Religious Deviance In Andrew Jackson

280 Words2 Pages

As a way to situate Faysal both theologically and politically, Jackson makes a number of arguments. First, he points out that heresy was not always “synonymous with infidelity or apostasy” in classical Islam because scholars differentiated between formal and material heresy; it thus connoted “several categories of theological deviance,” including kufr. For al-Ghazali, kufr is “purely a matter of rejecting the truthfulness of the Prophet Muhammad [pbuh]. Beyond this, it reveals, in and of itself, virtually nothing about a person’s moral or religious constitution.” Thus, “a kafir (qua kafir) is neither immoral, irreligious, nor exempt from receiving recognition—in this world—for the good he or she commits” (which is why, says Jackson, to use

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