American Journal of Islam and Society
March 27, 2026
Wissam Iman Nuwayhid
The publication of The Divine Names: A Mystical Theology of the Names ofGod in the Qurʾan marks a noteworthy addition to the growing body ofliterature on Islamic metaphysics, Qurʾanic hermeneutics, and Sufi theology.Composed by the understudied yet intellectually formidable NorthAfrican Sufi ʿAfīf alDīn alTilimsānī, this work represents one of themost philosophically nuanced treatments of the...
American Journal of Islam and Society
October 29, 2021
Chad G. Lingwood
In medieval Islamic civilization, poetry was widely acknowledged to be the most intimate vessel for conveying Sufism’s hidden truths. The spiritual states and stations traversed by adepts along an ascending path to the reality of God’s unity largely defies simple descriptions into ordinary prose or everyday language. The subtleties necessary to evocatively describe a spiritual journey that is,...
American Journal of Islam and Society
October 1, 2017
Jawad Anwar Qureshi
The Mystics of al-Andalus by Yousef Casewit, assistant professor of Qur’anicstudies at the University of Chicago Divinity School, tells the story of an overlookedmystical school of Andalusia, the Muʿtabirun (lit. “the contemplators”or “the practicers of iʿtibār”). The Muʿtabirun, as Casewit demonstrates, formulateda mystical teaching centered on contemplating God’s signs in creationand the...
American Journal of Islam and Society
April 1, 2010
Sajjad H Rizvi
Unfortunately there is still far too much by way of conjecture, innuendo,ahistoricity, ideology, and basic guesswork in the study of Islamic philosophyand mysticism, at least in what passes for historical studies of theseintellectual traditions. But as we have seen the serious study of intellectualhistory, particularly in the Graeco-Arabic period and in classical Islamdom,flourish, so too has...
American Journal of Islam and Society
December 1, 1985
A. Schleifer
Ibn Khaldun’s theories about perception, logic and knowledge are clearlyinfluenced by Aristotelian thought; however being somewhat ecclectic, he adds,synthesizes and arrives at his own perspective. In addition, however novelIbn Khaldin’s conclusions may be, there is the underlying awareness of theSource of all knowledge: “Knowledge comes only from Allah, the Strong,the Wise.” His philosophy,...