Tag: God

Islam & The Meaning of Life

The course explores how Islamic thought engages questions such as: What is the ultimate purpose of human existence? What is true happiness? How can human beings overcome alienation and find inner peace? How are faith and reason related in the search for meaning? What grounds moral obligations, justice, and human dignity? And how does belief in God shape the understanding of human destiny? The course approaches the meaning of life from three complementary perspectives within Islamic intellectual tradition: The Qur’anic perspective, the mystical perspective, and the philosophical and rational-theological perspective.

The Expectations from Islam

This lecture, The Expectations from Islam, examines how reformist Muslims define the scope and limits of religion today. Moving beyond traditional accounts of prophecy’s benefits, it asks what Muslims can legitimately expect from Islam. Reformist thought distinguishes enduring, transhistorical teachings from historically contingent rulings, identifying eight permanent domains: meaning to life, knowledge of God, the Hereafter, the unseen realm, morality, ritual, quasi-ritual, and limited social guidance. While Islam offers lasting principles of meaning, faith, ethics, and salvation, reformists emphasize that secular sciences and human reason address most worldly affairs.

The Problem of Evil

The 2024 course explores the key concepts and major issues of the problem of evil and its three types of responses. ‘The problem of evil’ as the challenge of reconciling the existence of a perfect being (Omnipotent, Omniscient, and omnibenevolent God) with the existence of evil, suffering, and sin has been one of the greatest intellectual problems. The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God.

Comparative Medieval Philosophy

Medieval philosophy is a prerequisite to understanding the theology of Abrahamic traditions, metaphysics, philosophical psychology, and political philosophy. We will focus on six top philosophers: Alfarabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali, Averroes, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas. After discussing general information about two translation movements, these distinguished philosophers, their works, and their philosophical innovations through the translation of a few of their major works, we will focus on comparative studies on three important subjects: God, creation, and freedom in three Abrahamic traditions, focusing on Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, and Aquinas in detail.

The Problem of Evil

Spring 2022 Course: This is an introduction to the problem of evil that examines writings from ancient to present. ‘The problem of evil’ as the challenge of reconciling the existence of an absolutely perfect being (Omnipotent, Omniscient, and omnibenevolent God) with the existence of evil, suffering and sin has been one of the greatest problems of intellectual. The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God.