In the August International Humanist News the title of Professor Taner Edis’s latest book was given wrongly. We apologise to Professor Edis for the mistake. The book is An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam (Prometheus Books, 2007).

We can recommend this book to any readers who are interested in the relationship between Islam and all forms of science: the collision between a world view based on revelation and one based on experiment, observation and deduction and the construction and testing of theories. The author looks at the approach not just to the physical sciences but also the human sciences. Muslim reactions to science range from straight denial, such as creationism, through strange attempts to show that all science can already be found in the Quran, to secular scientists who feel able to relegate religion to the private sphere. A majority of Muslims are hostile to secularisation, and as a result some Muslim thinkers admire societies that they see as favouring religion, even if they formally separate religion and state. The author thinks it unlikely that Muslim history will follow the Western example, especially if political Islam does not end up as a clear-cut failure.