Iranian thinker
Hossein Kamkar
Hossein KamkarLogic and Philosophy of Religion (Science and Religion)Iranian
Life and Thought
Hossein Kamkar is a young Iranian cleric and researcher working at the intersection of science and religion, logic, and Islamic jurisprudential theory. After winning a gold medal at Iran's National Physics Olympiad and earning a degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, he entered the seminary and also pursued graduate studies in "Science and Religion" at Shahid Beheshti University. He is known both for public debates on the relationship between science and religious belief and for academic articles on the logical formalization of Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh).
Hossein Kamkar is a graduate of Allameh Helli (1) High School in Tehran and won a gold medal at Iran's National Physics Olympiad in 2006-07 (1385 SH). He subsequently completed a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology, but redirected his path toward seminary studies and religious scholarship, advancing to Level 4 (sath 4) of the seminary curriculum in Transcendent Theosophy (hekmat-e mota'aliyeh). Alongside his seminary training, he also pursued a master's degree in "Science and Religion" at Shahid Beheshti University.
Kamkar's intellectual work follows two main threads. The first is his public debates and discussions on the relationship between empirical science—particularly physics—and religious belief, in which he critiques purely naturalistic explanations of the world and argues that findings of modern physics are compatible with belief in God and revelation.
The second is his academic research in logic and Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh). In a co-authored article with Fatemeh Sadat Nabavi, Zinat Ayatollahi, and Alireza Shahbazi—"A Critique of Abolghasem Fanaei's View on the Authority of Rational Conjectures," published in the journal Manteq-Pazhuhi—he critically examines Fanaei's reformist proposal regarding the role of rational conjecture (zann-e aqli) in jurisprudential reasoning (ijtihad), arguing that the standpoint of knowledge differs from the standpoint of judgment on this question.
Alongside his scholarly and seminary activities, Kamkar has for years taught and advised Physics Olympiad students at Tehran's gifted-student high schools (including the Allameh Helli schools) and is the author of the textbook "Electric Circuit Theory in the Physics Olympiad."