Abdal Hakim Murad – Conference Welcome Address
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Cambridge Muslim college training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers.
Thank you very much. Yeah, all up and welcome everyone and welcome
you on behalf of our
trustees chair at the moment. So Leila demery, is a Trinity Hall
person and is sending you her blessings from her current
professorial position and to begin in, in Germany, and this is as you
know, the second of our conferences on linked themes. This
weekend, we will be pondering the
plumbing the depths of the topic, artificial intelligence and
consciousness.
A few words about who we are and why we are the platform for this
event. Unlike most other institutions in the city, we are
extremely young kind of infant really in Cambridge terms. We
began an operation only nine years ago. But Unusually for a recent
institution, we started off in a rather old fashioned kind of way,
rather as Cambridge colleges began
seven 800 years ago as small groups of theologians wanting to
get in a huddle looking for ways of speaking sense about the large
and often difficult claims made by religious faith. What makes our
institution
still more unusual. And this conference is in a certain way, an
emblem of that is that we seek a reasoned understanding of faith in
an Islamic not a Christian idiom that makes us even more eccentric
in Cambridge terms. Old Fashioned though face often seems and sounds
bringing Islam to the table actually is rather an up to date,
if unusual thing to do. Cambridge is a community where scholars
Converse seriously in a way that ultimately serves and enlightens
the society in which they live reflects the demography and the
diversity of wider British society, which is changing a pace.
And Muslims are now Britain's largest majority, largest
minority, and often anxious to join the existing conversations,
to see what happens when the winnowing winds of modern thought
are directed at or against their systems of thought. And also just
possibly, to find ways of reciprocally enriching the cities
very long standing debates about issues which, like those which we
are coming to grips with today actually matter a good deal.
Now, our college is not a seminary. That's why we're in this
city. We do not expect or impose any kind of given creed or
position of our students or scholars. There are plenty of
other Muslim places where one can find that. Instead, we insist on
keeping our doors and our windows open. And this is in fact exactly
why we chose to be in Cambridge where for centuries, some of the
most vital and challenging conversations between faith and
science and philosophy have been worked out. We are seeking
challenges we are looking for trouble if you like.
We recall and again, this might be a theme which will recur in our
discussions today and tomorrow that Islam which is
stereotypically figured, as the West dark other, has, in fact very
often been its most recurrent and significant conversation partner,
medieval Cambridge curricula ODEP to Muslim, philosophical and
scientific writings, undergraduates knew about Anselm,
but also about epicenter. In the 17th century, the Cambridge
Platanus were fascinated by Avaroa says doctrine of a common soul, or
at least by the particular understanding of it. Three
Cambridge men in particular considered themselves indebted to
this doctrine about the mind which reached Cambridge from Muslims
mean, they will Ralph Cudworth, John Smith and Nathaniel
culverwell medics to were part of this exchange at Addenbrooke's, a
staple of the curriculum was the continent of Abu Zakaria, Razi,
which also has things to say about the role of mind and emotion in
diagnosis and healing.
So Islamic civilization has in past centuries made itself useful
here, and it's our determination to try and revive and perhaps even
surpass those early precedents.
The conference which we're going to be enjoying today, and tomorrow
is as I say, the second which we have organized on a scientific
topic. As such, we have been careful to explain to everyone
that the science or the best discussions about issues which
remain fiercely and fascinatingly contested, stays at the center.
While they're still
I'll make the logical ramifications and reactions take
the form of a gloss or a series of reflections. In line with the
driving philosophy of our college we are not venturing a set of
solutions to the questions being asked by science in this area of
cognition. Instead, we recognize that both science and religious
philosophy harbor internal disagreements on issues such as
the nature of consciousness.
The religion science dialogue cannot be allowed to become some
kind of zero sum game, nor must it ever be content with closure.
Instead, we seek to discover what it means to discuss the same
issues in two registers two vocabularies, traveling together
on the same path, ultimately enjoying the journey, and hoping
to become better thinkers wherever the road may turned.
On the diversity of scientific theories here I am hardly
qualified to pronounce. I note that there's no shortage of fierce
anti Cartesians who agree with Daniel Dennett, that our thoughts
are information bearing events in the brain, since that's all that's
going on. MRI scans show that different types of mental
processes happen in different parts of the brain. A severe
reductionism nowadays challenging to religionists it's fashionable,
but the sheer difficulty of the concept of consciousness seems to
produce many dissidents. Consciousness certainly needs the
brain. But for many, our introspection seems to generate a
mode of knowing that simply is not reducible to observable brain
events for many religious or secular, some sort of dualism.
However, implicitly perhaps materialistic in the end still
seems to be helpful.
So Muslim thought, is no more united on this difficult issue of
consciousness. The heritage, particularly in classical what we
call Kalam, theology is rich and suggestive. But Muslims do not
never have spoken with one voice. Among the theories, one that
certain recurrent patterns present already and enrich abundance in
medieval thought, some of which are certainly irretrievably
quaint, but others of which are of abiding interest and I think do
deserve to be reframed in contemporary and defensible ways.
Muslim scripture directs much attention to the question of
ethics and thus to the mind, which makes moral choices and to the
complex and among the commentators unresolved relationship between
raw spirit and neffs self
to terms such as the famous flying man argument, proposed by Abba
Sena as proof of the minds capacity to be itself in isolation
from sense perception. The principle of knowledge by presents
a name for Laurie found an important part in Islamic
psychology.
The system establishes the reality of mind by accepting the intuition
supplied by experience as a first order truth. Intention, which for
the likes of Elizabeth Anscombe in Cambridge, lies at the heart of
the philosophy of mind is the moral core of our activity. As a
hadith, the saying of religions founder says actions are by
intentions. Today, some Muslim theologians such as Matt de Erie,
continue to treat this concept as foundational. Others, however,
inclined to his skepticism about the reality of the human self,
which at times can seem almost Buddhistic. It is a diverse
tradition.
But I don't propose to say anything more about this. Our
purpose today, as I indicated, is to be hosts to be hospitable to
listen, and to learn and to provide a free space in which
ideas can be explored
in the contemporary religious world, and also it sometimes seems
in a modern secular Academy, where measurable practical outcomes are
demanded by government funding bodies, such as space is, I think,
insufficiently populated. But here we are, and we're grateful to you
all, and particularly to Dr. Jakob Choudry, our convener and also to
our funders, the Templeton Foundation for their kind support,
but also to everyone who's come to instruct and to share their vision
over what I think promises to be an extremely stimulating weekend.
Thank you.
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers