No description available.

Text in Arabic without English summary / Religious Studies and Arabic / D. Lit. et Phil. (Islamic Studies)

One of the outstanding scholars of his time, Sayyid Haydar Amuli (719-787/1319-1385) played an important role in the development of Shii 'Irfan, a tradition which traces its roots back to the Prophet Muhammad and the Imams. He gave his attention to the subject at a time when the Shia Islam began to develop its characteristic set of doctrines through the efforts of 'Allama Hilli and his son Fakhr al-Muhaqqiqin in Iran and Iraq. / Sayyid Haydar lived at a time of great political and social upheaval. This thesis places Amuli within this context and describes his life in some detail. Moreover, a number of problems surrounding the corpus of his writings are resolved by a complete listing of his works. / Finally, we provide an overview of his doctrines, most especially his ideas concerning the people of sharia, tariqa and haqiqa. Amuli puts great effort into reconciling these three groups, although he consistently maintains a mystical approach in his works. While Amuli accepts Ibn 'Arabis metaphysical doctrines he criticizes his teachings on walaya and Imama. This thesis deals with the issue of Imama from the point of view of Amuli in detail.

No description available.

Islaam as a world religion is most often associated with terrorism and numerous bombings and conflicts around the globe. While, Islaam does not encourage these actions there exists movements within the Muslim community which use violence as a means of political expression similar to the early extremist Khawaarij sect who abused the concept of takfeer. Many modern day ideologues seem to adopt the main tenets of the Khawaarij creed and as a result exhort and carrying out actions of violence under the guise of Islaam. In addition, Western media, secularists, and United States policy also appears to have a direct role in fostering the growth of these movements. Therefore, there is a need for further study into the ideological roots of these groups, their actions, and how societies can look for solutions to combat their ideals before they evolve into terrorist actions. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M. A. (Islamic Studies)

The role of divine Revelation in the process of construction of normative judgments has long occupied scholars of religion in general, and Islam in particular. In the area of Islamic studies, numerous works were dedicated to the elucidation of various trends of thought on the question of the methods of formulation of norms and values. Many of those studies suppose a distinction between textualist and rationalist theories, and use this framework to explain the most influential Muslim views on this issue. In contemporary philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion, theorists of religious meta-ethics draw upon the medieval and early modern Christian debates almost exclusively. Reconstructing the philosophical foundations of classical Islamic models of norm-construction, which arise within both theological and jurisprudential works, has not received sufficient attention in either discipline. In this study, I explore eleventh century debates on the place of divine Revelation in the formulation of normative judgments in Islamic theology and jurisprudence, and bring this analysis in dialogue with current questions in philosophical theology. By reconstructing the epistemological, metaphysical and semantic foundations of those debates, I show that two general trends emerge on the question of the depth with which Revelation interferes in human moral reasoning, which generally correspond to recent debates between natural reason and divine command theorists in contemporary philosophical theology. I argue that those tensions were the result of a number of philosophical disagreements, not mere reflections of a commitment to “rationalism” or “textualism.” This study is based on an analysis of texts attributed to prominent eleventh century jurist-theologians, including Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d.1013), Imām al-Ḥaramayn al-Juwaynī (d. 1085), al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 1024) and Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Bāṣrī (d. 1044). I maintain that abstract normative considerations animating those theories are of trans-historical philosophical value, and can be “appropriated” to provide new insights when introduced into current debates in religious ethics. Whereas, following post-colonial studies that held the inadequacy of treating non-Western thought through the lens of modern Western theories, many recent works emphasized the historicity of Islamic thought, I consider the abstract claims in both Islamic and modern thought in order to generate a philosophical dialogue across traditions. In conclusion, I argue that disagreements between prominent eleventh century Muslim jurist-theologians on the place of Revelation in the formulation of normative judgments is best understood as part of broader debates on theology, metaphysics and epistemology. To do that, we must treat theology and jurisprudence as an integrated meta-ethical project that inserts itself between the text of Revelation and the process of norm-production. Reconstructing those theories of divine speech and command shows us that the Muʿtazilīs combined a naturalist view of ethics with a dualistic metaphysic to hold that Revelation is a sufficient but not necessary condition for moral knowledge. Ashʿarīs, by contrast, insisted on the indispensability of Revelation on the basis of a combination of epistemological skepticism with a metaphysic that prioritized skeptical theism.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1996.

This thesis is, as its title duely indicates, an attempt to establish and describe the facts or events of an aspect of the public life of Ibn Taymiya (661-728), namely, his mihan or the trials and tribulations he underwent apparently due to the stands he took on certain dogmatic issues of his time. This thesis is divided into two chapters: the first tries to determine the originality of the sources in relation to each other as well as in relation to the mihan -- and their reliability; in all eighteen sources are dealt with. The second chapter tries to reconstruct a plausible account of the mihan on the basis of the knowledge acquired of the sources.

This thesis is a study of one aspect of the Twelver-Shi'i doctrine of imamah.

This study presents a comparative analysis of the interpretative approaches and the religious Weltanschauungs of two Islamic revivalists of Pakistan, especially in relation to jihad and the establishment of Islamic global order. Abu al-A'la Mawdudi (1903-1979) argues that the correct understanding of certain key Qur'anic terms makes it incumbent upon every Muslim to strive for the achievement of the basic objective of Islam, which is to establish an Islamic global order ( izhar-i din) to implement the Divine laws ( iqamat-i din) so that all un-Islamic (and, therefore, oppressive) "systems" of the world be replaced by the "ideal Islamic rule" (khilafat) of "the Islamic State." To strive fully to achieve this end is jihad, which may assume the form of an armed struggle (qital) when the situation so demands and Islamic conditions for it are fulfilled. Mawdudi gives various arguments to assert that this jihad is not a bane but a boon for mankind, and in it lies the only hope for mankind's prosperous existence in this world and the next. Contradicting Mawdudi's worldview, Javed Aḥmad Ghamidi (1951- ) asserts that the basic purpose of Islam as a religion is to purify the human soul to enable a person to worship and serve God as His true subject and servant. The qital done by the Prophet and his companions was essentially and for most part a form of Divine punishment against Divinely specified peoples for denying the truth of the Prophet's message and position after this truth had become evident to them. This form of jihad ended with the Prophet and his companions, and the only valid moral basis for qital now is to end oppression and injustice. Jihad (as qital) cannot be waged to propagate religion or merely to eradicate a non-Islamic "system." This study looks at the implications of these ideas and also delves into the concepts and interpretative approaches on which they are founded.