The Muslim Creek

This book, a major achievement, enriches not just the Muslim world but also the world at large by showing a broad display of Islamic theology with individual chapters on God, Angels, Prophets, Scriptures, Eschatology, the Divine Decree, and the future of Islamic theology, i.e. the recognition of divine truth (iman, fiqh, and tasawwuf) when integrated at a personal level. In fact, God’s oneness and Muhammad’s prophethood were never contested within Islamic theology (p. 14 f.). The author presents three aspects: belief (iman), practice (islam), and spirituality (ihsan), the latter being worshipping God as if one saw Him. Indeed, Muslims regularly integrated theology, law, and Sufism (p. 11), even though some of them always claimed that there was no need at all for theology since human reason was unreliable with regard to understanding faith. In contrast to the Christians (Trinity), the Twelver Shi[is, the Isma[ilis, and the Zaydis, Islam never encourages religious speculation (pp. 15–20), even though, in conflict over free will, the free willed Qadariyyah, the determinist Jabriyyah, and the philosophic Mu[tazilah (Ahl al-Tawhid wa’l-'Adl) arose within the boundaries of Islam....