ABSTRACT
In the foregoing chapters, I have initially described and analysed the theoretical foundations of traditional Islamic epistemology along with its methodological and hermeneutical features in the realm of law and jurisprudence. Secondly, I have presented an analytical account of the contemporary paradigmatic field of Iranian Shi’i positions on Islamic law and epistemology and highlighted the main intellectual representatives of the shifting discourses. The Islamic traditionalism of ʿAbdullāh Jawādī-Āmulī, the Islamic modernism of Muḥammad Mujtahid-Shabistarī and the Islamic postmodernism of ʿAbd al-Karīm Surūsh embody distinct products of the dynamic interaction between Islam and modernity, which have revealed complex relationships between the two entities. In Islamic thought, the problem of change versus tradition is largely apprehended in terms of a dialogue with modernity and of its impact on philosophy and culture. Since any normative question that is asked by contemporary Muslims must be seen in the context of Islamic modernity, the positions that are objects of the present study can successfully be situated in relationship to modernity. To various degrees, they accommodate religion to modernity by absorbing or refuting its normative cognitive and ontological characteristics. As far as Islamic modernism and postmodernism are concerned, these positions cannot be understood without realizing their deep roots in modern postrenaissance conceptions of being, knowledge and human agency, which are based on the different forms of ‘subjectivist’ epistemology.
