The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn Al-'Arabi's Cosmology (Suny Series in Islam)

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Summary: Detailed Translations by a Leading Akbarian Specialist
Review: "This is what shows you His Omnipotence, Exalted be He; that He hides himself from you by that which has no existence outside of Him" -- Ibn Ata'allah

Chittick is refining the art of translating Ibn Arabi. Unlike other medieval Arabic texts that are more or less straightforward -- hence translatable -- Ibn Arabi is an exception. The anti-systematic nature of his thought compounded by its deep interconnection with the Arabic language renders translations almost impossible.

The Great Shaikh's hermeneutics of Islamic Scripture (the Koran and Prophetic traditions) is at once mystical and linguistic. Mystical through kashf, (lit. 'unveiling,' a type of spiritual opening to knowledge), and linguistic through retracing each Divinely revealed word to its etymological root. To a reader unfamiliar with either mystical philosophy or classical Arabic, understanding Ibn Arabi can be excrutiatingly difficult. A natural response is to question the source of Ibn Arabi's radically subversive worldview.

Taking these factors into consideration, Chittick should be commended in undertaking a task so academically daunting that it prevented even an Orientalist of R.A. Nicholson's repute from publishing his own translations.

Chittick is meticulous in his translations and tries to be loyal to both the literal and implied meanings of technical Arabic words. He introduces each translated section with a brief summary to acquaint the reader what s/he is about encounter, simplifying the complexity of the passage and contexualising it within the (fluid) framework of Ibn Arabi's nondualistic ontology.

Finally, it should be noted that Chittick's other major work in the field of Akbarian scholarship, the Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination, makes an excellent introduction to this work. SDG is not easy reading, so preliminary works might be useful before jumping full fledge into Ibn Arabi's "ocean without shore" of mystical metaphysics. In strange and unfamiliar waters, the weight of ignorance can drown. But the ultimate ignorance, as Ibn Arabi would say, is not that of books written by the dead -- for "the servant is nonexistent!" -- but of the Living (al-Hayy) who reveals Himself through the cosmos around us, through His Self-Disclosure.

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Summary: Dont take it too seriously
Review: I find Ibne' Al-Arabi a bit too serious about this whole thing. I don't think God meant for the religion to be as serious as we have taken it. Surely if this thing was supposed to be serious we would have had more guidelines. We keep saying that Quran is a Light, last I checked light meant clarity and lack of confusion. Quran has generated anything but clarity and lack of confusion. It is said that this book is guide for all eternity, it has layers and layers of meaning, etc. Ok, that is fine but what use is it to us? If one studies the history of Islamic thoughts , one discovers that almost everyone disagrees with everyone else. Everyone is ex-communicating everyone else. There is so much commentary written on this book and each one is nothing but a best "guess" as to what the intention or meaning of a certain verse is. Sufis say one thing, philosophers say another, jurisprudents say something else and each condemn the other ones for misleading people and not understanding the true intention of the word of god. This is a clear proof that religion wasn't meant to be taken seriously, maybe god is messing up with our heads or maybe he is running an experiment on human stupidity. But one thing is clear, if this book and this business of religion was serious he would have provided us with better guidelines. So lets not make a big deal out of something that is by its very nature ambiguous and "Dark".

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Summary: Sufi phenomena in Islamic world
Review: I have never been an admirer of sufis and sufism. To me they played little or no positive role in Islamic world's social, political advancement. If these guys were so smart and so intelligent, surly they must have had some insight into the road the Moslem countries were taking which as we know now very well, lead to a total collapse of Islamic world and made us the most backward and miserable nations on this planet. What use is there for a mixture of old philosophy and self induced hallucination, and to top it off, a touch of Shiism. Chitic and others such as Chodkeiwicz try to tell us that Ibne Arabi was a "Sunni" Moslem who even was hostile towards Shia people. They rely on a few passages from him here and there to convince us. But for many great moslem scholars who are intimately familiar with Islamic history, the Shia promotion of men like Ibne Arabi is more than self evident. Those western scholar who think Ibne Arabi was " anti-Shia" because of a couple of rhetoric here and there, are apparently unfamiliar with middle east's culture and way of life. In middle east, things are never so simple. Chitic and Chodkeiwicz may know "Arabic" but don't speak nor understand middle east's " language". Ibne Arabi claims to have seen" Al-Mahdi", a distinctly Shia belief in that they believe in him as a hidden Imam, then he talks about the "12" being the poles and many other such non-sense which great shia implication. I must say I find Ibne Arabi very clever. But in my opinion, if it smells, taste, and feels like a Shia, then it is a Shia. It is apparent that the author thinks highly of this man, and as a Sunni Moslem, obviously he wants to make him a 100% Sunni Moslem, but if you truly accept many of Arabi's doctrines then you are definitly not a Sunni moslem, which pretty much means you are not a Moslem.