A Genealogy of Muslim Critiques of Christian Theologies of the Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2020
This chapter offers an intellectual genealogy of Muslim critiques of Christianity’s accounts of law and politics. It traces developments in Muslim critiques of Christian views of law from their initial focus on the corruption of scripture to contemporary arguments that connect the lack of a Christian sharī‘a with the rise of secularism. Ibn Taymiyya proves to be pivotal, combining early critiques of taḥrīf and the negative influences of Paul with a legal-political critique of Christian power. In response to colonialism, this legal-political reading of Christianity is expanded by a range of Muslim intellectuals into a critique of Christian response to secularism, Marxism, and societal injustice. The geneology argues that Muslim critiques of the secular are part of a longer discursive practice of distinguishing Islam from Christianity by way of taḥrīf and sharī‘a. Finally, the chapter considers what concrete challenges the Muslim thinkers present to a contemporary Christian political theology.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.