Human Agency, Responsibility, and Tawḥīd

This chapter continues to treat Şaban Ali Düzgün’s work, exploring his take on human agency and moving from an abstract sense of communal responsibility towards more concrete and constructive Muslim responses to the trauma of Western colonialism. By highlighting his understanding of human agency, it explores Düzgün’s theological and conceptual toolbox, showing how he draws confidently on Enlightenment and classical Islamic resources to produce a holistic vision of the individual in positive relationship with God. Specifically, this chapter shows how Düzgün finesses conceptions of human knowledge and affirms human plurality—a plurality facilitated by divine unity that does not stand in antagonistic relationship to individual agency. For Düzgün, tawḥīd, or God’s utter oneness, stands in positive and open relation to an empowered individual piously conscious of her responsibility to society and those around her.