political philosophy
Farabi was the first thinker to define the classical political philosophy of Plato's Republic, harmonised with Aristotelian epistemo-logical, ontological and cosmological principles within the broader frame of Islamic religion. While political philosophy in the structure presented in Farabi's independent studies does not continue after him, his study of the typology of political regimes, the concept of law and the role of the lawmaker, and the identification of an ideal form of Islamic...
Notes Jmn
1. Daniel Gimaret, La doctrine d'al-Ash'ari Paris 1990 , pp. 240-1. 2. IbnAbiYa'la ibn al-Farra', Tabaqat al-Hanabila Damascus, 1350 1931 , pp. 12, 24, 41, 62-3, 78-82, 101-2, 115, 125, 204, 217, 238, 240, 247, 276. 6. Ibn Badran al-Dimashqi, al-Madkhal ila madhhab al-imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal Cairo, 1919 , pp. 7-10, 12-14. 7. Ishaq ibn Ibrahim al-Nisaburl, Masa'il al-imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, ed. Zuhayr al-Shawish Beirut, 1979 , p. 60. The strictures of traditionalists with respect to the practice of...
Mas Abdel Haleem
The Qur'an is the starting-point of Islamic theology, and indeed of all things Islamic. As technically defined by Islamic theology and law, it is ''the corpus of Arabic utterances sent down by God to Muhammad, conveyed in a way that categorically establishes its authenticity''.1 For the tradition, this classical definition summarises the basic characteristics of the Qur'an and distinguishes it from anything else the Prophet said. The key phrase is ''sent down by God'', for God speaks directly...
The developed kalam tradition
OLIVER LEAMAN PART i AND SAJJAD RIZVI PART Ii A few initial points need to be made about the nature of Islamic theology in its later stages before a discussion of some of its main themes and thinkers can be attempted. First, there often exists no clear distinction between Islamic theology, in the sense of kalam, and the other Islamic and not so Islamic sciences, such as grammar, jurisprudence fiqh , philosophy falsafa hikma , Sufism, and the even more specific activities of learning how to...
The fifth belief in the day of judgement
The Qur'an frequently evokes the beauty and diversity of the natural world, and belief in a final end gives sense and purpose to the whole creation. But for the judgement, the world would be in vain 23 115-16 95 7-8 , which is why the next life is mentioned in the Qur'an exactly as often as the life of this world. The semantic logic of the qur'anic text makes the domain we presently occupy the ''first world'' al-ualaa , which exists only with reference to the ''other'' world which is to come...
David B Burrell Csc
''Originator Badi' of the heavens and earth. When He decrees a thing, He says only 'Be ' And it is.'' There are eight names for God, among the canonical ninety-nine, which direct our attention to Allah as the source of all that is al-Badi' Absolute Cause , al-Biri' Producer , al-Khaliq Creator , al-Mubdi' Beginner , al-Muqtadir All-Determiner , al-Musawwir Fashioner , al-Qidir All-Powerful and al-Qahhar Dominator , each with various connotations of creating.2 Nothing seems simpler than...
Characteristics
We need to ask what is Islamic about Islamic theology Most evidently, it is Islamic to the extent that it may be traced back in some way to the Prophet Muhammad and his distinctive vision of the One God. According to his scripture, he was sent ''as a mercy to the worlds'' Qur'an 21 107 , and one aspect of that mercy, as Muhammad Abdel Haleem suggests in chapter 1, was that he mapped out a religious path of great simplicity. This was to be the simplicity of an Abrahamic and ''primordial''...
Info Ctk
30. For the model, see Richard M. Frank, Creation and the Cosmic System Al-Ghaz l and Avicenna Heidelberg, 1992 and for an elucidation of sunnat Allah, see Christian van Nispen, Activite humaine, part 1, 31. Ghazal on Faith in Divine Unity and Trust in Divine Providence, tr. David B. Burrell Louisville, KY, 2001 . 32. This term is not qur'anic, nor is it a name of God cf. L. P. Fitzgerald, ''Creation in al-Tafs r al-Kab r of Fakhr ad-D n al-Razi'' PhD dissertation, Australian National...
Tim Winter
This volume presents a series of critical scholarly reflections on the evolution and major themes of pre-modern Muslim theology. Given Islam's salience in religious history and its role as final religious inheritor of the legacies of monotheism and classical antiquity, such a collection hardly needs justification. The significance of Islamic theology reflects the significance of Islam as a central part of the monotheistic project as a whole, to which it brings a distinctive approach and style,...
The Role Of Ibn Taymiyya
In particular, there emerged a few late medieval thinkers like the Syrian Hanbalite Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya d. 1328 whose campaign to critique theology was more radical than that found in earlier generations.9 He criticised the very basis of kalam by attacking the notion of definition, that is, specifying a clear and distinct meaning for abstract concepts,and without the possibility of definition there is no possibility of theological discussion, since one is then without the basic materials...
Notes Lim
1. For a discussion of theology in relation to and its impact on philosophy see Majid Fakhry, Philosophy, Dogma, and the Impact of Greek Thought in Islam Aldershot, 1994 . 2. An important discussion of the relationship between falsafa and kalam was presented by Averroes Ibn Rushd , who believed that philosophical investigation should be kept distinct from theological premises. See Averroes, Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory, tr. Charles E. Butterworth Provo, UT, 2001 . 3. For a...
Notes on contributors
Umai F. Abd-Allah received his PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago in 1978 with a dissertation on the origins of Islamic law. His principal interests are Islamic intellectual and spiritual history, the history of Islam in the West, and comparative religion. He taught academically in the United States, Canada and Saudi Arabia for more than twenty years before taking up his present post as chairperson and scholar-in-residence of the Nawawi Foundation Chicago , an...
The Hadith
Although the Qur'an is the unrivalled supreme revelation of Islam, the tradition also recognises a second form of revealed scripture the hadith hadith . Technically, Muslims came to define the hadith as ''the attested reports of the sayings, actions, and tacit approvals and accounts of the Prophet Muhammad''.6 These present records of the Prophet's statements, as well as statements by his companions relating to him. Collectively the hadith literature provides evidence for the Prophet's way of...
Zubayrids And Protosunnis
Just as Umayyad rule had provoked the emergence of Shi'ite and Kharijite movements during the Second Civil War, so it galvanised the party of Qurashis descended from the followers of Talha, Zubayr, and 'A'isha, now led by 'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr 624-692 . Centred in Mecca, the Zubayrid party failed to offer the ideological force that propelled the Kharijites and the Shi'a, and was readily dealt with by the Umayyad caliphs. Its political significance collapsed, but its erstwhile followers,...
Further reading Nlc
Adamson, Peter, and Taylor, Richard C. eds. , The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy Cambridge, 2005 . Daiber, Hans, Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy, 2 vols. Leiden, 1999 . Fakhry, Majid, A History of Islamic Philosophy, 2nd edn New York, Gutas, Dimitri, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition Leiden, 1988 . Greek Thought, Arabic Culture The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society 2nd-4th 8th-ioth centuries London, 1998 . ''The study of Arabic philosophy...
Notes
1. Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe London, 1959 , p. 105. For the attitude see Dimitri Gutas, ''The study of Arabic philosophy in the twentieth century an essay on the historiography of Arabic philosophy'', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29 2002 , pp. 10-12. 2. Robert Wisnovsky, Avicenna's Metaphysics in Context London, 2003 , p. 301. 3. Louis Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, tr....
Reason And Revelation
Closely linked to this dialectic was the even more taxing balance which high medieval Islam thought it had achieved between ''reason'' 'aql and revelation naql . Those who stressed the former tended to assume that the Qur'an's arguments for itself proceed on the principle that reason is prior to the authority of revelation they therefore tended to support a strongly abstract model of God strict scripturalists, by contrast, often inclined to anthropomorphism. It was generally admitted that...