The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

liberation theology

Liberation theology privileges the perspective of the poor and considers transformation of social orders the central theological task. It stresses human liberation from all forms of oppression: social, political, economic, religious, racial, and environmental. Latin American liberation theology focuses on social, political, and economic oppression; South African liberation theology focuses on racism; and Asian liberation theology focuses on issues surrounding religious pluralism. According to Gustavo Gutiérrez (b. 1928), a key theorist, theology is a second act; praxis and contemplation are the first. Liberation theology is a new method of theology that transcends mere exposition and emerges from a context of lived oppression.

Vatican II (1962 onward) and the 1968 Medellin Conference in Colombia formalized liberation theology, reflecting a trend in Catholic social teaching that began with Rerum Novarum, an encyclical issued by Leo XIII in 1891 on the “Condition of Labour,” and continued with landmark papal encyclicals in the 1960s. These encyclicals emphasized social justice, church and state as liberating forces for the poor and the oppressed, and workers’ rights. They also affirmed the responsibilities of richer nations for the welfare of poorer ones and denounced unbridled capitalism. In 1967, a group of bishops from Latin America, Asia, and Africa wrote “A Letter to the Peoples of the Third World,” which declared that revolution was a legitimate means to combat injustice and pointed fingers at the wealthy as instigators of violence. The Medellin Conference focused squarely on the church’s role in the sociopolitics of Latin America and gave birth to the central tenet of liberation theology: “a preferential option for the poor.” “The poor” was a broad term that included races and ethnicities suffering racism and women doubly exploited for being poor and for being women. Christian Base Communities appeared in the 1970s as the base of grassroots political action for faith as a liberating force. Since the 1990s, new perspectives have moved the discourse beyond economics and sociology. Women, indigenous peoples, and blacks speak of the broader “option for the excluded” and address topics of racism, culture, indigenous non-Christian spirituality, and nonpatriarchal ecclesiology. Other nontraditional subjects include ecology and interreligious dialogue.

Muslim theologians have only recently adopted the explicit terminology of liberation theology developed in Christian contexts. However, theologians like Shabbir Akhtar (b. 1960) and Asghar Ali Engineer (b. 1939) argue that the Qur’anic approach is fundamentally one of liberation, and they take inspiration from the Prophet Muhammad and his community as exemplifying struggle against injustice. Akhtar declares liberation theology an “Islamization of Christianity.” Arguing the necessity for political religion, he claims that the political dimension of Islam was present from the inception of Muhammad’s career. Akhtar argues that religion must engage with political power because of a moral responsibility to do so and because it is a natural human pursuit that should be regulated rather than wished away. He contrasts the “effective passivity [of Christianity] in the face of gross injustice” to the Qur’an’s “morally constrained political action.” He criticizes Christian thinkers for acknowledging the social dimensions of individual evil while proposing solutions only at the individual level, in contrast to Muslim thinkers, who address evil at a structural level. Engineer argues that Muhammad’s movement stressed liberation from ignorance, superstition, and injustice through the power of reason and the pursuit of knowledge but that the Qur’anic spirit was lost once these ideas became merely subjects for theological reflection. Engineer emphasizes compassion as a central Qur’anic value and argues that warfare is legitimate only if fought on compassionate grounds to protect the rights of the oppressed and exploited. He identifies Sufi theology, with its focus on spiritual praxis, as closer to the heart of the people.

Irfan Omar argues that 19th- and 20th-century Muslim revivalist movements, which began as anticolonial struggles for economic and political liberation and self-determination, can be viewed through the lens of liberation theology. For example, Afghani (d. 1897), like many contemporary liberation theologians, divided the world into two categories: oppressor and oppressed. While anticolonial movements attempted to revive the political authority of Islam, postcolonial movements call for liberation from dependency on the West and resist Western military hegemony and adventurism, nationalism, cultural globalization, and economic liberalism. In an essay in Miguel A. De La Torre’s The Hope of Liberation in World Religions, Omar argues that many of these movements can be counted as theologies because they “acknowledge the divine dispensation in how and what they set out to achieve.” They include Palestinian theologies of liberation in the nonviolent intifada of the 1980s, as well as the more recent stand taken by African and Asian Muslims against globalization. They can also include the “Islamization of knowledge” movement, which integrates Qur’anically based epistemologies and ethical constraints into secular Western intellectual tools, categories, and modes of analysis.

These same movements also seek the liberation of Muslims from within by using Qur’an-based reasoning to analyze Muslim societies. ‘Ali Shari‘ati (1933–77) embraced socialist trends within the Qur’anic message and posited tawḥīd (unity of God) as a perfect means to implement this, while Hizbullah’s Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (1935–2010) criticized metaphysical discussions of justice that ignored realities like unjust rulers. Transnational groups include the Abu Dharr Collective, which articulates a theology of social justice, and the Muslim Peace Fellowship, which is devoted to the theory and practice of Islamic nonviolence. Akin to the Christian tradition, the insights of liberation theology have been applied much more broadly to issues of race, gender, and religious pluralism, equally influenced by Muhammad’s example. The South African Farid Esack (b. 1959) seeks an Islam committed to contemporary progressive values and, more particularly, a South African Islam committed to the disempowered. His theology is founded on an alternative hermeneutical approach to the Qur’an that emphasizes praxis as the ultimate source of doctrinal orientation and stresses the historicity of and human experience behind the text while maintaining its universality and relevance for contemporary Muslims. Esack infuses his “horizon” as a South African Muslim under apartheid into the “Qur’anic horizon” to rediscover the text’s identification with the oppressed and its embrace of pluralism. Hamid Dabashi argues for a postcivilizational period in global conflict and explores post-Islamist responses to these new configurations of power. He articulates liberation theology as an attempt by those who have been denied a say in politics to democratize their voice, and he explores alternative resources for a politics of liberation, which include artistic movements like Iranian cinema and the ta‘ziya, a Shi‘i passion play, as a central performance of Islam as protest religion. Inspired by Malcolm X (1925–65), Dabashi stresses that an effective Islamic liberation theodicy must offer a solution to the disenfranchised in the heart of the “empire” (the United States) beyond an offer of conversion to Islam. Sherman Jackson, professor and scholar of law and Afro-American studies and a leading theological voice among American Muslims, addresses racial dimensions by seeking Qur’anic foundations for the protest agenda of black religion. Critiquing scholarship on the black American experience that denies the oppressor-oppressed paradigm, he explores the theological debate on black suffering through the lens of the Sunni tradition and argues that this tradition grants human beings agency in improving their condition. The Muslim feminist scholar Amina Wadud argues that women can be liberated through the Qur’anic text itself; though the prior texts of predominantly male Qur’an interpreters excluded women’s experience, revisiting the text from a woman’s perspective opens vast possibilities for nuanced approaches to gender. Another Muslim feminist scholar, Kecia Ali, rethinks Islamic sexual ethics to accommodate values of meaningful consent and mutuality, which she posits as crucial for a just ethics of sexuality, and gives precedence to wider Qur’anic principles of justice rather than specific “time-bound” commands.