Teachers and Students Reflections on Learning in Near and Middle Eastern Cultures – Collected Studies in Honour of Sebastian Günther
Near and Middle Eastern Cultures
Tag Archive for: Sufi
Falsafa. Jahrbuch für islamische Religionsphilosophie
Mystik und Vernunfterkenntnisin der Schule Ibn ʿArabī’s
Abstract:
“Despite the fact that some of the main followers of the famous Spanish Muslim mystic Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) were well-versed in the discipline of philosophy, the school of Ibn ʿArabī is often not regarded in Western scholarship as a philosophical school in the usual sense of the term. This is because Ibn ʿArabī’s followers tend to tackle the central problems of philosophy through the medium of mystical and religious symbolism (all here positively understood). In order to properly present the teachings of the school of Ibn ʿArabī as a unified philosophical perspective, therefore, I will argue that their emphasis upon symbolic formulations are largely a means by which they can present well-known rational concepts, but in accessible and concrete language. This is not, of course, an endorsement of the simplistic view which says that religious symbolism or mysticism is merely philosophy clothed”
Why Miracles Cannot Prove the Truth of Prophecy? (With a Glance at the Views of al-Ghazali, Averroes and Mulla Sadra) – را معجزه راه مناسبی برای اثبات صدق دعوی نبوت نیست؟ (با نگاهی به دیدگاه غزالی، ابنرشد و ملاصدرا))
Abstract:
“As it is well-known in theology, performing miracles is the main way prophets used to show that they are honest in their claims and are the true messengers of God. In contrast to this famous opinion, some theologians have not considered miracles as proof of the truth of prophecy. Muslim thinkers such as Mullah Sadra, al-Ghazali, Averroes, ‘Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji, and Hiji Mulla Hadi Sabzavari believe that a true believer does not base his faith and certainty on seeing a miracle from a prophet, and the religion which is the result of a miracle is the religion of ordinary people. According to them, miracles cannot bring about intellectual certainty; moreover, it is difficult to distinguish them from magic. In this article, after considering the objections in Islamic intellectual tradition, some other critiques in terms of the role of miracles in proving prophecy are introduced: the reports of miracles are not adequately sequential and multiple; the miracles are exclusively reported by the believers; there is no practical criterion for identifying miracles; the claim that miracles are related to the dominant art and techniques of the prophet’s time cannot be proved, and miracles can be explained in a completely natural –and not supernatural– way. Accordingly, it has been demonstrated that miracles narrated in religions do not serve theological functions desired by theologians. However, the best way for knowing a true prophet is investigating his teachings and experiencing his spiritual aura”
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“
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”
Creating Harmony Through Tradition in Japan – Matthew Teller
Abstract:
The tea ceremony is a marker of Japanese traditional culture, refined over centuries so that every aspect has significance, from the room setting and the arrangement of flowers to the calibrated movements of the tea master in preparing and serving the brew. Yet despite his skill, Yamamoto is not a tea master. A professor of Islamic studies at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey, he is an influential figure shaping Japanese Muslim society. His tea ceremony is taking place not in a traditional tea house but before a seated audience ranging from students to elders in Tokyo’s main congregational mosque. At the age of only 33, Yamamoto has developed what he calls an “Islamic tea ceremony” as an experiment, an innovative public workshop in which new links of understanding can be forged between Japan’s roughly 0.1-percent Muslim population and the rest of the country’s people, almost all of whom follow Buddhism and Japan’s homegrown religion, Shinto.“The point is to help people acquire the power of interpretation, the intellectual muscles of critical thinking and critical understanding of this world,” Yamamoto says. “We, as Muslims, can contribute to the prosperity and diversity of Japanese society.”
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 oer 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
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