Tag Archive for: Sufi

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, first describing what it is, and second enumerating the problems connected with it. Intellectual imperialism has, among other things, resulted in a displacement of attention from issues that should be of vital concern to Asian and African societies. The emancipation of the mind from the shackles of intellectual imperialism is the major condition for the development of a creative and autonomous social science tradition in developing societies.

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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 discover the fundamental nature of existence and Sufism relies on spiritual experience, it was not until the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī that philosophy and Sufism converged into a single framework by elaborating spiritual doctrines in precise philosophical language. Contextualizing the historical development of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s school, the work draws from the earliest commentators of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s oeuvre, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274), ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Kāshānī (d. ca. 730/1330) and Dawūd al-Qayṣarī (d. 751/1350), but also draws from the medieval heirs of his doctrines Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī (d. 787/1385), the pivotal intellectual and mystical figure of Persia who recast philosophical Sufism within the framework of Twelver Shīʿism and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), the key figure in the dissemination of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s ideas in the Persianate world as well as the Ottoman Empire, India, China and East Asia via Central Asia. Lucidly written and comprehensive in scope, with careful treatments of the key authors, Philosophical Sufism is a highly accessible introductory text for students and researchers interested in Islam, philosophy, religion and the Middle East.

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Review of Yousef Casewit’s The Divine Names – Arthur Schechter, Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies

Abstract:

The near-total neglect in modern Western scholarship of ʿAfīf al-Dīn Sulaymān b. ʿAlī al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291) is as baffling as it is regrettable. A prolific mystical author and giſted poet, he not only studied with both the leading luminary of later Sufism Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240)and his stepson Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī (d. 673/1274) but was himself the son-in-law of the firebrand “monist” Sufi Ibn Sabʿīn (d. 669/1258). though a fellow student under Qūnawī of the renowned poet Fakhr al-Dīn al-ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289) as well as other Ibn ʿArabian scholars such as Saʿīd al-Dīn al-Farghānī (d. 699/1300) and Muʿayyad al-Dīn al-Jandī (d. 688/1289), he also studied hadith under Imām al-Nawawī (d. 676/1277). None other than Ibn Taymiyyah (728/1328) lambasted him for disbelief while nevertheless confessing the exceptional quality of his verse. And though hailing from Morocco, he even learned Persian in Konya during the time of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (672/1273) and most likely made his personal acquaintance. Indeed, it seems incomprehensible how a figure so uniquely positioned in his world as Tilimsānī could have remained without an entire article devoted to him in the Encyclopedia of Islam

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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 of the greatest scholars of his time, Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir Dāmād Astarābādī (d. 1631/1041), with whom he studied philosophy and theology, and the enigmatic sage and jurist, Shaykh Bahāʾ ad-Dīn ʿĀmilī known as Shaykh Bahāʾī (d. 1620–21/1030) with whom he studied transmitted sciences and Qurʾānic exegesis. Having mastered both intellectual and transmitted sciences, he retreated to Kahak, a village outside of Qum, Iran, where he composed his magnum opus, al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya fi l-asfār al-ʿaqliyya al-arbaʿa (Transcendent Philosophy on the Four Intellectual Journeys), popularly known as al- Asfār al-arbaʿa (The Four Journeys). He composed more than fifty works, but it was in the Asfār that he formulated a comprehensive philosophical system that integrated reason, revelation, and mystical experience. Mullā Ṣadrā’s school of “Transcendent Philosophy” (al-Ḥikma al-mutaʿāliya) synthesized several major streams of Islamic thought, including scholastic theology (kalām), Avicennan (d. 1037/428) Peripatetic philosophy (mashshāʾ), Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191/587) Illuminationist philosophy (ḥikmat al-ishrāq), and the Sufism of Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240/638).

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Pripovijedanje kao filozofskapedagogija: primjer Suhrawardīja

Abstract:

Sažetak: Ovo je prijevod teksta koji tretira možda najpoznatiju simboličku pripovijest Shihāb al-Dīna Suhrawardīja (u. 587/1191), a to je njegovo djelo Āwāz-i par-i Jibrā’īl (Odjek Džibrilovog krila). Naime, među spisima Suhrawardīja, osnivača Škole prosvjetljenja i ključne ličnosti u postibnsīnāovskoj islamskoj filozofiji, nalazi se niz vizionarskih kazivanja, jer je korištenje

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La Grande chaîne de la conscience – Par Mohammed Rustom

Dans son Essai sur l’homme, le poète britannique Alexander Pope proposait au XVIIIèsiècle une formulation succincte d’une ancienne doctrine philosophique de la réalité. Cette doctrine, à laquelle Arthur Lovejoy a donné le nom de “grande chaîne des êtres,” soutient que l’existence est une structure organique, entremêlée et hiérarchisée, reposant sur les degrés décroissants d’états de l’existence. La réalité vient de Dieu et elle part de Lui, l’Être Suprême; et elle vient trouver sa fin dans la plus infinitésimale des formes d’existence. Chaque élément du cosmos, y compris le cosmos lui-même, nourrit un lien vital avec les autres éléments qui en composent la grande chaîne. Pour citer Pope:

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NEKI SAVJETI I OPOMENE U POGLEDU ISLAMSKIH NAUKA1 – Mohammed Rustom, S engleskog preveo Haris DUBRAVAC

Sažetak: U ovom nevelikom tekstu Mohammed Rustom, redovni profesor islamskih nauka na Carleton univerzitetu
(Kanada), upućuje savjete koji su u vezi s napredovanjem kroz različite faze akademskog života u islamskim
naukama. Često su ti savjeti iz praktičnog domena zbog čega onome ko se osposobljava kao proučavalac mogu
biti od iznimne koristi, naročito studentima islamskih nauka. Pažljivom čitaocu neće promaći to da se kroz ovih
sedamdeset naputaka povremeno mogu vidjeti proplamsaji spoznaja stečenih autorovim marljivim proučavanjem
klasičnih tekstova iz islamske filozofije i sufizma, s tim što su iskazane na savremen način. Ovaj rad je objavljen u
dva različita časopisa i preveden je na perzijski jezik.

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Armando Montoya Jordán’s Review of Orfali, Khalil, and Rustom (eds.), Mysticism and Ethics in Islam (Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, 2024)

Is the science of ethics entirely separate from mysticism, or might mysticism be the foundation of ethics? Or, conversely, might mysticism be the fruit of a higher ethics? these and other such questions come to the fore in a variety of ways in this important volume, a commendable attempt to produce a historical and conceptual survey of the intersections between mysticism and ethics in Islam.

The book addresses the parameters of ethics within the Muslim tradition through the analyses of a variety of authors who wrote in languages as diverse as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Russian, and Chinese. Many of them, we learn, were not necessarily bound to the postulates of Greek philosophy, even though the latter did exert a tremendous influence on the
development of ethics in Islam by defining some of the key problems in the discipline.

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Why Self-Care Is Not Enough: The Nature of True Well-Being – Samuel Bendeck Sotillos

The notion of self-care—like its precursor, self-help—has emerged due to a spiritual vacuum in the contemporary world. The burgeoning mental health crisis that is prevalent today appears inseparable from the broader existential predicament facing humanity. Mainstream psychology and its therapies have not been able to address these challenges, in response to which we have seen the inevitable rise of self-care remedies. Across humanity’s diverse spiritual cultures, these have always been available, yet they were invariably grounded in a religious tradition and its sacred psychology. The more we are marginalized from such roots, the more self-care is required our current obsession with which is the unacknowledged search for wholeness due to modern people having lost their sense of the sacred

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Metaphysical Institutions: Islam and the Modern Project – Caner K Dagli

What is real, possible, and good when it comes to human beings thinking together about the real, the possible, and the good? In this book, these ultimate questions will be explored on their own terms, and will be made particular through a question that is often limited to history, anthropology, and religious studies, namely, “What is Islam?” is latter topic continues to attract a great deal of scholarly attention oriented toward establishing a “useful concept” of Islam or a guideline by which to judge something “Islamic,” but it has deep metaphysical implications far beyond this defini- tional question’s relevance to any particular research program. At root, the work at hand is both a philosophical treatise about shared thinking that uses the encounter between the Modern Project and Islam as an illustrative example, and also an exploration of the conceptualization of Islam in light of the metaphysics of consciousness and meaning.

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