Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, -1641 -- Criticism and interpretation. ; Islamic philosophy -- Iran.

This essay looks at two young English-speaking Iraqi bloggers whose internationally recognized writings describe the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq. It examines sarcasm as a mode of resistance as employed by Salam Pax, characterized by BBC Radio in 2003 as “the most famous diarist in the world,” and Riverbend, whose blog was published as a book and translated into several languages. By subjecting the colonial discourse to ridicule, they not only successfully convey the angst their people suffer, but also mock a (...) stereotypical rhetoric that haunts the Western mentality regarding the Middle East. This essay negotiates their use of sarcasm as a means of non-violent resistance. It demonstrates how, for instance, they shift from the sarcastic to the absurd to unravel the banality of the colonial mind and the conceited position of its liberating enterprises. The aim of the paper is, therefore, to shed light on the emergence of a digitalized group of subalterns who write back to the center in the wake of the American intervention to topple the Baath regime in Iraq. Pax and Riverbend distinctively succeed in subverting the colonial and hegemonic gaze by unravelling the encroaching uncertainties of war through the deployment of sarcasm to signify resistance, and by transforming the coalition forces’ theatre of war into a theatre of the absurd. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; civilization; philosophy; philosophy, European.

al-kitāb 1. al-Nasq al-ʻilmī lil-manẓūr al-ẓāhirī lil-ʻulūm al-ijtimāʻīyah -- al-kitāb 2. [Taṭbīqāt al-nasq al-ʻilmī lil-manẓūr al-ẓāhirī fī majāl al-ʻulūm al-ijtimāʻīyah].

Collection of articles of a noted Muslim religious scholar published in various local newspapers.

Articles on moral and ethics according to Islamic teachings.

Ṣadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, -1641. Asfār al-arbaʻah fī al-ḥikmah. ; Islamic philosophy -- Iran.

On the relationship between religion, philosophy and mysticism.

Syed Abul Aʻla Maudoodi, 1903-1979, founder of Jamaat-e Islami, religio-political party of Pakistan and Abulḥasan 'Alī, Nadvī, b. 1913-1999, Islamic scholar.

Hadiths that have been discussed in this paper consist of narrations regarding divine attributes and having some problematic meanings between supporters of Bişr al-Marīsī and ʿUthmān al-Dārimī. These narrations were mostly accepted denounced (munkar) by Bişr al-Marīsī and his sopporters due to having an anthropormophist and corporealist content about God. They rejected divine attributes according to their understanding of God based on incomparability (tanzīh) which provided by Mutazilite approach towards divine attributes even though they conveyed some features of Ahl al-Ra’y. (...) They found contradicted of attributing human features to God based on their tanzīh understanding, therefore, they interpreted such this kind of narra-tions in terms of their approach or rejected at all. At the other hand, a hard Hadith scholar Uth-man al-Darimi believed that one should accept divine attributes as they are in the Qur’an and Sunna. According to his belief, he considered the explicit meanings of the narrations without interpretation of divine attributes, and based on his perpective he denied Bişr al-Marīsī and his supporters’ interpretations claiming they would cause divesting God of all attributes (ta‘tīl). He argues that these narrations should be taken into considerations based on their explicit mea-nings. The discussions on these hadiths are important due to showing different approaches of scholars from the schools of Ahl al-Ra’y and the ones from Ahl al-Hadith towards the hadith du-ring the period when the main Hadith works were collected. Discussions on the narrations stu-died in this paper reveal two schools’ understandings of divine issues, their approaches to divi-ne attributes, as well inform us their perspectives of hadith in general.Summary: The present paper examines the debates between ʿUthmān al-Dārimī (d. 280/894) and the supporters of Bishr al-Marīsī (d. 218/833) on the divine attributes mentioned in some hadiths in the period when the main hadith books were composed (i.e., III/IXth century). These debates that took place between the scholars of Ahl al-Hadith and Ahl al-Ra’y concern the un-derstanding and interpretation of the hadiths in a certain way.It could be stated that the debates focus on how the hadiths should be understood, or whether it is the explicit meaning of the words or the possible methaphorical meanings beyond them that should be considered.It is worth briefly introducing the parties who discussed the hadiths studied here. The aforementioned discussions about some hadith narrations are between the supporters of Bishr al-Marīsī and ʿUthmān al-Dārimī, one of the important figures of the Ahl al-Hadith who wrote a separate work on these hadiths. This work was written as a rejection of the views of Bishr al-Marīsī and his two students on the attributes of God and some issues regarding hadith.Bishr al-Marīsī was regarded as an important scholar of Kalam who received fiqh education from Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798). He is a scholar of Ahl al-Ra’y who made scientific dis-cussions with many scholars including Imam al-Shafiʿī (d. 204/820). He was on the council of the Caliph Al-Mamūn (d. 218/833) and had a significant role in the adoption of the idea of the createdness of the Qurʾān (khalq al-Qurʾān).Uthmān al-Dārimī,on the other hand, was a scholar of Ahl al-Hadith who learned ha-dith from the authorities of his era such as Yaḥyā b. Maʿīn (d. 233/847), ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī (d. 234/848), Isḥāq b. Rāhawayh (d. 237/851), and Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). Having visited all the important cities for the training of hadith, he learned the hadiths and conveyed them.With the understanding of proving the divine attributes and the opposition of the misin-terpretation of the narratives related to them, the groups advocating the appropriation of these lines in accordance with the understanding of incomparability (tanzīh) have complied the works since the first period. According to ʿUthmān al-Dārimī, the rejection of the divine attributes by Mu'tazila was influential in the emergence of the criticism literature of the Ahl al-Hadith and many authors wrote works in this direction.Regarding a narration by Abū Hurayra, an opponent reports that this narration gives the impression that God has the eyes and ears as we know. ʿUthmān al-Dārimī reports that this hadith proves sight and hearing not the eyes and ear organs. He indicates that God has no like by no means. Therefore, it is slanderous to refer the claim that Allah is made of organs to the Ahl al-Hadith. Abū Dāwūd states that with this hadith the attributes of sight and hearing for God are proved and Jahmiyya’s denial of the divine attributes are rejected.The opponent also considered Abū Hurayra's narration referring to the Prophet: "Faith is from Yemen, wisdom is from Yemen! I feel the breath of your Lord from Yemen!" as denounced (munkar). Because, according to Bishr al-Marīsī and his companions, breath can only come from those with an abdominal cavity, and Allah is free from it. According to ʿUthmān al-Dārimī, the opponent misunderstood. What is meant here is the wind that blows from Yemen and comforts people. In the context of this narration, we see that supporters of Bishr al-Marīsī evaluate the narrative literally, while ʿUthmān al-Dārimī interpret the narrative.Regarding the narration, "You can not approach Allah with something more virtuous than what comes out of it (the Qur'ān)" Ibn al-Saljī reports that Mushabbiha understands this as one with an abdominal cavity and from whom speech comes out. This understanding is in-valid since God is "samad" in the sense that He has no void. With this hadith, it is meant that the Qur'ān comes out of Allah’s presence rather than Allah. According to ʿUthmān al-Dārimī, the real aim of Ibn al-Saljī is to deny God's attribute of speech. There is no doubt that the Qur'ān comes from Him, and those who do not accept it merely deny His attribute of speech.Attributed to Ibn Abbas; The meaning of "yamīn Allah" (the right hand of Allah) in narration "Black Stone (al-ḥajar al-aswad) is the right hand of Allah on earth, handshakes with the people" is not the right hand that we know according to Ibn al-Saljī, it is blessing and grace of Allah. According to ʿUthmān al-Dārimī, who acknowledges that Black Stone is not meant to be a hand, the purpose of Ibn al-Saljī is to deny the two hands mentioned in the verses and ha-diths about Allah with invalid interpretations.ʿUthmān al-Dārimī, who criticized that Ibn al-Saljī quoted from another narration which Ibn Abbās heard from the Prophet, says that such poor narrations should not be spread. In addition, he points out that Ibn al-Saljī's interpretation is ugly and he criticizes it. Because Allah who is mentioned in the narrative is depicted as a young man with curly hair in a green suit. Such a narration is also an untrustworthy narration as it contradicts the authentic narrations of the Prophet. ʿUthmān al-Dārimī, who made this assessment of the narration, rejects the com-ments that the opponent made about the narration. According to the opponent, the phrase "I have come to Allah" means "to come into the presence of Allah in the Garden of Eden." Accor-ding to ʿUthmān al-Dārimī’s understanding, such complicated hadiths should not be only narra-ted.About the narration that are based on the Prophet and he does not know the answer to what he has come to know of himself, then he feels the coolness of his fingers as he puts his hand on his back and learns everything, the opponent evaluates the following: He was not Allah who came to the Prophet, but a well-behaved angel who was being directed by Allah and he was the angel who put his hand. ʿUthmān al-Dārimī rejects this interpretation of that oppo-nent. This comment is also contrary to other authentic hadiths. After he refused to the com-ment of the opponent about relevant narration, ʿUthmān al-Dārimī stated that he could not trust this comment on the basis of the authentic narrations he mentioned.Salaf scholars have preferred to be silent in this regard, as it is seen among the most difficult subjects to talk about divine attributes. However, subsequent generations have held dif-ferent paths in this regard. The basic approaches to understanding the divine attributes can be summarized in three main titles: tafwīd, tashbīh, and ta’wīl. Tafwīd is the path adopted by the early salaf scholars and means to leaving the knowledge about Allah’s entity and attributes to His knowledge. Tashbīh means to compare Allah to the created or the created to Allah. Ta'wīl is to interpret the Qur'ānic verses and hadiths that give the impression that Allah is like the crea-tures with semantics and rational deduction. The ones who deny the adjectives are called as Muʿattila and those who prove their attributes are called as Sifatiyya. According to Ahl al-Ra’y, it is necessary to appropriately make interpretation (ta'wīl) of the attributes giving the impression of anthropomorphism in terms of the dictionary. In the divine attributes, Muʿtazila advoca-ted the incomparability (tanzīh), whereas Ashʿariyya and Māturīdiyya adopted interpretation in accordance with incomparability. Mushabbiha and the Wahhābī-Salafī understanding has also taken the expressions regarding divine attributes with their explicit meanings.The debate between the scholars who lived in the ages II/VIII and III/IX, when the most important works are composed in the science of hadith, is important in that it is the first turn. In addition to this, the debate also contains important information on the approach to the Qur'ānic verses and hadiths, in that it shows two basic approaches, one of which represents the school of Ahl al-Ra’y, and the other represents the school of Ahl al-Hadith.ʿUthmān al-Dārimī generally advocates adhering to the explicit meaning of the narra-tion, while Bishr al-Marīsī and his companions criticize the narration labeling it as denied (mun-kar) or making an interpretation. On rare occasions, the places where ʿUthmān al-Dārimī re-jects the narration and makes interpretation, or where Bishr al-Marīsī and his companions de-fend the narrative can be seen.Interpretations made by Bishr al-Marīsī on the problematic narratives have influenced on the next scholars. Alongside Muʿtazilite scholars such as al-Jubbāʾī (d. 303/916), Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1024) and Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436/1044), his interpretations have been quoted by Sunni scholars such as al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), Ibn ʿAqīl (d. 513/1119) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210).The fact that the truth can be put forward in the science of hadith, which is based on the narration, does not favor one of the "narration" and "ra’y", it should be kept in mind that both of these depend on the proper and balanced use of both. To reveal the truth, the narration is in need of the opinion and the opinion (ra’y) is in need of the narration. Narration and opinion sho-uld be seen as complementary elements, not each other's opponents. (shrink)

jild-i 1. Az ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd Kātib (59 Sh.) tā Abū al-Ḥasan Masʻūdī (336 Sh.) -- jild-i 2. Az Abū al-Ḥasan ʻĀmirī (291 Sh.) tā Abū al-Faz̤l Bayhaqī (465 Sh.) -- jild-i 3. Az Nāṣir Khusraw (383 Sh.) tā Sadīd al-Dīn ʻAwfī (616 Sh.) -- jild-i 4. Az Najm al-Dīn Rāzī (553 Sh.) tā Fakhr al-Muḥaqqiqīn (748 Sh.) -- jild-i 5. Az ʻUbayd Zākānī (670 Sh.) tā Jalāl al-Dīn Sayūṭī (884 Sh.) -- jild-i 6. Az Rūzbihān Khunjī (825 Sh.) tā Shaykh (...) Ḥurr ʻĀmilī (1071 Sh.) -- jild-i 7. Az ʻAlāmah Majlisī (1006 Sh.) tā Muḥammad Bāqir Shafaq (1223 Sh.) -- jild-i 8. Az Muḥammad Ṣādiq Marvazī (1147 Sh.) tā Mīrzā Fatḥʻalī Ākhūndzādah (1289 Sh.) -- jild-i 9. Az Mīrzā-yi Shīrāzī Avval (1194 Sh.) tā Ākhūnd Khurāsānī (1290 Sh.) -- jild-i 10. Az ʻAbd Allāh Māzandarānī (1219 Sh.) tā Saʻd Zaghlūl (1306 Sh.) -- jild-i 11. Az ʻImād al-ʻUlamāʼ Khalkhālī (1237 Sh.) tā ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz S̲aʻālibī (1323 Sh.) -- jild-i 12. Az Āyat Allāh Burūjirdī (1254 Sh.) tā Muḥammad Amīn Rasūlʹzādah (1333 Sh.) -- jild-i 13. Az ʻAbd al-Karīm Zanjānī (1263 Sh.) tā Amīn al-Ḥusaynī (1353 Sh.) -- jild-i 14. Az Jamālzādah (1274 Sh.) tā Mahdī Bāzargān (1373) -- jild-i 15. Az Muḥammad Ḥamīd Allāh (1286 Sh.) tā Muṭahharī (1358 Sh.) -- jild-i 16. Az Farīdūn Ādamīyat (1299 Sh.) tā Muṣṭafá Khumaynī (1356 Sh.) -- jild-i 17. Az Samīr Amīn (1310 Sh.) tā Ḥasan Ḥanafī -- jild-i 18. Az Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir Ṣadr (1314 Sh.) tā Rāshid al-Ghanūshī -- jild-i 19. Az ʻAlī Awmlīl (1321 Sh.) tā Ṭāriq Ramaz̤ān. (shrink)

It was widely believed among post-classical thinkers that the classical Mutakallimūn held that the cause of dependence of an effect on a cause was its origination, or a combination of origination and contingency, or its contingency on condition of its origination. Some post-classical thinkers, led by al-Sayyid al-Sharif al-Jurjānī, went further by interpreting Abu’l-Hasan al-Ashʿarī’s denial of the persistence of accidents was a consequence of his view that origination was the cause of dependence. This is because the origination view (...) entailed that the world was no longer in need of the Creator after its origination, and thus, him and his followers sought to deflect this consequence by holding that accidents do not persist, and since the persistence of substances was dependent on those accidents, and accidents do not persist more than one moment, those substances remained in need of the Creator for those accidents after their origination. This article seeks to investigate this analysis of the Shaykh al-Ashʿarī’s view, alongside the leading scholars of his school. After examining the original sources of classical Ashʿarī thinkers, along with the Baṣran Mu’tazila, and the texts of Ibn Sina, it becomes clear that the Ashꜥarīs did not hold that accidents did not persist in order to deflect that purported consequence. Indeed, it becomes clear that they did not hold that origination was the cause of dependence, but rather, that it was contingency. As for the Mu’tazila, they are explicit that the cause of dependence is origination, and that is based on their view on the reality of the nonexistent. Since essences are real in their state of nonexistence, they are not in need of a cause; and everything that obtains for those essences after they come into exist are entailments of that essence; thus, they only stand in need of a cause in their origination, that is, going from nonexistence into existence. Indeed, they are also explicit that effects do not need the Creator after their origination, and they clarified this through a comparison with a builder and a building. Indeed, the classical Ashꜥarīs criticized them for this, just as Ibn Sina did in the Ishārāt wa’l-tanbīhāt, al-Najāt, and al-Shifā. Thus, those post-classical scholars generalized the statement that origination is the cause of dependence to all classical mutakallimūn, and then they interpreted Ashʿarī’s motivation behind the denial of the persistence of accidents in accordance with that. The truth, however, is that his view on accidents is based on contingency, and that is because a substance is possible of persistence and possible of non-persistence, and therefore, it stands in need of cause to determine its state in the subsequent moment. That determination must entail something additional to the substance itself, otherwise, the effect is redundant. That additional property must be an accident, and since it is impossible for an accident to subsist in an accident, it is not possible for an accident to persist, because it is not receptive to the property which entails persistence; meanwhile, it is possible for substances, because they can sustain accidents. (shrink)

Arabic translation Sayyid al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī'l letter on logic translated by the recipient, his son, Ibn al-Sharīf al-Jurjānī.

“Suu ulimwengu bahari tesi [This world is a tempestuous sea],” laments the poet Sayyid Abdallah bin Ali bin Nasir in his poem Al-Inkishafi, in which he seeks a stable point in the stormy ocean of historical upheavals. Al-Inkishafi has been translated as “The Soul’s Awakening”, as self-examination or revelation. Against the backdrop of a depiction of the economic decline of the Pate sultanate at the end of the seventeenth century, the poem dwells on the vanity of earthly life and (...) worldly pleasures and questions the presence of the self in the world and whether the self can withdraw itself from the world in search of a transcendent stable point. The poem arose in the context of an ongoing poetic discourse along the East African coast, where Sufism and religious asceticism found expression in poetry, and my paper reads it alongside other poems from this period as evidence of the constitution of introspection, interiority, and a new kind of self-consciousness. I will specifically examine the role of attention in this process. In addition to being a cognitive filter that removes confusion and error from thought and ensures the self—a relational construct arising from the interaction of reason, passions, and the world—constructs an adequate intellectual representation of the world, attention acquires ethical and pragmatic connotations in facilitating the self’s resistance to temptation as well as its focus on salvation. It is, effectively, only thanks to attention that the self is able to discriminate both cognitively and morally and, crucially, to maintain agency through exercising control over its desires and actions. (shrink)

In Turkish-Islamic literature, many copyright or translation nasihatnama with religious-mystical content have been written. In these works written in verse or prose form within the scope of Islamic culture and classical Turkish literature, information about the principles of Islamic belief and worship was given, and people were advised to be moral, faithful, observant of the orders and prohibitions of religion, prioritizing the hadiths of the Prophet, benevolent and tolerant. One of these nasihatnamas is Gencü’l-Esrâr, in which verses consisting of different (...) verse types and shapes are connected to each other with instrumental couplets. The author, Sayyid Muhammed Ali Riza from Gaziantep, who is a link of the Sufi tradition, tried to guide the disciples by addressing the concept of heaven from various aspects. Sometimes by quoting verses and hadiths, he used argument and proof to make his word trustworthy, and he tried to boost people's desire to attain Paradise by combining aspects of literature with the fantasy of individual paradise on occasion. In our study, in which goals and forms the notion of heaven is targeted in Gencü'l-Esrâr. For this purpose, first of all, data about the paradise in Gencü'l-Esrâr were determined by using the scanning model, which is one of the research methods. All kinds of information, comments, and narratives that can help us to make an inference about Sayyid Muhammed Ali Rıza’s vision and description of paradise has been studied under four headings: “Physical Description and Content of Paradise”, “Description of Names, Types, and Gates of Paradise”, “Description of the Inhabitants of Paradise” and “Mysterious Expression of His Desire to Reach Paradise”. In the article, it has also been tried to reveal the narrative techniques used by the author and the narrative style he exhibited in the sections where heaven is depicted and narrated. This study, which reveals that heaven is handled in detail and artistically in Gencü'l-Esrâr, which was written in 1923 by adhering to the tradition of divan literature, is important in terms of shedding light on the existence of Islamic literature in the 20th century. (shrink)

Sayings of Sayyid Ḥusain Aḥmad Madnī, 1878-1957, Indian Muslim religious leader.

Luck (2009) argues that gamers face a dilemma when it comes to performing certain virtual acts. Most gamers regularly commit acts of virtual murder, and take these acts to be morally permissible. They are permissible because unlike real murder, no one is harmed in performing them; their only victims are computer-controlled characters, and such characters are not moral patients. What Luck points out is that this justification equally applies to virtual pedophelia, but gamers intuitively think that such acts are not (...) morally permissible. The result is a dilemma: either gamers must reject the intuition that virtual pedophelic acts are impermissible and so accept partaking in such acts, or they must reject the intuition that virtual murder acts are permissible, and so abstain from many (if not most) extant games. While the prevailing solution to this dilemma has been to try and find a morally relevant feature to distinguish the two cases, I argue that a different route should be pursued. It is neither the case that all acts of virtual murder are morally permissible, nor are all acts of virtual pedophelia impermissible. Our intuitions falter and produce this dilemma because they are not sensitive to the different contexts in which games present virtual acts. (shrink)

Mu'tazila and Shīʿa (Zaydiyya-Imāmiyya) have common views on many theological issues except the imamate. This issue has been generally accepted by other Islamic scholars rather than Shīʿa and by Western researchers. That in this interaction between the Mu‘tazila and the Shīʿa, the Shīʿa is the side mostly affected. However, it is an issue that should not be overlooked that the Shīʿa partially influenced the Mu'tazila in ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, over the other Companions. In this context, some persons from the (...) Baghdad Mu’tazila School such as Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir (d. 210/825), Jaʿfar b. Mubashir (d. 234/848), Jaʿfar b. Harb (d. 236/850) and al-Iskāfī (d. 240/854) argued that the imamate of Abū Bakr, who was less virtuous, was permissible although they considered ʿAlī as the most virtuous person after the Prophet. In addition, al-ʿAllāf (d. 235/849-850), al-Naẓẓām (d. 231/845), Abū Abdullah al-Basrī (d. 369/979-80) and Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025) along with Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī (d. 303/916), one of the chiefs of the Basra Mu'tazila School, and Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (d. 321/933) did not accept the order of caliphate as the order of virtue. This study focuses on the issue of whether the aforementioned affinity between Mu'tazila and Shīʿa affected Mu'tazila, especially in the interpretation of the verses associated with ʿAlī. In the study, the aforementioned problem was examined through the tafsīr al-Kashshāf of the Muʿtazilī mufassir al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144). In addition to the importance of tafsīr, the fact that al-Zamakhsharī took lessons from Shīʿīte/Zaydī persons and he wrote the tafsīr with the support of Zaydī leader al-Wahhās (d. 506/1112) is effective in handling this issue through al-Kashshāf's tafsīr. In the first part of the study, first of all, the interaction between Imāmiyya and Zaydism, which are the two most important branches of Mu‘tazila and Shīʿa, is briefly mentioned. Then, Mu'tazila’s and Al-Zamakhsharī’s view on ʿAlī's position among other caliphs is emphasized. Al-Zamakhsharī, who is from the Basra school of the Mu'tazila, does not consider ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib superior to Abū Bakr, unlike al-ʿAllāf, Abū ʿAlī al-Jubbāʾī, Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī and Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, who are the leading figures of this school. In fact, the fact that he always observed the order of the caliphate while talking about the merits of the four caliphs supports the possibility that, unlike his predecessors, he accepted the order of the caliphate as the order of virtue. In the second part, it is questioned whether the narrations that al-Zamakhsharī included in his tafsīr of the verses associated with ʿAlī are similar to the narrations of the Shīʿīte/Zaydī/Imāmī tradition and whether he interpreted the verses in parallel with these narrations. In this respect, the tafsīr al-Kashshāf has been examined comparatively with the Sunni and Shiite tafsīrs prior to it. Eventually, while interpreting these verses associated with the Ahl al-bayt (members of the Prophet’s household), al-Zamakhsharī highlights the narrations that appreciate the virtues of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and his child. However, he also refrains from making comments that would be in line with the Shīʿa's belief in imamate. In particular, his tafsīr of the verse al-Aḥzāb 33/33 in the context of the Prophet’s wives is the greatest indicator of this situation. It has been determined that while al-Zamakhsharī includes the narrations highlighting the virtue of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and his children, he mostly follows the Sunni commentator al-Thaʿlabī. In particular, it has been seen that al-Zamakhsharī transferred the narration material in the interpretation of the relevant verses from al-Thaʿlabī's commentary almost in the same way. However, it is noteworthy that al-Zamakhsharī differs from him in some details such as linguistically supporting these narrations in some verses such as ʾĀli ʿImrān 3/61 and al-Māʾidah 5/55. An indirect influence can be mentioned because al-Thaʿlabī frequently narrates the narrations supporting the Shīʿītes in places where there is a Sunni-Shīʿīte conflict. Therefore, although there is no evidence that al-Zamakhsharī took these narrations from Shīʿīte sources, it is seen that he brought ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib-based narrations in Sunni sources into the fore. Even in the commentary of al-Ḥākim al-D̲h̲us̲h̲amī, al-Zamakhsharī's teacher in the line of Zaydi/Mu'tazili, the lack of Ali emphasis in the interpretation of the aforementioned verses supports our view. (shrink)

The gamer’s dilemma offers three plausible but jointly inconsistent premises: (1) Virtual murder in video games is morally permissible. (2) Virtual paedophelia in video games is not morally permissible. (3) There is no morally relevant difference between virtual murder and virtual paedophelia in video games. In this paper I argue that the gamer’s dilemma can be understood as one of three distinct dilemmas, depending on how we understand two key ideas in Morgan Luck’s (2009) original formulation. The two ideas are (...) those of (1) occurring in a video game and (2) being a virtual instance of murder or paedophelia. Depending on the weight placed on the gaming context, the dilemma is either about in-game acts or virtual acts. And depending on the type of virtual acts we have in mind, the dilemma is either about virtual representations or virtual partial reproductions of murder and paedophelia. This gives us three dilemmas worth resolving: a gaming dilemma, a representation dilemma, and a simulation dilemma. I argue that these dilemmas are about different issues, apply to different cases, and are susceptible to different solutions. I also consider how different participants in the debate have interpreted the dilemma in one or more of these three ways. (shrink)

How do we assign values to virtual items, which include virtual objects, properties, events, subjects, worlds, environments, and experiences? In this article, I offer a framework for answering this question. After considering different value theses in the literature, I argue that whether we think these theses mutually exclusive or not turns on our view about the number of value-salient kinds virtual items belong to. Virtual monism is the view that virtual Xs belong to only one value-salient kind in relation to (...) X. Virtual pluralism is the view that they belong to more than one value-salient kind. I argue for two claims. First, virtual monism is mistaken. Minimally some virtual Xs are Xs, while others are not. Second, dualistic virtual pluralism is also mistaken because it is too coarse grained. Instead, I argue for fourfold pluralism: virtual items either represent an original's properties or reproduce essential properties and do so to lesser or greater extents. This gives us four value-salient kinds of virtual X: virtual reproductions, simulations, representations, and simulacra of X. I apply this view to various debates in the literature and conclude with a discussion of less basic hybrid kinds. (shrink)

A central debate in the philosophy of virtual reality (VR) focuses on the reality of virtual items. Broadly, there are two main disagreements. Some views accept a metaphysical orientation to VR, and disagree on the reality of virtual items. For instance, David Chalmers (Disputatio 9(46):309-352, 2017, Disputatio 11(55):453- 486, 2019, 2022) defends digitalism, the view that virtual items are real digital items. Neil McDonnell & Nathan Wildman (Disputatio 11(55):371-397, 2019), by contrast, defend fictionalism, which maintains that virtual items are unreal (...) fictions. Other views, like Grant Tavinor’s (2021), reject the metaphysical orientation, argu- ing that focusing on the reality of virtual items is a mistake. In what follows I evalu- ate these two disagreements. I argue that experiences of virtual items depend on episodes of picture perception. Recognizing this reveals that the current debates are either easily resolved in favor of one view, or are not disagreeing about the reality of virtual items, but about what virtual items are. (shrink)

In the Buddhist tradition, there is an expansive collection of texts that explore the topic of ethics, addressing moral questions concerning the right and wrong behaviors, virtues, vices, and so forth. However, when examining the main texts of this tradition, we find an absence of a structured moral philosophy that systematically and critically analyzes moral values and principles. Therefore, Buddhist scholars have responded in different ways to the perplexing situation in which Buddhism largely lacks an explicit theory in moral philosophy. (...) Some scholars argue that we should read Buddhist moral teachings as one of the contemporary ethical theories, such as consequentialism or virtue ethics. Damien Keown is one of the scholars who claims that “virtue ethics” is the best way to understand Buddhist ethics. This paper analyzes and critiques Damien Kewon’s reading of Buddhist moral teachings as Virtue ethics. I argue that such interpretation poses problems, primarily because it may overlook key aspects of Buddhist beliefs deemed inconsequential to contemporary ethical debates, and secondly, it could result in the imposition of non-authentic Buddhist ideas on Buddhist ethics. (shrink)

The Intercultural, Educational, and Interdisciplinary Borderlines -- Intercultural Encounters, Discord, and Discovery: Medieval Times Amid Evil Times? -- The Dialogical Paradigm -- Al-Kindi on Education: Curriculum Theorizing and the Intercultural Minhaj -- Intercultural Farabism: Towards a Tripartite Model of Dialogical Education -- Rihla as the Sojourner's Deliverer from Error: Al-Ghazali's Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Journey of Epistemic Crisis -- The Averroesian Deliberative Pedagogy of Intercultural Education -- Concluding Thoughts and Implications.

Aristotle (b. 322 BC) was the first philosopher in the history of thought to examine all modes and types of belief acquisition such as knowledge, supposition, error and indirectly imagination. In his _Prior Analytics_, which he wrote primarily to clarify his theory of demonstration, Aristotle examined in detail the syllogism, which he saw as the most important form of reasoning, and his analysis was subject to interpretation by different traditions of thought for centuries. Aristotle’s _Prior Analytics_ was translated into Arabic (...) in the classical period and later interpreted by many Islamic logicians. This article aims to show how Aristotle’s definition of the syllogism in the _Prior Analytics_ was taken up and interpreted in the Peripatetic Islamic logical tradition. These interpretations of the definition of the syllogism will provide us with an idea about the unique features of the commentaries on the _Prior Analytics_ in the Islamic world. Here, introductory information about the translation of the _Prior Analytics_ into Arabic and its commentators in Arabic will be given, Aristotle’s definition of the syllogism and its versions in Peripatetic Islamic logicians will be indicated, and the interpretation of the basic terms in the definition by Peripatetic Islamic logicians will be revealed. (shrink)

A model M = (M, E,...) of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory ZF is said to be θ-like, where E interprets ∈ and θ is an uncountable cardinal, if |M| = θ but $|\{b \in M: bEa\}| for each a ∈ M. An immediate corollary of the classical theorem of Keisler and Morley on elementary end extensions of models of set theory is that every consistent extension of ZF has an ℵ 1 -like model. Coupled with Chang's two cardinal theorem this implies (...) that if θ is a regular cardinal θ such that $2^{ then every consistent extension of ZF also has a θ + -like model. In particular, in the presence of the continuum hypothesis every consistent extension of ZF has an ℵ 2 -like model. Here we prove: THEOREM A. If θ has the tree property then the following are equivalent for any completion T of ZFC: (i) T has a θ-like model. (ii) $\Phi \subseteq T$ , where Φ is the recursive set of axioms {∃ κ(κ is n-Mahlo and "V κ is a Σ n -elementary submodel of the universe"): n ∈ ω}. (iii) T has a λ-like model for every uncountable cardinal λ. THEOREM B. The following are equiconsistent over ZFC: (i) "There exists an ω-Mahlo cardinal". (ii) "For every finite language L, all ℵ 2 -like models of ZFC(L) satisfy the scheme Φ(L). (shrink)

Scientists cannot devise theories, construct models, propose explanations, make predictions, or even carry out observations, without first classifying their subject matter. The goal of scientific taxonomy is to come up with classification schemes that conform to nature's own. Another way of putting this is that science aims to devise categories that correspond to 'natural kinds.' The interest in ascertaining the real kinds of things in nature is as old as philosophy itself, but it takes on a different guise when one (...) adopts a naturalist stance in philosophy, that is when one looks closely at scientific practice and takes it as a guide for identifying natural kinds and investigating their general features. This Element surveys existing philosophical accounts of natural kinds, defends a naturalist alternative, and applies it to case studies in a diverse set of sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Drawing on fiqh al-aqalliyyat, this article introduces a Muslim minorities curriculum and negotiates the notion of diasporicity as a process that signifies a community’s readiness to respond to its own cultural, religious and literacy practices. More specifically, first, I propose a Muslim minorities curriculum that is informed by diasporicity and fiqh al-aqalliyyat. Second, the article makes a distinction between diaspora and diasporicity. In what ways can diasporicity itself be conceptualized to advance Muslim education and what are the pedagogical implications? Third, (...) it identifies what I call dialectical constructs within fiqh al-aqalliyyat that are conducive to diasporicity, namely, qiyas, ijtihad, istihsan, and taysir. Additionally, this article explores contingency as an overlooked philosophical and pedagogical dimension, which advances intercultural and critical thinking skills. It conceptualizes a Muslim education that is attuned to the “curriculum-as-lived”; hence it develops an educational theory that validates diasporicity. (shrink)

This study examines the Foucauldian notion of “parrhesia” within the context of curricular practices through a renewal of scholarly interest in Islamic metaphysics as represented by the Avicennean modalities of reality: necessity, contingency, and possibility. It explores the role of contingency in advancing educational practices that generate inclusive dissemination of knowledge that captures the language of Tajdeed (legitimate renovation) in Islamic education. This article argues that contingency, as a causality-oriented modality, determines whether meaning is relative or absolute, while necessity, as (...) an acknowledgment of universal truth, slips into demagoguery that can be used to canonize strict textualism and absolutism. Contingency is defined here as a practice that stimulates synthesis and dialogical understanding of knowledge. Accordingly, the study asks the following questions: How does infusing the Avicennean concept of contingency into curriculum practices offer opportunities for inclusivity and free speech? How can revisiting Islamic cosmological modalities help Muslim educators and curriculum writers move into the broader path of inclusive pedagogies? From an educational position, the article introduces a curriculum of metaphysics that advocates the implementation of contingency, which is considered essential to parrhesia and democracy. It also draws attention to an anti-metaphysical attitude that is generally present in curriculum theorizing. Accordingly, Metaphysics is invoked to challenge a state of flux or hegemonized assumptions; hence, metaphysics validates parrhesia. (shrink)