Maratib al-Taqwa: Sa’id al-Din Farghani on the Ontology of Ethics

Given the philosophical tradition’s explicit acknowledgment that “the Necessary in Existence” (al-wājib al-wujūd) is a proper designation for God per se, and given the fact that this acknowledgment came to be shared by various forms of Sufism and Kalam, it should come as no surprise that many scholars who investigated the reality of the human, “created upon the form of God,” concluded that ethical perfection amounted to the soul’s harmonious conformity with the Real Existence (al-wujūd al-ḥaqq). Early on, philosophers tended to keep ontology separate from ʿilm al-akhlāq, the science of ethics, but they used expressions like al-tashabbuh bi’l-ilāh, “similarity to the God,” and taʾalluh, “deiformity,” to designate the state of human perfection. Achieving perfection demanded transformation of khulq

Some honest talk about Non-Indigenous Education; Our Schools Our Selves. Winter 2011. Vol.20, No.2, pp.19-34

Abstract:

This narrowness is not by accident — it is by design. Big “E”Education has to limit who gets in and what it does in order tobe able to confer both valuable credentials on its graduates, andlegitimacy on the subjects under its gaze.Ask the Oppenheimerfamily how DeBeers made its fortune with diamonds: to makesomething valuable you have to make it scarce.If we read between the lines of thi sAccord,

Application instituting proceedings and request for the indication of provisional measures THE HAGUE – The International Court of Justice (ICJ)

Abstract:

“Proceedings instituted by South Africa against the State of Israel on 29 December 2023 – Request for the indication of provisional measures – Public hearings to be held on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 January 2024”

Atonement, Returning, and Repentance in Islam – Atif Khalil

Abstract:

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how in Islam the principle mechanism for atonement lies in tawba(returning, repentance). Divided into four sections, and drawing primarily on the literature of classical Sufism, the analysis begins by defining some key terms related to the idea of atonement, with special attention to the language of the Quran. Then it outlines three conditions of returning, repentance, and atonement, delineated by classical Muslim authorities, before turning to a brief overview of the concept of amending wrongs or settings matters aright. It concludes with some final remarks about the possibilities of atonement available until death, and the soteriological role divine mercy is believed to play in the posthumous states of the soul

Humility in Islamic Contemplative Ethics – Atif Khalil

Abstract:

“From the origins of Islamic history, humility (khushūʿ /tawāḍuʿ ) has occupied a cen-tral place in Muslim piety. This has been in large part due to its defining role in the Qurʾān and Hadīths, and no less because it stands as the opposite of pride (kibr )—the cardinal sin of both Iblīs and Pharaoh in Scripture. By drawing on the literature of Sufism or taṣawwuf   from its formative period to the 20th century—spanning the writings of such figures as al-Makkī (d. 386/996), al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), Ibn al-ʿArabī(d. 638/1240), Rūmī (d. 672/1273), al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565), al-Darqāwī (d. 1239/1823),and al-Sharnūbī (d. 1348/1929)—the article examines the defining characteristics ofthis virtue, its marks or signs, and the dangers that lie in its embodiment. In the pro-cess, we shall see how humility occupies a place somewhere in between pride, conceit, and self-admiration, on the one hand, and self-loathing, self-denigration, and outright self-hatred, on the other. Although humility is, in theory, to be exercised towards both God and other human beings, the precise nature of its embodiment, as we might expect, varies in relation to both. The article ends with an epilogue on what it means to transcend humility altogether”

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Ken Garden’s Review of Al-Ghazali, The Condemnation of Pride and Self-Admiration

Abstract:

“The Revival of the Religious Sciences is an enduring masterpiece of the Islamic tradition, a summa of Islamic religious disciplines (law, theology, etc.) within a rubric of virtue ethics, written by one of the most renowned thinkers of that tradition, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111). Admirers of the book in subsequent centuries enthused that, “if all the books of Islam were lost, the Revival would suffice for them,” and that the Revival “verged on being a Qur’an” (Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, Itḥāf al-sāda al-muttaqīn bi-sharḥ iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 2nd ed., 14 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2002), vol. I, 37)”

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Sufism, Scripture and Scholarship: From Graham to Guénon and Beyond By Atif Khalil and Shiraz Sheikh

Abstract:

The origins of the academic study of Sufism in Western scholarship
may be retraced to the second half of the 18th century, with the first
independent work on the subject appearing in 1819 by Lt. James W.
Graham (d. 1845), an officer working on the staff of Sir John Malcolm (d.
1833), a scholar-general in the British colonial army. Originally delivered….

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Love in Islamic Thought – William C. Chittick

Abstract:

Western studies of Islam have paid relatively little attention to love. Early scholars
were heirs to a long history of European animosity toward this upstart religion and tended to
assume that love was a Christian monopoly. When Muslim writing on love did come to their
attention, they typically considered it peripheral or borrowed, often by classifying it as “Sufi.”
As Carl Ernst explains, “The term Sufi-ism was invented at the end of the eighteenth century, as
an appropriation of those portions of ‘Oriental’ culture that Europeans found attractive.

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