American Imams: Islam Compatible with Biological Evolution

<...> The letter reads in part: "We, the undersigned Imams of the mosques, assert that the Qur’an is the primary source of spiritual inspiration and of values for us... We believe that the timeless truths of the Qur’an may comfortably coexist with the discoveries of modern science."

Almost 13,000 Christian clergy have signed a similar letter. Another has been signed by nearly 500 Jewish rabbis. The Clergy Letter was launched in 2006 and now has 12,725 signatures, followed three years ago by the Rabbi Letter, which has 476 signatures.

Like its predecessors, the Imam Letter explains why it's OK for believers to accept biological evolution. It also calls for a ban on creationist teaching in science classes. "As imams, we urge public school boards to affirm their commitment to the teaching of the science of evolution," says the letter, written by T. O. Shanavas, a doctor in Michigan and member of the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo in Perrysburg, Ohio.

"It shows that evolution and science can transcend what some people see as quite deep religious divisions, providing a unifying factor representing common ground between them," says Michael Zimmerman of Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, the architect of the Clergy Letter Project. <...> http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=244108">Ahlul Bayt News Agency

This means that Catholics, Conservative and Reform Jews, and American Muslims largely believe what fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews generally disavow: that their faith is compatible with modern science.

if they deny the reality of modern science.

when Spain was a colony of a sheik, the muslims brought higher math, translation, the legacy of learning from thousands of years in the libraries of the east and, in essence, the birth of the renaissance after hundreds of years of ignorance based upon the church/state system that had evolved in western europe.

people of all faiths or none, who are opening to learning, share more in common than they differ because a mind that is not closed b/c of a rigid belief system is a mind that can use reason to find common ground in human rights while maintaining respect for differences.

I live in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, and Sharjah is known as the conservative emirate. But there is a natural history museum here that has exhibits on evolution.

Is gravity next? Germ theory? General and special relativity?