Heidegger, Ontology, and the Destiny of Islam: Thoughts and Reflections on the Nature of Islam in the World critiques Islam as a phenomenon set into motion from its beginning. It is a reflective work that addresses difficult questions about Islam through familiar historical concerns and grapples with the issues that arise in that process. Notably, it attests to making no substantive claims about Muslims and instead keeps to the course of analysis of the phenomenon that is Islam, which is taken as an assessable entity rather than a categorical construct. Understood largely in light of a history of observable realities, the ontological analysis of Islam reveals the general acquaintance with it to be imperfect. This suggests the reality of Islam is based on a primal truth that is only partially seen. The analysis then confronts two problems: firstly, that Islam is not what its historical “story,” as it were, proclaims and, secondly, that Islam is therefore not what is traditionally made out of the surviving historical narratives. It is not a question of “what” Islam is, but more critically, “how” Islam appears in the world.

This volume offers insights into a unique philosophical landscape and enriches current Heidegger studies by offering fresh perspectives on his philosophy that are based on the traditions of Arabic and Persian Islamic philosophy

By proposing the Microcosm and Macrocosm analogy for dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology, the authors of this volume are reviving the perennial positioning of the human condition in the play of forces within and without the human being. This theme has run from Plato through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modernity, and has been ignored by contemporaries. It now acquires a new pertinence and striking significance due to the scientific discoveries into the "infinitely small" in life, on the one hand, and the prodigious technological discoveries of the "infinitely great" on the other. Both open up undreamt-of prospects for the continuing conquest of cosmic forces. The human person – thrown into turmoil by the new approaches to life and needing to acquire new habits of mind, having lost security of all beliefs – desperately seeks a new clarification of the Human Condition within the unity of everything-there-is, of cosmic forces, and of his destiny. The dialogue between Islamic Philosophy and phenomenology of life can show the way. Papers by: Gholam-Reza A'awani, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Roza Davari Ardakani, Mohammad Azadpur, Gary Backhaus, Marina Banchetti-Robino, William Chittick, Seyed Mostafa Muhaghghegh Damad, Golamhossein Ebrahimi Dinani, Nader El-Bizri, Kathleen Haney, Salahaddin Khalilov, Sayyid Mohammad Khamenei, Mahmoud Khatami, Mieczyslaw Pawel Migon, Nikolay Milkov, Sachiko Murata, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Daniela Verducci.

In a unique parallel analysis, Muhammad Kamal delves into the most controversial subjects of Islamic and Western existential philosophy. He describes the philosophical ‘turn’, ontological difference, becoming, and nothingness in the ontology of Mulla Sadra and Martin Heidegger. Through analysing the ontological enterprises of Sadra and Heidegger, Kamal shows how they both held that Being is the sole reality, and how both stood in opposition to Plato’s metaphysics. Despite hailing from different regions and eras, both Sadra and Heidegger viewed Plato’s philosophy as an established philosophical tradition which led to a state of untruth, or what Heidegger would have called ‘the oblivion of Being’. As Kamal explicates, Heidegger’s opposition to Plato became manifest in his deconstruction of the history of ontology, while Mulla Sadra’s opposition to Plato emerged through his criticism of the Iranian philosopher Suhrawardi’s doctrine of the principality of essence. These new interpretations of being by two philosophers brought new life to both Islamic and Western schools of philosophy and have formed the basis of much of modern ontology, epistemology, and philosophical psychology.

Sadradin Shirazi (1571–1640), known also as Mulla Sadra, spoke of the primacy of Being and promoted a new ontology, founding a new epistemology. Mulla Sadra's ontology is an important philosophical turn and contribution to the understanding of the development of Muslim philosophy and thought. This comprehensive study of Mulla Sadra's philosophical thought explores his departure from tradition; his turn to the doctrine of the primacy of Being; the dynamic characteristics of Being and the concept of substantial change; comparisons with Heidegger's fundamental ontology; and the influence of Mulla Sadra's ontology on subsequent Muslim philosophy. Of particular value to students of philosophy, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, philosophy of religion, and general readers who seek to understand Muslim philosophy, this book explores the significance of the doctrine of Mulla Sadra and its impact on subsequent debates in the Muslim world.

'An urgent and extraordinary book. Weaving a philosophical analysis of Heidegger, Agamben and Foucault, Jan draws out the implications of their thought for a radical analysis of the ontological politics of Islam and Pakistan. Whether writing about the 'Ulama and Deoband schools, blasphemy laws, the military, beards, or the Bamiyan Buddhas, Jan provokes and challenges our thinking while unearthing the ground on which Pakistan—and our world—are built.' —Joel Wainwright, Department of Geography, Ohio State University, USA 'In this exceptionally inventive and important book, Jan shows us that the problems besetting political life in Pakistan are part of a more troubling crisis in modern forms of power. Challenging accounts that cordon off "political Islam" from "the West," Jan discloses their fundamental indistinction and thus, through his practice of critical ontology, reorients our understanding of how power and violence are at work in the world.' —Joshua Barkan, Department of Geography, University of Georgia, USA The Metacolonial State presents a novel rethinking of the relationship between Islam and the Political. Key to the text is an original argument regarding the "biopoliticization of Islam" and the imperative need for understanding sovereign power and the state of exception in resolutely ontological terms. Through the formulation of a critical ontology of political violence, The Metacolonial State endeavors to shed new light on the signatures of power undergirding postcolonial life, while situating Pakistan as a paradigmatic site for reflection on the nature of modernity's precarious present. The cross-disciplinary approach of Dr. Jan's work is certain to have broad appeal among geographers, historians, anthropologists, postcolonial theorists, and political scientists, among others. At the same time, his explication of critical ontology – with its radical reading of the interlacement of history, power and the event – promises to add a bold new dimension to social science research on Islamism and biopolitics.