RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES IN LIQUID MODERNITY: POSTISLAM

Abstract

Postislam has been regarded as a new concept in need of a dire delineation. Basically, a Postislamic tendency is a paradigm of thought (philosophical, scientific, mystical, religious, theological2, etc.) that excessively transcends at least one of the three sources of Islam’s juridical Canons (i.e. Quran, Sunna, Ijma’ or consensus of Scholars). This paper provides a definition for the founding principles of Postislam. It shall examine this concept from a generic point of view. It will equally suggest a constellation of some central problems structuring an emergent system: Postislam. This tendency is positively inherent „in potentiality” (dunamis), in an Aristotelian sense, according to multiple forms of enunciations and semantic variations throughout the history of theology as well as the history of philosophy, theology, Islamic mystique and science. Postislam represents a potentiality devoid of a preexisting concept within Islam; it is an unnamed historical tenant, disseminated throughout a complex combination of theological and mystical first faltering steps.
 I will examine some of these instantiations, expressed essentially in Islamic theology (Avicenna’s Metaphysics of Emanation) and mystical tradition (i.e. Sufism in a general acceptance, and the nodal case of Al-Hallâj, in particular). Then, by isolating the essence of Islam’s theological mystique (the structural duality between Sharī’a and Haqīqa, Law and Truth), in order to construct a synthetic deconstruction identified to the concept of Postislam as pure mysticism, or the possibility a of a permanent theophany, indefinitely experienced throughout ecstatic theopathy. We ought to, at this step, enunciate divers axioms based on this concept. As a sequel, I will discuss further philosophical counterpoints and limits to this construction.