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The debate over Allah's attribute-the "nature" and the inner articulation of Allah-is one of the focal debates in the intellectual history of Islam. This edited collection aims to highlight and examine some aspects of this debate in their original context, based on the relevant primary literature.
By showing that even an apparently self-evident concept such as Allah, which lies at the heart of every reading of Islam, is highly ambiguous and polysemous, the chapters also emphasise the plurality that has always existed in Islamic thought. Through highlighting the philosophical and theological reflections on the concept of Allah, the results of this study challenge the juristic reading of Islam, in which Allah's function consists mainly in providing a detailed plan for the human life and also rewarding or punishing the ones who deviates from it. The book also attempts to demonstrate the relevance and the actuality of the tradition and to stress its contemporaneity.
This volume makes a significant part of the intellectual tradition of Islam accessible for students and scholars of Islamic theology, Islamic philosophy, Islamic studies and the like, as well as providing a secondary source for teaching on the debate in question.
List of contents
Part 1: Allah of the Philosophers 1. Dancing with the Devil or Chanting with Angels?: al-Razi's Employment of Philosophical Arguments in Discussion of Divine Attributes 2. The Ineffable and the Process of Its Determination: Sadr al-Din Shirazi's Considerations on the Origin 3. Divine Love in Medieval Islamic Philosophy: Some Stages in the History of an Attribute 4. Divine Simplicity, the Deus Revelatus, and the Divine Names in the Philosophical Theology of Mulla Sadra Shirazi (1571-1636) Part 2: Allah of the Theologians 5. Abu al-Hudhayl al-'Allaf on Divine Simplicity 6. Does the Attribute "Baqa " Exist?: Sunni Theologians on God's Persistence 7. Nur al-Din al-Sabuni and the Divine Attributes: Maturidi Kalam in a Nutshell 8. Is There an Elephant in Our Presence That We Cannot See?: A Deep Dive Into Bahshamiyya Attributes Discourses 9. The Omnipotence (al-qudra) and the Will of God (al-irada) in the Theology of Sayf ad-Din al-Amidi
About the author
Mansooreh Khalilizand is a research fellow at the Department of Philosophy of Freiburg University in Germany. She is currently working on the philosophy of the 17th-century Iranian philosopher ¿adr al-D¿n Shir¿z¿. Her research interests include metaphysics, ontology and epistemology in Islamic philosophy, and Islamic feminism.
Summary
The debate over Allah’s attribute—the “nature” and the inner articulation of Allah—is one of the focal debates in the intellectual history of Islam. This edited collection aims to highlight and examine some aspects of this debate in their original context, based on the relevant primary literature.
