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Mobilising a Decolonial–Islamic Praxis: Covenants in Islam and Muslim–Indigenous Relations
By Halim Rane, Debbie Bargallie and Troy Meston, Griffith University
Islam was an important factor in the decolonisation of Muslim countries from European colonial rule during the 19th and 20th centuries. However, Muslims are among the migrant-settler populations of Australia, Canada, the United States, and other British colonial states that continue to dispossess and disenfranchise Indigenous populations. This article contributes to the debate on “decolonising Islam”. It contends that covenants with God and between people in Islam’s pre-eminent sources, the Qur’an and sunnah, are antithetical to colonialism and reinforce a praxis-orientated decolonial–Islamic agenda. This article focuses on three aspects of decolonisation, addressing: (1) supremacist ideology; (2) human existence and coexistence; and (3) claims of entitlement. Using Australia as the primary case study, it examines Islamic obligations towards Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial states, emphasising the potential of covenants to promote mutual recognition and dialogue towards redressing injustices and building respectful coexistence.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030365
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Quran #Politics
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Why Evolution Does Not Make the Problem of Evil Worse
By Rope Kojonen, University of Helsinki
Does evolutionary history with all its apparent contingency, wastefulness, animal suffering and innumerable extinctions make the problem of natural evil worse? In this article, I argue that it does not. I respond to two main ways in which the evolutionary problem of evil might make things worse: (1) by increasing the scale of suffering to include billions of additional creatures over hundreds of millions of years, and (2) due to the apparent cruelty of evolution by natural selection as a method of creation. I argue that both problems fail to make a difference when considered in depth. Instead, the problem of natural evil is based mostly on factors that do not depend on evolutionary biology, such as the existence of animal mortality and suffering, as well as chance and
contingency in the world.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.3.3
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Tags: #Religion #Evolution #PoE #Evil
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The Theological Significance of the History of Science: John Templeton and the Promotion of Science and Religion
By Peter N Jordan, University of Oxford
This article examines the rationale behind philanthropist John Templeton’s investment in the field of science and religion. His support stems in part from the conviction that historical developments in science are finally leading us to the right understanding of God’s relationship to the created order. The older, mechanical picture of nature that science purportedly gave us implies that God is distant from nature, whereas more recent discoveries are revealing nature’s complexity, elusiveness, intangibility, unpredictability, and creativity and imply God’s intimate presence to, and involvement in, nature. This newer theological picture is consistent with a theological tradition to which Templeton had been exposed since childhood. Believing that science is finally uncovering theological truths about God and God’s relationship to the world, Templeton sought to shape science and (especially) religion so that comparable breakthroughs might continue to flow in the future.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae021
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Tags: #Science #Religion #Theology #God #History
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Imagination, Secularism and the University: The Presence and Consequences of Islamic Education
By Mujadad Zaman, Independent Researcher
This paper asks the question, ‘What does Islamic education mean for the 21st century university?’ To begin with, the paper addresses the modern university as an institution facing numerous challenges, which can be conceived of by understanding the nature of the ‘academic imagination’. In so doing, this argument draws on the fundamental elements of thought itself by foregrounding imagination as a primary route by which knowledge is conceived, created and disseminated. At root, it is an argument that suggests that to understand the university is to apprehend its imaginative functions. ‘Problems of the imagination’ are thereafter defined as ‘depth perception’, ‘vertigo’ and ‘paralysis’, respectively. In light of these challenges, the rise of Centers of Islamic Theology in Germany, and Islamic education as a discipline in particular, are considered as uncharted paths towards a discussion of the dilemmas of contemporary academia. Methodologically, the paper is a philosophical reflection on the role of the future of the university and the place of Islamic Theology and Islamic education therein. As such, use of the contemporary literature on higher education, as well as classical works on Islamic education, shall be employed for the purposes of the argument. In so doing, this paper turns the normative discussion of contemporary Islamic education on its head: from how we may make room for such education in the modern university, to consider how its presence may help the institution and its imaginative conundrums.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030330
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Tags: #Islam #Religion #Secularism #Pedagogy
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Textual Understanding and the Dialectics of Intent in the Works of Qur'anic Exegetes
By Bilqāsim Ḥimām
This article explores the ways a number of exegetes deal with ideas of authorial intent and textual (mis)understanding, on the basis that the Qur’anic discourse is a set of intentions, or rather an ‘intentional discourse’ (al-khiṭāba al-qaṣadiyya). In their view, the Qur’an is a discourse, rather than a monologic, linear text. As a speech act that uses the power of the spoken utterance, it is able to use language in a ways that allow it to convey its intended meanings fully, thereby guiding the recipient to a complete understanding of the speaker’s intention.
Qur’anic Arabic is a specialised language that can be understood primarily through an appreciation of authorial intention (mabdaʾ al-qaṣad). This is the most significant element in intentional discourses, in contrast to other genres such as literature, in which the reader’s understanding of the text is guided by both linguistic and semantic conventions and personal reader reception. In the case of the Qur’an, a failure to confine oneself to seeking to understand the speaker’s intended meaning leads to misunderstandings, and thus represents the most prominent threat to an accurate understanding of its message.
Misunderstandings can arise from issues such as the recipient’s lack of linguistic and rhetorical competence, or their lack of sufficient knowledge of the characteristics and qualities of the author of the discourse, not to mention the effect of personal assumptions. Exegetes have therefore attempted to arrive at a taxonomy of the degrees of textual understanding and misunderstanding of authorial intent in the Qur’an, and the range and scope of their analysis will be addressed in this article.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0562
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Quran #Exegesis
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The Translational Challenges Presented by Qur’anic Oaths: A Study of Q. 79 and Q. 100
By M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, University of London
Link: https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0558
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Tags: #Quran #Exegesis #Islam
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What Were the Most Popular tafsīrs in Islamic History? Part 1: An Assessment of the Manuscript Record and the State of tafsīr Studies
By Samuel J. Ross, Texas Christian University
Hitherto, the field of tafsīr studies has been beset by several challenges that have hindered its ability to produce a reliable historical outline of the genre. These challenges include: (1) the voluminous nature of our sources, both in terms of the sheer number of works and their individual length; (2) the fact that the overwhelming majority of works continue to be available only in manuscript form; (3) the tendency of previous scholarship to focus on the ‘classical’ period, leaving the post-classical tafsīr tradition largely unexplored, especially the ḥawāshī; and (4) our limited knowledge about which works were historically popular, when, where, and for whom.
This article shares the findings of a multi-year project to convert the most important union catalogue of Arabic tafsīr manuscripts, al-Fihris al-shāmil, into a searchable database and to use this database to pose and answer questions that were hitherto difficult to explore. These questions include: (1) What were the most longitudinally popular commentaries on the Qur’an as suggested by counts of extant manuscripts and their geographic distribution today? (2) To what extent have academic scholars studied these works? It is hoped that these findings will assist the field in planning future scholarly projects and in ultimately developing a more reliable outline of the tafsīr tradition.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0555
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Quran #Exegesis
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Qur’anic Understandings of the Divine Name Yhwh
By Abdulla Galadari, Khalifa University
Although the Qur’an never explicitly mentions the name yhwh, this study demonstrates that it reveals cognizance not only of the divine name but also of the elaboration of its meaning by paralleling interpretations found in some of the earliest rabbinic traditions, evidently building on traditions that were circulating amongst Jewish communities of Late Antiquity. I propose that the absence of an explicit mention of yhwh in the Qur’an points to the Qur’an’s oral rather than literary genesis. This study analyses Pharaoh’s inquiries about who and what the Lord is (in Q 20.49–55; 26.23–28). The Qur’an responds to these questions, whereas in the Exodus account, Pharaoh’s questioning about yhwh remains unanswered. The Qur’an appears to interpret the meaning of yhwh as God’s continuous generative action, the originating cause of every thing, and God’s existence, transcendence and omnipresence, echoing some explanations of the divine name in the earliest rabbinic traditions. Thus, the Qur’an engages with some of its audience by referencing Jewish understandings of the divine name. By reframing and reinterpreting some biblical stories, the Qur’an provides exegetical contributions to these narratives, highlighting its unique and critical role in the broader religious discourse during Late Antiquity.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2024.2303905
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Quran #Bible
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‘Where did you learn to write Arabic?’: A Critical Analysis of Some Ḥadīths on the Origins and Spread of the Arabic Script
By Joshua J Little, University of Groningen
According to some ḥadīths, the art of writing Arabic in the pre-Islamic Hijaz was learned from the city of al-Ḥīra (the capital of the Lakhmid kingdom) in southern Iraq, whilst al-Ḥīra in turn learned writing from the city of al-Anbār in central Iraq. Based on a combined isnād-cum-matn analysis, form-critical analysis, and geographical analysis of these ḥadīths, the earliest iteration of this material can be dated back to the middle of the eighth century CE (i.e., the early second century AH) in Kufa, but no earlier. A further historical-critical analysis also exposes the broader cultural and ideological tendencies at play behind the creation and elaboration of this material, including salvation history, a ‘great man’ theory of history, and—above all—the creation and elaboration of an Iraq-focused Arabian folk history in eighth-century CE Iraq. This small set of reports thus exemplifies the rich potential of ḥadīth in general as both a tool and an object of historical analysis: by applying my combined approach to ḥadīth, we can trace the creation, transmission, and elaboration of the material; we can locate its geographical origins; and we can identify the broader context that ultimately produced it.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etae008
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Hadith #History
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Education for Religion: An Islamic Perspective
By Ayman Agbaria, University of Haifa
This essay proposes a novel approach to religious education, one that stands in stark contrast to the often rigid and dogmatic nature of traditional religious instruction. The proposed approach seeks to cultivate deep awareness within students regarding their inherent limitations and their role as entrusted stewards in the grand design of God. It encourages students to move away from the temptation of godlike aspirations, such as the pursuit of boundless power and knowledge, instead positioning life on Earth as a divine destiny offering opportunities for growth, learning, and realizing one’s God-given potential. This form of religious education embraces doubt, uncertainty, and ambiguity, recognizing them as sources of motivation and meaning in a profound journey of faith. Inspired by John Hick’s and Abdolkarim Soroush’s works, this approach transcends traditional religious literacy, focusing on an encounter with the transcendent noumenal Real, and it is characterized by a sense of speechless awe, wonder, and astonishment before the riddles of existence and the beauty of the world. Ultimately, this essay underscores the importance of approaching religion as a system of relationships rather than as an ideology with all-encompassing answers.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030309
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Pedagogy
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Kafka’s Antizionism through a Comparative Analysis of ‘Jackals and Arabs’ with Judeo-Christian Texts, the Alexander Romance, and the Qur’an
By Ismail Lala, Gulf University for Science and Technology
Kafka explores many elements in ‘Jackals and Arabs’ that are found in the Judeo-Christian tradition of Gog and Magog, the Alexander Romance, and the Qur’anic story of Dhu’l-Qarnayn. A comparative analysis of these works reveals Kafka’s criticism of the Zionist movement. Kafka rejects Zionist exceptionalism and separatism through the narrator’s rejection of the jackals’ cause. Kafka’s jackals are compared to Gog and Magog, who are portrayed as corruptors of the land in the aforementioned texts. The categorisation of corruptors of the land is significant because this reverses Zionist claims of a profound connection to the land, which Kafka, likewise, reverses when the jackals claim that the desert is their home from which the Arabs should be removed. Zionist avowals of Arab backwardness are countered by Kafka as he makes the Arabs superior, which is also how the indigenous population are depicted in the Judeo-Christian and Muslim traditions since they are contrasted with the barbarity of Gog and Magog. Finally, the Zionist trope of the European Jewish hero who flees persecution is inverted by Kafka who confers on the narrator a quasi-prophetic/royal status similar to that of Dhu’l-Qarnayn and Alexander the Great.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030282
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Quran #History
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God and Space
By William Lane Craig, Houston Christian University
This paper inquires into the nature of God’s relationship to space. It explores two different views, one that God transcends space or exists aspatially and the other that God exists throughout space and so is spatially extended. It seeks to adjudicate the debate between these competing perspectives by weighing the principal arguments for and against each view.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030276
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Tags: #Quran #WLC #Theism
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On Proofs for the Existence of God: Aristotle, Avicenna, and Thomas Aquinas
By Xin Liu, Nanjing University
In this paper, I examine Aristotle’s cosmological proof of God’s existence, Avicenna’s metaphysical proof, and Thomas Aquinas’s five-way proof. By comparing these proofs, I argue that philosophers and theologians take different approaches to proving God’s existence not only because they follow different epistemological principles but, more fundamentally, because they construct different metaphysical frameworks in which God as the Supreme Being plays different roles and is thus clarified differently. The proof of God’s existence is also of theological significance. This paper makes an original contribution by showing that, despite Avicenna’s harsh criticism, Aquinas returns to Aristotelian cosmological proof. Moreover, Aquinas goes beyond Aristotle by identifying God not only as the First Mover but also as the Creator. The theme of God’s existence bridges philosophy and theology, and it also clearly reflects the interplay and mutual influence of Greek philosophy, Arabic Aristotelianism, and Latin Scholastics.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020235
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Tags: #God #Avicenna #Aristotle #Aquinas
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The Problem of Evil, God’s Personhood, and the Reflective Muslim
By Zain Ali, University of Auckland
Is it correct to think of God as a perfectly good personal agent? Not so, argue John Bishop and Ken Perszyk. Bishop and Perszyk, in their most recent work, God, Purpose, and Reality: A Euteleological Understanding of Theism (2023), outline a series of challenges that bring into question this concept of God—i.e., as a perfectly good personal agent, who is unique, unsurpassably great, all-powerful, and all-knowing. I aim to critically evaluate one of these challenges, namely the Normatively Relativised Logical Argument from Evil (NRLAFE). The NRLAFE has God’s perfect goodness as its target. Bishop and Perszyk argue that people who are committed to certain values about what constitutes right relationship amongst persons, might reasonably judge God as lacking perfect goodness. They also contend that the relevant values will likely be endorsed by theists. My aim in this paper is twofold: first, I aim to assess the Bishop-Perszyk argument from evil, in light of the tradition of Islamic Theism. The tradition of Islamic Theism is as broad as it is deep, and within the tradition there are a variety of ways in which God has been conceptualised. This includes debates as to whether we can view God as a personal agent. Second, I contend that we have available to us, from within and beyond the tradition of Islamic Theism, a set of resources that: (a) permit us to understand God as being a personal agent; and (b) allow us to resist the NRLAFE while endorsing the value commitments that Bishop and Perszyk have in mind. The perspective I bring to this paper is that of a reflective Muslim—i.e., a person of the Islamic faith who acknowledges that people of other religious and non-religious persuasions are as educated and concerned with seeking truth and avoiding error as they themselves are.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020225
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Tags: #God #Religion #PoE #Theism
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AVERROES’ “EPISTLE ON DIVINE KNOWLEDGE” AS A DIALECTICAL WORK: BETWEEN FORBIDDEN INTERPRETATION AND PHILOSOPHICAL TRAINING
By Yehuda Halper, Bar-Ilan University
Averroes’ “Epistle on Divine Knowledge” presents four different dialogues on two textual levels. These dialogues, the syllogistic structure of the arguments in them, and their use of contradictories indicate that the “Epistle on Divine Knowledge” is structured nearly entirely in accordance with the descriptions of dialectic we find in Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle's Topica. Accordingly, Averroes’ solution to the question of how God can have universal knowledge of particular things is a dialectical account of the distinction between Divine and human knowledge. Moreover, at a crucial point in the “Epistle on Divine Knowledge” Averroes refers to Aristotle, Metaphysics Β, which he considers to a dialectical exposition of questions on metaphysics. This reference suggests that Averroes sees the “Epistle on Divine Knowledge” as a kind of dialectical inquiry aimed at answering questions that arise at the outset of studying metaphysics. So, while it is possible to view the “Epistle on Divine Knowledge” as a dialectical interpretation of Quran 67:14, its primary purpose is to introduce its readers to metaphysical speculation. Thus it does not violate Averroes’ legal prohibition given in the Decisive Treatise against declaring dialectical interpretations in books available to the general public.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957423923000127
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Tags: #Averroes #Quran #Aristotle #Metaphysics
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On the Superiority of Divine Legislation Theory to Divine Command Theory
By Mark C. Murphy, Georgetown University
The view that human law can be analyzed in terms of commands was subjected to devastating criticism by H.L.A. Hart in his 1961 The Concept of Law. Two objections that Hart levels against the command theory of law also make serious trouble for divine command theory. Divine command theorists would do well to jettison command as the central concept of their moral theory, and,
following Hart’s lead, instead appeal to the concept of a rule. Such a successor view—divine legislation theory—has the attractions of divine command theory without the unacceptable limitations of command theories that Hart
identifies.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.3.1
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Tags: #Religion #DCT #Law #Metaphysics
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The Vagueness of Religion
By Andrew C Dole, Amherst College
A concept is vague if it admits of borderline cases—cases in which it is not clear whether the concept applies. Thus vague concepts are concepts without sharp boundaries. I argue that religion is vague, and I draw conclusions from this claim for both framing up conceptions of religion and studying it. One result will be to undermine arguments to the effect that any account of religion that does not sharply demarcate the religious from the nonreligious is somehow defective. Another will be that admitting the existence of borderline cases relieves us of the obligation to seek high levels of precision in our various usages of the term. And a third will be that is it not at all clear that any periods of human history can be characterized as times “before religion” on any but the narrowest of definitions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae017
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Tags: #Religion #Theology #Epistemology
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From Aslamat al-Maᶜrifa to al-Takāmul al-Maᶜrifī: A Study of the Shift from Islamization to Integration of Knowledge
By Mourad Laabdi and Aziz Elbittioui, Qatar University
Over the past half-century, the study of Islam in the Muslim world has been preoccupied with three global projects: maqāṣid al-sharīᶜa (the higher objectives of revealed law), al-wasaṭiyya al-islāmiyya (Islamic moderation), and aslamat al-maᶜrifa (Islamization of knowledge). Of these three, the latter has been the most substantial enterprise due to its ambitious work plan, extensive scope, and far-reaching influence. However, in recent decades, the Islamization of knowledge project has undergone significant developments culminating in its reformulation as ‘knowledge integration’ (al-takāmul al-maᶜrifī). This paper traces and analyzes the key manifestations of this notable transformation. Firstly, it surveys the various contexts of eschewing the concept of ‘Islamization’ and adopting ‘integration’. Secondly, it examines the conceptualization of the construct of ‘al-takāmul al-maᶜrifī’ within pre-modern and contemporary Islamic contexts. Thirdly, it investigates the practical implementation of knowledge integration with a special focus on the domain of higher education. The question that brings all three sections together is whether the knowledge integration model embodies a true paradigm shift or is a mere name change while bearing on the old rationale and approach of Islamization. The present paper argues that, under the banner of al-takāmul al-maᶜrifī, a shift from an internally focused intellectual effort to one that envisions new opportunities for epistemological renewal is recognizable at the individual level. However, institutionally, the application of this paradigm is still pending full and effective realization.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030330
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Tags: #Islam #Religion #Epistemology #Pedagogy
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Evaluating Strong Emergentism: An Argument for Non-Physical Substential Strong Emergentism
By Mohammad Mehdipour and Abdolrasoul Kashfi, University of Tehran
Physicalists and dualists have been unable to give a convincing answer to the mind-body problem, because they sacrifice, respectively, the mental causation and the close relationship between mind and body. Consequently, some recent philosophers, like Timothy O'Connor and Jonathan Jacobs, have turned to the idea of strong emergentism considereing the mind as an emergent but physical substance that has independent causal powers. If this answer is defensible, it will be a promising approach to solve the mind-body problem. However, there are significant challenges facing the idea of strong emergentism. In this article, we have two objectives: firstly, to address these challenges and to show that even the most serious one, the Collapse Problem, cannot threaten a particular understanding of strong emergentism. Secondly, we argue that O'Connor and Jacobs's proposal, although thought-provoking, is not comprehensible and can only be understood clearly when we consider the emergent substance to be not merely physical.
Link: https://doi.org/10.22091/JPTR.2024.10175.2983
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Tags: #Physicalism #Dualism #Metaphysics
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The Qur’anic Story of Joseph in Five Acts: A Playscript Translation of Sūrat Yūsuf (Q. 12)
By Shawkat M. Toorawa, Yale University
Link: https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0559
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Tags: #Quran #Islam #Exegesis
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The Meaning and Usage of laʿalla in the Qur’an
By Devin J. Stewart, Emory University
This study examines the use of laʿalla in the Qur’an, arguing that its most common meaning is ‘so that’ rather than ‘perhaps’, the common dictionary meaning. A few Western scholars have realised this, mainly on the basis of their independent inspection of the Qur’anic text, despite the fact that this meaning did not appear in any of the available dictionaries, grammars, and reference works in European languages until recent years. This interpretation of laʿalla is supported not only by the general sense indicated by contextual reading, but also by syntactic analysis of passages in which laʿalla appears. The present study corroborates and refines earlier analyses and shows that the interpretation of laʿalla as ‘so that’ is supported by several Arabic grammatical and lexical works. Furthermore, it finds that in the Qur’anic context, laʿalla is strongly connected with rhyme; it generally serves to introduce verse-final clausulae that rhyme, most often, but not always, in -ūn.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0557
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Quran #Exegesis
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Propagating Gender Norms in an Islamic Republic: Three Pakistani Alims and their Online tafsīrs
By Attash Sawja, Boston University
This article analyses the commentaries of three contemporary Pakistani scholars – Dr Israr Ahmad, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, and Engineer Muhammad Ali Mirza – on three Qur’anic themes as addressed in three specific verses: the creation story (Q. 4:1), women and legal testimony (Q. 2:282), and marital relationships (Q. 4:34). It emerges that the approaches taken by all three scholars differs considerably to those of earlier, premodern interpreters. For example, none of the three quote earlier authoritative opinions or engage in grammatical discussion, while only one uses ḥadīths to make his point. All three selectively bring in modern ideas to reinforce existing exegetical opinions and interpretations, and only rarely challenge these. While the three scholars deviate from the wider, inherited exegetical tradition in maintaining that women are not spiritually inferior or secondary to men, they do not challenge any other inherited concepts. In their discourse, they propagate the idea that men (i.e. husbands and fathers) are in charge of the family unit, the fundamental building block of society, because of their innate psychological and physiological features, and hence have greater responsibilities towards their households and society, while women, although spiritually equal, have different roles. None of the three scholars seem to consider the impact of changing socio-economic realities in Pakistan in their exegeses on the three themes addressed here, giving the impression that the normative values and customs of an Islamic society are independent of these changes. Finally, Ghamidi takes a more flexible approach in his question-and-answer sessions as compared to his tafsīr musalsal, giving the impression that the genre is more about conserving the meaning of the scripture.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0556
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Quran #Exegesis
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Authority with Textual Materials – Power of the Written Qur’an
By Hanna Nieber, University of szeged
The article studies the performance of Islamic authority through texts. It combines this with a close investigation of the textuality of these texts—that is, their letterforms as well as shapes of words and sentences—and their material affordances. Given that Muslims understand the Qur’an to be powerful, this article argues that it is the concrete possibilities that textuality provides which feed into Islamic authority. This article takes an ethnographic encounter in Zanzibar Town in which I was repeatedly prompted to visually follow the textual aids of my interlocutor, Hakimu Saleh, in order to gain access to that which is “hidden between the words” as starting point. I investigate how Hakimu Saleh used these occasions to perform his authority as a knowledgeable Islamic healer through “material citations.” I then explore the singularity of the Qur’an to examine the textuality of kombe, a practice in which the Qur’an is used as a decidedly textual artifact to be washed off for patients to ingest. In doing so, I show how practices tapping into the power of the materially textual Qur’an feed into other practices with material text, including those that support the performance of authority in an Islamic context.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2024.2303905
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Quran
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Fasting in Early Sufi Literature
By Atif Khalil, University of Lethbridge
This article offers an analysis of conceptions of fasting in early Islamic spirituality. By drawing on the literature of Sufism, with special attention to the writings of al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988), al-Makkī (d. 386/996), al-Kharkūshī (= Khargūshī; d. 407/1016), al-Hujwīrī (d. ca. 465/1071), al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and al-Sīrjānī (d. 470/1077), it thematically outlines (1) the value placed on fasting in early tradition, (2) the dangers believed to lie in the practice, and finally, (3) the need to transcend, in the final scheme of things, any attachment one may form with it, through ‘detachment from detachment’. In the process, the article aims not only to decipher and make sense of the various aphorisms and stories that make up the early literature of taṣawwuf, but also to resolve their apparent contradictions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etae003
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Sufism #History
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On the concepts of time, space, vacuum and domain of investigation among contemporary physics, philosophy and theological reflection
By Paul Di Sia, University of Padova
Contemporary theology is realizing the importance of integrating the knowledge of modern/contemporary physics into the metaphysical and ontological categories usedto consider God and the God-world relationship. Time is a complex notion with different meanings, characterized by a plurality of uses. The concept of time opens upto broader conceptions than those of physics, mathematics and philosophy and reveals that the human being, the earth and the cosmos are not the center of space or time.The concepts of space, time and matter, to which the concept of vacuum is connected,are of central importance in any modern physical theory, and particularly in thetheories of unification. It is being discovered that spacetime is absent at the most fundamental level and only emerges at an appropriate limit. This emerging image oftime leads to new conceptual challenges that must be faced in parallel with philosophy and theological research to achieve its correct understanding. It is acomparison of the viewpoints of the three investigative domains concerned with understanding the nature of consciousness, namely science, philosophy and metaphysics. This thought process is connected to the intuitions of the contemplative and mystical traditions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.22091/JPTR.2024.10113.2974
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Tags: #Religion #Metaphysics #Theology
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The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Study of the Psychology of Religion
By Khader I. Alkhouri, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
The study of the psychology of religion encompasses various aspects of human experiences and beliefs, including the influence of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). This article aims to examine the impact of AI on religious practices and rituals, highlighting its potential to reshape how individuals engage with spirituality. By exploring AI-powered religious applications, virtual communities, and online services, we seek to understand the transformation of traditional religious practices and raise important questions about authenticity, inclusiveness, and the role of technology in the psychology of religious contexts. Moreover, ethical considerations and challenges arising from the integration of AI into religion will be addressed. As researchers delve into this intersection, it is crucial to strike a balance between technological advancements and preserving the fundamental aspects of spirituality, personal growth, and genuine human connection. This article contributes to the existing literature by shedding light on the potential implications of AI in the realm of religious experiences, calling for further exploration of its ethical dimensions and unintended consequences. Ultimately, understanding the influence of AI on the psychology of religion prompts us to reflect on the nature of spirituality, belief formation, and the human experience itself.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030290
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Tags: #AI #Religion #Psychology
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Redefining Qurʾānic Hermeneutics: Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābrī and Nasr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd’s Humanistic Interpretations
By Ali Mostfa, Université Catholique de Lyon
This article presents the innovative endeavor by Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābrī and Nasr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd in interpreting the Qurʾān through a humanistic lens. Their approach marks a pivotal shift, viewing the Qurʾān as a dynamic text that actively engages with the human interpreter. This human-centric perspective underpins their hermeneutical method, which employs lexicography, philology, and semantics to unearth the layered meanings within the Qurʾānic narrative. The article delves into the nuances of their methodologies, drawing parallels and distinctions, and underscores their profound impact on modern Qurʾānic hermeneutics.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030278
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Tags: #Quran #Hermeneutics #History
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Two New Successive Addition Arguments
By Ibrahim Dagher, Yale University
One of William Lane Craig's key arguments for the finitude of the past is the Successive Addition Argument (SAA). Malpass (2021) has recently developed a novel challenge to the SAA, utilising a thought experiment from the work of Fred Dretske, which is meant to show that it is possible to count to infinity, to argue that there is a counterexample to the SAA's second premise. In this paper, I contend that the Malpass-Dretske counterexample should not worry advocates of the SAA. First, I argue that one objection Malpass considers—the Potential Infinite Objection—reveals an interesting fact: the SAA's second premise is unnecessarily strong and can be weakened whilst still yielding the same conclusion. Second, I show how another one of the objections considered by Malpass—the Accumulation Objection—is successful, provided some clarification to the SAA's premises. The upshot of both analyses is that we generate two ‘new’ Successive Addition arguments that not only move the dialectic forward, but shed light on deeper assumptions and motivating intuitions concerning the Kalām.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14292
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Tags: #God #Religion #WLC #Kalam
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The Forgotten Proof: The Existence of God and Universal Consent
By Peter Harrison, University of Queensland
During the early modern period, the proof of God’s existence based on universal consent (consensus gentium) was widely regarded as the most powerful argument that could be deployed against atheism. Yet from the mid-eighteenth century the argument began to disappear from the roster of arguments for God’s existence. Modern readers, moreover, find it difficult to see what makes this a proof at all and wonder why it was ever thought to be persuasive. This article offers a history of the consensus gentium principle, showing why it was long regarded as logically compelling and explaining its relation to the three better-known “classical” proofs of God’s existence. Consideration of the varying fortunes of this argument yields important insights into the changing nature and status of proofs for God’s existence and especially how these changed during the early modern period. It also shows why the burden of proof has gradually shifted over the past four centuries so that it is now belief in God rather than atheism that is thought to require rational justification. The history of this argument thus sheds light on the emergence of a distinctive feature of secular modernity, in which belief in the existence of God has become just one possibility among others. The article concludes with a brief consideration of modern vestiges of the argument in Rudolf Otto’s sense of the numinous, in revivals of Reidian reliabilism associated with reformed epistemology, and in the work of some practitioners of the cognitive science of religion.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1086/727614
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Tags: #God #Religion #Atheism #CSR #History
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Another Wittgensteinian response to the evolutionary argument against naturalism
By Zoheir Bagheri Noaparast, Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt
In “The evolutionary argument against naturalism: a Wittgensteinian response,” DeVito and McNabb (Int J Philos Relig 92(2):91–98, 2022, 10.1007/s11153-022-09832-3) propose a Wittgensteinian argument against Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism. In their paper, they seek to establish symmetry between a component of Plantinga’s premise and the premise of the radical skeptic. The first premise of Plantinga’s argument assumes the possibility of doubting the reliability of our cognitive abilities. The Radical skeptic doubts we have rational grounds to refute being brains in vats. DeVito and McNaab use hinge epistemology and Pritchard’s strategy against the radical skeptic to undermine Plantinga’s premise. This paper offers an alternative argument based on hinge epistemology against Plantinga’s argument. Relying on the various types of certainties Wittgenstein discussed, I argue that some scientific facts are among our certainties and hinges. Evolution (i.e., the theory of evolution by natural selection) is a well-established scientific fact and a hinge. As a result, in Plantinga’s first premise, we have two hinges: evolution and the reliability of our cognitive abilities. I will argue that given that hinges cannot trump one another, we can have these two hinges in place, and therefore, by endorsing hinge epistemology, there is another argument that shows why Plantinga’s argument cannot undermine naturalism if one accepts evolution.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-024-09904-6
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Tags: #EAAN #Naturalism #Plantinga #Evolution
