While it is evident that in a post-1979 period, the public debate on Islam, reason, and authenticity has become more sectarianized, it is striking that such an event and attempt to disseminate Mullā Ṣadrā in contemporary Pakistan has not sought to restrict its scope to the Shiʿi communities or Shiʿi intellectuals alone.
3 This latter tendency brings together Shiʿi religious leaders and functionaries who have trained in the seminary in Qum in the post-revolutionary period, as well as intellectuals seeking, via engagement with the postmodern debate on the nature of philosophy, an “Islamic” authentic alternative to the analytic tradition of philosophy. 2 While almost by definition an elite and rather restricted event, the conference demonstrates the two tendencies of interest in Mullā Ṣadrā in contemporary Urdu literary culture in South Asia: first, a continuation of the focus on the rational disciplines of the seminary in North India, on the maʿqūlāt within the pedagogy known as the Dars-e Niz̤āmī and, second, a modern interest in philosophy within learned culture-further motivated by the rise of the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā in Iran since 1979-attempting to find an “Islamic philosopher” who can be championed in identity politics to illustrate that Muslims, especially Pakistanis, also can do philosophy. 1 Various dailies including the Dawn wrote up the conference focusing on Mullā Ṣadrā’s contribution to philosophy and human knowledge. Titled “Man and Transcendent Philosophy,” the conference featured two keynote speakers: the prominent traditionalist Deobandi speaker Ahmed Javed and the leading Shiʿi ḳhat̤īb (orator) Syed Aqeel ul-Gharavi. On Friday, December 24, 2010, the Hikmah Foundation, represented by Maulana Syed Salman Naqavi and chaired by the well-known journalist and intellectual Aneeq Ahmed, convened an Urdu conference at the Sheikh Zayed Institute of Islamic Studies at Karachi University on the famous Safavid thinker and eminent philosopher of the late classical period, Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d.
Keywords: Islamic philosophy Mullā Ṣadrā analytic philosophy Urdu translation
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