Journal Of Religious Thought
Year:2005 | Volume:- | Issue:13|Papers Count:10

This article consists of the following issues:A. Prayers based on their specific characteristics can be categorized from three different points of view:a: Philosophicalb: Experimentalc: MysticalB: Prayers are beautiful mystically and are under the supervision of God's permission. Therefore in this view the nature of praying is desirable and the beauty of prayers is not determined by the content of prayers.C: Prayer are classified into four levels:a: Prayer in a transactional way.b: Prayer in the level of understanding the manifestation of God's acts.c: Prayers in the level of understanding the manifestation of God's attributes.d: Prayer in the level of understanding the manifestation of God's essence.The article exemplifies the above mentioned issues extracted from "Sahifeh Sajjadieh".

This paper is a comparative discussion of the epistemology of Divine Love in the poetical works of two mystics: Rumi and George Herbert. These two poets, who respectively come from the Islamic and Western traditions, neither share the same culture nor the same time, yet their concept of divine love is very similar. A comparative study of this concept in Rumi's Mathnawi and Divan and Herbert's The Temple will reveal the universality of Divine Love. The paper starts with the definitions of divine love through briefly examining the philosophical background of the theme of love in the Western and Islamic traditions, and will, then, proceed with the analysis of the poetical works of the two poets. The main reason for this amazing similarity lies in the nature of this experience, the love for the Absolute, which all men have felt in all times and places regardless of their national and cultural heritage.

Seyyed-e Razi the great 4-5 th centuries A.H. scholar and literary figure was highly competent in scholastic theology, Interpretation of the Quran and rhetorical sciences, apart from his great accomplishment compilation of Nahj-ol-Balaghe.His valuable volumes of works are evidence to this claim.During the early centuries of the Islamic history different sects had diverse views about theological and ideological issues and made much ado to establish their theories.In the article, a number of theological debates, prevalent at that period, are discussed from seyyed-e Razi's perspective which was characterized as the rationalistic paradigm espoused by the Imamiya Shiites.

This essay attempts to explain Avicenna's view of the relation between God's essence and His attributes. The problem of God's attributes is much important such that it was held to be the first and the most basic issue of Islamic theology. There is no doubt that some excessive or negligence views concerning the relation of God's attributes to His essence have misunderstood the issue and reached to some bad consequences. According to the famous and commonly accepted theory, all of God's attributes having different concepts refer to one extensive that is His essence.Avicenna's view of the relation of God's essence to His attributes which is known as the unique theory of God's attributes is contrary to the commonly accepted view, namely, the extensional identity of attributes without the conceptual identity of them. Unfortunately, Avicenna's theory because of its eccentric character was neglected by the later philosophers.This article tries to explain Avicenna's view and compares it to the view of the founder of the Transcendent Philosophy, MullaSadra.

Nowadays, we encounter many groups who speak of spirituality and, despite their plurality and varieties, all of them hold that there is ( and has been) a philosophia perennis whose fundamentals and principles are not ( and will not be ) subject to any kind of change and transformation. These groups, while believing in this perennial tradition, criticize the western modem culture and civilization and enumerate their objections to it as its serious weaknesses. They criticize it for, among many others, its dualistic and reductionistic attitudes which, they say, are conducive to rejecting faith and overstating the importance of reason, and these two are, in their own rights, responsible for the spiritual crisis of the present world.However, traditionalism one of these spiritualistic currents and movements, while believing in the Perennial tradition and criticizing the western modem culture and civilization, rejects the way in which New Age Religion, another one of these spiritualistic currents and movements, criticizes the Western modem culture and civilization and regards it as originating in the same culture and civilization. New Age Religion is thought, by traditionalists, to have a very important weakness: its electicistic method which has resulted in its separation from the historical religions and, also, in the rise of new man-made religions.In this paper, Firstly, we introduce the existing spiritual currents and movements; secondly, we list the five elements, the five trends, and the two main characteristics of New Age Religion; thirdly, we discuss this movement's critical attitudes towards western modem culture and civilization; and finally, we deal with the traditionalist's critique of the movement's of criticizing the west.

The base of Aristotle's logics was so strong that for several centuries after him, most of the scholars considered it perfect from different aspects and it governed thoughts and views of other thinkers. Avicenna was the first one who swerved from Aristotle's style in the forming of logics and changed Aristotlian logic from different aspects.Avicenna, besides diminishing some logical issues such as categories, full argument about poetry, rhetoric and dialectic, replaced some issues for example conversion, definition and description and introduced numerous creations in logic science as fallows:1- Changing the logic of nine parts to the logic of to parts.2- Division of conventional literal signifying to three parts, correspondence and implication and commitment.3- Extension and expansion the division of propositions by considering modality and their special order and modern flowing.4- Possibility of the consistency of two absolute propositions with difference in quantity and quality.5- Proportion between definition and essence of definiendum and diminishing of abbreviation order in real definition.6- Needing not the definition and difficulty of procurability to real definition of things.7- Hypotetical attributive syllogism and its different kinds.8- Actual ascertainment addressed attribute for subjects essence in subject fetter.9- Reflexiveness of affirmative necessary proposition in the form of general absolute particular affirmative proposition.

Rational science like Theology (Kalam), Logic and Philosophy have been accepted and spread by some Muslims and have been objected severely by some simple Muslims. Of course this does not only belong to Islam but we can find the same things in other religions such as Judaism and Christianity. In this paper the reasons for opposition against Kalam (Theology) among Muslims has been briefly discussed.The concentration will be on sunnism. Our approach will be historical. Some oppositions have been responded in this paper.