This paper attempts to rethink the philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) and challenge the still prevailing tendency in Iqbal scholarship to view it merely as an outcome of the influence of the ideas of various Western/European philosophers. I present Iqbal’s arguments in their particular historical and intellectual context to show that they developed in response to a specific philosophical problem and that Iqbal looked for a solution to that problem in Islamic tradition. I suggest that Iqbal’s philosophy is best understood (...) in the context of, and as a response to, the problem of nihilism as it was debated in modern German philosophy during ‘the pantheism controversy’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To demonstrate this, I analyse Iqbal’s article on ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī to show his concern with the problem of nihilism, and his solution to it based on al-Jīlī’s Sufism. (shrink)

While the problem of nihilism is derived from a particular historical and intellectual context in Western philosophy, i.e., the pantheism controversy in modern German philosophy and the ideas of Nietzsche, non-Western thinkers also engaged with it and developed responses to it. In this article, I am interested in analyzing Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938), a leading Muslim thinker (a Sufi) from India, engagement with the problem of nihilism and his response to it from a Sufi perspective. Arguing that the existing literature on (...) Iqbal fails to understand the deeper impact of Nietzsche’s ideas on Iqbal’s philosophy and the dramatic role “the problem of nihilism” played in causing changes in Iqbal’s philosophy, or on Iqbal’s intellectual development, in this article, I analyze how Iqbal’s encounter with the ideas of Nietzsche during his study period in Europe between 1905 and 1908 has introduced him to the problem of nihilism in its Nietzschean form, how this led Iqbal to a nihilistic mood/crisis from 1909 to 1913, and then how he later developed a response to nihilism by reconstructing the Sufi cosmology and by revaluating the Sufi values of the pantheistic/persian type of Sufism – the outcome of which is found in his philosophical poem Asrar-i-Khudî (1915). (shrink)

Bu bölümde karşılaştırmalı siyaset teorisinin, siyaset teorisinin hem bir alt alanı, hem de bir yöntemi olarak ortaya çıkış sürecini ele alacağım. Bu bağlamda öncelikle ‘karşılaştırmalı siyaset teorisinin’ (KST) ne zaman ortaya çıktığı sorusuyla ilgileneceğim. Ardından, KST’nin neden ortaya çıktığı, ne olduğu ve nasıl yapılması gerektiği ile ilgili tartışmalara değineceğim. Bu tartışmayı, son otuz yılda literatürde öne çıkan bazı çalışmalar ve isimler ve onların tartıştığı konular, meseleler, sorular ve sorunlar üzerinden (karşılaştırmada özne/nesne ilişkisi ve güç problemi, soruların ya da sorunların evrenselliği (...) meselesi, Batı/Avrupa merkezciliğini yeniden üretme riski) ve eleştirel bir değerlendirmeye tabi tutarak yürüteceğim. Son olarak, başlangıçta Amerika odaklı bir tartışma/gelişme olarak ve siyaset teorisinin belli sorunlarını (Avrupamerkezcilik, yanlış evrensellik, dar görüşlülük) aşma hedefiyle ortaya çıkan KST’nin aradan geçen otuz yılın ardından bugünkü durumu ile ilgili bazı değerlendirmelerde bulunacağım. (shrink)

Bringing together various scholars from different backgrounds and embodying a truly interdisciplinary approach make Sufism: A Theoretical Intervention in Global International Relations a valuable and timely contribution to the increasing interest in non-Western traditions of thought. It will be of interest to IR theorists as well as scholars in other disciplines who are interested in non-Western traditions of thought and is sure to motivate further research in IR that is inspired by Sufism.