God and Humans in Islamic Thought: Abd Al-Jabbar, Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali

by Maha Elkaisy-Friemuth

Overview

Winner of The Iranian World Prize for the Book of the Year 2007 in the Philosophy and Mysticism category.

This new and original text provides a timely re-examination of Islamic thought, presenting a stark contrast to the more usual conservative view.

The explanation of the relationship between God and humans, as portrayed in Islam, is often influenced by the images of God and of human beings which theologians, philosophers and mystics have in mind. The early period of Islam reveals a diversity of interpretations of this relationship. Elkaisy-Friemuth discusses the view of three scholars from the tenth and eleventh century: Abd al-Jabbar, Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali, which introduce three different approaches of looking at the relationship between God and Humans.

God and Humans in Islamic Thought attempts to shed light on an important side of medieval rational thought in demonstrating its significance in forming the basis of an understanding of the nature of God, the nature of human beings and the construction of different bridges between them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134146758
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/27/2006
Series:	Culture and Civilization in the Middle East
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

 

Dr. Maha Elkaisy-Friemuth is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and was formerly a lecturer at Manchester University. Her fieldof interest is the Islamci medieval thought and its intellectual influence on rformulating Islam. Publications include: Al-Radd al-Jamil: Ghazali or pseudo-Ghazali" in ed. David Thomas, The Arabic Bible, Leiden: Brill, Forthcoming (2006); 64 entries in the Encyclopaedia for Islamic Religion, Routledge, 2005; and 9 Entries in the Dictionary of Islamic Philosophers, Theommes Press, forthcoming 2005.

Table of Contents

Introduction  1. Historical and Cultural Context  2. Abd Al-Jabbar's View of the Relationship with God through Divine Assistance  3. Relationship with God through Knowledge and Love, Ishq in Ibn Sina's Philosophy  4. Relationship with God through Self Annihilation, Fana, According to Al-Ghazali  5. Comparison and Evaluation

Editorial Reviews

'[T]his study of the philosophical analysis of the Islamic faith is accessible to all philosophers who are interested in the relationship between religious faith and reason, and the author is to be congratulated for providing an extremely insightful and meticulous account of the human and divine relationship in the works of these significant Islamic thinkers.'
– Patrick Quinn, All Hallows College, Dublin, in Philosophy East & West

From the Publisher