Overview

Islamic liberation theology (ILT) refers to a diverse cluster of theologies that seek to reinterpret Islamic texts in the light of oppression and resistance to it. Based on a commitment to social justice, ILT shifts theological understanding away from the privileged center(s) of society, shifting the interlocutor, the conversation partner of theology to the neglected margins. Over the past few decades, a rich body of Islamic scholarship has emerged that has grappled with a variety of categories and frameworks, most notably gender and religious pluralism. The purpose of this Special Issue is to identify new directions in ILT by engaging the following questions: What is the current state of the field? What are the key contexts, problems, and thematic areas on which ILT has focused, and why have scholars prioritized these issues? How have establishment religion and its hierarchies of power and authority been deconstructed, and how have liberationist re-readings of religious texts been produced? How has ILT challenged dominant hermeneutical approaches and enabled more inclusive reading methods? To what extent are these alternative methods problematic and carry contestable assumptions? Which areas of human experience have received less attention from, or even been ignored altogether, by scholars? In the future, how can proponents of ILT study such thematic areas, unexplored intersectional realities, and changing global contexts, and what would critical theological scholarship in these new research areas look like? This is a non-exhaustive listing of the type of questions that this Special Issue seeks to engage.