Islamic Theology and Extraterrestrial Life With Shaykh Hamza Karamali

Hello everyone and welcome to blogging theology today I'm delighted to talk again to Sheikh Hamza Karamali your most welcome sir thank you it's a pleasure to be here again great to have you back sir for those who don't know is the founder of Basira Education where he trains teachers Scholars imams and chaplains how to help Muslims come to their own realizations that Islam is true he teaches many online courses around the general theme or proving that Islam is true he specializes in developing Islamic educational responses to the problem of atheism you can get a taste

of his work by going to chroniccaseforgod.com I expect a free video series on a powerful chronic argument for the existence of God that will he says silence any atheist and there's a link in the description below he's recently written a paper called theological information on the existence of intelligent life outside our solar system metaphysics scripture and science I was I was surprised to discover that there is a field of study around the Theology of aliens I've never heard of this before I must say in all my theology reading this is a a new thing for

me and also intelligent extraterrestrial life and this field of study is called EXO theology EXO Theology and and um Hamza has written a paper uh on EXO theology can you just tell us a bit about what EXO theology is and what kinds of questions it investigates yeah so thanks for introducing me the paper will be part of an edited volume edited by Malik who's a guest a regular guest at your on your channel and also Matthias uh determine it's called Islam and exotheology so exerciseology is it's an instance of the broader discussions between religion and

science so it's the theological counterpart of a new scientific field called astrobiology so biology studies life on Earth astrobiology goes beyond the Earth beyond the solar system to study life outside Earth extraterrestrial you know outside outside Earth so we've now discovered that the universe is greater than we've ever known it to be close to 100 billion light years has billions of galaxies each galaxy has billions of stars presumably all of these stars have or a large number of these stars have planets like our own and so the argument goes that if we turned up on

one planet of one star then surely there must be other beings like us on other planets in other galaxies that are or planets that are orbiting other stars so there's a search in astrobiology for something called exoplanets exoplanets are planets outside our solar system so stars are easy to spot because they emit uh light they emit energy so you can spot them with telescopes but planets are they're very small and they don't emit anything so they're a lot more difficult to spot the first exoplanet was spotted in the 1990s and today we've discovered about a

couple of thousand exoplanets and so the search there's a search for um extraterrestrial life on these planets and right now it's in the realm of is life possible on these planets are these planets candidates for um intelligent life outside our solar system is the star the right size is the kind of is the planet a rocky planet like Earth or is it a gaseous Planet like Jupiter is it the right distance from from the Sun is it in the right location in the galaxy and so they're they're identifying candidates and the Hope amongst the scientific

community is that as our abilities to observe um who knows maybe one day visit these places um uh improves maybe we will discover intelligent life like our own so this is astrobiology a lot of money is is being spent on this research and this raises theological questions and meaning that if we were to discover intelligent life like our own then what implications would that have for our own religious beliefs as uh Muslims or it rose out of a Christian context for Christians or for Jews and then also a little bit more of a hypothetical is

that do these beings have their own religious beliefs and what what problems might we pose to them um so this this field it's called EXO theology Christians have written a lot in this field Muslims haven't that much and so this uh volume that was edited by shoaib and Matthias is this is this volume that you contributed to is this a first in terms of pacifically Islamic uh publishing on this subject do you think yeah it's the first it's the first academic like publishing on the subject wow so this is a groundbreaking uh work uh amazing

look forward to seeing when's it coming out do you know yet yeah um it went to the publisher uh just a couple of days ago so it should be out soon soon I'll look at I look out for that might do a another video on that when it comes out inshallah so your work centered around proving um that Islam is true which seems like a very important thing to do but I can't help wonder why you chose to wrote a paper about the Theology of extraterrestrials it must be some importance to it but it can

seem rather unimportant to some why a Theology of aliens and how does that affect our lives and why is it important for a Muslim specifically to know about this yeah I mean I get asked that question often you know there's uh problems of atheism and you're talking about aliens like you know what's the is it important is it not important so it actually is important surprisingly enough and in order to understand why we need to kind of step back um into where these discussions came from and all science religion discussions they originate in the encounter

of Christianity with science in the enlightenment period and everything that happened at that time so um if we go to the Christian context the for Christians there's uh there's a number of problems and it they all come from this idea that um there's a human being or a son of God or Divine or however you know that the Trinity is resolved but uh but Jesus was a human and God um you know from their perspective who um died for the Salvation of other human beings so we attain salvation by accepting his um his sacrifice so

from the Christian Perspective um this poses two main problems the first is a problem of Salvation um so if intelligent extraterrestrial life exists and they don't know about Jesus then what how are they saved so this is I don't think this is a this has come up a lot in in Christian writings on the topic but it's not actually unique to extraterrestrials because this salvation problem also exists for um human beings prior to Christianity prior to the Advent of Jesus right so so as Muslims we have a Salvation history of the prophets and Messengers coming

since the first human being a consistent message and uh and it continues whereas um for Christianity it's just an event happening out of the blue and then what happens early and and so it's the same problem um and for us I think I'll show you there's actually a Hadith which seems to say that aliens have prophets and Messengers when we're looking at that hadees so so it's not going to be a problem for us um the second issue I think is more significant for us as Muslims and that's this idea of human specialness so the

history of the science religion debate goes back to the Galileo Affair when Galileo said that that maybe it's the sun that's the center of the universe uh or the solar system center of the solar system and not the Earth um a move from a geocentric view of the universe to a heliocentric view of the solar system so he was um he was tried he was prosecuted placed under house arrest um and then there was Copernicus who um who who said whose theories um were Vindicated by Newton um and his laws of planetary motion and we

came so in the in the Christian experience in the western experience um this idea of uh of human beings being at the center of the universe it is intertwined the most important thing in the universe it's intertwined with a struggle with science so uh so uh what what goes on underneath the surface of this scientific search for the existence of extraterrestrial life is that human beings aren't important we just inhabit an insignificant planet on that that orbits an insignificant star in an insignificant Galaxy there's probably millions of other people like us and religious people who

think that human beings are important and the universe is made for them um they are they're not only are they are they deluded it's unscientific to hold that belief not only is that the case so the claim goes but it also it gets in the way of Science and we need to get rid of this way of thinking Stephen Hawking famously uh the professor at uh Cambridge University who passed away a couple years ago um saying if I'm a rightly worse the effect that human beings are like scum on the surface of an insignificant planet

in in the middle of nowhere at a very very negative view It's Curious that his own supervisor when he did his PhD another eminent scientist at Cambridge completely disagreed with this and um had a view that was more um more sympathetic to the theistic point of view but the view you outline is certainly held by some very prominent uh scientists and others uh although it is as I say pushed back by other scientists yeah and so that's why I actually wrote this uh wrote the paper because what I found is that Muslims are are quick

to say that um there's nothing in the Quran that contradicts the existence of extraterrestrial life extraterrestrial life can exist and um and it lies within the power of God to create intelligent extraterrestrial life and leave it at that so um so I think that we I think that's true um but we need to go beyond that and we'll go and say that if intelligent extraterrestrial life exists then human beings still retain some kind of a special status in the on the cosmic scale and that our religious beliefs commit us to that and that doesn't go

against uh you know it's it's you can it doesn't go against any it doesn't stand in the way of the progress of Science and scientific discoveries so um that's so that's why I think it's important and with and in popular culture now with science fiction and Aliens everywhere um this when we when our children consume these um uh these stories they watch things then there's a subliminal message of the unimportance of human beings that permeates into their minds and I think it has a it's uh um it can lead to um to problems in in

religious belief down the line so I think it needs to be that stuff okay well your paper as I mentioned is called theological information on the existence of intelligent life outside our solar system metaphysics scripture and science end quote what exactly do you mean by theological information yeah it's a good question so um when we search for intelligent extraterrestrial life we do it based on scientific information so we make observations We Gather results we examine them and we come to conclusions regarding physical physical observations so um I think that as a as Believers um that

in the Quran that the Quran is the word of God um we have access to another source of knowledge and traditionally the way that Muslims have done science is that that there there hasn't been a separation between your um scientific study of the world and doing experiments and between your religious belief and your belief in angels and your belief in Jinn and your belief in the afterlife it's all an integrated whole so um so so as so when I examine a question it's natural for me to do science but also to turn to uh turn

to scripture and see well what does it have to say and is there any and is there any information um in uh in scriptural sources on intelligent extraterrestrial life and that should inform uh my uh my scientific inquiry and there's nothing wrong with that um and I believe based on evidence that it is from the creator of the universe and he knows what he created so uh you know why it's uh there's a so that's that's where the title comes from it's theological information on this um that should um that should that we should be

cognizant of as we um engage in this scientific study okay what I find I often push back on this when I when I were a couple of colleagues of yours who've said this already um that we already believe do we not in angels and gin and doesn't that kind of mean that we have clear evidence the existence of intelligent life that is not from this planet if you like extraterrestrial life so don't we already believe in angels and gin anyway so that that's a dimension that uh you don't appear to factor that in into your

into your analysis yeah that's that's correct and uh so in an angels would fit the definition of extraterrestrial if what you mean by extraterrestrial is something that does not um inhabit whose place of habitation whose home isn't planet Earth so angels are Celestial beings um they go back and forth between the heavens and between Earth they fulfill God's decrees his commands um they do things they bring rain uh and uh you know there's uh the angels of punishment and they protect us so they are they're part of our cosmology and uh and they are extraterrestrial

in this sense um however however when if if we look at the discussion of intelligent extraterrestrial life and the theological problems that it poses for us such as the problem of human specialness then in that context when um when a scientist uh who naturalness doesn't believe in religion when he's searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life in order to undermine the importance of human beings if if that's you know like it's um it's uh I don't want to I don't want to say that that's his motivation because it could be just like he's curious right but but

if there's but let's say that that that's that is a it's an underlying um underlying goal um unstated goal then the kind of extraterrestrial life that he'll be looking for is like a green alien with antlers or uh or you know like uh these uh humanoid uh species that inhabit some other planet and they go around in spaceships and all of these things they're made of the same kind of stuff that we're made of and um and that for a scientists is mass energy existing in space-time something that you can examine underneath a microscope you

can extrapolate from the the experiments that you do in a laboratory on Earth so they're they're the kind of alien that they're looking for it's something like that um and in their mind so so why so the the astrobiology is like Evolution so Evolution um there's a scientific aspect to it but there's also that subliminal message is also there that if human beings share an ancestor with chimpanzees and they're part of the tree of life then they're not privileged they don't hold a privileged status on Earth they're just like any other animal so what kind

of materialist explanation isn't it it deliberately excludes not only God but in design teleology a sense of meaning of purpose a spiritual Dimension always other dimensions which are extremely real are systematically excluded um and given the impression thereby of objectivity but in fact it's a reductionist explanation is it not of of our existence it's not a complete one but nevertheless this reductionist then is seen as the complete one ironically because it's anything but and so this is one of the for me as personally anyways is one of the misgivings I have about the way some

science in the west is explained and not all signs because a lot of this is very particular in particular areas but when it's when a meta narrative is offered it's often in a very materialist reduction as way I think yeah yes that's right and so this reductionism to on the cosmic scale is to say not that we share an ancestor with the chimpanzee but it's that are atoms and molecules with which we are made up of and the chemical processes that gave rise to life on Earth naturalistic non-miraculous reductionist perspective it leads to a broader

kind of relationship with with intelligent extraterrestrials elsewhere in the universe so this this kind of this so the this the the kind of intelligent extraterrestrial that will help them in their metanarrative is not an angel it's not a gen but it's this kind of an alien so uh so just for the sake of focus in the paper I I excluded angels and Jin and Jin actually like I think that you could make an argument that they are they are terrestrial beings but uh uh so so I I exclude angels and Jinn all your points well

taken but just to uh you know closely and and enter the conversation where it's at so um I mean I imagine it's possible for God to create anything and and if he Wills surely uh he can create aliens it lies within his power doesn't it yeah yeah right that's Allah is able to realize any contingent possibility that's how um the uh traditional scholarships you would explain this uh this verse so we have so what you just articulated is a metaphysics of contingency um so it's a view of the world where everything is dependent on God

God can realize any possibility he's the one who makes the sunshine he's the one who makes the wind blow and so an intelligent extraterrestrial is just any other contingency and he can realize it and he can realize it through um uh natural means or he can realize it through miraculous means so so so there's a that's our perspective now if we kind of contrast that to the perspective of the scientist who is searching for intelligent extraterrestrial life in the universe he doesn't see the universe in this way he sees the universe as um necessary relationships

between things in the universe laws of nature inviolable um and what he is searching for is he's he's working within the constraints of the laws of nature and saying that if I understand how these laws of nature which from his perspective are you inherent necessary not dependent on anything do they entail can they entail if I understand them deeply can they entail intelligent extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the universe so in order for us to enter the discussion the first thing we need to do is we need to make we need to clarify that when I

as a Muslim enter uh the the scientific world then I don't assume your metaphysics of naturalism but I have a metaphysics of contingency so it it lies within the power of God to realize any contingency including aliens intelligent extraterrestrials so it's possible um and this comes from an argument um argument from contingency which we talked about earlier uh in one of our episodes it's also you also referenced it in the quranic case for god um video series where I think viewers can go in and watch it watch it learn about it more in the description

below yeah um so uh the but what this perspective so in the paper the first part of the paper is metaphysics and that's what this that's what this part of the paper shows and it um this tells us that it's possible it's possible for intelligent extraterrestrial life to exist but it doesn't tell us whether it actually exists or actually doesn't exist we're just in the realm of possibility so if we want to if you want theological information about whether or not they actually exist we need to go deeper and means we need to examine um

versus or Hadith to see if there's anything there that tells us about intelligent exercise but on that question are there any uh versus or hadiths that talk explicitly about intelligent extraterrestrials actually there is so um there's um so just drop a slide um it comes from a verse in the Quran there's a discussion around the verse in the Quran um and in this verse he mentions not just seven Heavens but seven Earths so it says that that Allah is the one who created the seven heavens and of the Earth the like thereof [Music] and so

most Scholars have understood like thereof to mean like they're off in number so seven heavens and seven Earths so what is meant by seven Earths now the dominant interpretation amongst uh Scholars is that it's there's one it's our Earth and there's layers down um in this um in this Earth but there are some who have historically held that seven Earths mean seven other planets seven other worlds and um and this is a uh this is a an exegesis of this verse um that's ascribed to IBN Abbas um it's on the next slide was a companion

of the Prophet um and uh he he um he said a second so he he said uh that there are seven Earths and on every Earth there is a prophet like you're a prophet an Adam like Adam and Noah like Noah and Abraham like Abraham and the Jesus like Jesus so it's a very interesting statement from even Abbas because it shows a theological difference so the problem of Salvation is not it's not a problem for us because just as we can have a Salvation history of prophets and Messengers here this Hadith is actually if it's

interpreted to refer to intelligent extraterrestrial life it's saying the same thing over there so that particular problem in EXO theology is not is not really a problem for us um however however this Hadith so so first of all this is this Hadith it's a statement of a companion it's not a statement of the Prophet Muhammad now the companion was very knowledgeable Abdullah um he's considered by the scholarship is one of the most knowledgeable of the companions in quranic interpretation he was a young companion um he learned from the prophet saws the prophet made a prayer

for him that oh Allah teach him the interpretation of the Quran and he learn from many other companions he was held in high regard by said no matter he used to ask him used to consult him so he's a great scholar of the seat and he's widely quoted into C literature however this Hadith which is a statement of IBN Abbas it's a classical example of a kind of Hadith that's called an anomalous Hadith by the scholars of uh of the Hadith Sciences um so there's a famous book of Hadith criticism called tedriba Ravi written by

suyuti widely studied in the classical seminaries and he mentions this Hadith as a as an anomalous Hadith he cites and early Hadith Authority named Behati who said that who's the one who actually narraged the Hadith and he said that the chain is authentic but the Hadith is anomalous what does anomalous mean in this context I'm not sure what what we're saying so it means that uh it means that uh the so they have he says he has he expands on it elsewhere right actually in that same statement he says that there are so if you

look at the chain of transmission there are two narrations both narrated by very happy and the Seven Earth said if you start at the top you come down from the seven areas Hadith you see even ambass in both places yeah and then from even ambass you see a narrator whose name is Abu duha it's the same so both of these they go back to Abu dhab and then from then the chain diverges so you have IBN Abbas and then multiple people narrating from so when uh there are in in the Hadith uh community you have

Hadith that are narrated by many many many many people and uh from very early on there's a companion and from that companion many people took it from the companion and there's many people took it from from the followers it's a widely well-known Hadith and there are other hadiths that are narrated from a companion by just one individual now when there's when there's just one individual the scholars of hadees are careful they're because they because when because there's no corroborating reports they they will say that it there it may be that this person has made a

mistake it's a solitary solitary uh attested Hadith it's not matawata multiplayer tested clearly by many many people and so that this unique solitary Hadith which had Fairly unusual content perhaps it's the it's a solitary Hadith with a unique unusual content right and so the combination of these two things when they when they have they say that that in order it's it's it's unusual content which is is quite significant because um intelligent extraterrestrial life with profits like the prophet Muhammad elsewhere and like Noah like it's a it's a major thing so uh so for uh you

know for something like this for us to accept this as revelatory evidence that comes from God to the prophet Muhammad it needs it needs further attestation it is insufficiently attested to strange report and so when they see something like this they'll say it's anomalous they say it's shad and they'll say that even though the narrators in in the chain are reliable even even a reliable narrator can make a mistake and so it appears here that there's a mistake that's being made so uh so since the earliest of times the scholars of hadees they they cited

this as an example classic example they said textbook example of an anonymous Hadith if you see something like this and then then then then judge it to be inauthentic um so but there's something interesting that that we that we gain from here and that's that when they say it's anomalous it means that there's no attestation and it means that there's no other explicit verse or Hadith in the Hadith Corpus that speaks about intelligent extraterrestrial life otherwise they wouldn't have said it's anomalous yeah so we can get we can glean that from this Hadith and and

what that um what that uh so even so that actually leaves us at the same place that we were after our metaphysical analysis which is that it's possible it lies within the power of God to create intelligent extraterrestrial life there's nothing so this is a quote from a late mufaser um he wrote um an Iraqi scholar and he he said that if this report were to be true then there's nothing it wouldn't conflict with anything else um it's metaphysically possible it's theologically possible but it's just insufficiently attested too and that's so that is the theological

that's one aspect of the theological information that we have about um the existence of uh intelligent extraterrestrial life that it's metaphysically possible and it's also theologically uh possible so so in other words scripture in either affirm nor negates it although there is an interesting discussion um from which we can uh learn a number of things so I mean are you are you saying really that uh if intelligent extraterrestrial life does exist it must be less special than than human beings um yeah so that's that's the second part of the analysis so this is the first

part of analysis does it exist does it not exist the second part of the analysis is that if it exists if it exists then um what implications does it have for a human specialness so human specialness is a um is a uh it's a it's a concept that needs to be properly understood so it doesn't mean this verse in the Quran where Allah he says that we created human beings in the best of forms and then we reduced them to the lowest of the law so the fact that human beings are special doesn't mean that

they are inherently um the best sing and most beloved thing to God they have to do something to to become that way um and so the specialness of human beings refers to a potentiality that may be realized by some of them may not be realized by some of them so actually so if an intelligent extraterrestrial were to exist actually a particular intelligent extraterrestrial might be more special more beloved by God than a particular human being because a particular human being made bad choices and um and went to the Hell Fire and the intelligent extraterrestrial made

good choices and he goes to Paradise but just like the Jinn uh humans and gym same same idea um but human beings have a they have they have they have a higher potential and there's a cosmic significance that they have that that's mentioned um and the story of creation is uh it's related to um human beings and there are a number of verses in the Quran that that illustrate this um and there's also some statements from from Scholars so what I did in this paper it's uh in this paper I assumed I assumed I worked

from within the Sunni scholarly tradition so meaning that within the Sunni scholarly tradition there are a number of positions on which the late uh uh scholarly tradition kind of coalesces on and they are they're considered Givens um and so one of these and so I've worked Within These Givens I didn't I didn't um I I explained where these Givens are coming from but I hope to explain it in Greater detail in a future article so in the second um set of slides um this kind of a statement is typical amongst uh amongst the scholars of

Hadith amongst the scholars of the seal this is from a scholar called Abdullah al-munawi he's the author of a book called which is a commentary on suyuti's um compilation alphabetical listing of uh of of a very large number of short hadiths from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam it's widely cited so he said that Allah has surely honored the human being more than everything else that he has created he is the cream the quintessence and the purpose of the universe he is the one for whom he has subjugated everything in the heavens and the Earth this

is interesting there's a verse um that that comes that he's alluding to uh when he says this um Allah he says in the Quran don't you see that Allah has subjugated to you for you has both meanings subjugated to you for you for your benefit everything in the heavens and everything in the earth so this is actually now there's uh there's uh some very interesting work that's been done by Michael Denton on The Discovery Institute where he's argued scientifically that human beings have a privileged place in the universe so he says he says that yes

Copernicus displaced human beings from the physical from being the physical center of the universe but when you but when you this is what design this is what the design and the universe shows so any argument from design that you make the fine tuning of the constants of the Universe um the distance of the Earth from the Sun the length of the night and day they all of these arguments they're based on this idea that if the universe had been a little bit different then we would not have existed we would not have existed so there's

and there's an anthropocentric aspect to design arguments and so from this perspective like scientists who make this argument they say that that that what I observe in the universe shows that actually we are special things have been made and there's a book that just came out last year um which got delivered from Amazon just two days ago the miracle of man the fine-tuning of nature for human existence by Michael Denton who you mentioned and if I may on on the back cover can I just read to you um an extraordinary uh review of this book

um he's Michael Denton by the way is senior fellow with The Discovery Institute Center for Science and culture there's a Michael um uh uh Stephen Mayer's um Institute I suppose in America uh Maya and on the back cover it says the following there's a great bit of writing this for years leading scientists and science popularizers have insisted humans are nothing special in the cosmic scheme of things in this important and provocative new book this one the miracle of man renowned biologist Michael Denton argues that otherwise according to Denton the cosmos is stunningly fit not just

for cellular life not just for carbon-based animal life and not even just for air-breathing animals but especially for bipedal land roving technology pursuing creatures of our general physiological design in short the cosmos is specifically fit for creatures like us drawing on discoveries from a myriad of scientific Fields Denton masterfully documents how contemporary science has revived Humanity's special place in the assemblage of a special place in nature I should say this is Reviving this idea of the anthropocentric cosmos as you've just said the man-centered universe the human person as revealed by modern science is no contingent

assemblage of elements an irrelevant afterthought in the of cosmic evolution Denton writes rather our destiny was inscribed in the light of stars and the properties of atoms since the beginning now we know that all nature sings the song of man our seeming Exile from nature is over we now know what the medieval Scholars only believed that the underlying rationality of nature is indeed manifest in human flesh and with this Revelation the delusion of humankind's irrelevance on the cosmic stage has been revoked they were end quote so that's quite a nice bit of prose there um

this is a I mean I can't really show you but there's lots of diagrams and quotes from the latest scientific uh evidence um about um well the Earth we live in and our bodies uh will be breathing circulation oxygen and many other things as well to demonstrate his hypothesis that the fine-tuning of nature it is for human existence itself yeah is I I I highly recommend these books I actually use them and because what he does is he Gathers uh scientific information from the perspective of a religious believer who says that God made this universe

for mankind and so and so he he expresses this view scientifically very very well and I think uh something that that we should it should should we should uh permeate our own scientific education so that's why if we go back to the verse that I was that I was uh just uh expounding um this verse it said that's what it says that that Allah has subjugated to you for your use for your benefit everything in the heavens and everything in the Earth meaning everything and that's where this quote from munawi which the other Hadith Scholars

like pastalani has a commentary of on al-bukhari um um there is a whole host even in the Indian subcontinent mawlana um there um it's very widespread amongst the later Sunni scholarly community that um that human beings are uh that the Universe has been made for human beings um for human beings not to uh subjugate and make uh atomic bombs and Destroy Humanity but to use to worship God and uh and and for our benefit to be grateful to God and to maximize the moral force that we release into the universe so the um so so

there's this verse but then there's also um other revelatory evidence um so the the opening of verses of the Quran that talk about the the creation of Adam is he's a special creation Allah mentions in the Quran that that he created Adam with his own two hands which is a figurative expression meaning that it's it's a very special human beings are a special Divine direct Miraculous Creation Of God um and the fact that all the Angels prostrated to Adam it's mentioned as in the Quran the it's understood by the scholars of the seal as God

telling me and you that look I I I commanded the Angels the purest beings that I've created they don't send to prostrate to your ancestor and I raised your rank you should be grateful you should worship me alone and not take any Partners beside me that's that's that's the opening you know sections of um and and there's also another um angle that I'll just mention very briefly here but um I hope it's also write something more on this um in the future which is that um is that there's scholarly consensus that the prophet Muhammad is

the best of God's creation and the most part everybody agrees and he was a human being and so uh and his humanity is related to his specialness so um so what we uh what we need to do is we need to uh yes we need to affirm that uh it's possible for intelligent extraterrestrial life to exist but I think we need to add the qualification that if it does that um there is a uh it uh we still have a we still have a privileged location because we have theological not location but um we can

because we have theological information that indicates that and how that will be inshallah if they're ever discovered um we will find um ways that will um that will show this could be true so what is everything that you've described mean for these scientific research for extraterrestrial life so basically it means that uh that um the if science if a scientist were to discover the intelligent uh the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life it wouldn't conflict with anything that a the mere existence would not conflict with anything that a Muslim believes in in fact if you just

go back to those slides that you had uh that you had um there there are actually verses in the Quran like like this one um in which Allah he says and from his signs is the creation of the heavens and the Earth and all of the all of the walking creatures so adaba in ancient Arabic is a creature that walks so all of the walking creatures that he has scattered in both of them so this verse it led to uh some uh speculation amongst the executes because in this verse Allah he says that there are

walking creatures that that he has scattered in the heavens and the Earth which seems to indicate that there are creatures that walk on other planets in the universe and some Scholars of tafsir like they actually said it's not far-fetched that God has created walking creatures and they excluded angels from this because Angels um they are not are not walking creatures they they don't walk that's not how they move uh so um but there's other other interpretations of this there's a figurative interpretation which ended up being the dominant in the Muslim scholar tradition which is that

um is that walking creature doesn't literally mean walking creature but it means um anything that's alive and so they included angels in that and they said and they and they consistently interpreted it with human beings being the only on Earth being the only intelligent life form and there's another way to do it too because if you say that uh even if you say that intelligent life only exists on Earth it's still true that the Earth is in the heavens so the statement can still be true the human scattered in in the heavens and the Earth

I.E on Earth it's part of the heavens and the Earth but this digression aside um whether this verse should be figuratively interpreted or literally interpreted um a scientific discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life would solve the problem so it's actually and it's a it's a it's an example of how a scientific discovery can help us interpret a verse of the Quran because the assumption is that the one actually not assumption but uh the the evidence-based conclusion for Muslims because we have evidence that Islam is true is that the one who is speaking in the Quran is

the one who made the universe so uh he made the universe he speaks in the Quran so when I discover things about the universe and he talks about the universe the two things go together so this is actually interesting because it's an example of how Not only would um would a scientific discovery of extraterrestrials not uh go against um anything that we believe in it's actually theologically useful and it helps us understand a particular verse of the Quran um but and the qualification so it's possible for intelligent extraterrestrial life to exist but the the qualification

of uh of intelligent extraterrestrial life being less special than human beings that also it's it's not a it's not a scientific question so whether something is um special or not with God it's something that ultimately he has to tell us and and so that too would lie um uh beyond the scope of scientific inquiry so the conclusion is that uh that uh is is that the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life um would not you know it whichever way it ends up it doesn't um it doesn't conflict with my belief as a Muslim and it could

be theologically useful to help me understand something in a better way well thank you that's uh extremely uh interesting I must say it's a subject I know nothing about apart from watching Alien movies from Hollywood uh which are not necessarily a reliable source of information about anything whatsoever um so thank you for this uh emerging Islamic um science or discipline perhaps a better word of uh EXO theologies there's a new word I wonder who coined this town must do some investigating or find out where this work came from uh this neologism um but um in

conclusion then don't forget to go to chroniccaseforgod.com link in the description below uh where you can uh watch a free video series on chronic Arguments for God's existence uh that will it says silence any atheist and I think it's a very powerful argument actually I can't think of any any logical objections uh to it but people still might not believe it but hey um so thank you uh very much Shake uh Hamza karamani for your time and we look forward to um seeing your book which should be contributed to on on this uh subject out

hopefully not too distant future inshallah thank you so much thanks for having me Paul always a pleasure. until next time