Standpoints on the Belief in Imam Mahdi: A Sunni-Shia Discussion

Scrutinising the Sunni Standpoint on the belief in Imam Mahdi by Shaykh Muhammad Umar Ramadhan

Reassessing the Mainstream Shi'i Standpoint on the belief in Imam Mahdi by Prof. AbdulAziz Sachedina

In 874 CE, the eleventh Imam died, and the Imami community splintered. The institutions of the Imamate were maintained by the dead Imam's agents, who asserted they were in contact with a hidden twelfth Imam. This was the beginning of 'Twelver' Shiʿism. Edmund Hayes provides an innovative approach to exploring early Shiʿism, moving beyond doctrinal history to provide an analysis of the socio-political processes leading to the canonisation of the Occultation of the twelfth Imam. Hayes shows how these agents cemented their authority by reproducing the physical signs of the Imamate, including protocols of succession, letters and the alm taxes. Four of these agents were ultimately canonised as “envoys” but traces of earlier conceptions of authority remain embedded in the earliest reports. Hayes dissects the complex and contradictory Occultation narratives to show how, amidst the claims of numerous actors, the institutional positioning of the envoys allowed them to assert a quasi-Imamic authority in the absence of an Imam.

Ramon Harvey revisits the Muslim theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) from Samarqand and puts his system, and that of the Māturīdī school, into lively dialogue with modern thought. Combining rigorous study of Arabic Māturīdī texts with insights from Husserl’s phenomenology  and analytic theology, Harvey explores themes from epistemology and  metaphysics to the nature of God and specific divine attributes  (omniscience and wisdom, creative action, divine speech and the Qur’an).  His systematic treatment of these topics shows that a contemporary Islamic philosophical theology, or kalām jadīd, can be true to the past, yet dynamic in the present, and can provide original  and constructive answers to perennial theological questions.

The goal of this seminar is to discuss the invention of “religion” in the modern-colonial West as a category which ensured and reified racial hierarchies around the world and tied Christianity to whiteness whilst simultaneously positioning other religions, including Islam, at the bottom of a racial-religious hierarchy. This modern invention of ‘religion’ was also a very gendered process that enabled the production of religious hierarchies while simultaneously rationalising and justifying the privatisation of religion in an Enlightenment, post-Westphalian European context. This gendered and modern-colonial invention of religion has implications for how religion and religious actors (or actors perceived as such) are discussed, perceived, and treated within the realm of Global Politics.

Dr Joshua Ralston discusses his book "Law and the Rule of God: A Christian Engagement with Shari'a" with Dr Ali-Reza Bhojani.   In Law and the Rule of God, Joshua Ralston presents an innovative approach to Christian-Muslim dialogue. Eschewing both polemics and apologetics, he proposes a comparative framework for Christian engagement with Islamic debates on sharī'a. Ralston draws on a diverse range of thinkers from both traditions including Karl Barth, Ibn Taymiyya, Thomas Aquinas, and Mohammad al-Jabri. He offers an account of public law as a provisional and indirect witness to the divine rule of justice. He also demonstrates how this theology of public law deeply resonates with the Christian tradition and is also open to learning from and dialoguing with Islamic and secular conceptions of law, sovereignty, and justice.

Dr Anver M. Emon discusses his book "Islamic Natural Law Theories" with Dr Ali-Reza Bhojani. By recasting the Islamic legal tradition in terms of legal philosophy, Anver Emon's Islamic Natural Law Theories sheds substantial light on an uncharted tradition of natural law theory and offers critical insights into contemporary global debates about Islamic law and reform.

Dr Cyrus Ali Zargar discusses his book "Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism" with Dr Ali-Reza Bhojani. Islamic philosophy and Sufism evolved as distinct yet interweaving strands of Islamic thought and practice. Despite differences, they have shared a concern with the perfection of the soul through the development of character. In The Polished Mirror, Cyrus Ali Zargar studies the ways in which, through teaching and storytelling, pre-modern Muslims lived, negotiated and cultivated virtues. Examining the writings of philosophers, ascetics, poets, and saints, he locates virtue ethics within a dynamic moral tradition.

Disputes between classical Muslim theologians are often spoken of in very abstract terms. What is often forgotten, however, is the human  relationship that would have existed between such theologians. Through the example of the Shīʿī Hishām b. al-Ḥakam and the Ibāḍī ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī, I demonstrate how two theologians with striking doctrinal differences nevertheless maintained a very strong friendship,  as evidenced by the mention of this friendship in various genres of literature. Such a friendship serves as a prompt to rethink our assumptions about how classical Muslim theologians interacted with each other and as a precedent on which to base intra-Muslim interactions today.