The Foundation of Norms in Islamic Jurisprudence and Theology

Download or read book The Foundation of Norms in Islamic Jurisprudence and Theology written by Omar Farahat and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Omar Farahat presents a new way of understanding the work of classical Islamic theologians and legal theorists who maintained that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of the norms and values of human actions. Through a reconstruction of classical Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī debates on the nature and implications of divine speech, Farahat argues that the Ashʿarī attachment to revelation was not a purely traditionalist position. Rather, it was a rational philosophical commitment emerging from debates in epistemology and theology. He further argues that the particularity of this model makes its distinctive features helpful for contemporary scholars who defend a form of divine command theory. Farahat's volume thus constitutes a new reading of the issue of reason and revelation in Islam and breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics.