Can Muslims Befriend Non-Muslims? Debating al-walāʾ wa-al-barāʾ (Loyalty and Disavowal) in Theory and Practice

This article analyzes the polemic on the concept of al-walā? wa-al-barā? (commonly translated as “loyalty and disavowal”). While existing academic literature focuses on the usages of this concept by jihad activists, the article centers on the role “loyalty and disavowal” plays in debates between contemporary salafī and wasa?ī jurists and theologians, specifically in their conflicting agendas for Muslims living as minorities. Salafīs, relying on several qur'anic verses and Prophetic traditions, promote an understanding of “loyalty and disavowal” that requires Muslims to refrain from befriending or loving non-Muslims, or imitating their beliefs and customs. Relying on counter-verses and traditions, in particular Q 60.8, wasa?īs have interpreted the concept of “loyalty and disavowal” more narrowly, arguing that it applies only to non-Muslims who fight against Muslims; as part of their integration-oriented doctrine for Muslims in the West, they have in recent years dedicated considerable efforts to refuting the salafī interpretation of al-walā? wa-al-barā?. The article examines the juristic methodologies utilized in the debate, and how it has affected religious decisions (fatwās) on Islamic life in Western societies.     

The Evolution of Darwin to a “Unique Christian Species” in Modernist-Apologetic Arab-Islamic Thought

Darwin's theory of evolution has been the cause of great distress and the subject of intense and constant debates among Jews, Christians and Muslims. The article analyzes why and how Sunni Muslim-Arab modernist-apologetic scholars, whose approach emphasizes the compatibility of Islam with empirical sciences, shifted from reluctantly reconciling the theory of evolution with the Qur'an in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to rejecting Darwin as a fabricator and describing his theory as a Christian aberration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through a comparative survey that focuses on the works of ?usayn al-Jisr (d. 1909), Mu?ammad Rashīd Ri?ā (d. 1935), Mu?ammad al-Ghazālī (d. 1996), Yūsuf al-Qara?āwī (b. 1926) and Mu?ammad ?Imāra (b. 1931), the article suggests that this shift corresponded with changes in the American anti-evolutionist discourse, and that, while contemporary modernist-apologetic literature casts Darwin as illegitimate, it does not close the door to a future acceptance of the theory of evolution.     

Tasting the divine: the aesthetics of religious emotion in Indian Christianity

The category of rasa (emotional ‘tastes’) in Indian Christian theology and art offers a useful theoretical lens for the academic study of religious emotion. In this article, two Bharata Nā?yam dance ministries provide a case study in the practical applicability of a rasa theology that is emerging within contemporary Indian Christianity. The Christian choreographers have significantly altered the emotions of love and peace in comparison with classical rasa theory and its traditional use in Hindu devotion. Indian Christian artists and theologians have also begun to explore and invent additional aesthetic emotions, giving unique shape to their ‘emotional community.’ Important challenges attend the dance ministries as they are currently configured, yet rasa is a capacious analytical category that can shed new light on Indian Christianity and the study of emotion in religion.     

Christianity in Iran: A Brief Survey

This article reviews the long and varied history of Christianity in the country now known as Iran. The historical emphasis is on the Assyrian Church of the East, although other churches are also mentioned. The relationship, successively, with Zoroastrianism and with Islam, as the dominant religious traditions, is discussed, as are its implications for the wider Islamic world. Western contacts with Iran, and, in particular, those of western churches, are also examined. In the light of this historical analysis, and from discussion of the situation since the Islamic Revolution, some conclusions are advanced about the prospects for Christianity in the new contemporary context.     

The Concept of Intermediate Existence in the Early Buddhist Theory of rebirth

This article investigates the concept of intermediate existence in the early Buddhist theory of rebirth. The main sources investigated for this article are the Pāli canonical and commentarial literature. My main thesis is that early Buddhist discourses contain instances that suggest a spatial-temporal gap between death and rebirth known as ‘intermediate existence’ (antarābhava), in contrast to the idea of Theravāda Buddhist theory that rebirth takes place immediately without a spatial-temporal gap. In order to prove this, I argue that the ‘one who liberates in interval’ (anarāparinibbāyī) attains Nibbāna in the intermediate existence and the concept of gandhabbā in early Buddhist discourses refers to a being in intermediate existence, not to a dying consciousness (cuti-viññāna), and there are indirect inferences to an spatiotemporal gap between death and rebirth in the early Buddhist discourses.     

Buddhist idealism and the problem of other minds

This essay is concerned with Indian Yogācāra philosophers’ treatment of the problem of other minds in the face of a threatened collapse into solipsism suggested by Vasubandhu’s epistemological argument for idealism. I discuss the attempts of Dharmakīrti and Ratnakīrti to address this issue, concluding that Dharmakīrti is best seen as addressing the epistemological problem of other minds and Ratnakīrti as addressing the conceptual problem of other minds.     

Reasons and doubt in Dharmottara and his critics

This paper examines the role of doubt in the classification of inferential reasons in Dharmottara’s Nyāyabindu?īkā, and in the works of his Nyāya rivals Ke?avami?ra and Jayantabha??a. As deeply systematic thinkers, larger themes in these philosophers’ metaphysics directly determine the more local issues in epistemology and inferential theory, helping to explain, and show the significance of, the differences in their accounts of inferential reasons. For Ke?ava, an ontology which includes real universals allows for an externalist, reliabilist epistemology, on which the conditions for a genuine inferential reason can be stated in an absolute (as opposed to cogniser-relative) manner. For Dharmottara, on the other hand, an ontology in which mentally constructed universals are imposed upon real particulars leads to greater dependency on the cognising agent, such that the triple conditions for the inferential reason are formulated in a cogniser-relative way. These differences lead to a more restrictive list of acceptable reasons on Dharmottara’s part, which excludes cases involving doubt.     

佛教五蕴系统——一种信息加工模型

作为佛教基础教义的“五蕴”是对心理机能尤其是认知过程的高度概括——人类信息加工包括色蕴、受蕴、想蕴、行蕴和识蕴五大机能系统。色蕴对感官信息进行初级加工;受蕴进行信息的情绪编码;随后在想蕴阶段进行高级整合,完成信息的概念语言表征;行蕴则为信息加工提供能量及方向导控;识蕴负责信息储存、监控调节及信息输出,最终形成完整的认知判断。佛教五蕴提供了一种信息加工的新模型。     

《昭元秘诀》的成书与流传

《昭元秘诀》波斯文原本、注解本及其汉译本,作为中国化伊斯兰教经堂教育的认主学最高教材,国内学术界却鲜有系统的研究。本文通过综合国内外文献资料和研究成果,完整回溯了《昭元秘诀》的成书、注释、流传及汉译的过程,考证了作者、注者、译者的生平与师承关系,为进一步开展研究奠定了基础。