Tag: Philosophy
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The Ibn ‘Arabī Connection: How Akbarian Metaphysics Shaped South Asian Sufism
To those that, like me, spent their lockdown evenings watching Diliriş: Ertuğrul, Ibn ʿArabī will be a familiar name. Draped in the robes of a dervish, Ozman Sirgood’s character wanders the landscapes of medieval Anatolia, dispensing scriptural wisdom and delivering spiritual guidance to the eponymous protagonist and his plucky tribespeople.
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Abderrahmane Taha: A Sublime Life of Tajdīd
Taha Abderrahmane is a larger-than-life philosopher from Morocco— his life has spanned a plurality of Muslim crises and he has sought to set forth, through logic, Kalām, language, and Usūl al-fiqh, an entirely new way of living by which non-Muslims may see the dazzling wonder of Islamic civilization, and by which Muslims may abandon all…
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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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A Critique of Islamism
Islamism, in current contexts, connotes a political order based on and around Islam. However, these connotations are primarily negative, ranging from a vile and violent overthrow of the modern political system to a petty abuse hurled at Muslims. [1] Professor Salman Sayyid appears to have taken cue from this, and attempts to displace the negative…
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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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Healing Civilizational Diseases: The Importance of the Creative Minority
The study of the rise and fall of civilizations remains crucial to the preservation of societies; neglecting it can lead to our decline.
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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,…