Like their Jewish and Christian counterparts, Muslim theologians and philosophers have long grappled with a profound question: How can a God who is perfectly good, compassionate, merciful, powerful, and wise allow the existence of widespread suffering and evil in the world?
In this CIK Talk, Dr. Safaruk Chowdhury—drawing on his acclaimed monograph (Islamic Theology and the Problem of Evil, AUC Press, 2021)—explores this timeless dilemma through the lens of the Sunni theological tradition. The CIK Talk examines diverse manifestations of evil, including animal predation, natural disasters, moral wrongdoing, personal affliction, and systemic oppression, each considered alongside theological responses or justifications (theodicies).
Dr. Chowdhury unpacks how classical Muslim scholars conceptualized evil and how, across centuries, they developed nuanced frameworks to reconcile divine omnipotence and benevolence with the undeniable presence of suffering—while also highlighting the anti-theodicy perspective that emphasizes God’s ultimate sovereignty and the limits of human reason.
In this CIK Talk, Dr. Safaruk Chowdhury—drawing on his acclaimed monograph (Islamic Theology and the Problem of Evil, AUC Press, 2021)—explores this timeless dilemma through the lens of the Sunni theological tradition. The CIK Talk examines diverse manifestations of evil, including animal predation, natural disasters, moral wrongdoing, personal affliction, and systemic oppression, each considered alongside theological responses or justifications (theodicies).
Dr. Chowdhury unpacks how classical Muslim scholars conceptualized evil and how, across centuries, they developed nuanced frameworks to reconcile divine omnipotence and benevolence with the undeniable presence of suffering—while also highlighting the anti-theodicy perspective that emphasizes God’s ultimate sovereignty and the limits of human reason.
|
Dr. Safaruk ChowdhuryDr. Safaruk Chowdhury is the Academic Director of the Centre for Islamic Knowledge. He studied Philosophy at King's College London, completing it with the accompanying Associate of King's College (AKC) award. He then travelled to Cairo to study the traditional Islamic Studies curricula at Al-Azhar University. He returned to the UK to complete his MA at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, with distinction. His doctoral dissertation was on the eminent Sufi hagiographer and theoretician Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 412/1021), published as A Sufi Apologist of Nishapur: The Life and Thought of Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2019). He has published numerous academic articles in the fields of Islamic philosophy and theology, focusing on ethics, metaphysics, logic and epistemology. His most recent book is Islamic Theology and the Problem of Evil (New York and Cairo: AUC Press, 2021), which is the first work in Islamic Studies to treat the topic within the analytic theology approach. Chowdhury was the lead researcher on the project "Beyond Foundationalism: New Horizons in Muslim Analytic Theology," funded under a John Templeton Foundation grant award in association with Cambridge Muslim College and the Aziz Foundation, which explored new vistas in Islamic epistemology. Chowdhury is a past lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and Birkbeck, University of London. He runs the Islamic Analytic Theology website, and his academic work can be found on his Academia.edu page. He is currently the executive editor of the Journal of Islamic Philosophy and the Ihya’ Journal of Islamic Thought, a research scholar at the Ibn Rushd Centre for Excellence and Research, a lecturer at the Cambridge Muslim College, a senior instructor at the Whitethread Institute, and chair of the Islamic Literary Society.
|
