Материал: Islamskaya_mysl

Sh. Rahemtulla

THEOLOGY OF THE MARGINS: THE READING OF FARID ESACK

This publication is a translation of the second chapter of Sh. Rahemtulla’s book “Qur’an of the Oppressed” (2017). It focuses on the South African neomodernist Farid Esack. Esack is known not only as a philosopher, but also as a political activist: he fought against apartheid, and under N. Mandela served as Commissioner for Gender Equality. He reflected on his experience of political struggle (essentially a religious struggle against oppression) in the form of a reformist project in his book “Qur’an, Liberation, and Pluralism” (1997). This book has become a reference text for many neomodernists struggling for social justice, understood through the lens of what might be described as an Islamic version of “liberation theology”.

Rahemtulla’s study of Esack’s neomodernist conception is by far the best overview of his work. Rahemtulla provides the reader with a detailed picture of the historical context outside which it is impossible to understand Esack’s thought and traces the formation of his conceptual apparatus — the context of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Next he examines Esack’s hermeneutical method, which gives absolute preference to the text of the Qur’an, but also devotes attention to the Hadith (the South African thinker, however, finds it difficult to assess them because of the vast number of traditions, sometimes contradictory). In choosing between the Qur’an and the classical intellectual tradition, Esack also asserts the priority of the former. Another important question that Rahemtulla clarifies is that of the notion of context in Esack’s work (this theme is typical of neomodernists). The South African philosopher argues that the main context of the Qur’an was and remains the context of oppression. In doing so, his contextual approach differs from Fazlur Rahman’s “double movement” theory in that he argues that the primary lens of consideration of the Qur’anic text is modernity, not seventh-century Arabia, whose conditions need to be reinterpreted in an active way to fit the present era. It is practice that reveals the main teaching to be grasped within the Qur’anic message. Most of the Islamic Reformists who have tried to reinterpret Scripture in the light of contemporary realities, despite the differences in their methods, have nevertheless sought an appropriate way of presenting the original meaning of the text. According to Rahemtulla, the key point of Esack’s contextual hermeneutics is the question of who owns a particular interpretive context; it is the ownership of the interpreter that determines the nature of the context, or rather, the way certain aspects are emphasized in it; the context is as if appropriated by the interpreter.

Another important aspect of Esack’s thought is its focus on a theology of liberation: the Qur’an not only enjoins believers to act justly, but it also favors those who suffer oppression by clearly taking their side. And just as justice is a key theme of the Qur’an, so too is its opposite: the concept of oppression (zulm) is repeatedly found there, in particular God is understood as One who is never involved in oppression. In connection with the theme of liberation, the image of the Exodus is of great importance to Esack, which he considers key to all Abrahamic religions. He points out that Christianity has appropriated this narrative, extending its historical scheme to all civilizations. The appeal to the concept of universal justice in Esack’s case directly determines the role of solidarity in his constructions, namely that which he calls “prophetic,” implying by it a continuing unity with the oppressed side. Philosophically, this ties in with the characterization of Islam as din al-fītra, the religion of the natural state, the “nature” of man. Man’s intrinsic tendency toward the good automatically dictates the necessity of liberating the Other for the liberation of the Self. From this comes a direct sympathetic attitude toward all oppressed groups of people: the poor, women, minorities, AIDS patients, etc. What kind of Islam can we talk about if one uses convenient interpretations of this religion to justify his neglect of those on the margins of civilization? In doing so, according to Rahemtulla, Esack deliberately builds a strategy of argument that is in direct contradiction with S. Huntington’s theory of the “clash of civilizations,” which led to the formation of the Muslim guilt complex.

F. Esack

ISLAM AND GENDER JUSTICE: BEYOND SIMPLISTIC APOLOGIA

This article by renowned South African thinker and theologian Farid Esack offers a fresh perspective on the possibility of an Islamic feminist hermeneutics. The questions the author poses in the work center around the problem: What is men’s duty to women? The feminism is embedded by Esack in a spacious conceptual scheme of oppression. This is the focal point of liberation theology: the core of religion is a program of complicity and mutual assistance, without which it remains an empty mass of theological concepts and rituals. The author also addresses the purely textual aspects of a gender-sensitive reading, such as the historical context of the text, the immediate textual context, and the circumstances of the revelation of the ayats. Another horizon for unfolding the problem of gender is the reader’s optics as something that also affects the text. Ayat Qur’an 4:24 is analyzed in detail, along with the accompanying concepts of male privilege and female insubordination, on whose interpretation the entire Islamic view of marriage depends to a greater or lesser degree. Finally, there is an emphasis on mercy as the

first of God’s attributes, dictating a certain modality of the male-female relationship. In the end, Isak believes, the pillars of the Islamic faith, viewed through the lens of gender, provide us with resources for an interpretation aimed at liberation.

Abu Nasr al-Farabi

THE GATHERING OF THE IDEAS OF TWO PHILOSOPHERS

(FRAGMENT)

The works of Abu Nasr al-Farabi (870–951) need no voluminous biographical preface today. The first major philosopher-peripatetic of the Arab world, the “Second Teacher”, who successfully continued the work of Stagirite, this scientist won fame as an outstanding thinker and musician, mathematician and astronomer, whose name is forever inscribed in the golden pages of world cultural history. This is a hitherto unpublished translation of excerpts from the “Kitab al-jamʻbayna raʼyayy al-hakimayn” (“The Book of the Gathering of the Ideas of Two Philosophers”), which occupies a special place in the corpus texti of medieval Platonism. Historians of Arab-Muslim thought rightly note that it was al-Farabi’s “Book...” that played a key role in the Eastern synthesis of Aristotelian metaphysics and Platonic mystical philosophy. Resorting in the pages of the “Book...” to the authority of the works of Aristotle and Plato, al-Fara- bi insists on their common knowledge; nevertheless, avoiding the criticism of metropolitan disputants, he extremely inaccurately retells the texts of both — “the State”, “Physics” and “Second Analytics” and the notorious controversial “Theology”. The “carelessness” of the aspiring apologist of the two sages can only be explained by the fact that the writer himself had complete confidence in the translated lists of ancient manuscripts available to him (but lost today), which seemed to him not only authentic, but also extremely widespread.

“The Book...”, designed to substantiate the author’s belief in the conceptual unity of Plato’s and Aristotle’s teachings, quite predictably explains the well-established view of the struggle between mystics and peripatetics by the poor familiarity of the parties with the subject of verbal battles. The different paths, the paths of syllogisms and hierarchical divisions, lead, according to al-Farabi, to one and the same goal — to the only Truth, known by both “skillful” and “perfect in the philosophical art” sages. Aristotelian criticism of the theory of ideas, according to al-Farabi, is a hidden hint at the perfection of knowledge of the Supreme Cause, and Plato’s concept of emanation is nothing other than an indication of the unity of the universe and the existence of cause-effect relations in it. Besides, “reconciliation” of two views on the created world, al-Farabi is a sign of union of religion with philosophy, a prologue

to the cognition of God. The fierce intellectual battle will later unfold more than once around this knot of meaning of the “Book...”, and if Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd will lay through it the main way for medieval Europe “the teaching of two truths”, al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya will try to cut it from inside with the blade of critical analysis of the “religiosity” of two sages. The translation from the Arabic is by F. O. Nofal.

Muhammad Iqbal

THE DEVELOPMENT OF METAPHYSICS IN PERSIA

(FRAGMENT)

This publication is the fifth chapter of Muhammad Iqbal’s book “The Development of Metaphysics in Persia” (1908). This work is the book form of Muhammad Iqbal’s PhD thesis in philosophy at the University of Munich submitted in 1908 and published in the same year. Muhammad Iqbal had gone to Germany and enrolled into Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich where he earned a PhD Degree. The book published by Luzac & Company, London same year. Iqbal covers in this book from Zoroaster to Bahá’u’lláh era and metaphysical anatomy. This is one of the masterpieces of Muhammad Iqbal’s research work.

The published chapter deals with the mystical current of Islam, Sufism. Iqbal attributes the origin of Sufism to a number of factors: the tendency of the Persian mind toward mysticism and monism; the influence of Eastern ideas, particularly the Buddhist concept of nirvana; and the desire of mystics to root their experience in Islamic religion and give it an Islamic basis. In this chapter Iqbal elaborates on the metaphysical ideas of a number of major Sufis, especially al-Suhrawardi (1154–1191) and al-Jili (1365–1424); as well as the mystical insights of Sufi poets. The translation from the English is by V. I. Vovchenko.

Musa Bigiev

STUDIES ON THE PRECIOUS QUR’AN

(FRAGMENT)

The Qur’an and Qur’anic studies were among the main directions of Musa Bigiev’s (Musa Jarullah, 1873–1949) scientific theological activity. The scholar wrote and also brought back from oblivion more than a dozen works devoted to the Qur’an and various Qur’anic disciplines. All the theological-le- gal solutions and religious-philosophical statements of Bigiev in his works