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[German Version] (Abū Ḥāmid al-Gazzālī; 1058–1111 ce) from Ṭūs in northeastern Iran, the Algazel of the Latin Middle Ages, was one of the most important and, to date, most influential scholars in Islam. From a religious family, he first studied the traditional Islamic disciplines and taught law and theology from 1091 on in the leading Sunni academy in Baghdad. Simultaneously, however, Gazzālī sought to engage with the other intellectual trends of the epoch (Sufism, philosop…

[German Version] (Lat. form of Abū aʿAlī al-Ḥusain ibn ʿAbdallāh Ibn Sīnā; c. 980, Afšana near Buḫārā – 1037, Hamadān), a comprehensive scholar, outstanding physician and philosopher, whose thought has exerted lasting influence on later Islamic intellectual history, but also on European scholasticism. Avicenna developed his philosophical doctrines in dialogue with Aristotle, whose works he knew almost entirely in Arabic and …

[German Version] The Muʿtazilah was a school of major importance in the development of Islamic theology; it emerged in the first half of the 8th century through the teaching of Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ; in the early 9th …

[German Version] (c. 1105, Wādī Āš, Spain – 1185, Marrakech), physician and Islamic philosopher. Ibn Ṭufail supported Averroes and became known as the author of the novel Ḥaiy ibn Yaqẓān [The living, son of the wakeful one]. In this novel, Ibn Ṭufail describes the path to recognition of a person named Ḥaiy, who grew up alone on a solitary island from his birth. Ḥaiy deciphers…

[German Version] I. Science Natural laws express regular connections between nat…

[German Version] I. Fundamental Theology – II. Systematic Theology – III. Islamic Theology – IV. Philosophy of Science – V. Physics I. Fundamental Theology Determinism is the thesis that given a particular state of affairs (e.g. “the world now”) another state cannot be other than it is or will be (e.g. “the world tomorrow”). Fatalism is a slightly different idea, namely that an aspect of reality is unavoidable (e.g. one's own death…

[German Version] I. Bible 1. Old Testament and early Jewish apocalypticism. Predestination refers traditionally to God’s foreordained final determination regarding the eschatological salvation or damnation of each individual. In this sense, it represents a subset of a universal notion of divine predetermination (Determinism and indeterminism: II) taken to its logical individual and soteriological extreme, as is found in both Judaism and Christianity. The Old Testament does not speak of predestination in …

[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Fundamental Theology – III. Islamic Theology …

[German Version] I. Philosophy The term skepticism denotes an attitude informed by doubts regarding certain beliefs. In the realm of philosophy, these doubts have to do primarily with the existence or knowableness of the external world and the knowableness or motivating force of moral norms. Since ancient Greece, a distinction has been made between academic skepticism and Pyrrhonian skepticism. The former was cultivated at Plato’s Academy (I) and used against the defenders of dogmatism; it argued the …

[German Version] I. Philosophy Neoplatonism takes the system constructed by Plotinus as its starting point. Important representatives are Amelios, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Theodore of Asine, Emperor Julian the Apostate, Plutarch of Athens, Syrian, Proclus, Damascius, and Simplicius. Pagan Neoplatonism ends institutionally wit…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Bible – IV. Judaism – V. Christianity – VI. Islam…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. History of Religions – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Art History I. Religious Studies …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Human destiny. The human experience of existence holds both positive and negative events. Personal and structural processes involving violence and suffering are constants. The “horizon of justice and righteousness” allows us to surmise that the events that take place in the course of the world are not random but are turbulences on the surface of a fundamental order. Disorientation (anomie) does not destroy the need for security. These turbulences remain a question to which religious ¶ traditions and atheistic projections of Dasein offer answers. 2. Religious responses. The cultures that explain such contrary experiences (legitimation) and make them tolerable (motivation) are contextual, but they provide models of decipherment (paradigms) that make it possible for a society to cope with its fate. God’s righteousness and liberation are positive expressions of this hope. Its opposite counterparts are God’s punishment and judgment (Divine judgment). The symbolic worlds of religions vary with the focus of their cultures but can be characterized typologically. (a) In the shamanic/magical perception of the world (Shamanism), the ecological, social, and human imbalance in the cosmos is related to protective and threatening fields of energy, manipulated by ancestors, spirits, or deities. An unwritten tradition of proverbial wisdom records these connections. God’s justice is realized in potent regularities and rituals (Magic). (b) Hindu and Buddhist sensibilities are more apt to articulate experiences of success and failure moral…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. Church History – V. Dogmatics – VI. Judaism – VII. Islam – VIII. Buddhism – IX. Contemporary Art I. Religious Studies 1. Hell as a place of retribution in the afterlife for those who continually transgress the religiously sanctioned rules of their community is not specifically Christian or monotheistic. But it is also not an idea that springs automatically from the question of how the dead exist (Death). Although hell was long viewed as a necessary correlate of earthly justice (possibly delayed) or the conscience's internal court (…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. History of Dogma – V. Dogmatics – VI. Ethics – VII. Philosophy of Religion – VIII. Judaism – IX. Islam (cf. Present and Future Eschatology, Consistent Eschatology) I. Religious Studies 1. The Problem of Terminology Eschatology (“discourse” or “doctrine” [Gk λόγος/ lógos] concerning the “last things” [Gk …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies …

[German Version] I. Origin and Spread – II. Doctrine – III. Islamic Philosophy – IV. Islamic Art (Architecture and Book Art) – V. Islamic Studies – VI. Christianity and Islam – VII. Judaism and Islam – VIII. Islam in Europe – IX. Islam in North America – X. Political Islamism I. Origin and Spread 1. Muḥammad and his message In 569 ce, Muḥammad was born in Mecca, a city with the shrine of the Kaʿba at its center. Mecca enjoyed good relations with the Sasanian Empire and its Arab vassal princes in Ḥīra, but considered itself politically independen…

[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. History of Theology – VI. Creation and Preservation – VII. Religious Education – VIII. Islam – IX. Science – X. Art History I. History of Religion 1. Fundamentals Life, nature, the environment, the passage of time – these are everyday experiences for any society. But reality also includes the danger that this world may be imperiled or perilous. Chaos and death are part …