Islam and the Myth of Literalism

Habib, M. A. R.

doi:10.1215/01903659-2010-017

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…In this sense, i.e. translating faith into the contemporary context, translation is also favoured by some Islamic scholars (HABIB, 2010;MOOSA, 2006). Muslim pupils in St. Aidans are engaged in the process of developing their ability as translators, and the role of the school should be to facilitate, not hinder that process.…”

Section: T H E O L O G I C a L R E F L E C T I O N Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“It’s a bit cool and awesome”

Wilson

2015

FIRN

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Contrary to the stereotype of conflict between Christians and Muslims, St Aidan’s Church of England Primary School in inner-city Liverpool is a place where as one pupil said, “We are all united together,” arguably a remarkable achievement for an Anglican school with approximately two-thirds Muslim pupils. This article is based on my ethnographic fieldwork with Muslim pupils in St Aidan’s and examines the role of education and the Muslim heritage of Liverpool in shaping the identity of Liverpudlian Muslims today. The article comprises of four main sections. First, it briefly describes the context of St Aidan’s and the nature of my fieldwork there. Second, it discusses the idea of hospitality as translation. In the third, main, section, the article evaluates how the theory of hospitality as translation was realized in the life of the school, focusing on an RE lesson that I taught in St Aidan’s which outlined the history of Abdullah Quilliam’s “Muslim Institute,” which ran from 1889 to 1908 and housed the United Kingdom’s first registered mosque. Having outlined the content of the lesson, the article then critically evaluates student responses and argues that education concerning Muslim heritage is crucial for their identity formation as Muslims. The title for this article is a quote of a Muslim pupil’s reaction to learning about the existence of the Muslim Institute and typifies the positive response and growth in confidence of their identity as Liverpudlian Muslims. Finally, the article argues that Christian hospitality provides a distinctive framework within which the process of Muslim identity formation can be facilitated and that fieldwork can be combined successfully to form a theological enquiry.

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Section: T H E O L O G I C a L R E F L E C T I O N Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“It’s a bit cool and awesome”

Wilson

2015

FIRN

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“…the Qur'an itself, as well as the various apparatuses of Islamic interpretation (hadith, etc.) explicitly acknowledge their own use of metaphor and figurative speech" (Habib 2006).…”

Section: Arguments For and Against Literalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Islamic context, these proponents of literalism advocate an original (salafi 8 ) understanding and implementation of Islam during its earliest times, those of the Prophet and of his companions. Habib comments: "The fundamentalists posit a primordial-and mythical-literal meaning of the Qur'an which has never in fact been articulated" (Habib 2006). It also is well known that the hadiths came to constitute a primary resource for the interpretation of the Qur'an, because it soon became apparent that many of its passages were not selfexplanatory.…”

Section: Arguments For and Against Literalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Literalism and Science‐related Issues in Contemporary Islam

Guessoum

2010

Zygon

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The complex relations between Islam and modern science have so far mostly been examined by thinkers at the conceptual level. The wider interaction of religious scholars and preachers with the general public on science issues is an unexplored area that is worthy of examination, for it often is characterized by a literalistic approach. I first briefly review literalism in its various forms. The classical Islamic jurisprudential school of Zahirism, widely regarded as bearing the flag of juristic literalism, is also briefly presented. I then address specific science-related issues currently being discussed in literalistic ways by many religious scholars and preachers in their general-public discourse. I focus on the practical case of the determination of crescent-based Islamic months and holy occasions, the conceptual issue of evolution (biological and human), and the rule for the consumption of meat by slaughter of animals. In the last part of the essay I propose a constructive alternative to the literalistic mode: the Maqasidi (objectives-based) approach. This rather old method has seen some revival lately, mainly among Islamic jurists concerned with solving the new issues of modern times, especially for Muslims living in the West, but this approach has not yet been applied to science-related issues. I present the main ideas of this method and show their relevance and usefulness to science-related topics.

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Approaches to Muslim Biomedical Ethics: A Classification and Critique

2023

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This paper provides a perspective on where contemporary Muslim responses to biomedical-ethical issues stand to date. There are several ways in which Muslim responses to biomedical ethics can and have been studied in academia. The responses are commonly divided along denominational lines or under the schools of jurisprudence. All such efforts classify the responses along the lines of communities of interpretation rather than the methods of interpretation. This research is interested in the latter. Thus, our criterion for classification is the underlying methodology behind the responses. The proposed classification divides Muslim biomedical-ethical reasoning into three methodological categories: 1) textual, 2) contextual, and 3) para-textual.

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Islam and the Myth of Literalism

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

“It’s a bit cool and awesome”

“It’s a bit cool and awesome”

Religious Literalism and Science‐related Issues in Contemporary Islam

Approaches to Muslim Biomedical Ethics: A Classification and Critique

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