THE CONCEPT OF BELIEF IN ISLAMIC THEOLOGY

A Semantic Analysis of Imān and Islām

THE CONCEPT OF BELIEF IN ISLAMIC THEOLOGY • / A Semantic Analysis of Imein and /s/dm Toshihiko Izutsu • The present work is an analytic study of the concept of ‘belief’ or `faith’ in Islamic theology. On the one hand, it presents a detailed description of the historical process through which the concept of belief was born, grew up, and was theoretically elaborated among the Muslims and on the other, it aims at making a careful semantic analysis of ‘belief’ and other related key-concepts together with the conceptual networks which the latter formed among themselves. The concept of belief as manipulated by the scholastic theologians may very well be of such a nature that it merely touches upon the outward and formal side of the problem. But it is also undeniable that here as elsewhere the ‘outward’ is a direct self-manifestation of the `inward’. In this sense, ‘belief’ as a theological concept reflects and reveals, albeit in a very particular way, the real nature of ‘belief’ as an existential event, i.e. as something actually lived and experienced in the course of history by the Muslim believers. The Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology constitutes not only a welcome addition to the existing literature on Islam but introduces a new approach to the understanding of Islam— particularly by non- Muslims— the linguistic approach.”…This book, coming from the pen of the first serious Japanese scholar on Islam, throws new light upon one of the most interesting phases of the history of Islamic.