u/Miserable_Actuary904

So someone on Academic Quran posted the following, asking why Muslim Academics exists when there are other Muslim groups on Reddit. I thought it would be useful to spark debate on here now that we have grown, so I will share both his question and my answer.

Question:

is there anything like Christian academics like Muslim academics[r/muslimacademics]? I think for practicing faith traditional islam is out there.And if someone prefers academic studies, why he needs to presuppose something,is not traditional islam enough for that? we know there are sects in islam . One can follow any of them or invent one of his own.But why the "tag'' 'academics' is necessary here for them.? Are they trying to reform or mold islam in another form by using academia and trying to increase credibility.?

Answer:

I founded Muslim Academics, so I'll chip in here to explain what our project is. It's worth saying upfront why we call ourselves Muslim Academics and how we differ from the other Muslim pages on Reddit. The short version: we hold that being a Muslim  and choosing to evaluate the Quran outside a strictly naturalistic framework doesn't disqualify you from doing intellectually honest work. The argument for that turns on a methodological distinction worth laying out carefully. Many of the tools that we use are identical with HCM - but our methodological commitments, and therefore the way we process and evaluate evidence, differs. IE there is a distinction between the tools of HCM, such as intertextuality, linguistics, etc, (which we use), and its methodological commitments, which we do not adopt. The rejection of methodological naturalism doesn't make you unacademic - that's our primary contention, methodological naturalism does not own logic or its respective tools to asses historical evidence.

Apologetics works backwards from a fixed conclusion. The conclusion is the input; the reasoning is the output. Whatever the evidence shows, the conclusion stands and the work is to find a path from the evidence back to it.

HCM works forward from a fixed methodological floor: methodological naturalism. Whatever the evidence shows, the conclusion has to land within naturalist range and the work is to find which naturalist account, and only a naturalist account, fits best.

Both have a commitment that survives the evidence. They differ in what that commitment is, but structurally they are the same shape: a fixed point the reasoning serves.

Muslim Academics is a third thing (or at least we try to be); and has no such fixed point. The designation "Muslim" is a statement of where we currently judge the evidence to lie, not a framework we analyse evidence through. We believe the Quran is from God because of our assessment of the evidence otherwise we wouldn't be Muslims and we're honest about declaring that. But the conclusion doesn't shape how we assess.

Everyone has priors; the difference is whether they're load-bearing only insofar as the arguments for them hold. If the arguments fail, the priors go. That's a real and falsifiable commitment, not a verbal one, and the test of it is what the project does when its reasoning runs into trouble whether it follows the argument, or protects the conclusion.

The deeper difference is what each project is committed to in advance. Apologetics is committed to a conclusion defending the traditionalist framework of Islam as defined by sect. HCM is committed to a range of naturalistic explanations for the origin of the Quran. Muslim Academics, if it means anything distinct, is committed only to the reasoning itself willing to follow it into Islam, willing to follow it out, and willing to follow it into positions neither apologists nor HCM scholars would arrive at, because both are constrained in advance.

We don't lock God out as a possible explanatory factor, but we also don't hold the Quran to be from God merely as a function of identity.

In my latest article, published in JIQSA, I examine two key Qur’anic verses related to warfare, what I term the “fitnah-fighting verses”:

“Fight them until there is no fitnah and al-din is wholly for God” (Q 2:193; 8:39).

According to an aggressive interpretation of these verses—accepted by many classical Islamic and modern Western scholars—fitnah is glossed to mean shirk (“idolatry”) and kufr (“infidelity”), whereas the subsequent din clause is interpreted to entail the eradication of paganism/polytheism.

In this article, I uphold a defensive reading according to which fitnah refers to religious persecution and the din clause refers to the believers’ own worship, including at the Holy Sanctuary.

Direct Link:

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/jiqsa-2024-0028/html

Alternative link:

https://www.academia.edu/166112739/The\_Fitnah\_Fighting\_Verses\_When\_Does\_Qur\_anic\_Warfare\_Cease