Critical-Progressive Muslims: On Islamic hermeneutics, Gender and Interreligious Dialogue

  The Religious Genius: The Creative Transformation of Religious Consciousness     Adis Duderija What makes certain individuals transformative within the history of religion? Why do some people merely preserve a tradition while others renew it, deepen it, and reveal possibilities within it that had previously remained unrealized? These questions stand at the center of the concept of the "religious genius." Drawing on Alon Goshen-Gottstein's formulation, a religious genius is not simply an exceptionally intelligent person, a saintly individual, or an accomplished scholar. Rather, a religious genius is someone who, through a rare integration of intuition, intellect, imagination, and character, generates new understanding of reality that addresses fundamental religious concerns and leads to enduring transformation within a tradition. The religious genius offers not merely information but insight; not merely interpretation but reconfiguration; not merely knowledge...

  Why the Highly Gendered Nature of Classical Islamic Law Demands Critical Reassessment Adis Duderija One of the most common claims made in contemporary discussions of Islam and gender is that men and women are "equal but different." According to this view, the distinctions made within classical Islamic law do not reflect male superiority or female inferiority but simply different roles, responsibilities, and social functions. Yet a close examination of the classical legal tradition suggests otherwise. The issue is not merely that men and women are treated differently. Rather, the legal system itself was constructed upon a set of assumptions about masculinity and femininity that consistently privileged men while limiting the autonomy, authority, and agency of women.  The highly gendered character of classical Islamic law becomes apparent when one considers the sheer breadth of legal distinctions between men and women. These differences extended far beyond marriage and family ...

  On the Concept of a   (Woman)   Saint     Adis Duderija   What comes to mind when we hear the phrase woman saint? For many, the image is almost predetermined: a figure of purity, obedience, humility, and self-sacrifice. She is patient under suffering, submissive to authority, and detached from worldly ambition. Such qualities may indeed characterize some women recognized as saints. Yet, as Robert Ellsberg perceptively observes, these conventional portraits often tell us as much about the expectations of those who wrote the stories as they do about the women themselves.   The history of sainthood has largely been written by men, shaped by institutions dominated by male religious authorities. As a result, women saints have frequently been celebrated for embodying virtues deemed appropriately feminine while other traits have been minimized or ignored. Courage becomes obedience. Leadership becomes service. Intellectual brilliance becomes pi...

 The Poverty of a Worldview Without Imagination Adis Duderija One of the clearest signs that a worldview has become spiritually, aesthetically, and ethically deficient is its inability to make room for imagination, creativity, and genuine novelty. Such a worldview may appear strong, certain, and orderly. It may promise stability and protection from ambiguity. Yet beneath its surface lies a deep poverty of spirit. It reduces the richness of human existence to repetition, conformity, and control. In doing so, it undermines some of the very qualities that make human life meaningful and flourishing. Imagination is often misunderstood as a form of escapism, a retreat from reality into fantasy. In fact, imagination is one of the most profound ways humans engage reality. It allows us to envision possibilities that do not yet exist, to empathize with lives different from our own, and to perceive dimensions of the world that routine habits obscure. Every social reform, scientific breakthrou...

  Response to the Australian Government’s Response to the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia Report   Adis Duderija I welcome the Australian Government’sresponse to the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia and its recognition that anti-Muslim prejudice undermines social cohesion, democratic citizenship, and the wellbeing of Muslim Australians. The initiatives relating to education, community resilience, interfaith engagement, and improved reporting mechanisms are important steps towards addressing anti-Muslim discrimination and ensuring that Muslim Australians feel safe and valued members of our society. However, successfully combating Islamophobia requires more than increasing awareness of Muslims as a minority community. It also requires challenging the underlying assumptions that often sustain anti-Muslim prejudice. One of the most persistent drivers of Islamophobia is the tendency to portray Islam as a monolithic religious tradition defined primarily by its most ...

  We Cannot Escape Metaphysics: Why Every Islamic Interpretation Rests on Deeper Assumptions   Adis Duderija Many Muslims today want to focus on what they see as practical questions: How should we interpret the Qur’an? What is God’s justice? Who has religious authority? What rights do human beings possess? How should revelation relate to changing historical circumstances? These are important questions. But there is a deeper issue that often goes unnoticed. Before we answer any of them, we already carry certain assumptions about reality itself. Philosophers call these assumptions  metaphysics . Put simply, metaphysics concerns our most basic beliefs about what is real, what has value, how power works, what it means to be human, and how God relates to the world. This is why every account of Islamic hermeneutics presupposes a metaphysics of meaning. Every account of divine justice presupposes a metaphysics of moral value. Every account of religious authority presu...

  Islam Is Not a Museum Piece: Why Process Thought Matters for the Future of My Islamic   Faith     Adis Duderija I am often asked, by fellow Muslims and by curious outsiders alike, what “ progressive Islam “ actually means. Is it just liberal politics dressed up in Arabic vocabulary? A watered-down accommodation to modernity? I want to suggest something different: progressive Islam is best understood not as a fixed set of positions at all, but as a community of becoming — a community defined less by the doctrines it holds than by the orientation it takes toward growth, responsibility, and the ongoing work of moral discernment. That may sound abstract, so let me make it concrete. For centuries, much of Islamic theology has assumed, often without saying so out loud, that reality is made up of fixed, self-contained things: a fixed human nature, a fixed law, a fixed and unchanging relationship between God and the world. On this picture, the task of religion i...

   Muslims   Need a Fresh   Imagination of God—and of Reality   Adis Duderija If there is one idea that could fundamentally transform how Islam is lived and understood in the 21st century, it is this: reality itself is not static. It is relational, dynamic, and in constant becoming . And if that is true, then Islam—like everything else—cannot be reduced to a fixed system of doctrines or laws frozen in time. It must be recognised as an unfolding, participatory process. This is precisely where progressive Islam, at its most intellectually serious, makes its most important contribution. It is not simply advocating reform, nor merely updating old interpretations to suit modern sensibilities. It is grounded in a far deeper shift—a process-relational understanding of existence that recasts God, revelation, tradition, and ethics as dynamic rather than static realities. At stake here is not only theological nuance, but the future of Islam as a lived, mor...