This volume presents ten leading scholars' writings on contemporary Islamic law and Muslim thought. The essays examine a range of issues, from modern Muslim discourses on justice, natural law, and the common good, to democracy, the social contract, and -the authority of the preeminent jurist.- Changes in how Shari'a has been understood over the centuries are explored, as well as how it has been applied in both Sunni and Shi'i Islam. Debates on the nature, interpretation, reform, and application of Shari'a lie at the core of all Islamist revivalist ideologies and movements of the past two...

The judgement of apostasy on the last page of al-Ghazālī's Incoherence of the philosophers has long been considered as one of the key reasons for the decline of peripatetic philosophy in Islam. This study is an inquiry into the different elements of Islamic thought which led to al-Ghazālī's conviction that three important conclusions of peripatetic philosophy must be considered as heresy. In its four parts, the volume describes the early usage of the judgement on apostates in Islam and the legal and theological developments, which led to its application against the...

This volume presents ten leading scholars' writings on contemporary Islamic law and Muslim thought. The essays examine a range of issues, from modern Muslim discourses on justice, natural law, and the common good, to democracy, the social contract, and -the authority of the preeminent jurist.- Changes in how Shari'a has been understood over the centuries are explored, as well as how it has been applied in both Sunni and Shi'i Islam. Debates on the nature, interpretation, reform, and application of Shari'a lie at the core of all Islamist revivalist ideologies and movements of the past two...

Der arabische Philosoph, Richter und Arzt Ibn Rushd (lateinisch Averroes, 1126-1198) aus al-Andalus verfaßte eine Vielzahl von philosophischen Schriften, vor allem Kommentare zu den Werken des Aristoteles, durch deren lateinische Übersetzungen er ab der Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts auch in Europa zu der Aristoteles-Autorität schlechthin wurde. Die Kirche sah sich daraufhin im 13. Jahrhundert gezwungen, die sogenannten Averroisten, die Ibn Rushds Aristoteleskommentar rezipierten, zu verurteilen, weil ihrer Meinung nach die Lehren Aristoteles' kirchlichen Dogmen widersprachen.§§In seiner...

Al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) is one of the most influential thinkers of Islam. There is hardly a genre of Islamic literature where he is not regarded as a major authority. Islamic Law, Sufism, ethics, philosophy, and theology are all deeply shaped by him. Yet in the past thirty years, the field of Ghazālī-studies has been shaken by the realization that Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428/1037) and other philosophers had a strong influence on him. Now, after the 900th anniversary at his death, the field emerges stronger than ever. This second volume of Islam and...