Presented by Zia H Shah MD

Abstract

This report provides brief biographical profiles of Omer Suleiman and Zia H Shah MD (the author of The Glorious Quran and Science site), then compares and contrasts their publicly documented positions on evolution and common ancestry. The evidence base for Omer Suleiman’s views is constrained by limited accessible primary material: the full transcript/audio of the referenced video could not be retrieved through available sources, so the analysis relies on the video’s published metadata and a contemporaneous critical commentary about it.  In contrast, Zia H Shah MD’s views are extensively documented in a coherent series of articles arguing (i) common ancestry (including through comparative anatomy) and (ii) “guided evolution,” often framed through themes such as viral contributions to genomes, placental biology, and the inference from beauty in nature to God.  To ground the discussion in mainstream evolutionary biology, the report also references peer‑reviewed literature on universal common ancestry and endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), including their genomic prevalence and their exaptation (co‑option) in mammalian placentation. 

Biographical snapshots

Omer Suleiman (often spelled “Omar” in institutional biographies) is a U.S.-based Muslim scholar and public educator who is founder and president of Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research.  His public biography describes training in traditional Islamic studies, a PhD (completed in 2023) from International Islamic University Malaysia, authorship of works including Allah Loves… and Meeting Muhammad ﷺ, and additional roles such as founding director of MUHSEN, adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University, and resident scholar at Valley Ranch Islamic Center.  His bio also notes he was born and raised in New Orleans and is of Palestinian heritage. 

Zia H Shah MD is a practicing physician in Upstate New York and the primary author/editorial voice behind “The Glorious Quran and Science” website, which describes itself as a Qur’an-and-science commentary and a collection of articles “mostly by Zia H Shah.”  The site’s “About” page characterizes him as chief editor of The Muslim Times and reports that this platform has “more than 36,000 followers” on X/Twitter, alongside a large body of writing on Islam, Christianity, secularism, and religion-and-science themes.  An additional profile at Association of Ahmadi Muslim Scientists describes him as practicing sleep disorders and pulmonary medicine in Upstate New York, and also notes a leadership role connected to The Muslim Sunrise (as “Chair of Religion and Science”). 

Omer Suleiman’s views on evolution and common ancestry in the referenced video

What can be directly documented from accessible primary sources

The directly accessible, primary material about the referenced video is limited to its published metadata (title, channel attribution, date, and a short description). The video is titled “The Evolution Debate and Ibn Khaldun’s Racism – Sh. Omar Suleiman” and is described as a talk about Ibn Khaldun, the way “the evolution debate uses him,” his racism, and the claim that Greek influence contributed to racism. 

From that description alone, the best-supported inference is that the video’s central purpose is not a systematic account of evolutionary mechanisms or genomic evidence for common ancestry, but rather an intellectual-historical and ethical critique: how an influential Muslim thinker is invoked in public “evolution debate” discourse, and how racialized ideas are entangled with those invocations. 

Secondary characterization of his stance on human evolution

A secondary source authored by Zia H Shah MD on a different platform (The Muslim Times) frames the same video as “denying human evolution from apes” and states disagreement with Omer Suleiman’s “claims … about evolution,” but it does not provide a verbatim transcript of the video content in its accessible text and it does not, by itself, establish the full chain of reasoning Omer Suleiman used to reach his position. 

Evidentiary limitation that affects “detailed” summarization

Because the full audio/video content and transcript were not retrievable through accessible sources in this environment, a “detail-level” summary (e.g., mapping specific premises → intermediate conclusions → final claim about human common ancestry) cannot be responsibly reconstructed without introducing speculation. 

Zia H Shah MD’s views on common ancestry and guided evolution

Common ancestry as a scientific conclusion

In Zia H Shah MD’s article explicitly framed as evidence for evolution and common ancestry, he presents standard evidences used in evolutionary education. For example, under “Comparative Anatomy,” he argues that homologous structures across vertebrates—specifically the shared bone-plan in forelimbs (humerus, radius, ulna, and associated bones) across humans, whales, bats, and birds—are best explained by shared ancestry and divergent adaptation. 

To situate this within broader evolutionary biology, peer‑reviewed evolutionary literature treats universal or deep common ancestry as a central organizing hypothesis that can be statistically evaluated using molecular sequence data. A notable example is a 2010 Nature paper that reports a model‑selection approach across conserved proteins and concludes that the tested models “overwhelmingly support” universal common ancestry (while also discussing complications such as horizontal gene transfer). 

Guided evolution as a theological-philosophical interpretation of evolutionary history

Zia H Shah MD’s distinctive move is to combine acceptance of evolutionary continuity (common ancestry) with a strong interpretive claim that the process is “guided,” not “blind.” In his recent writing on endogenous retroviruses, he explicitly frames guided evolution as supported by the claim that “viral integration and re‑purposing are not random events” and associates this with the concept of “Natural Genetic Engineering,” described as cells acting as agents capable of actively modifying DNA in response to stress. 

This “guided” framing is not a minor aside but appears as a recurring thematic project: the site hosts dedicated topical collections labeled “Placenta” and “Guided evolution,” implying an organized effort to develop the argument across multiple essays and angles rather than as a single isolated claim. 

Viruses, genomes, and placental biology as key exhibits

Zia H Shah MD repeatedly uses endogenous retroviruses as a central exhibit in his guided-evolution case, emphasizing that substantial portions of the human genome trace to ancient viral integrations and that these sequences can become biologically functional. 

This theme aligns with mainstream genomics in at least two ways:

First, the quantitative claim that human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) constitute a substantial fraction of human genomic material is widely discussed in the literature. For example, a 2024 open-access editorial review states that HERVs account for “up to 8%–10%” of the host genome, and it describes typical ERV structures (LTRs and retroviral ORFs) and their frequent degradation into solo LTRs. 

Second, the placental connection is real and well documented in evolutionary biology: multiple mammalian lineages have “captured” retroviral envelope genes that were subsequently co‑opted (“exapted”) for placental functions involving cell fusion (syncytiotrophoblast formation). A 2015 PNAS paper, for example, reports a fusogenic syncytin gene in a marsupial lineage, interprets it as retroviral in origin, and frames it as evidence that syncytin capture and placental exaptation occur across major mammalian clades.  A separate biomedical study (2020) notes that syncytin (an envelope glycoprotein derived from a HERV family) is expressed on placental trophoblasts and can mediate cell fusion—here discussed in the specific context of facilitating cell-to-cell HIV transmission into placental tissues. 

Where Zia H Shah MD diverges from standard evolutionary framing is in the interpretive step: he treats viral “co‑option,” placental complexity, and related genomic phenomena not only as compatible with evolutionary history, but as suggestive of purposive direction (“guided evolution”). 

Beauty in nature as an additional argument for God

Beyond biology, Zia H Shah MD explicitly deploys an aesthetic line of reasoning: that pervasive beauty in nature functions as a sign pointing toward divine attributes. In one of his beauty-focused essays, he states that, in Islamic thought, beauty in creation serves as a continuous reminder of God’s existence and attributes, drawing believers toward acknowledgment of the Divine.  His fireflies essay blends naturalistic description (bioluminescence refined by natural selection, diversity of signaling patterns) with reflective language about wonder and meaning. 

Compare and contrast

Shared concerns and partial convergence

Both voices operate inside a broadly theistic (Islamic) horizon: they treat engagement with modern science and modern intellectual life as religiously and ethically significant rather than as a domain sealed off from theological reflection. 

They also intersect—at least thematically—at the point where evolution discourse can become socially charged. Omer Suleiman’s video description foregrounds race and the misuse of a classical scholar in “the evolution debate.”  Zia H Shah MD’s public commentary on that video (as a critic) similarly frames the topic as important enough to warrant explicit disagreement, suggesting that for him evolution is not merely a scientific topic but a religious-intellectual fault line with broad implications. 

Divergence on the scope of common ancestry

Zia H Shah MD’s acceptance of common ancestry is explicit and affirmative: his own site frames evolution as evidentially robust and uses standard lines of argument (e.g., homologous structures) to persuade readers who are “still on the fence.”  He also positions his broader project as integrating Qur’anic reflection with scientific findings, making evolution part of the “Quran & science” discourse rather than a threat to it. 

Omer Suleiman’s position on common ancestry—particularly human common ancestry with other primates—cannot be conclusively stated from the accessible primary material in this environment. What can be documented is (i) the video’s focus on Ibn Khaldun’s racism and its relationship to evolution debate discourse, and (ii) that a critic (Zia H Shah MD, writing elsewhere) labels the video as denying “human evolution from apes.”  Without the transcript, it remains unclear whether Omer Suleiman’s underlying position is a wholesale rejection of common ancestry, a narrower rejection of specific claims about human origins, or a critique about how evolution arguments are rhetorically deployed in Muslim debates. 

Divergence on what “guidance” means in evolutionary explanation

Zia H Shah MD clearly separates two layers:

1. Evolutionary history as scientifically evidenced (common ancestry, deep genomic history, inheritance of viral sequences). 
2. Evolutionary meaning as theologically interpreted (guided evolution; teleological reading of viral co‑option, placental development, and other complexities). 

By contrast, Omer Suleiman’s accessible material for this particular query does not foreground a “guided evolution” model. Instead, what is foregrounded is the ethical-historical question of racism and the interpretive question of how earlier scholars are used in modern debates about origins. 

How each frames the relationship between science and religious reasoning

Zia H Shah MD’s approach is integrative and cumulative: he aims to marshal multiple lines of biological and philosophical reflection—comparative anatomy, genomic viral legacy, placental biology, and aesthetic experience—into a unified religious interpretation in which God is seen as the ultimate author of the evolutionary story. 

Omer Suleiman’s approach in the cited video (based on metadata) appears more focused on intellectual genealogy—how ideas from antiquity and medieval scholarship (including Greek influence and Ibn Khaldun’s writings) shape modern conceptual associations, including harmful racial associations, within evolution discourse. 

Thematic epilogue

In their different ways, both projects treat the “origins question” as more than a technical dispute over fossils or genes. It is also a dispute over moral imagination: what kinds of stories about humanity will be told, what forms of hierarchy or solidarity those stories encourage, and what religious communities will do with the immense explanatory power of modern biology. 

Zia H Shah MD’s rhetoric pushes in the direction of synthesis: accept common ancestry as an evidential conclusion, then ask what sort of God could author a world in which ancient viral remnants can be woven into development, in which placental biology can arise through genomic bricolage, and in which beauty—whether in the ordered architecture of life or the theater of nature—can be read as a sign. 

Omer Suleiman’s publicly described focus, by contrast, warns that origin-stories can become vehicles for degradation: when evolution discourse is entangled with racism or when revered intellectual authorities are recruited to launder prejudice into “science” or “history.”  Read together, these emphases suggest a shared responsibility even amid disagreement: if the natural world is to be read—whether as guidance, as test, or as sign—then the reading must be disciplined by both truth-seeking and moral repair. 

For references go to the Word file: