The Imperatives of progressive Islam

Author: Dr. Adis Duderija

Summary / Excerpt: “The book highlights the arguments of several progressive Muslim thinkers, including Mohammad Shahrur, Khaled Abou El Fadl and Abdolkarim Soroush, Farid Esack, Shabbir Akhtar, Ali Ashgar Engineer and Hasan Hanafi in critiquing the static if not retrogressive nature of classical Islamic epistemology and promoting Islamic liberation theology in the 21st century. Besides, the main arguments employed by the proponents of progressive Muslim thought for legitimizing the idea of divinely willed religious pluralism in the context of the late modern episteme. This, by definition, involves tackling the topic of the salvation of the religious other. The concepts of religious pluralism and ethic of pluralism as employed in this study and how they played themselves out in Islamic history. ‘Gender-justice’ in the context of progressive Muslim thought as employed in this study describe the arguments behind classical gender ideologies in Islam and outline the progressive Muslims’ alternative conceptualizations of the same. Among progressive Muslims scholars surrounding the viability of (re)-emergence of a religiously indigenous Islamic feminism as a way of bringing about gender – justice in Islam. The works of a number of progressive Muslim scholars, both female and male, who have developed important hermeneutical principles which both critique the patriarchal interpretations of the Qurʾān and hadith both in the past and in the present and who have at the same time developed sophisticated non-patriarchal Qurʾān-Sunna hermeneutical models.”