Theology at the dihliz: traversing boundaries in Islamic thought

This paper explores alternative epistemological and ontological frameworks for responding to the looming ecological crisis by comparing the Cree and Anishinaabe concept of Minopimatisiwin (the good life) with the Islamic notion of Ihsan (doing what is beautiful or good), particularly as developed within Sufi traditions. Modern responses to the environmental crisis often focus on technical solutions, such as renewable energy, while leaving unchallenged the deeper assumptions that shape human relationships with the natural world. In contrast, Minopimatisiwin emphasizes holistic well-being and relationality among humans, animals, and the environment, grounded in reciprocity and collective responsibility. Similarly, Ihsan calls for the cultivation of moral excellence and spiritual awareness, encouraging individuals to act with goodness and maintain accountability before God. This paper seeks to consider how these traditions offer relational and ethically grounded visions of the good life that can contribute to more sustainable and decolonizing futures.

The Qur’anic obligation of Amr Ma’ruf Nahi Munkar encounters a semantic challenge, frequently instrumentalized to justify coercive policing and sectarian discord. While Michael Cook’s scholarship traces its legal and historical development, a gap remains concerning its internal, non-coercive dimensions. This paper proposes an "organic" genealogy within Islamic ethics by drawing upon Toshihiko Izutsu’s comparative philosophy. By examining Izutsu’s interpretation of Amr (Divine Command) alongside the Taoist concept of Ming (Heavenly Mandate), and planning to utilizing his published works and archival marginalia from the Izutsu Bunko this research develops a framework of "Organic Ethics." It contends that ethical harmony is attained not through external imposition but via Wu Wei (non-interference) and the internal cultivation of the Fitrah, reflecting the philological roots of Wasiyyah as "intertwining vegetation." Ultimately, this study presents a "Theology of Non-Coercion," offering a significant interdisciplinary paradigm to address systemic crises within contemporary Islamic practice.

Scholars of medieval Islamic philosophy and mysticism have increasingly noted parallels between Fāṭimid Ismā‘īlī theology and the texts produced by contemporary Muslim and Jewish thinkers in Iberia and North Africa. 

Although I accept the need for a robust, sociological explanation of how proprietary Ismā‘īlī ideas and texts could have moved beyond these closed communities, I want to qualify this narrative of Fāṭimid propriety by comparing two da‘wah texts (al-‘Ālim wa-l-ghulām and Kitāb al-kashf) by Ja‘far ibn Manṣūr al Yaman (d. 10th c.) and The Guide of the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides (d. 1204). I will argue that Maimonides’ Guide, though focused on the esoteric interpretation of Jewish sources, not only echoes the rhetoric of esoteric initiation found in Fāṭimid da‘wah literature, but likewise follows the Ismā‘īlīs in framing hierarchical initiation as the analogue to the Active Intellect’s initiation into the hierarchy of separate intellects under God. 

This paper centers upon the gināns, an oral poetic tradition with over 1,000 known, transcribed compositions, which is associated with and claimed by the Shia Nizari Ismaili Muslims of, or tracing their heritage to, South Asia. I argue that while the gināns, with their many terminologies and cosmologies, are certainly a window into the ‘cumulative tradition’ of Nizari Ismailis of South Asia, they are also reflective of larger phenomenological realities and, critically, are windows into how our collective (understanding of) scholarship on Islam must grow. Tracing what Ismail Fajrie Alatas terms as ‘articulatory labors’ across time, texts, and contexts, I highlight how, as an oral tradition, the gināns are variously remembered, voiced, and transcribed, yet their recitation also archives tensions driven by the supposition of ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ Islamic practice. The gināns are thus sites of emic negotiation, inflected by etic discourses, but nevertheless are an enduring, living tradition.