Idris Samawi Hamid

This is a DRAFT (22-07-31) book chapter; its final version is to be published in the upcoming Handbook of Qur'anic Hermeneutics, edited by Georges Tamer. The chapter is organized as follows:

1. The hermeneutical background of Shaykh Aḥmad, his biography, and his legacy.

2. A selection and discussion of some key works of Shaykh Aḥmad that pertain to the hermeneutics and tafsīr of the Qur'an. This includes a brief discussion of the controversial question of transposition (taḥrīf).

3. A detailed discussion of Shaykh Aḥmad's framework of theory and practice of hermeneutics. This includes matters such as

i) The necessary and sufficient conditions of hermeneutics,
ii) the two types of inferential indicator (dalīl) that apply to hermeneutics,

4. Detailed application of the framework of theory and practice to a real-life hermeneutical problem: Do certain Āyāt make reference to Lady Fiḍḍah, the handmaiden and close confidant of Fāṭimah (ʿa)?

5. Discussion of the six fundamental levels of tafsīr: the outward (ẓāhir) and the outward of the outward (ẓāhir al-ẓāhir); the inward (bāṭin) and the inward of the inward (bāṭin al-bāṭin); the symbolic (taʾwīl) and the inward of the symbolic (bāṭin al-taʾwīl).

[This DRAFT book chapter is virtually complete. A slightly edited version of this chapter has been submitted and approved for publication in the forthcoming volume The Philosophical Legacy of Jorge J.E. Gracia, scheduled to be published in 2021by Rowman & Littlefield.]

Abstract: The question of development and its place in the world is one of the oldest in the history of metaphysics. In the course of the formative years of the discipline that culminated in the metaphysical views of Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus’ emphasis on development qua concrete unity of process and result eventually gave way to a commitment to identify, in one degree or other of abstraction from becoming, the fundamental locus of reality, intelligibility, and goodness with being per se. Classic examples include Plato’s absolutely separate and timeless forms as well as Aristotle’s absolutely immutable and distinct infimae species (including both immaterial and materiate forms), in terms of which his closely related theory of scientific demonstration is constructed.

Despite its subordination, the theme of development, even in the realm of presumably immaterial and timeless being, was never entirely neglected – important Islamaic and Christian metaphysicians often emphasized the active and dynamic as opposed to static nature of pure being or existence. Eventually, however, the categories of what later Christian metaphysicians would come to call “general metaphysics”, and later Islamaic metaphysicians “general matters”, would become increasingly ossified, static, and conceived in ever greater abstraction from the intelligible realities, which are intrinsic values, that they are supposed to be about. In the West, as famously explained by Étienne Gilson: The resultant science of ontology eo nomine became easy prey to Kant’s critique of the powers of abstract a priori reason. That critique would also diminish confidence in the ontological aspects of earlier metaphysical systems which trace, ultimately, to Parmenides; as well as to any intellectual intuition of some separate or absolute rational fact and the associated infallible and incorrigible axioms upon which scientific demonstration depends. Closely related, confidence in the knowability of intrinsic value also diminished, in tandem with the rise of the value-free and purely quantificational conceptions of science that dominate the present age.

In the spirit of several famous post-Kantian and later Islamaic metaphysicians, in this chapter we cast back, beyond Parmenides, to Heraclitus as the starting point of the metaphysical enterprise as well as of the developmental paradigm of metaphysics. The first section builds upon Jorge F. E. Gracia’s conception of metaphysics in terms of categories per se and their interrelations. A development of Gracia’s conception incorporates insights from R. G. Collingwood’s scale of forms and G. R. G. Mure’s conception of development. In the resultant synthesis, the interrelation of categories is conceived in terms of a developing series of categories. The second section situates Heraclitus as the founder of Western metaphysics in general and of the developmental paradigm in particular. The next section discuses aspects of the tension between the developmental and ontological aspects of Aristotle’s metaphysics and associated theory of scientific demonstration; these contributed to the eventual collapse of Aristotelian science. Finally, some basic ideas of mathematician William Lawvere’s adaptation of Hegel’s objective logic are formulated using the language of contemporary mathematical category and topos theory, a framework that holds out the exciting promise of doing for developmental metaphysics what symbolic logic has done for ontology. The preliminary result is illustrated via a metaphysical theory of Benedetto Croce.

This 2019 paper discusses the biography, main works, legacy, and selected arcs in the philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī:

1. Biography (life, character, and charisma)
2. Works (with emphasis on his *opera majora*)
3. Legacy (students, licensees, Shaykhism, and later trends)
4. Selected Arcs in the Philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad (background, dialectics (with mention of Hegel), engagement with the followers of Mullā Ṣadrā, and the overall position of dialectical metaphysics within the project of Islamaic Illuminationism, with mention of Heraclitus).

This is the penultimate proof of Chapter Two, Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, in Philosophy in Qajar Iran, edited by Reza Pourjavady.

For accurate academic citation and quotation, kindly use the final, published version -- available from the author upon request.

Or you may order the published version here:

https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004387843/BP000010.xml

This paper was originally published in 2002, as a book chapter in

The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming (Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialogue), edited by Anna-Teresa Tymienicka. Kluwer Academic Publishers; pp. 199-215.

There are many things the author would change if he were to rewrite this. For example, the meta-linguistic context of "process philosophy" would be changed to "dialectical philosophy". Even at the time of publication the author fully recognized that the framework of "dialectic" would be crucial to an accurate reflection of the philosophy of Shaykh Aḥmad in general and of the existence essence distinction in particular. Work on the dialectical framework had not progressed far enough to warrant bringing it up in print at that time.

Future works will, inshaaAllah, take the framework of dialectic as the foundation for the Shaykh's metaphysics of process. For now, we will simply say that the position of of the Shaykh is one of "dialectical hylomorphism".

I, S  P is the second installment in the Islām-Dy-
namic Project. In this exciting sequel to Islām, Sign and Creation, Idris
Samawi Hamid constructs, for the first time ever in a Western language,
a comprehensive and multi-dimensionaltopography of primordial Islāmic
spritual wayfaring. First, Hamid identifies the various stations of the journey.
Hethengivesanoverviewoftheprocessofmovingfromonelayertothenext,
ending finally with the full realization of the knowledge and love of God.

I, S  C is the first and foundational installment in the
Islām-Dynamic Project. Here, Idris Samawi Hamid constructs a compre-
hensive and general metaframework from which each genuinely Islāmic
concept and process can be defined and situated. The lynchpin of this
metaframework is the process of walāyah or dynamic loving. Within the
process of walāyah, Islām is seen to be, not a static dogma or absolutist
faith, but rather a path of seeking knowledge of the world, the self, and God.

This *draft* monograph consists of a translation, with notes and lexicon, of one of the most famous epitomes of Shīʿī theology: Al-Bāb ãl-Ḥādī ʿAshar (The Eleventh Chapter) by Jamāluddīn Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf al-Ḥillī (d. 726hl/1325ce), better known as ʿAllāmah Ḥillī. A version of this is currently scheduled to be published as part of the book series

Collection of Al-Bāb al-Hādī ʿAshar: Commentaries and Translations, edited by Reza Yahyapour Farmad. Al-ʿAtabah al-Ḥusayniyyah, Karbala.

One of the objectives of the Oriental TeX project has always been to play with para- graph optimization. The original assumption was that we needed an advanced non- standard paragraph builder to Arabic done right but in the end we found out that a more straightforward approach is to use a sophisticated OpenType font in com- bination with a paragraph postprocessor that uses the advanced font capabilities. This solution is somewhat easier to realise than a complex paragraph builder but still involves quite some juggling. The lack of advanced fonts does not prevent us from showing what we’re dealing with. This is because the ConTeXt mechanisms are generic in the sense that they can also be used with regular Latin fonts, although it does not make that much sense. Anyhow, in the next section we wrap up the current state of typesetting Arabic in ConTeXt. We focus on the rendering, and leave general aspects of bidirectional typesetting and layouts for another time. This article is written by Idris Samawi Hamid and Hans Hagen and is typeset by ConTeXt MkIV which uses LuaTeX. Thisprogram is an extension of TeX that uses Lua to open up the core machinery. The LuaTeX core team consists of Taco Hoekwater, Hartmut Henkel and Hans Hagen. The launch of the LuaTeX project was sponsored in part by a grant from Colorado State University secured by Professor Idris Samawi Hamid.

1 The background of Oriental TEX Attempts to integrate scripts beyond the Latin into the TEX universe are nearly as old as TEX itself. In the case of Right-to-Left (RTL) scripts as Arabic script, the inadequacy of the original TEX to the task was pointed out bluntly by Knuth himself back in 1987. Since then, the heroic efforts of the ArabTEX and Omega projects took large strides in the way of extending TEX to support Arabic-script typesetting. On the other hand, by the early 2000s the realization of a paradigm capable of capturing the fullness of the Arabic script and its sophistication still seemed a long ways away. Combined with other challenges, e.g., critical-edition typesetting, so much work remained to be done. In the winter of 2005–6, this author, along with Hans Hagen and Taco Hoekwater, initiated a very ambitious attempt to address the challenges of Arabicscript and critical-edition typesetting in the context of a radical overhaul and extension of TEX that would affect and ...

ABSTRACT FORTHCOMING BULLETIN OF SYMBOLIC LOGIC ►JOHN CORCORAN AND IDRIS SAMAWI HAMID, Two-method errors: having it both ways. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150, USA E-mail: corcoran@buffalo.edu Philosophy, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1781 USA E-mail: ishamid@colostate.edu Where two methods produce similar results, mixing the two sometimes creates errors we call two-method errors, TMEs: in style, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, implicature, logic, or action. This lecture analyzes examples found in technical and in non-technical contexts. One can say “Abe knows whether Ben draws” in two other ways: ‘Abe knows whether or not Ben draws’ or ‘Abe knows whether Ben draws or not’. But a stylistic TME occurs in ‘Abe knows whether or not Ben draws or not’. One can say “Abe knows how Ben looks” using ‘Abe knows what Ben looks like’. But syntactical TMEs are in ‘Abe knows what Ben looks’ and in ‘Abe knows how Ben looks like’. One can deny that Abe knows Ben by prefixing ‘It isn’t that’ or by interpolating ‘doesn’t’. But a pragmatic TME occurs in trying to deny that Abe knows Ben by using ‘It isn’t that Abe doesn’t know Ben’. There are several standard ways of defining truth using sequences. Quine’s discussions in the 1970 first printing of Philosophy of logic [3] and in previous lectures were vitiated by mixing two [1, p. 98]. The logical TME in [3], which eluded Quine’s colleagues, was corrected in the 1978 sixth printing [2]. But Quine never explicitly acknowledged, described, or even mentioned the error. This lecture presents and analyses two-method errors in the logic literature. [1] JOHN CORCORAN, Review of Quine’s 1970 Philosophy of Logic. In Philosophy of Science, vol. 39 (1972), pp. 97–99. [2] JOHN CORCORAN, Review of sixth printing of Quine’s 1970 Philosophy of Logic. In Mathematical Reviews MR0469684 (1979): 57 #9465. [3] WILLARD VAN ORMAN QUINE, Philosophy of logic, Harvard, 1970/1986. END OF ABSTRACT THE PDF HAS OVER A DOZEN EXAMPLES. MAKE IT A BAKER'S DOZEN. PhD in Philosophy: State University of New York (SUNY) at University at Buffalo One possibility is PhD in Philosophy: State University of New York at Buffalo(SUNY). Another is PhD in Philosophy: University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY)

The subject of this study is the process metaphysics and cosmology of Shaykh ’Ah.mad ibn Zayn al-Dīn al-’Ah. sā’̄i (d. 1826), especially as outlined in al-Fawā’id al-H. ikmiyyah (The Wisdom Observations), his philosophical epitome, which we have edited and translated. With Shaykh ’Ah.mad ended the cycle of the great and original philosophers of traditional Muslim civilization, a cycle that began with al-Kindi (d. 870). Shaykh ’Ah.mad belonged to the period of Muslim scholasticism that stemmed from the work of both the kalām theologian Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāz̄i (d. 1209) and the last great philosopher in the post-Hellenic tradition, Nas.̄ir al-Dīn al-T. ūs̄i (d. 1274). In particular, Shaykh ’Ah.mad worked two centuries after Mulla S.adra (d. 1640–41). The latter, through his theory of motion in the category of substance, marked the beginning of a turn towards process philosophy in Muslim scholasticism, a turn marked by a still strict adherence to Peripatetic method. My general contention...

A version of this paper was originally published in *International Journal of Decision Ethics*, Volume 1, Issue 2, pp. 125-149. Published in 2006, this paper is based on ideas developed several years earlier. It represents an early stab at developing the *philosophical* potential latent within the teaching of the Imams of the AhlulBayt (S) in the context of more contemporary philosophical concerns; in this case via a comparison and contrast with Kant's theory of the "good will". Among other things, this paper contains a rebuttal to C. D. Broad's claim that Kant's argument on the intrinsic goodness of the good will is fallacious.

There are some things the author would change in this paper if it were to be rewritten. For one, the ideas in this article were developed at a time when the perspective of its author (on, e.g. a framework of comparative philosophy, Shīʿī sources) was more under the influence of Henry Corbin. For example, the author's use of 'prophetic', as in 'prophetic sources', has its roots in Corbin. There are other obvious influences as well, each of which needs to be critically revisited and reevaluated.

Corbin was one of the only philosophers to attempt to tap the philosophical potential latent in the teachings of the Imams and to place them in a wider philosophical context. As seminal as his work was and remains, Corbin's framework (one of Meta-Gnosticism) is significantly flawed in certain respects for purposes of situating the thought of the Imams (S). This author is currently working on an alternative philosophical framework.

Much work remains to be done for the research presented in this paper to reach any authoritative conclusions. As the afore-mentioned framework for situating the philosophical intentions of the AhlulBayt (S) becomes more mature, the author may revisit this discussion and bring it up to date. *Inshā Allāh*.

This paper was originally published in Journal for Chinese, Islamic, and Indian Cultural Relations, Volume 1, Issue 2, pp. 67-86. It is based on ideas about seven years earlier.

This paper constitutes, as indicated by the title, some introductory ideas on a comparative philosophy project. An ambitious aim of this project is to build upon and eventually supercede Toshihiko Izutsu's brilliant work *Sufism and Taoism* as the standard work in this field. Izutsu used the cosmology of Ibn Arabi as the main basis for his meta-linguistic framework of comparison between Islamic and Taoist mysticism. One crucial point of comparison that is left out by that framework is *alchemy*. As a related point: It is a contention of this author that the philosophical cosmology of Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī will provide a much more useful framework for comparison. Indeed, although this is not mentioned in the paper, it appears that the cosmology of Shaykh Aḥmad is so compatible with that of Taoism that the former can legitimately *clarify* a number of points in early Taoist literature. The reverse is also true: Taoist cosmology will clarify things in Islamic and especially Shīʿī thought that have been made obscure by the imposition of Aristotelian philosophy upon Islam's primordial cosmological framework.

There are many things that the author would change if this introduction were to be rewriten.. Among them is making explicit the role of the metaphysics of *objective logic* and *dialectic* in the meta-language of comparison. The one mention of "Hegelian dialectic" is an echo of Henry Corbin's rejection of Hegel's allegedly historicist dialectic. This has little bearing per se on the metaphysical dialectic common to both Taoism and to Shīʿī cosmology. Despite that this author would now rewrite that sentence. Corbin's anti-dialectical *meta-historical* approach as something entirely separate from historical circumstances is no longer entirely tenable. Indeed, the first few paragraphs of this article point in that direction. The translation of 'kalām' by 'dialectical theology' is unfortunate. It is a common translation in the literature and a very misleading one. The word 'dialectic' is already ambiguous enough in philosophical usage; its use to translate 'kalām' only compounds its vagueness. In future work we intend to use 'dialectic' in accordance with a small set of very precise but related senses.

This article was published in 2004 in International Journal of Shīʿī Studies, Volume 2, Number 1; pp. 121-158 (the pdf wrongly states 2003). It presents an introduction to the philosopher-mystic Mīrzā Muḥammad ʿAlī Šāhʾābādī (d. 1944), the teacher of and perhaps the single most important influence upon Imam Ruhullah Khumayni (d. 1989). Touched upon are his connections to Ibn ʿArabi,  Mullā Sadrā Shīrāzī, as well as Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsāʾī. The latter theme is in need of further development.

Following this introduction, we present a *draft* selection from our critical edition of one of the Mirza's treatises: Al-Qurʾān wa ãl-ʿItraḧ (The Qurʾān and the Progeny).

It is our intention to return to this theme, and to finally complete and publish our critical edition of the full Rašaḥātu ãl-Biḥār. InshaaAllah.

This long article was published in 2003 in Volume 1, Issue 1, of International Journal of Shīʿī Studies. Its theme is the aim, object, methodology, and ultimately definition of 'metaphysics’ according to Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī (d. 1826).

As well as this original article perhaps accomplished that task, there are numerous things its author would change now. Some matters in the writing of the Shaykh which were not clear at the time are much clearer now. Further, the philosophical maturity of the author has made significant progress since this article was published.

One crucial issue in need of explicit exposition is the *dialectical* nature of the metaphysics of the Shaykh, in contrast to the *ontological* approach of the followers of Mulla Sadra in particular, and Classical Islamic Philosophy and Illuminationism in general.

Another matter in need of work is the *prehensology* of the Shaykh (مشعر ج. مشاعر); we may contrast prehensology with *psychology*. The foundations are in this article, but much has been discovered since its publication.

InshaaAllah we will say more about this in future works.

http://www.ctan.org/pkg/almfixed

Arabic Latin Modern Fixed Regular. This is a fixed-width font for the purpose of editing and entering Arabic-script text. Every Arabic-script glyph (for a total of 1845 characters) in each Unicode-code block is supported (up to Unicode 7.0) There are two versions of the font: otf and ttf. The unique feature of Arabic-Latin Modern lies in its treatment ofvowels and diacritics. Each vowel and diacritic may now be edited horizontally within any text editor or processor. The author believes this is the very first opentype Arabic font ever to have this capability. Editing complex Arabic texts will now be much easier to input and to proofread.

Keynote lecture delivered at the “Religious Faith and Social and Applied Sciences Conference”, October 11, 2013. Utah Valley University.

One of the peculiar features of modern Western civilization is the conceptual divide between, on the one hand the category of religious faith, where knowledge is supposedly rare or impossible; and the category of scientific knowledge which, it is generally assumed, is the sole repository of true knowledge. This position is well-exemplified in theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson’s book chapter, “The Two Windows”, in the Templeton Foundations’s How Large Is God: The Voices of Scientists and Theologians. I argue that this conceptual bifurcation, which has its roots in Traditional Christianity, has subconsciously and subjectively within Western civilization been carried over into the very conception of science itself. At the same time, the broad category “religion”, inclusive of scientia (gnosis) has been reduced to that of “faith” (where knowledge/scientia is impossible). Hence the bifurcation leads to a polarization of civilization into two irreconcilable extremes: fideism and scientism, each following its own internal subjective logic. In such a civilizational situation, projects that seek to apply religious faith to the sciences, or to apply science to the religions, are engaged in a category mistake. One promising avenue to overcoming this divide lies in the burgeoning theory of objective logic. Objective logic involves the identification of objective maps and transformations between two apparently different categories or universes of discourse. This allows the precise derivation of new concepts, or a new framework for old concepts, where the resultant concepts will then transcend the categories of investigation and yet provide a dialectical bridge between them.

One of the objectives of the Oriental TeX project has always been to play with para- graph optimization. The original assumption was that we needed an advanced non- standard paragraph builder to Arabic done right but in the end we found out that a more straightforward approach is to use a sophisticated OpenType font in com- bination with a paragraph postprocessor that uses the advanced font capabilities. This solution is somewhat easier to realise than a complex paragraph builder but still involves quite some juggling.

The lack of advanced fonts does not prevent us from showing what we’re dealing with. This is because the ConTeXt mechanisms are generic in the sense that they can also be used with regular Latin fonts, although it does not make that much sense. Anyhow, in the next section we wrap up the current state of typesetting Arabic in ConTeXt. We focus on the rendering, and leave general aspects of bidirectional typesetting and layouts for another time.

This article is written by Idris Samawi Hamid and Hans Hagen and is typeset by ConTeXt MkIV which uses LuaTeX. Thisprogram is an extension of TeX that uses Lua to open up the core machinery. The LuaTeX core team consists of Taco Hoekwater, Hartmut Henkel and Hans Hagen. The launch of the LuaTeX project was sponsored in part by a grant from Colorado State University secured by Professor Idris Samawi Hamid.

Two pdf files: research article and presentation.

The most relevant torture test of Arabic-script typesetting and typography involves capturing the nuances of the Arabic used in traditional Qurʾ¯anic script, a task that involves much by way of multiple layers of diacritics, paragraph optimizations using stretching and shape alternates, as well as multilayered coloring.

The Oriental TeX project is proud to announce that it has reached the milepost of being able to represent these aspects of Qurʾānic typography, marking a major outward milepost in the forward movement of Oriental TEX. There is still a ways to go, but in the current visual results we can confidently say that we are “over the hump” so to speak.

The Oriental TeX project is an ambitious attempt to bring high quality Arabicscript typesetting to academics and, beyond, to the world at large. Recent decades have witnessed the degradation of typographical and typesetting quality of Arabic-script texts, in particular scholarly books. For example, complete sets of vowel markings and diacritics, crucial for understanding the meaning of a given text, are rarely available or readily accessible. This and other features so essential to a culturally authentic representation of Arabic script are woefully lacking in even the most expensive word processors and layout programs. Compared to the corresponding situation in Latin typography Arabic script resides in a veritable dark age. For the current round of funding through DANTE e.V., we are focusing on a problem that is by no means limited to the Arabic script. It turns out that a subset of the problems Arabic-script typography can be solved in a manner that will be of equal benefit to Latin-script typography or, indeed, any other script. This is the implementation of a flexible OpenType layout engine within TeX itself.

A version of this review was published in 2003 in *Bulletin of the Middle East Studies Association*: Volume 36, Issue 2, Winter; pp. 206-207.

As mentioned at the outset of this review, the matter of the classification of knowledge in Islam builds upon Aristotle. The review mentions the crucial role played by the Aristotelian theory of *definition*. Not mentioned but related and equally important is the Aristotelian theory of *special science* as developed in his *Posterior Analytics*. Whereas Aristotle couched this in terms of *genus*, today we speak (more comprehensively) of *universe of discourse*. In Aristotle, genera (=universes of discourse) are mutually exclusive. Further, the set of first principles of a given science (with respect to a genus and developed via *subjective logic*) are discontinuous with those of every other. It has been emphasized by a number of modern metaphysicians (G. R. G. Mure, Stanley Rosen, etc.) that within the Aristotelian framework (and by extension the Muslim civilization that followed it) a genuine cross-disciplinary *science of science* or *wisdom* is impossible.

Thus, as mentioned in the review (paraphrasing Bakar): Both al-Farābī the philosopher and Ghazzālī the apologetic theologian "recognize a sharp difference between the purely intellectual sciences and those based on revelation."

Beyond this review: In an *objective logic* of universes of discourse we seek to overcome this discontinuity. The *objective mappings* of the content of the universe of discourse (or genus) of a given science to other universes (also called *functors*) is indispensable to both defining that science as well as to establishing a coherent *science of science* that is constituted by genuine *wisdom*. The current project of this author (Objective Logic) points in this direction.

International Journal of Shīʿī Studies was launched as a biannual serial in 2003 in collaboration with Professor Parviz Morewedge, Director of Global Scholarly Publications. This author was invited by GSP to serve as Editor-in-Chief as well as Technical Editor; the latter position included developing an automated-typesetting framework in TeX and ConTeXt for the journal. This author served as Editor-in-Chief for over seven years, during which time he oversaw the preparation and release of nine issues, the last being Volume 4, Number 1. After that issue the editorial reins were returned to GSP.

International Journal of Shīʿī Studies was the first attempt in a Western language to provide a serial devoted to scholarship related to Tashayyuʿ or Shīʿī Islam. Work on this journal provided the author with the opportunity to experiment with a paradigm of scholarship not beholden to the agendas of traditional orientalism. One of the persistent myths and prejudices of orientalist scholarship is that objectivity is incompatible with a personal commitment to Islam. On the contrary, it is the scientistic (not to be confused with scientific) pretensions of a considerable segment of the orientalist paradigm that is affected by an irreducible subjectivity. Perhaps this author will write more on this topic on another occasion. The aim of International Journal of Shīʿī Studies was to provide a platform for a different paradigm, where the rigors of genuine objectivity could be pursued without prejudice towards the cosmological commitments of the authors.

Innovations of International Journal of Shīʿī Studies included the development and deployment of a new paradigm for the transliteration of Arabic script. More radical, perhaps, was the insistence that inaccurate and anachronistic orientalist locutions such as ‘Shi'ite’ and ‘Shi'ism’ be abandoned in favor of expressions that derive from the bowels of the tradition itself, viz., ‘Shīʿī’ and ‘Tashayyuʿ’. Moojan Momen,***** in his otherwise fair and balanced critical review of the first issue, misses the objective spirit of this point by a wide margin. It is this author's intention to address Momen's criticism on a future occasion by way of an abstract or perhaps more.

***** Iranian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Jun., 2005), pp. 335-337