Is an Intra-Islamic Theological Ecumenism Possible? A Response to Sherman Jackson

It is rare to find within contemporary Islamic thought writers who are conversantin both the classical Islamic theological heritage and recent developmentsin philosophy and theology. More often than not, those who doattempt to engage in Islamic theology display either an ignorance of the pastor the present. This is not, however, the case with Sherman Jackson, whojoins a small handful of others, such as S. H. Nasr, Khalid Abou Fadl, andAbdal Hakim Murad, whose works – diverse as they are – reflect a grasp ofboth the Muslim intellectual tradition and modern thought.Jackson’s recent On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002) is not only a translation of al-Ghazali’s Faysal al-Tafriqah bayna al-Islam wa al-Zandaqah (TheDecisive Criterion for Distinguishing Islam from Masked Infidelity), one ofthe most significant medieval attempts to formulate a method to definitivelydelineate “orthodoxy,” but is prefaced by a highly original essay inwhich, among other things, he ventures to extend al-Ghazali’s project byredefining and expanding the limits of Islamic orthodoxy within a contemporarycontext. In this sense, the introduction is a creative and laudableattempt by a serious Muslim thinker to do Islamic theology rather thanmerely exposit the dogmatic formulations of his medieval predecessors. Assuch, the introductory essay is the most original part of the book,1 since itis here that Jackson argues, among other things, for the possibility of anintra-Islamic theological ecumenism, one in which creedal schools that previously saw each other as misguided might come to a greater recognitionof their mutual legitimacies.This is, indeed, an ambitious project. Yet, few of the book’s reviewersseem to have fully appreciated the magnitude of Jackson’s project as laid outin his introductory essay – virtually an independent piece in its own right –and devoted, instead, the bulk of their reviews to the rest of the work.2 WhatI intend to do in the few pages that follow is to respond briefly to some ofhis arguments insofar as they pertain to his ideas on intra-Islamic theologicalecumenism.3 My purpose is to show that despite the ingenuity withwhich he tackles the issue of doctrinal and theological diversity, many of hiscentral arguments are beset by internal contradictions and incongruenciesthat might otherwise evade the casual reader ...