A lesser known but powerful Prophetic hadith that serves as a proof for tāwhid-i-wujūdi/ mono-realism, when it is taken in its literal meaning.

The hadith shows how firmly rooted tāwhid-i-wujūdi was in the language and consciousness of classical Arabs, a point against those

🧵 who object that it was not preached and believed in by the Prophet ﷺ and sahāba.

When Muslims are asked what their belief is about God, the answer is simple; He exists, He is one and is the only one worthy of worship, only He should be worshipped. This is the correct Islamic aqidha (belief), Tāwhid, whose english translation is most suitably “monotheism.”

🧵 Then the question arises, is this belief true in Reality? Surely, Muslims believe that it is, otherwise they would not be Muslims in the first place.

One of my favorite hadith due to its philosophical depth which refutes extreme neo-Ash’aris—Wahābi Ash’aris, Salafis and modernist groups who reject the idea of Islam having commensurate ideas with non-Islamic and pagan religions and traditions and Muslims taking from them.

🧵 Whenever these kinds of Muslims see a traditional or orthodox Sunni who is a student or scholar of Islamic rational and mystical sciences, admiring or affirming a wisdom or knowledge from a pagan or hindu or christian or atheist or any non-Muslim, or they see commensurability

To rationally understand why Islam is not monotheistic on the metaphysical level, but monism of whatever kind suits it best, there is no better place to start than Zubdat al-Haqāʾiq of the disciple of Imām Ahmad al-Ghazāli ق, Shaykh Ayn al-Qudat ق, who takes theology and

🧵 philosophy to the next level, exploring and explaining the deeper dimensions of Tawhid in the Qur’ān and ahādith and the Islam creed in general.

This is the curriculum that you would find in pre-colonial traditional Ottoman and Indian madrassas and we can clearly see that they never took kalām for a philosophical science [metaphysics] per se due to its subject matter being different from metaphysics.

🧵 The neo-kalām people today who equate kalām with metaphysics and use it in matters of pure tahqiqi metaphysics, not only are not on traditional understanding of the sciences because they don’t understand and employ the principle of demarcation in sciences but also don’t know

This passage refutes all Muslim modernists and secularists who have fallen victim to the christian bifurcation of faith and ethics since Paul’s bifurcation of the spirit and law, reducing the former to blind faith and latter to social culture, and impose it on Islam as well.

🧵 You often find them treating morals and ethics as more important than faith (imān) in God and his Prophets especially excluding the latter from having any basis or effect on our spiritual and moral condition.

Shaykhūna Hasan Spiker:

"Kant’s account of Plato’s epistemology and metaphysics is a multifaceted misrepresentation; indeed, every single assertion he makes in his characterization of Plato’s position is demonstrably inaccurate. What is this ‘previous intuition of divinity’

🧵 that Kant alleges, and that constitutes ‘the primary source of the pure concepts of the understanding and of first principles’, as opposed to a ‘still-continuing’ intuition? The depiction of the source of our knowledge of first principles and ‘the pure concepts of the

Shaykhūna Hasan Spiker:

"When liberalism tells you that it can host all different religions and traditions together in a tolerated environment, what it is basically telling you [based on its philosophical, theological and ethical commitments] is that all of your religions and traditions are equally arbitrary choices of people, relative and absurd, and only liberalism is the way. You are tolerated in a liberal State, as long as you just believe in your heart and tongue that your religion is objectively true [common foolish idea of religion is personal]

Asha’ri or anyone’s nominalism and conceptualism ultimately collapses into Nihilism, the rejection of all existence and reality itself. And the coping mechanism they use against the critical metaphysical questions of Platonists and Akbarians who reveal this to them, are vague

🧵 things like normative experience, brute facts, different sorts of appeal to authority fallacies like human language standard etc. No wonder I find many modern Asha’ris interested in and utilizing modern analytic philosophy like Salafis, for it’s useless semantical jargon that has

Prof. @JosephLumbard:

"[The author of The Loss of Hindustan] says, “Scholars have noted, colonization denies those who are epistemically colonized, access to their own history.”

Within the [orientalist] Islāmic studies, one of the things that we see is not just

🧵 denying but trying to reframe it to the point where people will actually give up on that history. That’s what the purpose is of the [orientalist] Qur’ānic studies within the west, that’s what the purpose is of the [orientalist] hadith studies in the west, that’s what the purpose

Plotinus, Ibn al-‘Arabi and Descartes on what it is to exist and the affair of thinking and existence 🧵

I am not sure if Descartes believed that all beings can think, but he is generally correct in positing that to have perspectival consciousness or to be self-aware means to have an individual existence that cannot be doubted because doubt itself presumes self-awareness. If we do some reflection, we realize that it is indeed the case that if we didn’t have an individual conscious perspective different from the others, we wouldn’t be able to

The rejection of the philosopher and mystic doctrine of marātib al-wujūd (levels of Being in terms of chain of realms) and intrinsic hierarchy of Being, based on ontological realism and essentialism, gives birth to all modern-ills: modernity, liberalism, secularism, feminism,

🧵 transgenderism, empiricism, atheism, existentialism and so on. When the already-flattened world is stripped of formal and final causes that preserve meaning, realities and purpose of beings, a mechanistic and materialist view of the world emerges, where everything is understood

Wāhdat al-Wujūd, in simple and clear words, is an idea and experience which makes you conscious of the fact that the creation depends on God in every way. While, in normative theology and philosophy, discussion about the cause and dependence of the contingents on God, mostly

🧵 involve existence, sustenance and providence which pertain to few out of the infinite Divine names and attributes, Wujūdi metaphysics takes things to the next level by considering all the Divine names and attributes and purport the idea that not just the existence, sustenance and

A wonderful lecture at BTA on Philosophy of Science with Dr. Omar El Mewās, who is close to people like Prof. Samir Okāsha, author of the famous Oxford series book on Intro to Philosophy of Science, and studied with esteemed Philosophers of Science like Dr. Nancy Cartwright.

🧵 There was so much to learn from him about the history, approach, understanding and differences in the Philosophy of modern science. Putting it all here is nearly impossible, so I just wanted to share some important insights about his lecture, which concern us all as Muslims.

Traditional and Modern conceptions of “Freedom and Autonomy” 🧵

Historically and traditionally, freedom has always been about self-mastery instead of arbitrary and unconditional self-indulgence and individualism. Before one could worry about outer influence and control, they should look into their own self, consider the structure of their Soul, and subdue the desire (nāfs) and spirit or instinct part of it, to the individuated-in-human universal intellect, an intellect which is inspired by The One with some metaphysical and moral truths. So for

With all due respect, I like Prof. Akyol’s work in Biblical and comparative creed studies, but his opinions on matters related to philosophy and religious sciences are of amateurs, who always have a superficial and flawed understanding of the matters which are much more nuanced

https://twitter.com/AkyolinEnglish/status/1851317768261423327

than they can imagine.

On a scriptural and linguistic level, Islam doesn’t even have a concept equivalent to the popular western understanding of tolerance. We know of many verses and hādiths too, which strongly emphasize the social responsibility of “امربالمعروف ونہی عن المنکر”

Taymiyyān Theology of God in light of Aristotelian Categories of Being

When you understand Aristotelian categories, you kinda understand why would Shāykh Ibn Taymiyyā take some elements of Aristotelian metaphysics from Ibn Rushd and use them as he likes to show that his
apparent-scripture based absurd theology of God has a standing amongst philosophers and theologians.

To be specific, the 1st Aristotelian category of Being is ‘substance’ which has two fold division: ‘primary substance’; the particular being which exists externally, and

Both the general Asharī position and Mutazilī position on morality and obligation, are crude and incomplete. The better position is that of Matūridīs with more detailing coming from the Platonists and Akbariāns. The Matūridīs believe that Allāh has given us both the innate and rational ability to know good and bad; as is also said in the Qur’ān about the soul being inspired with some knowledge of right and wrong. We know good and bad through untainted fitrāh and because the soul receives henological intuitions from Allāh, as well as through intellect

A good podcast of Dilly with Prof. Paul. I was mainly interested in what Dilly has to report to us about the female education after his brief visit to Afghanistan. And I thought, it will be beneficial, at least for traditional Muslims, If I explain his
report in Islamic and secular terms.

So what I really understood from Dilly’s words is that the Taliban government is completely against the modern secular idea of education for the sake of individualism and self-satisfaction. As we know, individualism is one of the core

Allamā Ibn Khaldūn on the gradual degeneration—increased crime date, dishonesty, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, children born out of wedlock etc—of a society or nation once it reaches the apex of civilization since the goal of civilization is the sedentary culture and

luxury, which leads to the diversification of human desire and which is the mother of all evils of the human soul and society.... This reminds me of when Sayyīdna Omār bin Khattāb ع looked away from the riches and treasures of Romans and Persians and was concerned about it

Syed Naquīb Al-Attas:

"The confrontation between Western Culture and civilization and Islam, from the historical and religious and military levels, has now moved on to the intellectual level; and we must realize, then, that this confrontation is by natire a historically permanent one. Islam is seen by the West as posing a challenge to its very way of life; a challenge not only to Western Christianity but also to Aristotelianism and the epistemological and philosophical principles deriving from Graeco-Roman thought which forms the dominant