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:
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:
Output
Some of the outputs from the above aims of IAT include:
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):
Method
The most salient features that are foregrounded in the method or style of IAT includes at least the following:
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 :
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
Novel projects in Islamic Analytic Theology include (information correct at time of writing but this section will be periodically updated):