Marcia K. Hermansen

Dreams and Dreaming in Islam

In my overview of approaches to dreams and dreaming in Islam, I focus primarily on hermeneutic questions about the practice of dream interpretation. As the passage cited above suggests, the idea that there is a factual meaning or indication to a dream is assumed in the tradition. However, the interpretive process, the contextualization of dream and dreamer, and the relation between them are all factors of successful exegesis. This is foundational in approaching Islamic understandings of dreams and dreaming.

Cultural worlds/culture wars: contemporary American Muslim perspectives on the role of culture

This article surveys a range of current America Muslim intellectuals’ positions on the ideal relationship between Islam and culture, using as a starting point the suggestive ideal types laid out in H.R. Niebuhr’s classic work, Christ and Culture.

Said Nursi and Maulana Ilyas : Examples of Pietistic Spirituality among Twentieth-Century Islamic Movements

Abstract The premise of this article is that we can learn something about the spirituality as well as other orientations of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi and the movement he inspired by taking a comparative perspective. Among other twentieth-century movements in the Muslim world, it has been suggested that the ‘faith’ movement of Maulana Muhammad Ilyas, also known as the Tablighi Jamaat, would be the most apt for comparison. This study therefore highlights comparable and contrasting aspects of these two movements in order to shed light on Nursian spirituality. It will consider, for example, the lives of the founders, the contexts in which their activities arose, their teachings and practices, and the subsequent development of the respective movements.

Shah Wali Allah of Delhi's "Hujjat Allah al-Baligha": Tension between the Universal and the Particular in an Eighteenth-Century Islamic Theory of Religious Revelation

The Conclusive Argument of God is the master work of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (1762), considered to be the most important Muslim thinker of pre-modern South Asia. This work, originally written in Arabic, represents a synthesis of the Islamic intellectual disciplines authoritative in the 18th century. In order to argue for the rational, ethical, and spiritual basis for the implementation of the hadith injunctions of the Prophet Muhammad, Shah Wali Allah develops a cohesive schema of the metaphysical, psychological, and social knowledge of his time. This work provides an extensive and detailed picture of Muslim theology and interpretive strategies on the eve of the modern period and is still evoked by numerous contemporary Islamic movements.

Religion and Violence: Christian and Muslim Theological and Pedagogical Reflections

This volume is based on a conference convened in Tetova, Macedonia, in October 2015. Scholars from multiple disciplines with an interest in religion and violence met for presentations and deliberations, which lasted several days. Since the focus of many contributions was either on Muslim or Christian theological responses to violence or the sociological and pedagogical implications of the association of Islam and Muslims, or even religion in general, with violence, we have selected the title Religion and Violence: Christian and Muslim Theological and Pedagogical Reflections for the collection.

Classical and Contemporary Islamic Perspectives on Religious Plurality

This chapter takes a conceptual approach to the topic, providing an overview of Islamic resources for theologies of religious diversity while surveying some major and representative Muslim approaches to the existence of religious diversity, both classical and contemporary.