Developments in Islamic Thought | OCR A-Level Religious Studies (H573)

Developments in Islamic Thought

222 questions
12 subtopics
Components 03 to 07: Developments in Religious Thought, one religion of five
Components 03–07

Component 04, one of the five Developments in Religious Thought options.

Revelation and the Prophet, the sources of Sunni and Shi'a Islam, the oneness of God and human destiny, the Shari'a in practice, Sufism, and Islam's engagement with science, gender, tolerance, justice, the state and life in Europe.

Sample questions from Developments in Islamic Thought

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

The 12 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Prophecy and revelation in Islam	Recall questions on nubuwwa and wahy, the angel of revelation, nabi and rasul, Ibrahim, Musa and Isa, the Prophet Muhammad as seal of the prophets, tahrif, the inimitability of the Qur'an, revelation in ritual and festivals, and Islam's relationship to Judaism and Christianity.	20
Hadith, Sira and the formation of Sunni and Shi'a Islam	Recall questions on Hadith and Sira and their limits as sources, the first revelation in al-Bukhari and Ibn Hisham, the Sunni and Shi'a accounts of the succession, the Imams and ahl al-bayt, the salaf and consensus, religious authority, and whether the division is political or theological.	18
The oneness of God (tawhid)	Recall questions on tawhid, the Qur'an on God's unity and incomparability, the kalam cosmological argument, the Qur'anic arguments from design and against more than one God, the Mu'tazilite, Ash'arite and Hanbali approaches to anthropomorphic descriptions of God, and why speculative theology has been distrusted.	18
Human destiny, the afterlife and divine will	Recall questions on the purposes of human existence, Adam, the barzakh and the Day of Resurrection, divine justice and mercy, heaven and hell, Mu'tazilite free will and the Ash'arite doctrine of kasb, Ghazali on free will and omnipotence, and life as a test.	18
The Shari'a and Islamic law in practice	Recall questions on Shari'a and fiqh, the scriptural and non-scriptural sources of law, ijtihad and taqlid, the madhhabs, rulings on intoxicants, riba and tobacco, the aims of the law, Shari'a in daily life, and whether Islamic law can answer new problems.	18
Sufism and Islamic spirituality	Recall questions on ihsan, dhikr and tazkiyat al-nafs, fana' and baqa' in drunken and sober Sufism, shatahat, states and stations, wilaya, master and disciple, the tariqa, Rumi's Song of the Reed, whether Sufism is authentic to Islam, and reformist criticism of it.	18
Islam, science and philosophy	Recall questions on the Qur'an and the study of nature, medieval Muslim medicine, mathematics and astronomy, Ghazali's crises and his judgement of the philosophers and causation, Ibn Rushd on philosophy and religious law, levels of knowledge and his reply to Ghazali, and their lasting influence.	19
Gender in Islam: equality, law and feminism	Recall questions on the spiritual and legal equality of women and men, significant women of early Islam, local culture, awra and modesty, family law, feminist rereadings of scripture and their critics, the headscarf and the veil, and Muslim women's religious scholarship.	18
Tolerance, religious freedom and apostasy	Recall questions on the Qur'an on compulsion in religion, ahl al-kitab, the dhimma contract, the treatment of minorities in medieval and modern Muslim societies, Ghazali on unbelief, classical and modern positions on apostasy, and whether Islam is a tolerant religion.	18
Justice, jihad and liberation	Recall questions on justice in the Qur'an, enjoining right and forbidding wrong, greater and lesser jihad and the conditions on armed jihad, terrorism, mercy, qisas, diya and maslaha, Ali Shari'ati and the Iranian revolution, and Abdal Hakim Murad's critique of Islamist revivalism.	21
Islam and the state	Recall questions on the contractual Sunni state, ruler and ulama, rebellion, the Shi'a Imam, the occultation and wilayat al-faqih, secularism, Western legal codes and reactions to them, religion and state in pre-modern thought, and whether democracy and the nation-state are compatible with Islam.	18
Islam in Europe	Recall questions on hijra and the classical categories of territory, da'wa, minority jurisprudence and its critics, European Islam and Mustafa Ceric's declaration, Bosnia, multiculturalism and French laicite, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hostility, and integration and coexistence.	18

Developments in Islamic Thought is 222 of the 1,584 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £8

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.