This encyclopedia entry surveys the beliefs of Muslims, presenting them not as a set of agreed-upon doctrines but as an ongoing argument over seven main topics: God, creation, humanity, prophethood, ethics, salvation, and the Muslim community.
David R. Vishanoff. “Religious Beliefs.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics, ed. Emad El‑Din Shahin, vol. 2, 321–337. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
I find it useful as an introductory reading for my class on Islamic Theology. Unfortunately, it was written “for hire” for OUP, and cannot be made available here. It is accessible in the printed encyclopedia, and until June 2022 it was available online through Oxford Islamic Studies Online; it has now been moved to Oxford Reference.
The Qur’an’s statement that the Jews “did not kill [Jesus], nor did they crucify him, but it was made to appear [so] to them” (4:157) has often been interpreted to mean that someone else was crucified in his place, but in his book The Crucifixion and the Qur’an Todd Lawson shows that this interpretation is neither inevitable nor universally accepted by Muslim exegetes. Here is my review of the book:
David R. Vishanoff. Review of Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009). Review of Middle East Studies 47.1 (2013): 69–71.
Unfortunately, the review is rather critical, so I do not wish to distribute it widely, and will not post the full text here. It is important only for those scholars who are considering making serious use of the book.
This essay explains the slow but certain adaptation of Islamic law to a general audience:
David R. Vishanoff. “Islamic Law: A Long Work in Progress.” The Army Chaplaincy, Winter-Spring 2009, 65-68.
This article was originally accessible on the public websites of the Chief of Chaplains (http://www.chapnet.army.mil) and the U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School (USACHCS) (http://www.usachcs.army.mil/TACarchive/TAC/tac.htm), but as of 2017 these web sites no longer exist and The Army Chaplaincy no longer appears to be in publication or available online, so I am making a pdf of the article available here.
My very first publication was an encyclopedia article on the early Muslim theologian Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Sayyar al-Nazzam (782–836), whose thought I encountered in writing my dissertation.
David R. Vishanoff. “Naẓẓām, al‑.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, ed. Lindsay Jones, vol. 9, 6444-6446. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005.
My M.A. thesis, completed in 1997 at the University of Colorado in Boulder under the guidance of Fred Denny, Ira Chernus, and Robert Lester, advances a peculiar and, no doubt, very naive idea about how the early Muslim community came to be known as “believers:” in accordance with its pre-Islamic usage, the term initially meant “those who give protection” to the Prophet Muhammad, but came to mean “believers” as the community’s self-definition evolved. This is not an idea I would feel qualified either to defend or refute today, but it has found some sympathetic ears among scholars and may still be of interest.
David Reeves Vishanoff. “On the Origin and Development of the Qurʾānic Use of Āmana.” M.A. Thesis, University of Colorado, 1997.
