This article pursues a topological reading of Milestones, one of the most influential books in the history of Islamism. Written by Muslim thinker Sayyid Qutb, the general interest in this crucial text has largely remained restricted to the fields of Islamic Studies and Security Studies. This article aims to make the case for assuming a philosophical standpoint, relocating its significance beyond the above-mentioned fields. A creative and topological reading of this text will allow the spatial complexity of Qutb’s eschatological vision (...) to be fully exposed, while also unpacking the way in which antagonistic relations have variously been articulated by this thinker. The underlying conviction is that such an examination can offer new perspectives from which to examine and develop current debates on political universalism and antagonism in the tradition of continental philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Despite all fundamental divergences, the similarities formed between some interpretations of the later-Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and the tradition of Islamic Mysticism, can yet be philosophically recognized. These basic analogies are as follows: 1) The inextricability of belief and practice and the priority of practice over knowledge 2) The characterization of the core religious beliefs as the primal ground of man’s perception and understanding, in contrast to the view that considers fundamental religious beliefs as theoretical conclusions derived from purely (...) rational courses of reflection 3) A new practice-laden narrative of religious realism. Given that, one can even shed a new Wittgensteinian light on even the most abstract and metaphysical elements of the mystical worldview. If fundamental religious beliefs are interpreted not as metaphysical doctrines but as a set of descriptions arising from a specific form of practical life, then the ability to see a sort of transcendent and sacred unity in the whole universe will be based on a way of purposive engagement and wayfaring in the natural and social world. (shrink)

The new generations of bioenhancement technologies and traditional Virtue Theory both try to make a meaningful connection between the improvement of human states and characteristics on one hand, and attainment to the good life, on the other. Considering the main elements of virtuousness in Farabi’s thought—namely rational inquiry and deliberative insights, alongside volitional discipline within various social contexts, one can conclude that although the trajectories of enhancement technologies—be they in the field of genetic engineering, neurostimulation technologies, or pharmacology—do not in (...) themselves satisfy the constitutive determinants of virtuousness, they function as having both mediative and amplificative/reductive roles in a life which is dedicated to the pursuit of happiness in the light of the cultivation of virtue. (shrink)

Al-Ghazālı̄ famously claims in the Incoherence of the Philosophers that al-Fārābī and Avicenna are unbelievers because they hold philosophical positions that conflict with Islam. What is less well-known, however, is that Averroës claims in the Decisive Treatise that al-Fārābī and Avicenna are not unbelievers; rather, al-Ghazālı̄ is the true unbeliever for writing the Incoherence of the Philosophers. In this paper, my aim is to present a sustained reconstruction of Averroës’ legal and philosophical argument for why al-Ghazālı̄ is an unbeliever. The (...) crux of Averroës’ argument is that al-Ghazālı̄ has expressed false allegorical interpretations of scripture to unqualified persons, which has led them into unbelief. By being causally responsible for other people’s unbelief, al-Ghazālı̄ is an unbeliever as well. (shrink)