Sacred Web 36
Editorial:
Looking Beyond Islamophobia: Three Case Studies
by M. Ali Lakhani
With heinous acts being carried out in the name of Islam, it is understandable that questions will be asked about the nature of the faith itself. In such a combustible climate of fear and suspicion, there is a need for a better understanding about this major world religion. By drawing on three recent examples from the news, the editorial argues that certain underlying assumptions about Islam are false, and that it is ignorance about Islam every bit as much as the threat from extremists that we need to overcome. Read more...
Hafiz and Da Vinci: Two Non-Parallel Trajectories
By Rana Shieh
This essay compares two of the most celebrated cultural figures of East and West, one a poet and the other a painter. The author shows how the Persian poet Hafiz was immersed in the world of tradition, while the Italian painter Leonardo Da Vinci belonged to the Renaissance which had turned its back on its own traditional past.The first was intimate with the reality of the Divine Mysteries and esoterism, while the second had an inkling of the existence of these Mysteries and the esoteric but could not reach them.Through these figures the author points to the contrast between tradition and modernism especially in the field of art. Read more...
Enoch in the Islamic Tradition
By Imad Jafar
The biblical patriarch Enoch remains one of the most mysterious figures in Abrahamic tradition. This essay details the crucial role the legendary prophet has played in Islamic metaphysics and mysticism, and sheds light on the important parallels that the medieval Muslim thinkers established between Enoch, Hermes Trismegistus, Mercury, Hushang, and Thoth. Read more...
Mysteries of the Substantial Pole
By Anthony Passeggeri
This essay explores the spiritual significance of prime matter or ‘universal substance’ with special attention paid to its unintelligibility. How should one understand the obscurity of the substantial pole of manifestation, and what is its relation to the goal of spiritual wayfaring? Read more...
Interviews
‘Islam: Under the Veil of Reification’: A Conversation
with Rusmir Mahmutćehajić
Interviewed by Mateus Soares de Azevedo
This interview with the renowned public intellectual and former Vice‐ President of Bosnia‐Herzegovina,Rusmir Mahmutćehajić ,was conducted in Sarajevo in September 2015. In the conversation, the philosopher, academic, and Muslim statesman speaks about the fundamentalist reification of faith and its antidote, and about his country’s history and its pluralist heritage. Read more...
‘In Breath, so it is in Spirit’: A Conversation
with Ann-Marie Sayers
Interviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
This interview with a Native Elder of the Ohlone/Costanoan people was conducted in her ancestral home of the Indian Canyon. Anne‐ Marie Sayers speaks about her own history, and of the importance of her spiritual and ancestral heritage, of the environmental crisis and its spiritual roots, and of the traditional emphasis of living in balance with Spirit in nature. Read more...
Book Reviews
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
Triumph of the Spectacle, by Chris Hedges
Reviewed by Atif Khalil
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Science and Myth: With a Response to Stephen Hawking’s
The Grand Design, by Wolfgang Smith
Reviewed by Peter Samsel
Read more...
The Romantic Attack on Modern Science in England
and America, and Other Essays, by Roger Sworder
Reviewed by Harry Oldmeadow
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Day and Night on the Sufi Path, by Charles Upton
Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
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In Search of the Lost Heart: Explorations in Islamic Thought,
by William Chittick, edited by Mohammed Rustom,
Atif Khalil, and Kazuyo Murata
Reviewed by Syed A.H. Zaidi
Read more...
