Locating 'Praxis' in Islamic Liberation Theology

God, Scripture, and the Problem of Suffering in Egyptian Prisons

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4313705
AutoresWalaa Quisay (University of Edinburgh, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen14
Número9
Páginas1085
Fecha de publicación2023-08-22
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaReligions (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
EditorialMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel14091085
OpenAlexW4386070307
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas10

The paper examines the tenability of a project for Islamic liberation theology by exploring the religious lives of Egyptian prisoners-with an emphasis on their encounters with the Qur'an, devotional and contentious contemplation, and theodicy. It employs an ethnographic approach to the study of Islam in Egyptian prisons by interviewing former political prisoners incarcerated after the 2013 military coup. By examining the work of key liberation theologians Farid Esack (b. 1959), Hamid Dabashi (b. 1951), and Asghar Ali Engineer (b. 1939), I ask: can a justice-oriented hermeneutics, concerned with pluralism and breaking down binaries, be a meaningful starting point to those struggling under oppression? I posit that the concern with developing hermeneutics can potentially limit the praxis whereby the faithful struggle with the text in the very moment of suffering. It shows how Egyptian prisoners' devotional (and contentious) contemplation (taddabur) of the Qur'an-rather than reading liberation into the Qur'an-allowed for emancipatory embodiments of scripture. Furthermore, I show how prisoners stripped of their agentic power come to understand human action and divine action in history and how the metaphysical responses to human suffering inevitably shaped how they view both structures of inequality and domination as well as their potential liberation from it

Contemplation · Epistemology · Hermeneutics · Islam · Liberation theology · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Sociology · Theodicy · Theology · Education and Islamic Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Society, and Development · Religious studies