Modern Debates on Prophecy and Prophethood in Islam: Muhammad Iqbal and Said Nursi

By Mahsheed Ansari

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: November 28, 2024

Hardcover: 288 pages

ISBN: 9781032231242

While prophethood is the backbone of the Islamic tradition and an uncompromised tenet of faith, the impact of modernity with its ambivalent status afforded to the prophet and institution of prophethood shook many Muslim scholars. Through analysis of these modern debates on prophethood in Islam, this book situates Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938) and Said Nursi’s (1877–1960) discourses within it and assesses their implications on the modern period. This book introduces the “what, who and how” of the prophets in the Islamic tradition. It unveils the rich Islamic literature of both the classical and modern periods and analyses the construction of their philosophies and theologies. Concise in both historical and textual analyses, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary debates on prophecy and prophethood in Islam and will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers of Islam, religious studies, medieval studies and contemporary studies of Islam and religion.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Demystifying the Prophetic Vocation in Islam
• 2. Theologising Resurgence of Prophetology in the Modern Muslim World
• 3. Iqbal’s and Nursi’s Methodology in Context of Their Global and Local Histories.
• 4. Rational Challenges and New Understandings of Prophethood
• 5. Traditional and Metaphysical Tensions of Prophethood
• 6. Conclusion: Towards a New Philosophy of Prophethood in Islam

About the Author

Mahsheed Ansari is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilization and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Religion and Ethics and Society (CRES), Charles Sturt University. She is a community activist working in the areas of interfaith dialogue, education, social harmony and leadership-mentoring programes with Muslim youth and women. Her research interests include the history of Islamic thought, spirituality and culture. She has been working on the Australian Muslim Heritage Project, that captures the contributions of Muslim Pioneers Post World War II, and she is currently writing a book on the Institutional integration of the Muslim community in Australia and Dr. Ashfaq Ahmad’s contributions to it.

Reviews

• “Mahsheed Ansari offers a rigorous study of prophethood in Islam, focusing on the twentieth century responses of two major thinkers, Said Nursi and Muhammad Iqbal. The potential for the continued development of constructive contemporary Islamic approaches to this topic is enriched through Ansari’s detailed exposition of classical doctrines on prophecy as well as the South Asian and Turkish contexts during this period of challenges from modernity. Through its presentation of the creative responses of Nursi and Iqbal, who employed both critical intellectual analysis and mystical sensitivities in understanding both the historical human and the cosmic significance of the Prophet for their age, this work provides an important contribution in the field of Islamic religious thought and a resource for interfaith dialogue and understanding.” – Marcia Hermansen, Loyola University Chicago

Source: Routledge

The Journal of Islamic Ethics, established by the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), has become the first Islamic studies journal in Qatar and the Middle East to be accepted for inclusion in the prestigious Scopus index of peer-reviewed journals.

Pioneering on several fronts, the Journal of Islamic Ethics, which is published by Brill, the Netherlands-based international academic publisher, has the distinction of being the first academic journal on Islamic ethics globally. It is also the first humanities journal edited by HBKU to be indexed by Scopus.

Source: Hamad Bin Khalifa University

Taking place from August 9 to 12, the Islamic Ethics and the Covid-19 pandemic summer school provided participants interested in Islamic ethics with the skills and knowledge to critically engage with the global ethical discourse surrounding Covid-19. Over the course of four days, participants became familiar with case studies of pandemic diseases and their effects on Muslim societies in medieval, colonial and contemporary times, such as congregational rituals, medical rationing and triage. This was accompanied by an analysis of the ethical approaches and discourses relating to Covid-19, including secular bioethics and varying Islamic approaches to scriptural, theological and juristic aspects.

The summer school initiative highlights CILE’s distinctiveness in leading the interdisciplinary field of Islamic Ethics. Some of the school’s key speakers included CIS faculty Dr Mohamed Ghaly, Dr Mutaz al-Khatib and Dr Rajai Ray Jureidini, along with professors from Leuven and Germany including Dr Umar Ryad, Dr Arjan Post and Dr Samer Rashwani.

CIS has established a two-year Master of Arts program in Applied Islamic Ethics which combines the fundamentals of interdisciplinary scholarship in Islamic Studies with the practical skills of research. The program addresses the challenge of balancing between taking the lead in cutting-edge research and technology on the one hand, and being conscious of and faithful to one’s religious and cultural identity on the other hand.

Source: MENAFN

Publisher: Brill

The Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) announces the publishing of the second volume of its “Journal of Islamic Ethics” (JIE) in collaboration with BRILL.

Over the last decade, the academic discipline of Islamic Studies has been witnessing an “ethical turn”. Which is expected to carve new spaces for ethics in the study of Islam both as a Scripture-based tradition (“Text”) and as a living reality (“Context”).

Studies on Islamic ethics that move back and forth between the “Text” and “Context” and those of an interdisciplinary character in general seem to have great academic potential. One can simply think of the plethora of ethical challenges posed by modern sciences and technologies that await rigorous ethical examination and analysis from a rich ethical tradition like Islam.

Against this background, and due to the urgent need to re-approach the Islamic tradition and its overall system (Sharia), the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) finds it extremely crucial for researchers in various filed to work together and produce innovate research that will help in this process. Hence, CILE, in collaboration with Brill have created an academic podium that can accommodate the prospective research output in Islamic Ethics under the name: Journal of Islamic Ethics.

The Journal of Islamic Ethics is a full Open Access journal that focuses on the ethical approaches embedded in Islamic philosophy, theology, mysticism and jurisprudence as well as Islamic civilization in general – and their intersection with applied fields like Arts, Bioethics, Economics, Education, Environment, Gender, Media, Methodology, Migration & Human Rights, Politics and Psychology.

The Journal is open to all voices, regardless of their specific positions or backgrounds, with a keen interest in making seminal contributions to the fields listed above.

Source: CILE

A Study in Ethics and Law

By Mairaj U. Syed

Publisher: Oxford University Press (November 17, 2016)

Series: Oxford Islamic Legal Studies

In Coercion and Responsibility in Islam, Mairaj Syed explores how classical Muslim theologians and jurists from four intellectual traditions argue about the thorny issues that coercion raises about responsibility for one’s action. This is done by assessing four ethical problems: whether the absence of coercion or compulsion is a condition for moral agency; how the law ought to define what is coercive; coercion’s effect on the legal validity of speech acts; and its effects on moral and legal responsibility in the cases of rape and murder.

Through a comparative and historical examination of these ethical problems, the book demonstrates the usefulness of a new model for analyzing ethical thought produced by intellectuals working within traditions in a competitive pluralistic environment. The book compares classical Muslim thought on coercion with that of modern Western thinkers on these issues and finds significant parallels between them. The finding suggests that a fruitful starting point for comparative ethical inquiry, especially inquiry aimed at the discovery of common ground for ethical action, may be found in an examination of how ethicists from different traditions considered concrete problems.

Key Features:

• Aids understanding of the legal and ethical problems involving coercion through the use of hypothetical scenarios
• Compares schools of thoughts, disciplines, and intellectuals from different cultures and times
• Conducts synchronic and diachronic analysis of legal and theological thought
• Offers a new model for how scholars should evaluate ethical thought produced by intellectual traditions in a pluralistic environment

About the Author:

Mairaj U. Syed is an Assistant Professor in the department of religious studies at the University of California, Davis. His research explores the history of Islamic legal and ethical thought, particularly areas dealing with public law, family law, and politics. He is also interested in the development of hadith literature and the social network that transmitted and preserved it in the first 250 years of Islamic history. Syed holds Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Texas, Austin.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. Compulsion and Moral Agency in Muʿtazilism

2. Coercion and Moral Agency in Ashʿarism

3. Defining Coercion in Ḥanafism

4. Defining Coercion in Shāfiʿism

5. Coerced Speech Act Jurisprudence in Ḥanafism and Shāfiʿism

6. Coerced Harm Jurisprudence in Ḥanafism and Shāfiʿism

Conclusion

Reviews

– “Mairaj Syed’s important work traces accounts of coercion and responsibility in several of the most important Muslim theological and juridical schools. That contribution is impressive enough. Syed ranges more widely, however, proposing that we explain certain features of these differing accounts by way of the factors he calls “constraint” and “contingency”. In addition, Syed opens the door for comparison between Muslim and Anglo-American approaches to his subject. He thus makes contributions to the comparative study of law and ethics, as well as to the history of Muslim tradition. This is a very fine piece of work.” (John Kelsay, Florida State University, USA)

– “Lucid, erudite and highly original, Syed’s book analyses an important, yet hitherto understudied, concept central to the ethical reasoning of classical Islamic thought. It makes a valuable contribution to bridging the divide between the study of jurisprudence and the study of theology, and should be read by those interested in either field.” (Ayman Shihadeh, SOAS, University of London)

Source: Oxford University Press

The classical Islamic scholarly tradition is characterized by an emphasis on the teacher-student relationship. Learning is not simply seen as a material acquisition of knowledge, but rather as a means of induction into a living tradition. This classical work expounds upon the ideals for teachers and students. It is a translation of Munyat al-Mur?d f? Adab al-Muf?d wa al-Mustaf?d by the renowned scholar al-Shahid al-Thani. The original Arabic work, written in 954 AH/1547 CE, quickly established itself as a core text in the Islamic seminaries, and it has long been an important source of reference for anyone interested in Islamic education and spiritual development.

Now available in English for the first time, this work is a valuable addition to the core reading lists of courses on Islamic ethics and spirituality. This edition also contains an insightful introduction consisting of a biography of the author, an overview of the body of his work, a survey of his predecessors’ views on education, a study of his ideas on education, and an examination of his methodology of education.

Source: The Islamic College