Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life: The Culture of Astrobiology in the Muslim World

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The Muslim world is not commonly associated with science fiction. Religion and repression have often been blamed for a perceived lack of creativity, imagination and future-oriented thought. However, even the most authoritarian Muslim-majority countries have produced highly imaginative accounts on one of the frontiers of knowledge: astrobiology, or the study of life in the universe. This book argues that the Islamic tradition has been generally supportive of conceptions of extra-terrestrial life, and in this engaging account, Jrg Matthias Determann provides a survey of Arabic, Bengali, Malay, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu texts and films, to show how scientists and artists in and from Muslim-majority countries have been at the forefront of the exciting search. Determann takes us to little-known dimensions of Muslim culture and religion, such as wildly popular adaptations of Star Wars and mysterious movements centred on UFOs. Repression is shown to have helped science fiction more than hurt it, with censorship encouraging authors to disguise criticism of contemporary politics by setting plots in future times and on distant planets. The book will be insightful for anyone looking to explore the science, culture and politics of the Muslim world and asks what the discovery of extra-terrestrial life would mean for one of the greatest faiths.

Reviews

This is a rare excursion into a little explored region of Islamic culture Most readers of the West will be riveted by the imaginative and futuristic explorations of possible extra-terrestrial life in the universe by Muslim writers and filmmakers. * AramcoWorld *
Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life provides a kaleidoscopic view of the rich variety of ways in which Muslims have imagined, sought, and encountered life beyond our planet. -- Alireza Doostdar, Assistant Professor, Divinity School and the College, The University of Chicago
This original and much-needed book fills a huge gap in the subject of astrobiology and society. Never before have the relations between astrobiology and Muslim science, culture, and politics been rendered in such vivid detail and with such solid scholarship. A must read for historians, theologians, and the general public interested in both Muslim culture and alien life. -- Steven J. Dick, Former NASA Chief Historian, Former Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology
Jrg Determann presents readers with an engaging, in-depth and scholarly investigation into the ways in which Islamic writers, over the centuries, have written, thought about and engaged with the concept of extraterrestrial life. Determann breaks much new ground and makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the history of the relationship between out-of-this-world ideas and religion, in particular Islam. -- David Weintraub, Professor of Astronomy and Director of Program in Communication of Science & Technology, Vanderbilt University
Jrg Matthias Determann ... has given us a well-researched tour, remarkably broad in scope, of different manifestations of sf and extraterrestrial life in the Muslim world writ large, from Morocco all the way to Indonesia. * Science Fiction Studies *

Author Bio

Jrg Matthias Determann is Associate Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar. He is the author of three books published by I.B.Tauris: Space Science and the Arab World (2018), Researching Biology and the Evolution of the Gulf States (2015) and Historiography in Saudi Arabia (2014).