Ebrahim Moosa
Forfatter af Ghazālī and the Poetics of Imagination
Om forfatteren
Ebrahim Moosa is associate university research professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Muslim Networks at Duke University
Værker af Ebrahim Moosa
Associated Works
How Should We Talk about Religion?: Perspectives, Contexts, Particularities (ND Erasmus Institute Books) (2006) — Bidragyder — 4 eksemplarer
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Almen Viden
- Kanonisk navn
- Moosa, Ebrahim
- Andre navne
- Moosa, Ebrahim E. I.
- Køn
- male
- Nationalitet
- South Africa
- Uddannelse
- University of Cape Town (MA|1989)
University of Cape Town (PhD|1995) - Erhverv
- professor
- Organisationer
- Duke University (Associate Professor of Islamic Studies)
- Priser og hædersbevisninger
- Carnegie Scholar (2005)
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First off, he doesn’t have anything to say about women in this book. Al-Ghazali’s ideas of individuality and what constitutes human consciousness are gender neutral.
Second, there isn’t much verbatim quoting of Al-Ghazali, this is Moosa’s commentary on Al-Ghazali’s ideas, many of which were spread out across volumes of Al-Ghazali’s copious literary output.
Third, Moosa does have a post-modernism bias (based on my observation that only post-modernists use the word ‘bricolage’) however, he is respectful of Muslim tradition. His basic tenant is Muslims need to deconstruct the past so that it can then be reconstructed with a foundation of tradition but with an active dialog in respect to dealing with modern problems.
Moosa’s book is very good in that it paints a very complex portrait of a highly complicated and interesting historical figure. No Al-Ghazali wasn’t perfect, yes he backtracked on some of his ideas or wasn’t consistent, and perhaps even he was a dreaded ‘flip-flopper’, but nevertheless, who exactly is right all of the time? Who doesn’t change their mind? And besides, Al-Ghazali did write some stunningly beautiful things. I particularly liked his analysis of the “light” ayahs in Surat al-Noor. Furthermore, since so many Muslim traditions have picked over and borrowed from Al-Ghazali’s work, I felt like I had a better understanding of so many other Muslim thinkers, particularly Rumi and Muhammad Iqbal. In reading Al-Ghazali, you get a better understanding of the source of many Muslim ‘talking points”.
There is a lot of heavy vocabulary, most of which Moosa defines so you don’t have to go running to a dictionary (ex. Anathema, catachresis, epistemicide, teleiopoiesis, liminality, palingenesis). The style is academic, but not so obtuse that a college sophomore couldn’t handle it. The chapters on self and identity were lovely, but I got a bit lost on the metaphysics chapters.
After reading this book I had much greater respect for Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, and while he wasn’t perfect and got some stuff wrong, overall he was an amazing thinker.… (mere)