Islamic Liberation Theology

Abstract

By this provocative work – to say the least – Dabashi makes a quite timely intervention in the direction that the new discourse on Islam has recently taken, especially among progressive-liberal Muslim scholars. Unlike many others who are attracted to liberalism of various sorts, Dabashi remains closer to the socialist lineage to formulate a fervent anti-imperialist critique and struggle for justice in the line of liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutierrez and Joseph H. Cone. There have also been a few other Muslims pursuing a similar endeavor, such as Shabbir Akhtar and Farid Esack. Yet Dabashi, while retaining the basic sense of liberation theology, “articulation of the meaning of faith based on commitment to abolish injustice” (p. 254), is rather after a theodicy for our post-civilizational times. In his words, the aim is “to investigate the specifically Islamic manners of opposing the imperial upsurge in the aftermath of the ‘Islam and West binary opposition’” (p. 2) ...