Encounters Between Secular Sacred Knowledge

A quick glance at this book will indicate that it deals with many areas of knowledge. There are thirty in all and they are presented in the first chapter in a purely secular form with which most potential readers will be familiar. There is no need for such people to go any further; they may well be content with a standard presentation of the respective subjects. But it is possible for inquiring minds to go further and seek the way in which those subjects are presented in sacred contexts. No doubt many people read the Bible but they may well be surprised when they look into Chapter 2 and see how many of these secular subjects emerge in the text of the Bible. Then there is a further way of perceiving the sacred connections of many of these subjects by looking back into their history and origins, as in Chapter 3. The obvious examples are those of astronomy and Galileo's conflict with the church; in the life sciences, Charles Darwin's evolution was in antagonism with traditional Christian beliefs about creation. Readers are advised to pick and choose whatever topics attract their interest and trace them through the first three chapters. The remainder of the book is an attempt to rethink and rephrase in modern terms the principle of St Thomas Aquinas that "theology is the queen of the sciences."

"Papers ... delivered at an international symposium entitled "Pilgrims and travellers in search of the holy" convened in Helsinki in 2008"--Introd.

The main subjects of analysis in the present book are the stages of initiation in the grand scheme of Theosophical evolution. These initiatory steps are connected to an idea of evolutionary self-development by means of a set of virtues that are relative to the individual’s position on the path of evolution. The central thesis is that these stages were translated from the “Hindu” tradition to the “Theosophical” tradition through multifaceted “hybridization processes” in which several Indian members of the Theosophical Society partook. Starting with Annie Besant’s early Theosophy, the stages of initiation are traced through Blavatsky’s work to Manilal Dvivedi and T. Subba Row, both Indian members of the Theosophical Society, and then on to the Sanâtana Dharma Text Books. In 1898, the English Theosophist Annie Besant and the Indian Theosophist Bhagavan Das together founded the Central Hindu College, Benares, which became the nucleus around which the Benares Hindu University was instituted in 1915. In this context the Sanâtana Dharma Text Books were published. Mühlematter shows that the stages of initiation were the blueprint for Annie Besant’s pedagogy, which she implemented in the Central Hindu College in Benares. In doing so, he succeeds in making intelligible how “esoteric” knowledge was transferred to public institutions and how a broader public could be reached as a result. The dissertation has been awarded the ESSWE PhD Thesis prize 2022 by the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.

As its interests have become deeply tied to the Middle East, the United States has long sought to develop a usable understanding of the people, politics, and cultures of the region. In Imagining the Middle East, Matthew Jacobs illuminates how Americans' ideas and perspectives about the region have shaped, justified, and sustained U.S. cultural, economic, military, and political involvement there. Jacobs examines the ways in which an informal network of academic, business, government, and media specialists interpreted and shared their perceptions of the Middle East from the end of World War I through the late 1960s. During that period, Jacobs argues, members of this network imagined the Middle East as a region defined by certain common characteristics--religion, mass politics, underdevelopment, and an escalating Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and as a place that might be transformed through U.S. involvement. Thus, the ways in which specialists and policymakers imagined the Middle East of the past or present came to justify policies designed to create an imagined Middle East of the future. Jacobs demonstrates that an analysis of the intellectual roots of current politics and foreign policy is critical to comprehending the styles of U.S. engagement with the Middle East in a post-9/11 world.

This book discusses the need for a paradigm shift from Islamic economics universe of discourse to Iqtisād, a socio-economic system that is entirely independent from other economic doctrines and systems of thought. It provides an overview of critiques of the science and dogma of mainstream, orthodox, neoclassical, or simply Economics, with its axioms of rationality, scarcity, and unlimited wants. There is also a critical analysis of Islamic economics, and its failures to set its own policy agenda and development objectives. Our contention in this book is that Iqtisād--the Qur’an’s vision of how the economy is to be arranged—provides such a paradigm with a radically different philosophical foundation from that of Economics to the point that makes grafting one onto the other Impossible. Iqtisād offers a genuine and authentic Islamic paradigm with unique etymological and philosophical foundations. It is a unique system that derives its organizing principles from the principal source of the Quran, rather than Economics. The logical coherence of its immutable system of rules compliance, institutional structures, and risk-sharing relations provides the foundations for economic dynamism, financial stability, and shared prosperity. It ensures that resources are efficiently managed, poverty is eradicated, income and wealth mal-distributions are corrected, and the internal sources of economic injustices gripping human societies are eliminated. The Impossibility Theorem proposed in this book implies that, metaphysically, ontologically, epistemologically, axiologically, and teleologically, the two polar cases of Iqtisād and Economics are so radically different to rule out any grafting of one onto the other in order to present an intermediate paradigm with a synthetic discipline called Islamic economics. Given its multidisciplinary contents, this book will be of interest to a wide audience, including economists, policymakers, philosophers, theologians, and jurists, and can guide also free-thinking readers to a clarity of understanding about the conditions of humanity and the imperative of change with a sincerity of purpose and coherence in knowledge.

Secularism in Question examines how twentieth-century revivals of religion prompt a reconsideration of many issues concerning Jews and Judaism in the modern era. Scholars of Jewish history, religion, philosophy, and literature illustrate how the categories of "religious" and "secular" have frequently proven far more permeable than fixed.

Offers a progressive Christian approach to soteriology and missiology in a global, postcolonial context. This book proposes an integration of gospel and culture. It aims to steer a third course towards an integration of the knowledge and treasures, the losses and laments of Christianities forged in colonizing and colonized societies.

An exploration of how Senegal has decolonised its cultural heritage sites since independence, many of which are remnants of the French empire.