Category: Philosophy
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Spiker’s Hierarchy & Freedom: A Case For Akbarianism Against the Poverty of Modernity
Hasan Spiker’s most recent work, Hierarchy & Freedom, explores the historical/philosophical relationship between “hierarchy” and “freedom” in Western thought, providing a convincing case for Platonism and its innate hierarchical structures in opposition to the empirical, positivistic philosophical structure forwarded by the West.
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Exploring Love Through Poetry: The Question of Happiness
The term ḥubb possesses the term khamr (wine) as a synonym, and khamr, in turn, was referred to as Umm Laylā by the Arabs. Laylā, in this context, refers to ecstasy and intoxication, and umm is present for it induces a state of ecstasy, begetting it as a mother begets a child. Love, likewise, intoxicates…
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7 Modern Deadly Sins and Misunderstandings: Exclusivity and Priority
Serving as a continuation of the series on “7 Deadly Modern Sins and Misunderstandings,” this second section focuses on a less analytical issue: the idea of misjudging ethical prioritization. As in, who do we, at a threshold level, owe moral respect and obligations to, and how do we prioritize these obligations towards our friends, family, community,…
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7 Modern Deadly Sins and Misunderstandings: Inequality
In any given society, there are certain common sense moralisms ingrained within that culture. Certain aspects of ethical life and sentiments may be universal in nature and span multiple countries and continents, as part of a generalized weltanschauung. Yet, the particular way in which that ethic is practiced is always subject to cultural conditions and…
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Conceptualization of Islam as a ‘Religion’ and Possibility of the Secularist/Islamist Binary
The history of the modern Middle East is often narrated as a story of power struggles between competing ideologies. One such set of competing ideologies is Islamism and secularism. The aim of this paper is not to explore these ideologies in the light of Middle Eastern history and argue in favor of either one of…
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Is ‘God’ Meaningless? Exploring Theological Noncognitivism
What is theological noncognitivism? [1] Most people may not be familiar with the term, but more familiar with the sentiment. Theological noncognitivism roughly holds that all theological discourse is meaningless. Unlike atheism, which essentially rejects the proposition that “God exists,” theological noncognitivism holds that propositions like “God exists” are not even meaningful or intelligible in…
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A Study of Worldviews: Islām and the Modern West, Part III: The Reign of Quantity
In the previous part, the notion of what I call ontological apathy was explored, which occurs when the reality of our place as humans in relation to God and nature is dissolved. In the worldview of Islām, we operate with the hierarchy of “ontology-epistemology-axiology-politics-economics,” and I have asserted that in the modern West, this hierarchy…
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A Study of Worldviews: Islām and the Modern West, Part II: Ontological Apathy
This article is part two of a series, you can find the part one here and part three here. In the last part, we established how the Islāmic civilization is built on a worldview that deems ontology as the highest determinative factor. This ontology, or pure metaphysics as Guénon calls it, concerns the Ultimate Reality,…
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A Study of Worldviews: Islām and the Modern West, Part I: Inversion
How do we make sense of reality? This is inarguably the most difficult question one can pose because it amounts to giving an explanation of everything. Even if we concede to the Heideggerian claim that metaphysics is inevitably nihilism, nihilism’s fundamental claim that there is no such thing as reality does constitute itself as an…
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Differences in Approaching History Between Reform Oriented and Traditionalist Muslims
Contemporary rifts between reform oriented and traditionalist Muslims might be traced back to differences in their respective philosophies on the progress of history. By first examining the three most prominent enlightenment philosophies of history, which share much in common, and then contrasting them with pre-modern philosophies of history, I will lead us to the possible…