Miracle in the context of religion and science (The case of Farid Wajdi)

As is known, Muslim scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries, while encountering with Western claims of conflict between reason and religion, were in an endeavour to prove that Islam is compatible with reason by means of prioritizing it in interpreting the religion. For this purpose, they struggled to explain theological issues such as belief in God, prophecy, and miracles depending on rational data. However, a set of interpretations that were put forth to explain miracles has overshadowed their extraordinary and incapacitating features. In this study, the understanding of miracle as emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries is examined comparatively by focusing mainly on the Egyptian thinker Farid Wajdi. The first chapter addresses Farid Wajdi's life and the characteristics of his era. The second chapter studies the classical understanding of miracles, whereas the third chapter traces and evaluates the changes that took place in this understanding in the 19th and 20th centuries comparatively on the basis of Farid Wajdi's thoughts. Keywords: Ferid Vecdi, miracle, fantastic, prophethood, Islam, science, causality.