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Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue in Religions is dedicated to exploring problems in contemporary Islamic Philosophy of Religion. It is intended to catalogue treatments of select problems in the Philosophy of Religion today, such as arguments for and against the existence of God, religious epistemology, problems of religious diversity and pluralism, etc., with a focus on the Islamic religion. As such, the Special Issue will offer a modest contribution toward broadening the scope of contemporary Philosophy of Religion, which continues to be dominated by discussions about philosophical problems as they relate primarily, or even exclusively, to Christian theism.

The Special Issue will also be characterized by its distinctly philosophical approach to select problems that arise in thinking about Islam, as opposed to exercises in Islamic apologetics, theology, or even ‘analytic theology’ (as all these other approaches operate on the assumption of the truth of the Islamic religion). Given that it is a second-order enterprise, one that does not presuppose the truth or falsity of Islam, Islamic Philosophy of Religion is not bound to parameters set down by Islamic belief and practice. Because of this, efforts by those who philosophize about Islam in such a context may very well yield conclusions that many Muslims would regard as ‘unorthodox’ or ‘incorrect’ convictions about religious matters.

While the Special Issue in Religions is open to those who may wish to defend philosophical positions that are congruent with Islamic belief and practice, it is not limited to such endeavors. Indeed, on the contrary, the Special Issue is particularly intended to provide an opportunity for reflection on and defenses of philosophical positions that might be regarded as controversial, heretical, or even instances of outright ‘disbelief’ in Islam.

Dr. Imran Aijaz
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Islamic philosophy of religion
Islam and philosophy
philosophical issues in Islam
philosophical debates in Islam
contemporary philosophical problems in Islam

Published Papers (2 papers)

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10 pages, 208 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Intellectual Humility and the Argument from Evil: A Reply to Zain Ali

by John Bishop and Ken Perszyk

Religions 2024, 15(5), 522; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050522 - 23 Apr 2024

Viewed by 258

Abstract

This is a response to Zain Ali’s critique in this journal of our presentation of a ‘right relationship’ normatively relativised ‘logical’ Argument from Evil. Our argument aims to show that the existence of horrendous evils (as defined by Marilyn Adams) is incompatible with the existence of the personal omniGod (a person or personal being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good), given certain reasonable judgments about what a personal God’s perfect goodness would imply about the way God relates to those caught up in horrendous evils. We reply to Ali’s main criticism that our assumptions about divine goodness are unjustified, and show a lack of intellectual humility. We defend the claim that, if God is a person, then God’s goodness is moral goodness according to our best human theory of what that implies. We accept that God’s situation as creator and sustainer of all that exists may justify ‘divine exceptionalism’: God’s personal moral goodness may be consistent with ways of relating to others that would fall far short of perfection in human-to-human relationships. But in that case, we argue, intellectual humility may be better served by accepting that God is so exceptional that God should not be understood as a person at all, which is the prevailing Muslim view, as Ali himself acknowledges. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Problems in Contemporary Islamic Philosophy of Religion)

16 pages, 247 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Problem of Evil, God’s Personhood, and the Reflective Muslim

by Zain Ali

Religions 2024, 15(2), 225; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15020225 - 16 Feb 2024

Viewed by 988

Abstract

Is it correct to think of God as a perfectly good personal agent? Not so, argue John Bishop and Ken Perszyk. Bishop and Perszyk, in their most recent work, God, Purpose, and Reality: A Euteleological Understanding of Theism (2023), outline a series of challenges that bring into question this concept of God—i.e., as a perfectly good personal agent, who is unique, unsurpassably great, all-powerful, and all-knowing. I aim to critically evaluate one of these challenges, namely the Normatively Relativised Logical Argument from Evil (NRLAFE). The NRLAFE has God’s perfect goodness as its target. Bishop and Perszyk argue that people who are committed to certain values about what constitutes right relationship amongst persons, might reasonably judge God as lacking perfect goodness. They also contend that the relevant values will likely be endorsed by theists. My aim in this paper is twofold: first, I aim to assess the Bishop-Perszyk argument from evil, in light of the tradition of Islamic Theism. The tradition of Islamic Theism is as broad as it is deep, and within the tradition there are a variety of ways in which God has been conceptualised. This includes debates as to whether we can view God as a personal agent. Second, I contend that we have available to us, from within and beyond the tradition of Islamic Theism, a set of resources that: (a) permit us to understand God as being a personal agent; and (b) allow us to resist the NRLAFE while endorsing the value commitments that Bishop and Perszyk have in mind. The perspective I bring to this paper is that of a reflective Muslim—i.e., a person of the Islamic faith who acknowledges that people of other religious and non-religious persuasions are as educated and concerned with seeking truth and avoiding error as they themselves are. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Problems in Contemporary Islamic Philosophy of Religion)

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