Classical Sufi manuals present the spiritual stages achieved through disciplined Sufi practice. This article argues that the seventh/thirteenth-century mystic Muh}yī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī reimagined the spiritual stations as ontological realities rather than behavioral achievements. Through a systematic reading of the twenty-second chapter of his Meccan Revelations in dialogue with his fellow Sufi...
This paper investigates the philosophical and mystical concept of ‘Ālam al-Mithāl (The Imaginal World) in Islamic thought as analternative framework for understanding religious experience. Despite the acknowledgement of its importance, contemporary discourse has yet to undertake a systematic philosophical inquiry into how ‘Ālam al-Mithāl, as a spiritual epistemology, provides rational grounds...
There is a problem of persistence of anti-Sufi image of Syed Abū al-A‘lā al-Mawdūdī owing its genesis partly to tangential engagement with key doctrinal issues of Sufism and certain ambivalence regarding it in him and, more significantly, due to Mawdūdī’ scholarship’s atomistic reading of his key statements. For addressing this key problem, this paper critiques atomistic reading and explores...