Discusses philosopher Mulla Sadra's commentary on the opening chapter of the Qur'an.

Featuring the work of leading contemporary Muslim philosophers and theologians, this book grapples with various forms of evil and suffering in the world today, from COVID-19 and issues in climate change to problems in palliative care and human vulnerability. Rather than walking down well-trodden paths in philosophy of religion which often address questions of evil and suffering by focusing on divine attributes and the God-world relationship, this volume offers another path of inquiry by focusing on human vulnerability, potential, and resilience. (...) Addressing both the theoretical and practical dimensions of the question of evil, topics range from the transformative power of love, virtue ethics in Sufism and the necessity of suffering, to the spiritual significance of the body and Islamic perspectives on embodiment. In doing so, the contributors propose new perspectives based on various pre-modern and contemporary materials that can enrich the emerging field of the global philosophy of religion, thereby radically transforming contemporary debates on the nature of evil and suffering. The book will appeal to researchers in a variety of disciplines, including Islamic philosophy, religious studies, Sufism and theology. (shrink)

This article recounts one contemporary Muslim philosopher’s journey into the discipline of philosophy, detailing the importance of diversifying the study of philosophy to take it beyond its Anglo-American and Eurocentric boarders along the way.

A comprehensive introduction to the life and thought one of the Islamic intellectual tradition's most original and profound authors.

Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation honors two of the most beloved and productive scholars in the field of Islamic Studies, Professors William Chittick and Sachiko Murata. For the past five decades, and in over 40 books (monographs, editions, translations, edited volumes) and more than 300 articles, Professors Chittick and Murata have presented us with philologically astute and analytically sound expositions of the pre-modern Islamic intellectual tradition, particularly in the areas of Sufism and philosophy. They have done so primarily (...) by zeroing in on the technical vocabularies of these disciplines (in Arabic, Persian, and Chinese), demonstrating just how important the functions of philology and cross-cultural translation are when studying pre-modern cultures and civilizations. (shrink)

This article argues against the indiscriminate reading of Christian discursive categories into the Quran, taking the term “salvation” as its case in point. Rather than “salvation,” the word “deliverance” more adequately accounts for the complexity inherent in four closely related Arabic root structures employed throughout the Quran.

The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism. By Cyrus Ali Zargar. London: Oneworld, 2017. Pp. 341. $30, £20.