The AMI Podcast

Questions pertaining to the nature of the human soul and its purpose through bodily existence have perplexed the minds of humanity from time immemorial. The issue is further compounded, for the Abrahamic faiths, due to their presumption of a Merciful God who initiates the existence of the soul and places it in the domain of strife and suffering as a part of God’s bestowal. The reconciliation between the notions of a benevolent God who initiates the human soul and the prospect of the soul’s eternal damnation, without allowing for a pre-worldly existence for the soul with the ability of discretion and choice to come into this world, becomes extremely difficult. Through reference to the Qur’ānic verses and its accompanying exegesis, together with the deliberations of Muslim philosophers and mystics, this paper explores the idea of a pre-worldly existence of individual souls who choose to enter a worldly existence. The human souls both pre-exist their embodied states and are eternal posterior to death. This is because death and life are states of the body and not the point for the origination of the soul; the soul is merely initiated in the worldly domain through a bodily medium, and allowed agency through the body during bodily life and denied such agency at the point of bodily death. The life of this world, or the lowly life (hayat al-dunya), is an unreal and illusionary life through which human souls find an opportunity to come to the fullest of their potential. The paper will allude to how this line of reasoning can allow for the formulation of a theodicy in which human beings bear the onus of coming to a world of strife with a prospect of possible damnation. Similarly, through the aid of verses, and the thoughts of the likes of Ibn Arabi, it is postulated that the fate of individual souls at the level worldly existence is left unknown as opposed to the idea of a God Who had foreknowledge of the destinies of the souls. Finally, it will be argued that both paradise and hell cannot be eternal abodes.

In India, the law of ṭalāq as a means of dissolving a marriage is one of the most significant aspects of Muslim personal law. The Supreme Court of India declared triple ṭalāq unlawful in 2017. Subsequently, the Indian Parliament passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act 2019, declaring ṭalāq al-bidda or any other type of ṭalāq with the impact of an immediate and irrevocable divorce to be null and void, as well as a penal offense. Some regard this legislation as a landmark for gender equality for Muslim women, while others decry its repercussions. The presentation traces the legal history of ṭalāq from pre-Islamic Arabian customs through the formative years of Islam. It also provides a glimpse of the colonial administration of personal laws. It focuses specifically on the most recent development of the law of ṭalāq in India and its complications.

Stories about gendered social relations permeate the Qur'an, and nearly three hundred verses involve specific women or girls. The Qur'an features these figures in accounts of human origins, in stories of the founding and destruction of nations, in narratives of conquest, in episodes of romantic attraction, and in incidents of family devotion and strife. Overall, stories involving women and girls weave together theology and ethics to reinforce central Qur'anic ideas regarding submission to God and moral accountability. Celene Ibrahim explores the complex cast of female figures in the Qur'an, probing themes related to biological sex, female sexuality, female speech, and women in sacred history. Ibrahim considers major and minor figures referenced in the Qur'an, including those who appear in narratives of sacred history, in parables, in descriptions of the eternal abode, and in verses that allude to events contemporaneous with the advent of the Qur'an in Arabia. Ibrahim finds that the Qur'an regularly celebrates the aptitudes of women in the realms of spirituality and piety, in political maneuvering, and in safeguarding their own wellbeing; yet, women figures also occasionally falter and use their agency toward nefarious ends. Women and Gender in the Qur'an outlines how women and girls - old, young, barren, fertile, chaste, profligate, reproachable, and saintly - enter Qur'anic sacred history and advance the Qur'an's overarching didactic aims.

Dr Malik, a scientist by training, has been researching this topic for many years and recently published a work on the topic through the lens of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī. His lecture laid out a systematic framework by which Muslim scholars can approach the topic of evolution. Dr Malik outlined the major theories on evolution including creationism, human exceptionalism, Adamic exceptionalism, and the no exceptions theory and examined whether such theories are scripturally compatible from an Islamic perspective.

Ibn Babawayh – also known as al-Shaykh al-Saduq – was a prominent Twelver Shi'i scholar of hadith. Writing within the first century after the vanishing of the twelfth imam, al-Saduq represents a pivotal moment in Twelver hadith literature,  as this Shi'i community adjusted to a world without a visible imam and  guide, a world wherein the imams could only be accessed through the text  of their remembered words and deeds. George Warner's study of  al-Saduq's work examines the formation of Shi'i hadith literature  in light of these unique dynamics, as well as giving a portrait of an  important but little-studied early Twelver thinker. Though almost all of  al-Saduq's writings are collections of hadith, Warner's approach  pays careful attention to how these texts are selected and presented to  explore what they can reveal about their compiler, offering insight  into al-Saduq's ideas and suggesting new possibilities for the wider  study of hadith.

Dr. Mashid Turner presents a surface overview of the Islamic perspective of angels. She begins by outlining that the belief in angels is a foundational aspect of Islamic theology – one that has been emphasised upon in the Quran. As her talk develops, clear parallels can be seen between the Islamic perspectives and that of the Christian and Jewish backgrounds. Dr. Turner explains how, in her understanding of the Islamic belief, angels were manifestations of God’s power and mechanisms of His will to be enacted; without having autonomous will of their own or power to dissent against God’s command, nor agency to act beyond His will.

Prof. Rabbi Jeff Berger provides a Jewish examination on angelology. Rabbi Berger gives a host of references to angels’ interaction with man, including apostles of God, as mentioned in Hebrew scripture. Subsequently, Rabbi Berger describes a hierarchy of angelic ranks as described in Judaism. He then classifies angelic beings into virtuous angels, who guide towards God, and those that are subversive and prompt man to act in an evil way.

Canon Dr. Andrew Thompson begins his presentations by explaining how angels are part and parcel of religious belief, and not exclusively confined to formal or conventional religions. After explaining that Christian beliefs in angels are largely based on Hebrew texts of the Old Testament, Dr. Thompson’s presentation split the way angels are viewed in, Christian theology, into two categories: their ontological aspects and their nature on one hand, and their functional value on the other hand.

This presentation outlines the religious, specifically the Muslim, background of the sanctity of life argument (SLA) in bioethics and its recent secular versions. It suggests a path towards the future of SLA by taking into account a widely neglected theological position in bioethics in general and specifically in SLA: negative theology. It further probes whether SLA is fundamentally a cataphatic (positive) theological position or whether an apophatic (negative) version of SLA is also possible.

In this presentation, Dr Lloyd focuses specifically on the views of two Iranian clerics, Ayatollah Motahhari and Ahmad Qabel, whose views on the hijab are diametrically opposed, but who argue from a position of “rationality”. These arguments assume greater importance given the current campaign for unveiling in Iran.