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Comparing Contemporary Evangelical Models Regarding Human Origins
By Casey Luskin, Discovery Institute
Multiple viewpoints exist among Protestant Evangelical Christians regarding human origins, with each offering different answers to questions regarding the existence of Adam and Eve and their relationship to humanity, common human–ape ancestry, evolution and intelligent design, humanity’s relationship to other members of the genus Homo (e.g., Neanderthals and Denisovans), and the timing of human origins. This article will review eight models for human origins which have recently received attention: (1) the Classical Theistic Evolution/Evolutionary Creationism model, (2) the Homo divinus model, (3) the Genealogical Adam and Eve model, (4) the Homo heidelbergensis model, (5) the Unique Origins Design model, (6) the Classical Old Earth Creationist model, (7) the Classical Young Earth Creationist model, and (8) an Old Earth/Recent Humans Hybrid model. Key features of each model will be described, and critical responses will be discussed in light of agreement or disagreement with traditional Judeo-Christian theological views and the scientific evidence. Most of these models maintain that science does not force one to abandon belief in core tenets of a traditional Adam and Eve, though they resolve the relevant scientific and theological questions in different ways and with varying degrees of success.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060748
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Tags: #Evolution #Creationism #IntelligentDesign #OOL
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Design of Islamic Religious Education: Purposes, alignment of curriculum components and contexts
By Suhayib and M. F. Ansyari, State Islamic University of Sultan Syarif Kasim Riau
This paper presents evidence of the design of Islamic Religious Education (IRE) by evaluating the purpose, the interconnectedness of curricular components and its contextual levels through a conceptual framework for studying the design of IRE. Relying on document analyses, the findings indicate a gap between the intended and teachers’ designs of IRE. The threefold purpose of IRE, ta’leem, ta’deeb and tarbiyah, is rarely integrated into designing IRE outcomes. The ta’leem oriented outcomes are the most frequently included, the so-called ‘cognitification’ of IRE in this study. Furthermore, the components of intended IRE outcomes, formation activities that shape the threefold purpose, and assessment methods are often unaligned with one another, especially in designing IRE related to the domains of ta’deeb and tarbiyah. Finally, IRE is generally designed to help students contribute at the personal, local and national levels although its contribution to the global one is only expected from upper secondary school students. Based on these findings, this study calls for developing a taxonomy of IRE and rethinking the role of IRE in addressing multiple challenges at various levels.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2023.2220940
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Tags: #Pedagogy #Islam #Sociology
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Merely statistical evidence: when and why it justifies belief
By Paul Silva Jr., University of Cologne:
It is one thing to hold that merely statistical evidence is sometimes insufficient for rational belief, as in typical lottery and profiling cases. It is another thing to hold that merely statistical evidence is always insufficient for rational belief. Indeed, there are cases where statistical evidence plainly does justify belief. This project develops a dispositional account of the normativity of statistical evidence, where the dispositions that ground justifying statistical evidence are connected to the goals (= proper function) of objects. There are strong intuitive motivations for doing this. For we can turn almost any case of non-justifying merely statistical evidence into a case of justifying merely statistical evidence by adding information about the dispositions and goals of the objects involved. The resulting view not only helps us understand when and why merely statistical evidence is normatively significant, but it also helps us understand how statistical evidence relates to more standard forms of evidence (perceptual, testimonial). The emerging view also has surprising applications, as it imposes limitations on the epistemic value of fine-tuning arguments for theism as well as undermines a standard class of case-based arguments for moral encroachment.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01983-x
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Tags: #JustifiedBelief #FTA #God #Theism
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How Children Co-Construct a Religious Abstract Concept with Their Caregivers: Theological Models in Dialogue with Linguistic Semantics
By Franziska E. Viertel and Oliver Reis, Paderborn University,
In acquiring a meaningful and rich religious language, children need to build up semantic knowledge about religious words. Most religious concepts do not refer directly to visible entities. Instead, their meanings are often abstract and emerge from the social observation of the world. In our pilot study, we investigate the acquisition of the religious word merciful in 7–8-year-olds during dialogic reading of a biblical story. Merciful is a prototypical religious concept and therefore a fruitful subject for research on the acquisition of religious concepts. First, following the perspective of religious education, we present theological models that identify relevant semantic aspects that constitute mercy. Two of these models relate to interpersonal behavior, which is most common in contemporary understanding. In a second step, we analyze which theological models of mercy are evoked in dialogic reading between caregivers and their children and how they are expressed linguistically. In a third step, we designed a picture story test that allowed us to investigate how children apply their knowledge to novel (secular) contexts and which theological models are evident in children’s problem solving. Our results show that two different theological models of mercy prevail during dialogic reading: the model of forgiveness and the model of compassion. Although the model of forgiveness is central in our settings, the language data show that the model of compassion is also present in the caregiver’s and children’s language. During dialogic reading, the frequency of the semantic aspects of the model of forgiveness expressed between child and caregiver is significantly related. In the picture story test, children are more likely to select semantic aspects of the model of forgiveness in religious contexts than in secular contexts. Interestingly, in secular contexts, children chose semantic neighbors more often, indicating a more diffuse understanding of merciful.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060728
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Tags: #Pedagogy #Relion #Religiousity #Psychology
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On the Nature of Faith and Its Relation to Trust and Belief
By Paul Faulkner, University of Sheffield
One can have faith in someone, believe in someone and trust someone, and these notions seem closely related. Any account of faith should then address its relation to trust and belief. Like trust, faith can similarly have propositional and relational forms. One can have faith that God is good and faith in God; one can trust that another will do something and trust them to do it. Starting from a comparison between these forms of faith and trust, this paper proposes a philosophical analysis of faith and its relation to trust and belief.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onac021
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Tags: #God #Belief #Faith
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"It cannot be fitting to blame God"
By Marcus William Hunt, Concordia University Chicago
This paper argues that it cannot be fitting to blame God. I show that divine immutability, even on a weak conception, implies that God's ethical character cannot change. I then argue that blame aims at a change in the ethical character of the one blamed. This claim is directly intuitive, explains a wide set of intuitions about when blame is unfitting, and is implied by most of the theories blame offered in the philosophical literature. Since blame targeted at God aims to change God's ethical character, an impossibility, such blame is not fitting. I then draw on this conclusion to sketch a new theodicy. I argue that a necessary condition on being blameworthy is that one can be blamed under some possible condition. So, God cannot be blameworthy. Further, I argue that if someone cannot be blameworthy, then they cannot do wrong. Wrong actions tend to make us blameworthy, but since God cannot be blameworthy nothing can tend to make him blameworthy – God cannot do wrong.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14225
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Tags: #God #Ethics #Metaphysics
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The Conversation around Islam on Twitter: Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis of Tweets about the Muslim Community in Spain since 2015
By William González-Baquero, Javier J. Amores and Carlos Arcila-Calderón, University of Salamanca
Social media, especially Twitter, has become a platform where hate, toxic, intolerant, and discriminatory speech is increasingly spread. These messages are aimed at different vulnerable social groups, due to some of their differentiating characteristics with respect to the dominant one, whether they are phenotypic, religious, cultural, gender, sexual, etc. Of all these minorities, one of the most affected is the Muslim community, especially since the beginning of the Mediterranean refugee crisis, during which migration from the Middle East and North Africa increased considerably. Spain does not escape this reality as, given its proximity to Morocco, it is one of the main destinations for migrants from North Africa. In this context, there are already several studies focused on specifically investigating Islamophobic speech disseminated on social platforms, normally focused on specific cases. However, there are still no studies focused on analyzing the entire conversation around Islam and the Muslim community that takes place on Twitter and in a southern European country such as Spain, aiming to identify the latent sentiments and the main underlying topics and their characteristics, which would help to relativize and dimension the relevance of Islamophobic messages, as well as to analyze them from a more solid base. The main objective of the present study is to identify the most frequent words, the main underlying topics, and the latent sentiments that predominate in the general conversation about Islam and the Muslim community on Twitter in Spain and in Spanish during the last 8 years. To do this, 190,320 messages that included keywords related to Muslim culture and religion were collected and analyzed using computational techniques. The findings show that the most frequent words in these messages were mostly descriptive and not derogatory, and the predominant latent topics were mostly neutral and informative, although two of them could be considered reliable indicators of Islamophobic rejection. Similarly, while the overall average sentiment in this conversation trended negatively, neutral and positive messages were more prevalent. However, in the negative messages, the sentiment was considerably more pronounced.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060724
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Islamophobia
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How Exceptional Is the West? An Investigation of Worldwide Trends in Societal-Average Levels of Religiosity, 1981–2020
By Louisa L. Roberts, University of South Dakota
Research shows most Western societies became less religious over recent decades. But we know much less about the rest of the world. Is the non-Western world also becoming less religious, as some varieties of secularization theory would lead us to expect? Using 1981-to-2020 World/European Values Survey data from 103 countries, this study describes, and uses mixed-effects models to rigorously estimate, religious trends in eight world regions and five former Soviet and Eastern Bloc (FSEB) subregions. Results indicate that religious decline occurred in Latin America, Central and Baltic Europe, and (recently) in the Mideast and North Africa. But there is little evidence of such decline elsewhere in Asia, Africa, or the FSEB—despite the broad reach of many modernizing social trends. These findings do not lend support to a strong version of secularization theory but may be consistent with some versions of the idea that modernization can make people less religious.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12860
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Tags: #Religion #Sociology #Religiosity #Secularism #Modernism
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The Philosophical Theology of al-Ghazali: The End of Philosophy in Islam?
By Hasan Hameed, Princeton University
In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, one of the most influential thinkers of the modern world dismissed the importance of Arabic (Islamic) philosophy. Hegel declared that Arabic philosophy “has no content of any interest.” Other European writers such as Ernest Renan remarked that philosophy in the Islamic worlds had once flourished—the Greek philosophical...
Read more: https://themarginaliareview.com/the-philosophical-theology-of-al-ghazal-the-end-of-philosophy-in-islam/
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Tags: #Ghazali #Islam #Philosophy
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The “Secular” in Post-1967 Islamist Thought; Revisiting Arab Intellectual History and Political Ideology towards 20th Century fin-de-siècle
By Ihab Shabana, Hellenic Open University
This article gives an historical and analytical account of post-1967 Islamist intellectual production in the Arab-Muslim world and the ways it shaped political ideology in the region. By discussing Islamist approaches and debates with regards to the “secular” and secularism in the Arab-Muslim world the paper tries to answer mainly two research questions: what the perceptions over secularism were after the 1967 Naksa, and how intellectual transformations were applied on political identities, ideologies and strategies by some Islamist parties, occasionally leading to cross-ideological synergies. Using conceptual history, we divide post-1967 into two broad periods, while we argue that Islamist thought copiously appropriated notions of the secular with, however, many limitations.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060686
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Tags: #Islam #History #Secularism #Modernism
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Desiring the Sweet Perfume of Closeness in the Oscillating Tawajjuh of the Letter Rāʾ
By Kris Ramlan, Goethe-University of Frankfurt; Ana Ludovico, University of Algarve
This article delves into the concept of tawajjuh through a poem and a prayer ascribed to the Arabic letter rāʾ, which expresses key themes in the Akbarian tradition. Using the hermeneutical approach of Ibn ʿArabī to interpret word polysemy in the texts, the article sheds light on the science of letters and key metaphysical ideas cultivated in this tradition. The letter rāʾ represents various aspects of cosmic duality and hence a strong desire for intimacy. The Arabic word tawajjuh, meaning the projection of spiritual energy, orientation, or attentiveness, refers to turning to face God. There is contemplation and continuous turning, like the phases of the moon facing the sun.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060692
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Tags: #Islam #Sufism #IbnArabi #Cosmology
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The Challenge of Muhammad Iqbal’s Philosophy of Khudi to Ibn ‘Arabi’s Metaphysical Anthropology
By Antonio De Diego González, Universidad de Sevilla
The period between the publication of Asrār-i Khūdī (Secrets of the Self) in 1915 and The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam in 1930 marked the consolidation of the philosophy of khūdī (self) from the perspective of the Indian philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. A philosophical project for the contemporary Islamic world that sought to overcome, from the acceptance of science and few elements of Western philosophy, the limitations of the Islamic tradition and, above all, of Sufism, which the author labels as pantheism. Among the deep dialogues he maintains with Islamic tradition, Iqbal carried out a very special one with Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn ʻArabī (1165–1240), who was one of the most notorious mystics and philosophers of Islam. A metahistorical dialogue, in the form of a critique, that invites us to see the convergences and divergences in metaphysical and anthropological aspects of both authors.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050683
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Tags: #IbnArabi #Sufism #Iqbal #Metaphysics
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Opposition to Word-Breaking in the Practice of Qur’an Commentary in Eighth/Fourteenth- and Ninth/Fifteenth-Century Mamlūk Cairo
By Shuaib Ally, McGill University
The Mamlūk biographer al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1497) praised Sirāj al-Dīn al-Bulqīnī (d. 805/1403), the pre-eminent scholar and judge of the late fourteenth to early fifteenth century, for curtailing the practice of tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi’l-taqṭīʿ. This was a new category of Qur’an interpretation: a method of generating meaning through the use of word-breaking. The main proponents of this practice were the Shādhilī Sufi Ḥusayn al-Ḥabbār (d. 791/1389) and his followers, who perpetuated his exegetical approach. Attempts to curtail this practice of Qur’an commentary in Mamlūk Cairo were made by scholars and members of the judicial class, the most prominent among them being Sirāj al-Dīn al-Bulqīnī and his son Jalāl al-Dīn (d. 824/1421). This practice was policed not for its actual interpretations but because of its method, which undermined the shared philological basis for deriving meaning from the Qur’an. This study accounts for these historical controversies over word-breaking in interpreting the Qur’an, augmenting and correcting previous studies on the is subject published by Walid Saleh and Jonathan Berkey. It also analyses the role institutions such as the zāwiya and the office of the Shāfiʿī chief judge played in promoting such interpretations and regulating religious life and education. These controversies ultimately result from a tension between the oral and the written, as is demonstrated in this article by analysis of the use of word-breaking in the interpretation of the Qur’anic term salsabīl, and of similar problems of orality discussed in classical manuals on the proper recitation of the Qur’an.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0528
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Tags: #Quran #Hermeneutics #Exegesis
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‘Qur’anic Metaphors: Between the Historicity of Poetic Imagination and the Continuity of Context
By Saad Mohammed Abdel-Ghaffar Yousef, New Valley University
Due to their contextual breadth and hermeneutic continuities, Qur’anic metaphors are held to be manifestations of Qur’anic iʿjāz that outshine the metaphors and imagery found in pre-Islamic poetry: they transcend temporal and spatial limits and are accessible to all languages and cultures.
The historicity of metaphors and rhetorical images that characterise the Arabic poetic heritage is contextualised by their location within the temporal and spatial regions in which they were produced, the conceptual connections to which have been lost due to changing cultural beliefs, ideas, and contexts. In contrast, Qur’anic rhetoric has enduring continuity due to its observance of similarities in the construction of its metaphors, as well as the fact these are revealed within a religious, legislative text, whose contexts enjoy a rich continuity that encompasses meaning and connotations that accommodate the knowledge paradigms of different cultures.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0536
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Tags: #Ijaz #Quran #Hermeneutics
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Being Commanded by God: Katharsis for Righteousness
By Paul Moser, Loyola University Chicago
Many people in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheistic traditions testify to their experience of being commanded by God to do something or to be a certain way. Is this kind of testimony from experience credible in some cases, and, if so, on what ground? The main thesis of this article is that it is credible in some cases and a suitable ground is available in the morally purifying experience of human conscience. The article looks to the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an for relevant testimony to the importance of righteous divine commanding experienced by humans. The relevant commands are not abstract or merely theoretical but grounded in human moral experience and potentially motivating for righteous action. The article doubts that God would be God if there were no divine commanding given directly to receptive people in their moral experience. It contends that God would not be a morally righteous guide of the divine kind needed for worthiness of worship by humans in the absence of God’s commanding people directly in their experience.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.22091/JPTR.2023.9247.2870
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Tags: #God #Quran #Bible #Katharsis #Judaism
#Christianity #Morality
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Who Defines Islam? Critical Perspectives on Islamic Studies
By Abdessamad Belhaj, University of Public Service
This paper endeavors to answer the question of who defines Islam as an academic discipline. Firstly, it discusses the epistemic authority of producers and transmitters of knowledge about Islam. It is argued here that, despite modernization, religious scholars and learning centers in the Muslim world still define, to a certain extent, the main curriculum of texts and interpretations of the Muslim tradition within the discipline of Islamic studies. Furthermore, Western scholars of Islamic studies must navigate between the demands of politics and identity, which put pressure on the discipline. Secondly, this article maps the major models and approaches of Islamic studies at work today. In particular, this section highlights the diversity of research norms and practices in Europe. Finally, multiple critiques produced by decolonial, historicist, and theological views within the field of Islamic studies are shown to be complementary rather than exclusivist.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060753
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Tags: #IslamicStudies #Islam #Orientalism
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Between Tyranny and Anarchy: Islam, COVID-19, and Public Policy
By Mahan Mirza, University of Notre Dame
Research on the causes for vaccine resistance among Nigerian Muslims reveals what the philosopher Žižek terms a “heaven in disorder:” lack of trust in public institutions, conspiracy theories, ignorance of basic science, individual apathy, and faith in “Allah as the only protector.” Other social contexts demonstrate far greater compliance. How can governments improve outcomes in vaccine resistant communities amidst such complexity, especially in instances where theology provides a right to dissent? Alongside a right to dissent, “obedience to authority” for the sake of social and political harmony is also an important principle of Islamic thought. It has the ability to enhance widespread compliance to public health guidelines by obligating the setting aside of private convictions in favor of collective cooperation. Religious literacy is an important element for responding effectively to pandemics, and by extension, other global emergencies. While policymakers must tailor their outreach to incommensurable worldviews in society, the human family must also imagine effective political models for cooperation despite divergence in worldviews. Otherwise, societies may need to choose between tyranny and anarchy. This article adds to efforts already underway which aim to demonstrate that engagement with religious norms, rather than their dismissal, represents the most promising path towards tackling vaccine resistance, especially in communities in which religious authority significantly informs social practice.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060737
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Tags: #Covid #Islam #Politics #Sociology
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Transcendental Happiness in the Thought of Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ‘Arabī
By Ismail Lala, Gulf University for Science and Technology; Reham Alwazzan, University of Manchester
This article explores the concept of transcendental happiness in the philosophies of arguably the two most important figures in Islamic intellectual thought, Abū ‘Alī ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) and Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240). The most striking parallels between the philosophy of Ibn Sīnā and that of Ibn ‘Arabī is in their agreement on the Aristotelian principle of transcendental happiness as the comprehension of God, combined with their emanationist cosmologies. Based on Neoplatonist emanationism, especially as it is put forth by Plotinus, Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ‘Arabī argue that there is a necessary emanation from God that results in the existence of the universe. As corollaries of the divine emanative process, those endowed with rationality seek to return to the divine in a reciprocal upward motion that aims to ‘reverse’ the downward motion of the original divine descent. The impetus for the two-way process incorporating divine descent through emanation and the longing for ascent found in humans is love. Despite these points of confluence, there are others of divergence. Ibn ‘Arabī disagrees with his predecessor that transcendental happiness is found in absolute annihilation in the divine, while still maintaining that annihilation of the self is a necessary first step in the attainment of transcendental happiness. Transcendental happiness, argues Ibn ‘Arabī, is ultimately the realization of human potentiality to become a complete locus of divine manifestation. This is carried out through the body for Ibn ‘Arabī, whereas for Ibn Sīnā, transcendental happiness requires the divestment of materiality.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060729
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Tags: #IbnArabi #IbnSina #Aristotle #God #Cosmology
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Faith as Trust
By Thomas W Simpson, University of Oxford
The Reformed theological tradition has maintained that faith consists in trust, with that trust involving belief of certain doctrinal propositions. This paper has two aims. First, it contributes towards rehabilitating this conception of faith. I start, accordingly, by setting out the Reformers’ basic case: faith consists in trust because faith is a response to the promises of God, by which the Christian receives God’s forgiveness and is united with God. This argument is independent of any commitment to nondoxasticism or doxasticism about faith. Second, it argues for a methodological commitment which the Reformers’ conception of faith-as-trust complies with, which I think is independently compelling, and which has significant implications for contemporary debates on faith: the kind of faith that matters is that which enables the individual to stand justified, or righteous, before God. Philosophical accounts of faith are unavoidably entangled with theological disputes about justification.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onac021
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Tags: #God #Belief #Faith #ReformedTheology
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Faithfully Taking Pascal’s Wager
By Elizabeth Jackson, Toronto Metropolitan University
I examine the relationship between taking Pascal’s wager, faith, and hope. First, I argue that many who take Pascal’s wager have genuine faith that God exists. The person of faith and the wagerer have several things in common, including a commitment to God and positive cognitive and conative attitudes toward God’s existence. If one’s credences in theism are too low to have faith, I argue that the wagerer can still hope that God exists, another commitment-justifying theological virtue. I conclude with two upshots of the argument, including how it provides responses to common objections to Pascal’s wager.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onac021
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Tags: #God #Pascal #Theism #Faith
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Explaining Religious Revival in the Context of Long-Term Secularization
By Jörg Stolz, Université de Lausanne; David Voas, University College London
Secularization theory has often been criticized for not being able to explain counterexamples. However, secularization theorists argue that transitory religious resurgences are expected to occur even in modernizing conditions. The aim of this article is to identify mechanisms that can explain the temporary upswing of religion against the backdrop of long-term modernization. We classify the mechanisms under five broad headings: crisis, reaction, transition, state intervention, and composition. Historical examples are provided to illustrate these mechanisms. The mechanisms are not mutually exclusive and can be understood within the framework of rational action.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060723
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Tags: #Religion #Secularism #Religiousity
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Dashtakī's Solution to the Liar Paradox: A Synthesis of the Earlier Solutions Proposed by ūsī and Samarqandī
By Mohammad Saleh Zarepour, The University of Manchester
adr al-Dīn al-Dashtakī (d. 1498) has proposed a solution to the liar paradox according to which the liar sentence is a self-referential sentence in which the predicate ‘false’ is iterated. Discussing the conditions for the truth-aptness of the sentences with nested and iterated instances of the predicates ‘true’ and/or ‘false’, Dashtakī argued that the liar sentence is not truth-apt at all. In the tradition of Arabic logic, the central elements of Dashtakī's solution—the self-referentiality of the liar sentence and the implicit iteration of the predicate ‘false’—were initially highlighted in two earlier solutions proposed by Naīr al-Dīn al-ūsī (d. 1274) and Shams al-Dīn al-Samarqandī (d. 1322), respectively. Here I investigate all three solutions and show that Dashtakī's solution can be taken as a synthesis of the other two. None of these solutions seems to be convincing at the end of the day. Nevertheless, all of them include significant logical and philosophical insights. In particular, although Dashtakī's solution is not itself compelling, it is only a few steps away from a promising solution. The appendix to this paper includes translations of the relevant passages.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2023.2210918
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Tags: #Truth #Logic #History
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Rape with Murder and Suicide: The Evidential Argument from Evil against Naturalism
By Han Jen Chang, Independent Researcher
The problem of evil seems to have been the patent of theism for a long time. However, some philosophers notice that this is not necessarily the case and raise arguments from evil against atheism. In this paper, I follow this insight and raise the evidential argument from evil against naturalism. I argue that some human behaviors that cause evil and suffering contradict the principles of evolution and should not exist in a naturalistic world. Nevertheless, they do exist, and they accordingly disconfirm naturalism. To attain this conclusion, I first establish that psychological mechanisms as evolutionary causes are the ultimate causes of human behaviors if naturalism is true. Then, I argue that cases of rape with murder and suicide have contravened their relevant psychological mechanisms’ adaptive functions and should not exist. Therefore, cases of these behaviors make it reasonable to believe that naturalism is not true. Both naturalists and theists now have to raise plausible explanations for various evils in the world. It is possible for theism to outcompete naturalism with respect to evil as a result.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060715
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Tags: #God #Evil #PoE #Naturalism #Psychology
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Munājāt and Ibn al-ʿArabī’s Unity of Being
By Amanda Tapp, King’s College London
This paper looks at the mystical topic of munājāt, or intimate dialogue, typically between a worshipper and their Lord, and how it relates to Ibn al-‘Arabī’s waḥdat al-wujūd (Unity of Being). The paper first works to situate munājāt within the current surrounding body of Sufi devotional literature and within the Islamic intellectual tradition. Then the paper goes on to examine how munājāt as prayer reflects and relates to Ibn al-‘Arabī’s larger metaphysical treatises, particularly waḥdat al-wujūd, using crucial concepts such as Barzakh, Imagination, and dhikr (remembrance). From this it may be understood that munājāt is direct communication occurring from God to Himself through the form of man.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060693
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Tags: #Islam #IbnArabi #Sufism #Metaphysics
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What Does it Mean to call God Good?
By Mr Philip Peter Sivyer, Oxford University
Contemporary expositions of God's goodness commonly err either (1) by subjecting God to moral laws, which is to question His sovereignty, or (2) by failing to establish that God will always act in accordance with moral principles, which removes the theist's ability to appeal to God's goodness in response to problems of evil. Current attempts at intermediate positions which avoid these two problems fall short. In this paper, I aim to construct a better intermediate position and account of God's goodness. I do this by claiming that God's ability to create is best explained in terms of God's self-love. Since God, as the greatest possible being, must be able to create, He must love Himself. I argue that this in turn entails that God loves all things, since by loving Himself, God loves the pre-existent ideas of everything that will come to exist, and by extension the things themselves. This, I argue, allows us to have confidence that God will act in accordance with moral principles, but without subjecting Him to moral laws.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14223
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Tags: #God #Metaphysics #Morality
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Lost Daughters: Affective Framings of Women Embracing Islam
By Nella van den Brandt, Coventry University
This article draws upon and contributes to current discussions in the study of conversion, Muslims in Europe, and gender and emotion by taking media productions as an ethnographic starting point for analyzing the subject position of women who converted to Islam. In contemporary Western European contexts, the phenomenon of conversion to Islam evokes various affective responses, including bewilderment, concern, and fear. This article assesses the frames through which female converts to Islam are represented in the media and particularly explores the existing focus on mother and daughter relationships. Based upon an analysis of the emotions named and generated, this article argues that such affective framings contribute to the shaping of the subject position of female converts to Islam. It moreover demonstrates that emotions such as concern, sadness, grief, and fear are the result of, as well as constructively infuse, contemporary debates on religious and cultural diversity in the Netherlands in which Islam and Muslims are considered to pose a “problem” for Europe.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfac072
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Tags: #Islam #Women #Sociology
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The Qur’an on Muslim Women’s Marriage to Non-Muslims: Premodern Exegetical Strategies, Contradictions, and Assumptions
By Shehnaz Haqqani, Mercer University
This article interrogates the claim that Islam prohibits Muslim women’s marriage to kitābīs (a derivative of the Qur’anic term ahl al-kitāb that is commonly used to refer to Christians and Jews), an argument that has practical and theological implications for Muslims today. By analysing the three Qur’anic verses on interreligious marriage (Q. 2:211, Q. 60:10, and Q: 5:5) and the ways they have been interpreted by several premodern and modern scholars, I show that two of the three verses invoked commonly to explain the prohibition can be read as applying equally to women and men, and the third does not prohibit such marriages. Premodern exegetes justified the prohibition using traditional hermeneutical tools such as qiyās (‘analogical reasoning’), ijmāʿ (‘scholarly consensus’), and takhṣīṣ (‘particularising a general statement’) to collectively interpret the verses as prohibiting women’s marriage to kitābīs. The application of these tools in the context of their specific milieux resulted in interpretations and conclusions that emerged from entrenched social systems which privileged a Muslim religio-patriarchal elite while normalising endogamy and slavery. Each exegete surveyed here has highlighted different elements of the relevant verses that reinforced their own personal assumptions, biases, and priorities, all of which confirm their interpretive power and authority. However, by applying the very same methods, contemporary readers of the Qur’an can arrive at different conclusions, given their own, different, priorities, biases, and contexts. I argue that applying the very same hermeneutical tools that exegetes have historically used can also lead to the conclusion that the Qur’an permits women’s marriage to kitābīs.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0529
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Tags: #Quran #Hermeneutics #Exegesis #Women
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Ḥamza's Consideration of Ibn Masʿūd's Divergent Readings
By Redwan B. Refat Albakri, University of Madinah
This study deals with the issue of Imām Ḥamza al-Zayyāt al-Kūfī – one of the seven reciters – and his acceptance of the reading of Ibn Masʿūd when it diverges from the muṣḥaf of ʿUthmān, so as to shed light on the early history of Qur’anic qirāʾāt. The article explores the ways in which Ḥamza was impacted by Ibn Masʿūd’s recitation, and the extent to which he followed it or implemented his own innovations, based on an applied study of the readings of Ibn Masʿūd that diverge from the ʿUthmanic codex as recorded in Ibn Abī Dāwūd’s al-Maṣāḥif and transmitted from al-Aʿmash. By comparing Ibn Masʿūd’s readings with the ten accepted qirāʾāt it seeks to analyse how close these recitations are to Ibn Masʿūd’s readings and to what extent they have been affected by them. This comparative analysis indicates that there is a strong relationship between the reading of Ḥamza and the recitations of Ibn Masʿūd, to an extent unseen in any of the other ten reciters. It reveals that, although Ḥamza does not follow all of Ibn Masʿūd’s readings, Ibn Masʿūd’s reading is clearly foundational to his recitation. The study concludes that Ḥamza’s use of Ibn Masʿūd’s readings indicates that he did not invent his own readings by opinion or ijtihād, while the fact he did not accept of all of Ibn Masʿūd’s readings testifies to the fact that he adhered only to what has been transmitted, and did not go beyond this to accept those of Ibn Masʿūd’s readings that were not.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0535
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Tags: #Ijaz #Quran #Hermeneutics #History
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‘A Precious Treatise’: How Modern Arab Editors Helped Create Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr
By Younus Y. Mirza, Georgetown University
Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr (‘Introduction to the Principles of Qur’anic Hermeneutics’) is frequently used as a guide to the classical tafsīr tradition, and its hermeneutic is viewed as the normative way to understand the Qur’an. It is even presented as one of the ‘classics’ of the medieval Islamic tradition and one of Islam’s ‘great books’. This small treatise has inspired other works on the Qur’an, especially those which are more tradition based, such as those that seek to interpret the Qur’an through the Qur’an and the Prophetic tradition. However, this article demonstrates that the treatise was not historically one of Ibn Taymiyya’s major works, did not have a stable name, and was not copied or disseminated profusely. The various parts of the treatise operated independently of one another, with medieval scholars referencing different parts of it. It was only in the modern period when Arab editors ‘rediscovered’ the work and went through the process of editing, naming, commenting on, and publishing the treatise that it became such an essential factor in our contemporary understanding of the Qur’an. By tracing the endeavours of these editors, we better appreciate the nature of the treatise and how it has influenced modern Qur’anic interpretation.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0530
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Tags: #IbnTaymiyya #Quran #Hermeneutics #Exegesis
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What analytic metaphysics can do for scientific metaphysics
By Chanwoo Lee, University of California
The apparent chasm between two camps in metaphysics, analytic metaphysics and scientific metaphysics, is well recognized. I argue that the relationship between them is not necessarily a rivalry; a division of labour that resembles the relationship between pure mathematics and science is possible. As a case study, I look into the metaphysical underdetermination argument for ontic structural realism, a well-known position in scientific metaphysics, together with an argument for the position in analytic metaphysics known as ontological nihilism. I argue that we can ascribe the same schema to both arguments, which indicates that analytic metaphysics can offer an abstract model that scientific metaphysics may find useful.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/rati.12379
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Tags: #AnalyticalPhilosophy #Metaphysics #Science
