Entries by Tony Soprano

Neo-Orientalism and the Study of Islamic Philosophy: An Interview with Professor Mohammed Rustom

Abstract: After attending Professor Rustom’s advanced seminar on Ibn Sina at Carleton University in winter 2017, doctoral candidate Soroosh Shahriari of McGill University, Canada, “brought up the possibility of . . [posing] some ‘hard’ questions concerning the contemporary study of Islamic philosophy.” Rustom’s in-depth knowledge of the method and spirit of traditional Islamic education and Islamic […]

Roads to paradise : Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam

Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam offers a multi-disciplinary study of Muslim thinking about paradise, death, apocalypse, and the hereafter. It focuses on eschatological concepts in the Quran and its exegesis, Sunni and Shi‘i traditions, Islamic theology, philosophy, mysticism, and other scholarly disciplines reflecting Islamicate pluralism and cosmopolitanism…………….. A Philosopher’s […]

The Question of Theodicies by Frithjof Schuon

“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 […]

Our “Share” in this World By Mohammed Rustom

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 […]

Notes on the Semantic Range of ‘Deliverance’ in the Quran

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 […]

Mulla Rajab, On the Necessary Being and The Fundamental Principle

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

Islam and the Problem of Evil by Timothy Winter

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 […]

An Interview with Ekrem Demirli, Turkey’s Leading Scholar of Ibn ʿArabi and Qunawi

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 […]

THE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE OF JERUSALEM-THE ISLAMIC VISION*

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)

The Great Chain of Consciousness :Do All Things Possess Awareness?

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. […]