This book discloses a largely unnoticed dialogue between Muslim and Western social thought on the search for meaning and transcendence in the human sciences. The disclosure is accomplished by a comparative reading of contemporary Muslim debates on secular knowledge on the one hand, and of a foundational Western debate on the demise of metaphysics in the human sciences on the other hand. The comparative reading is grounded in a dialogical hermeneutic approach; that is, a hermeneutic approach to texts and cultural (...) traditions that draws upon the work of Hans Georg Gadamer and also upon the insights of inter-religious dialogue. (shrink)

Is translation of a particular concept from one religious-linguistic tradition into another possible? If so, how much precision and nuance is possible in translation? Even if the problem of translating between religious-linguistic traditions is removed, we are still confronted with the question of how a particular concept is understood differently across vast stretches of time and space within a particular tradition. Atif Khalil's Repentance and the Return to God: Tawba in Early Sufism addresses these fundamental questions in a particularly salient (...) manner. Khalil's object of analysis is the commonplace human experience of contrition, repentance and atonement and the consequences of transgression. More specifically... (shrink)