Frank Griffel

Last updated

Frank Griffel is a German scholar of Islamic studies. He is the Professor in the Study of Abrahamic Religions at the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford University and Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. Until 2024 he was the Louis M. Rabinowitz Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, where he is still an emeritus professor.

Contents

Biography

Griffel earned his PhD in 1999 from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, after studying philosophy, Arabic literature, and Islamic studies at universities in Göttingen, Damascus, and Berlin. From 1999 to 2000, he was a research fellow at the Orient Institute of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) in Beirut, Lebanon. He joined Yale University in 2000 as an assistant professor, where he taught Islamic intellectual history, ancient and modern theology and philosophy, and how Islamic intellectuals respond to Western modernity. [1] In 2008, he was promoted to full professor at Yale, and in 2021 named Louis M. Rabinowitz Professor of Religious Studies. At Yale, he chaired the Religious Studies Department 2020–2024 and was chair of the Council of Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) 2011–2017. In 2003–04 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He was visiting professor at LMU Munich and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany. In 2024 he was appointed the third Professor of the Study of the Abrahamic Religions at Oxford. [2]

On al-Ghazālī (d. 1111)

Griffel’s first monograph study, which is based on his dissertation, is a history of the judgement of apostasy (irtidād) in Islamic law up to al-Ghazālī. In a famous fatwa at the end of his book Tahāfut al-falāsifa, al-Ghazālī declared that all Muslims who teach three positions that stem from the philosophical system of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) were apostates from Islam who can be killed. In his Apostasie und Toleranz im Islam (in German), Griffel studies the legal and theological preconditions and assumptions (“Voraussetzungen”) of this fatwā and adds a part where he looks at the reactions to this it in subsequent philosophical literature from the Islamic west (Ibn Bājja, Ibn Ṭufayl and Ibn Rushd/Averroes).

Griffel’s second monograph Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology (2009) [3] was triggered by the dispute between Michael E. Marmura and Richard M. Frank (1927–2009) on al-Ghazālī’s cosmology. Up to the mid-1980s, al-Ghazālī was considered a mainstream Ashʿarite theologian with some odd and idiosyncratic teachings. In several books and articles, published between 1987 and 1994, Frank argued that al-Ghazālī was in reality a follower of Ibn Sīnā’s Aristotelian cosmology who hid his opposition to Ashʿarite theology behind a smokescreen of confusing statements that seemed to support Ashʿarism. Marmura rejected Frank’s findings and, although admitting that he expressed himself sometimes in confusing language, maintained that al-Ghazālī was a faithful Ashʿarite theologian, who taught an occasionalist cosmology in all of his works. Griffel describes Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, “as a fitting example of what G.W. Hegel called a dialectical progression. While Frank’s and Marmura’s works are the thesis and the anti-thesis (or the other way round), this book wishes to be considered a synthesis.” [4] For Griffel, al-Ghazālī was both an occasionalist and a follower of Ibn Sīnā in his cosmology of secondary causation. In some books he teaches an occasionalist cosmology, in others secondary causality, following the Aristotelian model. Early on in his oeuvre (in the 17th discussion of his Tahāfut al-falāsifa), al-Ghazālī decided that both cosmologies offer equally convincing explanations of how God creates. Neither revelation nor reason offers insights into how God interacts with His creation, either by means of occasionalist direct creation or through secondary causes.

On the History of Philosophy in Islam

The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam (2021) is a detailed study of the conditions for and the content of philosophical activity in the Islamic east during the 12th century, the century after al-Ghazālī’s death. Griffel stresses that in Islam there was no decline of the rational sciences and of philosophy after al-Ghazālī. The history of philosophy in Islam, however, followed different patterns and different strategies than philosophy in the West. Philosophy in Islam developed more gradually than in Europe, where fundamental conceptions were periodically revised and sometimes discarded in “scientific revolutions.” In pre-modern Islam there was a tendency toward syncretism. [5] Different elements subsisted side by side, to the extent that during Islam’s post-classical period (after 1150) expressions of Islamic theology (kalām), of Aristotelian philosophy (falsafa or ḥikma), and Sufism would appear within one and the same thinker. Griffel interprets this as a particular kind of reaction to a philosophical impasse that in the West led to Immanuel Kant’s “antinomies of pure reason.” [6]

On the meaning of “Salafi”

In 2015–16, Griffel engaged in a debate with Henri Lauzière about the proper understanding of the label “salafi.” Intellectual historians of Islam use this term to describe two groups of thinkers and activists. First, a group of reformers, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose most influential members were Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida. Then, second, a group of contemporary Sunni activists who often reject any affiliation with the four schools of law (referred to as an attitude of “lā madhhabiyya”) and who try to establish norms of correct Islamic behavior and action by direct recourse to the sources on the Prophet Muhammad’s life, most importantly by an independent study of the hadith corpus. In a 2010 article [7] and in his subsequent 2016-book, [8] Lauzière argues that the conflation of these two groups in one (analytical) label is a mistake, for which the French scholar of Islamic studies Louis Massignon is responsible. Starting in 1919 he identified al-Afghānī and ʿAbduh as leaders of the salafiyya. These two, however, never used that word and have no connection to the contemporary movement of Salafiyya, whose members reject any affiliation with them. To this, Griffel responded in 2015 that the modern usage of the Arabic word “salafiyya” indeed only starts in the first decade of the 20th century among a group of ʿAbduh’s students and that neither al-Afghānī nor ʿAbduh themselves used the term. Still, Massignon was right, Griffel argues, because both employ a strategy of reforming Islam where they aim to go back in history to an age of “al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ” (“the pious forefathers”) that was unaffected by the intellectual decline they identified with the Islamic era that immediately preceded colonial defeat. For early Salafis such as ʿAbduh, that era could include any Muslim thinker from before ca. 1200 CE. The contemporary movement that today claims the label “salafiyya” grew out of a group of Rashid Rida’s students in the 1930s. For them, “al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ” is a much smaller group, mostly limited to the Prophet Muḥammad’s companions. Both the modernizers of the late 19th century and the contemporary Salafis, however, employ the same intellectual and political strategy. They wish to go back to sources that pre-date Islam’s post-classical era, which is associated with the onset of Western hegemony. [9] Lauzière responded to Griffel’s article, [10] to which Griffel also wrote a response, arguing that the modern Salafis’ rejection of any kind of affiliation with ʿAbduh and his movement is not a decisive criterium and that “the historian’s task is to develop analytical criteria of what we mean by [words such as “salafī”] and what kind of activism falls under than umbrella.” [11]

Recognition

Griffel was a Carnegie Scholar in 2007 and received a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel-Research Award of the Humboldt Foundation in 2015. In 2021, he received the annual award of the German “Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Islamische Theologie” (WGIT). His Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology received the World Prize for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic Iran in 2011, and his Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2024 in the category “Arab Culture in Other Languages.” [12]

Selected works

Related Research Articles

Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsiyy al-Ghazali, known commonly as Al-Ghazali, known in Medieval Europe by the Latinized Algazelus or Algazel, was a Persian Sunni Muslim polymath. He is known as one of the most prominent and influential jurisconsults, legal theoreticians, muftis, philosophers, theologians, logicians and mystics in Islamic history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ash'arism</span> Sunni school of Islamic theology

Ash'arism is a school of theology in Sunni Islam named after Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, a Shāfiʿī jurist, reformer (mujaddid), and scholastic theologian, in the 9th–10th century. It established an orthodox guideline, based on scriptural authority, rationality, and theological rationalism. It is one of the three main schools alongside Maturidism and Atharism.

Ilm al-kalam or ilm al-lahut, often shortened to kalam, is the scholastic, speculative, or rational study of Islamic theology (aqida). It can also be defined as the science that studies the fundamental doctrines of Islamic faith, proving their validity, or refuting doubts regarding them. Kalām was born out of the need to establish and defend the tenets of Islam against the philosophical doubters. A scholar of kalam is referred to as a mutakallim, a role distinguished from those of Islamic philosophers and jurists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ibn Taymiyya</span> Islamic scholar and jurist (1263–1328)

Ibn Taymiyya was a Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, traditionist, ascetic, and proto-Salafi and iconoclastic theologian. He is known for his diplomatic involvement with the Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan Khan at the Battle of Marj al-Saffar, which ended the Mongol invasions of the Levant. A legal jurist of the Hanbali school, Ibn Taymiyya's condemnation of numerous folk practices associated with saint veneration and visitation of tombs made him a contentious figure with many rulers and scholars of the time, which caused him to be imprisoned several times as a result.

Liberalism and progressivism within Islam involve professed Muslims who have created a considerable body of progressive thought about Islamic understanding and practice. Their work is sometimes characterized as "progressive Islam". Some scholars, such as Omid Safi, differentiate between "progressive Muslims" versus "liberal advocates of Islam". Liberal Islam originally emerged out of the Islamic revivalist movement of the 18th–19th centuries. Liberal and progressive ideas within Islam are considered controversial by some traditional Muslims, who criticize liberal Muslims on the grounds of being too Western and/or rationalistic.

Occasionalism is a philosophical doctrine about causation which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly by God. The doctrine states that the illusion of efficient causation between mundane events arises out of God's causing of one event after another. However, there is no necessary connection between the two: it is not that the first event causes God to cause the second event: rather, God first causes one and then causes the other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salafi movement</span> Conservative reform movement within Sunni Islam

The Salafi movement or Salafism is a revival movement within Sunni Islam, which was formed as a socio-religious movement during the late 19th century and has remained influential in the Islamic world for over a century. The name "Salafiyya" is a self-designation, to call for a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors", the first three generations of Muslims, who are believed to exemplify the pure form of Islam. In practice, Salafis claim that they rely on the Qur'an, the Sunnah and the Ijma (consensus) of the salaf, giving these writings precedence over what they claim as "later religious interpretations". The Salafi movement aimed to achieve a renewal of Muslim life and had a major influence on many Muslim thinkers and movements across the Islamic world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pan-Islamism</span> Movement advocating unity of Muslims under one state

Pan-Islamism is a political movement which advocates the unity of Muslims under one Islamic country or state – often a caliphate – or an international organization with Islamic principles. Historically, after Ottomanism, which aimed at the unity of all Ottoman citizens, Pan-Islamism was promoted in the Ottoman Empire during the last quarter of the 19th century by Sultan Abdul Hamid II for the purpose of preventing secession movements of the Muslim peoples in the empire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muhammad Abduh</span> Egyptian jurist and theologian (1849–1905)

Muḥammad ʿAbduh was an Egyptian Islamic scholar, judge, and Grand Mufti of Egypt. He was a central figure of the Arab Nahḍa and Islamic Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

<i>The Incoherence of the Philosophers</i> 1095 CE book by al-Ghazali

The Incoherence of the Philosophers is a landmark 11th-century work by the Muslim polymath al-Ghazali and a student of the Asharite school of Islamic theology criticizing the Avicennian school of early Islamic philosophy. Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Farabi (Alpharabius) are denounced in this book, as they follow Greek philosophy even when, in the author's perception, it contradicts Islam. The text was dramatically successful, and marked a milestone in the ascendance of the Asharite school within Islamic philosophy and theological discourse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rashid Rida</span> Salafi reformist scholar and theologian (1865–1935)

Muhammad Rashid Rida was an Islamic scholar, reformer, theologian and revivalist. An early Salafist, Rida called for the revival of hadith studies and, as a theoretician of an Islamic state, condemned the rising currents of secularism and nationalism across the Islamic world following the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate. He championed a global pan-Islamist program aimed at re-establishing an Islamic caliphate.

Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi was a Muslim judge and scholar of Maliki law from al-Andalus. Like Al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad, Ibn al-Arabi was forced to migrate to Morocco during the reign of the Almoravids. It is reported that he was a student of Al-Ghazali. He was a master of Maliki Jurisprudence. His father was a student of Ibn Hazm. He also contributed to the spread of Ash'ari theology in Spain. A detailed biography about him was written by his contemporary Qadi Ayyad, the Malikite scholar and judge from Ceuta.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abdel-Hamid ibn Badis</span> Salafist Islamic scholar in Algeria (1889–1940)

Abd al-Hamīd ibn Mustafa ibn Makki ibn Badis, better known as Ibn Badis was an Algerian Salafi educator, exegete, Islamic reformer, scholar and figurehead of cultural nationalism. In 1931, Ben Badis founded the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulema, which was a national grouping of many Islamic scholars in Algeria from many different and sometimes opposing perspectives and viewpoints. The Association would have later a great influence on Algerian Muslim politics up to the Algerian War of Independence. In the same period, it set up many institutions where thousands of Algerian children of Muslim parents were educated. The Association also published a monthly journal, the Al-Chihab and Souheil Ben Badis contributed regularly to it between 1925 and his death in 1940. The journal informed its readers about the Association's ideas and thoughts on religious reform and spoke on other religious and political issues.

Islamic modernism is a movement that has been described as "the first Muslim ideological response to the Western cultural challenge", attempting to reconcile the Islamic faith with values perceived as modern such as democracy, civil rights, rationality, equality, and progress. It featured a "critical reexamination of the classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence", and a new approach to Islamic theology and Quranic exegesis (Tafsir). A contemporary definition describes it as an "effort to re-read Islam's fundamental sources—the Qur'an and the Sunna, —by placing them in their historical context, and then reinterpreting them, non-literally, in the light of the modern context."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atharism</span> School of theology in Sunni Islam

Atharism is a school of theology in Sunni Islam which developed from circles of the Ahl al-Hadith, a group that rejected rationalistic theology in favor of strict textualism in interpretation the Quran and the hadith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tafwid</span>

Tafwid is an Arabic term meaning "relegation" or "delegation", with uses in theology and law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi</span> Muslim scholar (1866–1914)

Jamal al-Din bin Muhammad Saeed bin Qasim al-Hallaq al-Qasimi was a Muslim scholar in Damascus during the Ottoman Empire. He was a leader of the Salafi movement and a prolific author who wrote many books about Islamic law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tahir al-Jazairi</span> Syrian Muslim scholar and educator

Tahir al-Jaza'iri was a 19th century Syrian Muslim scholar and educational reformer and a great scholar of Tafsīr, Ḥadīth, Fiqh, Uṣūl, history and the Arabic language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Development of Salafism after World War II</span>

Arab Salafi movement of early 20th century led by Syrian Salafi theologian Muhammad Rashid Rida championed various beliefs such as Pan-Islamism, anti-colonialism, revival of Athari theology based on the works of medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyya as well as rejection of partisanship to legal schools (mad'habs). After his death, Rida's ideas would later on be expanded by his disciples in varied ways. One such disciple, Abu Ya'la al Zawawi called for the creation of a committee of ulama to reconcile various Sunni legal mad'habs. The ultimate goal was the promotion of a single school of thought for all Muslims, “a pure ancestral madhhab [madhhaban salafiyyan mahdan], be it in creed or in worship and other religious practices.” Others such as Muhammad Munir al-Dimishqi would come to the defense of the mad'habs. He also condemned those who invited Muslims to act according to Qur'an and Sunnah alone without taqleed (imitation) or ittiba (following) of the 4 schools. Conveying his pro-madhab message, Munir asserted that taqleed (blind-following) is not dispensable for modern Muslims. Scholars like Mas'ud 'Alam al-Nadwi defined the Salafi movement in vague terms as "the movement of decisive revolution against stagnancy". Thus different notions of Salafi legal doctrines emerged amongst Rida's followers and competed for dominance. Some, like that of Munir remained marginal.

References

  1. ↑ "Frank Griffel". Yale University – Religious Studies. Retrieved 2021-10-21.
  2. ↑ "New appointment establishes Oxford as a "major centre" for the study of Islamic philosophy and theology". Oxford University - Faculty of Theology and Religion. Retrieved 2024-11-06.
  3. ↑ Reviews of Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology:
    • Whittingham, Martin (2010). "Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology". American Journal of Islam and Society. 27 (4). International Institute of Islamic Thought: 111–114. doi: 10.35632/ajis.v27i4.1295 . ISSN   2690-3741.
    • Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 130, No. 1 (January–March 2010), pp. 118-121
    • Review of Middle East Studies, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Summer 2010), pp. 82-84
    • Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Vol. 163, No. 1 (2013), pp. 244-246
    • Philosophy East and West, Vol. 61, No. 3 (JULY 2011), pp. 564-567
    • Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 71, No. 2 (October 2012), pp. 398-400
    • Journal of Qur'anic Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2011), pp. 115-128
    • Otto, Sean (2016-01-27). "Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology". The Heythrop Journal. 57 (2). Wiley: 415–416. doi:10.1111/heyj.46_12316. ISSN   0018-1196.
    • Janssens, Jules (2011). "Al-Ghazālī's Philosophical Theology". The Muslim World. 101 (1). Wiley: 115–119. doi:10.1111/j.1478-1913.2010.01346.x. ISSN   0027-4909.
    • Kılıç, Muhammet Fatih. SCIRES-IT , Jul2011, Vol. 1 Issue 2, p. 133-137
    • Ragep, F. Jamil. In: Isis. Dec 2010, Vol. 101 Issue 4, p867
  4. ↑ Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, p. 11.
  5. ↑ Griffel, Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology, p. 6.
  6. ↑ Griffel, The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam, pp. 552–560, 571.
  7. ↑ Henri Lauzière, “The Construction of Salafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism From the Perspective of Conceptual History,” IJMES 42 (2010): 369–89.
  8. ↑ Henri Lauzière, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
  9. ↑ Frank Griffel, “What Do We Mean By ‘Salafī’? Connecting Muḥammad ʿAbduh with Egypt’s Nūr Party in Islam’s Contemporary Intellectual History.” Die Welt des Islams 55 (2015): 186–220.
  10. ↑ Henri Lauzière, “What We Mean Versus What They Meant by "Salafi": A Reply to Frank Griffel” Die Welt des Islams 56 (2016): 89–96.
  11. ↑ Frank Griffel, “What is the Task of the Intellectual (Contemporary) Historian? – A Response to Henri Lauzière’s ‘Reply’.” Die Welt des Islams 56 (2016): 249–255, pp. 253–54.
  12. ↑ "Sheikh Zayed Book Award Announces Winners of its 18th Edition". sheikh zayed book award. Retrieved 2024-04-11.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.