Epistemology has a distinguished history within Islamic philosophical and theological discourses. Muslim scholars sought to explain what knowledge was, where it came from, and how it could be justified. They were especially interested in religious knowledge and the core question of why human beings were justified in their belief in God and the Prophet Muhammad.
In this volume, editors Safaruk Chowdhury and Ramon Harvey, alongside fifteen contributing authors, put this vibrant tradition of thought into sustained dialogue with contemporary analytic philosophy of religion and clarify what is at stake in their mutual interaction. The text acts, therefore, as a founding document for the new subfield of analytic Islamic epistemology. By bringing together the insights of intellectual historians, comparative religionists, philosophers of religion and analytic epistemologists, this book maps historical articulations of Islamic epistemology, the ongoing conversation with Christian counterparts, the advancement of key existing debates, and proposals for the future.
The first collected volume on the Islamic tradition and analytic epistemology in conversation.
Arvustused
This book will provide impetus for the integration of the Islamic tradition into the epistemology of religion, a field that has long been dominated by Christian perspectives. The contributors include some of the more promising younger scholars in the field and the papers cover a wide range of topics within Islamic philosophy and other relevant fields of Islamic culture. -- Peter Adamson, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich An intriguing collection of articles that demonstrates the power of analytic philosophy to contribute to Islamic philosophy. There has been a trend recently to use that approach in the philosophy of religion but not so much until now in Islamic thought, so this is both innovative and a valuable addition to epistemology -- Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: From Islamic Theology to Analytic Philosophy
Safaruk Chowdhury and Ramon Harvey
Part I. Epistemology outside Kalm: Falsafa, Traditionalism and Sufism
1. A New Look at al-Frb on Philosophy versus Theology
Anthony Robert Booth
2. God as an Empirical Entity: The Expanded Scope of Sense Perception in
Sunn Traditionalist Spatialism
Jon Hoover
3. The Tripartite Division of Knowledge and Belief in al-Makks Nourishment
of the Hearts
Harith Ramli
Part II. Epistemological Sources in Kalm: Perception, Reason and Testimony
4. How to Know?: Justifying Experience in Classical Kalm
Hannah C. Erlwein
5. Divine Freedom meets Logical Necessity: On the Relationship between
Rational Speculation and Knowledge in Classical Ashar Foundationalism
Laura Hassan
6. Mass Transmission of Prophetic Miracles in the Contemplation and Proof of
Core Creed
Aaron Spevack
Part III. Comparative Studies in Islamic and Christian Epistemology
7. The Epistemological Status of Causation within al-Ghazls Cosmological
Argument in Light of Reids Modest Foundationalism
Ayenur Ünügür-Tabur
8. Is There any Doubt about God?: Maktab-i Tafkks Religious Epistemology
in Comparison with Reformed Epistemology
Amir Mohammad Emami
9. Knowing God Personally: Second-Person Knowledge in Christian and Islamic
Analytic Theology
David Worsley
Part IV. Contemporary Debates on the Basicality of Islamic and Christian
Belief
10. Fira Foundationalism
Jamie B. Turner
11. Dealing with Defeaters for Warranted Islamic Belief: A Reply to Turner
Erik Baldwin
12. Creation, Sin and Salvation: Essential Categories for a
Christian-Theistic Epistemology
K. Scott Oliphint
Part V. Islamic Epistemology Today: Disciplinary, Scriptural and Social
Discourses
13. Advice for Muslim Epistemologists
Kelly James Clark
14. Epistemological Foundations of Quranic Ethics: Understanding, Wisdom and
Righteousness
M. Ashraf Adeel
15. Individualism and Anti-individualism in Islamic Epistemology
John Greco
Afterword: Epistemological Themes Revisited
Safaruk Chowdhury and Ramon Harvey
Glossary of Arabic Terminology
Glossary of Analytic Epistemological Terminology
Index
Safaruk Chowdhury is a visiting lecturer at Cambridge Muslim College. He is the author of Islamic Theology and the Problem of Evil (The American University in Cairo Press, 2021) and A f Apologist of Nshpr: The Life and Thought of Ab Abd al-Ramn al-Sulam (Equinox, 2019).
Ramon Harvey is Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Cambridge Muslim College. He is the author of Transcendent God, Rational World: A Mturd Theology (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) and The Qur'an and the Just Society (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
