أرشيف التصنيف: English Articles

Ibn ‘Arabi’s vision of Woman

أكتوبر 19, 2013English Articlesequality،Ibn 'Arabi،shaykh،spiritual teacherbenaraby

Woman as Human Being

Ibn ‘Arabî views human reality as one in all human beings, males and females. The two genders are equal in respect of humanity, and that is their origin. Maleness and femaleness are contingent states in the human essence. He says: “Humanity unites male and female, and in it maleness and femaleness are contingencies, not a human reality. He also says: “Eve was created from Adam, and so she has two determinations (hukm), that of male by virtue of origin and that of female by virtue of contingency. Based upon this gender equality as human being, woman is qualified to work in all the same occupations as a man does, and possesses the aptitude for the performance of all intellectual and spiritual activities.

Woman’s aptitude for knowledge

Sufi circles are, for the most part, open to both genders, looking upon woman as a human being and not as a female, as a person with exactly the same aptitude for divine closeness and gnosis as a man.

Ibn ‘Arabî further developed the vision of the sufis who preceded him, with regard to women being people of knowledge and gnosis. Woman manifested in his works in two aspects: the sufi and the Fikh fields.

Woman as spiritual teacher, guiding the shaykh, and spritual mother

This characterisation was personified by a woman of gnosis from Seville,

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The modern material civilization and " progress"

أكتوبر 18, 2013English ArticlesDEMOCRACY،modern،modern civilization،progress،westbenaraby

For what moderns have agreed to call ‘progress’, is nothing else than a purely material progress; but its ‘benefits’, of which they are so proud, aren’t they illusory? most people today claim they increase their ‘welfare’ by this means; in my opinion, the aim they set to themselves, even if it was really reached, its not worth of so much effort; moreover, it seems a very debatable question whether they do reach it really, since the modern society constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy…So people get never really satisfied and always run after a new material desire…

Other than that, it should be taken into account also that not all men have the same tastes or the same needs, and that there are still who would wish avoid modern commotion and the craving for speed, but who can no longer do so ?? Could anyone presume to maintain that it is a ‘benefit’ to these people to have thrust on them what is most contrary to their nature? It will be said in reply that there are few such men today, and this is considered a justification for treating them as a negligible quantity; in this, as in the field of politics, the majority arrogates to itself the right to crush minorities, which, in its eyes, evidently have no right to exist, since their very existence defies the egalitarian mania for uniformity.

But if the whole of mankind is taken into consideration, instead of merely the Western world, the question bears a different aspect: the majority i have just spoken of then becomes a minority. A different argument is therefore used in this case, and by a strange contradiction it is in the name of their ‘superiority’ that these ‘egalitarians’ seek to impose their civilization on the rest of the world, and that they bring trouble to people who have never asked them for anything; and, since this ‘superiority exists only from the material point of view, it is quite natural that the most brutal means are used to assert it. if the general public accepts the pretext of ‘civilization’ in all good faith, there are those fo

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THE ILLUSION OF DEMOCRACY EXPLAINED BY RENE GUENON

أكتوبر 17, 2013English ArticlesDEMOCRACY،modern civilization،RENE GUENON،world orderbenaraby

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The most decisive argument against democracy can be summed up in a few words: the higher cannot proceed from the lower, because the greater cannot proceed from the lesser; this is an absolute mathematical certainty that nothing can gainsay. And it should be remarked that this same argument, applied to a different order of things, can also be invoked against materialism; there is nothing fortuitous in this, for these two attitudes are much more closely linked than might at first sight appear. It is abundantly clear that the people cannot confer a power that they do not themselves possess; true power can only come from above, and this is why—be it said in passing—it can be legitimized only by the sanction of something standing above the social order, that is to say by a spiritual authority, for otherwise it is a mere counterfeit of power, unjustifiable through lack of any principle, and in which there can be nothing but disorder and confusion. This reversal of the true hierarchical order begins when the temporal power seeks to make itself independent of the spiritual authority, and then even to subordinate the latter by claiming to make it serve political ends. This is an initial usurpation that opens up the way to all the others; thus it could be shown, for example, that the French monarchy was itself working unconsciously, from the fourteenth century onward, to prepare the Revolution that was to overthrow it; it may be that we shall

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The origin of contemporary secularism and it s consequences on the modern civilization..

أكتوبر 16, 2013English Articlescontemporary secularism،modern civilizationbenaraby

Humanism, a group of philosophies and ethical perspectives , born in 16 th century, which emphasize the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers individual thought and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over established doctrine or faith, was the first form of what has subsequently become contemporary secularism; according to this definition, secularism is therefore, the negation of any principle higher than individuality, and the consequence is the reduction of the civilization, in all its branches, to purely human elements; this is the characteristic feature of the ‘ secular , profane point of view’ .

secularism necessarily implies the refusal to accept any authority higher than the individual, as well as any means of knowledge higher than individual reason; these two attitudes are inseparable, so it begins by denaturing religion and,

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