Al Jazeera discussion on London Muslim medics and evolution

by Salman Hameed

Last week, biologist Steve Jones gave an interview to the Sunday Times in which he said that some of his Muslim students (not a majority) have walked out of his biology classes when he addresses the topic of evolution. Now, this is an interesting observation based on his personal experience. However, the story took a life of its own and the blogosphere and even couple of other British newspapers were suggesting that Muslim medics are boycotting evolution classes in elite medical schools in London. Notice, how "some Muslim medics boycotting" turned into "Muslim medics boycotting". I will have a separate post on the media coverage of this and some suggestions on how to cover such evolution-related stories (in the mean time, you can read this article from earlier this year - also about another controversy involving London: Fallen Angels, Risen Apes: Covering Islam and Evolution).

Al Jazeera also weighed in today on its show The Stream. I was one of the guests along with philosopher Stephen Law from Oxford and Imam Joe Bradford from Jacksonville, Florida. We actually had a pretty good discussion and I appreciated the comments of both Stephen and Joe about what our attitude towards science and evolution should be (the only exception was in the post-show discussion, when Imam Joe was ambiguous about the possibility of human evolution). I also think that the host, Imran Garda, had done his homework and hence the level of questions was quite good. Even the selection of Twitter and Facebook comments was good, and the result, I think, was a fruitful and civil conversation.

Here is the video (by the way, the quality of Skype turned out to be quite good!):