By the fate of Allah subhana wa ta’ala, I came across this book by Dr. Isma’il R. al-Faruqi entitled “The Hijrah: The Necessity of its Iqamat or Vergegenwartigung”. I never knew this book existed and I wasn’t even sure that it was really authored by almarhum, until I came across this entry at the Pustaka Perdana Library. I’ve already placed an order for this book, so let’s see what the contents are once I’ve received the book (expected to be in December according to Alibris). I am very excited because knowing Dr. Faruqi’s style and ideology, this book will surely not disappoint. Its quite strange that this book was not included in his Bibliography, but I am taking the liberty to officially add this book to the list.
A month seems like a long time away but once I get this book, I will scan it and put it up online for all to benefit from it.
29 Oct
Dr. Isma’il al-Faruqi wrote the following on the Trinity:
The offense of Christianity against transcendence was even greater. Islam charged Christianity with extending the nontranscendent concept to God’s “fatherhood of the Jewish kings” to Jesus and giving it, besides its moral signification of compliance with God’s commandments, the de-transcendentalizing ontological connotation of unity of substance between God and Jesus. Indeed, Christian catholicity defined itself with terms of this “substantial” identity of Jesus with God, as distinct from plurality of their “personalities,” characters and consciousness. Obviously, the source of this new departure from transcendence of the divine being within the Semitic stream was not the Jewish inheritance of Christianity. This had given Christianity the concepts, not their connotation. Neither was gnosticism the source of that departure, whose argument “If he suffer, he was not God; if he was God, he did not suffer” was hurled against their fellow Christians in defence of transcendence. The source must be the non-Semitic influence of the “mystery religions.” It was from this source that Christianity derived its “suffering God” who saves by dying and returning to life and whose mana (grace) is imparted to the communicant thought sacrament.
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13 Sep
Who was Dr Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi?
Ismail Raji al-Faruqi (January 1, 1921 – May 27, 1986) was a Palestinian-American philosopher who was recognized by his peers as an authority on Islam and comparative religion. He spent several years at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, then taught at several universities in North America, including McGill University in Montreal. He was Professor of Religion at Temple University, where he founded and chaired the Islamic Studies program.
The Ismail Faruqi Online website was first initiated by myself after I contacted DSAI and he put me in touch IIIT to work in collaboration with them in 2006. Due to several outstanding issues and personal matters that I had to deal with, the site was put on a backburner in 2007 but remains active.
I have collected various papers published by Dr. Faruqi during this period (and with some help from IIIT) but I have decided to take over the project 100%.
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23 Jul
