It's Not Just Academic!: Essays on Sufism and Islamic Studies

Description

This collection of articles by Carl W Ernst summarizes over 30 years of research, recovering and illuminating remarkable examples of Islamic culture that have been largely overlooked, if not forgotten. It opens with reflections on teaching Islam, focusing on major themes such as Sufism, the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad, and Arabic literature. The importance of public scholarship and the questionable opposition between Islam and the West are also addressed. The articles that follow explore multiple facets of Sufism, the ethical and spiritual tradition that has flourished in Muslim societies for over a thousand years. The cumulative effect is to move away from static Orientalist depictions of Sufism and Islam through a series of vivid and creative case studies. Cover Half title page Title page Copyright Contents Preface Acknowledgments PART 1 GENERAL AND CRITICAL ISSUES IN ISLAMIC STUDIES 1 Between Orientalism and Fundamentalism: Problematizing the Teaching of Sufism 2 Reading Strategies for Introducing the Qur’an as Literature in an American Public University 3 “The West and Islam?” Rethinking Orientalism and Occidentalism 4 Muḥammad as the Pole of Existence 5 It’s Not Just Academic: Writing Public Scholarship in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 6 The Global Significance of the Arabic Language PART 2 EARLY SUFISM 7 Esoteric and Mystical Aspects of Religious Knowledge in Sufism 8 Controversies over Ibn `Arabi’s Fusus: The Faith of Pharaoh 9 Mystical Language and the Teaching Context in the Early Lexicons of Sufism 10 The Man without Attributes: Ibn `Arabi’s Interpretation of Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī 11 Rūzbihān Baqlī on Love as “Essential Desire” 12 An Indo-Persian Guide to Sufi Shrine Pilgrimage 13 The Stages of Love in Early Persian Sufism, from Rabi`a to Ruzbihan 14 Sufism and Philosophy in Mulla Sadra 15 Shams-i Tabriz and the Audacity of Bayazid Bistami PART 3 SUFISM, ART, AND LITERATURE 16 The Spirit of Islamic Calligraphy: Baba Shah Isfahani’s Adab al-mashq 17 The Symbolism of Birds and Flight in the Writings of Rūzbihān Baqlī 18 On Losing One’s Head: Hallajian Motifs and Authorial Identity in Poems Ascribed to ʿAṭṭār 19 Beauty and the Feminine Element of Spirituality 20 Sufism and the Aesthetics of Penmanship in Sirāj al-Shīrāzī’s Tuḥfat al-Muḥibbīn (1454) 21 Jalāl al-Dīn Davānī’s Interpretation of Ḥāfiẓ 22 “A Little Indicates Much”: Structure and Meaning in the Prefaces to Rumi’s Masnavī, Books 1–3 23 Wakened by the Dove’s Trill: Structure and Meaning in the Preface to Rūmī’s Masnavī, Book 4 PART 4 CONTEMPORARYSUFISM 24 Ideological and Technological Transformations of Contemporary Sufism 25 Sufism, Islam, and Globalization in the Contemporary World: Methodological Reflections on a Changing Field of Study PART 5 PERSIANATE THEMES 26 Persianate Islamic Studies in American Universities 27 Concepts of Religion in the Dabistan 28 Early Orientalist Concepts of Sufism Index About the Author