Fazlur Rahman

Fazlur Rahman ( Arabic فضل الرحمان, DMG Faḍl ar-Raḥmān ) (born September 21, 1919 - † July 26, 1988 ) was a Pakistani philosopher and liberal Islamic thinker who was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1969 until his death .

Life

Born in British India in the area that now belongs to Pakistan , Fazlur Rahman studied at the University of the Punjab in Lahore (Masters in Arabic in 1942) and then at Oxford University , where he received his doctorate in 1949. From 1950 to 1958 he was a lecturer for Persian Studies and Islamic Philosophy at Durham University , from 1958 to 1961 Associate Professor at the Institute for Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal . He received international attention for the first time in 1952 with his book Avicenna's Psychology , in which he worked out the influence of the Muslim philosopher Avicenna on Thomas Aquinas .

In 1961, Fazlur Rahman returned to Pakistan to head the Central Institute of Islamic Research in Karachi, founded by General Ayyub Khan , which was supposed to develop a modernist interpretation of Islam. During this time he wrote a number of articles on the Sunnah and the Hadith traditions that were later published in the book Islamic Methodology in History . Fazlur Rahman's attempts to mobilize the Central Institute to fight traditionalist Muslims failed, however. Since Fazlur Rahman was the main advisor to Ayyub Khan, the ulama saw in him an instrument of the government to eliminate their authority. His critical position on the hadiths was also particularly controversial, because of which he was denounced by his opponents as the "destroyer of hadiths ".

In 1969, Fazlur Rahman was appointed Professor of Islamic Thought at the University of Chicago . In this position he wrote, among other things, his book Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition , in which he called for a historical-critical examination of the Islamic heritage.

Mustafa Cerić , Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1993 to 2012, is one of Fazlur Rahman's students . Rahman's thinking had a major influence on the theology of the Ankaran school .

Teaching

The core message of Rahman's teaching is that the legal interpretation of the Koran and the Sunnah has gone wrong since the death of the Prophet by not asking about the general ethics that the Koran seeks to convey, but rather answers to specific questions in individual traditions sought to find. This is the main reason for what, from Rahman's point of view, is negative in today's Islamic countries and the world itself. Another important point is Rahman's criticism of the law schools . According to Rahman, the schools of law have established an authority-based, dogmatic system of interpreting the Koran and Sunna. In particular, the definition of detailed questions in the context of hadith studies should be viewed critically. Rahman rejects both Taqlīd and Idschmāʿ .

Rahman continues to criticize Islamic theology. In particular, Ashʿarite theology, with its strict doctrine of predestination and the emphasis on the omnipotence of God, its anti-rationalist orientation and the lack of freedom of man, has contributed to the formation of dogmas. By gaining an understanding of the context of revelation and time, the actual goal of the respective proclamations or actions of Muhammad can be determined and thus the ethics underlying the Koran can be grasped. In a second step, this must be applied in a timely manner. The aim is to develop an Islamic worldview that can be applied in a contemporary manner in various political or economic systems.

Works

• Avicenna's Psychology . Edited and translated by Fazlur Rahman. London 1952.
• Islamic Methodology in History . Karachi 1965.
• The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra . Studies in Islamic Philosophy and Science. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1975.
• Islam . 2nd ed. Chicago, Ill., Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1979.
• Islam and Modernity . Chicago 1982. Excerpts from Charles Kurzman (ed.): Liberal Islam. A sourcebook. Oxford 1998. pp. 304-318.
• Towards reformulating the Method of Islamic Law: Sheikh Yamani on "Public Interest" . Journal of International Law and Politics.
• Some key ethical concepts of the Quran . Journal of Religious Ethics. 1983.

literature

• Amirpur, Katajun: Rethinking Islam. CH Beck; Munich, 2013. pp. 91–116.
• Frederick Mathewson Denny: "Fazlur Rahman: Muslim Intellectual" in The Muslim World 79 (1989) 91-101.
• Husein, Fatimah: Fazlur Rahman's Islamic Philosophy. Master's Thesis, McGill University, 1997. Website with PDF
• Tamara A. Sonn: Art. "Fazlur Rahman" in John L. Esposito (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World . 6 Vols. Oxford 2009. Vol. IV, pp. 501-502.
• Tamara A. Sonn: "Fazlur Rahman's Islamic Methodology" in The Muslim World 81 (1991) 221-230.
• Earle E. Waugh: "Beyond Scylla and Kharybdis: Fazlur Rahman and Islamic Identity" in EH Waugh and FM Denny (ed.): The Shaping of an American Discourse. A Memorial to Fazlur Rahman . Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1998. pp. 15-36.
• Ebrahim Moosa: "Rahman, Fazlur (1919-88)" in Gerhard Böwering (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2013. p.458 .

References and footnotes

1. ↑ Today the Islamic Research Institute of the International Islamic University (IIUI) in Islamabad , Pakistan .
2. ↑ See Waugh: "Beyond Scylla and Kharybdis". 1998. p. 26f.
3. ↑ See Waugh: "Beyond Scylla and Kharybdis". 1998. p. 27.
4. ↑ See Kurzman: Liberal Islam. A sourcebook. 1998, p. 304.