“God does what He wills”: this affirmation in the Koran all too readily evokes the unfortunate image of a more or less arbitrary Divine Will, when in fact it simply means that man is in general ignorant of the motives of that Will, particularly with regard to the multiple contradictions the world displays. According to […]
We often hear people speak of the need to balance our religion (din) and our worldly lives (dunya). This is a rather uncustomary formulation in traditional Islamic parlance, especially because the Qur’an juxtaposes the akhira (afterlife), not din, with dunya. Needless to say the Muslims in the past had their priorities straight. They understood what […]
Abstract: In The Ends of Philosophy of Religion Timothy Knepper argues for a wide-ranging and globally inclusive approach to a sub-discipline of philosophy that has largely been confined to, and defined by, Anglo-American and Continental philosophical traditions on the one hand and Christian philosophical theology on the other. Knepper’s central contention is that “philosophy of […]
Abstract: Translated for this volume by Mohammed Rustom from Mullā Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī,Ithbāt-i wājib in Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn Āshtiyānī and Henry Corbin, ed., Anthologie des philosophes iraniens depuis le XVII siècle jusqu’à nos jours (Tehran, 1972–1975),vol. 1, pp. 220–243.e
Abstract: “Islam’s theological, ethical and mystical traditions have adopted a range of approaches to the question of evil. They share, however, a rootedness in the Qur ’ān, a text which repeatedly attends to the fact of human suffering, having emerged in a society which it proclaimed to be miserably deluded by false belief and custom […]
Abstract: “Ekrem Demirli (www.ekremdemirli.com/) is Professor of SufiStudies at Istanbul University (Faculty of Theology, Department of Tasawwuf), and Turkey’s foremost scholar of IbnʿArabi and Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi. Below is the edited transcript of an interview which I conducted with him concerning his life and work. Professor Demirli’s responses were given in Turkish and translated into […]
Who Speaks For The Quran (SW 37, 2016)
THE SUBJECT OF JERUSALEM is an extremely significant one for both spiritual and obviously mundane reasons. For men and women of faith, especially those who belong to the world of Abrahamic monotheism, it is of both immediate and ultimate concern…………… Nasr_Article_The Spiritual Significance Of Jerusalem_The Islamic Vision (1999)
Abstract: In An Essay on Man, the eighteenth-century British poet Alexander Pope offers a succinct formulation of an age-old philosophical doctrine about reality. This doctrine, which Arthur Lovejoy refers to as the “great chain of being,” maintains that existence is hierarchi- cal and organically linked, structured as it is upon the descending degrees of being. […]
It is well‑known that Rumi (d. 1273) was a great lover of the Prophet Muhammad. This is best typified in such verses as the ones with which the present article begins. Given our knowledge of the devotion to the Prophet that we find in Rumi’s writings and in the works of many other Sufi authors, […]
Amongst the most formidable opponents of the metaphysics of Mulla Sadra (d, 1045 AH/1636 or 1050 AH/1640) during the Safavid period was his student and son-in-law ‘Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji (d. 1071 AH/1661-2).’ Unlike Muhsin Fayd Kashani (d, 1091 AH/1680),’ Sadras other son-in law and student, Lahiji’s writings were primarily within the tradition of post-Avicennian Islamic […]
Islamic traditional teachings are couched in a language which is not easily understood by many contemporary men, especially those with a modern education. The old treatises were usually written in a syllogistic language which is no longer prevalent today. What must be done is to disengage the content of Islamic philosophy from the language which […]