Sophia Perennis
Year:2010 | Volume:7 | Issue:3|Papers Count:10

Art has always been regarded as a branch of philosophy where theory and action meet with a view to create new objects. Sacred and traditional art is itself one of the meeting points between philosophy and religion in their symbolic language.Every religion in order to continue to exist should necessarily be possessed of an outward framework in conformity with its inward dimensions. The relevant art of each religion will be responsible for the creation of this framework, including the built spaces with all the objects they embrace. Islam as one of the most widespread religion in the world has been no exception to this rule. The sacred and traditional art of Islam is concerned with the formation of a peaceful and contemplative environment in which the Muslim would never forget the Divine Reality and where the very body of built space, together with all the material objects it contains, conforms to the needs of his spiritual realization. Modern civilization, on the contrary, reduces man to a mere biological phenomenon and cares only for his bodily welfare, in the name of progress. Modernistic art contradicts the mental and spiritual expectations of the Muslim, to the point of suffocating him. For the ordinary Muslim, who needs to be constantly reminded of his inner celestial reality to remain faithful towards Heaven, the disappearance of traditional Islamic art and architecture would amount to forgetfulness, pure and simple, that is to sayghaflah. The purpose of the present paper is to discuss the necessity of the traditional ambiance for contemporary Muslims living in the modern world.

The issue of practice and its relation to theory has been one of the fundamental issues of philosophy from ancient times until today. This question has also been presented in various religions in a different form. Mystics of the world's religions generally do not accept knowledge without practice, and consider this to be the cause of the stagnation and deviation of religious people. In contrast to the mystics, a type of superficial pragmatism is also seen in the history of religions, of which a prime example in Islamic history is to be found in the Kharijites. However, during the modern period another type of pragmatism with a different set of fundamental principles has appeared which has also left a deep impression on religious thought and understanding and has led to the appearance of ideas and movements asserting the primacy of action in religion. Two important movements, namely religious pragmatism and fundamentalism are the result of these ideas.The first issue which this article addresses is the explanation of the importance of the combination of knowledge and action and the negation of action without knowledge in religion. The second issue is the presentation of the two mentioned forms of pragmatism in religion in the modern period and their bases and negative consequences in the contemporary world.

This article is a consideration of the inner meanings and functions of theeikayat, or visionary treatises, written by such Islamic mystics as Jami, Suhrawardi, Niiami and Ibn Sina. The article focuses on the nature of symbolism and in particular on the mystical and interiorizing interpretation of symbolism which is demanded by these texts. As the author writes, "eikaya does not take into account only the symbolic language of the Text, but also the concomitantinteriorization of the Text, the semantic unburdening of which has to take place in the inner history and geography of the soul…these stories call for applied spirituality, a spirituality of which the met ahistorical events are brought to completion only for God." In the second part of the article the author focuses in particular on the ' Ta’wi or the spiritual exegesis of Love' which is " a pure act of mystical death and spiritual resurrection, the act of emerging from and entering into new cognitive levels, which is what constitutes the interpretative MI' raj of every living soul." In this discussion he pays particular attention to the insights of 'Ayn al-Quąat Hamadani in this regard.

This article is a study and analysis of some of Ibn Sina’s technical terms as referred to in the first chapter of the fourthnamah of his al-Isharat w' al-tanbihat, wherein he tries to prove the existence of the natural universal (al-kulli al-habi' i) as a single intelligible fact in the outside world in order to counter those who equate being with sense perceptible being. In this regard he refers to certain features of the proved fact, such that it seems that what has been proved is somewhat compatible with the Platonic universal rather than the Aristotelian one; however, as far as the issue of the universal is concerned, Ibn Sina is a realist in the Aristotelian sense, and denies the realistic universal in the Platonic sense. To support her discussion, the author also reviews briefly some of the different views on universals and the common basis of philosophers in the tradition of Islamic philosophy.She studies some of Ibn Sina’s views in the Ilahiyyat ('Metaphysics') ofal-Shifa' and then deals with the first chapter of the fourth namah of al-Isharat w' al-tanbihat.In addition, during the discussion the author also addresses the question: Will the denial of Platonic realism lead us practically too pure conceptualism, and finally to nominalism.At the end of the article the author throws some light on certain points and problems, each of which can be in turn a topic for further research, some of the most important of which are as follows: 1) On the basis of Aristotelian realism, according to which the universal is acquired from sensible things - whether from only one individual or from several individuals - can ‘induction’, as such, support universal concepts.If the reply is in affirmative, is not then universal knowledge a posteriori? And if so, how does the universality of the universal attain its validity? 2) If in a philosophical system, like that of Mulla Ģadra, it is thought that ‘form’ is the existential status of a thing and ‘being’ is the criterion of individuation, can we ever assume a commonpoint, named the nature of the thing? In other words, will not the transformation of ‘form’ as an essential constituent to an existential mode of thing - in a doctrine that stresses the difference between‘existence’ and ‘quiddity’- lead practically to a kind of individualism? And finally, what is the basic difference between the results of this position and conceptualism.

According to the school of Ibn 'Arabi, mystical experiences are dependent on two factors: an active factor, which is the manifestation of God, and a passive factor, which is the internal capacity and eternal archetype of the mystic, and which we name ' the internalization of God (the object of worship) '. In this case, the mystical experiences of imaginal forms and their expression in the mind are also influenced by the beliefs, presuppositions and expectations of the individual. The fact that everyone, whether ordinary believer or mystic, worships his own personal God has been expressed in the school of Ibn 'Arabi in the form of the principle named ' The god created in belief.' (al-ilah almakhliq fi' l-i'tiqad) and ' the God of ideas' (al-ilah al-mu'taqad), and this idea has a fundamental role in the theoretical and practical doctrines of Ibn 'Arabi.This article discusses the meaning, significance and foundations of this principle in the school of Ibn 'Arabi.

In Suhrawardi's works, the termHirqalya has been mentioned in two places. Before him, we do not know of any other author who has used this word.Hirqalya, on the one hand, is the name of a world (the Mundus Imaginalis, or 'imaginal world'), and on the other hand, is the name of an ideal city (and it seems that this city is the capital of that world). In this paper, it is proposed that Hirqalya is the name of a mythological city, which was established by the Kayanid prince, Siyavash. In Pahlavi books the name of that city, which can be described as an Iranian call polis, is Kang-diz. The characteristics of that strange city can be extracted from the various Pahlavi texts. As for the word Hirqalya, it can be said that the first part of Hirqalya is hir, which in Pahlavi and Persian means the sun and the second part of it isqalya, which means the castle (Kang-diz).