What is islamic analytic theology?

Islamic Analytic Theology is an approach that attends to the core doctrinal subject matter of Islam, which is God and His relation to creation, while seeking to be exact, precise and clear with language as well as aspiring to produce arguments, analysis, reflection and deliberation with a cogency, coherency and systematisation according to philosophical norms.

There is, expectedly, considerable overlap between the content here and the Analytic Theology page.

Below is an overview of the discipline or field of Islamic Analytic Theology (IAT):  

Aims

Some of the broad aims of IAT include:

• To seek answers to Islamic theological questions that are philosophically supported.
• To enable theological clarity, internal creedal coherence and intelligibility for Muslims as a believing community.
• To examine and break-down fundamental Islamic theological precepts and ideas.
• To rigorously explicate Islamic theological doctrines, and where necessary, in formal (logical) representation.
• To offer fresh philosophically-guided and philosophically-informed thinking on theological puzzles, issues and challenges.
• To establish the true and orthodox creedal core of Islamic theology.
• To serve the apologetic agenda of the Muslim community in exporting Islam as a universal message from God for human betterment and fulfillment. 

The above aims assumes the truth of Islam as a worldview with a normative dimension and hence operationalising analytic philosophical tools and methods within that worldview and normativity must be constrained by at least the following:

• Analytically informed output must be both God honouring (the Qur'an) and Prophet honouring (the Sunna), i.e. it must meet the rubrics and requirements of these two revelatory sources.
• There must be no direct contravention of the fixed and incontrovertible (qat'i) theological doctrines of Islam.
• There must be cognisance of and sensitivity to the theological thinking of early pietistic generations (al-salaf al-salih).
• There must be strong cognisance of the many limits to the analytic philosophy approach in offering theologically relevant and meaningful answers.

Output

Some of the outputs from the above aims of IAT include:

1. Theological retrieval: which is to draw on the relevant elements from the Islamic revelatory sources of the Qur'an and Hadith as well as the theological tradition inspired by those sources and correlate it with aspects of modern culture.
2. Theological systematisation: which is not just a topical collection or thematic organisation of Qur'anic and Hadith data but formulation of a coherent, rational and unified account of the fundamental pillars or articles of Islamic belief ('aqida).
3. Sapiential Theology: where focus must not only be on merely cataloguing propositional content or formal coherency of Islamic theology but there must also be a holistic embracing of theology that includes wisdom-formation that generates wisdom-filled behaviour and orientation (cf. here the Analytic Sufism page). 

Scope

The primary subject-matter of IAT is the broad range of topics and themes internal to Islamic theology either generated by/from the Qur'an and/or the Hadith corpus of the Prophet Muhammad as well as the various theological traditions (Mu'tazilite, Ash'arite, Maturidite, Athari, Shi'i, Ibadi, etc.) that formed and shaped Islamic intellectual culture and history. This forms the wide ambit of inquiry and pairing for analytic assessment by the Islamic theologian or philosopher. 

Activities

Some identifiable activities the proponents or actors of IAT may be involved in include (but not restricted to):

1. Looking to the Qur'an and Hadith or a theological tradition developed out of both as a source for topics to investigate and inquire about philosophically.
2. Seeking out the entailment relations from the claims made in the Qur'an and Hadith or the axioms of a theology developed out of both sources and then assessing and explicating them.
3. Using the claims in the Qur'an and Hadith or postulates of a theology based on both within a premise when formally articulating arguments or any proposition in general.

Method

The most salient features that are foregrounded in the method or style of IAT includes at least the following:

1. Seeking clarity in the Islamic ideas one is exploring (whether related to theology or philosophy) which may be attained by crisp definitions or dissection of language.
2. Offering precision in expression and articulation of Islamic theological ideas and tenets by using appropriate terms and relevant technical vocabulary.
3. Emphasising argumentative rigour that teases out assumptions, embedded claims and hidden implications and then presented in formal steps, i.e. logical arguments.
4. Avoiding poetic license and overly rhetorical, elaborate or tediously lengthy accounts.
5. Applying concepts, precepts ideas and arguments borrowed from analytic philosophy to specifically Islamic theological questions, puzzles and challenges - primarily generated by data in the Qur'an and Hadith - in order to illuminate and shine light on them and any theology based on them.

Language

The technical terminology of IAT may be a hybrid of both established analytic philosophical jargon as well appropriate theological nomenclature like from the kalam or falsafa traditions. Although there is no necessary hierarchy or prioritisation of language, the analytic philosopher or theologian must be sentitive to and cognisant of vocabulary embedded in the Islamic theological tradition she is inquiring about and investigating in order to avoid subordinating that theological lexicon to the analytic one. This is especially the case if the theological lexicon is a normative body of terms.

Non-confessional IAT

Those who are not Muslim in faith may still engage in or adopt IAT as a research method among any other. In this case, they would be adopting the Formal Model (discursive and non-confessional) of analytic theology which would involve the researcher doing, but not restricted to, the following :

• Seeking theological answers broadly identifiable as 'Islamic' that are philosophically supported.
• Enabling theological clarity, coherence and intelligibility of Islamic doctrines.
• Examining and breaking-down Islamic theological precepts and ideas.
• Rigorously explicating theological doctrine whether in the Qur'an and Hadith or the theological literature inspired by both revelatory sources.
• Offfering fresh theological thinking on theological puzzles, issues and challenges raised by Islamic scholars in the past or entirely new ones.

Some of the possible theological themes or topics that Muslims operating in analytic philosophy or aim to apply the precepts, tools and methods of analytic philosophy to the Islamic revelatory source texts and theology include (but not limited to):

God

-action models

-paradox

-ineffability

-glut-theoretic theology

-relation to time

-abstract objects

-laws of logic

The Qur'an (Revelation):

-ontological status

-inimitability

The Metaphysics of the Prophet Muhammad

-his nature

-his powers and properties

-being the best of creation

-Tawassul (intermediation)

Anthropology

-human nature

-essences

-free will

-understanding sustenance (rizq)

-origins

Ethics

-realism

-relativism

-suffering

-systemic evil

-Darwinian problem of evil (evolutionary)

-ecological theology

-theodicies

Nature

-laws

-causation

-miracles

-necessity

-contingency

-evolution

Bodily Resurrection

-personhood

-materialist theories

-Dualism

-emergent accounts

-resurrection models (recreation, reassembly, reconstitution, resuscitation, etc.)

-monism vs. dualism

Afterlife Metaphysics

-paradise and free will

-afterlife anthropology

-afterlife animal existence

Hell

-The problem of hell

-Soteriological problem of evil

Epistemology

-foundationalism

-evidentialism

-Fitralism

-scepticism

-fideism

-reformed epistemology

• Ed Moad's short video on his highly informative article 'What is Islamic Analytic Theology?' at Yaqeen Institute.

Novel projects in Islamic Analytic Theology include (information correct at time of writing but this section will be periodically updated):

• Cambridge Muslim College, England. Beyond Foundationalism: New Horizons in Muslim Analytic Theology, led by Ramon Harvey. 
• Dubai, UAE. KR&M (Kalam Research and Media), led by Arif Nayed.
• Boston, MA. American Society for Islamic Philosophy and Theology (ASIPT), led by Aaron Spevack.