Tag Archive for: metaphysics

Remembering Toshihiko Izutsu: Linguist,Islamicist, Philosopher – Atif Khalil

Abstract:

“The publication of this Festschrift in honor of Professors William Chittick and Sachiko Murata coincides with the 30-year death anniversary of Toshihiko Izutsu, who was one of their teachers and one of the most remarkable scholars of Islam of the last century. Like Henry Corbin (d. 1978), with whom he forged a close friendship, Izutsu saw himself first and foremost as a philosopher, and in his own particular case, as a “metaphysician of the word.”1 The designation symbolized both his fascination with language and a lifelong preoccupation with the nature of Being to the extent that it emerges as a Word (through the kun fa-yakūn, the creative fiat) out of the silence of the formless Absolute, Beyond Being, Non-Being, or Void. In conventional academic parlance, Izutsu might also be described as a philosopher of language, a designation not wholly inaccurate as long as we keep in mind the intricate, intimate relation he believed to exist between human speech, on the one hand, and Being as a repository of meaning, on the other“

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A Scholar in the Shadow: Essays in the Legal and Theological Thought of Ibn Qayyim al-Gawziyyah, Oriente Moderno 90, 1 (2010)

Abstract:

“When strolling through the buzzing Muslim book markets at Friday prayer services, one is immediately struck by the persistent presence of Ibn Qay-yim al-ßawziyyah’s (d. 751/1350)writings paraded on the packed shelves of the market bookstalls. Ibn Qayyim al-ßawziyyah’s books, in multiple sizes and formats, in tacky colorful and flowery covers, as well as in more subdued mono-chromatic editions, have gained their secure place on the crowded stands of Muslim booksellers. As simple as this may sound, the most likely conclusion to be drawn is that, today, Ibn Qayyim al-ßawziyyah sells. The popularity he enjoys on the contemporary Muslim scene is well reflected by the recent copious scholarly production about him in Arabic, and by the current efforts to produce high quality academic editions of his works”

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“if I must die” Japanese translation of Refaat Alareer’s poem written in traditional Japanese calligraphy – Naoki Yamamoto

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  1. Source: https://twitter.com/NaokiQYamamoto ↩︎

Creating an Islamicate Fiction: Futuwwa Samurai Art – Dr Qayyim Naoki Yamamoto

Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World – Zachary Valentine 

Abstract:

Studies on eighteenth-century Islamic intellectual history tend to highlight the Wahhabi movement or “fundamentalist” movements. Few studies oer insights into less understood—though by no means less influential scholarly currents. One such book is Zachary Valentine Wright’s Realizing Islam The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World Focusing on the knowledge production of the modern Tijani Sufi order—one of the largest Sufi orders

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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

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 for over a thousand years. This form of intellectual hegemony often results in a multifaceted epistemological reductionism that denies efficacy to the analytical tools developed by the classical Islamic tradition. The presumed intellectual superiority of Euro-American analytical modes has become a constitutive and persistent feature of Quranic Studies, influencing all aspects of the field. Its persistence prevents some scholars from encountering, let alone employing, the analytical tools of the classical Islamic tradition and presents obstacles to a broader discourse in the international community of Quranic Studies scholars. Acknowledging the obstacles to which the coloniality of knowledge has given rise


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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 Ibn ʿArabī’s foremost propagator, Ṣadr alDīn Qûnawī. Farghānī wrote a dense, two-volume commentary on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s famous 760- verse qasida, Naẓm al-sulûk. Deeply rooted in Islamic metaphysics, theology, and spiritual psychology, the commentary explains how the poet is describing Muhammad’s eternal archetype in God as both the means whereby God creates the universe and the ultimate returning place of all things.

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