When the theological and moral structure of the prophets' speech about justice is understood, their sayings take on resonance with the actualities of our society.

In hadith of the Prophet his "we" has become an emphasis on social awareness. Not so-called, it is formed in a self-conscious. In this way, the original is returned to the community of faith-communities. This "words, actions and feelings" as he tried to explain. Understood by all levels of society and it is a narrative encompassing their entire. It has managed to social cohesion in the application. This success also shed light on the present century is such a success.SUMMARY: The (...) Prophet adopted his Ummah as a single unity. He associated this unity with a number of characteristics and explained them. He said that point the person or persons who accept them, would gain ummah notion. This can be achieved with good values and bad values. All of them affect the whole of society. This consciousness is the same in the time he lived in the first century and the century of the last living member of humanity. In this context, "we" consciousness, has contributed to achieving the nation's unity consciousness.The Prophet’s "we" is seen to be applied to a variety of metaphors to make it understood consciousness. In this context, it was resembled sometimes to a limb, sometimes a building, sometimes one man, sometimes to a rain. (shrink)

This work situates the Qur’anic story of Moses’ meeting with Khiḍr in an ever-expanding network of intercultural and interreligious ideas about knowledge, humility, and spiritual excellence, where Moses and Khiḍr are seen as representing the ẓāhir and the bāṭin, respectively.

In this nationwide study of American and Canadian journalists, I found that their moral and ethical values are solidly connected to the Judeo-Christian tradition, even among those who do not claim to be religiously oriented. This study shows that religious values are imbedded deeply, if not always consciously, in the moral and ethical values of journalists and that journalists of varying religious orientations tend to endorse a core group of moral and ethical principles at the heart of the religious (...) heritage of the United States and Canada. However, journalists have expanded their definition of what religion coverage means in an increasingly diverse and secular society, and few want to connect their professional values only with Christian teaching. (shrink)

The Jinn, which is regarded as the third kind of entity apart from the angel and the human being, has been the subject matter of several separate works written by both Muslims and non-Muslims in the past and present. In short, such works deal with the nature of jinns and their characteristics, and they cover matters such as the beliefs about jinns in several religions and cultures and their relationship with human beings. Apart from the fact that the primary source (...) of Islam, namely, the Quran, has a separate chapter called al-Jinn (The Jinn) /72, it provides information about jinns in many verses in several other chapters. Traditions also provide plenty of information about jinns. One example of such information is on the question whether the Holy Prophet have met with jinns. A study of the traditions on this matter reveals the fact that there are ṣaḥīḥ (authentic) traditions that appear to be in conflict with each other and/or with some of the verses in the Quran. In this paper, we have analyzed and evaluated the relevant traditions in order to reconcile these contradictions, thus we aimed to clarify the matter. The question on whether the Holy Prophet met with jinns is often discussed within the context of narrations coming from Ibn al-Masʿūd and Ibn ʿAbbās. While the traditions coming from Ibn al-Masʿūd indicate that the Prophet met with jinns, a tradition narrated by Ibn ʿAbbās says the opposite. In the present work, we have analyzed the outwardly conflicting traditions narrated by both companions along with traditions narrated by other companions on this matter in the light of the chronology of the revelation of the Quran. As a result, we have concluded that the Holy Prophet have met with jinns as narrated by Ibn al-Masʿūd and that the report narrated by Ibn ʿAbbās was about the first years of Islam. (shrink)

In _Anarchist Prophets_ James R. Martel juxtaposes anarchism with what he calls archism in order to theorize the potential for a radical democratic politics. He shows how archism—a centralized and hierarchical political form that is a secularization of ancient Greek and Hebrew prophetic traditions—dominates contemporary politics through a prophet’s promises of peace and prosperity or the threat of violence. Archism is met by anarchism, in which a community shares a collective form of judgment and vision. Martel focuses on the (...) figure of the anarchist prophet, who leads efforts to regain the authority for the community that archism has stolen. The goal of anarchist prophets is to render themselves obsolete and to cede power back to the collective so as to not become archist themselves. Martel locates anarchist prophets in a range of philosophical, literary, and historical examples, from Hobbes and Nietzsche to Mary Shelley and Octavia Butler to Kurdish resistance in Syria and the Spanish Revolution. In so doing, Martel highlights how anarchist forms of collective vision and action can provide the means to overthrow archist authority. (shrink)

Most contributors approach the secularization question out of concern with intolerance and repression. But a peculiar kind of religion may impinge upon secular life in a different way: a prophetic religion may generate the solidarity and will-to-sacrifice that oppressed peoples need to fight for freedom and equality. The tradition of the Hebrew Prophets played a key role in the American civil rights struggle. Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, and other exponents of the tradition rejected the idea that (...) minority rights could ever be secured automatically or predictably. They viewed their fellow Americans' faith in progress with severe skepticism. The distinction between prophetic religion and normal religion will clarify the secularization debate, because it helps us see that some forms of religion are skeptical of official and/or popular beliefs. A prophet may reject the prevailing religion as strongly as an atheist does. Members of the prevailing religion will often call the prophet irreligious. Pagan Romans, for example, called the early Christians "atheists," since they believed in a mere man. There are sometimes religions that foster skepticism and critical thinking, that is. These Prophetic religions may at times be more effective against repression than secular efforts to organize opinion. (shrink)

To attempt in two short articles to provide an adequate review of present-day reflection about divine revelation to humans is folly; in addition to suggest and justify a particular understanding of revelation borders on the impossible. What I propose to do is something much more limited: within the content of contemporary discussion about revelation to examine only two critical and, I hope, illumining instances - namely, the revelation of the divine that occurs in prophetic experience (which I will deal (...) with here) and (in the sequel) human history as the symbolic agency through which revelation occurs. (shrink)

Nanda writes disparagingly of "Hindu" intellectuals--including those in the West - who try to produce alternative sciences often inspired by post-modernism. She is unaware that many - including Einstein and Schrödinger - fit her descriptions of such "Hindu" Western prophets "facing backward" who revolutionized science by "alternative sciences". She misreads those positions she criticizes into one anti-science conspiracy of post-modernism and Vedic science adherents. Her misconstructions are easy to spot Examples: Key citations on India are Western; her statements often ex-cathedra (...) statements. Her history is patchy, sometimes wrong. She derides social-constructionism but turns to it when she wants it. A presumed Western leftist she quotes Daniel Bell ("End of Ideology") approvingly. "Third Ways" and "Alternatives" between alleged Western liberalism and Marxism which she denounces are in the Western left agenda for nearly thirty years. She ignores key factors in India's predicament like low literacy. Nanda derides contemporary Hindu nationalism as a scavenger picking up from different sources. This "scavenging" however, is a sign of confidence, paralleling the attitude of Europeans during hte Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Although she claims that there are a few elements from the Indic tradition which are useful, she does not explore this except for Ambedkar Buddhism. Here she puts more emphasis on its alleged western roots than on Ambedkar's declared Buddhism. For her, Western modernity is one universal ignoring the many different trajectories different western societies have taken in their science development. She regrets the breaking down in comtemporary India of conventional boundaries between presumed right, left, progress and development. Instead of rewriting received Western wisdom to fit this real historical experience of India, she resorts to only Western conceptual categories. She damns both Indian social reality as well as attempts at fresh Indian conceptualization. For her, secularization means brainwashing the local populaton into an unashamed McCauleyite template illustrating deep feelings of insecurity about her own culture. (shrink)

This appreciation of Meera Nanda's book 'Prophets Facing Backwards' deals primarily with the contemporary socio-political relevance of her work. This essay highlights the significance of the book in the study of the Hindu fundamentalist stance towards the natural sciences and its roots in the construction of the world view of neo-Hinduism. It also situates the emergence of the post-modernist critique of science in India, that has made ideological common cause with Hindu fundamentalim on the question of science, in the context (...) of a long tradition of political debate about the relevance and significance of the role of science and technology for India's socio-economic development. This essay also deals with some major lacunae in Nanda's reding of the ground realities of the intellectual space in Indian society today and the manner in which this is reflected in her analysis of Hindu fundamentalism and the sciences. (shrink)

Sunnah is the second main source for Islamic law following the Qur’ān. Sunnah in the books on the Methodology of Islamic Law (Usūl al-fiqh) is examined in two main parts, one of which is as the source for religious commands and the other is being as religious/taklīfī commands. Sunnah is divided into three categories in terms of being the source for Islamic commands: qawlī (verbal), fi‘ilī (behavioral) and taqrīrī (approval). In the Islamic literature, when the word “sunnah” is mentioned, first (...) of all, it is understood as a verbal appeal, which is qawlī sunnah (hadith). Verbal sunnah has a rhetoric/wording that includes demand (amr/order-nahy/prohibition) or freedom (mubāḥ). And ultimately to the wording of this verbal address, some religious commands, such as farḍ/wājib, sunnah/mandūb, and permissible/mubāḥ are attributed. The behavioral sunnah (the acts of the Prophet Muḥammad), on the other hand, does not have a rhetoric that includes demand (amr/order-nahy/prohibition) or freedom (mubāḥ). The command/judgment is based on rhetoric. In other words, if there is an address, there is a command; if there is no address, there is no command/judgment. Therefore, it is problematic that the acts of the Prophet are decreed in the form of farḍ/ wājib, sun-nah/mandūb and mubāḥ. For this reason, the acts of the Prophet in the books on the Method-ology of Islamic Law (Usūl al-fiqh) have been particularly examined under the title of Afʿāl al-Rasūl. While some of the acts of the Prophet Muḥammad have a religious character, some of them are the acts that he performed completely in accordance with the customs and traditions in the society he lived in. Therefore, not all of the Prophet’s deeds/acts (behavioral sunnah) are at the same level in terms of obligation. Therefore, while some of the acts/deeds of the Prophet express wucūb, some other mandūb (sunnah-mustaḥab) and still some other ibāhā/mubāḥ. On the other hand, the acts of the Prophet Muḥammad, in terms of being the source of religious commands, are divided into two categories: the tashrīī (religiously) qualified and non tashrīī (religiously) qualified. What is meant by a religious act is the actions of the Prophet, which he performed as being a prophet, for the purpose of worshiping and that he wanted his followers act accordingly. What is meant by a non-religious act is the behavior of the Prophet as a human being or as a requirement of the society he lived in. Sunnah, in terms of being a religious com-mand, refers to commands other than fard and wājib. Ḥanafī scholars are of the opinion that sunnah as a religious decree is divided into two parts as sunnah-i hudā and sunnah-i zawāid. The acts of the Prophet, in accordance with his being a human or the custom of the society he lived in, are included in the scope of sunnah zawāid. In other words, sunnah zawāid generally means the actions of the Prophet that he did not do with the intention of worship. In this con-text, the acts of the Prophet Muḥammad are important. Because, the acts of the Prophet are not the same in terms of qualification (command), nor are they the same in terms of their nature (being religious or humanly natural). The acts of the Prophet Muḥammad with a religious nature are divided into two as known qualities and unknown qualifications. In principle, the religious acts of the Prophet, whose qualities are known, are also obligation for the ummah (Muslims). Therefore, when it is known for what purpose the Prophet Muḥammad made a deed/behavior, that act is accordingly is binding for the ummah (Muslims). Accordingly, if the attribute of a deed/behavior made by the Prophet is wājib/farḍ, it is also wājib for the ummah and permissible (ibāḥā) for the ummah if it is permissible. On the other hand, the acts of the Prophet in the Qur’ān as a mujmal (ambiguous nass /verse) are also subject to the command of mujmal. There is a dispute regarding the verdict of the Prophet’s acts of religious nature whose qualifications are unknown. According to the majority of Hanafī scholars, what is essential in the actions of the Prophet whose qualifications are unknown and that contain the characteris-tics of worship, is that it is mustahab/mandūb. According to Kerkhī (d. 340/952), what is es-sential in such deeds/behaviors is that it is permissible. Jassās (d.370 / 980) expresses the same opinion with Kerkhī. Opinions on this issue are conveyed from Imām Mālik and Imām Shafiī that he declared permissibility. The preferred opinion in Hanbalis is to declare permissibility. Non-religious acts of the Prophet Muḥammad as a human being or as per the custom of the society he lives in are not obligation for the ummah. Therefore, what is essential in such deeds/behaviors is that it is permissible. (shrink)

Liu Ping discusses patriotism and nationalism in regard to culture and values and also the role of the prophetic voice in Chinese society. His provocative allegorical rewriting of a prophecy from the Biblical book of Amos, setting it in contemporary China, is pointedly political. Liu writes in the Chinese intellectual tradition of pointing out when a society or a country is on the brink of destruction.

Reconstruction of a Source of Ibn Isḥāq’s Life of the Prophet and Early Qurʾān Exegesis: A Study of Early Ibn ʿAbbās Traditions. By Harald Motzki. Islamic History and Thought, vol. 3. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2017. Pp. v + 144. $58.

For Christians, a strange dislocation often seems to exist between the ecological crisis and a heritage that includes a Creator God. This book turns to the prophetic tradition - a tradition generated in the dislocation of crises in the past. Drawing this tradition into engagement with the ecological humanities, and with ministry studies, the author discovers root memories that hold. Here is wisdom and that could unleash our passion and energy by challenging us to attend to (...) Earth's cry. (shrink)

René Guénon is a major figure for anyone who recognises a need to rediscover the spiritual roots from which Western society has become so comprehensively alienated. Immersing himself in the search for spiritual truth, he chose Islam as the vehicle for his spiritual life. Settling in Egypt, he clarified and deepened our understanding of the teachings of traditional metaphysics, his central message being that there is at the source of all humanity's traditions a 'Primordial Tradition' -- a Universal Metaphysics (...) which sets out the principles that underlie this Tradition. The truths it embodies are universal and unchanging, and form part of a unified body of higher knowledge which transcends the multiplicity of religious dogmas and philosophical systems that abound in Western society. He wrote about the need to transcend the formal and emotional aspect of religion in order to prepare ourselves for an understanding of 'pure metaphysics'. He explained how traditional societies achieved this, exploring the symbols used, in order to help individuals forward to levels of understanding which are otherwise inaccessible to minds blinkered by the limitations of the currently prevailing Western approach to existence and its meaning. (shrink)

The fifteen “Messenger Leaves” poems Whitman assembled as part of the third (1860) edition of Leaves of Grass exhibit a tension between the prophetic and the sacramental that would become more significant as the United States entered the decade of the Civil War. Comprised of poems that provide warnings and admonitions (the prophetic) and poems that offer consolation and healing (the sacramental), in “Messenger Leaves” Whitman uses biblical models and texts to appeal to the religious sensibilities of the (...) American people. Although “Messenger Leaves” as a cluster was dissembled in the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass, its religious themes draw attention to Whitman’s envisioning of the third edition as the “new Bible.”. (shrink)

This essay provides an analysis of Karl Rahner’s book The Shape of the Church to Come and comments briefly on the context of this book, namely, the German Synod at Würzburg, Germany in 1971. Rahner was prescient in thinking that it may only be a single occasion that may precipitate a huge crisis in which many Catholics will leave the Church, refusing to pay the church-tax, as is happening in Germany today. Although Rahner sharply criticizes the Church as institution, his (...) passionate loyalty to the magisterium also comes through loud and clear in all his writings. Rahner, the consummate theologian, cannot be pigeonholed into neat categories like “conservative” or “liberal” because his theology knows how to do a balancing act. Finally, Rahner is such a trailblazer in theology that it may take another fifty years for the institutional Church to catch up with his thought. (shrink)

This concise biography tells the story of John Dewey, a pioneer of pragmatism and the first original school of philosophy created in America. The school was born out of a specific historical context, in the wake of a country at war with itself, and in response to the rapid changes of industrialization. Dewey's pragmatism celebrated human intelligence and agency and the promise that tomorrow could be better than today. For Dewey, pragmatism was the philosophy of democracy. Dewey lived from just (...) before the Civil War to just before school integration. As such, the book touches on many key moments in American history, from social reform in turn of the century Chicago, to censorship during world war one, and to the government's responsibilities in the Great Depression. It covers all this in the context of the life of a man whose ideas helped shape American culture and intellectual life. John Dewey: Prophet of an Educated Democracy will appeal to students, scholars, and all those interested in American philosophy and history of the 19th and 20th centuries. It will also compliment humanities courses on American philosophy, history, and intellectual traditions. (shrink)

Religious ethicists use a variety of conceptual tools from many disciplines—for example, psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, philosophy, political science, cognitive science, and neuroscience—to study various religious traditions. They use these interdisciplinary tools to study how these traditions influence and are influenced by the cultural mores and societal norms of the societies in which these traditions are practiced. If William Schweiker's depiction of religious ethics in The Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics is representative of the field's emerging self-conception, then religious ethics (...) is primarily a hermeneutical and multidimensional field (See Schweiker 2-3). Schweiker thinks that this .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Virtues, Obligations, and the Prophetic VisionRoy Branson (bio)Ethics at its best is only bad poetry—that is, it seeks to help us see whatwe see every day but fail to see rightly...If ethicists had talent, they might be poets,but in the absence of talent, they try tomake their clanking conceptual anddiscursive chains do the work of art.—Stanley HauerwasThe speaker was so severely bent over that his congenitally deformed back (...) had to be supported. He was a young Ph.D. in history. We were some 50 physicians, lawyers, health care administrators, and ethicists studying the ethics of organ transplants. Before he arrived, the conference had discussed different understandings of equal access and the nuances of federal policies governing organ transplant distribution. 1 In his lecture, our guest matter-of-factly described his own condition. He then pointed out that not only in ancient civilization but in American history as well, the disabled had been killed just because they were disabled. Indeed, even now, he said, they were not being allowed to live.In the question and answer session, he was immediately challenged by nationally prominent transplant surgeons. He responded by asking the surgeons: If two people could avoid death and anticipate significantly prolonged life from receiving an organ transplant and the only difference between them was that one was disabled and the other not, who would receive the life-saving transplant? The surgeons’ initial, spirited defense of excluding the significantly disabled person died down as they began to realize that, as far as they were concerned anyway, they might not have allowed the lecturer to live. They were stunned by the realization that they had not felt the disabled were fully persons. In the silences between their sentences, the participants sensed that they had passed beyond the discussion of economic, medical, and legal terms to glimpse new horizons of responsibility. [End Page 361]The conference was experiencing the truth of William F. May’s claim that moral quandaries must be placed within “a fresh and liberating vision of the world;” within “metaphysical horizons” (May 1983, pp. 15, 19).Pastoral VirtuesIn the late sixties, André Hellegers, the dynamic physician and Catholic layman who founded the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and who claimed that he had invented the word bioethics, focused bioethics elsewhere—on virtue. “As the caring branches of medicine were gradually pushed aside by the curing ones,” Hellegers said, “there seemed to be less use for the Christian virtues.” We must, he declared, “recapture the Christian virtues of care” (cited in McCormick 1985, p. 111). In a subsequent essay on the conceptual foundation of bioethics, Hellegers, writing with Albert Jonsen, did not invoke the word pastor, but he did argue that the codes drawn up for the ethical practice of medicine were, among other things, guides for the cure of physicians’ souls (Jonsen and Hellegers 1976, pp. 35–36).In 1969, at the same time that André Hellegers was in the process of establishing the Kennedy Institute, Edmund Pellegrino, then a medical school dean, led in the founding of humanities programs within American medical schools. Pellegrino, like Hellegers, a physician and Catholic layman, also focused on virtue. Obligations are not irrelevant for Pellegrino, but in biomedical ethics “one starts always with one’s commitment to be a certain kind of person and then approaches clinical quandaries, conflicts of values, and patient interests as a good person ought” (Pellegrino 1988, p. 123). Pellegrino knows that the classical and Christian tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, a tradition with which he identifies, is concerned with the whole gamut of ethics. But for Pellegrino, that tradition teaches that “no matter to what depths a society may fall, virtuous persons will always be the beacons that light the way back to moral sensitivity” (p. 123). He freely acknowledges that “a virtue-based ethics is inherently elitist, in the best sense, because its adherents demand more of themselves than does the prevailing morality” (p. 123).Hellegers and Pellegrino added to the need of physicians acquiring professional skills their responsibility to become the embodiment of the moral ideal in the patient-physician relationship by caring for the patient... (shrink)

Suffering is a universal human phenomenon. In a time when religious differences are evident and often fuel conflict, shared narratives may provide common ground in which true understanding may take root. This paper will consider the problem of suffering and address how adherents of the three great monotheistic traditions seek understanding, comfort, and the believer’s appropriate response from the same story found within their respective sacred texts: the story of Job, the servant of Yahweh in the Tanakh/Old Testament of Judaism (...) and Christianity— known as Ayyub, prophet of Allah, in the Qur’an. The story of Job addresses more than the distribution of evil problem. At stake in the story is Job’s very relationship to his God. This paper will consider a few of the many Jewish, Christian, and Islamic insights from the ancient story, hopefully leading to mutual understanding and empathy. Keywords: suffering, Tanakh, Qur’an, Job, Ayyub. (shrink)

A quoi reconnaît-on un prophète? Quelles sont ses caractéristiques? Après avoir rappelé la structure et les articulations du Traité théologico-politique de Spinoza, l'auteur présente les différentes figures du prophète qui y sont décrites, selon l'ordre institué par les exigences propres du Traité.

John Henry Newman was a discerning critic of the dominant social values and cultural features of England in the Victorian era that revolved around the sovereign self. Insofar as many of these features—individuals as their own masters, wealth and celebrity, the arbitrariness of answers about faith and meaning, and the character of higher education in the absence of theology—also characterize American society and culture in the early twenty-first century, Newman’s critique of his own time and society also applies to ours. (...) This essay was first delivered as the 2014 Newman Legacy Lecture, sponsored by the National Institute for Newman Studies, at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 3, 2014. (shrink)

The first eulogies (Qaṣāīd) about the Prophet Muḥammad (pbuh) appeared when he was still alive. Ḥassān ibn Thābit (d. 60/680 [?]), ʿAbd Allāh b. Rawāḥa (d. 8/629) and Kaʿb b. Mālik (d. 50/670), important Muslim poets of the period, praised the Prophet and inspired future generations of poets. Depending on the developments in the following centuries, there had been a great increase in the number of poems sung to express enthusiastic feelings towards the Prophet and to defend him and his (...) Prophethood. Andalusia is one of the places where this genre increased the most. The first examples of the praise of the Prophet appeared in Andalusia during the Mulūk al-Ṭawāʾif period (1031-1090). The praises of the Prophet, which were processed in the poems of asceticism, dirge and elegy until the end of the 5th/11th century, became an independent genre called al-Madāʾiḥ al-Nabawiyyah/Nabawiyyāt thanks to the ever-increasing Ṣūfī thoughts penetrating literary circles. The turning point of the praise of the Prophet in Andalusia, as in the East, is the period of the The Almohads (1147-1238), which coincides with the 7th/13th century. The mawlid celebrations, which were first initiated by the Fāṭimids in the 4th/10th century to give legitimacy to their rule, and held every year in North Africa on the twelfth of the month of Rabi'ulawwal, moved to Andalusia at the end of the The Almohad period and gradually became one of the largest official and religious holidays in Andalusia. Giving awards to high-quality poems read on the mawlid festival and celebrations made all over Andalusia has greatly contributed to the literary richness in this field. In praise of the Prophet, talented poets such as Abū Zayd al-Fāzāzī (d. 627/ 1230), Ibn al-Jannān al-Anṣārī (d. 650/1252), Ibn Jābir (d. 780/1378) and Ibn Zumruk (d. 797/1395) emerged. Abū Zayd al-Fāzāzī, one of the most distinguished Prophetic ode poets of the Almohad period is said to have first pioneered the spread of Prophetic praises in Andalusia before the Iraqi poet Yaḥyā al-Ṣarṣarī (d. 656/1258) and the Egyptian poet Būṣīrī (d. 695/1296). He has a dīvān called al-Wasā’il al-mutaqabbalah, which he wrote in alphabetical order and dedicated to the praise of the Prophet. The fame of the odes he uttered about the Prophet spread as far as North Africa, and it has become a tradition to read his odes on special days. Because of the abundance and quality of Prophetic odes, Ibn al-Jannān, who witnessed the glorious days and the collapse of the The Almohad state, also commemorated the poet Ḥassān ibn Thābit, The Prophet’s Odic Poet. Ibn Jābir al-Andalusī, on the other hand, wrote the second ode in this field after Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥilli (d. 749/1348), the inventor of the axiomatic odes, and became the pioneer of axiomatic odes in Andalusia. The effect of political instability on Prophetic odes in Andalusia, which entered its collapse with the end of the Almohad state, is obvious. According to many poets, salvation from this plight of Muslims in Andalusia is possible by once again adhering to the Sunnah of the Prophet. Probably as a reflection of this idea, many poets from 7th/13th centuries onwards devoted their odes to narrating the Prophet and his Sunnah. Poets who describe the Prophet elaborately in their poems hope to be saved from the troubles they have fallen into and to reach the highest rank in heaven. Poets who touched upon the physical characteristics of the Prophet often likened his smiling face to a bright sun and a full moon. In terms of oratory, they stated that he had a fluent language and never uttered bad words. Andalusian poets, who praised the Prophet with moral virtues such as tolerance, justice and courage, stated that there was nobody more merciful and generous than him due to the abundance of his blessings resembling torrential rain. Andalusian Prophetic ode poets adhered to the traditional forms of Arabic poetry in terms of the structure of eulogy. In the introductory parts of odes, they generally express longing for the Prophet and the holy places. The main theme is mostly the Prophet and his outstanding virtues, and they usually end their eulogies with salutation to the Prophet. Save a few Sufi poets, it can be said that they used simple and understandable language in their poems. The sources of inspiration for their poems are the Qur'an and hadiths. Andalusian poets used non-material axiomatic arts in their poems without disturbing the structure of eulogy. In addition to the art of pun, they provided musicality in the poem with the ‘tent-frame’ meter and rhyme scheme, sometimes supporting it through repetition. It is possible to see all kinds of repetitions in, Ibn al-Jannān's odes. In this study, the place of the Prophet in Andalusia and odes, which are reflections of the love for him, will be examined. In addition, the concept of the Prophet in Andalusia will be explained within the political, social and cultural framework of the period. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill is the father of modern liberalism. His most remembered work, On Liberty, which was published in 1859, changed the course of the liberal tradition. What is less well-known is that his ideas have profoundly influenced the American constitutional rights tradition of the latter half of the twentieth century. Mill's 'harm principle' inspired the constitutional right to privacy recognized in Griswold v Connecticut, Roe vs Wade and other cases. His defense of freedom of expression influenced Justices (...) Holmes, Brandeis, Douglas, Brennan and others and led to greatly expanded freedom of speech in the twentieth century. Finally, Mill was an ardent feminist whose last important work, The Subjection of Women, was a full-scale and, for its time, radical defense of complete gender equality. This is a book for lawyers who want to understand the intellectual origins of modern constitutional rights, and for political philosophers interested in the constitutional implications of Mill's conception of freedom. (shrink)

How does one categorize Cornel West? He describes himself on multiple occasions as a "neo-Gramscian pragmatist," a "Jesus-centered intellectual bluesman," and a "card-carrying Kierkegaardian—with a strong Chekhovian twist—and a Marxist-informed radical democrat with a tragicomic sense of life." West seems intentionally cagy about being sorted into a particular school of thought. The resources he draws upon are too eclectic and the work he does with them too creative to treat him as a denizen of any one -ism. As he once (...) said in an interview, "I'm less interested in being situated within a philosophical tradition and much more interested in making sense of the world, pulling from whatever intellectual tradition I... (shrink)

Eschatological images of Jesus as found in Jewish and Christian texts constitute the foundation of Edward Schillebeeckx’s positive orientation to suffering for others. Jewish prototypes provided the early Christians with an understanding of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection as the advent of the eschaton. The pre‐existing biblical figures, which early Jewish Christians appropriated in the aftermath of the devastating crucifixion, provided traditional categories through which the life and death of Jesus could be meaningfully interpreted. Jesus as the eschatological prophet‐martyr and (...) Jesus as the suffering, eschatological high priest of the Epistle to the Hebrews are the most prominent and complex of the ancient figures. In Schillebeeckx’s analysis, each of the two composite titles ascribed to Jesus is an amplification of a prophetic or priestly prototype. The use of both models is predicted on Jesus’ compassionate and redemptive response to suffering – healing the sick, comforting the bereaved, giving hope to the oppressed, and proclaiming eschatological salvation.Schillebeeckx’s historical‐critical investigation of Jesus’ perception of his anticipated death, as revealed in the Last supper narrative, and his analysis of the meaning ascribed to the crucifixion in primitive Christianity establish the basis for a theology of redemptive suffering in the early church. Schillebeeckx has critically examined three pre‐New Testament interpretations applied to Jesus’ crucifixion: the death of the eschatological prophet‐martyr in the Deuteronomic tradition of the prophets whose proclamations were typically misjudged by Israel; the fulfilment of the divine scheme of salvation through the suffering of the ‘righteous one’, who is ultimately exonerated by God; and a vicarious, atoning sacrifice. The interpretative categories examined by Schillebeeckx with respect to the crucifixion are closely related to the biblical images upon which his theology of suffering is based. (shrink)