scholarly journals The Existence of Arguments in Classical Islamic Thought: Reply to Hannah Erlwein

Sophia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdurrahman Ali Mihirig

AbstractIn recent years, there has been notable interest in Islamic philosophy and theology from an analytic and not merely historical perspective. One important area of research that has garnered a great deal of research is the arguments for the existence of God. Recent work by Hannah Erlwein seeks to argue that this research has been in vain, for there are no arguments for the existence of God in classical Islamic thought. This paper analyzes Erlwein’s strategies in justifying this position, revealing that her research ignores an enormous amount of evidence that runs contrary to her thesis, in addition to demonstrating many of the errors and shortcomings in her work. Most disturbingly, the book seeks to present the Islamic philosophical tradition as fideistic and unintellectual based on a series of contrived interpretations of rather clear texts. In response, this paper demonstrates the importance of independent inquiry in the Islamic tradition by looking at a wide range of different relevant texts.

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-90
Author(s):  
Dennis Michael Warren

The late Dr. Fazlur Rahman, Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Islamic Thought at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, has written this book as number seven in the series on Health/Medicine and the Faith Traditions. This series has been sponsored as an interfaith program by The Park Ridge Center, an Institute for the study of health, faith, and ethics. Professor Rahman has stated that his study is "an attempt to portray the relationship of Islam as a system of faith and as a tradition to human health and health care: What value does Islam attach to human well-being-spiritual, mental, and physical-and what inspiration has it given Muslims to realize that value?" (xiii). Although he makes it quite clear that he has not attempted to write a history of medicine in Islam, readers will find considerable depth in his treatment of the historical development of medicine under the influence of Islamic traditions. The book begins with a general historical introduction to Islam, meant primarily for readers with limited background and understanding of Islam. Following the introduction are six chapters devoted to the concepts of wellness and illness in Islamic thought, the religious valuation of medicine in Islam, an overview of Prophetic Medicine, Islamic approaches to medical care and medical ethics, and the relationship of the concepts of birth, contraception, abortion, sexuality, and death to well-being in Islamic culture. The basis for Dr. Rahman's study rests on the explication of the concepts of well-being, illness, suffering, and destiny in the Islamic worldview. He describes Islam as a system of faith with strong traditions linking that faith with concepts of human health and systems for providing health care. He explains the value which Islam attaches to human spiritual, mental, and physical well-being. Aspects of spiritual medicine in the Islamic tradition are explained. The dietary Jaws and other orthodox restrictions are described as part of Prophetic Medicine. The religious valuation of medicine based on the Hadith is compared and contrasted with that found in the scientific medical tradition. The history of institutionalized medical care in the Islamic World is traced to awqaf, pious endowments used to support health services, hospices, mosques, and educational institutions. Dr. Rahman then describes the ...


Author(s):  
Bruce L. Gordon

There is an argument for the existence of God from the incompleteness of nature that is vaguely present in Plantinga’s recent work. This argument, which rests on the metaphysical implications of quantum physics and the philosophical deficiency of necessitarian conceptions of physical law, deserves to be given a clear formulation. The goal is to demonstrate, via a suitably articulated principle of sufficient reason, that divine action in an occasionalist mode is needed (and hence God’s existence is required) to bring causal closure to nature and render it ontologically functional. The best explanation for quantum phenomena and the most adequate understanding of general providence turns out to rest on an ontic structural realism in physics that is grounded in the immaterialist metaphysics of theistic idealism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (01) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Risanda Alirastra Budiantoro ◽  
Riesanda Najmi Sasmita ◽  
Tika Widiastuti

Allah has given the guidance in the form of Islam for Muslim to take and lead all the aspects of life including the economic activity. The Islamic economic system is believed to be the answer of the economic problems that exist at this time. The goal is to achieve falah in kaffah by not doing some economic activities that are in violation as prescribed by Islam. For example is riba. Discourse on riba can be said "classical" both in the development of Islamic thought and in Islamic civilization because riba often occurs in all aspects of public life, especially economic transactions (in Islam called muamalah). Riba is an additional retrieval, either in a sale and purchase transaction or lending in a false or contrary to the principle of muamalah in Islam. Prohibition of riba is obtained from various sources by the Qur'an and Hadith Rasulullah SAW, so the scholars firmly and clearly defined the prohibition of riba because there are exploitative elements that can harm the others. So, this study is aimed to identif yIslamic economic system and the prohibition of riba in historical perspective. From the results of this study is expected to be a good reference for the reader to understand the Islamic economic system and riba in the future.Saran sitasi: Budiantoro, R., Sasmita, R., & Widiastuti, T. (2018). Sistem Ekonomi (Islam) dan Pelarangan Riba dalam Perspektif Historis. Jurnal Ilmiah Ekonomi Islam, 4(01), 1-13. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.29040/jiei.v4i1.138


ULUMUNA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-118
Author(s):  
Qurratul Aini

This article discusses al-Gazālī’s critiques in his Tahāfut al-Falāsifah against the Muslim. It answers two main questions: First, what is the purpose of al-Gazālī in writing Tahāfut al-Falāsifah? Second, is it true that this work represent the conflict between philosophy and dogma, between revelation and the ratio, or between orthodoxy and hetherodoxy? Content analysis and historical method are used to elucidate the criticism of al-Gazālī against the Muslim philosophers in Tahāfut al-Falāsifah. This study shows that instead of questioning the validity of logic on philosophical reasoning and methodology, al-Gazālī wrote Tahāfut al-Falāsifah in order to contest epistemological philosophical superiority claims advanced by Muslim philosophers. The critism of al-Gazālī cannot be seen as a reaction, or let alone rejection, of orthodoxy or dogma against the philosophy. Rather, his critical thought should be viewed as his attempt as a Muslim scholar to accept and adapt Greek philosophical tradition into the framework of Islamic thought. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20414/ujis.v20i1.805


2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann W. Unger

The Scots language plays a key role in the political and cultural landscape of contemporary Scotland. From a discourse-historical perspective, this article explores how language ideologies about the Scots language are realized linguistically in a so-called ‘languages strategy’ drafted by the Scottish Executive, and in focus groups consisting of Scottish people. This article shows that although the decline of Scots is said to be a ‘tragedy’, focus group participants seem to reject the notion of Scots as a viable, contemporary language that can be used across a wide range of registers. The policy document also seems to construct Scots in very positive terms, but is shown to be unhelpful or potentially even damaging in the process of changing public attitudes to Scots.


Author(s):  
Daniel Butt

This chapter examines the limitations of both command-and-control and market-based legal mechanisms in the pursuit of environmental justice. If the environment is to be protected to at least a minimally acceptable degree, approaches that focus on the coercive force of the state must be complemented by the development of an “ecological ethos,” whereby groups and individuals are motivated to act with non-self-interested concern for the environment. The need for this ethos means that the state is dependent on the cooperation of a wide range of non-state actors. Recent work on environmental governance emphasizes the delegation of aspects of governing to such actors and supports efforts to increase popular participation in governmental processes. The chapter therefore advocates a governance approach that seeks to rectify some of the limitations of state-led environmental law, while encouraging popular participation in a way that can encourage the development of an ecological ethos among the citizenry.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Michael Kemper ◽  
Gulnaz Sibgatullina

Abstract This article studies the work of the Moscow-based Syrian academic scholar Taufik Ibragim. Originally a Marxist historian of Islamic philosophy and kalām, after the end of the ussr Ibragim became one of Russia’s most authoritative scholars also of the Qurʾān and the Islamic tradition more broadly. Since the mid-2000s, Ibragim has publicly propagated the concept of “Qurʾānic humanism”, which is meant to demonstrate the tolerance of the Qurʾān and the humanist character of Islam in general, against Islamic extremism and stagnation in Muslim thought. In his opposition to the dominant political “traditionalism” in Russia’s Islamic landscape, Ibragim links back to the heritage of the Tatar Muslim educational and religious reformers (Jadids) of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Without reference to any other contemporary Islamic thinker, Ibragim advocates a reform of Islam to adapt it to the conditions of modern Russia. His interpretations appeal to Russia’s academic elite, as well as to the Jadid-oriented muftiate of the Russian Federation (dumrf) in Moscow, which until recently propagated Ibragim’s concepts against the vague “traditionalism” that other muftiates in the Russian Federation claim to follow. But his insistence on a rational approach to the Qurʾān and his challenging of the authority of ḥadīth have brought Ibragim the enmity of many conservative muftis and Muslim theologians in Russia, and Islamic reformism is under increasing attack.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-146
Author(s):  
Rory Smead ◽  
Patrick Forber

AbstractSpite (in the biological or evolutionary sense) is behavior that harms others at a cost to the actor. The presence of spite in human and animal populations presents an evolutionary puzzle. Recent work has suggested small populations and pre-play signaling can have a significant effect on the evolution of spite. Here, we use computational methods to explore these factors in fluctuating populations that may go extinct. We find that the presence of spite can make a population significantly more likely to go extinct, but that this does not preclude the possibility of spite reliably evolving. Additionally, we find that the stochastic effects of small fluctuating populations allow for the evolution and predominance of signal-mediated conditional spite across a wide range of conditions. These results suggest that directed harm, even if costly, can play a significant early role in the evolution of social behaviors and this provides a possible origin for punishment.


Author(s):  
Giovanna Lelli

The study of medieval Islamic philosophy is necessary in order to understand Islamic thought, both medieval and contemporary. I propose that the distinction within Islamic thought between two great paradigms, the Avicennian and the Averroistic, is a fertile approach. It is true that in the field of Islamic poetics and rhetoric we find nothing that corresponds to the philosophical and religious opposition between Avicennism and Averroism. Nevertheless, in the medieval Islamic world, besides the official rhetoric which was linked to the legal culture, we can find several elements of these two great cultural paradigms even in the theory of literature. Today, a renewed interest in Islamic aesthetics and philosophy might help the West recompose its fragmented postmodernism, while it could in turn help the Islamic world construct a new, critical and non-fundamentalist approach to its classical authors.


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