Reclaiming Our Faith Lecture 7 by Sherman Jackson
By Abdal Hakim Jackson | 2026-01-13T19:15:24.129993+00:00 | Topic: Iman
Dr. Sherman Jackson - "Reclaiming Our Faith: Whether the Modern Muslim Negotiating Creed, Theology, and Spirituality"
Opening
Khutbat al-Hajah (Opening Khutbah)
Introduction by Conference Host
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. May Allah bless you, Dr. Bazian. Inshallah, we're at our final speaker for our conference today.
And I know it's been a long day, and I appreciate everyone's patience. And Dr. J has given me the hand. And I've introduced him many times, so I'm not going to take too much time.
But the most important thing you need to know for all the Bay Area people that are visiting, and they tell us, we have Sheikh Hamza, we have Dr. Hatim, we have Imam Zaid, we have Imam Tahir, we have Ustad Abdullah. And I can say, Alhamdulillah, we now at the University of Southern California, we have Dr. Sherman Jackson. So the topic for Dr. Jackson is, Whether the Modern Muslim Negotiating Creed, Theology, and Spirituality.
And in interest of time, I'll have Dr. Jackson explain what he'll be talking about. Assalamu alaikum. Assalamu alaikum.
Dr. Jackson's Opening Remarks and Topic Explanation
First of all, I want to start off by saying that I'm just a little bit perplexed by the fact that I was just told that I'm supposed to explain the topic that I'm talking about, but the topic was assigned to me, and I didn't choose it. So I've been assigned the topic of, Whether the Modern Muslim Negotiating Faith, Creed, Theology, and Spirituality. But I want to preface my remarks with a number of what I hope will be sort of useful comments, suggestions, if you will.
First Prefacing Comment: Community Spirit and Cooperation
The first of them is this. I'm here as a part of a community. And it is my hope that if the last 10 to 11 years have taught us nothing, they have taught us our mutual need for each other as community members, and that there is strength in our numbers, and that we need each other.
And I say that in the context of trying to set up a context here for my remarks in which what I'm saying up here is not understood to be an attempt to offer any kind of last words on anything. This is not a debate. This is a conference.
And a conference is a mu'tamara. Mu'tamara means basically to come together and to cooperate among yourselves in an effort to bring about the best possible outcome. And the reason I'm saying this is that, I mean, I'm going to have to talk, and again, I was assigned my topic.
I'm going to have to talk about issues of theology and all of these kinds of things. And I remember, you know, that decade of the 90s when as a community, you know, every time we got together, we tended not to discuss matters among ourselves, but rather to debate. And by that I mean that, you know, I would stand up here, not me, those other guys, but I would stand up and I would present my position as if it were the last position, and then I would defend that to the death, even if it was not the best position.
And as a community, I think that we suffered a great deal from that. And I hope that we have reached the maturity where we can come out of that, where we can begin to see, as corny as it may sound, our diversity as a strength, and as something that we should not be afraid of. I'm not going to compromise what I believe to be my deepest principles, but I'm going to be open enough to understand that some of what I believe is essential with regard to Islam.
Other aspects of what I believe are not essential. And these are issues that there can be give and take on. And there are issues on which someone else in the community may have a better point of view than I. So I hope that we will remain open to ourselves as a community.
That's the first point.
Second Prefacing Comment: Focus on Young People
The second point that I want to make... Can I get some water? That wasn't the second point. But the second point that I want to make... The second point that I want to make is that... You know, when I was assigned this topic, I thought primarily about the young people in our midst.
And so most of my comments are going to be going to, you know, sort of college students and below. And part of the reason for that is a certain recognition that I have that I hope I'm not being too heavy here, but it's a reality, and it's a reality that we as a community are going to have to confront. And that reality is this.
If we come back to this Zaytuna College banquet conference 20 years from now, it is very likely that I won't be here. It's likely that Sheikh Hamza won't be here. Imam Zayed might not be here. We are reaching the point where you're looking at a generation that is going to be passing on within the next two to three decades. And that means that we have to prepare the way for those who are coming after us. We have to have the collective communal consciousness to understand what that means.
And part of what I think that what we are missing as a Muslim community, we are missing a sense of historical consciousness. We don't understand where, what, and why we are where, what, and why we are. And I think that's something that we have to do a better job of.
So in the comments that are going to follow, I'm looking primarily at the young people among us. Finally, let me say that I'm going to be, because I've been asked, I keep saying that, don't I? I'm going to stop saying that. I'm going to be talking about some of the challenges that confront us in terms of theology, in terms of faith, in terms of spirituality.
Third Prefacing Comment: Maintaining Perspective on Problems
And I just want to, sort of not warn us, but point out the fact that, you know, sometimes when we talk about problems, and Muslims have lots of problems that are confronting them these days. But sometimes when we talk about problems, you know, it can dampen the mood. You know, it can put us in a state of mind where we think that life in itself is nothing but one long, boring concatenation of problems.
Alright? I'm going to be talking about challenges, but I don't want Muslims to internalize, you know, the sensibility, you know, the idea, the feeling, that our lives are nothing but a long chain of problems. We live in a time and in a place where, yes, we do have problems. But we also live in a time and a place where we have unprecedented resources and opportunities.
And away from our dealing with many of the problems that we have, we have to leave space to contemplate how we are going to best use our resources, and how we're going to best take advantage of the opportunities that we have, that other Muslim communities across the globe could never even dream of enjoying. So I don't want everybody in here just to be thinking about problems, problems, problems. Although that's, in a sense, what I'm going to be talking about.
The Nature of Negotiation in Modern America
So the issue of negotiating theology, faiths, spirituality in a place like modern America. Of course, negotiation is itself a give-and-take enterprise. It's sort of the art of give-and-take, and that includes compromise.
And I know that's a dirty word for some Muslims, especially when you're talking about issues having to do with religion and theology. But there is principled compromise, and there is unprincipled compromise. And I think that anyone who is familiar with the Sunnah of Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم) knows the difference between principled compromise and unprincipled compromise.
And for us to be able to negotiate the things that we're going to be talking about today, it's important to know the difference between what we can and what we cannot compromise. And to be clear in understanding that difference, and to be resolute in our commitment to maintaining that distinction.
The Centrality of Theology
This means, to my mind, that theology has to come front and center. In a sense, it is first and foremost. Because it is theology, far more than any other of the religious sciences, that gives us the sense of the absolutely non-negotiables of Islam. I mean, even in fiqh, I can, as a matter of fiqh, I can drink some wine if I'm choking and I don't have anything else to save my life but wine.
I can drink wine under duress and still be a Muslim. But I cannot believe that God is three, or that God has children, or that God didn't even forbid wine drinking. I can't do those things, I can't believe those things, and still be a Muslim.
So it's important for us to understand what leads and what follows in terms of our religious commitments and our beliefs. And when it comes to theology, we have a number of challenges in America. And there are many of them.
And I'm only going to have an opportunity to talk about maybe three or four of them. But I hope that what I have to say will be useful.
Challenge One: The Epistemological Crisis - Scientism and Education
The first challenge that we have, I think, is a challenge that some of us might not be familiar with in this room, but I'm an academic, I'm interacting with young people on the college level every day.
And I have been for the last few decades. And one of the things that I am repeatedly being confronted with is the fact that our children, who are passing through the academy and institutions of higher education, are internalizing an epistemology, a way of knowing, a way of comprehending reality and assessing reality that is placing distance between them and religion, distance between them and Islam. They are coming through the university system, they are internalizing a way of thinking, a way of knowing, that is itself fundamentally alienated from religion.
And at the end of four or six or eight years, they're coming out of these institutions and then being asked, now reconcile Islam with yourself. And among the major features of this epistemology is something that some refer to as scientism. This is a major challenge, not just for theology, because of course theology comes after the very idea that one accepts the existence of God to begin with.
We are in some ways challenged with the whole enterprise of the very existence of God. And so we have a challenge of how do we sustain and approach others with talk about God when one of the reigning epistemologies not only denies but precludes the very existence of God by denying and placing beyond the realm of legitimate engagement anything and everything that is supernatural or above and beyond the material world. This is what, and by the way, you know, Reinhold Niebuhr, the great Christian theologian, talks about irony.
And it's ironic that the more successful we are as parents, the more likely we are to produce children who go to college. And yet the more likely we are to produce children who go to college, the more likely they are to become successful to precisely this kind of an epistemology. And so it's the better off among us, if I can use that term, who should perhaps be most concerned about this as a challenge.
Addressing the Challenge: Distinguishing Science from Scientism
Now, how do we begin to address this challenge? There are two things that I want to say about this very briefly. And again, especially for our young people here who are saturated with the presuppositions of scientism. I think one of the first things that we have to do is we have to get clear and we have to maintain the distinction between science and scientism.
I'll say that again. We have to be clear and we have to maintain the distinction between science on the one hand and scientism on the other. Science as a study of the physical world is an enterprise in and of itself.
The claim that there is no reality beyond the physical world, that's not a scientific claim. Or that's not something that science can prove empirically, although it is a claim of some scientists. We have to be clear about distinguishing science from scientism.
And therefore, our opposition to scientism does not necessarily have to imply opposition to science. Because when we oppose science, and by the way, science is not all one thing. I'm taking for granted that I'm talking to intelligent people.
Science is not all one thing. There are many different scientific theories, not all of them equally reconcilable with each other. I don't have to go into any details about that.
But again, part of the problem that we have to be careful about is that if in the interest of promoting our commitment to religion, and if in our attacks on scientism, we come off as appearing to be opposed to science, we will actually undermine our position rather than promote it. And this is one of the reasons why I say we have to be extremely careful about remaining clear on the difference between science and scientism. That's an important distinction for our young people to get.
And it's important because, on the one hand, if God is indeed beyond the created physical world, then God, in his essence, is beyond science. That if science says that anything that cannot be empirically tested, we can't bring it in the lab and subject it to scientific testing, if that is beyond the realm of science, then so is God. And so we don't need to allow these sort of false arguments, these false contradictions to bedevil us.
But we'll only be able to navigate that space if we can maintain this distinction between science on the one hand and scientism on the other. There's a recent book by David Berlinski, I think his name is, if I'm remembering this correctly. One of the points, and by the way, he's a scientist, he's a mathematician.
And he happens to be a secular Jew, for all that that's worth. I mean, one of the points that he makes is that, you know, we have to be careful about some of the mythologies of science. And some of those mythologies operate most heavily on people who know nothing about science.
I mean, we complain about, you know, taqlid in religion, all right? I mean, the number of people who do blind taqlid, and I mean really, really blind taqlid of science, I mean, is equally problematic. And one of the things he says is that, you know, I'm not here to argue, and he's not, I think he's agnostic. He says, I'm not here to argue or to make a scientific argument about the existence of God, but what I am here to establish is that science, any self-respecting science, must admit that it cannot disprove the existence of God.
All right? And so that's one of the things that we need to be very clear with, especially for our young people. So Muslims should beware of, I think, scientific proofs of the existence of God, as well as proofs of the non-existence of God. And this sort of takes me to my second question, or my second issue.
The Danger of Seeking Scientific Validation for Islam
I think that, you know, when you are an embattled minority, and Muslims, no matter what your race, your ethnicity, your social class in America is today, if you are a believing, practicing Muslim who identifies as such, then you know something about what it means to be a sort of marginalized, embattled minority. And sometimes when you find yourself in that position, you know, you will go for any argument that you think will serve your cause. And sometimes you can end up embracing arguments that actually can do as much, if not more harm than good.
I think that Muslims have to be very careful in this quest to somehow find scientific backing or support for Islam as a religion. We have to be very careful about the scientific arguments for the existence of God that we accept. All right? And the reason that I say that is the following.
Is that oftentimes, I mean, many of the scientific arguments that I've read for the existence of God, the God they prove exists don't sound like the God of the Quran to me. And I think that that's something that we have to be very, very careful about. And again, if we maintain this distinction between science and scientism, we don't have to worry about needless dichotomies in that regard.
Challenge Two: The Social Scientification of Islam
So that's one challenge. How are we going to sustain talk about God, all right, when one of the reigning epistemological paradigms that all of us are infected by, all right, basically problematizes the whole enterprise of believing in God. The second challenge, I think, has a lot to do with what I would call the rise of the social scientists, not the social scientists, but the social sciences, and a certain genre of modern rationalism almost.
And here the question becomes this. Will theology, including Muslim theology, survive as a relevant, functional enterprise for Muslims in the modern world? And what will that theology be? And I ask this question because it seems to me that to a large extent the rise of the social sciences have in some ways produced a sort of social scientification, that's my word, of Islam. A social scientification of Islam which drastically reduces the role and the influence of theology.
And what do I mean by the social scientification of Islam? I mean that the tendency to say that Islam is whatever Muslims say it is, regardless of how qualified, unqualified, learned, ignorant, regardless of how much they know about Islam or even how committed they are to Islam. If we want to know what Islam is, we simply take some surveys. What do you Muslims in this room believe? You believe that wine drinking on Tuesdays between 2 and 4 is okay? That becomes Islam.
Right? And what this does is it reduces the role and the influence of theology because religion no longer has to be grounded in the very revelatory sources of that religion. And if you want to get an idea of what I'm talking about here in more concrete terms, somebody mentioned it up here, there are debates going on online now about atheist Muslims. For example, a Muslim who doesn't believe in God.
A Muslim who doesn't believe in God. And by the way, this is going on in academic circles. And there are actually people who are supporting the idea that if he or she says he is a Muslim, he or she is a Muslim.
Period. Period. And no one can second guess their claim to being a Muslim.
All right? And what this will end up doing is empowering masses who may be overly influenced by non-Islamic influences to determine what the substance of Islam in the modern world is. This is a major challenge for us, especially in this part of the world. It's a major, major challenge.
And I personally witness so many debates. You know, from gender justice to who is a Muslim to gay rights and all of these things. So many of these debates are going on in Muslim circles. All right? With little to no reference to the very sources of Islam. It's amazing. I mean, the theological implication.
Does God have the sovereignty and the right to dictate moral values? That question is never even addressed. And this, by the way, is among college educated and even some professors among within the Muslim community. All right? So we have a real challenge in terms of the social sciences redefining the definition of Islam.
And on that redefinition, the sources of Islam, Quran, Sunnah, people who want to invoke Quran, Sunnah, and all this kind of stuff in the context of those conversations. Sheikh Hamza talked about extremism earlier today. They are considered extremists in many of these conversations.
And so this is a challenge that we have to understand as a challenge. And it's a challenge. Somebody stole 10 minutes off my clock.
It was 10 minutes. I just looked. All right, let me hurry up then.
I get to get your, hmm. It's a challenge that brings us to the next challenge. And that is Muslim theology.
Challenge Three: The State of Contemporary Muslim Theology
What is it? And is Muslim theology in its sort of frozen black box form? Is it adequate to rise to the
challenges that we face here in this part of the world? And I say this not as someone who sees himself as detached from Muslim tradition. I personally believe that Islam is a storied enterprise. Islam is a storied enterprise.
That story begins with Muhammad ibn Abdullah and his companions who write a first chapter. And that story continues throughout the generations among Muslims. And for me, Islam in its best tradition is an Islam that remains in conversation with all of the efforts of our ancestors.
So I'm not talking about cutting us off from our tradition. However, we must understand, we play a really nasty pack of tricks on our ancestors. Because we hold them responsible for things that they could never have been responsible for.
And when they set out to develop theological approaches, they set out to make Islam, Quran, Sunnah, their own tradition, meaningful, relevant, and transformative in the context of the societies in which they lived. They did not live in our society. They did not confront the challenges that we confronted.
They laid down for us, however, indicators in terms of how we might confront those challenges. And that's what we have to do. And just to get more concrete about this, if we go back and look at some of the major debates that were had, you know, say a thousand years ago.
And by the way, I'm personally, I'm of the opinion that we need to look at our tradition not only critically, but judiciously. That means that, you know, those aspects of our tradition that we find useful, we have to avail ourselves of them. But we should not be importing meaningless controversies and debates into our modern space.
Just because they argued about it then, doesn't mean that we have to argue about it now. Especially those aspects which nobody really understands now. All right? But if you take, for example, three minutes, okay.
If you take, for example, the asma wal sifat. What were the asma wal sifat that they argued about most? Give me some speech. What else? Hand? No? Right? Right? Right? You see, the point is that, and this is what happens when we lose our historical consciousness.
All right? Many people will hear me and what I'm saying right now as an indictment of them. Not at all. Not in the least.
Not in the least. They did their job. We have to do ours.
They did their job. And by the way, Muslim theology developed at a time when the greatest theologians, al-Ash'ari, al-Maturidi, ibn Hanbal, all of them were minorities in their societies. All of them.
They did their job. But if they talked about wajh, wa-yad, wa-istiba, al-'al-ash, are these going to be the attributes of Allah that are most meaningful to modern people? And what I would argue is that one of the things that we need to confront in terms of our theological approach is that people in
modern society, especially in modern America, they want not simply a God they can think about, but they want a God they can embrace and relate to. And that means that we have to do a better job of obviating those attributes of God, such as his mercy, such as his forgiveness, and such as his wrath, such as his intiqam, such as his hikmah, his wisdom.
These things have to become meaningful to modern people so that God is not simply an artificial construct that people think about, but a reality that they can actually embrace and live with. This is going to be one of the challenges of Muslim theology in the modern West. And I know, especially in the way that I just articulated it up here, that there are many problems awaiting here.
Problems of anthropomorphism and all these other kinds of things. We will have to confront these. We will have to confront these problems.
Alright? But ask yourself this. Anybody ever try and explain to a child... Right? Whether God literally or only figuratively has a hand. The point that I'm making here is this.
We have to understand that our aim, our mission, our goal in society is always to make Islam relevant, meaningful, and transformative. And that means meeting society where it is, without compromising our principles. We have to erect out of the Quran, out of the Sunnah, out of the tradition, an understanding of God that can actually speak to the people where they are.
Challenge Four: The Problem of Theodicy in American Context
I've got to stop now, so let me conclude. Because there was one other point that I wanted to make. Actually, two other points that I wanted to make, but I won't be able to make them.
And let me then just conclude very quickly. Because there are a number of theological issues that we've got to confront. The issue of theodicy.
Sheikh Faraz talked about that this morning. You have all kinds of things happening in American society. You know, twenty-something little kids, five, six year olds get gunned down. You know, you've got hurricanes now in Oklahoma. You know, you've got all kinds of things going on. Modern people have an idea of God as that entity which always and must do that which is best or good for human beings.
And when things like this happen, alright, it challenges the whole idea, the whole enterprise of belief in God. And whether we like this or not, this is where we live. And we too will have to produce answers to these kinds of problems.
Right? I have a little book, Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering. You know, it's a first step. It's a little attempt.
But these are some of the kinds of things that we will have to confront in American society. Finally, that's not the only thing, but I'll just use this as the final point. Because it's very real.
Making Islamic Concepts Relevant in Modern Context
I mean, when we say, you know, what is the function of theology? I mean, one of the things that we have to get very serious about here in America is how do we get the cardinal principles of the Quranic discourse to make not only sense, but to have transformative meaning in American society. Alright? Do we continue to simply translate Iman as faith? What is Tawheed in a modern context? What is Shirk in a modern context? It's not bowing to idols. What is it? What is Kufr? What are these things in a modern context, alright, that can have transformative meaning in the context of American society? These are some of the challenges that we have to confront.
The Essential Role of Spirituality and Filters
And none of these challenges, and this is what I wanted to say, I'll sum it up about spirituality, you know, none of these challenges are going to be successfully confronted on the basis of this alone. Because the reality is that we're going to have to negotiate the answers to these questions with reigning paradigms, existing ways of thinking, existing ways of thinking and feeling in our own society. And that means that we have to have filters that will empower us to let in the good and to keep out the bad.
And we have to understand this about these filters. This is my last point, really is. This is probably the most important point I want to make all afternoon.
We have to understand something. Our filters will only be as effective as our spiritual state is healthy. If we are spiritually anemic, then we won't have the constitution to set up effective filters.
We will either reject things that don't need to be rejected or we will accept things that should not be accepted. Only when this thing, this thing right here, only when that is strong, only when that is strongly attached to God, only when it has inside of it uncompromisable commitments and principles, will we be able to set up the kind of filters that we need to negotiate faith, theology and religion and spirituality in America.
Closing
"May Allah reward you [with] goodness."
"Peace be upon you, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings."