Orientations Islamic Thought in a World Civilisation

Behind today's media stereotypes of an apocalyptic 'clash of civilisations,' could we be witnessing the epochal birth of new spiritual, ethical and cultural forms of communion, of a nascent global civilisation? 'Orientations' begins with those intimately familiar situations of disorientation, painful conflict and confusion-almost inescapable in the contemporary world-whose most dramatic expressions are daily so visible in emblematic images from each Jerusalem or Sarajevo. It presents three Muslim thinkers-from the metaphysics of Ibn Arabi, to notions of the 'virtuous city' of al-Farabi to the contemporary thinker, Ostad Elahi-whose seminal works together provide the inspiration for positive, realistic, and constructive responses to those challenges. The purpose of this study is to turn our attention toward those universal elements of Islamic thought and spirituality which are explicitly grounded in the deepest common dimensions of human experience: dimensions that can alone provide us with the indispensable foundations for true communication, for genuine moral and spiritual communities rooted in our shared responsibilities of spiritual insight, creativity and the uniquely human processes of realisation and transformation.

James W. Morris holds the Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies and is Director of Graduate Studies in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at University of Exeter, England. He has previously taught at Princeton, Temple, Oberlin, and The Institute of Ismaili Studies in Paris and London. He has published widely on many areas of Islamic religious thought and practice.