The Kurdish question and the PKK have been among the topics that have gained massive importance for almost a century in politics, daily life, and among academics. The declaration of the PKK, the last ideological rebellion against the Turkish state, has translated the Kurdish problem into the problem of assimilation, nationalization, and standardization of the decades-long armed conflict between the Turkish army and the PKK. This article aims to present a discourse and content analysis of the master’s and doctoral dissertations (...) that were submitted to the Turkish Higher Education Institution (YÖK) between 1999–2020 in Turkey. The paper focuses on how and in which context these researchers analyzed and formulated their findings on the PKK and the Kurdish conflict. The two basic theoretical concepts on which the study is based are the “embedded journalist” used in media studies and Antonio Gramsci’s “organic intellectual.” The main argument of this study is that the theses have become an affirmation apparatus that reproduces the official ideology of the state with slight differences and feeds it to the masses, and at the same time, due to their narrative that is built with the eyes of the state, they tend to be examples of embedded journalism rather than scientific studies. (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)

This book is a study of overlooked themes in Iran's contemporary political and intellectual history. It investigates the way Iranian Muslim intellectuals have discussed politics and democracy. As a history of Iranian Islamism and its transformation to post-Islamism, this work demonstrates that Muslim intellectuals have enriched the Iranian society epistemologically, aesthetically, ethically, and politically. This book examines the internal conflicts of the Islamist ideology as the intellectual underpinnings of the 1979 Revolution, its contribution to the formation of the post-revolutionary state, (...) and the post-Islamist response to the democratic deficits of the post-revolutionary state. Seeking to overcome the shortcomings of historiographical approaches, this book demonstrates the intellectual and political agency of Muslim intellectuals from the 1960s to the present. (shrink)

Hegel’s philosophy is in tension with liberalism, containing both liberalizing tendencies and rejecting liberal norms. I explore this tension by investigating the relationship between religion, fanaticism, and world history in Hegel’s discussion of Islam. Drawing on recent work that considers Hegel’s treatment of race and world history, I show that he views Islam as a form of fanaticism that is antithetical to Christian Europe. This rejection of Islam stands in contrast to his treatment of the French (...) Revolution, which is a fanaticism that can be incorporated into world history. I conclude that Hegel does not provide resources for narrating a history of a more inclusive Europe, but that interrogating his philosophy offers strategies for thinking askew the liberal “problem-space” and reconsidering identities formed in opposition to the Islamic fanatic. Such an interrogation reveals the assumptions at work in contemporary debates about the liberalization of Islam. (shrink)

This work treats in one volume the most important fields in Islamic studies: Persian literature and philology; Islamic history and historiography; Arabic literature and philology; and Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence. The essays are representative of the fields in which one of the most illustrious Arabists and Persianists in the world, Ahmad Mahdavi Damgani, has been an indispensible contributor for close to 65 years.

Accession Number: ATLA0001712108; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 71-86.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 86.; Rev from an article in The Islamic quarterly.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Andalus and Sefarad: On Philosophy and Its History in Islamic Spain. By Sarah Stroumsa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. xxi + 220. $35, £28.

Peter Adamson presents the first full history of philosophy in the Islamic world for a broad readership. He traces its development from early Islam to the 20th century, ranging from Spain to South Asia, featuring Jewish and Christian thinkers as well as Muslim. Major figures like Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides are covered in great detail, but the book also looks at less familiar thinkers, including women philosophers. Attention is also given to the philosophical relevance of Islamic theology and (...) mysticism--the Sufi tradition within Islam, and Kabbalah among Jews--and to science, with chapters on disciplines like optics and astronomy. The first part of the book looks at the blossoming of Islamic theology and responses to the Greek philosophical tradition in the world of Arabic learning, the second discusses philosophy in Muslim Spain, and a third section looks in unusual detail at later developments, touching on philosophy in the Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid empires. (shrink)

The central debate of natural theology among medieval Muslims and Jews concerned whether or not the world was eternal. Opinions divided sharply on this issue because the outcome bore directly on God's relationship with the world: eternity implies a deity bereft of will, while a world with a beginning leads to the contrasting picture of a deity possessed of will. In this exhaustive study of medieval Islamic and Jewish arguments for eternity, creation, and the existence of God, Herbert Davidson provides (...) a systematic classification of the proofs, analyzes and explains them, and traces their sources in Greek philosophy. Throughout the study, Davidson tries to take into account every argument of a philosophical character, disregarding only those arguments that rest entirely on religious faith or which fall below a minimal level of plausibility. (shrink)

Scientific thought and its burdens is a book to search for the ways in which science has been understood in history and the way we conceive it today. It argues that every human phenomenon has certain mental frameworks through which it is manifested. Then it raises the question: through which mental frameworks is science manifested? First of all, science is a cognitive activity and as such it is an attempt to acquire knowledge of certain objects or phenomena around us. In (...) that case, it must have an epistemological framework, which is developed in this book as the epistemology of science; then, it is an activity carried out by a community of scholars and their students in an uninterrupted chain of tradition. This gives us the sociological framework. Based on these fundamental frameworks, i.e. the cognitive and sociological approach, the concept of science is defined. Due to the lack of a satisfactory epistemological and sociological framework, taken together, many crucial concepts, such as scientific process, scientific consciousness and worldview, concerning the rise and development of science within a civilization has not adequately been explained. This book thus brings a fresh understanding of sociological concepts concerning science, such as scientific community and tradition. Sufficient material is brought in from the history of science unfolding itself within three civilizations; Greek, Islamic and Western, in order to vindicate the framework in which scientific thought in these communities emerged. (shrink)

In the 21st century, amid converging global political, social, and economic forces we are questioning the fundamental values we hold true, driven by an antagonism between different schools of philosophy--between left- and right-wing politics. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of western political philosophy and underlines the core principles of each argument. It then argues that neither have we solved nor do we have any pathway to eventually solve, the question of right and wrong--we are essentially moral relativists (...) in disguise. In order to break out of this cycle of uncertainty, the book proposes a solution of knowledge-based cognition: policy based on a concrete and proven understanding of an absolute and certain body of truths. This requires an analysis and blending of non-western political philosophical traditions, such as those espoused by Islam and Confucianism. This book gives an original critique of western political philosophy and is the first book to engage in a reconstruction of Islamic political philosophy." -- Back cover. (shrink)

This book highlights the emergence of a new mathematical rationality and the beginning of the mathematisation of physics in Classical Islam. Exchanges between mathematics, physics, linguistics, arts and music were a factor of creativity and progress in the mathematical, the physical and the social sciences. Goods and ideas travelled on a world-scale, mainly through the trade routes connecting East and Southern Asia with the Near East, allowing the transmission of Greek-Arabic medicine to Yuan Muslim China. The development of science, (...) first centred in the Near East, would gradually move to the Western side of the Mediterranean, as a result of Europe's appropriation of the Arab and Hellenistic heritage. Contributors are Paul Buell, Anas Ghrab, Hossein Masoumi Hamedani, Zeinab Karimian, Giovanna Lelli, Marouane ben Miled, Patricia Radelet-de Grave, and Roshdi Rashed. (shrink)

Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi... is not exactly a household name, even for those involved with the history of Islamic science or Islamic thought in general. He was born around 1270 C.E. in Nishapur, at that time a major city in northeastern Iran, and died around 1330. He was probably a Shi'ite, though not aggressively so, to judge from his writings. Like most medieval Islamic scholars, he wrote in several fields. Works of his survive on astronomy, Qur'an commentary, and rhetoric, but this (...) understates his breadth, since his works on astronomy also drew on philosophy, other branches of science, and astrology, while the Qur'an commentary tapped the whole range of religious and secular sciences. His particular fame, such as it was, was based on two of his works on astronomy that were used as textbooks and his Qur'an commentary. (shrink)

Originally published in 1958, this volume covers important aspects of Islamic history and culture: Arabia before the Prophet The Prophet The Koran and Islam The Caliphate From the Caliphate to the end of the Ottoman The Crusades The Maghreb Muslim Spain The Sharia Philosophy The Sciences Literature The Arts Problems of the Twentieth Century Arab World.

This short essay analyzes the deception and self-deception in talk of ‘the clash of civilizations’ and proceeds to diagnose what is wrong in the standard understanding of Islam in the Western media today by looking to the abiding history of colonial relations with Islam down to this day and also looking to the relation between ideals of democracy and the formation of religious identities. The essay closes with some remarks about the nature of identity and the importance to (...) one's own agency of the distinction between the first and the third person point of view in Muslim self-understanding. (shrink)

This book brings together the study of two great disciplines of the Islamic world: law and philosophy. In both sunni and shiite Islam, it became the norm for scholars to acquire a high level of expertise in the legal tradition. Thus some of the greatest names in the history of Aristotelianism were trained jurists, like Averroes, or commented on the status and nature of law, like al-Fārābī. While such authors sought to put law in its place relative to (...) the philosophical disciplines, others criticized philosophy from a legal viewpoint, like al-Ghazālī and Ibn Taymiyya. But this collection of papers does not only explore the relative standing of law and philosophy. It also looks at how philosophers, theologians, and jurists answered philosophical questions that arise from jurisprudence itself. What is the logical structure of a well-formed legal argument? What standard of certainty needs to be attained in passing down judgments, and how is that standard reached? What are the sources of valid legal judgment and what makes these sources authoritative? May a believer be excused on grounds of ignorance? Together the contributions provide an unprecedented demonstration of the close connections between philosophy and law in Islamic society, while also highlighting the philosophical interest of texts normally studied only by legal historians. (shrink)

This study traces the history of the origin and development of Unanimedicine in the Islamic world and its later blossoming in Persia. Based mainly onArabic, Persian, Urdu and English sources, the study focuses on the intellectuallegacy of the Muslims in the development of Unani medicine and their interestin the progress of medical sciences, when a number of classical works wereproduced by great Muslim scholars during this period that provide evidenceof organized medical care that provided the basis for modern medicine as (...) itemerged from the 17th century onwards in Europe. The early Muslim scholars’works were focused on the integration or Islamicisation of human knowledgein the areas of medical and health-care sciences as well as those who seekto understand the role of moral values and Maqaṣid al-Sharīʿah in medical and healthcare practices in a more comprehensiveframework, exposing the dynamic contribution of Islamic civilization tomedical progress that was later obscured in modernity by Western ideologies. (shrink)

This book discusses Asian medicine, which puts enormous emphasis on prevention and preservation of health, and examines how, in recent decades, medical schools in Asia have been increasingly shifting toward a curative approach. It offers an ethnographic investigation of the scenarios in China and India and finds that modern students and graduates in these countries perceive Asian medicine to be as important as Western medicine. There is a growing tendency to integrate Asian medicine with Western medical thought in the academic (...) curriculum that has led to a gradual decline of Asian medical thought and practices. At the same time, there has been a massive rise in patent drugs, health products and cosmetics being sold under the brand names of Asian medicine or herbal medicine. Most of these drugs and health products do not follow the classical formulas found in the Asian medical texts. The book analyses these texts and concludes that contemporary Asian medicine rarely follows the classical texts, and in fact uses Asian medicine brands to sell Western health products and practices. With a particular focus on the formal and professional sector of Chinese herbal medicine and Indian ayurvedic medicine in urban areas, this book appeals to a broad readership, including undergraduate students and academics as well as non-experts. Md. Nazrul Islam is an Associate Professor in the General Education Office, United International College, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University. He was a Visiting Associate Professor in the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia (2015-16) during which time he completed this book manuscript. (shrink)

Jainism is a religio-philosophical school of India which reacted against the Brahmanic/Vedic tradition and established as a school of thought. As a way of life it started as a Sramanic movement (the non-Brahmanic ascetic tradition) to attain the truth. Jains metaphysics and epistemology are purely logical and conducive for all. Jainism always is against the physical and psychological violence, and believes that it is the Ekanta (one sided view of reality) philosophy, which leads to violence. According to the Jains, (...) Ekantavada is a very rigid view, thus partial in nature. Any school asserting this claim for the absolute truth logically thus rejecting all the other views that basically leads towards dogmatism and in toleration; which further aggravated and leads toward violence. Mahavira as a champion of Ahimsa (nonviolence) carried out this concept from the domain of practical behaviour to the domain of intellectual and philosophical discussion. The Jaina principle of respect for the other life gave rise to the principle of respect for the views of others; thus they advocates Anekāntavāda. According to them, non-violence is the goal and Anekāntavāda becomes the tool. Its Syadvada is basically a logical inclusivity which accepts diversified aspects of truth. Consequently, it tells that a complete understanding of any truth requires the consideration and acceptance of a variety of viewpoints. This pluralistic view of the Jains is to be effective well to combat social violence and evils too. The world is in the pyramid of violence that can only entail massive destruction of this phenomenal world in any moment. I think, this pluralistic approach of Anekāntavāda is to be considered as the panacea to overcome all types of rigidities and bigotries of the present society as well. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#67-68; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2020 P 15-31. (shrink)

The general mission of feminist philosophy is to correct whatever male biases may exist in the mainstream philosophical traditions. Thus western feminist philosophers investigate and challenge the ways in which western traditions have so long been participating in subordinating women or in rationalizing their subordination. By questioning the gender insensitivity of ethics and philosophy, feminism attempts to reveal various forms of subjugation of women operating through laws, institutions, customs, social theories, and cultural values. Feminism aims at coming up (...) with a better design for society, based on a thorough review and rethinking of gendered positioning of human beings. (shrink)

Abstract. Environmental ethicists ask several questions about global climate change; especially on the moral justification of the problem of non-compliance; i.e., why agents do not comply with their climatic responsibilities. It is evident that some developed countries have been perpetuating the climate change crisis by not following their climatic responsibilities (i.e., mitigation, adaptation, and compensation) or even more surprisingly a few of those states have been denying the climate change facts. This paper focuses on comparing two forward-looking approaches to climate (...) justice; namely, the Ability to Pay Principle (APP) and the Power/Responsibility Principle (PRP) and seeks an answer whether any of these principles enable a response to the problem of non-compliance. Scrutinizing a few analogical examples and analysing contemporary debates on this issue, this paper then shows the APP does not enable a response to the problem of non-compliance whereas one possible distribution of duties according to the PRP does so and concludes that the relevant agents’ willingness to comply with climatic responsibilities seems to be the key factor to avoid harm in the context of climate change crisis. (shrink)

This introduction provides an overview of the significance of this Symposium on Islam and Science in the Future. Compiling this project began in early 2019 and various articles by philosophers, Islamicists and historians tackle the relationship between Islam and science from different angles.

We provide two programmatic frameworks for integrating philosophical research on understanding with complementary work in computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. First, philosophical theories of understanding have consequences about how agents should reason if they are to understand that can then be evaluated empirically by their concordance with findings in scientific studies of reasoning. Second, these studies use a multitude of explanations, and a philosophical theory of understanding is well suited to integrating these explanations in illuminating ways.

In recent decades, the trope that classical Muslim thinkers anticipated or influenced modern European thought has provided an easy endorsement of their contemporary relevance. This article studies how Arab editors and intellectuals, from 1882 to 1947, understood the twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl, and Arabo-Islamic philosophy generally. This modern generation of Arab scholars also attached significance to classical Arabic texts as precursors to modern European thought. They invited readers to retrospectively identify with Ibn Ṭufayl and his treatise, Ḥayy ibn (...) Yaqẓān. Comparisons of Ibn Ṭufayl to European thinkers, and re-presentations of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān as the precedent or genesis of European thought, facilitated these editors’ global imaginaries, anti-colonial projects and political fantasies. This article tracks these projects and fantasies through the afterlife of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān from early printings and generalist surveys to later editions and studies, as Ibn Ṭufayl’s significance became sutured into his imagined importance for Europe, and for going beyond Europe. (shrink)

Theology and Society is the most comprehensive study of Islamic intellectual and religious history, focusing on Muslim theology. With its emphasis on the eighth and ninth centuries CE, it remains the most detailed prosopographical study of the early phase of the formation of Islam. Originally published in German between 1991 and 1995, Theology and Society is a monument of scholarship and a unique scholarly enterprise which has stood the test of time as an unparalleled reference work.

This is a ground-breaking study of the consequences of a central problem in Aristotle's Metaphysics in the interpretation given to it by Islamic and Christian Aristotelian philosophers: the relationship between individuals as individuals, and individuals as instances of a universal. Father Booth begins from an examination of the factors causing the aporia in the centre of Aristotle's ontology, going on to elaborate the way in which it occurred sometimes with confused reactions among the Greek, Syrian and Arab commentators, and to (...) note in particular the modifications to the weighting of elements in Aristotle's ontological figures (differing in detail, but in tendency the same) when his ontology was brought into the union with Platonist and other thought conventionally known as `Neoplatonism'. The discussion culminates in two chapters on the different reconciliations of the radical Aristotelian and the Neoplatonist traditions, proposed by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, in which the factors in the aporia have a key importance. (shrink)

Though all the religions of the world teach love, preach sympathy for others and encourage man to exercise utmost self-restraint and have most profoundly been a source of inspiration for the highest good of mankind, the world today is torn by conflicts, enmity and religious hatred. In this predicament, a lasting and peaceful society is impossible unless different faiths are understood in their proper perspectives. Therefore, it is necessary that people belonging to different faiths understand each other well. This necessitates (...) a constant dialogue and effort to generate moral and hearty religious thinking. The advocates of all the religions of the world emphasize the importance of certain virtues and moral values. Only these can foster unity and cohesion of mankind. But the moral and religious values cannot be invoked by force. This can be achieved through the exchange of words, kind words, sincere words and loving words that can reach the deepest fathoms of the heart. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#61-62-; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2017 P 1-14. (shrink)

This inspiring work presents a truly knowledge-based approach to education as an alternative to the current curriculum that is based on consolidating pre-conceived ideas. It demonstrates the advantages of the new curriculum, both in terms of acquiring knowledge and preventing current problems such as technological disasters, global injustice, and environmental destruction. It also shows how it can eliminate plagiarism, low retention in classrooms, non-representative grading, and other common problems. Examples are given from various disciplines, ranging from science and engineering to (...) philosophy and law. (shrink)

J. Krishnamurti, whose life and teachings spanned the greater part of the 20th Century, is regarded by many as one who has had the most profound impact on human consciousness in modern times. He talked of the things that concern all of us in our everyday life: the problems of living in modern society, the individual’s search for security, and the need for human beings to free themselves from their inner burdens of violence, fear and sorrow. Meditation, according to Krishnamurti, (...) is not the popular tranquilizer that most people call to mind, but an attempt to see if there is an end to knowledge, therefore freedom from the known. What Krishnamurti considers meditation is along the lines of insight meditation or jyana yoga. Meditation is not a means to an end; there is no end, no arrival; it is a movement in time and out of time. Every system and method binds thought to time, but choice less awareness of every thought and feeling, as well as an understanding of their motives, their mechanism, allowing them to blossom, is the beginning of meditation. This paper is an attempt to discuss J. Krishnamurti’s insight on what meditation is and how to practice it. (shrink)

Organisational citizenship behaviour towards the environment (OCBE) aids in both environmental protection and in harnessing sustainable competitive organisational advantage. This study proposed a conceptual research model which investigated managerial perceptions of the relationship between OCBE and economic cost performance (ECP) in the UAE hospitality sector, with green innovative behaviour (GIB) mediating and green training moderating the relationship. Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour and abilities motivation opportunity theory, the study administered 479 structured questionnaires to hotel managers in the UAE (...) using purposive and snowball sampling techniques. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was applied to test the hypotheses in SmartPLS3.3. Findings showed that OCBE had a direct and significant impact on ECP, with GIB emerging both as a direct and mediating predictor. Additionally, green training directly and significantly moderated the OCBE–cost performance relationship. These results evince the integration of sustainable philosophies with innovative mindsets to encourage green innovative endeavours among hotel managers. (shrink)

This is the standard general account in English of Islamic philosophy and theology. It takes the reader from the religio-political sects of the Kharijites and the Shiites through to the assimilation of Greek thought in the medieval period, and onto the early modern period. Watt concludes with an analysis of Western influences on modern Islamic theology.

In the late twelfth century the mystical philosopher Suhrawardi developed a metaphysics based on metaphysical light that combined the Islamic Neoplatonism of Avicenna with ideas and symbols drawn from Islamic mysticism, classical Platonism, and Iranian mythology. This book analyzes how Qutb al-Din Shirazi, an Iranian scientist and philosopher of the thirteenth century and a leading exponent of Suhrawardi's thought, understood Suhrawardi's metaphysics of light and how he applied it in his own writings. Also discussed are Shirazi's own views on such (...) subjects as the nature of existence, reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, and the spiritual universe known as the "World of Image." The book contains several appendices, including a detailed bibliography of Shirazi's writings and the text and translation of Shirazi's essay on the World of Image. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy has often been treated as being largely of historical interest, belonging to the history of ideas rather than to philosophical study. This volume successfully overturns that view. Emphasizing the living nature and rich diversity of the subject, it examines the main thinkers and schools of thought, discusses the key concepts of Islamic philosophy and covers a vast geographical area. This indispensable reference tool includes a comprehensive bibliography and an extensive index.

This book presents a comprehensive, accessible survey of Western philosophy of music from Pythagoras to the present. Its narrative traces themes and schools through history, in a sequence of five chapters that survey the ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. Its wide-ranging coverage includes medieval Islamic thinkers, Continental and analytic thinkers, and neglected female thinkers such as Vernon Lee (Violet Paget). All aspects of the philosophy of music are discussed, including music and the cosmos, music's value, (...) music's relation to the other arts, the problem of opera, the origins of musical genius, music's emotional impact, the moral effects of music, the ontology of musical works, and the relevance of music's historical context. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in philosophy and musicology, and all who are interested in the ways in which philosophers throughout history have thought about music. (shrink)