Using Comparative Insights in Developing Kalām

Abstract

Muna Tatari presents her personal and autobiographical encounter with comparative theology. We learn that at the beginning of her work in comparative theology, she came to realize that not only did she need to learn much about Christian theology, its doctrines and methods; she had too a quantitative and a qualitative lack of knowledge of her own Muslim religious tradition. Tatari elaborates two theological categories, justice and mercy, in order to demonstrate how comparative insights are fruitful in developing kalām as the way of study and reflection that illuminates these categories. To elucidate her method, Tatari discusses five major insights arising in her dissertation that were inspired by comparative theology; she shows how she used tools and insights from Christian theology and late-modern philosophy to reconstruct Islamic thought on a specific topic.