Islam and Rationality PDF Download

Author: Frank Griffel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004307494
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) is one of the most influential thinkers of Islam. There is hardly a genre of Islamic literature where he is not regarded as a major authority. Islamic Law, Sufism, ethics, philosophy, and theology are all deeply shaped by him. Yet in the past thirty years, the field of Ghazālī-studies has been shaken by the realization that Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428/1037) and other philosophers had a strong influence on him. Now, after the 900th anniversary at his death, the field emerges stronger than ever. This second volume of Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazālī brings together twelve leading experts on al-Ghazālī who write about his thought and the impact it had on later Muslim thinkers. Contributors are: Anna Ayşe Akasoy, Ahmed El Shamsy, Kenneth Garden, Frank Griffel, Jules Janssens, Damien Janos, Taneli Kukkonen, Stephen Ogden, M. Sait Özervarlı, Martin Riexinger, Ulrich Rudolph, and Ayman Shihadeh.

Author: Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad
Publisher: Islam International Publications Ltd
ISBN: 1853726400
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 787

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Book Description
Any divide between revelation and rationality, religion and logic has to be irrational. If religion and rationality cannot proceed hand in hand, there has to be something deeply wrong with either of the two. Does revelation play any vital role in human affairs? Is not rationality sufficient to guide man in all the problems which confront him? Numerous questions such as these are examined with minute attention. All major issues which intrigue the modern mind are attempted to be incorporated in this fascinatingly comprehensive statute. Whatever the intellectual or educational background of the reader, this book is bound to offer him something of his interest. It examines a very diverse and wide range of subjects including the concept of revelation in different religions, history of philosophy, cosmology, extraterrestrial life, the future of life on earth, natural selection and its role in evolution. It also elaborately discusses the advent of the Messiah, or other universal reformers, awaited by different religions. Likewise, many other topical issues which have been agitating the human mind since time immemorial are also incorporated. The main emphasis is on the ability of the Quran to correctly discuss all important events of the past, present and future from the beginning of the universe to its ultimate end. Aided by strong incontrovertible logic and scientific evidence, the Quran does not shy away from presenting itself to the merciless scrutiny of rationality. It will be hard to find a reader whose queries are not satisfactorily answered. We hope that most readers will testify that this will always stand out as a book among books – perhaps the greatest literary achievement of this century.

Author: Ramon Harvey
Publisher: Edinburgh Studies in Islamic S
ISBN: 9781474451659
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Ramon Harvey revisits the Muslim theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) from Samarqand and puts his system, and that of the Māturīdī school, into lively dialogue with modern thought to show that a contemporary Muslim philosophical theology (kalām jadīd) can provide original and constructive answers to perennial theological questions.

Author: Frank Griffel
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
ISBN: 9789004306950
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) is one of the most influential thinkers of Islam. There is hardly a genre of Islamic literature where he is not regarded as a major authority. Islamic Law, Sufism, ethics, philosophy, and theology are all deeply shaped by him. Yet in the past thirty years, the field of Ghazali-studies has been shaken by the realization that Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 428/1037) and other philosophers had a strong influence on him. Now, after the 900th anniversary at his death, the field emerges stronger than ever. This second volume of Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazali brings together twelve leading experts on al-Ghazali who write about his thought and the impact it had on later Muslim thinkers.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004290958
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
This volume offers an account of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) as a rational theologian who created a symbiosis of philosophy and theology and infused rationality into Sufism. The majority of the papers herein deal with important topics of al-Ghazālī’s work, which demonstrate his rational treatment of the Qurʾān and major subjects of Islamic theology and everyday life of Muslims. Some other contributions address al-Ghazālī’s sources and how his intellectual endeavors were later received by scholars who had the same concern of reconciling religion and rationality within Islam, Christianity and Judaism. With contributions by Binyamin Abrahamov, Hans Daiber, Ken Garden, Avner Giladi, Scott Girdner, Frank Griffel, Steven Harvey, Alfred Ivry, Jules Janssens, Taneli Kukkonen, Luis Xavier López-Farjeat, Wilferd Madelung, Yahya M. Michot, Yasien Mohamed, Eric Ormsby, M. Sait Özervarlı, and Hidemi Takahashi.

Author: Louay M. Safi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000483541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The book examines the growing tension between social movements that embrace egalitarian and inclusivist views of national and global politics, most notably classical liberalism, and those that advance social hierarchy and national exclusivism, such as neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and national populism. In exploring issues relating to tensions and conflicts around globalization, the book identifies historical patterns of convergence and divergence rooted in the monotheistic traditions, beginning with the ancient Israelites that dominated the Near East during the Axial age, through Islamic civilization, and finally by considering the idealism-realism tensions in modern times. One thing remained constant throughout the various historical stages that preceded our current moment of global convergence: a recurring tension between transcendental idealism and various forms of realism. Transcendental idealism, which prioritize egalitarian and universal values, pushed periodically against the forces of realism that privilege established law and power structure. Equipped with the idealism-realism framework, the book examines the consequences of European realism that justified the imperialistic venture into Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in the name of liberation and liberalization. The ill-conceived strategy has, ironically, engendered the very dysfunctional societies that produce the waves of immigrants in constant motion from the South to the North, simultaneously as it fostered the social hierarchy that transfer external tensions into identity politics within the countries of the North. The book focuses particularly on the role played historically by Islamic rationalism in translating the monotheistic egalitarian outlook into the institutions of religious pluralism, legislative and legal autonomy, and scientific enterprise at the foundation of modern society. It concludes by shedding light on the significance of the Muslim presence in Western cultures as humanity draws slowly but consistently towards what we may come to recognize as the Global Age. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003203360, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Author: Richard C. Martin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786070243
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This clearly written text explores the rational theology of Islam, the conflict between the "defenders of God" and the "defenders of reason", and the controversy's historical roots.

Author: Abdolkarim Soroush
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195351916
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Abdolkarim Soroush has emerged as one of the leading moderate revisionist thinkers of the Muslim world. He and his contemporaries in other Muslim countries are shaping what may become Islam's equivalent of the Christian Reformation: a period of questioning traditional practices and beliefs and, ultimately, of upheaval. Presenting eleven of his essays, this volume makes Soroush's thought readily available in English for the first time. The essays set forth his views on such matters as the freedom of Muslims to interpret the Qur'an, the inevitability of change in religion, the necessity of freedom of belief, and the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Throughout, Soroush emphasizes the rights of individuals in their relationship with both government and God, explaining that the ideal Islamic state can only be defined by the beliefs and will of the majority.

Author: Abdul Elah Nazer
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1469148323
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 815

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Book Description
Islam, more than 1400 years after its revival by Prophet Muhammad is still misunderstood today. The traditional Islam practised today, is not the Islam of the Prophets, Abraham and Muhammad. It has been acutely syncretized with alien concepts of Paganism, Zoroastrian and Judeo-Christian. This book will attempt to explain some of the misunderstood verses using linguistics within its various contexts. Resorting to reason, Sense and Sensibility in Islam “sieves” out words and expressions of literalism from historicity. The resulting exegesis closely mirrors the message of the Quran as understood by the Pagan, Persian and the Judeo-Christian weltanschauung of the days of the Prophet Muhammad. The use of logic and context of the message is paramount. Arabic lexicons are frequently consulted and ancient metaphors revealed. Myths, legends, dogmas, miracles, superstitions, and historicity will be examined in the light of modern disciplines of archaeology and it sub-discipline of epigraphy, anthropology, cosmology and other scientifi c disciplines in deciphering and “teasing” out the message to its “original” rational intent. Contrary to popular perception, Islam is not a religion. It is in fact opposed to it, states Nazer. Traditional Islam today is a syncretic medley of traditions from Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian traditions. While Nazer attempts to separate Original Islam from this syncretism, he asks various pertinent questions on the origins of Prophet Muhammad; the rituals perpetuated in the name of Islam by the Pagan Meccans of the Omayyad Period and later Abbasside Zoroastrian Persians and question their authenticity through linguistics, common sense and unveiled metaphors from Arabic Lexicons. Like separating wheat from chaff, Nazer “teases” out ancient words and metaphors from commonly translated rituals in today’s Islam. What was the essence of the ancient faith, he asks? Did Abraham travel all the way to Mecca to found a faith on the ritual of prayers, or did he found a system of socio-economic reforms, which Muhammad followed, for later generations? Did Abraham build the Kaaba in Mecca? Did Mecca exist during Abraham’s time? What do the words Kaaba and Bakkah really mean? Was Bakkah the Mecca of today, or was it the Baca or Bekah of the Judaic religion? Nazer explains these words through linguistics from context and the answer may surprise many, including the followers of traditional Islam today. Finally, Sense and Sensibility in Islam examines whether Islam is compatible with Western democracy. Is Islam a democracy or an autocracy, allied to patristic bondage as practiced in Iran and Saudi Arabia? He comes to the conclusions that Islam is a set of social reforms that lead to peace, security and human rights for all.

Author: George F. Hourani
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521035637
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Preface; Foreword Michael Marmura; Conventions; Titles and locations of the original articles; Introduction; 1. Islamic theology and Muslim philosophy; 2. Ethics in classical Islam: a conspectus; 3. Ethical presuppositions of the Qur'an; 4. 'Injuring oneself' in the Qur'an, in the light of Aristotle; 5. Two theories of value in early Islam; 6. Islamic and non-Islamic origin of Mu'tazilite ethical rationalism; 7. The rationalist ethics of 'Abd al-Jabbar; 8. Deliberation in Aristotle and 'Abd al-Jabbar; 9. Ash'ari; 10. Juwayni's criticisms of Mu'tazilite ethics; 11. Ghazali on the ethics of action; 12. Reason and revaltion in Ibn Hazm's ethicical thought; 13. The basis of authority of concensus in Sunnite Islam; 14. Ibn Sina's 'Essay on the secret of destiny'; 15. Averroes on good and evil; 16. Combinations of reason and tradtion in Islamic ethics; Select bibliography; Index.