Dr. Asad Ahmed is an associate professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in the USA.

Ahmed specializes in early Islamic social history and pre-modern Islamic intellectual history. He holds a special focus on the rationalist disciplines, such as philosophy, logic, and astronomy.

His current focus is the period ca. 1200-1900 CE, especially with reference to the Indian subcontinent. He is the author of The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Hijaz (2011). In addition to, Avicenna’s Deliverance: Logic (2011), and “Historical and Contemporary Muslim Engagements with Science,” 2015 – Hampshire College.

Scientific Enterprising

The Muslim World is currently going through enormous changes. This isn’t entirely surprising, as more than half the population is under the age of 25.

This is also the first generation to have been fully affected by the spread of mass education and the global technological revolution of the past two decades.

It’s not a leap to predict that this generation will interpret Islam and shape its relation to the modern world for decades to come. Therefore, we expect the global concerns and technological developments to influence these interpretations.

In this 20-minute video, Ahmed talks to TVIslamScience about the scientific enterprise during the pre-modern Muslim World. An era when the Muslim World has excelled in countless scientific disciplines.