The Foundation of Norms in Islamic Jurisprudence and Theology

Omar Farahat
Paperback, 258 pages
9781108701471

In this book, Omar Farahat presents a new way of understanding the work of classical Islamic theologians and legal theorists who maintained that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of the norms and values of human actions. Through a reconstruction of classical Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī debates on the nature and implications of divine speech, Farahat argues that the Ashʿarī attachment to revelation was not a purely traditionalist position. Rather, it was a rational philosophical commitment emerging from debates in epistemology and theology. He further argues that the particularity of this model makes its distinctive features helpful for contemporary scholars who defend a form of divine command theory. Farahat's volume thus constitutes a new reading of the issue of reason and revelation in Islam and breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics.

Contents
Introduction: Classical Islamic thought and the promise of post-secularism
Part I. Epistemological and Metaphysical Foundations:
1. What do we know without revelation? The epistemology of divine speech
2. God in relation to us: the metaphysics of divine speech
3. The nature of divine speech in classical theology

Part II. The Construction of Norms in Islamic Jurisprudence:
4. The nature of divine commands in classical legal theory
5. Divine commands in the imperative mood
6. The persistence of natural law in Islamic jurisprudence.