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

Dr. Adis Duderija In my previous post I discussed a number of the reasons why I use the adjective ‘progressive” when theorising progressive Islam/progressive Muslim Thought”, a question that is frequently put to me in my discussions with various people on the subject matter. In this post I want to address another issue that arises in relation to progressive Islam, namely the claim some have made that progressive Islam is ‘secular’ and/or ‘western’. Putting aside issues pertaining to the theorising of the concept of secularism as, for example,  discussed at length by scholars such as Charles Taylor and that of ‘western’ civilisation as for example discussed by K.A. Appiah , those who subscribe to this view would be surprised to find out  that in my book on the imperatives of progressive Islam I have used the words ‘secularity’ , ‘secular’, ‘secularise’ and ‘secularism’ once only respectively. In my first book on progressive Muslim thought published back in 2011

Dr. Adis Duderija Over the decade or so of publishing on theory of progressive Islam a number of people have asked me why do I use the word “progressive.” While I have provided a systematic and detailed discussion (in academic terms) of what this means from a  philosophical, epistemological and methodological perspective in my academic writings on the subject matter, I understand that given that progressive Islam /progressive Muslim thought is very much present  at grassroots level that there is a need to  provide a non-academic explanation.  In what follows I provide four reasons why I use the word “progressive” in progressive Islam/progressive Muslim thought: Reason one : Quran and Sunna were progressive in approaching ethical and legal issues of that time by having a more ethical vision beyond what was considered as status quo and customary ( ma'ruf/ 'urf) ! Progressive Islam wants to stay true to this vision . Reason two : ethical values like justice and fai

Dr. Adis Duderija, Lecturer in Study of Islam  and Society, Griffith  university  I have been involved in a number of debates on FB surrounding  my own scholarship, especially in relation to theorizing of progressive Islam since I started  using face-book for ‘academic’ purposes  in 2012/2013 ( 3 years after completing my Ph.D in contemporary Islamic hermeneutics with focus on progressive Islam and neo-traditional Salafism  ). Some of these experiences have been really helpful in clarifying my own thinking further and I have learnt things I did not know. However, some of the debates have been the opposite. Usually , these involve  young Muslim men with little or no scholarly credentials who ‘critique’ my work in a highly distortive. self-serving ,piecemeal,  and unsystematic and essentially uninformed  manner to basically score an ideological point ( usually against progressive Islam) . This prompted me to write this short blog piece  for such individuals to check whether or

Dr. Adis Duderija I would like to briefly critique some assumptions behind some claims made in the article  by Dr. Brown on sodomy from the perspective of problematizing the assumed concept of Sunna in the paper, a topic I have been publishing on for a decade. The concept of Sunna as I demonstrated in my publications   remained epistemologically , and methodologically in dependent of the concept of a sound hadith as per classical ’ulum ul hadith for a period of two centuries or so. In my paper which traces the meaning and evolution in the meaning of the concept of Sunna during the formative period of Islam I conclude as follows: “At the beginning of this article, two questions that guided its analyses were asked: namely whether the traditional definition of Sunnah that took root and established itself during the post-formative or classical period of Islamic thought reflect the way this term was understood during the preclassical period. The answer, based on our above ana