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A fundamental flaw in the free will defence
By Brandon Robshaw, Open University
In this paper I examine versions of the free will defence by Alvin Plantinga and Peter Van Inwagen. The free will defence states that God allows evil acts to occur because they are an inevitable outcome of granting humans free will. One could only have a world free of evil if humans were unfree. But free will is such a very great gift that a world with no free will and no evil would be worse than a world where there was free will and also evil. I argue that this defence has a fundamental flaw. It leaves something crucial out of account: the fact that acts of evil typically diminish or destroy the free will of their victims. If God wants all humans (not just powerful ones) to have the valuable gift that is free will, therefore, he has reason to prevent evil acts which take away other individuals’ free will. The free will defence is therefore paradoxical: the value of free will is no reason for allowing evil, but for restricting it.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-025-09962-4
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Tags: #FreeWill #Plantinga #Morality #Evil
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Islamic emotional-cognitive integration: how Islamic education shapes students’ cognitive processes and outcomes through expressive writing
By Redite Kurniawan, Imam Karya Bakti, M. Firmansyah, Rosidi Bahri, Nur Kholis & Kusaeri, Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel
This study explores the role of Islamic education in shaping cognitive processes, the internalisation of Islamic values and the cognitive-emotional integration of students through the practice of expressive writing. Using a mixed-methods approach, this research compares the expressive writing of 34 participants from two different institutions: a madrasah tsanawiyah, which intensively implements an Islamic atmosphere, and a public middle school. The results reveal that students in the madrasah consistently demonstrate a deeper understanding of Islamic concepts and reflect religious values in their writing, even without religiously specific prompts. In contrast, students in the public middle school show minimal expression of Islamic values, primarily prompted by the religious cues given in the writing task. These findings suggest that religious education integrated with Islamic habituation in the school environment strengthens students’ reflective abilities, both cognitively and emotionally. This study demonstrates that social support and value-based learning can accelerate the internalisation of Islamic values and the emotional regulation of students.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2025.2523385
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Tags: #Psychology #Sociology #Religion #Pedagogy
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Morality and the Gods
By Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Aarhus University
The relationship between religion and morality has been a steadfast topic of inquiry since the dawn of the social sciences. This Element probes how the social sciences have addressed this relationship by detailing how theory and method have evolved over the past few generations. Sections 1 and 2 examine the historical roots of cross-cultural inquiry and Section 3 addresses the empirical tools developed to address cross-cultural patterns statistically. Sections 4-6 address how the contemporary evolutionary social sciences have been addressing the role religious cognition, behaviour, and beliefs play on moral conduct. By critically examining the tools and theories specifically developed to answer questions about the evolution of morality, society, and the gods, this Element shows that much of our current knowledge about this relationship has been significantly shaped by our cultural history as a field. It argues that the relationship between religion and morality is, despite considerable diversity in form, quite common around the world.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009414036
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Tags: #God #Religion #Morality
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Beyond Interest: The Legal Development of Bayʿ al-Wafāʾ in Hanafi Legal Thought
By Birnur Deniz, Independent Researcher
Credit relations in Muslim societies have attracted significant scholarly attention across disciplines due to the prohibition of interest. In the Ottoman Empire, renowned for its vast resources, the presence of sophisticated credit mechanisms alongside its strong Muslim identity has often been perceived as paradoxical. While this apparent contradiction has been extensively studied, the perception and legitimacy of these credit mechanisms within Islamic law, particularly in English-language scholarship, remains underexamined. This study addresses this gap by analyzing bayʿ al-wafāʾ, a significant financing mechanism in which asset ownership is temporarily transferred to a lender in exchange for a loan, with the understanding that the asset will be returned upon full repayment. This transaction, employed for centuries across diverse regions as an interest-avoiding solution, has been extensively debated within Hanafi jurisprudence. This research chronologically examines bayʿ al-wafāʾ’s integration into Hanafi legal thought from its emergence through the 18th-century Ottoman Empire, drawing on primary sources across various genres of Hanafi legal literature. The findings reveal that bayʿ al-wafāʾ could not be categorized within existing Islamic contract frameworks. Instead, it is recognized as a contract with unique provisions deriving legitimacy from custom and necessity. This study illuminates both how this transaction achieved legal and legitimate status within Hanafi jurisprudence and, more broadly, demonstrates the dynamic evolution of Islamic law within the Hanafi school from the 10th to 18th centuries. Through this analysis, this study demonstrates how the paradoxical challenge of providing interest-free financing was resolved within the framework of Islamic legal principles.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16070832
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Tags: #Islam #Shariah #Law #History
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Ibn Rushd’s Unification of Forms in the First Form as an Early “Theory of Everything”
By Hakan Turan, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck
Besides God's role as the First Mover, in Ibn Rushd's Metaphysics, God also represents the First Form, which is the cause of all forms in the world. But how can the existence of a variety of forms be reconciled with a causing single First Form? This article will present three phases in the development of this problem by Ibn Rushd. After a comparison of these with the concept of unification of the laws of nature in modern physics, the article concludes with a proposal to introduce objects of modern mathematics into Ibn Rushd's concept of the unification of forms.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514316
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Tags: #IbnRushd #God #Metaphysics
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Reason and Revelation in Ibn Taymiyyah’s Critique of Philosophical Theology: A Contribution to Contemporary Islamic Philosophy of Religion
By Adeeb Obaid Alsuhaymi and Fouad Ahmed Atallah, Jouf University
This paper addresses the longstanding tension between reason and revelation in Islamic religious epistemology, with a focus on the thought of Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728/1328). It aims to reassess his critique of philosophical theology (falsafa and kalām) and explore his constructive alternative to rationalist metaphysics. The study adopts a descriptive–analytical methodology, combining close textual reading of Darʾ Taʿāruḍ al-ʿAql wa al-Naql and Naqd al-Manṭiq with conceptual analysis informed by contemporary religious epistemology and philosophy of religion. The findings reveal that Ibn Taymiyyah advances a triadic epistemological model centered on revelation (naql), reason (ʿaql), and innate disposition (fiṭrah). He refutes the autonomy of reason, redefines logic as a tool rather than a judge, and repositions fiṭrah as an intuitive foundation for belief. His approach emphasizes the harmony of sound reason with authentic revelation and challenges the epistemic assumptions of speculative theology. By presenting a comparative table of rationalist and Taymiyyan epistemologies, the study demonstrates how Ibn Taymiyyah’s framework anticipates key themes in Reformed Epistemology and the cognitive science of religion. The conclusions suggest that his vision offers a coherent, theocentric paradigm for religious knowledge that is highly relevant to the contemporary philosophy of religion and Islamic theology.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16070809
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Tags: #IbnTaymiyyah #Kalam #Islam #Fitrah #Epistemology
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Some Considerations on the Theory of Emanation in Alfarabi, Avicenna, and al-Ghazālī
By Catarina Belo, The American University
This chapter, inspired by Edward Moad's analysis of al-Ghazālī's approach to the theory of emanation, offers a comparative analysis of that theory, according to Alfarabi and Avicenna, and assesses al-Ghazālī's response. Al-Ghazālī holds that emanation constitutes a major obstacle to a correct conception of God as portrayed in the Qurʾan. More specifically, it is incompatible with a correct understanding of God's attributes, in particular God's knowledge and will, and more broadly with God's agency. Although he criticizes both Alfarabi and Avicenna, al-Ghazālī's account of emanation is fundamentally more indebted to Avicenna's model than to that of Alfarabi.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514309
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Tags: #Ghazali #Avicenna #AlFarabi #God
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Artificial Intelligence and Human Spirituality: Is a Spiritual Chatbot a Good Idea?
By Ron Cole-Turner, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has led to sophisticated chatbots to provide virtual companions or to address mental health problems. Somewhat similar in design, a “spiritual chatbot,” intended to enhance the user’s spirituality, is within reach of today’s technology. The key features of a spiritual chatbot are described, along with early experiments in the religious use of AI. Spiritual chatbots may play a positive role in promoting spirituality, but they should not act in the role of pastor or priest. With a proper balance of encouragement and honesty, they might be accepted as a means of grace leading to authentic spiritual growth.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514299
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Tags: #AI #Spirituality #Religion
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Self-deprivation and cognition in Ramadan: could fasting practice improve inhibitory control?
By Mostafa Salari Rad, New School for Social Research
Nearly a quarter of the world's population undergoes a major lifestyle transformation during the month-long Ramadan fast, making this large-scale self-restraint exercise a unique natural laboratory for exploring behavioral and psychological questions. This study tests the hypothesis that self-control improves with practice, predicting enhanced inhibitory control after a month of restraining basic needs. Ramadan participants (RPs; N = 173) and Controls (N = 222) completed tests of inhibitory control before, during and after Ramadan, assessing response times and accuracy alongside measures of trait self-control and beliefs about willpower. Over time, both the speed and accuracy of inhibitory responses improved, with RPs showing greater gains than Controls. Improvements in inhibition accuracy were significantly moderated by trait self-control, emerging only among RPs with higher perceived self-control. Insofar as this trait reflects an individual's value for self-control and aspiration for improvement, this finding highlights the role of motivation in practice effects. While the durability of these effects remains uncertain, the results suggest that inhibitory control can improve through practice when paired with supportive self-perceptions. This research also underscores how collective abstinence practices promoted by religious and cultural systems might guide individual efforts to foster self-control, advancing research on underrepresented practices and beliefs in psychological science.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2025.2487277
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Tags: #Sociology #Muslims #Islam #Psychology
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Al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd on the End of the World
By Taneli Kukkonen, New York University Abu Dhabi
The question of whether the universe can or must come to an end is rarely addressed in Arabic philosophy but informs the Second Discussion of al-Ghazālī’s Incoherence of the Philosophers and Ibn Rushd’s rejoinder in his Incoherence of the Incoherence. The philosophical debate between the two reveals limits to the symmetries between time and space in Aristotelian thinking. Additionally, we discern in Ibn Rushd’s responses a dedication to scientific reasoning even in the face of theological concerns, while al-Ghazālī is more willing to make allowances—within a rational worldview—for events that fall outside the normal course of nature.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514310
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Tags: #Aristotle #IbnRushd #Ghazali #Theology
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Structural Challenges in Constructive Muslim Thought on Gender and Sexuality
By Aysha Hidayatullah, University of San Francisco
Constructive Muslim scholarship engaged in the critique of hierarchies which are based on gender and sexuality faces structural challenges posed by both Muslim community audiences and the academy. These challenges produce limitations but also generate key theological insights within Muslim constructive thought. This critical constructive scholarship must necessarily attend to both the present and future of Muslim communities.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12501
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Tags: #Gender #Islam #Muslims
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Avicenna on the theory of Forms
By Hashem Morvarid, Johns Hopkins University
It is well known that Avicenna vehemently rejected the theory of Forms. However, his interpretation of the theory and his reasons for rejecting it remain understudied. This paper aims to fill this lacuna. It begins by laying out the theses that he associated with the theory of Forms, demonstrating where they diverge from Plato's own formulation of the theory and from two later reformulations of it: those of post-Avicennian Muslim Platonists and contemporary analytic Platonists. Subsequently, it examines Avicenna's arguments against the theory, classifying them into two categories: (1) refutations of Platonic arguments and (2) direct arguments against the theory. Both groups of arguments demonstrate significant originality, going well beyond Aristotle's critiques in his Metaphysics, which was likely the principal source of Avicenna's knowledge of the theory of Forms. The examination of Avicenna's arguments reveals (1) his methodology in responding to ancient views with which he disagreed; (2) some of his innovative logical contributions, including the distinction between two kinds of predication, and the logic of the “min ḥaythu hīya hīya” (inasmuch as it is what it is) operator; and (3) some substantive metaphysical, epistemological, and semantic assumptions that were later embraced by mainstream Islamic philosophy.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.70020
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Tags: #Avicenna #Islam #Logic #Metaphysics
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Non-contrastive transcendence as gift and challenge to science and religion
By Peter N. Jordan, University of Oxford
This article suggests that the nature of transcendence represents a promising topic for future engagement between revision-minded theologians in the field of science and religion and tradition-oriented ones. It does so by drawing on Kathryn Tanner's account of non-contrastive transcendence within the history of Christian theology to illuminate the thinking of contemporary science and religion pioneer Arthur Peacocke. Peacocke thought modern science showed God to be immanently present to and working in the natural world, and not merely transcendent over it as its creator. To correct an alleged theological overemphasis on God's transcendence—one that shaded into distance and disconnection—Peacocke sought to reintroduce immanence into the God-creation relation. His approach imagined transcendence and immanence as separate modalities that could be increased or decreased independently of one another. Had Peacocke adopted a non-contrastive view of transcendence, in which a particular kind of transcendence makes immanence possible, he could have met the requirements he set for satisfactory pictures of the God-world relation, claimed the profound sense of immanence he wanted, and situated himself within a more traditional way of thinking. In doing so, however, Peacocke would have had to settle for a vision of science-theology relations in which science's theological impact is less profound than the field often assumes.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/moth.12998
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Tags: #God #Science #Theology
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A layered unity model of split-brain consciousness
By Azenet Lopez, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Split-brain subjects can consciously perceive and identify two stimuli presented simultaneously but separately in opposite hemifields. Yet, they seem to lack a conscious experience of the two stimuli together, as they cannot judge whether these are the same or different. Such breakdowns in experiential or phenomenal unity would carry important implications for philosophical reflection on the essential properties of conscious experience, as well as for scientific theorising about consciousness’ neural and functional bases. Extant models supporting the preserved unity of split-brain consciousness secure unity in a subject or agential sense, but do not explain how right- and left-side conscious experiences could be unified in the problem cases. Here, I offer a new model that supplies the missing phenomenal unity. Based on the construct of layers of conscious experience, my model acknowledges breakdowns in localexperiential layers but warrants preserved unity in global ones. A supporting argument draws on the preserved attentional capacities of split-brain subjects. My proposal goes beyond extant research in that it focuses on the conjoint phenomenology of simultaneous right- and left-side experiences, highlights the conceptual connections of phenomenal unity to attention, and discusses the impact of specific split-brain attentional capacities on the unity of right- and left-side experiences.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-025-02339-3
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Tags: #Consciousness #Philosophy #Science
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Foundational Grounding and Four Sources of Contingency
By Kenneth L. Pearce, James Madison University
I have previously argued that theists should understand God as the foundational ground of the created world. This view is a version of metaphysical rationalism, holding that everything that is apt for grounding is grounded. Views of this sort can avoid necessitarianism only if some grounding relations are indeterministic, that is, if complete grounds, even given their total circumstances, do not always necessitate what they ground. The present paper argues that there are (at least) four places in the grounding hierarchy where theists may plausibly insert this kind of indeterminism.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2025.41.1.5
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Tags: #God #Contigency #Theism
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Analytic atheism and analytic apostasy across cultures
By Nick Byrd, Geisinger College of Health Sciences; Stephen Stich, Rutgers University; and Justin Sytsma, Victoria University of Wellington
Reflective thinking often predicts less belief in God or less religiosity – so-called analytic atheism. However, those correlations involve limitations: widely used tests of reflection confound reflection with ancillary abilities such as numeracy; some studies do not detect analytic atheism in every country; experimentally encouraging reflection makes some non-believers more open to believing in God; and one of the most common online research participant pools seems to produce lower data quality. So analytic atheism may be less than universal or partially explained by confounding factors. To test this, we developed better measures, controlled for more confounds, and employed more recruitment methods. All four studies detected signs of analytic atheism above and beyond confounds (N > 70,000 people from five of six continental regions). We also discovered analytic apostasy: the better a person performed on reflection tests, the greater their odds of losing their religion since childhood – even when controlling for confounds. Analytic apostasy even seemed to explain analytic atheism: apostates were more reflective than others and analytic atheism was undetected after excluding apostates. Religious conversion was rare and unrelated to reflection, suggesting reflection’s relationships to conversion and deconversion are asymmetric. Detected relationships were usually small, indicating reflective thinking is a reliable albeit marginal predictor of apostasy.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412525000198
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Tags: #Atheism #CSR #Religion
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On the Methodology of Science and the Current Crisis of Religious Belief
By Andrew Loke, Hong Kong Baptist University
The current crisis of religious belief is plausibly correlated with widespread scientific education and a related agnostic way of thinking. I show how this crisis can in principle be addressed, by first asking what are the methodological requirements of the scientific constructive agnostic process (SCAP) itself. I demonstrate that these requirements include deductive reasoning and phenomenological experience, and they can in principle be used to formulate a cosmological argument for the existence of God. Moreover, SCAP also requires well-established historical conclusions, and I show how one can in principle use this consideration to address the difficulties concerning belief in miracles.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514305
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Tags: #God #Science #Religion #ConflictThesis
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Religious delusion or religious belief?
By Richard Gipps, University of Oxford; Simon Clarke, Canterbury Christ Church University
How shall we distinguish religious delusion from sane religious belief? Making this determination is not usually found to be difficult in clinical practice – but what shall be our theoretical rationale? Attempts to answer this question often try to provide differentiating principles by which the religious “sheep” may be separated from the delusional “goats.” As we shall see, none of these attempts work. We may, however, ask whether the assumption underlying the search for a differentiating principle – that religious beliefs and religious delusions can usefully be considered species of a common genus – is a good one. In this paper, we outline an alternative, “disjunctive,” understanding of religious belief and religious delusion. By reminding ourselves both of what is central to any delusion and of what distinguishes bona fide religious claims from their pretenders, we show how to resolve our reflective puzzlement about religious delusion without recourse to differentiating principles.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2024.2302519
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Tags: #Religion #Psychology #Faith
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A View on the Possibility of an Ethics Without God
By Elliott R. Crozat, Purdue University
This article addresses the question, “Is an ethics without God possible?” This question is explored in a special issue, edited by Prof. Dr. James P. Sterba, which directly poses this very inquiry. I argue that an objective ethics without God is epistemically possible. Having addressed this initial point, I then make the case that an objective ethics without God is metaphysically possible. In other words, there are plausible explanations to support the thesis that ethics exists without God. Lastly, I propose that although God is not required for ethics, it is reasonable to postulate God’s existence to realize aspects of justice.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16070813
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Tags: #Ethics #God #Metaphysics
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From Theodicy to Anthropodicy: The Banalities of Evil
By David Le Breton, University of Strasbourg
This article defends the idea that evil is a notion dependent on social and cultural judgment, and that in our societies, it implies the idea of free will. There is no metaphysics of evil, but rather an anthropology, a myriad of specifically human incidences linked to situations, to good or evil intentions, to specific relationships such as wars, torture, violence, rape, cruelty, abuse, and so on. Their consequences involve suffering and death, sometimes deliberately. The anthropological question of evil differs from a metaphysical conception of human nature.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16070805
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Tags: #Evil #Theodicy #FreeWill #Anthropology
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Reflections over the Symposium on Coherence of the Incoherence
By Edward Moad, Qatar University
This paper will address some issues raised in the insightful contributions to the symposium on my recent book Coherence of the Incoherence. First, I will examine Davat Dadikhuda’s defense of Ibn Sina against objections Ghazali raises to his proof of cosmic pre-eternity, pertaining to time and the causal relation between God and creation. Second, I will examine a critique of Ibn Sina brought by Nazif Muhtaroglu regarding the distinction between de reand de dicto necessity. Second, I will share some initial thoughts on Ahmed Abdel Meguid’s interpretation of Ghazali’s position on modality.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514317
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Tags: #Ghazali #Avicenna #IbnRushd #God
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An Adjudication Between Avicenna, Ghazālī, and Moad on the Second Avicennian Argument
By Davlat Dadikhuda, Independent Researcher
This article examines Ghazālī’s critique of Avicenna’s second argument for the eternity of the world, as presented in Tahāfut al-falāsifa. While prior scholarship has addressed this debate, it often relies solely on Ghazālī’s rendition of Avicenna’s argument, which omits key details. To rectify this, the article first reconstructs Avicenna’s original argument, highlighting its nuances. It then defends the argument where necessary against Ghazālī’s objections. Finally, it evaluates a contemporary interpretation that supports Ghazālī’s critique, offering a critical analysis of its conclusions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514314
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Tags: #Ghazali #Avicenna #Theology
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Ibn Sīnā and al-Ghazālī on Causality as Necessary Connection, and Occasionalism
By Nazif Muhtaroglu, Yale University
This paper examines the relationship between necessity and causality in the philosophies of Ibn Sīnā and al-Ghazālī, with a focus on occasionalism. My analysis uncovers that al-Ghazālī, while critiquing Ibn Sīnā's concept of causal necessity, implicitly grasps a distinction between de re and de dictonecessity. I argue that al-Ghazālī’s acceptance of de dicto necessity, allows him to articulate a more robust principle of causality, termed here the “meta-principle of causality.” This principle forms the basis of a three-step framework supporting occasionalism, offering new insights into the doctrine.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514311
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Tags: #Occasionalism #Kalam #Islam #Avicenna #Ghazali
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Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Theology of Technology: From “Means” to “Meanings” and from “Minds” to “Hearts”
By Mohammed Gamal Abdelnour, Oxford Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies & Al-Azhar University
Muslim responses to Artificial Intellgence (AI) have so far focused mainly on how it challenges the human “mind”. This paper moves from the “mind” to the “heart”, which, in Islam, is not only a vessel of emotion but a cognitive, moral and spiritual centre. Charting a path between cynicism and optimism, the article proposes a third track: critical, hopeful, and ethically grounded. Utilizing indigenous Islamic concepts (e.g., ijtihād “independent reasoning”, maṣlaḥah mursalah“unrestricted public interest”, and sadd al-dharā’iʿ “blocking the means to harm”), it advocates a bottom-up approach that focuses not just on managing AI, but on shaping “who” we are in the AI age, calling for a moral vision rooted in intentionality (niyyah), moral clarity, and individual-cum-collective responsibility.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16060796
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Tags: #AI #Muslims #Islam #Theology
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The Principle of Sufficient Reason: An Axis of the Early Encounter of Ash‘arism with Avicennism
By Laura Hassan, University of Oxford
Ibn Sīnā upheld a strong principle of determination, maintaining the ontological neutrality of the contingent essence towards both existence and non-existence and, resultantly, its need for a determinant cause for either state. Beginning with al-Ghazālī, Ash‘arīs confronted the difficulty that by extension of Ibn Sīnā’s principle, the determination of existence for x and of non-existence for y represented by God’s particularisation of the world’s origination must itself be subject to a determining factor. This poses problems for the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. This article details the approach to Ibn Sīnā’s principle of determination maintained by a number of post-Avicennan rational theologians.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2025.2514310
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Tags: #God #Islam #Avicenna #Ghazali #Theology #PSR
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The Prophetic in Constructive Muslim Theology: Creativity, Epistemic Virtues, and Vices
By Ebrahim Moosa, University of Notre Dame
Theology, like every living discourse and tradition of knowledge that must contend with a changing and complex reality, demands revision, renewal, and recalibration. Why? In order to craft a narrative that speaks meaningfully to the challenges of our time–a narrative that expresses our commitments to the Divine through belief, action, and practice. The central theological question–the God-question–remains ever-present. It is not that this question has gone unanswered, but rather that each age must ask it anew. What matters now is how the God-question compel creative thinking, and how it confronts us with new conceptions of moral and intellectual responsibility. In this brief reflection, I will focus on the relationship between knowledge and action, with particular attention to the cultivation of epistemic virtues and the danger of epistemic vices.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12507
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Tags: #Theology #Islam #God #Epistemology
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The Role of Knowledge in the Caliphate System of al-Ghazālī: Is It an Element of Openness or Isolating Fundamentalism?
By Vanessa Breidy, Université Saint-Joseph
Opening the debate today about the original aims of the caliphate system and the importance of the relationship between religion and politics in the Islamic tradition might look outdated or fundamentalist in a negative sense. Effectively, in today’s global imaginary, such topics are mostly related to groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS; however, the original sense of the Islamic political system has little to do with what these groups preach and do. This article aims to highlight that the real raison d’être of the relationship between religion and politics in Islam is none other than the desire and will of a believer to seek true knowledge and live according to it. This search for true knowledge where religion and politics meet is also a place where all spiritualities might find themselves together in a genuine search for the truth.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16060765
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Tags: #Ghazali #Epistemology #Islam
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Learning with(in) religious tradition. Navigating the existential in Islamic religious education
By Niina Putkonen, Saila Poulter & Arto Kallioniemi, University of Helsinki
In this paper, we explore the educational purposes of Islamic religious education (IRE) and discuss IRE as a place for navigating the existential. We aim to explore the functions of IRE outside of identity policies or of instrumental use, such as inclusion in society or competences for the future. Towards this goal, we employ the conceptualisation of the three domains of educational purpose, subjectification, socialization and qualification, conceptualised by Gert Biesta. The research data consisting of interviews with IRE teachers (N = 17) working in comprehensive schools in Finland is analysed using thematic analysis. According to the findings in this study, the relationship between socialisation and subjectification in IRE is close, and the educational purposes relating to qualification are mostly mirrored towards this relationship. The apparent emphasis on learning within Islamic tradition links the epistemology of the Islamic tradition closely to ontological and existential perspectives in IRE. Meanwhile the negotiations related to Muslim existence in Finnish society embody the negotiations on the boundaries of the ideals of liberal education on neutrality and non-alignment to any cultural value system.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2025.2508488
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Tags: #Religion #Pedagogy #Muslim
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Philosophical Debates on Seeing God in Medieval Kalām Theology
By Safaruk Chowdhury, Centre for Islamic Knowledge (CIK), Canada and Cambridge Muslim College
This article offers a systematic philosophical study of the medieval Islamic debate over the possibility of seeing God (visio dei, ruʾyat Allāh), a doctrine that reveals an intersection of theology, epistemology and theories of perception. Moving beyond purely scriptural exegesis, the study reconstructs the major Muʿtazilī rational objections to Divine vision, focusing on their materialist theories of optics and their uncompromising commitment to Divine transcendence (tanzīh). In response, it analyses the counterarguments of Ashʿarī theologians, such as al-Ashʿarī, al-Bāqillānī, al-Juwaynī, al-Anṣārī and al-Rāzī, highlighting their methodological developments: from early occasionalist models of Divine action to later sophisticated critiques of Muʿtazilī extramission theories of vision. This study shows how later Ashʿarīs redefined vision as a direct, non-physical act of Divine creation, thereby preserving the possibility of seeing God without compromising His transcendence. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the adoption and adaptation of Avicennian intromission models of optics allowed thinkers like al-Rāzī to refine their metaphysical and epistemological frameworks. In doing so, the doctrine of visio dei in early kalām theological discourse emerges not merely as a theological point of faith but as a site of rich philosophical engagement with logic, metaphysics and natural philosophy.
Link: https://doi.org/10.55831/ajis.v10i1.791
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Tags: #God #Avicenna #Razi #Kalam
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Perceptions of Spirituality and of God: A Psychological Qualitative Study
By Christopher E. Peck, Timothy B. Smith and Jamila Mastny, Brigham Young University
The majority of people living in the U.S. report that spirituality is an important part of their life that is influential to their well-being. However, individuals vary widely in how they conceptualize spirituality, which often stems from and overlaps with their conceptualizations of God or so-called “God image”. Examination of people’s experiences of spirituality and conceptualization of God can enable psychologists to improve their understanding of individuals’ core personal experiences. This study evaluates both spirituality and God image, as well as the relationship between these two constructs, using qualitative hermeneutic analysis of interviews with 63 adults (51% women, 49% men, aged 18–75) from a midwestern U.S. university town. Substantial overlap characterized participants’ descriptions of spirituality and God. Participants tended to either view spirituality in relational terms or as an abstract concept, with the latter conceptualization being distanced from personal experience. Religious concepts and personal experiences were integral to most participants’ descriptions of both spirituality and God. The results emphasize the importance of addressing contextual worldviews about spirituality, inclusive of personal experiences.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16060723
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Tags: #God #Spirituality #Religion #Psychology
