Usama Hasan is a British astronomer and former academic. He is a former senior lecturer in business information systems at Middlesex University, and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was also a senior researcher in Islamic Studies at the Quilliam Foundation until it was closed down in April 2021. Hasan has previously argued in favour of a compatibility between Islam and human evolution, arguing the mention of Adam and Eve in the Quran is purely symbolic. Family His father, Suhaib Hasan, is a Saudi Arabia-trained Islamic scholar who considers himself Ahl-i Hadith and Salafi, while his grandfather, Abdul-Ghaffar Hasan Al-Hindi (d. 2007), was a scholar as well, having taught at the Islamic University of Medina at the request of the influential Salafi scholar Al-Albani. Career He has stated that he fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation. Hasan was a member of the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Projecting British Muslims delegations to Egypt in 2008 and to Afghanistan (Helmand) in 2010, was a Keynote Speaker at the Anglo-Syrian government-sponsored conference "The Message of Peace in Islam" in Damascus in 2009, and is a Patron of both the Forum for the Discussion of Israel and Palestine (FODIP) and Friends of the Bereaved Families Forum. Usama was also a speaker at the Google Ideas/Council on Foreign Relations Summit Against Violent Extremism (Dublin, 2011). He is Senior Researcher at the Quilliam Foundation. He has appeared on television programmes, including BBC Hardtalk, CNN, and has also written various columns for The Guardian and The Washington Post. Controversies Evolution controversy Hasan has argued that Islam is compatible with the theory of evolution, describing the story of Adam and Eve as "children's madrasa-level understanding" of human origins while pointing to antecedents of the modern theory of evolution among medieval Muslim philosophers like Ibn Khaldun (d.1406) and Ibn Miskawayh (d.1030). His lectures have been disrupted by hecklers and has reportedly received death threats. Hasan later retracted some of his views on evolution. Several British Muslim writers, including Inayat Bunglawala and Yahya Birt, backed his right to free speech. On 5 January 2013, he was featured in a debate against Yasir Qadhi titled Have Muslims Misunderstood Evolution?, in which he argued in favor of human evolution. Power struggles at the Masjid al-Tawhid Hasan has complained about "extremism" at the London Masjid al-Tawhid mosque and in May 2012, as part of the arbitration process, he