Can Science Alone Overcome Patriarchy and Tribalism with Jared Morningstar (Part 1)

In this episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Sr. Ilia Delio speaks with independent scholar Jared Morningstar about the transformative potential of science-informed spirituality. Drawing from Islamic philosophy, including the thought of Muhammad Iqbal, Jared explores how process thought might bridge religious divides and invite a deeper interfaith convergence—one grounded in creativity, ecological awareness, and scientific integrity.

Together, Sr. Ilia and Jared reflect on the long but fractured relationship between science and religion. Why have these traditions, which once collaborated, become estranged? What would it take to move beyond entrenched patriarchal and tribal patterns—particularly those that continue to shape the experiences of women within religious life?

Later in the episode, the conversation turns to the enduring role of tradition and the search for meaning in a complex, pluralistic world.

ABOUT JARED MORNINGSTAR

"Almost everything worthwhile which has accumulated in any religious tradition was, in its own time, a striking ingression of fresh creativity—a creativity, of course, in contact with the self-same wellspring of inspiration at the root of the founding moments of the tradition in question.”

Jared Morningstar is an independent scholar with academic interests in philosophy of religion, Islamic studies, comparative religion, metamodern spirituality, and interfaith dialogue. His work in these areas seeks to offer robust responses to issues of inter-religious conflict, contemporary nihilism, and the "meaning crisis," among other things. Jared graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2018 with degrees in religion and Scandinavian studies and currently works for the Center for Process Studies and the Psychedelic Medicine Association. 

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Transcript

Robert: Welcome to Hunger for Wholeness. Today, Ilia talks with Jared Morningstar, process thinker and independent scholar of Islam and metamodernism. They delve into Islamic philosophy, highlighting figures like the philosopher-poet Muhammad Iqbal, and explore how process thought can serve as a bridge between traditions, creating a space for religious convergence rooted in scientific integrity. Later in the episode, Ilia and Jared reflect on whether a scientific worldview could offer a path beyond patriarchy and tribalism, especially as it relates to the experiences of women.

Ilia: This afternoon, we are really happy to have with us Jared Morningstar, a young up-and-coming scholar who has written quite a bit already in areas of process thought, Islamic thought, really in metamodernism. So I'd love to talk with you about some of these really fascinating areas. So Jared, just for the sake of getting to know you a little bit, can you tell our listeners that yourself and where you're coming from, what sparked some of these interests?

Jared: Yeah, happy to do so. I work for the Center for Process Studies, a process philosophy and theology research and education organization really grounded in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead. But more and more, we're trying to broaden the tent. And so certainly Teilhard is in the mix for us as well now, and many non-Western thinkers as well. So yeah, my background is in religious studies, especially Islamic studies. So I did a BA in religious studies that I completed back in 2018, so a bit ago now. And for that degree, I did a lot of coursework in Islamic studies, but also some Hindu and Buddhist studies, a lot of interreligious comparative religions and sort of coursework. 

And so, yeah, that's really my initial grounding in the study of religion. And since then, I've just been operating pretty independently and continuing to nurture some of my own research interests and collaborate with interesting folks, certainly in this process community, but also in, yeah, meta-modern Islamic studies communities. So it's been an adventure.

Ilia: Very interesting. So your studies in Islamic studies and then Asian religions, and not entirely I mean, Islamic studies I take under the monotheistic umbrella and Asian studies I take under the, what I call, deep relationality and consciousness umbrella. So let me just focus on the Islamic studies first because I think you've done some writing and certainly some collaboration in this area of Islamic studies and process thought. How do you see those two areas in relationship?

Jared: Yeah, it's a new sort of intersection here that's getting some attention as of late. And so it's an exciting, exciting space to be in to be one of the early collaborators working on what is an Islamic process philosophy, Islamic process theology, what do those maybe look like? And what are the sources for those discourses, both within Islamic traditions themselves, but then within these contemporary process traditions, Whitehead, Teilhard, these sorts of thinkers. So really, a lot of folks will point to the South Asian philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal, who's really better known as a poet as maybe the first Islamic process thinker. And certainly, if you read his major work, the reconstruction of religious thought in Islam, you see citations of folks like Whitehead, like Bergson, like Samuel Alexander. So some of these major process and evolutionary names, that's a touchstone for a lot of people. 

So there's a lot of Iqbal scholars, like my colleague Farhan Shah, who are really trying to continue his project forward, modify it in certain ways, bring it into deeper dialogue with other process traditions, and really ground Islamic process thought in the early pioneering work of Muhammad Iqbal. He's also one of the founding sort of political figures of modern day Pakistan. So it was really interesting, interesting individual and beautiful, beautiful poetry as well.

Ilia: Sufi tradition? Is he Sufi?

Jared: He had a complex relationship with Sufism. In fact, there's a lot of criticism of Sufism in his writings for what he saw as too much of a say world renouncing mysticism. So a major concept for Iqbal is this idea of khudi, which often gets translated as self. And so he's got this existentialist, like self-affirmation vitalist sort of streak to him. And at least his reception of Sufism sees it as too transcendentalist, too mystical in a pejorative sense of, as opposed to being able to engage in the world and these self developmental and community developmental processes. But he's also someone who's writing in this context of Western colonialism and really encountering the technological might of these European nations and contrasting that with some of those situations in South Asia and wanting to find a basis for the Muslim community as a global community to really be able to, yeah, self-affirm, unite together in these very practical ways that are nonetheless infused with spirituality. He actually saw the Sufi traditions as a hindrance to that, perhaps. But I'd say that there were some ways that his reception of Sufism was a little off the mark, a little colored in certain ways. And so I would personally go a slightly different direction there.

Ilia: What's interesting about, if I understand you correctly on Iqbal, so my very limited understanding of Islamic theology and philosophy goes back to the Middle Ages with Avicenna and Averroes, who were very influential, and Thomas Aquinas. So why I would find the world embracing a process idea almost opposite of what I thought was the Islamic position of essentialism, that God is this essential being, divine being, who is ontologically or radically distinct from created being. 

So Avicenna's notion of creation as this divine being or power that is the efficient or the operative cause behind creation. But Thomas Aquinas picked that up and that developed his idea of participation, so we're participating in divine being, divine life. But it also gave rise to, and this is where I have a little, you're going to have to correct me because I was under the impression that even for Avicenna, and Averroes had his own version of things, that there would be no real relationship between God and world, precisely because God is ontologically other than or distinct from world. And yet process philosophy is really based on the mutuality between God and world. So how are those two things reconciled, maybe for Iqbal or modern Islamic philosophers?

Jared: I'll take that a couple of ways. Let's start with Iqbal here. He really goes back to the Quran, especially, and tries to reground Islamic theological thinking right in a lot of the scriptural materials prior to this real uptake of the Greek philosophical tradition, first by people like al-Kindi, al-Farabi, these early Islamic philosophers, but then really developed by people like Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd. And so he definitely draws on this rich Islamic philosophical tradition, but He really wants to start with some different metaphysical priors than what we got both in the West and in the Islamic world from this Hellenistic philosophical heritage. And so he's able to, through Quranic exegesis, find a bit more grounding for ideas of mutuality, reciprocity, dynamism in the divine life, these classic process sorts of ideas.

Ilia: Because in a sense we're seeing a similarity from the Christian side of things, like Robert Nicastro's work on recovering scripture and science. So a God who is from the beginning in deep relationship with us, a God who cares and this type of thing. So in both situations, whether it's, say, for the Judeo-Christian position or the Islamic position, it's returning to scripture helps us recover a more authentic God-world relationship than the distortions that were brought about by Greek metaphysics. Is that correct?

Jared: Yeah, that's certainly Iqbal's position anyway, and he's very explicit in that regard of, okay, there were some benefits perhaps to taking up this Greek philosophical heritage to start doing some really robust intellectual theological exposition of Islamic positions. But yes, it also definitely led to some ossification, some rigidification of theological dogma and doctrine that perhaps doesn't serve us anymore. So I think in the Islamic context, though, the Neo-Platonic strand is perhaps a little more pronounced in the mainstream theological tradition than at least many forms of Western Christianity. 

So Ibn Sina, especially, is certainly in that lineage. And it is an interesting historical quirk here that the Enneads of Plotinus were erroneously attributed to Aristotle in the Islamic translation movement. So you have this integrated Aristotle Plotinus figure that is really the basis of a lot of peripatetic and mystical philosophy in the Islamic world. So thinking of that as the same author ended up integrating a little more of these relational and mystical elements, even in the same more rationalist philosophy. And that really starts to really really reaches its zenith in a certain way in Ibn Sina, and then you have the subsequent critique by the major Islamic theologian Al-Ghazali, who nonetheless is likewise drawing upon this Greek philosophical lineage and the Islamic interpretation and embellishment of it to give this critique. 

But then you see the Sufi mystics, especially really continuing on these mystical and philosophical discourses. And that's really where I think you can find a lot of the existing relational processual elements in Islamic tradition. So someone like the Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi, you can certainly find senses of divine intimacy, reciprocity, all sorts of these juicy process themes in his corpus without any problem. And so that's part of the Neoplatonic heritage, but part of the creativity of these Islamic thinkers themselves.

Ilia: Whitehead himself developed process theology by paying attention to contemporary science and especially the new physics like quantum physics. So you know, so his work definitely represents this bridging between science and religion. Where, may I ask is Islam or Islamic religion on the question of science and religion? And do you see efforts being made to integrate science and religion into a coherent framework?

Jared: There's a lot of work happening right now, definitely. I'd say science and religion is a major topic in Islamic studies. And even for lay people who are theologically, religiously, and intellectually interested, really thinking about and grappling with some of these topics in parallel, but also distinct ways from similar work Christian theologians and lay people as well are doing. That's an interesting, it's an interesting context, because certainly the Islamic tradition in these periods we're talking about with people like Ibn Sina was deeply, deeply scientific, and it was some of the pioneering scientific work of these Arab Muslim thinkers that was then being taken up in the West and eventually laid some foundations for the scientific revolution in this part of the world that we're all very familiar with. 

So in certain ways, there's existing materials in the Islamic tradition to really think scientifically in Islamic ways. But I mean, of course, this needs to be brought into conversation and dialogue with the most contemporary sciences. And that ought to be a two way dialogue. So not only should Islamic thinkers be trying to understand, say, the significance of a quantum paradigm for theological understandings, but likewise, what can an Islamic type of metaphysical perspective say to contemporary science on its metaphysical basis itself? I mean, more and more, we're running into limits and downsides of the mechanistic materialist paradigm, and that's certainly not the paradigm that these great Islamic scientists were operating under. And so, are there ways that that work itself can be re-engaged, re-revived, brought into a new key that may have something really valuable to say to scientific discourses? And what would a contemporary Islamic science look like? We don't have the answers to those questions yet, but that's where I'm really excited to see what work can get done.

Robert: Historically, there have been centuries of cooperation between religion and science. Why then do they so often seem like adversaries today? Next, Ilia invites Jared to share how he envisions religion uniting in service of the future. Later, they explore the role of tradition within a scientific worldview, particularly for women shaped by patriarchal contexts.

Ilia: Even the medieval Islamic philosophers had a scientific outlook. And I think if I'm correct, that they're the ones really who brought Aristotle to the West. What we have is really their interpretations and their translations of Aristotle that allowed the West to take up Aristotle's philosophy, which was very important for science. So what's really interesting, here's what I wonder, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this. 

Okay, so we have Islamic scholars beginning now to grapple with Islamic religious beliefs and modern science. We have Christian theologians doing the same. We have Jewish scholars doing the same. Do you think we should all get together at some point? How do you think... Let me ask you this in another way. Should our priority be first religion and how religion in a sense is reconciled with modern science? Or should our priority be the one cosmos that we share and how this may be interpreted within these various religious traditions? Like how would you, if you were to take the next steps for the 21st century, like what might you suggest for these various religious traditions to, because one of the things I find is we're tribal still we're all our little tribes and one's thinking about this here and one's thinking about this here, but we are sharing the same problems planet. And a part of it, how do we get beyond our tribal boundaries into a shared vision, a collective vision? What's your thoughts there?

Jared: I think deeply inter-religious, ecumenical type of engagement is much more towards the leading edge of thinking these deep metaphysical, scientific, theological, existential types of problems that are really urgent, it turns out. We've got all kinds of crises that are intersecting in complex and reinforcing ways. And so certainly the solution space to that is likewise going to involve a much more complex web of interrelated and reinforcing types of perspectives, projects, aspirations, etc. But yeah, we certainly are still in a place where tribalism reigns to a significant degree. And so I think some of that slightly more siloed or in a more positive sense, specific niche type of work will still have a place, but hopefully that can be oriented to getting people up to speak and to be able to participate in that more global and multi-perspectival type of project. And so, yeah, that's my hope. Definitely in particular in the Islamic context, it's important to remain historically minded with exactly how these things have manifested and the ways that there's residuals of some of these historical processes to this day. I'm specifically thinking of the colonial experience. 

So scientific revolution happens endogenous to Europe, it creates incredible disruption and destabilization on social, political, all kinds of axes and takes a long to really be resolved, and it's still unresolved. There's still ways that the scientific paradigm is causing these kinds of destabilizations, disruptions. We're still navigating this. And that was when it happened from within the society in a much more organic way. And Islamic societies did not have that experience in modernity. They had the experience of the technological fruits of contemporary science being weaponized for colonial projects against their sort of organic societies. And so that's an even more complex and noxious experience of coming to grapple with the scientific worldview and the concrete products that can be produced in this world. And so you've seen some extreme reactions in multiple directions from Muslim thinkers. And some of that is a very reactionary traditionalism that tries to reject scientific viewpoints, scientific sort of value, and really try to return in this crude, naive way to much more narrow, puritanical, religious values that don't really see a place for science. There's not really a space for dialogue there. 

Or you see the opposite, where there's a very intense wholesale uptake of the mechanistic type of scientific paradigm of this is what the European conquerors we're able to use to achieve so much power and have such an impact. If we want to raise our conditions and be competitive in a global way, this is what our deep focus must be too. And the religious, spiritual stuff, it's the secondary importance. It can do what it does in a much more personal, privatized way. But the real game in town is scientific, technological progress. And again, not really a space for dialogue. But both of those more fundamentalist type of perspectives really are coming out of a colonial context. So trying to deal with them in a more isolated ahistorical way is going to be difficult. And so, yeah, taking a more holistic understanding that brings that history into the conversation is going to be very important.

Ilia: I think all that you're saying is, I would agree as well. Although I do think contemporary science is really moving, especially on the point of, say, quantum physics and even our cosmology today, certainly beyond the mechanistic science. And I think a lot of scientists grapple with the fact that science is not so easy, it's not like Legos, it's not like just simple fundamentals we can mathematically work out. And so I think science itself has opened up to a new realm of mystery or the unknown that scientists themselves don't know what to do with. But I think we're seeing more and more that science cannot answer our ultimate questions and it simply cannot provide and satisfy the deepest yearning of the human heart. So I mean, it's slow, but we're waking up to the fact that we need that other religious dimension of our lives. But yet there's... So I agree that it's interesting even among the Islamic side of things, there are some who's like, "Well, let's just... Who cares about science? It doesn't really affect us on a day-to-day basis. Go back to the fundamental laws of Islam or whatever.” 

And it's interesting. We live in this yin-yang of these religious traditions. For example, in the Catholic Church, we just elected a new pope. And it's pretty exciting because he's a graduate of Illinois University and an Augustinian friar. And honestly, he looks like a very, very good person who will do well in the job. But I couldn't help but notice how very male and patriarchal the whole thing is. And very much in terms of the ritual, the dress, the code of behavior, all from an imperial cultic type of patriarchal culture. So for all the progress we've made, whether theologically or scientifically, there is this intransigence. We're not going to change this any time soon. And Islam, quite honestly, the role of women still is a little bit behind. 

And so while we have the critiques of power in these various traditions, it seems to be that a very simple solution or one step forward would be the full inclusion of all peoples within the communities of faith or communities of discussion. I mean, what's your take on... I always wonder, I mean, how much do we stay with tradition and how much do we accept that that was a beautiful time in the past and now we need to, in a sense, create new traditions or find new ways forward? Where are you on that question?

Jared: It's definitely an important one, but it also requires a lot of care, a lot of genuine historical knowledge and being able to take in experiences of the relevant living people who are impacted by these things. And so it can be tricky to wade into often because very typically, at least in Western discourse, you have all kinds of presuppositions about women in Islam and these sorts of things. And a lot of the time they can be really lacking context, really lacking contact with the lived experiences of Islamic Muslim women. 

And so one thing I would emphasize is that Islamic history is quite broad and diverse, and it's not nearly as patriarchal as one who lacks familiarity with the tradition may assume at the outset, especially having, say, a typical progressive reaction to something like the hijab as being this symbol of controlling women, oppressing women, these sorts of things. For example, there's nothing in Islamic law or norms classically that says a woman cannot be a scholar. A woman can absolutely be a jurist, a spiritual teacher, can be a participant in these lineages of authority for these various types of leadership in the Islamic community. And women's education has historically been important in Islamic countries. Prior to that, the broader Islamic world.

Ilia: Do you see women's leadership in religious communities or politically?

Jared: Things again have gotten very complex in modernity with the colonial experience and how that has shifted religious norms, cultural norms. And so in some ways, contemporary Muslim women have ended up with less opportunities and status consideration as a result of a rising fundamentalism, puritanical sort of perspective. But that's something that arose very much in response to modernity, in response to the colonial experience and various Eurocentric paradigms that were hoisted upon the Muslim world very violently. For example, there was traditional Islamic education, and they were trying to modernize it in the style of the British or something, and they tried to separate men and women into different university tracks, and then that led to disenfranchising and de-investing from the women's religious education. And so there's ways that things that we might assume is, "Oh, this is this like outdated Islamic tribalistic thing.” Actually, some of those have a root in a colonial experience that had different European patriarchal norms that got subsumed into the Islamic world in a regressive way. 

And so there's lots of examples like that. Again, not the traditional Islamic society was unpatriarchal. There's plenty of ways that this already had a grip. But these are the kinds of historical nuances I think it's really important to have a sense of as you're getting into some of these questions. But yeah, in terms of some of the classically important leadership roles in religious life, and here I'm thinking specifically of the juristic positions, the mufti and the spiritual leadership, the sheikh or the sheikah for a female spiritual leader. These were certainly positions that, at least in potential, were fully open to women participants, though of course there were barriers to these kinds of full participations. 

One particular role that traditional Islam has barred women from is that of the imam. And so that specifically, though, just means the person who leads the prayer. So for example, if I am with three of my Muslim friends, and it is time for us to pray, one of the four of us is the one who stands at the front and sort of leads this liturgical practice. That person is the imam in our context. It can also have this sense of the pastoral figure leading a mosque community. In that sense, having that pastoral role, that is something that a woman leader could do, but she wouldn't be able to lead the congregational prayer. The exception here is if the group of Muslims is all women, of course a woman can take that role and be the imamah for that group. But as soon as it's mixed gender, it is just the male gender that is taken to be allowed to lead the congregational prayer.

Ilia: Not too far from the Catholics.

Jared: Yeah. It's a little more messy, it's a little more organic than some may assume from the outside, but there's options for hopefully moving things in a more positive direction. As a really specific example, anytime a mixed gender group of Muslims is praying together, traditionally it is understood that men and women ought to pray separately rather than say a man and a woman side by side or there's a woman in front of me as a man in a row of prayers. And the most traditional way to do this was to have the women praying behind the men in the congregational prayer. 

There is, in fact, a feminist interpretation of this practice, though, and that is, well, would you as a woman needing to be bowing and prostrating feel all that comfortable knowing that there's a bunch of men behind you, being able to really kind look at you in these intimate gestures. And I think there's something to that, but nonetheless, it can also take a very patriarchal sort of form. And especially nowadays, especially in the West, where a lot of Muslim communities don't have a ton of capital, don't have a ton of financial resources, and are just trying to plant some newer mosques in their communities. These are small spaces, they're very makeshift, and man, the women's section can be a real drag in these contexts.

Robert: Next time, Ilia asks, "What is metamodernism?" and explores how an ecological perspective can foster greater unity and convergence, moving beyond patriarchal and tribal traditions. I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for listening.