Early Muslim Scholars in Religionswissenchaft: A Study of Zoroastrianism in Islamic Religious Traditions

Author(s):  
Muhammad Azizan Sabjan
1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-420
Author(s):  
Yasien Mohamed

David Waines, Islamic lecturer at Lancaster University, divides AnIntroduction to Islam into three parts. Part 1 deals with the Qur'an and theSunnah in the formative period, and part 2 is devoted to Islamic teachingsand practices, including separate chapters on Islamic law, theology, Sufism,and Shi'ism. The connecting thread in these first two parts is the ways inwhich Muslim scholars have explored "revelation and the experience oftheir Prophet, Muhammad" (p. 3). Part 3 treats Islam in the modern world,recounting the period over the last two centuries during which Muslimshave been challenged by western hegemony and have sought to establish amodem sense of Islamic identity.This is a comprehensive, wide-ranging, and up-to-date treatment ofIslamic history and culture. It is by no means the only recent introductionon Islam by a western scholar: Victor Danner's The Islamic Tradition: AnIntroduction (1988) deals with the Islamic intellectual and spiritual traditionwithin the context of other religious traditions. Frederick M. Dermy'sAn Introduction to Islam (1985) offers a comprehensive, simple account ofIslam, and Annemarie Schinunels' Islam: An Introduction is a concise and ...


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Muhammad Mushtaq ◽  
Muhammad Riaz Mahmood

The problématique of governing diversity has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention but literature has largely overlooked the challenges appertaining to growing religious diversity in many places. The contemporary power sharing models and multicultural policies which are of a secular nature fall short of the expectations to foster peaceful coexistence in multi-religious societies. The primary concern of this paper is to manifest how religion can help us to lessen faith based violence. It is argued that religious traditions may offer valuable insights to design more inclusive governance. In this backdrop, the current paper evaluates the Islamic values of religious accommodation to gauge how helpful they are for designing inclusive policies in religiously diverse societies. The analysis illustrates that Islamic doctrine contemplates the politics of accommodation and forbearance. The pluralistic approach of Islam offered religious autonomy to non-Muslims in the state of Madinah. The ‘millet system’ established by the Ottoman Empire is widely admired for granting non-territorial autonomy in the matters related to religion, culture, and personal laws to non-Muslims. This display of an Islamic pluralistic approach at different junctures of Muslim history attests the capacity of the Islamic values of accommodation to nurture peaceful coexistence in modern societies. However, it requires a more unbiased and rigorous analysis to convince the global audience in this regard.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-232
Author(s):  
Sam Abede Pareno ◽  
M Rif’an Arif

ABSTRACT Religious traditions in Indonesia are known to be very moderate and tolerant abroad is a reflection of the character of a great noble nation. Between religion, tradition and culture are able to perform compounds so as to create a genuine religious harmony. Because of this reality Indonesia is regarded as the largest Muslim majority country in the world that almost without conflict, in the midst of reality Muslim countries in the Middle East that impressed the dispute into the daily menu. However, the reality of Indonesia as a moderate nation is injured by the act of a group that is fond of terrorism and radicalism by riding Islamic religious teachings. Thus, this reversed religion is assumed as a source of cruelty.   It is through that phenomenon researcher, feel the need to examine the strategy of disseminating moderate Islam by Nahdlatul Ulama. The selection of this Islamic organization according to the authors due to its success in moderating Islam in Indonesia. In this study, the study using a qualitative approach or method as well as adopting the theory of Van Dijk discourse analysis as a scalpel to peel the discourse of moderate Islam published by PWNU East Java through the website. As for this research, the findings are important, among others are: 1) moderate Islamic discourse campaigned by Nahdlatul Ulama East Java is categorized into three segments, namely social, religious and nationality. 2) the text structure that builds moderate Islamic discourse NU East Java in Van Dijk perspective constructed in three domains, namely text, social cognition and social context. 3) the principles of Public Relationship implemented by NU through cyber (online media), among others; News publications and expert opinions, production of image and video-based information, and updating official NU information to the public about their attitudes and views on the phenomena that occur by promoting the values of Islamic moderatism. Key Word : Islamic Moderatism, Nahdlatul Ulama, Cyber Public Relationship


Derrida Today ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-237
Author(s):  
Michael Barnes Norton

This paper examines Derrida's treatment of the quasi-transcendental structure of hospitality, particularly as it pertains to religious traditions, conceptions of human rights, and modern secularism. It begins by looking to the account Derrida presents in ‘Hostipitality’, focusing especially on his treatment of the work of Louis Massignon. It then proceeds to an exploration of Kant's concept of cosmopolitanism and some of its contemporary descendants before returning to Derrida's treatment of hospitality by way of his critique of this Kantian heritage. The paper argues both that religious traditions exhibit (though, perhaps, often not explicitly) the kind of structures of openness to difference to which Derrida's notion of hospitality refers, and that modern Western conceptions of secularism too easily preclude understanding and fostering those aspects of religious traditions which can contribute to more peaceful coexistence in pluralistic environments.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isra Yazicioglu

Miracle stories in sacred texts have been a source of both fascination and heated debate across religious traditions. Qur'anic miracle stories are especially interesting because they are part of a discourse that also de-emphasises the miraculous. By looking at how three scholars have engaged with Qur'anic miracle stories, I here investigate how these narratives have been interpreted in diverse and fruitful ways. The first part of the article analyses how two medieval scholars, al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and Ibn Rushd (d. 595/1198), engaged with the implications of miracle stories. Taking his cue from miracle stories, al-Ghazālī offered a sophisticated critique of natural determinism and suggested that the natural order should be perceived as a constantly renewed divine gift. In contrast, Ibn Rushd dismissed al-Ghazālī’s critique as sophistry and maintained that accepting the possibility that the natural order might be suspended was an affront to human knowledge and science. In the second part, I turn to Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1870–1960), whose interpretation offers a crystallisation of al-Ghazālī’s insights as well as, surprisingly, an indirect confirmation of Ibn Rushd's concerns about human knowledge and science. Nursi redefines the miraculous in light of miracle stories, and interprets them as reminders of ‘everyday miracles’ and as encouragements to improve science and technology in God's name.


2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Hsu

Is the Christian teaching on sin a ‘stumbling block’ to Chinese accepting Christianity? This paper critiques the notion that Chinese have difficulty comprehending ‘sin’ because of the culture's long-standing belief in the humanistic potential for self-perfection without any reference to the divine. This view of Chinese culture has been too narrow and does not account for the fact that Chinese religious traditions have always had at their disposal a wide variety of resources to comprehend the Christian concept of sin. Incorporating a history-of-practice perspective can contribute to a more productive balance between the representation of Chinese culture and its actual practice and avoid the current tendency to posit Western theology against a narrowly constructed and idealised version of Chinese culture that is severed from both historical and present-day realities.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Hodkinson ◽  
Chandrika Devarakonda

This paper offers a critique of transnational aspects of ‘inclusion,’ one of those global education buzzwords that as Slee (2009) puts it, say everything but say nothing. It starts off by trying to compare Indian and English usages and attitudes at the level of teacher discourse, and notes the impossibility of any ‘authentic’ translation, given the very different cultural contexts and histories. In response to these divergences, the authors undertake a much more genealogical and ‘forensic’ examination of values associated with ‘inclusion,’ focussing especially on a key notion of ‘pity.’ The Eurocentric tradition is traced from its Platonic origins through what is claimed to be the ‘industrialization of pity’ and its rejection as a virtue in favour of more apparently egalitarian measures of fairness. The Indian tradition relates rather to religious traditions across a number of different belief systems, most of which centre on some version of a karmic notion of pity. The authors both criticise and reject ‘inclusion’ as a colonisation of the global and call for a new understanding of notions like ‘pity’ as affective commitment rather than ‘fair’ dispensation of equality.


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