Analytic Islamic Epistemology - (Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Scripture and Theology) by Safaruk Chowdhury & Ramon Harvey (Hardcover)

About the Book

The first collected volume on the Islamic tradition and analytic epistemology in conversation.

Book Synopsis

Epistemology has a distinguished history within Islamic philosophical and theological discourses. Muslim scholars sought to explain what knowledge was, where it came from, and how it could be justified. They were especially interested in religious knowledge and the core question of why human beings were justified in their belief in God and the Prophet Muhammad.

In this volume, editors Safaruk Chowdhury and Ramon Harvey, alongside fifteen contributing authors, put this vibrant tradition of thought into sustained dialogue with contemporary analytic philosophy of religion and clarify what is at stake in their mutual interaction. The text acts, therefore, as a founding document for the new subfield of analytic Islamic epistemology. By bringing together the insights of intellectual historians, comparative religionists, philosophers of religion and analytic epistemologists, this book maps historical articulations of Islamic epistemology, the ongoing conversation with Christian counterparts, the advancement of key existing debates, and proposals for the future.

Review Quotes

An intriguing collection of articles that demonstrates the power of analytic philosophy to contribute to Islamic philosophy. There has been a trend recently to use that approach in the philosophy of religion but not so much until now in Islamic thought, so this is both innovative and a valuable addition to epistemology--Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky

This book will provide impetus for the integration of the Islamic tradition into the epistemology of religion, a field that has long been dominated by Christian perspectives. The contributors include some of the more promising younger scholars in the field and the papers cover a wide range of topics within Islamic philosophy and other relevant fields of Islamic culture.--Peter Adamson, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich