This was a three-year project (2020-2023) funded by the John Templeton Foundation and hosted by Cambridge Muslim College. Published and forthcoming outputs of the project are listed below.

TEAM

DR RAMON HARVEY

PROJECT LEADER Dr Ramon is the Aziz Foundation Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Cambridge Muslim College and lectures on the BA (Hons) in Islamic Studies. He received his MA and PhD in Islamic Studies from SOAS, University of London. His research interests are in Qur’anic studies, Islamic theology and ethics, working from both historical and constructive theological angles. He is currently engaged in a long-term project to develop contemporary Muslim philosophical theology, or kalām jadīd, drawing especially on the Māturīdī school. Ramon’s first book, The Qur’an and the Just Society (2018), and his second one, Transcendent God, Rational World: A Māturīdī Theology (2021), are published by Edinburgh University Press. He is also the editor of a new series for the press: Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Scripture and Theology.

DR SAFARUK CHOWDHURY

PROJECT RESEARCHER Dr Safaruk studied Philosophy at Kings College London completing it with the accompanying Associate of Kings College (AKC) award. He then travelled to Cairo studying the traditional Islamic Studies curricula at al-Azhar University. He returned to the UK to complete His MA at the School of Oriental and African studies with distinction. His doctoral dissertation was on the eminent Sufi hagiographer and theoretician Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 412/1021) published as A Sufi Apologist of Nishapur: The Life and Thought of Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2019). Saf’s research interests in addition to Sufism at the moment are in paraconsistent logic, metaphysics, ethics and epistemology with keen interest in how these subjects were all utilised for clarifying and explicating Islamic theological doctrine – especially within kalam theology. His forthcoming book is entitled Islamic Theology and the Problem of Evil (New York and Cairo: AUC Press) which is the first work in Islamic studies to treat the topic within the analytic theology approach.

SHAHANAZ BEGUM

PROJECT OFFICER Shahanaz is currently studying for a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, with a focus on Islamic legal theory. Prior to this, Shahanaz completed her MA in Islamic Studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She undertook further studies after studying at Ebrahim College, a Muslim seminary based in London, where she completed the traditional Alimiyyah programme. Shahanaz has also worked in public policy and strategy delivering on agendas such as community cohesion, and gender and faith equality in both a local and a national context. She continues to take an active role through various voluntary activities, as well as teaching in a community context.

EVENTS

  1. Workshop 1 – The Premodern Tradtion (29 May 2021) focused on epistemic justification in the premodern kalam (and related) Islamic disciplines, from the formative to the late classical period. By bringing together intellectual historians, scholars of kalam and Muslim philosophy and traditionally trained Muslim theologians to tackle this subject, this initial workshop broached a conversation that will direct inquiries for the remainder of the project.
  2. Workshop 2 – Theistic Epistemologies in Conversation (30 October 2021) took a comparative look at Muslim, Christian and Jewish analytic theology building on conclusions from the previous workshop to begin to conceive of how contemporary Muslim analytic theology could revisit the question of epistemic grounding in the light of existing theistic work.
  3. International Symposium (2-3 July 2022)Continued the deliberations of the two workshops and broadened the conversation into the field of contemporary analytic philosophy, attracting a world-class panel of religious epistemologists.

PUBLICATIONS

  • Dr Harvey has produced a monograph titled Transcendent God, Rational World: A Maturidi Theology, which touches on themes from the project. The monograph has been released in hardback, paperback and open access e-book format. He is also working on a journal article around the project’s theme.
  • Dr Chowdhury will produce a monograph focused on the project’s theme, as well as two relevant journal articles.
  • A collected volume, titled “Analytic Islamic Epistemology: Critical Debates”, edited by Dr Harvey and Dr Chowdhury featuring chapters drawn from the project’s events, will be published by Edinburgh University Press.
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