Livnat Holtzman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748689569
- eISBN:
- 9781474444828
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748689569.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
More than any other issue in early and medieval Islamic theology, anthropomorphism (tashbīh) stood at the heart of many theological debates. These debates were not purely intellectual; they were ...
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More than any other issue in early and medieval Islamic theology, anthropomorphism (tashbīh) stood at the heart of many theological debates. These debates were not purely intellectual; they were intrinsically linked to political struggles over hegemony. The way a scholar interpreted the anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Qur’an and the Hadith (for instance, God’s hand, God’s laughter or God’s sitting on the heavenly throne) often reflected his political and social stature, and his theological affinity. This book focuses on aḥādīth al-ṣifāt – the traditions that depict God and His attributes in an anthropomorphic language. The book reveals the way these traditions were studied and interpreted in the circles of Islamic traditionalism which included ultra-traditionalists (the Hanbalites and their forerunners) and middle-of-the-road traditionalists (Ash’arites and their forerunners). The book presents an in-depth literary analysis of aḥādīth al-ṣifāt while considering the role of the early scholars of Hadith in shaping the narrative of these anthropomorphic texts. The book also offers the first scholarly and systematic presentation of hand, face, and bodily gestures that the scholars performed while transmitting the anthropomorphic traditions. The book goes on to discuss the inner controversies in the prominent traditionalistic learning centres of the Islamic world regarding the way to understand and interpret these anthropomorphic traditions. Through a close, contextualized, and interdisciplinary reading in Hadith compilations, theological treatises, and historical sources, this book offers an evaluation and understanding of the traditionalistic endeavours to define anthropomorphism in the most crucial and indeed most formative period of Islamic thought.Less
More than any other issue in early and medieval Islamic theology, anthropomorphism (tashbīh) stood at the heart of many theological debates. These debates were not purely intellectual; they were intrinsically linked to political struggles over hegemony. The way a scholar interpreted the anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Qur’an and the Hadith (for instance, God’s hand, God’s laughter or God’s sitting on the heavenly throne) often reflected his political and social stature, and his theological affinity. This book focuses on aḥādīth al-ṣifāt – the traditions that depict God and His attributes in an anthropomorphic language. The book reveals the way these traditions were studied and interpreted in the circles of Islamic traditionalism which included ultra-traditionalists (the Hanbalites and their forerunners) and middle-of-the-road traditionalists (Ash’arites and their forerunners). The book presents an in-depth literary analysis of aḥādīth al-ṣifāt while considering the role of the early scholars of Hadith in shaping the narrative of these anthropomorphic texts. The book also offers the first scholarly and systematic presentation of hand, face, and bodily gestures that the scholars performed while transmitting the anthropomorphic traditions. The book goes on to discuss the inner controversies in the prominent traditionalistic learning centres of the Islamic world regarding the way to understand and interpret these anthropomorphic traditions. Through a close, contextualized, and interdisciplinary reading in Hadith compilations, theological treatises, and historical sources, this book offers an evaluation and understanding of the traditionalistic endeavours to define anthropomorphism in the most crucial and indeed most formative period of Islamic thought.
Mairaj U. Syed
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198788775
- eISBN:
- 9780191830846
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198788775.003.0003
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
The chapter introduces the Sunnite school of theology, Ashʿarism. It describes their theory of physical agency, including the distinctive idea of how voluntary acts are created by God and acquired by ...
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The chapter introduces the Sunnite school of theology, Ashʿarism. It describes their theory of physical agency, including the distinctive idea of how voluntary acts are created by God and acquired by humans. It notes that their position affirming God’s monopoly on creating all acts and events in the cosmos, including voluntary human action and their Divine voluntarist theory of ethical value were the most important constraints in their analysis of coercion and moral agency. While they held that coercion does not invalidate moral agency, their argument for that position changed over time. The chapter argues that later Ashʿarites (Juwaynī and Ghazālī) modified the Ashʿarite arguments they inherited because the arguments from an earlier Ashʿarite, Bāqillānī, would undermine commonsense notions of responsibility for action. This change in argumentation is very similar to the processes Thomas Kuhn identified as taking place in the “normal phase” of scientific traditions.Less
The chapter introduces the Sunnite school of theology, Ashʿarism. It describes their theory of physical agency, including the distinctive idea of how voluntary acts are created by God and acquired by humans. It notes that their position affirming God’s monopoly on creating all acts and events in the cosmos, including voluntary human action and their Divine voluntarist theory of ethical value were the most important constraints in their analysis of coercion and moral agency. While they held that coercion does not invalidate moral agency, their argument for that position changed over time. The chapter argues that later Ashʿarites (Juwaynī and Ghazālī) modified the Ashʿarite arguments they inherited because the arguments from an earlier Ashʿarite, Bāqillānī, would undermine commonsense notions of responsibility for action. This change in argumentation is very similar to the processes Thomas Kuhn identified as taking place in the “normal phase” of scientific traditions.
Tariq Jaffer
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- December 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199947997
- eISBN:
- 9780199345946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199947997.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam, Theology
Chapter Two argues that Rāzī assigns an authoritative role to human reasoning as a source of religious knowledge. By doing so, he rejects the idea that the Qurʾān and Sunna constitute sources of ...
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Chapter Two argues that Rāzī assigns an authoritative role to human reasoning as a source of religious knowledge. By doing so, he rejects the idea that the Qurʾān and Sunna constitute sources of religious knowledge that must be strictly followed and adhered to—a salient feature of classical Ashʿarism. Indeed, what Rāzī did was to rearrange the sources of religious knowledge along Muʿtazilite lines with human reasoning as its leading source and limit the weight of the Qurʾān and Sunna as sources of religious knowledge and arbiters of theological questions. By ranking these sources along Muʿtazilite lines, Rāzī developed Ashʿarism into a trend that continued to view and use the Qurʾān and Sunna as sources of knowledge but rejected the idea that they were the ultimate arbiters of theological issues. This methodology—the priority of reason—became a fundamental methodological characteristic of Islamic theological orthodoxy that flourished in post-classical Islam.Less
Chapter Two argues that Rāzī assigns an authoritative role to human reasoning as a source of religious knowledge. By doing so, he rejects the idea that the Qurʾān and Sunna constitute sources of religious knowledge that must be strictly followed and adhered to—a salient feature of classical Ashʿarism. Indeed, what Rāzī did was to rearrange the sources of religious knowledge along Muʿtazilite lines with human reasoning as its leading source and limit the weight of the Qurʾān and Sunna as sources of religious knowledge and arbiters of theological questions. By ranking these sources along Muʿtazilite lines, Rāzī developed Ashʿarism into a trend that continued to view and use the Qurʾān and Sunna as sources of knowledge but rejected the idea that they were the ultimate arbiters of theological issues. This methodology—the priority of reason—became a fundamental methodological characteristic of Islamic theological orthodoxy that flourished in post-classical Islam.
