Is Going to the Moon Possible? Manuscript ifan-Kolda 331 and the Fatwā by the West African Muslim Scholar Sīdiyya Diaby (d. 1444/2023)

Abstract The Muslim world of the twentieth century faced new questions about technoscientific modernity and its relationship with Islam. Discoveries and innovations, ranging from using the telegraph to announce the beginning or end of Ramadan to the possibility of going to the moon, were questioned in the light of scriptural texts to judge their (in)acceptability. On the basis of a copy of a manuscript preserved at ifan , Dakar, this article analyzes, for the first time, a Fatwā by Senegalese scholar Sīdiyya Diaby (d. 1444/2023) on the conquest of the moon. An analysis of this text demonstrates that beyond a simple West African author’s position, the Fatwā is a significant contribution to the theological debates that have marked the twentieth-century Muslim world; it also demonstrates the importance of manuscripts in studying contemporary Islamic thought in this part of the world.