The relationship between religion and science in the New Ilm al-Kalam period (The cases of Muhammad Abduh, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, and Izmirli İsmail Hakki)

The New Ilm al-Kalam movement emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during a period when the Islamic world was increasingly interacting with the West. Intellectuals of the period felt the need to renew the traditional discipline of kalam in both method and content in order to make it compatible with contemporary thought. Within this context, Muhammad Abduh in Egypt, Sayyid Ahmad Khan in India, and Izmirli Ismail Hakki in the Ottoman Empire made significant efforts to reconcile reason, modern philosophical approaches, and science with divine revelation in their respective regions. Each of these thinkers rejected the notion of a fundamental conflict between religion and science, as witnessed in the West, and instead argued that the two fields complement each other from different perspectives. They also sought to reinterpret fundamental concepts of Islam using modern scientific methodologies, contributing to reformative efforts within Islamic thought.