The Trust of Knowing: An Introduction to Islamic Epistemology (Islamic Thought and Studies) - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

What can human beings truly know—and what do they owe Allah and one another once they know it?

A confident answer may still be false. A widely accepted opinion may still rest on error. Even an idea that “works” may fail to correspond to reality. In an age of instant information, competing worldviews, and AI-generated certainty, students need more than access to facts. They need a disciplined way to examine claims, evaluate sources, and recognize the limits of their own understanding.

The Trust of Knowing: An Introduction to Islamic Epistemology offers a clear and intellectually serious study of knowledge in Islam. Written as an undergraduate textbook, it introduces the major questions of Islamic epistemology without treating them as merely abstract philosophical problems. It approaches knowledge as both a human possibility and an amānah—a trust carrying intellectual, moral, and spiritual responsibilities.

Across fifteen structured lessons, readers explore:

• The possibility, meaning, and value of knowledge
• The senses, intellect, heart, experience, nature, history, and revelation as tools and sources of knowledge
• The stages and degrees of knowing, from sensory perception to rational and symbolic understanding
• How the mind transforms particular experiences into universal concepts
• The unconscious mind as an example of symbolic knowledge
• The difference between truth, error, consensus, usefulness, and practical success
• Certainty, doubt, evidence, and the criteria by which knowledge claims are judged
• Fiṭrah and the moral formation of the knower
• Revelation, transmitted knowledge, testimony, and scholarly authority
• The duties, manners, and ethical consequences of possessing knowledge
• The relationship of Islamic thought to modern science, digital information, and generative artificial intelligence

The first ten lessons present Mansoor Limba’s English translation of selected lectures by the influential Muslim philosopher Murtaḍā Muṭahharī. The final five lessons expand the discussion through classical Islamic scholarship and contemporary questions facing Muslim students today. Qur’anic passages appear in Arabic alongside their English renderings, while footnotes, key terms, a glossary, and a selected bibliography support further study.

Each lesson includes core questions, learning outcomes, a reading principle, a necessary caution, review questions, critical reflection questions, an integrative assessment, and a classroom activity. These features make the book practical for lectures, guided discussions, independent reading, and formal coursework.

The Trust of Knowing is written for undergraduate students and instructors in Islamic Studies, Islamic philosophy, theology, religious studies, and related fields. It will also serve readers seeking an accessible introduction to the Islamic theory of knowledge, the relationship between reason and revelation, the ethics of scholarship, and the challenge of pursuing truth in the digital age.

This book does not simply ask, “What do you know?” It asks the more difficult questions: How did you come to know it? Why should it be trusted? And what kind of person should that knowledge help you become?

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