Entries by simar
Sufis and Muʿtazilites: Theological Engagements of Ibn ʿArabī – Yydogan Kars
“This paper introduces Ibn ʿArabī’s depictions of, encounters with, and responses to the preeminent Islamic theological school, Muʿtazilism. Ibn ʿArabī fourished during the eclipse of Muʿtazilism, yet his corpus demonstrates close familiarity with their theological claims. Therefore an analysis of his depic- tions of Muʿtazilism gives us important insights on the trans- mission and reception […]
“Decolonial translation: destabilizing coloniality in secular translations of Islamic law.” Journal of Islamic Ethics 5 (2021): 250-77 – Lena Salaymeh
“Contemporary Islamic legal studies—both inside and outside the Muslim world— commonly relies upon a secular distortion of law. In this article, I use translation as a metonym for secular transformations and, accordingly, I will demonstrate how secular ideology translates the Islamic tradition. A secular translation converts the Islamic tra- dition into “religion” (the non-secular) and […]
“Hebrew law: a secular translation of Jewish law.” Trumah 26 (2023): 113-24
“The author highlights three interrelated aspects of Jewish law: that it is a non-state legal tradi- tion, it is neither secular nor religious, and its application within Israeli law results in a secular hybridization of Jewish law. That is, Hebrew law combines aspects of the Jewish tradition and secularism. Using historicist and critical approaches, the […]
Foreword to Oludamini Ogunnaike, The Book of Clouds (Fons Vitae, 2024) – Mohammed Rustom
“As the blessed Prophet’s words indicate, the cloud is connected to the “space” wherein God resides, and which transforms into the rain of mercy (raḥma) that pervades all things. As a metaphysical reality, Ibn ʿArabī explains that the primordial Cloud (ʿamāʾ) is the ontological, basis of the Muhammadan Reality (ḥaqīqa Muḥammadiyya) and directly corresponds to […]
Justice, Nonaggression, and Military Ethics in Islam – Asma Afsaruddin
“In the sixteenth century, the Spanish jurist Francisco de Vitoria helped de- velop the principle of noncombatant immunity in Europe, which today has become a hallmark of modern international law. This principle is foregrounded in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols enacted in 1949 that form the core of in- ternational humanitarian law, as […]
M. F. Attar 2021 Review of Michael Noble’s “Philosophizing the Occult” – M. Fariduddin Attar
“Michael Noble’s Philosophizing the Occult lies at the intersection of two recent developments in Islamic studies: (1) the renewed appreciation for the philosophical and theological thought of the Sunnī theologian and polymath Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), a trend that has led to an exponential growth of studies devoted to this figure since the 2000s; […]
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, […]
Musical Instruments in Samāʿ Literature: al-Udfuwī’s Kitāb al-Imtāʿ bi-aḥkām as-samāʿ – Yaron Klein
Samāʿ literature reveals a tension in premodern Islamicate societies. While musical practices were ubiquitous and practiced in many contexts, Islamic legal tradition regarded them with suspicion. Musical instruments occupied a central place in these discussions, perhaps, because as physical objects associated with what is otherwise in the non-tangible domain of sound they were seen as […]
La Grande chaîne de la conscience – Par Mohammed Rustom
“Dans son Essai sur l’homme, le poète britannique Alexander Pope proposait au XVIIIèsiècle une formulation succincte d’une ancienne doctrine philosophique de la réalité. Cettedoctrine, à laquelle Arthur Lovejoy a donné le nom de “grande chaîne des êtres,” soutientque l’existence est une structure organique, entremêlée et hiérarchisée, reposant sur lesdegrés décroissants d’états de l’existence. La réalité […]
Spiritual Practice in the Arabic Hagiography of the Chinese G ̌ ahrīya Sufi Order – Florian Sobieroj
Abstract: “The hagiography of the Chinese branch of the Naqšbandīya order of Islamic mysticism called Ǧahrīya has been recorded, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries , in some Arabic and Persian language texts. These include stories about the founder of the Sufi order, Ma Mingxin (d. 1781), and his successors in the first few […]
A new light on the Sufi network of Mindanao (Philippines) – Oman Fathurahman
“This article attempts to fill the gap in the very limited knowledge of the history of Islam and Muslim intellectual tradition in Mindanao in the 19th century. It particularly deals with a set of primary sources of Islamic manuscripts recently found in the Lanao area of Mindanao, southern Philippines, which formerly belonged to a Maranao […]