The question of the origin of Islamic mysticism has been one of the major concerns of many researchers in the field of mysticism in the recent decades. Some have maintained that Islamic mysticism is an imported product: a combination of Eastern spiritual traditions or a mixture of Manichaeism and Alexandrian philosophy. However, in order to find out the real origin of Islamic mysticism, the bes...

a doctrine which has played a significant role in the beliefs of the jews, the christians and the moslems is the issue of the garden of eden and the renowned tree in it (one tree in islam, and two trees in the judaism and christianity, i.e. the tree of life and the tree of knowledge). this essay deals with a comparative study of the forbidden tree in judaism and islam, and for this sake we have...

In today’s world where the former colonized are reshaping their relation with the colonizer, the concept of decolonizing or indigenizing education is widely discussed in postcolonial studies. Decolonizing/indigenizing education counters the western systems of knowledge’s hegemony over those of non-western systems of thought and requires the development of a new approach to education that keeps ...

This article offers an anthropological outline of immanent critique in Islamic traditions. In addressing the question – what is immanent critique? – it dwells on the interrelationships amongst the Enlightenment’s notion of reason, critique, and Islam. My main contention is that to construe the Western notion of critique derived from Enlightenment’s specific conceptualization of reason as critiq...

This paper investigates the ways in which terrorism is linked to education and poverty using data newly culled from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) documentary sources. The paper presents a statistical analysis of the determinants of participation in terrorist activities by members of the Hamas and PIJ between the late 1980s and May 2002. The resulting evidence suggests that both high...

In the last two decades one of the key questions that has occupied many feminist theorists is how should issues of historical and cultural specificity inform both the analytics and politics of any feminist project. Although this questioning has resulted in serious attempts at integrating issues of sexual, racial, class, and national difference within feminist theory, questions of religious diff...

Stem cell research is very promising. The use of human embryos has been confronted with objections based on ethical and religious positions. The recent production of reprogrammed adult (induced pluripotent) cells does not - in the opinion of scientists - reduce the need to continue human embryonic stem cell research. So the debate continues. Islam always encouraged scientific research, particul...