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The Self-Disclosure of God continues the author's investigations of the world view of Ibn al-'Arabi, the greatest theoretician of Sufism and the "seal of the Muhammadan saints. The book is divided into three parts, dealing with the relation between God and the cosmos, the structure of the cosmos, and the nature of the human soul. A long introduction orients the reader and discusses a few of the difficulties faced by Ibn al-'Arabi's interpreters. Like Chittick's earlier work, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, this book is based primarily on Ibn al-'Arabi's monumental work, al-Futuhat al-makkiyya "The Meccan Openings. More than one hundred chapters and subsections are translated, not to mention shorter passages that help put the longer discussions in context. There are detailed indexes of sources, Koranic verses, and hadiths. The book's index of technical terminology will be an indispensable reference for all those wishing to delve more deeply into the use of language in Islamic thought in general and Sufism in particular.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Chittick is refining the art of translating Ibn Arabi. Unlike other classical Arabic texts which are more or less straight-forward -- and hence translatable -- Ibn Arabi is an exception. The elliptical nature of his thought compounded by its deep interconnectedness with the Arabic language makes translations almost impossible.
The Shaikh's hermeneutics of the cosmos and Islamic scripture (the Quran and Prophetic sayings) is at once both mystical and linguistic. Mystical through kashf (unveiling, a type of spiritual intuition), and linguisitic through tracing words back to their roots. To a reader unfamiliar with both mysticism and Arabic, understanding Ibn Arabi can be difficult. "From WHERE is this man deriving his ideas?" is a natural response.
Taking these factors into consideration, Chittick should be commended in undertaking a task so academically daunting. He 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 passage with a brief description or summary to acquaint the reader what he or she is about encounter "simplifying" the complexity of the passage.
Finally, it should be pointed out that Chittick's other work, the SUFI PATH OF KNOWLEDGDE: IBN AL'ARABI'S METAPHYSICS OF IMAGINATION makes an excellent introduction to this work. SDG is not easy reading, so preliminary works might be usefull before jumping full-fledge into Ibn Al-Arabi's shore-less ocean of mystico-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, but of the Living who reveals Himself through the cosmos around us -- through His Self-Disclosure.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The 40 page introduction is a good summary overview of Ibn Arabi's metaphysics. The rest of the book contains extensive translations of Ibn Arabi with explanatory commentary.
4 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the only book that seems to allow Arabi to speak for himself. While there are a lot of interesting passage in the book, there are a few disturbing ones as well. On page 204 of the book Arabi tries to come up with a mystical reasoning as to why the four early rulers of Moslem communities were chosen the way they were. He says" Since God knew that Abu Bakr would die before Umar , that Umar would die before Uthman, and that Uthman would die before Ali, and since each one had honor with God, he made the caliphate of the community as it happened" That is He made Abu Bakr first, Umar second, Uthman 3rd and Ali 4th ruler of the community. Now this is the most clumsiest and unintelligent explanation of a socio-political phenomena ever written. Reading the early history, and there is plenty of sources for it, one would realize that the "order" had nothing to do with God but rather how clever or unclever those rulers were in capturing the power. By reading mr. Arabi's explanation one would get the impression as if there was a dice thrown for who becomes the first ruler. Not likely, for they were about to cut each others throat. They drew sword on each other and engaged ina heated debate about "ruling" the community and the body of their "beloved" prophet was not yet burried. Everyone knows that Prophet didn't assign anyone for rulership after his death and that is why Mr. Arabi in trying to justify those rulers, refers the matter to the absent, that is God . This is a perfect example of religion in the service of "politics" and why some philosophers have rightly called religion "opium of the masses". Somewhere else we read a hadith from Prophet " if there are two Caliphs, kill one of them". The simple question would be, which one? Obviously of the two, the one with most sword power would win, hence the theory of "political Darwinism" that is, the survival of the powerful. I really doubt it if Prophet would have said something of this nature. This hadith smells like one manufactured by those "powerful" in charge. The fact that many hadiths should be manufactured by those in charge should hardly be a surprise since Moslems considered "haidth" as a major source for their religious belief. So hadith becomes a perfect vehicle for taming the masses and mounting them like a horse. And needless to say that Mr. Arabi plays right into their hand and takes all the hadiths in face value and gives them a "mystical" justification. Many of Mr. Arabi's claims are beyond verification and hence nothing can be said about them. Some like the one I mentioned, however, can be verified by history and plain common sense, and in that Mr. Arabi fails. I'll give him a C or a B-. No wonder middle east is so difficult to reform.
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