and a medium in which our values are formed about science and religion and the civilizational role they have, in the light of the integrative vision that the Qur’an establishes in the consciousness of the Muslim human being.

In the articles of this book, according to what he presented, the author has endeavored not to turn into an argument, justify positions, or provide academic lessons. His goal was an educational and informative goal, opening the minds of Muslim youth to the importance of these issues, and establishing a new awareness of the Qur’an, science and religion. It restores to the Muslim mind its cognitive and intellectual effectiveness, just as it restores to the Muslim person, individually and as a group, their effectiveness and complementarity.

The discussion on the book and its topics revolved around a dialogue between the moderator and the author, and many questions were raised about the issues presented in his book. The most important of which was the question about the broader concept of science as a subject and method, and the relationship between religion and science, as well as the extent to which the Western cognitive model in applied sciences and humanities makes the connection between Religion and science.

To this, Dr. Badrane Benlahcene, the author of the book, says: “Contemporary knowledge has made religion and science opposites, either a contradiction or that they are two isolated islands from each other, and this has led humanity to a kind of schizophrenia between religion, faith and science, and the Western cognitive model is basically a material model. According to it’s scientific method, it rejects any source of knowledge outside the scope of physical sensory examination subject to experience and observation, and this strips man of his basic cognitive components, the first of which is religion, with which his instinct is raised, his psyche is balanced, his mind is purified, his conscience upright, and his spirit elevated.”

He added: “The Holy Qur’an establishes (knowledge is not based on a single source, but rather it integrates sensory, mental and spiritual perceptions, and the monotheistic vision that the Qur’an brought is based on a monotheistic conception in which human life is integrated, and his cognitive powers are integrated on knowledge of the truth”.

Asking him about ways to restore a renaissance, as he always poses in his books and articles, Dr. Badrane Benlahcene said: “The Arab and Islamic nation today is experiencing a launch attempt to establish its civilizational cycle anew. In our lives, so that we do not fall into a distorted or contradictory reductionist understanding, especially with regard to the relationship between religion and science.”

It is worth noting that the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue, which is the leading institution in Qatar concerned with interfaith and intercultural dialogue, participates – as it usually does every year – in the exhibition with its own stall where the center displays various publications of books specialized in dialogue in both Arabic and English, as well as its own Adyan journal, which is issued by the center periodically. So far, fifteen issues have been issued.