Entries by simar

Dreaming Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: Dreams and Knowledge in the Works of Shaykh Dan Tafa – Oludamini Ogunnaike

This article explores five remarkable works (currently in unpublished manuscript form) by ʿAbd al-Qādir b. Muṣṭafā (known as “Dan Tafa”) (1804–1864), a 19th-century West African Sufi scholar of the Sokoto Caliphate, to examine the ways in which dreams were (and are) theorized in the unique synthesis of Sufi, occult, philosophi- cal/medical, theological, and exegetical disciplines […]

Avicennian DDS: the divine essence, knowledge, and power – Davlat Dadikhuda

In the Islamic tradition, there’s a long standing controversy over the relationship between God’s attributes and His essence, giving rise to diverse theories with significant theological implications. In one respect, these views are broadly categorizable into three: A1, the doctrine of divine complexity (DDC), A2, the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS), and B, the doctrine […]

Returning to the Central Question of the Humanities: What Does it mean to be Human and to share Human consciousness?

Caner Dagli’s Metaphysical Institutions: Islam & the Modern Project is an interdisciplinary treatise on the nature of shared thinking—with an emphasis on interdisciplinary. What strikes the reader first and foremost is both the many topics Dagli covers—religion, modern philosophy, human consciousness, and of course Islam and modernity, inter alia—and the rationally coherent employment of various […]

What Muslim Scholars Talk About When They Talk About Love – Marion Katz

Scholars often assume that love is a concern alien to Islamic legal discourses. However, the composition of love poetry has been a core cultural competence of elite Muslims throughout the premodern history of Islamicate societies. In fact, love was a preoccupation across disciplines and genres. This article examines a work on love by an important […]

Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi

The human soul, whose initiation the recitals “image,” has itself the structure of a pair, formed of the practical intellect and the contemplative intellect. In its superior state, the state of intimacy with the Angel of Knowledge and Revelation, the second of these “terrestrial angels,” the contemplative in tellect, is qualified as intellectus sanctus and […]

Intellectual Imperialism: Definition, Traits, and Problems – Syed Farid Alatas

Imperialism is not confined to the political or economic aspects of the historical process. Rather, it is to be considered as a cluster. A phenomenon such as imperialism is a cluster of different aspects of human undertakings. What is usually discussed is economic and political imperialism. In this paper, however, we turn to intellectual imperialism, […]

Philosophical Sufism: An Introduction to the School of Ibn al-ʿArabī

Analyzing the intersection between Sufism and philosophy, this volume is a sweeping examination of the mystical philosophy of Muḥyī-l-Dīn Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 637/1240), one of the most influential and original thinkers of the Islamic world. This book systematically covers Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ontology, theology, epistemology, teleology, spiritual anthropology and eschatology. While philosophy uses deductive reasoning to […]

Mullā Ṣadrā – Mukhtar H Ali: Introduction

Abstract: Ṣadr ad-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm ash-Shīrāzī (1571–1640/980–1050), popularly known as Mullā Ṣadrā, is considered the culminating figure of Islamic philosophy in Persia. Born into an aristocratic family in Shīrāz, he was given the best education from an early age in the city of his birth. He then traveled to Isfahan to study under two […]