Short answer
No. Consciousness means being aware. Each of us knows it more surely than any fact of physics: there is something it is like to be us. We see red, taste salt and feel grief. Science can map which parts of the brain are active when this happens. It has no account of why any of that activity is felt from the inside at all. Philosophers call this the hard problem of consciousness, and it is still unsolved. A full description of matter lists sizes, shapes, charges and motions, and none of these is a feeling. Islam's answer is that man is more than matter. The Qur'an points to the human self as one of God's (﷾) signs. It says God (﷾) breathed into man a spirit He created and honoured by calling it His. Your own inner life is one of those signs, and matter alone has not explained it.
Full explanation
The one thing no one can doubt
A person can doubt what he sees, but not that he is seeing. In 1974 the philosopher Thomas Nagel put the test simply. A being is conscious if there is something it is like to be that being. Every reader passes that test from the inside. Whatever else is uncertain, this is not.
Argues that an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and that this subjective character of experience is left out of every physical account of the mind so far offered. Nagel does not conclude that physicalism is false, but that we have at present no conception of how it could be true.
The gap matter leaves open
Physics describes matter by its mass, charge, position and motion. None of these is a colour as it looks or a pain as it hurts. In 1983 the philosopher Joseph Levine called this the explanatory gap. Even if a feeling goes with a brain process, nothing in the physical story explains why the process feels like anything. In 1995 the philosopher David Chalmers called it the hard problem. He separated it from the easy problems. The easy problems are how the brain sorts information and controls behaviour.
Coins the term "explanatory gap": even if pain is identical with some brain process, nothing in the physical story explains why that process should feel the way it does, or feel like anything at all.
Separates the "easy problems" of consciousness (how the brain discriminates, reports and controls behaviour) from the "hard problem": why any of that processing is accompanied by experience at all. Argues that explaining the functions does not explain the experience, so the usual methods of reductive explanation fail for it.
The materialist reply
A materialist is someone who holds that only matter exists. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, in 1991, argued that consciousness is simply what the brain does. He said cognitive science, the scientific study of the mind, will explain it. He also said the private felt qualities philosophers point to are not what they seem.
Argues that consciousness is wholly a product of brain activity, to be explained by cognitive science, and that the private, felt qualities of experience ("qualia") that philosophers treat as a special problem do not exist in the way they seem to.
Why the reply does not close the gap
Scientists can map which brain states go with which experiences. That explains what the brain does. Chalmers calls these the easy problems. But the map does not explain why those states are felt. Some say the feeling is an illusion. That does not get rid of it, because an illusion is itself something experienced. The philosopher Galen Strawson, who holds that everything is matter, made this point in 2018. And in 2012 Thomas Nagel, an atheist, concluded that a picture of nature made only of matter cannot account for consciousness.
Separates the "easy problems" of consciousness (how the brain discriminates, reports and controls behaviour) from the "hard problem": why any of that processing is accompanied by experience at all. Argues that explaining the functions does not explain the experience, so the usual methods of reductive explanation fail for it.
Criticises philosophers, Dennett among them, who say that conscious experience only seems to exist and is really an illusion. Strawson, himself a materialist, answers that any such illusion is already a case of the very experience it is said to explain away: a seeming is itself an experience. He calls the denial of consciousness the silliest claim ever made.
Nagel, an atheist philosopher, argues that the materialist neo-Darwinian picture of nature is almost certainly false, because it cannot account for consciousness, reason and value. He does not accept belief in God, but holds that reason's grasp of truth cannot be explained as a by-product of natural selection.
What the Qur'an says about the self
The Qur'an calls the human self a sign of God (﷾), alongside the signs on earth and across the horizons. It says God (﷾) fashioned man and breathed into him something of His spirit. That spirit is created. The Qur'an calls it His to honour it, not because it is part of Him. It says He gave man hearing, sight and understanding. Asked about the spirit, the Prophet (ﷺ) was told to answer that it comes by the command of his Lord. People, the verse says, have been given only a little knowledge. Yusuf Ali translates that verse as "the Spirit (of inspiration)". Many classical commentators on the Qur'an read it as the human soul.
“On the earth are signs for those of assured Faith, As also in your own selves: Will ye not then see?”
“Soon will We show them our Signs in the (furthest) regions (of the earth), and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that thy Lord doth witness all things?”
“Behold! thy Lord said to the angels: "I am about to create man, from sounding clay from mud moulded into shape; "When I have fashioned him (in due proportion) and breathed into him of My spirit, fall ye down in obeisance unto him."”
“But He fashioned him in due proportion, and breathed into him something of His spirit. And He gave you (the faculties of) hearing and sight and feeling (and understanding): little thanks do ye give!”
“They ask thee concerning the Spirit (of inspiration). Say: "The Spirit (cometh) by command of my Lord: of knowledge it is only a little that is communicated to you, (O men!)"”
Perspectives
Materialist
The mind is what the brain does. Consciousness is a natural product of the activity of brain cells that science is steadily explaining. The sense of a private inner glow is not what it seems.
Consciousness is wholly a product of brain activity. The felt side of experience does not exist in the way it seems to.
Rebuttal
Granted: brain activity goes with every experience, but more data will not close this gap. Physics describes matter by quantities such as mass, charge and motion, and none of them is a feeling. Calling the feeling an illusion fails, because an illusion is itself experienced.
Buddhist: consciousness arises from conditions
Buddhism holds that consciousness arises from conditions and that there is no lasting self behind it. It is one of the five changing aggregates that make up a person, not a soul.
Consciousness arises from causes. Without a cause it does not come to be. So it is not a lasting self.
Rebuttal
Islam agrees that the human self is created, and does not exist by itself. But naming the conditions of experience does not explain why there is experience at all. It does not explain why there is something it is like to be a person. The Qur'an says the spirit comes by the command of God (﷾). It says people have been given only a little knowledge.
The case from reason
Conscious experience is the one certainty each person has, and no physical description has explained why it exists.
A being is conscious if there is something it is like to be it. And each person knows this about himself directly.
No accepted scientific theory explains why brain processes come with experience. This question is widely called the hard problem of consciousness.
Describe matter in purely physical terms. Even in principle, that cannot explain why there is something it is like to be conscious.
Calling experience an illusion does not remove it, because an illusion is itself something experienced.
The Islamic perspective
Man is more than matter. The Qur'an, revealed to the Prophet (ﷺ), teaches that God (﷾) fashioned him and breathed into him of His spirit. The inner self is one of the signs that point to its Maker. That spirit is created; the Qur'an calls it His to honour it.
The Qur'an names the human self as one of God's (﷾) signs.
God (﷾) fashioned man, breathed into him of His spirit, and gave him hearing, sight and understanding.
The spirit comes by God's (﷾) command, and human knowledge of it is small.