This article examines distinct theological frameworks of Al-Farabi and Al-Ghazali, whose arguments significantly contributed to the evolution of Islamic philosophy. Employing a library based qualitative comparative research lens, the study uncovers the differing conceptions of God, Al-Farabi’s rationalist God of Necessary Existence and Al-Ghazali’s voluntarist God of Absolute Will, and how each conceived of creation, causality, knowledge, and eschatology. Al-Farabi, drawing from Aristotle and Neoplatonism, envisioned a cosmos rationally organised and emanating from the self-contemplation of God, where reason and revelation meet harmoniously as the expressions of a singular truth. Al-Ghazali, following Ash’arite and Sufi teachings, argues for the divine’s unbounded power and freedom in creation ex nihilo, the causation of events as occasionalist, and the dominance of revelation over reason, in Al Ghazali’s critique of the falasifa in Tahafut al-Falasifah, a new boundary of philosophical thought and Islamic orthodoxy. The central claim of this study is that the conflict between each other’s ideas is not simply a clash of doctrines, but a deeper conflict between two opposing metaphysical worldviews—rational necessity and divine volition. These worlds profoundly changed the course of Islamic philosophy, kalam, and mysticism, as well as contemporary debates in Islamic philosophy, addressing the integration of reason and revelation. This article contributes originally by reframing the al-Fārābī - al-Ghazālī debate as a paradigmatic metaphysical conflict between rational necessity and divine volition, rather than a merely doctrinal disagreement.
In everyday life, society views educational activities are unsuitable for men, so women must take over this activity. This perception has gradually led to a clearer division of roles between men and women. During a six-month observation at Surabaya State University, an interesting phenomenon of gender dominance was discovered when the education department had a larger female student population than male students. This study aimed to analyze the reasons given by students for choosing the education department by adopting a qualitative research method. The data sources used are secondary data and primary data. Secondary data comes from books, journals, theses, and documents that still have an appeal to the research topic. Then the primary data is obtained through non-participant observation and unstructured interviews. Furthermore, it is explained using the interactive model data analysis technique from Miles and Huberman. The results of the study indicate that male students decisions to choose the education major were made after considering future job prospects (instrumental rationality), referring to religious values (value rationality), referring to feelings (affective action), and continuing the family tradition of pursuing a career in education (traditional action). Unlike previous studies focusing more on external factors (economic support), this study highlights more complex internal reasons.
Death is a painful reality that strikes and affects all human beings. Death knows no boundaries, race, age, gender, belief system or status. It affects the family; the social, political and economic networks of the deceased and the community at large. Death comes with different challenges that require coping mechanisms. While Africans from all walks of life use different approaches to help the bereaved deal with death and loss, the church has become the biggest role player in attending to this crisis. Although the church is a latecomer in the lives of African people in general, for the people of Collins Chabane Municipality in particular, it is given priority when death strikes. This article seeks to articulate how the church has become central to the death and burial rituals in that municipality. To that end, the researcher conducted a review of data collected through individual and focus group interviews carried out with traditional community leaders (local chiefs) in the municipality on the theme: The erosion of postcolonial African funeral traditions in rural South Africa (Limpopo).
The interpretation of al-Bahr al-Muhit by Abu Hayyan al-Andalusi (died. 745 AH) is considered one of the most prominent books of interpretation. I devoted this research to explaining the effect of the Qur’anic comma on proportionality in terms of precedence and delay, including: prioritizing the object in the comma and delaying it, prioritizing the genitive and the prepositional or adverbial relation to commas, Presenting some words that are not governed by a single rule, such as the virtuous over the best, in which the Qur’anic comma, advance, and delay were defined linguistically and idiomatically. Some examples were mentioned, and important questions were answered in this study, including: What is the Quranic comma? What is advance and delay? What is the subject of the dispute between Imams Al-Zamakhshari and Abu Hayyan regarding advancement and delay? What are examples of this in interpreting the al-Bahr al-Muhit? I reached a number of important results that I will explain at the end of the research.
In contemporary spirituality-related thought and behaviour in Estonia (as well as in a number of other regions), a phenomenon can be observed that I call hop-on hop-off spirituality. This means testing and tasting of various forms of contemporary spirituality (via techniques, courses, lectures, books, etc.) out of curiosity or for fun or just because a friend said that this or that teaching has changed their life. Such experimenting can sometimes result in deeper spiritual involvement or change in worldview but often doesn’t bring along anything that could be defined as deeper spiritual or religious commitment or belonging. Based on interviews, questionnaire responses and written life-history narratives from Estonia from the 1990s to 2020s, I will analyse how the suggested term fits into the context of already existing definitions and terms related to “spirituality”, and how such “hop-on hop-off” participation can be still seen as a learning process that influences one’s values, meaning-making, coping models, and lifestyle.
Christoph Christian Sturm was an eighteenth-century German ecclesiastic keenly interested in naturalist knowledge. As a pastor, he used this knowledge for theological purposes: people can and should enhance their faith by investigating God’s works in nature to see the clear signs of His wisdom, powers, and providence imprinted in these works. Sturm also addressed at length the problem of theodicy by pointing that the good by far overweighs evil found in nature and in social and individual life, and that what is perceived as evil is God’s means used for beneficial purposes.
This paper explores the intersection of religion, gender identity, and gender prejudice within the American context of religious conservatism and the overturning of Roe v Wade. Discussion considers the overturning as a dangerous move that negates the rights and religious liberties of women, with adverse implications also for the rainbow community. Notably, this legislative context depicts the power of conservative Christian ideology to sustain hierarchical gender norms anchored in a binary consciousness, which privileges and empowers men (typically white, elite, heterosexual men), while diminishing and disempowering women and gender-diverse persons as non-normative and subsidiary. Discussion further conveys that this male-centred/androcentric ideology continues the oppressive legacy of male-dominant, fundamentalist biblical interpretation — a mode of interpretation heavily criticised within contemporary mainstream biblical scholarship as flawed and grievous in its promotion of gender prejudice. Accordingly, the overturning of Roe v Wade is relevant to the Australian context, for the same androcentricity and legacy of biblically-justified gender prejudice underpins all Western cultures. That is, manifold people, knowingly or reflexively, religious or otherwise, adhere to this biased interpretation and prejudicial gender consciousness through entrenched psychosocial Western norms. Not least, much scholarship has stressed that the issue of gender bias deeply pervades the structures of Australia’s justice system. Ultimately, this paper emphasises that understanding androcentricity and the legacy of injurious androcentric biblical interpretation is necessary to the tasks of negotiating religious freedom for all persons and cultivating non-sexist social and legal structures that uphold the rights of multiple gender identities and subjectivities.
Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence, Religion (General)
The Seljuk government had two major internal barriers to establishing centralized and stable bureaucratic management. The first obstacle was the lack of stable financial and monetary resources. The second obstacle was the lack of a centralized communication and transportation system in the political realm. The dominance of the natural economy in the society and the low prevalence of money in the market and trade relations caused the shortage and limitation of monetary resources in the central treasury. Because the government had to collect taxes in a non-monetary way. Lack of liquidity in the government treasury was the most important obstacle to the establishment and consolidation of the bureaucracy. The policy of the Seljuk government in Assignment of Igta’ and non-cash payments to government officials was due to lack of liquidity. Also, the lack of a transportation system and continuous means of communication within the political realm led to the inability of the Central Court to continuously oversee the provinces and the activities of local and province governors. These two conditions led to the disintegration of the Seljuk state and the collapse of the central bureaucracy.
History and principles of religions, History of Asia
In 1990 a publication by Pedro Calahorra reported a unique musical notation of a <i>Salve</i> on the walls of the Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora del Pueyo in Villamayor de Gállego, Zaragoza. The contributions offered in this article have enhanced research in this area through a revised study of this musical epigraphy. The analysis of the palaeography of notation reveals the dating of the work and, therefore, a possible collation with the Spanish polyphonic sources belonging to the white mensural notation, determining that it is the <i>Salve Regina</i> in four by Cristóbal de Morales. This study aims to recognize musical epigraphies as historiographic-musical sources of information capable of intervening in the reconstruction of a musical past, so they must be restored, preserved, catalogued and displayed like any historical document, regardless of their physical support. The <i>Salve Regina</i> written on the walls of the Villamayor de Gállego sanctuary is the witness of a Christian tradition of devotion to the Virgin Mary. Within the Rite of <i>Salve</i> this chant was the most popular in the Iberian Peninsula during the Renaissance.
Significant changes have been taking place in the field of the sociology of religion in the last few decades, which challenge researchers to rethink this scholarly field. This article suggests that a great deal could be learned about the current dilemmas within this field through research that explores the moral underpinnings of everyday food consumption within contemporary society that is characterized by abundance. More specifically, the article proposes that everyday food consumption and everyday ethics provide unique opportunities to transcend and surpass crucial distinctions within social sciences in a way that can feed the sociological imagination in relation to research on lived (non)religion. Drawing on examples from research on food consumption in the nonreligious context and at the individual, discursive and institutional levels, this study shows how the everyday ethics of food consumption can serve as a point of departure for sociological research, which could help researchers to understand the currents of lived religion and nonreligion in a way that evades the idea of religion as a certain set of practices or beliefs, or as a specific religious affiliation. This research would enable the study of issues such as practices, beliefs, meanings and belonging, as well as distancing, withdrawal, and indifference.
<p>Intercultural encounters generally imply dynamics of (re-)elaboration of symbolic universes by the social groups affected. Imperial domination of Asia, from the 18<sup>th</sup> to the 20<sup>th</sup> century, furthered the reinterpretation of existing symbolic universes, such as religious communities, as well as the creation of new modes of symbolic organization of social life, as national communities. This paper analyzes the construction of a religious-nationalist symbolic universe in a context strongly influenced by otherness. We consider the discourse on Hindu nation and its Muslim other, by V.D. Savarkar, a Hindu nationalist ideologue that was written in the early decades of the 20<sup>th</sup> century. We adopt phenomenology as theoretical framework and undertake content analysis of a primary source – <em>Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? </em>We argue that the Hindu nationalist ideologue elaborated a rhetoric of annihilation, in which the other of Hindu nation, the Muslim, is depicted as inferior through a double strategy: selective exaggeration of characteristics attributed to the Muslim; transfer of socially negative definitions to the other.</p>
This contribution offers a review of Anne K. Bang's book: Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c. 1880-1940). Ripples of Reform.
Islam in Africa, Volume 16. Leiden: Brill 2014. xiv + 227 pages, € 104.00, ISBN 978-900-425-1342.
El Rosario en Andalucía constituye mucho más que la devoción mariana por antonomasia o la iconografía de la Virgen más repetida en los templos de sus pueblos y ciudades. Constituye todo una estructura socio-religiosa que marca la existencia de las personas desde el siglo XVI hasta la primera mitad del siglo XX y que todavía pervive en muchas de sus manifestaciones. El Rosario nace como oración vocal y mental que se concreta en un instrumento de cuentas, pero que pronto se hace estética palpable en las imágenes de la Virgen con esta advocación, en las cofradías y hermandades, pero sobre todo es un fenómeno específico de la religiosidad popular desde fines del siglo XVII con el uso de los Rosarios públicos o callejeros.
Dalla storia ci sono noti assai bene le prominenti figure della Galia tardoantica (IV-V secolo d.C.): Paolino di Nola, Sulplicio Severo, Eucherio di Lione, Salviano di Marsiglia, ecc. Tutti quanti appartenenti alla classe della nobiltà d’allora, ben educati, sposati, in un certo momento della loro vita hanno abbandonato vita monadana e si sono dedicati all’ascezi ed agli ideali monastici. Si parla della „seconda conversione” dopo il battesimo. Nell’articolo viene presentato il fenomeno e si domanda sulla sua natura. Un’analisi dei casi esaminati ci peremette a dare i conclusioni. Anzitutto posiamo dire di un crescente desiderio della vita più vicina a Dio nel mondo già cristianisato ma poco esigente.
Early Christian literature. Fathers of the Church, etc., Philosophy of religion. Psychology of religion. Religion in relation to other subjects
In the context of changing paradigms of human thinking, secularization of social consciousness, scientific and technological and information revolution, social and environmental cataclysms, Christian preaching seeks to answer the "challenge of time", seeking and offering man such spiritual foundations of life that will help him to "find himself" in the changing in the modern world.