Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: heology, like every living discourse and tradition of knowledge that must contend with a changing and complex reality, demands revision, renewal, and recalibration.Why?In order to craft a narrative that speaks meaningfully to the challenges of our time-a narrative that expresses our commitments to the Divine through belief, action, and practice.The central theological question-the God-question-remains ever-present.It is not that this question has gone unanswered, but rather that each age must ask it anew.What matters now is how the God-question compel creative thinking, and how it confronts us with new conceptions of moral and intellectual responsibility.In this brief reflection, I will focus on the relationship between knowledge and action, with particular attention to the cultivation of epistemic virtues and the danger of epistemic vices. KnowledgeKnowledge is one of the greatest gifts bestowed upon humanity.In the Islamic tradition, the celebration of knowledge begins in pre-eternity, with the Qur'anic narrative of Adam's creation-a story in which Adam is taught "the names of all things," a profound metaphor for knowledge itself.But knowledge is not static.Like life, it is dynamic, expansive, and at times overwhelming.The question today is not whether knowledge abounds, but whether we are capable of truly comprehending, embodying and communicating its complexity with clarity and depth.The obscure mystic ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Niffarī (d.965) in one of his divine communings, writes: "He stayed me, and said to me: 'The more the vision increases, the more the expression decreases.'"(awqafanī wa qāla lī: kullamā ittasaʿat al-ruʾya, ḍāqat al-ʿibāra). 2 The wider the vision, the more compressed the expression.It is as though this insight were composed for the modern worldthough with one exception.For while modernity had expanded our line of sight, our expression 2 ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Niffarī and A.J. Arberry, The Mawáqif and Mukhátabát of Muḥammad Ibn ʿAbdi ʾl-Jabbár Al-Niffarí, with Other Fragments, trans.A.J. Arberry (London: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial & Luzac and Co, 1935), 50, 64.I am grateful to Mahmoud Youness for pointing
Source: The Muslim World
DOI: 10.1111/muwo.12507
Author: Ebrahim Moosa
Institution: University of Notre Dame
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,900
OpenAlex ID: W4411357216