“Say: Travel through the Earth and deeply observe how God did originate the creation; then God produces the next creation; surely God has power over all things” (Qur’an 29:19-20)

Welcome and May the peace and blessings of God be upon you (in Arabic)

"In our field, research could work and it could not work. You have to take bold decisions. But are you doing them for science or for something else? It's the same with Faith. It's all linked."

Dr. Khalid Shah

If you’ve ever played with or heard of Legos, you are familiar with genes. Genes are the building blocks of our bodies. Since 1865 with Gregor Mendel (1), genes were considered the blueprints of our current body machinery, inherited and unchangeable. Like poker our genetic makeup is the hand we’re dealt. We can’t choose our parents or ancestors, but unless chance changed a gene (more accurately, a nucleotide) here or there, you either lucked out with good health, got played out by a chronic illness or folded. This may make sense to those who believe in determinism (2), but to those who accept free will and self-determination, this can be hard to accept.

Philosophy and science share a common border, leaving room for healthy debate. Unless enough facts prove a concept into scientific theory (3), science is an arena for educated debate, especially when the game changes completely. CRISPR has been changing the game for scientific experimentation and now, challenging the idea of our supposed unchangeable blueprints. Dr. Khalid Shah calls it the “cusp of innovation.”

Performing research at Harvard’s Center for Stem Cell Therapeutics and Imaging, Dr. Shah has been on the forefront of CRISPR technology. CRISPR is Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. More simply, it’s advanced cutting and pasting. A protein complex works with a marker (RNA sequences) that identifies specific gene sequences in the genetic code and cleaves (cuts it out) it from the genetic code. Dr. Shah and his team are taking this one step further to fight cancer, specifically for those cancers that have metastasized, spread outside of the original tumor. Like a Trojan horse, the hope is that the cancer cells that are manipulated by CRISPR technology will be programmed to return to the original tumor and attack the tumor cells, fighting the cancer (4).

“Neither is it possible to discover the more remote and deeper parts of any science, if you stand but upon the level of the same science, and ascend not to a higher science”

-Sir Francis Bacon

Going back to the healthy debate, one can argue that the cutting-edge requires a lot of faith, and another can argue the need for further scientific endeavor. For Dr. Shah, working with science and faith is not a foreign concept as both contribute to reaching the horizon and beyond. As a Muslim, Dr. Shah believes in three main concepts: fairness, integrity and fearlessness. “As a Muslim, is not about the number of prayers, but were you fair to yourself and others around you?” He promotes personal responsibility, personally investing in his own scientific research and persevering no matter how hard or long the challenge. He respects the community of people around him, working collaboratively with a team no matter where they come from or their religion, because the goal is helping people. “One thing I’ve learned is that it’s never about me,” he remarks. “If we do the research well, we can cure cancer.” Emphasis on “we.” It takes integrity to persevere and maintain your positions and faith, and not flip-flop the next day. “Are you fearless? In our field, we have to take bold decisions. It could work or not. It’s all linked. Faith teaches you the same thing. When you have faith, you should not have fear.”

“Soon We will show them Our signs in the horizons and their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses all things?” (Qur’an 41:53)

This reflects the Islamic tradition of faith and science. Baghdad was the home of the “House of Wisdom,” (Bayt-ul-Hikma) during the 6th and 7th centuries. This was an eminent center of thought, research and debate in the Muslim world (4). Open to women and men of different faiths, languages and regions, the House was an eclectic place of higher education, including translation of old Greek texts, from Galen and Hippocrates. This was a center of debate, evaluating past reflections and forging the path to progress. These Muslim accomplishments are predicated on tradition and teachings going back to the Prophet.

“The Prophet created a ripple in 23 years and it’s still lasting now and has an impact now. We have bigger responsibilities on our shoulders as Muslims. Everything you do can have good value.” (Dr. Khalid Shah). As science pushes onward toward the horizon and as faith drives us from beyond, what ripples will you make to better the world around you?

“Read in the name of your Lord, who created man from a clot. Read, and your Lord is the Most Generous, who taught by then pen.” (Qur’an 96:1-4).

“If mankind is to profit freely from the small and sporadic crop of the heroically gifted it produces, it will have to cultivate the delicate art of handling ideas. Psychology is now able to tell us with reasonable assurance that the most influential obstacle to freedom of thought is fear; and fear which can with inimitable art disguise itself as caution, or sanity, or reasoned skepticism, or on occasion even as courage” (William Trotter, 1987)