About
43
Publications
3,313
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
115
Citations
Current institution
Publications
Publications (43)
Abstract
Genesis 1:26 states that humankind has been created in the image of God. There are three general interpretations of what this means. While the substantial view emphasises the essence of humankind and the relational view underscores the social aspect, the functional view highlights the responsibility of humankind to God’s creation. Recent s...
Genesis 1:26 states that humankind has been created in the image of God. There are three general interpretations of what this means. While the substantial view emphasises the essence of humankind and the relational view underscores the social aspect, the functional view highlights the responsibility of humankind to God’s creation. Recent studies ha...
The renowned mystical thinker Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) believes uncertainty (ḥayra) has a higher epistemological value than certainty. This is because certainty is only of ostensible reality, which ignores the true ontological underpinnings of phenomenality. To become cognisant of the reality that palpitates beneath the facade of the s...
One of the most important mystical thinkers in the Islamic tradition, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240), believes that there are many phases of existence. While he agrees with the majority of Muslim scholars that the bitterness of death comes from facing the consequences of one’s actions, he is unique in the inordinate emphasis he places on the...
The mystical thinker Muhyi al-Din ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) had many audiences with the dead. This article explores who Ibn ‘Arabī interacted with, and how. Usually as dreams and visions, the meetings Ibn ‘Arabī had with messengers were generally at key milestones in his life, or to confer particular distinctions upon him. A special subset of these...
Kafka explores many elements in ‘Jackals and Arabs’ that are found in the Judeo-Christian tradition of Gog and Magog, the Alexander Romance, and the Qur’anic story of Dhu’l-Qarnayn. A comparative analysis of these works reveals Kafka’s criticism of the Zionist movement. Kafka rejects Zionist exceptionalism and separatism through the narrator’s reje...
Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) is arguably the most influential philosophical mystic in Islam. He is also a presentist. This paper responds to the arguments of contemporary philosophers, Norman Kretzmann, William Lane Craig, Garrett DeWeese, and Alan Padgett, who argue that divine atemporality and temporal presentism are incompatible, throug...
Asceticism or renunciation (zuhd) is generally viewed as turning away from the world and all it has to offer in order to connect to the divine. The well-known mystical theorist, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240), adds a denotation of asceticism to this conventional definition. Ibn ‘Arabī argues that the impetus for the creation of the cosmos wa...
The works of Aristotle left an indelible impression on Arabic philosophy after the translation movement. While many philosophers accepted the works of the revered First Teacher (Al-Mu‘allim al-awwal), as Aristotle was designated, others sought to reformulate his ideas in accordance with their own priorities. One such thinker is the hugely influenti...
Abū ‘Alī ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1027) is regarded as the most influential philosopher in Islamic intellectual history. Of his numerous contributions, none has garnered more attention than his ontological proof for the existence of God, known as ‘the Demonstration of the Truthful’ (Burhān al-ṣiddiqīn). In this proof, Ibn Sīnā argues that only one being ca...
The mystical commentary on the story of Bilqīs, the Queen of Sheba, from chapter 27 of the Qur’an carried out by the highly influential Sufi thinker Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240), shows that he differs radically from exoteric Sunni exegetes. The principal reason for this is Ibn ‘Arabī’s complete reliance on spiritual unveiling (kashf) as a...
While most traditional works on the life of Prophet Muḥammad focus on how his ostensible teachings and actions can be used as a template for human conduct, the thirteenth-century Sufi thinker, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240), turns his attention to the spiritual significance and inner reality of Prophet Muḥammad. Ibn ‘Arabī argues that as the...
This article explores the concept of transcendental happiness in the philosophies of arguably the two most important figures in Islamic intellectual thought, Abū ‘Alī ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) and Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240). The most striking parallels between the philosophy of Ibn Sīnā and that of Ibn ‘Arabī is in their agreement on the Ar...
Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) is regarded as one of the foremost mystical thinkers in Islam. This paper explores the ways in which he and his followers distinguish between the reality of Muḥammad (al-ḥaqīqa al-Muḥammadiyya) or the light of Muḥammad (al-nūr al-Muḥammadī), as the metaphysical reality of Muḥammad, and his metahistorical manife...
Spirituality has been proven in recent studies to be a key contributor in posttraumatic growth. One of the most well-known mystical thinkers in Islam, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ’Arabī (d. 634/1240), nevertheless, believes that trauma does not facilitate spiritual growth, but rather has the capacity to reveal the spiritual potentiality that was latent within...
Studies have shown that comprehension of the Qur’an has a statistically significant positive effect on the mental health of Muslims. The emotions of hope and fear are proven indicators of the mental and psychological health of humans. This study analysed Qur’anic terms implicated in and responsible for the generation of hope for God’s mercy and fea...
The extremely influential mystic, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 634/1240), believes that the most advanced gnostics are imbued with a special power that turns their religious experience into reality. This is the power of himma—the power of existentiation that elite gnostics derive from God’s absolute power of existentiation. Ibn ‘Arabī and his follow...
Numerous sociological studies indicate that the societal perception of women in Muslim countries is generally poor. These perceptions, argue the promulgators of such ideas, are based on the Qur’an. There is, nevertheless, no consensus on the interpretation of the qur’anic verses that supposedly promote such views. One of the main sources of negativ...
Arguably the most influential Sufi thinker in Islam, Muḥyī l-Dīn Ibn ʻArabī (d. 638/1240), views revelatory knowledge and mystical experience, what he terms ‘spiritual unveiling’ (kashf), as a form of continuing divine revelation that is bequeathed to the spiritual elite or saints (awliyā’). As the self-proclaimed ‘Seal of Saints’ (Khātam al-awliyā...
Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) is arguably the most influential Ṣūfī in Islam. Of his vast oeuvre, no work has attracted more attention than Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. In the most important chapter of this work – on Muḥammad – Ibn ʿArabī writes of the true significance of women, showing the exceptionally high regard in which he holds them. Ibn ʿArabī i...
Sunni exegetes repeatedly assert the authority of the Qur’an to explain itself, and the authority of the prophetic tradition (ḥadīth) or early interpretations when explanations cannot be found in the Qur’an. Yet the treatment that the Queen of Sheba receives by the exegetes reveals that, contrary to their assertions, they are influenced by and are...
Although ostensibly different, Franz Kafka and the mystical theorist Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) both employ complex rhetoricity that accommodates paradox and contradiction. This study compares how their complex rhetoricity exposes the tension between the essential human need to comprehend god, and a god who is essentially apophatic. God’...
Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī is arguably the most influential Ṣūfī theorist in Islam. In his most enduringly popular work, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, he conspicuously and persistently demonstrates that whatever our perception of a prophet in the Qurʾān, the wisdom associated with him and derived from him is very different. This is not to suggest that Ibn ‘Arabī de...
The Christian doctrine of original sin—a corollary of the initial Adamic transgression—is the linchpin of the soteriological and eschatological significance of Christ. Construction of a binary opposition between the fall through Adam and redemption through Christ seems pleasing in its symmetry, yet the question of children who die in infancy poses...
Kierkegaard raises many issues in his account of the near sacrifice of Isaac by his father. Responding to and critiquing Hegelian and Kantian depictions of Abraham, Kierkegaard moves to elevate Abraham into a position as a knight of faith. The Sunnī perception of the incident in the exegetical tradition is far more ethically unequivocal than that...
Human germline gene editing (hGGE) poses many questions for the Muslim community. They range from the scientific: is there sufficient evidence that hGGE is better than existing technologies? To the ethical: is the lack of consent an insurmountable hurdle? What is the moral status of the embryo? What effect would hGGE have on societal inequalities?...
The erudite Indo-Ḥanafī lexicologist, Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Qāḍī Muḥammad Ḥāmid ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣābir al-Fārūqī al-Tahānawī (d. 1158/ 1745?), has hitherto been largely overlooked in Western scholarship. This, despite his lexical magnum opus, Kashshāf iṣṭilāḥāt al-funūn wa’l-ʿulūm al-islāmiyya, being widely used by scholars in fields from philos...
