The Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology

Author: Toshihiko Izutsu

Publisher: Islamic Book Trust

ISBN: 9789839154702

Weight: 0.35 kg

Year: 2020

Page: 317 pp

Price: RM55

‘Belief’ was historically the first and the most important of all the theological concepts in Islam, and it raised in the first few centuries of Islamic culture a number of problems of real significance. Some of them were literally problems of life and death to the growing Muslim community, as they are still today. By methodically analyzing these problems and the major concepts underlying them, this study throws light upon one of the most interesting phases of the history of Islamic thought. ‘The danger of the free practice of takfa’, ‘the relation between iman and Islam‘, ‘belief and knowledge’, ‘belief and work’ are some of the key concepts explored by the author in depth and analyzed in the light of earlier studies, such as the works of Imam Ghazali and Imam Ibn Taymiyyah.

This work by Dr Toshihiko Izutsu (1914-1993), one of the eastern world’s greatest modern Islamic scholars, is one of three in a series of works by the late scholar re-issued by us.

Toshihiko Izutsu was born into a wealthy family in Japan. His father was a calligrapher and a Zen Buddhist. Izutsu was a well known Japanese scholar on Islam, having taught at Keio University, McGill University, Montreal and the Iranian Imperial Academy of Philosophy, Tehran. More than thirty scholarly works in Japanese and English are attributed to him, all of which demonstrate uniqueness of his thought through the construction of complex theoretical arguments. Complementing this brilliance was his mastery of over twenty languages, including Hebrew, Persian, Chinese, Turkish, Sanskrit and Arabic. In 1958, he completed translation of the Qur'an, for the first time directly from Arabic to Japanese.