From Revelation to Reimagination: Case Studies in Sunnī Islamic Eschatology over 1,400 Years

Presenter

Andrew Justin Bielecki

Campus

UMass Amherst

Sponsor

Anne F. Broadbridge, Department of History, UMass Amherst

Schedule

Session 2, 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM [Schedule by Time][Poster Grid for Time/Location]

Location

Poster Board C18, Poster Showcase Room (163), Row 2 (C11-C20) [Poster Location Map]

Abstract

Islamic eschatology, particularly of the Sunnī tradition, has developed over the past fourteen centuries in ways that have created both a plurality of approaches and interpretations of core Islamic scripture (i.e., the Qurʾān and the aḥadīth) and common practices, as well as disparate religious, sociocultural, and geopolitical circumstances based upon this diversity of understanding. Though many academic scholars of the Islamic World and Islamic thought have written about this subject, few truly comprehend how Sunnī Muslims understand their own eschatologies historically and contemporaneously, how specific individuals and larger groups alike produce such knowledge, and how eschatological dialogues between Muslim and non-Muslim communities produce profoundly different eschatologies at different points in time. By examining the early Islamic period under the Rashidūn Caliphate, the initial centuries of expansion in the Ottoman Empire, and the recent actions by Salafī jihādist organizations like al-Qāʿida and the Islamic State, one can gain both better insight into the congruity of Sunnī Islamic thought since the time of the Prophet Muḥammad as well as perspective on how eschatologies branch, mutate, coalesce, and divide over and over again.

Keywords

Islamic eschatology, Sunnī Islam, Rashidūn Caliphate, The Ottoman Empire, The Islamic State

Research Area

History

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