Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

Eschatology 309
Unseen, without needing to take a specific position on precisely how
that truth will be actualised. This stands in contrast to alternative
interpretive positions which allow human reason greater scope, and may
therefore prefer allegorising interpretations when confronted with texts
that confound rationality. In the medieval period, a large majority of
Muslim theologians stood by the view that the core eschatological
doctrines and symbols must be held literally as tenets of faith. A smaller
number derived inspiration from an intellectual tradition that constructed
a dual truth system whereby archetypal or symbolic truth and
material truth were asserted to be simultaneously distinct and
compatible.
eschatology in the revealed sources
Eschatology is a large subject. It possesses both an individual and a
cosmic element in which the fate of the individual is inextricably bound
up with the purpose and destiny of the entire creation within a religious
vision. Sacred time finds its culmination, fulfilment and, ironically, its
negation or deconstruction in the drama of the Last Things. Theologians
typically held that it is among the three most fundamental Islamic
doctrines – the unity and uniqueness of God (tawh _
ıd), prophecy
(nubuwwa) and the ultimate ‘‘return’’ (ma‘ad). Typically in late kalam
manuals eschatological teachings are subsumed under the category of
sam‘iyyat, ‘‘matters heard’’, or ‘‘received in faith’’, since unlike the other
two great categories of theological concern, metaphysics and prophecy,
they are considered to lie outside the reach of rational proof. The theologian’s
task here is simply to defend scriptural predictions from
denial or misinterpretation rooted either in false scriptural exegesis
or in an inappropriate extension of ratiocination into this uniquely
revelatory area.
Islam gives a particularly important place to eschatology, partly
because of its own self-understanding as the final revelation, but also
because of the qur’anic stress on the intelligibility of history as well as
on individual human accountability. Contemporary scholars of apocalyptic
note its connection to theodicy, the concept that the things of this
world will be brought to completion in a just way in which the good and
true will be vindicated. But in addition, the end of things may be considered
the binary or corollary of the beginning of things. Our discussion
will begin with four important dimensions of the fact of creation which
set the context for the specifically eschatological motifs within Islamic
theology.
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