Arabic and Islamic Philosophy

Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) have been practiced in Islamic societies within married couples since their introduction. However, there are divergent views over the issue of third-party donation among Sunni and Shia scholars. This paper illustrates the different perspectives of Shia Muslims surrounding, sperm, egg, and embryo donation and ethical aspects thereof. The study reveals that there are different views regarding sperm, egg, and embryo donation among the Shia religious leaders around the world. Many Shia religious scholars, including the Iranian supreme (...) religious leader Ali Hussein Khamenei allow sperm, egg, and embryo donation with certain conditions. However, the conditions stipulated by Shia religious scholars contradict the ethical and legal practices of sperm, egg, and embryo donation. Regarding sperm and egg donation, they declared that the donor child would inherit from a third-party donor and the commissioning parents would be adoptive parents. Thus, according to them, donor anonymity is impossible. Moreover, the Iranian act on embryo donation did not stipulate the right and responsibilities of the donor child and recipient couples and did not clarify the nature and number of embryos that can be donated and implanted. The paper argues that the lack of laws and guidelines on sperm, egg, and embryo donation raises many ethical problems. Based only on religious rulings, third-party donation has been practiced without foreseeing the well-being and safety of donor children, donors, and recipient couples. (shrink)

Islam as a cultural, intellectual, and religious venture appears in the popular imagination as a monolithic entity. Orientalists of the traditional ilk have tended to describe it in essentialist terms, whilst many fundamentalist Muslims themselves promote their construction of a pure and unadulterated Islamic past, to which they strive to return by purging foreign or unauthentic elements from their religion. Next to these attempts, another more traditional view sees the influence between the Western and the Islamic world in linear and (...) teleological terms. Knowledge was transmitted, so to speak, from Alexandria to Baghdad, and hence to Toledo and Paris. The present volume challenges both these concepts regarding the development of Islamic cultures. To do justice to the complexity of structures within which the Muslim Middle Ages unfolded, it approaches the questions of interaction and influence through a novel conceptual framework, that of crosspollination. Instead of telling the story of the transmission of Western works from Greece via Islam into the Latin world, a number of case studies highlight the plurality of encounters between Islam and other adjacent cultures. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories are widespread across the world, including in the Arab Middle East and North Africa. The term “conspiracy” (muˀāmara) itself is also frequently used in contemporary Arabic. However, we know little about when and how the term emerged and how it was used originally. Based on a digital corpus of Arab newspapers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as plain text versions of classical Arabic literature, this article finds that muˀāmara appears and rises to prominence (...) in the late nineteenth century in the emerging Arabic-speaking public sphere. The term was probably coined in response to influence from European public discourse at the same time, which included conspiracy theories. Unlike that European discourse and today's Arabic conspiracy talk, the early usage of muˀāmara had little to do with either conspiracy theories or religion. The word was used in a more sober way than in Europe. (shrink)

This article studies the Islamic State's only remaining periodical, Al-Naba, identifying the most common tropes and patterns in the periodical's Sub-Saharan Africa coverage, and on Mozambique in particular. The Islamic State's increasingly important coverage of Africa focuses on terror attacks, military campaigns and on the fight against Christianity. However, it also employs more traditional anti-colonial arguments that have been used by other, more accepted, political actors during the struggle for decolonisation. Al-Naba also functions as a 'shamer' of non-African Muslims, to (...) get them to join jihad by pointing to the African successes of the organisation and set these successes up as examples to be followed. In this sense, the article illustrates how African jihadist branches can have global agency. (shrink)

In this article, I consider how the epistemic problem of religious disagreement has been viewed within the Islamic tradition. Specifically, I consider two religious epistemological trends within the tradition: Islamic Rationalism and Islamic Traditionalism. In examining the approaches of both trends toward addressing the epistemic problem, I suggest that neither is wholly adequate. Nonetheless, I argue that both approaches offer insights that might be relevant to building a more adequate response. So, I attempt to combine insights from both by drawing (...) a distinction between inferential and noninferential reflective responsibility. Given this distinction, I argue that it may be possible for a theist to remain steadfast in upholding their tradition-specific theistic belief, without having to hold that belief by way of inference; but nevertheless, having to be sufficiently reflectively responsible in forming their theistic belief noninferentially. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Classical Islamic Philosophy: A Thematic Introduction by Luis Xavier López-FarjeatThérèse-Anne DruartLuis Xavier López-Farjeat. Classical Islamic Philosophy: A Thematic Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. 368. Paperback, $34.36.Interest in classical Islamic philosophy has grown and recently given rise to several presentations of the field: The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy, edited by Richard C. Taylor and Luis Xavier López-Farjeat (New York: Routledge, 2016); Islamische Philosophie im Mittelalter. Ein Handbuch, (...) edited by Heidrun Eichner, Matthias Perkams, and Christian Schäfer (Darmstadt: WBG, 2017); and The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy, edited by Khaled El-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). One may, therefore, wonder whether López-Farjeat should have provided another one. My answer is a resounding "yes." The Oxford Handbook presents specific texts, The Routledge [End Page 320] Companion gives brief overviews of specific themes, and Islamische Philosophie provides a sketch of the development of Arabic-Islamic philosophy as well as an introduction to some of the major philosophers' most significant themes or works. By contrast, López-Farjeat offers a detailed picture of lively philosophical debates between philosophers, theologians, and other intellectuals, showing how philosophy pervaded thinking in the Islamic lands and was itself enriched by serious thinking in theology and other fields.After presenting the Islamic context and the translation movement from Greek into Arabic, López-Farjeat focuses on six main themes: (1) Theologians and Philosophers on Islamic Revelation; (2) The Classification of the Sciences, Logic, and Language; (3) Philosophy and the Natural Science; (4) Metaphysics in the Islamic Philosophical Context; (5) Psychology and Theories of Cognition; and (6) Ethics and Political Philosophy. In each case, he focuses on various much-debated philosophical issues, reconstructing their evolution. He begins by highlighting the Greek background, then moves to show chronologically how and why those debates evolved. When needed, he indicates in which other section of the book the context for a particular philosopher's or theologian's specific position on a debated issue can be found. Finally, after each chapter, he gives an excellent list of further readings (mostly in English) for the reader who wishes to delve more deeply into the topic.López-Farjeat's approach highlights the liveliness and the nuances of the debates between intellectuals of various religious persuasions in a way rarely done before. Such a detailed attention to specific contexts also means that his book does not allow for a quick, easy read. It provides all the information that even someone unfamiliar with Islamic studies or ancient philosophy may need to appreciate the richness and depth of Islamic-Arabic thinking, but this amount of information requires close and slow reading. López-Farjeat's frequent references to scholarly disagreement about specific issues could make this book at times challenging for nonspecialists. This means, however, that even seasoned scholars might find something to learn from López-Farjeat's treatments of the aspects of Islamic thought they might be less familiar with. And while beginners will need some time to absorb the vast amount of information López-Farjeat provides, they will be grateful for the clear way he has organized it.Too often and for too long have historians of Islamic philosophy focused on thinkers who saw themselves as mainly Aristotelians and neglected what philosophers learned from other disciplines, in particular from theology, be it Islamic or Christian. This book shows how Christians in the Islamic world had already integrated some Greek philosophy into their thinking from an early time, when they first entered into dialogue with Islamic theologians. In turn, Islamic theologians integrated philosophical elements in their works. López-Farjeat's knowledge of Islamic theology and Eastern Christian theology allows him to show that this process of integration was not a one-way street. The Islamic milieu and its theological developments raised new questions and issues that philosophers under Greek influences had to take into account. One does not philosophize in a vacuum: new questions raised in a different cultural and linguistic environment led to a refinement and enrichment in the understanding of philosophical issues.As an example, let us consider chapter... (shrink)

We present the history of Menelaus’ Spherics (second c. AD), explaining its importance and quoting in detail some of the significant propositions. We include this work in the general context of Greek and Arabic mathematics, highlighting the far-reaching connections with modern mathematical ideas.

Many philosophers of theistic religions claim (1) that there are powerful a posteriori arguments for God’s existence that make it rational to believe that He exists and at the same time maintain (2) that God always has the freedom to do otherwise. In this article, I argue that these two positions are inconsistent because the empirical evidence on which the a posteriori arguments for God’s existence rest can be explained better by positing the existence of a God-like being without the (...) freedom to do otherwise. (shrink)

As the scope of innovative technologies is expanding, their implications and applications are increasingly intersecting with various facets of society, including the deeply rooted traditions of religion. This paper embarks on an exploratory journey to bridge the perceived divide between advancements in technology and faith, aiming to catalyze a dialogue between the religious and scientific communities. The former often views technological progress through a lens of conflict rather than compatibility. By utilizing a technology-centric perspective, we draw metaphorical parallels between the (...) functionalities of new technologies and some theological concepts of Islam. The purpose is not to reinterpret religious concepts but to illustrate how these two domains can coexist harmoniously. This comparative analysis serves as a conversation starter with an intention to mitigate any apprehensions towards technology by highlighting its potential to align with religious concepts. By fostering an environment where technological innovations are seen as tools for enhancement rather than threats to tradition, we contribute to a more inclusive discourse that encourages the religious community to engage with and potentially embrace contemporary technological advancements. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain some economic aspects of sharia by using a widely grasped philosophical approach. The paper presents an Islamic position on business ethics as it is in Qu-ran and in interpretations of sharia elaborated by Islamic thinkers, first of all Indonesian ones. Following results given in selected positions of the literature of the subject the authors come to the following theses and conclusions: Humans must pay attention to few possessions that are basic needs. Humans must avoid prioritizing (...) secondary needs by ignoring basic needs because this is contrary to the maqashid of sharia. Property management must be carried out about a predetermined plan and people who have property should not hoard it. (shrink)

The absence of Islam from recent scholarship on Hegel's account of world religions is puzzling. In the first part of the article, we argue that Hegel's neglect of Islam in his systematic account of religious phenomena is not accidental and that he did not think of Islam as a determinate religion. Its size and believers aside, we suggest that it is not possible to assign any determinacy to Islam as a world-historical phenomenon under Hegel's rubric, because such determinacy that applies (...) to other religions would be in conflict with what Hegel takes to be Islam's emphasis on the negative moment of truth, its revolutionary tendencies, and its lack of any novel conceptual content as a response to Christianity. In the second part of the article, we point out how one could respond to Hegel's characterization of Islam when it is mentioned in relation to other religious traditions. First, we argue that Hegel overemphasizes the significance of Islam qua religion in explaining the history of Muslim peoples. More than that, Hegel does not see that the history of Islamic philosophy and science can be characterized by sublation and that it can be integrated into conceptual developments in the West on these terms. However, our critique of Hegel's Eurocentrism does not remain at this level, for in the third part of the article we argue for the significance of considering the response of Muslim philosophers to Hegel. In particular, we look at the responses by Mohammed al-Khosht and Mahmoud Haider, respectively. We conclude that Hegel's exclusion of Islam from any involvement in the history of the Concept indicates an undialectical commitment on his part and that to this extent being Hegelian today requires that we rectify this oversight. (shrink)

In recent years, preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) of IVF embryos have gained much traction in clinical assisted reproduction for preventing various genetic defects, including Down syndrome. However, such genetic tests inevitably reveal the sex of IVF embryos by identifying the sex (X and Y) chromosomes. In many countries with less stringent IVF regulations, information on the sex of embryos that are tested to be genetically normal is readily shared with patients. This would thus present Muslim patients with unintended opportunities for (...) sex selection based on personal or social biases without any pressing need or valid medical reason. Additionally, there are other patients who claim using PGT for preventing genetic defects as a pretext or “convenient excuse,” with a secret intention to do sex selection when it is banned in their home country. Currently, non-medical sex selection is a highly-controversial and hotly debated issue in Islam, because there is generally a strong preference for having sons over daughters due to widespread cultural norms of elderly parents depending on their sons for financial support, as well as the need for male heirs to continue the family lineage within the backdrop of local patriarchal cultures. There is a risk of gender imbalance and social disequilibrium occurring in Islamic societies due to prevalent sex selection. Hence, the question is whether opportunistic sex selection with PGT would contravene Islamic ethics and principles, which will thus be discussed here. (shrink)

Arabic lanaguage; history and criticism.

Introduction. The article is devoted to the phenomenon of symbiosis of the state apparatus of the Republic of Indonesia and Islam. Theoretical analysis. Throughout its independence from 1949 to the present, the State power and Islamic religious organizations have been in close symbiosis. The article highlights three stages in relation to Islam and the state. Empirical analysis. The first stage was the subordination of Islam to the state apparatus from 1975 to 1997. In 1975, the main coordinating body of Muslims (...) in Indonesia, the Indonesian Ulema Council (ISU), was established. The second stage is the period of struggle for influence in the state during the presidential term of Abdurahman Wahid (1998–2001), who was formerly the leader of the country’s largest Islamic organization Nahdatul Ulama (NU). The third stage of the relationship is a time of symbiosis of the Indonesian state apparatus and Islamic organizations. It began in 2005 after the speech made by the President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on granting autonomy to the Indonesian Ulema Council. Conclusion. The religious and political situation in Indonesia is a unique phenomenon. Despite all the attempts of the democratic government to remove Islam from political and social decisions, it failed. (shrink)

This is the first study to compare the philosophical systems of secular scientific philosopher Mario Bunge (1919-2020), and Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b.1945). In their efforts to establish the philosophical underpinnings of an ideal modernity these two great thinkers speak to the same elements of the human condition, despite their opposing secular and religious worldviews. While the differences between Bunge’s critical-realist epistemology and materialist ontology on the one hand, and Taha’s spiritualist ontology and revelational-mystical epistemology on the other, (...) are fundamental, there is remarkable common ground between their scientific and Islamic versions of humanism. Both call for an ethics of prosperity combined with social justice, and both criticize postmodernism and religious conservatism. The aspiration of this book is to serve as a model for future dialogue between holders of Western and Islamic worldviews, in mutual pursuit of modernity’s best-case scenario. (shrink)

Kitāb al-Mabādiʼ wa-al-ghāyāt fi-̄mā tataḍammanah ḥurūf al-muʻjam min al-ʻajāʼib al-āyāt -- Kitāb Mīm wa-al-wāw wa-al-nūn -- Kitāb al-Alif, wa-huwa kitāb al-aḥadīyah -- Kitāb al-bāʼ, wa-huwa Kitāb al-ḥaqāʼiq al-ilahīyah -- Risālat al-ḥarf wa-al-maʻná, wa-huwa tafhīm maʻānī al-ḥurūf -- Kitāb al-yāʼ, wa-huwa Kitāb al-hūw -- Risālat al-kalām fi ̄ḥurūf al-muʻjam wa-maʻānīhā -- Risālat al-ʻiqd al-manẓūm fī khawāṣṣ al-ḥurūf.

Unveils the profound influence of medieval Islamic philosophy on the thought of Leo Strauss.

al-Mujallad al-awwal. Muqaddimāt al-taḥqīq wa-muqaddimat al-Imām al-Zubaydī lil-Itḥāf -- al-mujallad al-thānī. Kitāb al-ʻIlm ilá nihāyat al-bāb al-thālith -- al-mujallad al-thālith. Tatimmat kitāb al-ʻilm min al-bāb al-rābiʻ ilá ākhir al-kitāb -- al-mujallad al-rābiʻ. Kitāb Qawāʻid al-ʻaqāʼid -- al-mujallad al-khāmis. Kitāb Asrār al-ṭahārah -- al-mujallad al-sādis. Kitāb Asrār al-ṣalāh ilá nihāyat shurūṭ al-jumʻah min al-bāb al-khāmis -- al-mujallad al-sābiʻ. Tatimmat kitāb asrār al-ṣalāh min ādāb al-jumʻah ilá ākhir al-kitāb -- al-mujallad al-thāmin. Kitābā Asrār al-zakāh wa-asrār al-ṣawm -- al-mujallad al- tāsiʻ. Kitāb asrār (...) al-ḥajj -- al-mujallad al-ʻāshir. Kitābā ādāb tilāwat al-Qurʼān wa-al-adhkār wa-al-daʻawāt -- al-mujallad al-ḥādī ʻashar. Kitābā tartīb al-awrād wa-tafḍīl iḥyāʼ al-layl wa-ādāb al-akl -- al-mujalladal-thānī ʻashar. Kitābā ādāb al-Nikāḥ wa-ādāb al-Kasb wa-al-maʻāsh -- al-mujallad al-thālith ʻashar. Kitāb al-Ḥalāl wa-al-ḥarām -- al-mujallad al-rābiʻ ʻashar. Kitāb al-Ulfah wa-al-ukhuwwah -- al-mujallad al-khāmis ʻashar. Kitābā ādāb al-ʻUzlah wa-ādāb al-Safar -- al-mujallad al-sādis ʻashar. Kitābā ādāb al-Samāʻ wa-al-wajd wa-al-Amr bi-al-maʻrūf wa-al-nahy ʻan al-munkar -- al-mujallad al-sābiʻ ʻashar. Kitābā ādāb al-maʻīshah wa-akhlāq al-nubūwah wa-sharḥ ʻajāʼib al-qalb -- al-mujallad al-thāmin ʻashar. Kitābā riyāḍat al-nafs wa-tahdhīb al-akhlāq wa-kasr al-shahwatayn -- al-mujallad al-tāsiʻ ʻashar. Kitābā āfāt al-lisān wa-dhamm al-ghaḍab -- al-mujallad al-ʻishrūn. Kitābā dhamm al-dunyā wa-dhamm al-bukhl -- al-mujallad al-ḥādī wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kitābā dhamm al-jāh wa-dhamm al-kibr wa-al-ʻajab -- al-mujallad al-thānī wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kitābā dhamm al-ghurūr wa-al-tawbah -- al-mujallad al-thālith wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kitābā al-ṣabr wa-al-shukr -- al-mujallad al-rābiʻ wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kitābā al-rajā wa-al-khawf -- al-mujallad al-khāmis wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kitāb al-zuhd wa-al-faqr -- al-mujallad al-sādis wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kitāb al-tawḥīd wa al-tawakkul -- al-mujallad al-sābiʻ wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kitāb al-maḥabbah wa-al-shawq wa-al-uns wa-al-riḍā -- al-mujallad al-thāmin wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kutub al-ikhlāṣ wa-al-nīyah wa-al-murāqabah wa-al-muḥāsabah wa-al-tafakkur -- al-mujallad al- tāsiʻ wa-al-ʻishrūn. Kitāb dhikr al-mawt wa-mā baʻdih ilá nihāyat al-bāb al-thāmin -- al-mujallad al-thalāthūn. Kitāb dhikr al-mawt wa-mā baʻdih ilá ākhar al-kitāb wa-yalīhi maṣādir al-taḥqīq. (shrink)

In Being Another Way, Dustin Klinger recounts the history of how medieval Arabic philosophers in the Islamic East grappled with the logical role of the copula 'to be,' an ambiguity that has bedeviled Western philosophy from Parmenides to the analytic philosophers of today. Working from within a language that has no copula, a group of increasingly independent Arabic philosophers began to critically investigate the semantic role that Aristotle, for many centuries their philosophical authority, invested in the copula as the basis (...) of his logic. Drawing on extensive manuscript research, Klinger breaks through the thicket of unstudied philosophical works to demonstrate the creativity of postclassical Islamic scholarship as it explored the consequences of its intellectual break with the past. Against the still widespread view that intellectual ferment all but disappeared during the period, Klinger shows how these intellectuals over the centuries developed and refined a sophisticated philosophy of language that speaks to core concerns of contemporary linguistics and philosophy. (shrink)

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of Islamic ethical issues within a wide spectrum of philosophy of science topics, examining the development of the model of moral inclusiveness in economics, science and society from ontological, epistemological and analytical perspectives. This paradigm takes the view that ethics is systemically endogenous, and can be studied by the most rigorous scientific analysis pertaining to diverse issues and problems of ethicality in socio-scientific inquiry. This handbook takes a sweeping transdisciplinary approach that is deeply phenomenological, (...) to the nature and logic of scientific inquiry of, and in, the Qur’an. Such an approach invokes the episteme of the unity of knowledge in the socio-scientific systemic sense. The volumes' respective sections focus on the nature, logic, and role that ethics plays in formulating new vistas of alternative epistemic futures in Islamic economics, finance, and the social sciences. The ideas presented are situated within the broader context of the post-modernist, post-pandemic, and the post-Covid-19 epoch, while being aimed at conceptualising a distinctive new outlook of transdisciplinary intellection in Islamic philosophy. The content is rigorously conceptual, qualitative, quantitative, and applied. Covering a diversity of subject areas from philosophy of science, to economics and in socio-scientific context within the realm of Islamic philosophy, this forms a key text for scholars in these respective arenas, led by pioneering scholarship in Islamic studies. (shrink)