Episode 58: Adis Duderija - The Diversity of Islam
In this episode of Faith for Normal People, Pete and Jared sit down with Adis Duderija to discuss the rich diversity of belief within Islam. Adis outlines various expressions of the faith, challenges the idea of Islam as monolithic, and explores some of the history behind how these iterations came to be. Join them as they explore the following questions:
How diverse is Islamic belief and practice across cultures and contexts?
What are the main typologies or categories of Islamic thought today (e.g., puritanical, progressive, cultural nominalist)?
How do progressive Muslims interpret the Quran differently from more traditional or puritanical groups?
What role does interfaith dialogue play in Adis’s understanding and practice of Islam?
How has Islamic theology historically developed in relation to Judaism and Christianity?
What is the influence of process-relational theology in progressive Islamic thought?
How can non-Muslims better understand and engage with the complexity and diversity of Muslim communities today?
Quotables
Pithy sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
“The more I get to learn about Christianity and other religions, the more similarities I see [with Islam].” — Adis Duderija
“[Progressive Muslims believe] the scope of the concept of revelation is much broader. It's not just restricted to a text.” — Adis Duderija
“I think…the [Islamic] faith in its process relational version can survive the critical historical critique.” — Adis Duderija
“As difficult as it is, especially in this context, try to divorce Muslims from geopolitical events, and Islam from geopolitical events. Obviously this goes without saying, [but Muslims are] human beings, with all the usual virtues and vices like anyone else. Try to meet them for who they are at their level.” — Adis Duderija
“There's a lot of now critical scholarship coming out, talking about how early Islam was an ecumenical Judeo-Christian movement that early on was indistinguishable, kind of a continuity of certain forms of Judeo-Christianity. But then over time, as Islam became an empire of faith, and the political leaders understood how important it [was] to make more distinction between Islam and Judeo Christianity, they started to kind of engage in forms of apologetic discourses to carve out theological and discursive space for a new religion.” — Adis Duderija
“Contemporary Islam is dealing with the same issues that every other major world religion is dealing with.” — Adis Duderija
“We are just as complex [as] anyone else. So meet us at the human-to-human level and just be aware that life is always more complex, more complicated than labels…There are many Muslims in the West who are very progressive, liberal, secular—and you will find them to be your partners in many different contexts for many different purposes.” — Adis Duderija
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: May class Mythbusting the Bible with Dan McClellan and Pete Enns
Books: Check out Adis’s books here
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Jared: You are listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet.
Pete: I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.
[May class promo]
Pete: Hey everybody. Today on Faith for Normal People, we're talking about the diversity of Islam with Adis Duderija.
Jared: Yep. And Adis is a first-generation Bosnian Australian, and he's currently professor of, in the study of Islam, in Australia.
Pete: Yeah, and he tells his story pretty much at the beginning too. So we're gonna have some fun with that. So anyway, don't forget to stay tuned afterwards for a quiet time where Jared and I will process some of this stuff a little bit more deeply, and let's get right into this episode.
Jared: All right. Well Adis, welcome to the podcast. It's really great to have you here.
Adis: Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor to be with you.
Jared: Absolutely. So can you talk a little bit about your upbringing and how that informed your faith? Just to give us a little context.
Adis: So, I was born in Bosnia. At that time it was Yugoslavia, socialist Yugoslavia. I was born in the late seventies. Until [00:03:00] I was about. 14, 15 years old and then all the trouble started, I'm not sure how much you know about the history of that region. And then I ended up, uh, living in Germany for a while and due to various reasons, ended up in Australia as, as a, um, 19-year-old.
So I'm a first generation Bosnian Australian, um, married to an Indonesian, two wonderful children.
In terms of, yeah, so I grew up in a socialist Yugoslavia, where religion was probably somewhat marginalized. It was somewhat hidden as well. And my, my parents were of a generation who really kind of grew up in the formative years were, um, that part of that socialist, uh, um, cultural intellectual milieu. So my parents were probably the most secularized generation, uh, that have existed probably in the [00:04:00] region.
And, um, so I, I grew up as, I guess, a cultural, cultural Muslim. Um, I, my, my grandma used to live with us as, as a, as a child. I, my, my, my father's, um, mother, uh, she had a little bit more kind of religious influence on me. She taught me some basic Arabic, uh, forms of supplication, and I would, I would see her do the, you know, traditional Muslim prayer, but I had very limited exposure to, to the Islamic faith as, as, as a young person. We would basically celebrate the major festivals, but they were kind of an expression of our cultural heritage rather than being an expression of, kind of conscious faith, if I can put it that way.
I guess when I started university, uh, in Australia, [00:05:00] I became a little bit more self-aware and kind of more intellectually, um, mature. And that was around the time of, it was actually, prior to 9/11, I already got involved in, in interfaith-related activities at my university. I was part of the Muslim Student Association, vice president and then president.
But yeah, always was, I was always interested in interfaith dialogue. And then co-founded a, uh, an interfaith group in Perth. I used to live in Perth in Western Australia. That's where I did my PhD as well. Currently I reside in Brisbane, which is, Griffith University is in Brisbane. Um, so like as a, as a, as a, as in my late teens, early twenties, I was very much interested in, in, in interfaith dialogue.
And I also got exposed to modernist, progressive or modernist at that time, really. The word progressive wasn't used that much. Muslim, Muslim thinking. Uh, certain [00:06:00] scholars, I don't know if your audience probably was not going to be familiar with them, but there was one very famous modernist Muslim thinker who used to teach at McGill University and University of Chicago by the name of Fazlur Rahman.
Luckily, I guess my, my serious, most serious introduction into my faith was primarily through academic literature. Although in terms of my lived experience, as I said, I was part of the Muslim Student Association at my university. Uh, I met a lot of, a lot of Muslims who come from very different backgrounds.
Australia has like Muslims from 150 different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. I also met some international students who were studying at the university, many of them from Southeast Asia. You know, I often ask myself the question, well, you know, how come there's so very different expressions of the Islamic faith?
You know, why do I follow or why do I believe in the kind of Islam that I believe in? And it kind of triggered my interest in [00:07:00] my, what eventually became my PhD thesis, which was comparing, uh, progressive Islamic approach to interpreting normative Islamic text to death of the puritanical. So it's the same text.
But very, very different interpretations. Around, just after 9/11, there was a very significant, from my perspective, book published, um, called, uh, and it used the word Progressive Muslims, completed by a professor Omid Safi who now teaches at Duke University. So I kind of fell in love with that book and I said, well, uh, if there's one thing I wanna do for the rest of my life is to contribute to that kind of Islam.
Pete: You know, you're sparking our imaginations here with this, uh. And, and to talk maybe a little bit about the diversity in Islamic thought, um, which may not be the same thing as diversity in Islamic religion. I mean, uh, you know, there are, in Christianity you have the theologians and those who do the, you know, the, the [00:08:00] thinking.
But on the ground, it's a very different thing. And a question that I hate getting is, “hey, hey Pete, what do Christians think about X, Y, or Z?” And I said, “you've got to be kidding me, right?” They, they think all different kinds of things and, but I think people look at Islam at least, who don't know much about it and say, well, this is a monolithic, uh, movement.
And that's not, not true.
Adis: There's definitely that, there's, there's definitely that, um. Look, I'm very pleased that I can actually speak from an empirical vantage point. My, my colleague here and I, well my colleague is much more into sociology of religion than, than myself. So three, four years ago we did this really major study, um, although it was restricted towards the Australian context, but I think, uh, it could be extrapolated, especially in relation to Muslims in the West more generally.
So we did this really comprehensive survey, uh, followed by focus groups on, um, various expressions of Islam in in Australia. [00:09:00] And we, one of the questions, there were like 150 questions, but one of the questions we were really keen on is we looked, we kind of, we were already aware of the literature on different typologies of being a Muslim, different Islamic orientations, intellectual Islamic orientations, and we kind of extracted the most important kind of delineating features of each one of these.
And we ask people, okay, here are all these descriptors of different ways of being a Muslim. For example, one descriptor is, my understanding of Islam aligns with religious pluralism, gender justice and social justice. Something along those lines. And then another one might have been, you know, I'm a Muslim, I'm a practicing Muslim who believes that, I don't know, Islamic law needs reforming or whatever.
You know, we kind of map them in accordance with these existing typologies. And I'll talk about these typologies or Islamic orientations, but I'll, I'll tell you the results first, which was surprising. So [00:10:00] we got, we had these nine or ten typologies. Oh, I, I might as well mention them right now. Uh, classical scholasticism, these are your theologians in the, in the, in the biblical sense.
Kind of like classical, classical scholasticism, or, you know, um, uh, so we've got them as well in, I mean, there's many parallels between Islam and Christianity in that sense. So, uh, so we've got these classical, kind of traditionalist Muslims or your average imam in the mosque, for example. Then you would have what we call conservative political Islamist, who theologically are very similar to classical traditionalists, but they have a much more robust political vision.
I don't know, I'm trying to find a group, like some groups in Turkey, maybe like, you know, uh, AKP, some more reformist forms of, um, I don't want to make this a political thing, you know? Uh, but, you know, certain groups in the Middle East would also fall into this [00:11:00] category that have been in the news, although they have, they can range from reformists to more kind of very conservative.
So we've got the political, political, conservative political Islamists who are all about restoring the, the, you know, the caliphate, the utopia from the past.
Then we would have more reformist-minded political Islamists who still believe that Islam should have, uh, like, should play a serious role in politics. But it, it's not wedded to the, uh, classical political Islamic theology of the past.
So they're kind of, they’re more likely to accept parliament, democracy, and, kind of constitutional democracy, and parliament-based kind of politics. Yeah. Um, then you would have the cultural nominalists who express the Islam primarily or exclusively through the [00:12:00] ethnic and cultural belonging. Um, then you would have the puritanical, the, the, you might have heard of the Salafis. Yeah. The puritanical, theological puritanical who are apolitical.
So they[‘re all about the importance of following the correct doctrine, but they're all about puritanical doctrines. Like it's, uh, you know, what you should believe in to be a proper Muslim. Yeah.
Pete: Well, I mean, it seems like you can really map onto, I, I can hear echoes in Christianity. I can hear echoes in Judaism, the, the different varieties.
It's, it's interesting. I mean, that's a sociological issue in a sense that you, you have these different ways of expressing a religious faith and, um, it looks like, you know, the three major world religions as they call 'em, it, it, the, they're all- It's, it's the same.
Adis: The more I get to learn about Christianity and other [00:13:00] religions, the more similarities I see.
I haven't actually finished these three more categories. Yeah, three more.
But I think, I think it's important. I mean like, uh, I'm teaching this course now next week with Islam, Muslims in the West. The first thing I'm gonna talk to them about, I'm going to introduce these intellectual orientations.
It's, it's important because number one, many of my students are non-Muslims and they have, you know, they've been exposed to certain views of what Islam is and who a Muslim is. And when I talk to them about this, oh, they feel so liberated. They feel like, oh, I don't have to be politically correct if I say that there are certain forms of Islam that are definitely problematic and I'm, I'm highly critical of a number of forms of Islam.
But they also see the diversity, you know, so they feel like, wow, yeah, like there's much more to Islam than this. And, and I am, I can, you know, they can kind of be critical of certain forms of Islam without being able, [00:14:00] without being labeled Islamophobe or uh, uh, kind of politically, they have to be politically correct and, and, but kind of hide opinions. But so the other three, there are the militant extremists, who combine puritanical theology with the political kind of ideology. Uh, then we have the mystic or the sufies, and then we have the progressives who combine the best of all and leave the worst behind.
Pete: And you're a progressive, right?
Adis: I very much, uh, very much am a progressive.
[Ad break]
Jared: I, I, I, I appreciate getting all of the categories, and I appreciate that you pushed through, uh, Pete, interrupting you and, and continued on. But, uh, within those categories, you know, for Christians. There's, even within our categories, the, the Bible still has a certain, uh, place in our faith. It's sort of, everybody has to deal with the Bible in one way or the other because it, it is such a part, an extractable part of our faith.
So what role does the Quran play within Islam broadly, if you can say that? And then what are the different ways that it's handled within maybe a couple of these different, uh, these different variations?
Adis: Sure. So, uh, the vast amount of people and like, like Islamic clergy, people who are practicing Muslims, uh, they would adhere to the doctrine, the of, of the idea that the Quran is a verbatim word of God.[00:17:00]
So, which was a doctrine, developed early, uh, well, not necessarily early, uh, but it kind of, the Orthodox view one, like probably in the fourth century of the Islamic calendar. So this is about the end of fourth, beginning of fifth, so 11th century common era. Um, there are all these kind of doctrines, like the, the inimitability of the Quranic language, it's called the iʿjāz al-Qurʾān.
Um, that took a couple of hundred years to develop and kind of to consolidate itself. But very early in Islamic, uh, there was this question of, um, it, it, it emerged as a, as a result of certain theological debate, uh, about pertaining to the nature of, of God's attribute. And God's speech was one of these attributes.
So is God's speech part of God's essence, or, or is it more kind of incidental? And where and, and where does the Quran fit into all of this [00:18:00] as, as, as a form of revelation? So the mainstream orthodoxy, which still holds a lot of sway among practicing Muslims and, and major Islamic institutions, seminaries, is that the idea that Quran is, um, uncreated God's speech and God's speech as one of the attributes of God is co-eternal with God, and therefore Koran is, has this meta historical, um, quality to it.
So this is very much, um, emphasized by basically all forms of Islam, apart from, apart from progressive Muslim thought. Progressive Muslim thought is informed by constructive postmodernism. Okay? So the idea of any kind of meta narrative, uh, any kind of objective truth is problematic [00:19:00] to say the least.
I'm, I'm actually now working on a paper on, on kind of the affinities between process, relational concept of revelation in progressive Islam. So maybe we can go into that, but, uh, essentially, uh, progressive Muslim thought accepts the criticism of process relational metaphysics, that it, it is untenable to. to, to say that, you know, go, you know, a text would correspond to like that, that there is purely metaphysically divine text. Yeah. Uh, but, you know, and that the form of- the revelation can take various forms and degrees. You know, the, you know, it can get really technical.
But, uh, progressive Muslim still takes Quran very seriously as, as, as a revelation without the capital R. Uh, as a form of revelation, because of Quran, I mean, [00:20:00] when you look at the Quran, Quran talks about natural phenomena as forms and signs of God. You know, uh, even the Quran talks about how if, if, if human beings look into themselves, they, they will find signs of God in themselves.
So it's a much broader concept of revelation. It’s not restricted to a text form of revelation. And also it talks about, you know, it talks about, for example, even like bees. Like bees who do what they do every day. They have been inspired by God to do what they do. So like there's different forms of revelation. Uh, they come in different degrees, but yeah.
But, and, but they all have, I guess, a contingent contextualist, uh, element to them. Um, and like the scope of the concept of revelation is much broader. It's not just restricted to a text.
Jared: Yeah. So I, I think it would be fun to maybe get into some of that, around revelation. But before [00:21:00] we leave these, these categories, what, what's the difference between a progressive Islam and, and a cultural nominalist?
Because I- those have some parallels, I think, within Christianity. And I'm, I'm trying to think of the differences of how I would articulate that within the Christian faith, but how would you distinguish between those two in, in Islam?
Adis: So, I guess the most important distinction is that they could often come to the same conclusions, although, uh, like progressives would work through the tradition, they would deconstruct it, reconstruct it and say that we should leave many things from the past to be in the past from cultural nominalists and secularists, I guess. They come to the same conclusion or they, they, they have the same kind of world, same ideas, but they do it subconsciously or without actually being conservant with the tradition.
Jared: Yeah. They, they take the easy, they take the easy road out, which is how, [00:22:00] how it is over here too.
We, we gotta like struggle and we have to strain through it all. And then we deconstruct it and then other people are like, “yeah, we've, we've just been doing that since the seventies. We just kinda show up.”
Adis: Yeah. Well, not all of us, uh, not all of us have the luxury of being, you know, philosopher theologians and do this for a living.
If I was to kind of delineate between the two, uh, that would be probably the most important.
Jared: Yeah. I think that has, that has some real clear parallels I would say to how we would think of that too. Sort of people who absolutely grew up culturally, you know, in, in the South here in the States. Um, I think a lot of people would be culturally nominalist in their Christianity.
They just kind of go with whatever they inherited. If it's more progressive, they stick with that. If it's more conservative, they stick with that 'cause it's more of a cultural phenomenon, than a religious one. And then the more progressive, I think that is more of a label of people that have maybe deconstructed or reconfigured, [00:23:00] um, their faith in a, you know, in a different way.
So I, I, I appreciate that, but maybe, I don't know. Pete, do you have a follow up on the revelation thing? 'cause I think that's really interesting. You mentioning process relational metaphysics. I, I tend to think of that as a very Western, kind of post-Christian way of thinking of, uh, you know, secularized thinking that, I mean, not always.
I think it's made its way into theological circles for sure. Yeah. But it's interesting that it's coming up there.
Pete: I mean, one question is, how long has this been a, a conversation in Islam, uh, you know, a process theology? I mean, it's, this has been a part of, uh, you as you know better than I do, that, you know, the early part of the 20th century is when these things started becoming part of Christian conversations.
And, um, did, did Islam come along a bit later or was it always there from the beginning? There was always these progressive types as you are, who were willing to engage these kinds of new and potentially dangerous idea?
Adis: Yeah. Okay. So if we take off the cutoff period for process relational metaphysics with [00:24:00] Whitehead and Charles Hawthorne in the beginning of 20th century, then probably the first major figure, uh, in the Islamic world who read Whitehead and kind of try to consciously integrate some of the ideas into Islam is someone called Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who is the, uh, intellectual father of Pakistan, which could be very surprising for people like today's, today's image of Pakistan is anything but.
So, but yeah, so he, he read Whitehead and he was influenced by, by a process, uh, by kind of an organic cosmos, a cosmos that is kind of not substance Newtonian, but a process kind of continually in process. Everything is kind of interconnected and interrelated. And he found certain ideas in the Quran and the Islamic tradition, [00:25:00] especially in the Quran for example.
And this is again, a parallel with Christianity, this is kind of the idea that God appointed, uh, humanity to be the steward on planet Earth, on, on, on Earth, and kind of, uh, you know, you know, uh, to, to kind of do God's bidding. Um, and in, in Islamic tradition, the concept that's used like the Quran uses the concept, the God's deputy on Earth.
Which of course in classical theism is premised on a, on a kind of a dual, duality. Uh, which kind of process relational theology rejects. But, uh, Allama Muhammad Iqbal basically took this concept, this idea of, of stewardship, and he said, well, God has given human beings free will and agency. [00:26:00] So we are kind of co-creators with God.
So, and this is where the link with process relational theology or method is, uh, this idea of co-creation that God doesn't unilaterally determine events. So Allama Muhammad Iqbal kind of picked up on that.
Pete: Can I ask a question just for clarification? I'm thinking of, because these are new concepts, I think for a lot of us and for a lot of our listeners.
Um, what you're describing now would be rejected clearly by, let's say, more traditionalists, uh, in the Islamic faith, what we would call maybe fundamentalists or something. Right? So, um, and the reason they reject it is because they see that Quran as trans historical, it's not affected by, it's God's speech and it's context-less.
I mean, because process [00:27:00] theology developed because of a context, things were happening in the world of science and people started to think differently about these things. That's off the table completely in that more, um, I, I'm gonna use the word conservative element in the Islamic world, correct?
Adis: That's exactly right. Yeah. So they, um, uh, the, the orthodoxy, what today counts as orthodoxy. They, they have invested very heavily in this meta historical approach to revelation. And that Muhammad basically was just a vessel, that there was this external angel who poured revelation into his empty brain. Uh, and delivered it.
Yeah, you know, so Muhammad's psychological cognitive, imaginative or even cultural or historical context had absolutely nothing to do with it. So they were, [00:28:00] and because Islamic theology, and this is probably something that people don't appreciate as much, really developed in the context of two well-established monotheistic traditions, Christianity and Judaism.
So there was so to, to understand this, to understand this insistence on, on Quran being the pure word of God, uh, we have to go back into these earlier debates between, uh, uh, Christian, especially Christian theologians. Because when Islam expand- Islam kind of expanded very quickly. Uh, um, or let's say the Arab Muslims conquered many large parts of the Mediterranean region.
And Muslims were a minority for hundreds of years. And, and they, or they, they conquered places that had well-established, you know, culturally well-established, theologically, very well-established, and they were kind of, and early [00:29:00] Islam actually, this is quite also very interesting. There's a lot of now critical scholarship coming out, talking about how early Islam was an ecumenical Judeo-Christian movement that early on was indistinguishable. Probably- it was kind of a continuity of certain forms of Judeo-Christian, of Judeo-Christianity, if you like.
So, but then, um, kind of over time, you know, as, as, as certain political, a certain, a certain as, as Islam became an empire of faith, and the political leaders understood how important it's to make a more, make more distinction between Islam and Judeo Christianity.
They started to kind of engage in more in kind of forms of apologetic discourses, that kind of to, to carve out theological and discursive space for a new religion. So they said, okay, um, like there's a [00:30:00] doctrine in Islamic theology meaning distortion of revelation by previous religions, especially in Christianity.
Now, this distortion, some people would say, okay, it's not really, it's not willful, it's just the people who have been misinterpreting it. And so, so now the, the, this, this, uh, nascent Islamic faith, they said, we don't want to make the same mistake. You know, we would, we want, we want inerrancy, you know.
Therefore, the only way to maintain this inerrancy is to say that, you know, the Quran has not been written by human beings. It is purely divine. It has been preserved hundred percent in, in its divine form, not like other religious traditions, you know, that Muslims have encountered, especially, you know, Christianity, Judaisms or Westernism. So it came out of that kind of, uh, intellectual media.
Jared: When would that have developed, uh, just historically. When are you [00:31:00] thinking, like that idea of it, we need to, we need to protect this inerrancy so that it doesn't get, you know, uh, yeah. When did that come about?
Adis: As far as we can tell, it started under a certain person called Abd al-Malik, who was one of the, uh, I don’t know how well you know, Islamic history, but the first dynasty they called Umayyad, alright? Um, and they kind of ruled from, uh, 50 years after Muhammad’s death until up to 120 years after Muhammad's death.
Jared: Just like a, one generation removed.
Adis: Yep, yeah, once. Yeah. Uh, so they, uh, although initially, like initially they were very much, if you look at the coins that they have minted, the Umayyad, they all have Jesus with the Christ on them. They minted because they were part of the Byzantine, kind of Byzantine, uh, cultural and religious context.
So, and as I said, early Islam, as far as we [00:32:00] can tell, was a very much, an ecumenical movement. It didn't have a strong, uh, let's say self identity. Because you might also, you might know that early Muslims actually were praying initially towards Jerusalem, and only later on they started praying towards Mecca.
And, uh, the Holy, the Holy Rock, Dome of Rock is also, uh, you know, very important to, to Muslims.
But towards the late Umayyads, this crystallization of Muslim identity started to appear. But then the new, the new rulers, the Abbasids, they kind of capitalized on this and wanted to, uh, really, um, deepen this rift between all kind of, kind of to make Islam less ecumenical and make it [00:33:00] more, a more distinct religion so that they could also justify their own power, to say that they are now, they, they, they are the ones who are ruling in the name of God and the prophet.
You know? So it's kind of, it's a very interesting, uh, very interesting historical development.
Pete: Well, yeah, it's like Christianity, isn't it? When you have the rise of, um, you know, after the beginnings, maybe rather innocent beginnings of Jesus and Paul by, it didn't take long for this to be wrapped up in political power.
And uh, many would say we've been suffering ever since because of that. You know, just when, when you rule in, in God's name, right? If, if that's, if that's the purpose of your religion, this mixing of faith and politics. I mean, it's not, not that they have to be separate, but you know what I mean? It's this civic religion that, uh, that is such a big problem.
I just, it's, it's so interesting to see these parallels to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
Jared: Um, so what, within that, [00:34:00] what is the, I, I was curious to know. You know, for the relationship of these different traditions, like how do they see each other? So for us, like conservative Christians wouldn't really even call progressive Christians true Christians.
They, they don't, there's not a sense of like, oh yeah, there's all these different expressions. It's more like, I think more historically or, or, you know, sociologists would certainly put 'em all in the same camp, but from the perspective of a conservative Christian, they'd be like, “well, they're not true Christians.”
Is that similar to kind of who's- who are the gatekeepers of this orthodoxy in Islam and how do the different, uh, perspectives see each other?
Adis: Okay, so I know how far you want me to go back in history, but what happened? I think as far as Sunni Islam, let's just focus on Sunni Islam here. Islam, you know, the Sunni and like Shia and one could, uh, within Shia, there is different expressions. Within Sunni, there are also very different expressions. So, uh, in about [00:35:00] 11th, 12th century CE, orthodoxy kind of crystallized and they said, we, I have these four major legal schools of thought and we will say that they are all core orthodox: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali.
Uh, so there was this agree to disagree within these parameters of legal, legal, legal thought. In addition, there are theological schools that also would have legal components to them. So, uh, Sunnism, uh, now you put me on the spot, the, the Salafis or the Atharis, which are the puritanical.
Uh, although there's some debate about this, every now and then it flares up. In Chechnya in 2016 or 17, they had all these Sunni clerics coming together and deciding what. What, what [00:36:00] is Sunni Islam? What is not Sunni Islam? This is in the, uh, in the context of the Islamic state in Iraq and, and Syria. They were like saying, you know, we are true Muslims.
And then, you know, like, then, so all these other clerics said, oh, we have to do something about this. You know, we don't want people to think that the mainstream Sunni Islam is represented by ISIS. And, and so, and they said, okay. And because ISIS is very kind of puritanical theologically. Uh, they, they, they didn't want this puritanical form of Islam to be also considered part of Sunni Islam, but in truth, it has always been part of Islam from the very beginning.
So like the puritanical strands, which is the Athari, Salafi kind of, uh, yeah. But then you have something called the Maturidis, or Maturidiya, who are, let's say the most well, uh, with alongside the Ash’aris. Uh, and these are the two major in terms of geographical spread today, they are the most, [00:37:00] most, uh, well established and like, uh, in terms of at least nominally, like people, like for example, I was born into Hanafi legal school, and my theological uh, uh, orientation is Maturidi.
He was a scholar who lived in the fourth century. Somewhere in, in, in, in Central Asia. Um, and then, uh, basically it all has to do with, uh, the, the free will and the, the relationship between reason and revelation. Like yeah, it's got to do with, uh, Ash’aris, Ash’aris, well again, the same thing in Christianity.
So, so there's these four or five major theological schools and four major legal schools. And I forgot what your question is, so, yeah. So which ones? So, um, so in terms of, in terms [00:38:00] of rivalry, there has always been rivalry. So even in pre-modern times, we, we, there's like examples of pogroms or even within Sunnism of scholars burning each other's scholar’s books or, or one scholar inciting a group of his followers to go and smash, smash the mosque of another scholar.
Some scholars have been poisoned by others on, you know, very, very ugly stories there, unfortunately. Uh, so a lot of rivalry at the scholar to scholar level, as well as kind of territorial different schools of thought. In today's context, biggest arch rivals are puritanical Salafis versus Sufis, and, and, and because Sufis are often associated with the classical scholasticism kind of people.
So you have, you, so you have these rivalries between, I guess in, in the Christian context it would be between, uh, puritanical, [00:39:00] evangelical, Bible trumping versus kind of scholastic Catholic. Catholic Scholasticism, I guess, would probably be- I, I might have, I might have offended few people here right now, but, uh, but it's that kind of, you know, you know, in my view, in my view like, like the way I look at, the way I look at Catholic, Catholic Christianity, it's all about the founding fathers and building upon the, the kind of this speculative theology.
So that's kind of, Classical scholasticism in Islam is like that.
Whereas puritanicals are more like, forget about the tradition and all these, we go back straight back to the Quran and the Haddi.
Jared: Yeah, that's a good parallel. I think that's right. Yeah.[00:40:00]
Pete: I'm, I'm thinking here of, again, of our listeners who I think will be really interested in learning more about the diversity of Islam. So where, where would you point them? I know you wrote a book, but my guess is that's probably gonna be more of high-level academic treatment of progressive Islam. Do you have any, any resources just to come to mind where people can say, listen, if, if you wanna get the big lay of the land here of Islam, of its diversity, um, do you have any place to point them?
By the way, I hate that question myself. Yeah. 'cause I have to think about it long and hard. That's not an easy question to answer. And what are the best books that cover all the territory? It doesn't work that way. But, anything come to mind at all?
Adis: You know, you know, uh, and you might find this funny, but I'm gonna say it nonetheless.
So, as you said, as you rightly pointed out, I, I have been writing on progressive Islam in an academic context now for 17 years.[00:41:00]
It’s posted behind these paywalls, although I’ve tried to proselytize it as much as I could on academia.edu and all of these places. But then I said to myself, okay, uh, you know, I had a long, you know, a long road towards, you know, securing an academic, full-time academic position took me seven years after PhD and so on. So I thought, okay, it just occurred to me earlier this year, oh, maybe I can get rich, but if I write a short book.
Pete: I'm telling you, you took the words out of my mouth. I think you might, you, I mean, you, you would be able to with the breadth of learning that you have. I think that's a great idea. I mean, honestly to, like, “Islam for the Rest of Us” or something. I don't know.
Adis: I set up my own personal website. And I actually already, I wrote a collection of essays on critical progressive Islam available on my website for five US dollars.
Jared: It's gonna take you a while to get rich.
Adis: And [00:42:00] since, since I launched my website in February this year, I managed to sell 15 books.
Pete: That's fantastic.
Adis: Look, I’ve also written stuff, like, I do a regular column for a, for a website called newageislam.com. It's based in India. And I've also, there's also some free stuff, uh, that I've written, so you don't really need to buy the book, but if you wanted a, like a holistic and, uh, and at, at, uh, like, uh, at an accessible level.
Pete: So what I'm hearing you saying is just Google you. Right, just Google your name and things will come up.
Adis: They should. They should. So if, if I was to summarize progressive Islam in a lay person's nomenclature, uh, I actually, one of the essays I wrote for that short booklet, uh, I kind of spelled it out in the title. I am a [00:43:00] rationalist feminist critical thinker with Sufi mystical orientations and in terms of my theology, I'm a process, relational theologian, something like that.
So all of those combined, yeah. Critical thought in the context of postmodernism, but not the radical kind of postmodernism of the reader that just deconstructs for the sake of deconstruction. But there is a reconstructive element to it. Process relational theology so that we reject the classical theistic God or someone, a God who is, you know, has us on, on strings and yeah.
Um, yeah, feminism is very important to me. I'm a pro-feminist male. I've written a lot on Islamic feminism. Uh, yeah, critical thought. Cosmopolitan. A cosmopolitan identity. So this is like one of the things that I like about the Islamic tradition heritage, that cosmopolitan element, or [00:44:00] glimpses of it that it had, given their context.
And also mysticism Islamic for certain forms of Islamic philosophical mysticism. Not everyday mysticism of these Muslim brotherhoods that you find attached to the mosque, but more philosophical mysticism or certain Islamic philosophers like Avicenna, al-Arabi.
So that, that kind, so there are, there are antecedents of the kind of Islam I am projecting and defending or, I'm just re-articulating some of these trends in a, in a, in a postmodernist kind of context. And I also appreciate the critical historical approach to scripture. Without, of course, without the, the adjacent, the, the latent scientist, scientism of materialism.
I don't know. Right. I think that faith can still survive the critical historical. [00:45:00] Definitely the faith in its process relational version can survive the critical historical critique.
Jared: So we, as we, um, as we wrap up our time here, I'm wondering is there something that. Kind of a final word for people who maybe don't know much about, uh, Islam.
They haven't been around, uh, Muslims much. Um, and they want to, you know, you talked earlier about being afraid of, of, being, uh, Islamophobic and not really know how, how to navigate the space, which I think sometimes keep people from interacting in a way that could be helpful for them. So what's a, a word as, as we end our time here for people who are saying, oh, I should probably get to know my, uh, Muslim neighbors a little bit better.
You know, this is very interesting stuff. I, I just didn't, I didn't have access to it. So what, what would you say to people who want to kind of more connect with people, um, who are, are [00:46:00] Muslim?
Adis: Uh, thanks. That's a really important question. Probably the most important thing that we've discussed that we're going to discuss today. As difficult as it is, especially in this context, try to divorce Muslims from geopolitical events, and Islam from geopolitical events.
There are, uh, Muslims, obviously this goes without saying, uh, human beings, uh, with all the usual perks and, and, you know, uh, virtues and vices like anyone else. Try to meet them at the, you know, for who they are at their level. Often, most Muslims do not have very good understanding of their faith and many of the things I've talked about, they probably wouldn't know, I mean much about, anyway, um, Islam has had a strong [00:47:00] cosmopolitan dimension, uh, that we are not aware of.
It has been buried under contemporary geopolitical kind of discussions. Islam has a strong, mystical, spiritual tradition. People like Rumi and Hafez, you might have heard of them, who are still kind of often in a, in like, I often, uh, also listen to spirituality, podcasts, like Be Here Now Network. I don't know.
They're based in San Francisco, I think. So, uh, like often these kinds of people, I wouldn't say the word appropriate, but they use, definitely use, they use spirituality, Muslim, like Islamic spirituality from the, uh, Rumi, Hafez, the mystics. You know, think of Istanbul and the whirling dervishes. So, and contemporary Islam is dealing with the same issues that every other major world religion is dealing with.
We might be a little bit behind when it [00:48:00] comes to critical historical kind of thought when it comes to developing Islamic feminist theology. But we are catching up. We are catching up now in terms of Islamic feminism. We now have the second generation Muslim female scholars who have developed Islamic feminism very robustly.
Learning from, from, uh, Christian feminist theology. Uh, so we are just as complex, just as, um, you know, like any, any, anyone else. So meet us at, meet us at the human to human level and, and just be aware that life is always more complex, more complicated than labels and, um.
Don't try, yeah, and as I said, I'm highly critical of certain forms of Islam. I think that puritanical Islam, classical Islam has nothing to little to offer, like any other religion that's couched in those kinds of, uh, ideas. It has very little or nothing to offer to [00:49:00] contemporary society, and I really sincerely hope that these forms of Islam will become less and less meaningful to, to more and more Muslims, at least Muslims in the West.
There are many Muslims in the West who are very progressive, liberal, secular, whatever, and you will find them partners. to be your partners in many different contexts for many different purposes.
Jared: Thanks, Addis. That was fantastic, uh, way to end. I appreciate the way you articulated that. Yeah. So, um, thanks so much for taking some time and talking to us, uh, through some, we got into more history than I was expecting.
And I was very- my nerd side was real excited about that.
Adis: Thank you. I, I should thank you for providing the platform to articulate these ideas.
Pete: Well, thank you Adis. Thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it. We appreciate your time and the discussion.
Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
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Outro: You've just made it through another episode of Faith for Normal People. Don't forget you can catch our other show, The Bible for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Stephen Henning, Joel Limbauan, Savannah Locke, Melissa Yandow, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Lauren O'Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.
