The Exemplarist (Ishrāqi) metaphysics is perfectly suited for Islāmic theism, compared to peripateticism/immanentism 🧵

Aristotle and the immanentists broadly, can rationally account only for the ontological dependence of contingents on God. While Plato and the Exemplarists in general, can rationally account rigorously not just for the principial ontological (in terms of Being) dependence of the contingents and concepts on God, but also their principial axiological and epistemological dependence, with their very reality and structural formation.

The last Ottoman şeyhülislâm Mustafa Sabri Effendi رح (d. 1954) describes the essence of Islamic religio-politics in opposition to the modern State:

"The idea of our religious reformists [i.e., Muslim modernists and secularists] is “since we are not able to build our world,

🧵 we must at least destroy our afterworld.” I can only say I am not one of those people who deny the material and moral decline of the Muslims, and I do not want to prevent their awakening nor the methods of reform that could improve the situation of the Muslim world. But if the

“[Educated] woman being housewife is a waste, weakness and unfortunate event” is a very deceptive capitalist propaganda designed to make people especially women guilt-trip into their own goals. Capitalism, to which liberalism and feminism are tied, is concerned with capital

🧵 only. If a person is not generating capital by putting his or her knowledge and skill to use, in the market, he is principally not even worthy of being a human as per the liberal thinker’s definition of human rights and possession—they were the ones who created the human rights

In Sharh Aqā’id al-Nasafiyya, after Imām al-Taftazāni navigates through the proofs of mutakallimin for Atomism in opposition to the peripatetic Hylomorphism and declares that they are raitonally weak, he invokes Imām al-Rāzi for the fact that he reserved judgement on which is

🧵 the rationally sound position between both for this reason, but followes up with the fact that despite the rational weakness of Atomism, it is still preferred and Hylomorphism is critiqued, by the mutakallimin because it helps or benefits in defending the Sunni creed.

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.

An explanation of the rational proof of the Akbarian Absolute Being and ontology 🧵

Every multiplicity—whether external, mental or conceptual— is qualified by unity or oneness. And a unified multiplicity cannot qualify itself with unity or oneness nor can qualified with it by nothingness so that it can have being, so there must be a prior unified multiplicity—a principle of unity in relation to the posterior—which qualifies a multiplicity with oneness thus giving it being, and since the infinite regress is impossible, there must be an Absolute Unity

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]

Since and after Aristotle, a huge misrepresentation of Platonic Forms/Akbarian Essences by immanentists is to view it as just another albeit universal determinate form floating in a separate transcendent world whose multiple similar copies are created in the sensible world, a

🧵 mistake that is the result of understanding and deriving forms or essences from the particulars. Once they present such a big strawman, the immanentists foolishly comes with the critique that since one transcendent-world universal form is shared by multiple different things in

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

People often ask me about a beginner guide to learning Islamic Theology and Philosophy and I also see many critics and supporters of Islamic tradition having no understanding of it despite their engagement, so I prepared one, which follows a step by step orderly progression 🧵 starting with initiation into Islāmic theology and philosophy and gradual progress to a higher level.

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.