My review of an important new book on how Islamic law came to be based on the Qur’an and Hadith.
David R. Vishanoff. Review of Ahmed El Shamsy, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 26 no. 2 (2015), 256-258.
Permanent link to the published article (Version of Record), with PDF for those whose institutions subscribe to the journal: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2014.979575
This paper, presented at IQSA in 2014, compares how several modern Muslim thinkers have made use of the Ashʿarī theological doctrine that God’s speech is eternal but its expression is temporal. Special attention is paid to Aksin Wijaya, an Indonesian thinker who employs a version of the Ashʿarī doctrine to support his creative new approach to Qur’anic interpretation.
“Reenchanting the Qurʾān: Hermeneutical Applications of the Ashʿarī Concept of God’s Eternal Speech.” International Qur’anic Studies Association, San Diego, November 23, 2014.
Here is a pdf of the oral presentation version of the paper, without documentation. This was the first of several conference presentations about Aksin Wijaya and other contemporary scholars of Qur’anic hermeneutics in Indonesia. Future publications will incorporate some of the material presented here, with full documentation.
This auto-biographical essay recounts the development of several themes and directions in my work as a Christian scholar of Islam, including my pedagogy of sacrificial listening.
David R. Vishanoff. “Sacrificial Listening: Christians, Muslims, and the Secular University.” In Faithful Is Successful: Notes to the Driven Pilgrim, ed. Nathan Grills, David E. Lewis, and S. Joshua Swamidass, 213-243. Denver: Outskirts Press, 2014. (ISBN 978-1478730354)
A scanned copy is posted here as a pdf file, by permission of the editors, for personal non-commercial use only.
My detailed review of a magnificent collection of essays representing the state of the art in the study of the Andalusian Zahiri thinker Ibn Hazm (d. 1064).
Review of Camilla Adang, Maribel Fierro, and Sabine Schmidtke, eds., Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba: The Life and Works of a Controversial Thinker (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Islamic Law and Society 21 no. 4 (2014): 453-459.
The publisher, Brill, owns the copyright but graciously allows me to post here a PDF for your personal use.
What, exactly, are we saying when we casually refer to various Muslims (and others) as literalists? Here is my detailed review of an ambitious book that identifies a whole range of different conceptions of literal meaning in several Islamic disciplines, especially legal theory.
David R. Vishanoff. Review of Robert Gleave, Islam and Literalism: Literal Meaning and Interpretation in Islamic Legal Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 25 no. 4 (2014): 553–557.
Permanent link to the published article (Version of Record), with PDF for those whose institutions subscribe to the journal: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2014.946823
