Theological Foundations-
How do we understand the term "theology?" Muslims have rarely restricted themselves to a single, all-embracing discipline which they call "theology." Rather, they related various aspects of the broad dsicussion about God, the world, humanity, and values to different "buckets," each of which has a unique content and a particular scope and frame of reference. The most important of these disciplines are analytical and synthetic theology, the Prophetic law, metaphysical Sufism, and ethics. Together, they constitute essential resources for defining Muslim approaches to contemporary theological concerns. The lecture touches upon the authoritative sources of knowledge that Muslims rely upon in filling the content of these "buckets," especially, revelation, pure reason (intellection), and empirical knowledge.
Perspectives in Muslim Theology — with Dr. Umar Abd-Allah
Dr. Abd-Allah is one of the foremost scholars of Islam in the United States today, with both classical religious training and a doctorate from the University of Chicago. His courses next Fall (2014) at CTS represent the first opportunity to study with him for academic credit. This lecture series is sponsored by CTS' Center for Jewish, Christian, & Islamic Studies.
Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Wymann-Landgraf) is an American Muslim, born in 1948 to a Protestant family in Columbus, Nebraska. He grew up in Athens, Georgia, where both parents taught at the University of Georgia. His father taught Veterinary Medicine and Organic Chemistry, while his mother's field was English. In 1964, his parents took positions at the University of Missouri in Columbia, where his grandfather had been a professor emeritus of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Abd-Allah did his undergraduate work at the University of Missouri with dual majors in History and English Literature. He made the Dean's list all semesters and was nominated to the Phi Beta Kappa Honorary Society. In 1969, he won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and entrance to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York to pursue a Ph.D. program in English literature. Shortly after coming to Cornell, Dr. Abd-Allah read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which inspired him to embrace Islam in early 1970. In 1972, he altered his field of study and transferred to the University of Chicago, where he studied Arabic and Islamic Studies under Dr. Fazlur Rahman. Dr. Abd-Allah received his doctorate with honors in 1978 for a dissertation on the origins of Islamic Law, Malik's Concept of 'Amal in the Light of Maliki Legal Theory. From 1977 until 1982, he taught at the Universities of Windsor (Ontario), Temple, and Michigan. In 1982, he left America to teach Arabic in Spain. Two years later, he was appointed to the Department of Islamic Studies at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah, where he taught (in Arabic) Islamic studies and comparative religions until 2000.
During his years abroad, Dr. Abd-Allah had the privilege of studying with a number of traditional Islamic scholars. He returned to Chicago in August 2000 to work as chair and scholar-in-residence of the newly founded Nawawi Foundation, a non-profit educational foundation. In conjunction with this position, he is now teaching and lecturing in and around Chicago and various parts of the United States and Canada, while conducting research and writing in Islamic studies and related fields. He recently completed a biography of Mohammed Webb (d. 1916), who was one of the most significant early American converts to Islam. The book was released September 2006 under the title A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb (Oxford University Press).
