Mohsen Feyzbakhsh

There is a quotation in the Holly Quran from the book of Psalms in 21:105: “The righteous shall inherit the earth”. A similar sentence can be found in Psalm37:29: צַדִּיקִים יִֽירְשׁוּ־אָרֶץ וְיִשְׁכְּנוּ לָעַד עָלֶֽיהָ. A comparison between these verses would illustrate that “صالح” is the Quranic equivalent of the Hebrew word “צַדִּיקִ”. This equivalence would allow us to compare usages of “صالح” in Quran and “צַדִּיקִ” in the book of Psalms. This comparative study will show that: (a) on the one hand, “צַדִּיקִ” has been used in Psalms either as an attribute of God or as a description of some peoples and on the other, “صالح” has been used in Quran for describing either some peoples or their acts, (b) These two words have similar usages in Psalms and Quran to the extent that they have been used for the description of some peoples and (c) the Quranopsalmic use of this notion can be linked with the concept of “divine selection(istifā)”.

Will there be any joint future for science and Islam? Although such questions have recently received considerable attention, more basic questions are often ignored. This article aims at addressing some of those more basic questions through exploring the assumptions that underlie different possible understandings of the question about the future of Islam and science. By investigating the relation between conceptualizations of religion and the question about the future of Islam and science, it will be argued that different understandings of the concept of religion (i.e., whether it denotes real objects, whether it is universal, and whether it is belief centered) lead to extremely different readings of the question. Besides, it will be argued that different answers to the question about the future of Islam and science can be understood in terms of the inference to best theological explanation; thus, the criteria that one assumes for the best theological explanation result in different criteria for evaluation of the answers.