Evil, Suffering, and the Art of Listening in Islamic Philosophy
This was a lecture recently given for Global Philosophy Research Interest Group. Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto. Toronto, December 1st, 2023
Entries by simar
An Elegy for Gaza
This poem was written to mourn the thousands of people killed in Gaza and millions more whose lives still hang in the balance. The poem references locations in Gaza as well as the Qur’an, the mu’allaqa of Imru’l-Qays, Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Silence for the Sake of Gaza,” and Dan Heymann’s anti-apartheid song, “Weeping.”
Decolonizing Quranic Studies – Joseph E. B. Lumbard
Abstract: The legacy of colonialism continues to influence the analysis of the Quran in the Euro-American academy. While Muslim lands are no longer directly colonized, intellectual colonialism continues to prevail in the privileging of Eurocentric systems of knowledge production to the detriment and even exclusion of modes of analysis that developed in the Islamic world […]
Farghānī on the Muhammadan Reality – William C. Chittick
Abstract: Perhaps the closest parallel to the Johannine Logos in Islam is found in the notion of the “Muhammadan Reality” (al-ḥaqīqat al-muḥammadiyya). The term was probably first used by Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), but the earliest detailed explanation of what it implies was provided by Saʿīd ibn Aḥmad Farghānī (d. 1300), an outstanding student of […]
The Student and the Sage – Mohammed Rustom
Abstract: Plagued by the problem of evil, a student of philosophy and religion finds himself in great despair, with many more annoying questions than satisfying answers. The student passes by a certain ḥakīm, or sage, as he takes his usual route to his early morning philosophy of religion seminar. Drawn towards the sage’s luminous presence, […]
Life after life: Mulla Sadra on death and immortality – Muhammad U. Faruque
Abstract: The purpose of this article is twofold: first, I will reconstruct Mullā Ṣadrā’s complex arguments for the soul’s immortality based on its immaterial nature. Second and finally, I will briefly probe and assess various epistemological and metaphysical objections against Ṣadrā’s immaterialist conception of the soul. Ṣadrā contends that our bodily death marks an awakening […]