Can We Talk about Philosophy of Islamic Religion?
This is according to Hojat-ol-Islam Abolfazl Sajedinia, a faculty member of Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute, who made the remarks in a seminar on the philosophy of religion. Here is a summary of his remarks:
Is it possible to talk about the “philosophy of Islamic religion” or not? Philosophy of religion is a field that deals with the analysis of rational religious teachings and studies religion with a rational, philosophical and sometimes experimental approach. It seems that we can talk about the philosophy of the Islamic religion in two ways.
The first form is that we examine and assess the issues of religion with the same concepts that have been raised in the religion, that is in the Quran and hadiths. If this is the case, the nature of our discussion becomes intra-religious, and in other words, the issues are related to the philosophy of religion but the answers are not. The philosophy of religion does not consider the truthfulness of any religion as a presupposition.
The second approach is to preserve the essence of the philosophy of religion. It means that our view remains completely rational, but we will see what answers have been given to our questions in different approaches. In the second approach, we can discuss the revelation without presupposing its authenticity.
Sometimes Islamic and revealed statements inspire an idea that can be discussed independently. When a person discusses religious propositions in the philosophy of religion, his resources for this discussion are scientific and philosophical tenets and capabilities, however, we can use the Quran to analyze these teachings. Therefore, we can have an Islamic view of the philosophy of religion, and “philosophy of Islamic religion” means philosophizing about Islamic teachings.
