What do you think?
Rate this book
Cambridge Companions to Religion
دليل كامبريدج إلى علم الكلام الإسلامي
This series of critical reflections on the evolution and major themes of pre-modern Muslim theology begins with the revelation of the Koran, and extends to the beginnings of modernity in the eighteenth century. The significance of Islamic theology reflects the immense importance of Islam in the history of monotheism, to which it has brought a unique approach and style, and a range of solutions which are of abiding interest. Devoting especial attention to questions of rationality, scriptural fidelity, and the construction of 'orthodoxy', this volume introduces key Muslim theories of revelation, creation, ethics, scriptural interpretation, law, mysticism, and eschatology. Throughout the treatment is firmly set in the historical, social and political context in which Islam's distinctive understanding of God evolved. Despite its importance, Islamic theology has been neglected in recent scholarship, and this book provides a unique, scholarly but accessible introduction.
Unknown Binding
First published May 1, 2008
46 people are currently reading
737 people want to read
About the author
Abdal Hakim Murad
32 books382 followersTimothy John "Tim" Winter (born 1960), also known as Abdal Hakim Murad, is a British Sufi Muslim researcher, writer and teacher. His profile and work have attracted media coverage both in the Muslim World and the West. Conversant in both traditional Islamic scholarship and Western thought and civilization, Winter has made contributions on many Islamic topics.
Born in 1960, Winter was educated at Westminster School, and graduated with a double-first in Arabic from Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge in 1983. He then studied and taught traditional Islamic sciences at the Al-Azhar University in Egypt for several years, and spent several more in Jeddah, where he administered a commercial translation office and maintained close contact with Shaykh Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad. In 1989, he returned to England and spent two years at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he concentrated on Turkish and Persian.
Winter is currently the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer of Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, Director of Studies in Theology at Wolfson College, and a doctoral student at Oxford University, where he is studying the relationship between the government and Sufi brotherhoods in the Ottoman Empire.[citation needed] Winter is also the secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust (London), Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe, President of the UK Friends of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Director of the Sunna Project, which has published scholarly Arabic editions of the major Sunni Hadith collections.
Born in 1960, Winter was educated at Westminster School, and graduated with a double-first in Arabic from Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge in 1983. He then studied and taught traditional Islamic sciences at the Al-Azhar University in Egypt for several years, and spent several more in Jeddah, where he administered a commercial translation office and maintained close contact with Shaykh Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad. In 1989, he returned to England and spent two years at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he concentrated on Turkish and Persian.
Winter is currently the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer of Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, Director of Studies in Theology at Wolfson College, and a doctoral student at Oxford University, where he is studying the relationship between the government and Sufi brotherhoods in the Ottoman Empire.[citation needed] Winter is also the secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust (London), Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe, President of the UK Friends of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Director of the Sunna Project, which has published scholarly Arabic editions of the major Sunni Hadith collections.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 14, 2019
A dry read, turgid in certain places but if you persist you will gain a few nuggets of insight. Having now read this book and the Cambridge Companion to Islamic Philosophy and the three volumes of Marshall Hodgson's Venture Islam, I have a reasonable idea of how Islam evolved into what it is today.
My theory is that Islam in its infancy suffered a terrible tragedy. You see, to make sense of the Quran you need to have the guidance of someone who has been endowed with a spiritual insight. A person who has the wisdom and perspicacity to combine the spirituality and practicality inherent within the Quran. In my opinion that person was Hazrat Ali ibn Talib, and I am confident that anyone who has read Nahjul-Balagh will agree with this assertion.
Unfortunately because the Muslim Ummah lacked this guidance, schools of thought arose and to my mind deviated the true nature of Islam. Schools such as the Ashariites and Mutaziliites engaged in vacuous polemical debates about ambivalent meaningless matters, and as a result reaching ludicrous conclusions. For example the Ashari were of the opinion that God had hands and face, due to their literal reading of verses in the Quran. Then you had the strife between the Philosophers and the Kalimiites which did nothing but enervate the message of the Quran for the masses.
The fascination with metaphysics, in my opinion, regressed Islam. The subsequent schools of thought that crystallised to form the bedrock of Sunni ideology became for many Muslims a source of authority second only to the Quran. Colonialism ensured this predicament did not change.
Islam for the first two hundred years was an exoteric religion. The Quran despite its ambivalent verses remains a guide that is both practical and spiritual. That's all you need. Admittedly, Sufism was the main form of Islam for a thousand years, and the main reason for this was I think that Sufi Masters in their various Tariqa orders preached a view of Islam that was easier to comprehend than the Jurist.
In religion, a little bit of knowledge can be deadly because it engenders sectarianism. And sectarianism thrives on dissent. The matters which split the Muslim Ummah of the past hundred years are so petty it almost beggars belief. But that is why we are where we are.
My theory is that Islam in its infancy suffered a terrible tragedy. You see, to make sense of the Quran you need to have the guidance of someone who has been endowed with a spiritual insight. A person who has the wisdom and perspicacity to combine the spirituality and practicality inherent within the Quran. In my opinion that person was Hazrat Ali ibn Talib, and I am confident that anyone who has read Nahjul-Balagh will agree with this assertion.
Unfortunately because the Muslim Ummah lacked this guidance, schools of thought arose and to my mind deviated the true nature of Islam. Schools such as the Ashariites and Mutaziliites engaged in vacuous polemical debates about ambivalent meaningless matters, and as a result reaching ludicrous conclusions. For example the Ashari were of the opinion that God had hands and face, due to their literal reading of verses in the Quran. Then you had the strife between the Philosophers and the Kalimiites which did nothing but enervate the message of the Quran for the masses.
The fascination with metaphysics, in my opinion, regressed Islam. The subsequent schools of thought that crystallised to form the bedrock of Sunni ideology became for many Muslims a source of authority second only to the Quran. Colonialism ensured this predicament did not change.
Islam for the first two hundred years was an exoteric religion. The Quran despite its ambivalent verses remains a guide that is both practical and spiritual. That's all you need. Admittedly, Sufism was the main form of Islam for a thousand years, and the main reason for this was I think that Sufi Masters in their various Tariqa orders preached a view of Islam that was easier to comprehend than the Jurist.
In religion, a little bit of knowledge can be deadly because it engenders sectarianism. And sectarianism thrives on dissent. The matters which split the Muslim Ummah of the past hundred years are so petty it almost beggars belief. But that is why we are where we are.
September 10, 2012
Overall, this is a good volume. But as with many collections the essays are uneven.
February 17, 2021
This book was recommended to me as I wanted to start reading around philosophy in the Islamic world. Apparently, in order to understand Muslim philosophers, one needs to understand the basic at least of Classical Islamic Theology as the key difference between Western and Muslim Philosophy is the source of wisdom/knowledge. Muslim’s philosophy source is the Quran and Sunnah and it uses the different interpretations of it to try to understand the world; views the world through the lens of the Quran and Sunnah, while Western philosophy tries to view the world from an atheistic viewpoint – or at least that’s how I so far understand.
Other than understanding more about Islamic theology, a key takeaway I got from the chapter on falsafa and ethics is the influence of Greek philosophy on Islamic thinking. Muslim thinkers had used ideas of Aristotle etc. to help formulate their own ideas. While the book does not focus on philosophy there were still lots of references to several to how Greek philosophers and their ideas played a part in Muslim thinking. The ideas of the more famous Muslim philosophers, such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, were also discussed in detail, showing me the link between Islamic theology and philosophy. Amongst much other academic interests, this book has gotten me interested in the comparative study of Islamic and Western Philosophy – how they have influenced each other, the overlap as well as their contrasting different viewpoints.
Like all reading, another lesson that I’ve learned is how much I don’t know about Islamic thought. On certain topics that I thought I understood, this book has revealed to me how much I never really thought of. It also has exposed the complex and long path of Islamic thought and has emphasised its pluralistic characteristic.
I also enjoyed the fact that each chapter was written by different people; it adds more flavour and perspective to the book and helps get an overall understanding of Islam.
Not sure if it would have been in the scope, but I would have liked a chapter on Islam and politics – and more specifically Islam and Secularism. At the time I read this book, I am listening to a lecture by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im who claims that there never has been an Islamic state and Islamic theology is meant for an individual and community but not to be sponsored/claimed by a state or any other institution. So possibly because of listening to that, I felt that question in regards to theology could have been addressed.
Other than understanding more about Islamic theology, a key takeaway I got from the chapter on falsafa and ethics is the influence of Greek philosophy on Islamic thinking. Muslim thinkers had used ideas of Aristotle etc. to help formulate their own ideas. While the book does not focus on philosophy there were still lots of references to several to how Greek philosophers and their ideas played a part in Muslim thinking. The ideas of the more famous Muslim philosophers, such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, were also discussed in detail, showing me the link between Islamic theology and philosophy. Amongst much other academic interests, this book has gotten me interested in the comparative study of Islamic and Western Philosophy – how they have influenced each other, the overlap as well as their contrasting different viewpoints.
Like all reading, another lesson that I’ve learned is how much I don’t know about Islamic thought. On certain topics that I thought I understood, this book has revealed to me how much I never really thought of. It also has exposed the complex and long path of Islamic thought and has emphasised its pluralistic characteristic.
I also enjoyed the fact that each chapter was written by different people; it adds more flavour and perspective to the book and helps get an overall understanding of Islam.
Not sure if it would have been in the scope, but I would have liked a chapter on Islam and politics – and more specifically Islam and Secularism. At the time I read this book, I am listening to a lecture by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im who claims that there never has been an Islamic state and Islamic theology is meant for an individual and community but not to be sponsored/claimed by a state or any other institution. So possibly because of listening to that, I felt that question in regards to theology could have been addressed.
October 17, 2024
كتاب مهم، تتفاوت جودة وعمق فصوله، يقدم نظرة بانورامية عن مجموعة من أهم موضوعات علم الكلام.. بعد قسم تاريخي.. وأيضا هناك فصل عن الفلسفة الإسلامية بمعناها الضيق.. ربما أعود فأكتب عنه بتفصيل أكثر إن شاء الله.
Currently reading
June 5, 2016I've had this book for a year. It didn't catch my attention initially but for some reason as i began to familiarize myself with the author (unknowingly) and coincidentally picked the book back up to read it became much more interesting. It is very unveiling in the historicity of Islamic theology and the blending of sectarianism and how they developed alongside one another. And the authors put no favoritism towards one group over another which could be disheartening to a Muslim who comes in with the understanding the Islam is how it has always been. Although, i would argue that the book doesn't quite dispel the notion either and adds that the matter is a little more complicated. Im enjoying the read.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews