While prophethood is the backbone of the Islamic tradition and an uncompromised tenet of faith, the impact of modernity with its ambivalent status afforded to the prophet and institution of prophethood shook many Muslim scholars. Through analysis of these modern debates on prophethood in Islam, this book situates Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938) and Said Nursi’s (1877–1960) discourses within it and assesses their implications on the modern period. This book introduces the "what, who and how" of the prophets in the Islamic tradition. It unveils the rich Islamic literature of both the classical and modern periods and analyses the construction of their philosophies and theologies. Concise in both historical and textual analyses, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary debates on prophecy and prophethood in Islam and will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers of Islam, religious studies, medieval studies and contemporary studies of Islam and religion.

"While prophethood is the backbone of the Islamic tradition and an uncompromised tenet of faith, the impact of modernity with its ambivalent status afforded to the prophet and institution of prophethood shook many Muslim scholars. Through analysis of these modern debates on prophethood in Islam, this book situates Muhammad Iqbal's (1877-1938) and Said Nursi's (1877-1960) discourses within it and assesses their implications on the modern period. This book introduces the 'what, who and how' of the prophets in the Islamic tradition. It unveils the rich Islamic literature of both the classical and modern periods and analyses the construction of their philosophies and theologies. Concise in both historical and textual analysis, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary debates on prophecy and prophethood in Islam, and will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers of Islam, religious studies, medieval studies and contemporary studies of Islam and religion"--

Muhammad Reconsidered rectifies the failures of scholarly attempts to understand Islam in the West and to take Islamic theology seriously. Engaging Islam from deep within the Christian tradition by addressing the question of the prophethood of Muhammad, Anna Bonta Moreland calls for a retrieval of Thomistic thought on prophecy. Without either appropriating the prophet as an unwitting Christian or reducing both Christianity and Islam to a common denominator, Moreland studies Muhammad within a Christian theology of revelation. This lens leads to a more sophisticated understanding of Islam, one that honors the integrity of the Catholic tradition and argues for the possibility in principle of Muhammad as a religious prophet. Moreland sets the stage for this inquiry through an intertextual reading of the key Vatican II documents on Islam and on Christian revelation. She then uses Aquinas's treatment of prophecy to address the case of whether Muhammad is a prophet in Christian terms. Muhammad Reconsidered examines the work of several Christian theologians, including W. Montgomery Watt, Hans Küng, Kenneth Cragg, David Kerr, and Jacques Jomier, O.P., and then draws upon the practice of analogical reasoning in the theology of religious pluralism to show that a term in one religion—in this case “prophecy”—can have purchase in another religious tradition. Muhammad Reconsidered not only is a constructive contribution to Catholic theology but also has enormous potential to help scholars reframe and comprehend Christian-Muslim relations.

This volume focuses on Islamic philosophy of religion with a range of contributions from analytic perspectives. It opens with methodological discussions on the relationship between the history of Islamic philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy. The book then offers a philosophical examination of some specific Islamic beliefs as well as some approaches to general beliefs that Islam shares with other religions. The chapters address a variety of topics from the existence and attributes of God through to debates on science and religion. The authors are predominantly scholars from Muslim backgrounds who tackle philosophical issues concerning Islam as their own living religion, representing internal perspectives that have never been vocal in analytic philosophy of religion so far. This is valuable reading for scholars and students of philosophy, theology, and religious studies.

This book examines the rise and demise of the psychology of religion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe and the United States. It considers the formation of the psychology of religion as an international movement, an enterprise whose goal was to refashion the science of religion at the turn of the century. Drawing on published sources and archival accounts, the chapters engage with the work of notable figures including William James, C.G. Jung, and Pierre Janet, placing it alongside lesser-known practitioners such as Ernest Murisier, James Henry Leuba, James Pratt, and George Albert Coe. In addition to probing the intellectual background and professional context for the emergence of this sub-discipline, the book examines the development of key concepts and methodologies among psychologists of religion and offers arguments both for the rise of the discipline as well as for its demise in the early decades of the 20th century.

At a time when there is increasing need to offer psychotherapeutic approaches that accommodate clients’ religious and spiritual beliefs, and acknowledge the potential for healing and growth offered by religious frameworks, this book explores psychology from an Islamic paradigm and demonstrates how Islamic understandings of human nature, the self, and the soul can inform an Islamic psychotherapy. Drawing on a qualitative, grounded theory analysis of interviews with Islamic scholars and clinicians, this unique volume distils complex religious concepts to reconcile Islamic theology with contemporary notions of psychology. Chapters offer nuanced explanations of relevant Islamic tradition and theological sources, consider how this relates to Western notions of psychotherapy and common misconceptions, and draw uniquely on first-hand data to develop a new theory of Islamic psychology. This, in turn, informs an innovative and empirically driven model of practice that translates Islamic understandings of human psychology into a clinical framework for Islamic psychotherapy. An outstanding scholarly contribution to the modern and emerging discipline of Islamic psychology, this book makes a pioneering contribution to the integration of the Islamic sciences and clinical mental health practice. It will be a key resource for scholars, researchers, and practicing clinicians with an interest in Islamic psychology and Muslim mental health, as well as religion, spirituality and psychology more broadly.

How did the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) converse and engage with other religious believers? Did he start off with prejudice and mistrust? Or was he convivial and open-minded? This book analyses six models of the dealings in the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), specifically, but not restricted, to the siblings of Abrahamic religious believers. The six models of dialogue analysed in the book are dialogue with Ashamah, Najashi of Abyssinia, delegation of Najran Christians, different Jews of Yathrib, and emperors of Byzantine and Sassanid. The analysis applies Ibn Khaldun’s (d. 1406) historical approach which the author termed as Khaldunian Hermeneutics due to the similarity between his ideas to that of Johann Gustav Droysen (d. 1884), a German philosopher, in historical hermeneutics. As such, the analysis goes beyond the dialogue content, taking into consideration the immediate and larger contextual settings, and changes of the contexts due to the passage of time. It critically considers the suitability of each model due to the difference in times and contexts. The book serves as a reference for Muslim dialogue advocates and practitioners, to provide substantial evidence of the dialogue application by the role model of Muslims – the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) whom they hold very dear to their hearts.