Modern Muslim Theology

Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination

Martin Nguyen

This book aims to bring Muslim theology into the present day. Rather than a purely academic pursuit, Modern Muslim Theology argues that theology is a creative process and discusses how the Islamic tradition can help contemporary practitioners negotiate their relationships with God, with one another, and with the rest of creation.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 224 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-5381-1499-5 • Hardback • August 2018 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-5381-1500-8 • Paperback • August 2018 • $38.00 • (£29.00)

978-1-5381-1501-5 • eBook • August 2018 • $36.00 • (£28.00)

Series: Religion in the Modern World

Subjects: Religion / Islam / Theology, History / Middle East / General, Religion / Comparative Religion, Religion / Islam / General, Social Science / Islamic Studies

Modern Muslim Theology

Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

This book aims to bring Muslim theology into the present day. Rather than a purely academic pursuit, Modern Muslim Theology argues that theology is a creative process and discusses how the Islamic tradition can help contemporary practitioners negotiate their relationships with God, with one another, and with the rest of creation.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 224 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-5381-1499-5 • Hardback • August 2018 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-5381-1500-8 • Paperback • August 2018 • $38.00 • (£29.00)

978-1-5381-1501-5 • eBook • August 2018 • $36.00 • (£28.00)

Series: Religion in the Modern World

Subjects: Religion / Islam / Theology, History / Middle East / General, Religion / Comparative Religion, Religion / Islam / General, Social Science / Islamic Studies

Author

Martin Nguyen is associate professor of Islamic religious traditions at Fairfield University, where he is also the faculty chair for diversity. He is the author of the book Sufi Master and Qur’an Scholar.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Why Theology?
Muslim Theology
A Muslim Theology of Engagement
Genealogy of the Book
Arrangement of the Book
Conventions of the Book
Notes
1 The Language of Theology
Theology
The Horizon of Engagement
The Measure of Revelation
Notes
2 The Measure of Modern Time
A Pound of Flesh
Life Without End
The Time That Remains
End of the End Times
Crisis Continuous
Notes
3 Imagining Tradition
The Question of Tradition
The Construction of Tradition
The Kaʿba as Tradition
Notes 69
4 The Religious Imagination
Imagine
Reason and Rationalities
The Muslim Imaginative Tradition
The Measure of the Religious Imagination
Notes
5 Revelation and Response
The Qur’an as Revelation
In the Moment of Revelation
Toward a Theology of Prostration
Notes
6 Faith in the Tradition
A Life of Faith
The Measure of Faith
Faith in the Changing Tradition
A Life of Change
Faith in the Forge
Notes
7 Theology in Prostration
Prayer
A Life of Prayer
Prayer in Prostration
The Timing of Prayer
The Form of Prayer
The Prostration of Response
The Prostration of Protest
Pray as Though It Is Your Last Prayer
Notes
Conclusion
Where We Have Been
Where We Shall Go
Notes
Bibliography
Arabic Texts 187
General Sources 189
Index of Qur’anic Verses 199
About the Author 205

Reviews

Muslim theology has traditionally been understood as involving doctrines and beliefs, as emphasizing the conceptual and cognitive aspects of the faith. Nguyen (Fairfield Univ.) considers Muslim theology in a different way. He understands it as encompassing all aspects of a believer’s life—the intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual elements. He believes Muslim theology should lead people to see their lives as an ongoing response to God involving active engagement with others and society. Nguyen looks at prayer, the Koran, imagination, creativity, Muslim tradition, prostration before God, righteousness in words and actions, and protest. He intends this book for both laypersons and scholars, since he believes that theology should address all believers and not just a small, elite segment of them. Nguyen's fresh approach makes Islam relevant to the present time, in which people are influenced by postmodernism and need to see faith in action and not simply through its doctrines and ideas. Nguyen likely will encounter resistance and criticism from other Muslim scholars, but his creative vision for theology may well have significant influence.

Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.
— Choice Reviews

Informed by his deep reading of scripture and the Islamic tradition, as well as his grounding in the academic study of religion, Nguyen offers a theology that is of interest to academics as well as to people of faith, and to those who wish to learn more about Islam regardless of their orientation.

— Zayn Kassam, Pomona College

Nguyen successfully inhabits the pastoral voice—the book is as much an intellectual and spiritual reflection as a motivating call to action.

— Mairaj Syed, University of California, Davis

This is a courageous and bold voice which brings together the layers of tradition and worship in an engaged conversation on the topic of theological ethics. Learned as well as accessible, Martin Nguyen shows how a lived Islam reflects the ethical life Muslims around the world as well as in America practice and cherish. It is a fascinating search of a scholar and an engaged participant for a Muslim ethical narrative in late modernity.

— Ebrahim Moosa, professor of Islamic Studies, University of Notre Dame

Features

Written by a younger generation thinker – appealing to students

Book is engaged from a theological point of view and doesn't speak from a political one.

Modern Muslim Theology

Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination

Martin Nguyen

Modern Muslim Theology

Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination

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