True Faith Research Articles

Ta’wil of Ten Angels in ViewIslamic Mysticism(Analytical Study of the "Saderiah" Islamic Mysticism About UnderstandingTen Angels in Karang Semanding Village, Kec. Balung, Kab. Jember)

: The doctrine that emerges in the theology of Ahlussunnah Asy'ari and Maturidi is the necessity of all mukallaf to believe in ten Angels, starting from the Angel Gabriel to Ridlwan. conceptually doctrine, belief about angels is part of theghaybiyyat. Saderiah's mystical Islamic group is present in the midst of the classical understanding of Angel. According to this group, there's no way someone would have true faith when unable to understand the concept of angels in detail. Therefore,understanding it is a must. This paper is a description of the results of the research that has been carried out by the author about tawil ten Angels according to "Saderiah" is part of mystic Islam, based on this research, it can be concluded that, according to"Saderiah" Angels are not creatures of God who are supernatural, but only symbols of human behavior alone. And in this group's belief, whoever is able understand the concept of Angels perfectly, surely, he will become a calm figure, will even be able to protect life surrounding

Әбу Насыр Мүбашшир ат-Таразидің «Йадгар Зандан иа aйней жаһан» («Түрме естелігі немесе әлем айнасы») атты мәснәуиі.

Annotation. The path of struggle, numerous works and literary and journalistic heritage of Abu Nasir Mubashshir at-Tarazi (1896-1977), a native of historical Taraz city, a prominent religious and political figure who spent 47 years in emigration, still remain without due attention and research in Kazakhstan. The voluminous poetic work of the ulema in Persian, Yadgar Zandan ia Aynei Jahan (Memory of the Prison or the Mirror of the World), was born in a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, from September 6 to November 21, 1947. In the article, this voluminous work in the masnavi genre is analyzed for the first time on the basis of the original. At the end of this work, the poet notes that he wrote this work, focusing on the form of the work of Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (1207-1273) “Masnavi Magnavi” or “Semantic Masnavi”. The work is divided into 192 chapters, each of which has a thematic title, the main content of which is formed by religious and political motives. Masnavi begins with gratitude and prayer to Allah and praise of the Prophet. In the next chapter, entitled “In Prison”, he describes the mood of his son and the comrade imprisoned with him, and urges them to remain patient. The work examines the situation in the world after the Second World War and discusses complex global geopolitical problems. Equating communism with a plague that has affected all peoples and humanity, with an incurable disease that spreads from one place to another in the form of a microbe, warns of this danger. In the chapter “Turkestan”, he praises his homeland as “the cradle of the great”, “the earth is a treasure, a storehouse of knowledge and art”, “heaven on earth”, writes, appreciating all the advantages, that his homeland was oppressed by the communists, and lists the entire struggle of the Turkestan people for freedom. The sections “Communist power and law”, “Publishing house”, “Education”, “Wakfs”, “Mosques and madrasahs”, “My father’s central mosque in Taraz”, “Dar-ul-Kada (House of judges)” describe the violation of human rights in his native country, the imposition of restrictions on elections, meetings, the press, book publishing, freedom of thought, that in the field of education nothing is taught except for secular sciences and the ideas of the Communist Party, the closure of mosques, madrasahs, waqfs, Sharia courts, repression, etc. The section “Kosh” (Resettlement) touchingly describes the suffering and longing for the homeland of refugees who were forced to leave their homeland, unable to endure the pressure and humiliation of the Soviet regime. The work is valuable as an artistic depiction of a difficult fate, difficulties, and experiences in captivity, true faith in the one and only Allah, selfless love for the Motherland of the author who fought for independence.

Hoax News and Technology Literacy from the Qur’anic Perspective

The development of media technology and freedom of releasing news led to fake news or hoaxes spread to form a public opinion in order to get particular interests which are used to attack each other, accuse, slander, and generate stereotypes, even to claim that a specific group or religion is superior to others. This study takes under scrutiny the Qur'anic perspective about hoaxes and technology literacy to help provide context for an effort to combat fake news. Using a thematic and an anthropological approach to the Qur’an, this study has found that the Qur’an narrates that hoaxes have existed since the first humans, Adam and Eve, to test the true faith as well as pretense. The Qur’an gives a sign that the eternal enemy of honesty is a hoax. Tabayyun is a crucial concept for fighting hoaxes, and qalam is the medium.

The Psychological Approach of Transpersonal Theory in Islamic Education

This study aims to examine and describe the integration of the psychological approach of transpersonal theory in Islamic education. The method used in this research is the Library Research method using documentation as a data collection method and analyzing it with Content Analysis. The results show that transpersonal psychology integrates psychological concepts, theories, and methods with material and practice from individual subjects' spiritual disciplines. Its application in Islamic education, peace of mind, and faith is the basis for carrying out learning activities well. So, if it is associated with religion, humans will have a peaceful soul if they have strong, firm, and true faith and always remember Allah. So it can be concluded that the psychological approach of transpersonal theory directs the achievement of education by focusing on happiness and peace of mind, maximizing the potential of reason by contemplating and relying on God for the results or outputs of the educational process.

Unhappy Dialectics

Unhappy Dialectics

American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War by D.G. Hart

Reviewed by: American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War by D.G. Hart Raymond Haberski Jr. American Catholic: The Politics of Faith During the Cold War. By D.G. Hart. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020. 280 pp. $29.95. The title of D.G. Hart's book presents the first and most central dilemma that faced Catholics in postwar America. What is the proper arrangement: Catholic Americans or American Catholics? Each choice has implications for the relationship between church and state, as well as the practical considerations for how Catholics fidelity to their "Church" (with a capital "C") influenced their allegiance to their nation—a point some Americans harped on constantly. Hart's book is the best I have read in laying out the contours of this relationship and the debate that surrounds it. In particular, he [End Page 71] provides the most succinct overview of Americanism, or the once heretical concept that Catholics in America faced a moral dilemma by accepting that their status as Americans influenced their faith. The stakes rested on how the Catholic Church viewed the right ordering of society and if the United States fundamentally challenged that view by enshrining the freedom to practice religion. In other words, because U.S. law regarded other religions just as legitimate as Catholicism, by what principle did Rome enforce its view that there was only one true faith? Hart provides a detailed and lively discussion of how conservative Catholics transformed this heresy into a new ideology by arguing that American intellectual foundations worked with rather than against a Catholic understanding of social order. Hart focuses on "politically conservative Roman Catholics, primarily in the world of opinion journalism and magazines, [who] made Americanism safe for the church" (7). Such a group includes writers who worked for William F. Buckley, Jr. at National Review and the friends and collaborators with Richard John Neuhaus at First Things. Hart chose not to include liberal or politically left Catholics in his analysis because those figures have challenged both the hierarchical power of the Catholic Church and the role of the United States as a redeemer nation—they were unimpressed with Americanism. The version of Americanism developed by conservative Catholics has had far-reaching influence on domestic affairs, including, of course, the abortion debate, and in foreign affairs, especially in terms of the Forever Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But before Hart engages the work of these neo-Americanists, he writes extensively about the influence of John F. Kennedy's presidential election and the work of John Courtney Murray, perhaps the most influential Catholic theologian of the Cold War era. Kennedy's election represented a turning point in the machinations of Americanism. Hart contends that "Kennedy's insistence on Protestant pieties such as church-state separation and American exceptionalism launched a new phase in the American Roman Catholic experience … But with a Roman Catholic as president endorsing the United States' redemptive mission in the world, Kennedy was crafting and promoting an Americanism that even popes had not considered" (64). JFK advanced a more generic American civil religion that showed how to invest American power with sacred meaning. If Kennedy made peace with Americanism, Murray demonstrated how to build a movement upon it. Much has been written on the pivotal role the Jesuit played in both American Catholic thought and as perhaps the key thinker behind drafting the Vatican's Declaration of Religious Freedom, a document that closed the Second Vatican Council. [End Page 72] "Murray's involvement in the sessions," Hart writes, "also allowed the church in the United States … to achieve a measure of pride in the way American Roman Catholicism helped redirect the church and its understanding of the modern world. That high estimate of the United States, which Murray himself cultivated, not only meant an end to Americanism. It also opened the way for Roman Catholics in the United States to regard their nation as Kennedy had said, as a city on a hill, a country as decisive in world affairs as Rome had once been" (87). Murray's achievement was to bequeath to conservative Catholics a "neo-Americanism" that positioned Catholics in the United States as...

"Substaunce Into Accident": Transubstantiation and Relics in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale

This article focuses on the "substaunce into accident" trope in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale. In the major critical editions, there is no cohesion among glosses of the trope and its philosophical terms. This has yielded mistaken interpretations of the trope and mis-readings of the Tale, most particularly the trope's relation to a supposed joke about transubstantiation and Wycliffite Eucharistic controversies. The most powerful and influential argument for an allusion to Eucharistic controversy is made in Paul Strohm's article "Chaucer's Lollard Joke." I aim to dismantle this reading, which has been cited often in subsequent criticism, in order to clear space for a fresh interpretation of the trope's relevance to the Pardoner and his Tale. To this end, I present a critique of Strohm's thesis by focusing on the Aristotelian idiom of Scholastic philosophy and the precise application of that terminology to an account of transubstantiation; and in the second half of the article, I develop a new reading of the trope in the context of the Pardoner's faking of relics. The Pardoner capitalizes on the indistinguishable difference between the accidental qualities of a true and fake relic. Like the cooks in his denunciation of gluttony, he turns substance into accident. Ironically, nonetheless, just as his rhetoric causes good outcomes despite his vicious intentions, so too does his faking of relics potentially turn an assemblage of accidents into the substance of true faith.

"THE MASKING GOD": Engaging Roger Haight and Wilfred Cantwell Smith in Search of the Living God in the Ongoing Deadly Covid-19 Pandemic

This study phenomenologically aims to reconsider the understandings and practices of religions in ongoing deadly Covid-19 pandemics. Religions and their naivety have become the pandemic within pandemic. Religions pretend to behave like God and the followers obey them uncritically and sometimes irrationally. This study argues that religions should become a window that through it the followers can experience the liberating presence of God who is characteristically pro-life and love. I argue whatever concept of truth religions have, life, and love must be the character of true faith in a true God. This study limitedly investigates global religious phenomena during the covid-19 pandemic all over the world and endeavors to give a theological appraisal based on the theology of Roger Haight and Wilfred Cantwell Smith. In conclusion, I argue, God is indeed present in human life but not transparently. God reveals God-self with a theo-philosophical mask. Thus, God is a masking God. Therefore, to understand God we should debunk the naïve understanding of religion and go beyond the religious phenomena to the absolute mysterious reality of God–The ‘Wholy Mysterious Other’.

Archpriest Avvakum and Patriarch Nikon: Life and ministry through the eyes of Old Believers

The article is devoted to a comparative examination of important historical and literary sources reflecting the attitude of Old Believers to the leaders of two opposing ideological currents of the era of church reform in Russia: the autobiographical Life of Archpriest Avvakum and the anonymous “Decorated Tale” (or “anti-life”) of Patriarch Nikon, written by Old Believers in the 18th century. This consideration makes it possible to assess the position of the Old Believers in resolving the issue of true faith, true priesthood, attitude towards the Church and secular authority. The heroes of the two considered non-canonical Old Believer “lives” go to their goal and achieve it, resorting to the help of miraculous otherworldly forces — light (divine) and dark (antichrist), entering into direct communication with them, like the New Testament apostles or ancient prophets.

О традиционализме старообрядцев

The paper considers the problem of the Russian population’s traditionalism in the 17th - 18th centuries. Opponents of the church reform started by Patriarch Nikon declared themselves the guardians of the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church. Attention is drawn to the fact that the direction of the Old Believers’ search for arguments for their viewpoint on innovations was determined by their opponents’ claims that all changes to the new books had been made after comparing them with ancient Greek and Russian manuscripts. The defenders of the Old Rites undertook enormous efforts to find the text fragments from authoritative sources that could testify to the discrepancies between new liturgical texts and ancient manuscripts or old-printed books. They interpreted all the innovations as a departure from tradition and deviations from the true faith. In the 18th century, when formulating the ideology of communities, the leaders relied on this description of the Russian Church traditions perceived by the Old Believers as an actual practice violated by the reformers. The historical scheme of including single communities in universal Christian history made it possible to recognize the community as the only place in the world where the true faith is preserved despite the reign of the Antichrist. A conclusion is made that this approach formed the peculiarity of the traditionalism of the Old Believers: they moved to a conscious description of their community as a continuation of the Russian Church traditions.

РЕЛІГІЯ І ПРАВА ЛЮДИНИ В ДИСКУРСАХ І ПРАКТИКАХ КУЛЬТУРНОГО РЕЛЯТИВІЗМУ ТА УНІВЕРСАЛІЗМУ

The content and features of the coexistence of universal and local (primarily religious) values and approaches to the problem of human rights are considered; the specifics of the contradictory interaction of religious ideas and attitudes and human rights in the discursive and practical dimensions of cultural relativism and universalism have been studied; the features of the vision of universal and local codes of human rights in Islam, Christianity, in particular Catholicism, in the space of the system of "Asian values" are analyzed; the influence of a dialectical interrelationship between the universality of norms in the private sphere and the religious traditional law on the establishment of the fundamental standards of human rights was examined. It is noted that in the modern world there is a desire of some religions (for example, Islam and Christianity) to connect the idea of universalism and the practice of its assertion with their basic principles, which are given an absolute, comprehensive, infallible nature. In this connection, the topic of religious exclusivity is also relevant, where exclusivism is the belief that my faith is the true faith and other beliefs are wrong. On the other hand, the author points to one of the paradoxes of relativism, which is that it sometimes seeks to become universalism or, rather, absolutism, proposing (and often imposing) a system of its values as the only true. The article emphasizes the necessity to value religious differences, as well as to care for other people, regardless of religion, the need and importance of finding a balance between the universalist understanding of human rights and a diverse, multi-confessional world, combining adherence to certain religious traditions with a commitment to the universality of human rights. As a possible option, an attempt to integrate universal values into the body of the corresponding particular religious and cultural traditions is considered, and, on the other hand, the enrichment of universal human rights standards with relevant unique religious and cultural values.

Contando i martiri in Cina. La controversia sul martirio in uno spazio missionario globale

It was not difficult for a foreigner in China to get killed. China was the country that resembled Ancient Pagan Europe most closely and thus it was the perfect place for martyrs. Nevertheless, among the many Jesuits who suffered persecution, tribulation, imprisonment and torture, few of them suffered death for hatred of their religion. Such an absence became a matter for disputation among the religious orders over the Chinese Rites. If bloodshed was a requisite for the spread of Christianity, the lack of martyrs of the Society of Jesus was proof that the type of Christianity they preached in China was not the true faith, but an adapted and compromised version. Among the first observers of this peculiar absence of Jesuit martyrs in China was Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1600-1659), one of the main opponents of the Jesuit method adopted in China. In his writings, the absence of Jesuit martyrs became the confirmation that the adaptation practised by the Jesuits had denied the Christian message its most subversive power and witness to the faith.

Marian Literary Culture: Lydgate, his Heirs, and the End of Tragedy

Marian Literary Culture: Lydgate, his Heirs, and the End of Tragedy

«Убийство» как чеховский рассказ

The focus is on the story Murder which occupies a special place in Chekhov’s work (this manifests itself at the level of the central plot line, in an emotionally expressive style unusual for the writer (murder scene), in the motif of the protagonist gaining true faith, in spatial remoteness of scenes from the “big” world, in the gloomy coloring of the narrative). At the same time, the author of the article shows that thanks to a number of features — the poetics of repetition, the unobvious commonality of the characters conflicting with each other, the difficulty of their communication, the presence of typically Chekhov themes and words, the author’s axiology — Murder organically fits into boundaries of the writer’s artistic world. As a result, dialectics of the familiar and the new arises, when the familiar, typical of other Chekhov’s works, is interwoven into a new problem, theme and plot construction.

KONSEP DAN FALSAFAH SASTERA ISLAM MENGIKUT MUHAMMAD QUTB

Muhammad Qutb was a writer and Islamic thinker. He believed that Islamic art (literature) is not necessarily the art of talking about Islam. Islamic art is not an advice, direct sermon, and insistence on the following goodness. It is an art that draws an image of existence from the perspective of perception (tasawwur) of Islam on everything that exists. It is a wonderful expression of the universe, life, and humanity, through the Islamic teachings of it. Islamic art is an art that finds the perfect interrelation between the beauty (al-Jamal) and the truth (al-Haq). Beauty refers to the reality of this nature, whilst the truth is the peak of beauty. The relationship between art and Islam is not a reluctance and hostility relationship. It is contrary to a group that assumes religion is related to truth, and art is only about beauty (al-Jamal). Many say that religion only focuses on ethics and morals. On the contrary, Islamic art rejects all constraints against it, including morals and attitude. Religion actually fulfilled the needs of the soul with art, and art meets the creed of the inner soul. The concept of Muhammad Qutb leads to the universal idea of literature (عالمية الأدب), and the commitment to art based on literary texts, and within the framework of Islam. The Quran is a major source of art, presenting a perfect vision of nature, life, and humanity, including the purpose of the arts itself. Islamic art is characterized by four attributes, namely divine truth, the universe, life, and humanity. These four attributes are the core of Islamic art, in addition to the Islamic teachings of existence that focus on realism, beauty, human emotion, destiny, and the truth of faith. All these are the things that turn the arts into giving life-packs and expressions that affect the souls of men.

Boundaries of Sense-creating Experiences in the Literary Works by Karol Wojtyła and the Concept of Transgression by Józef Kozielecki

Introduction: The literary work of Karol Wojtyła coincides with the concept of the weakness created by him on the philosophical and theological grounds. Wojtyła's poetry and dramas reflect a fully thought-out and mature conception of a person, which he developed as a personalist philosopher. According to Wojtyła, a person is, on the one hand, an irreducible subject and, on the other, a relationship. This concept is visible especially in Wojtyła's plays, as well as in his poetry. In Kozielecki's understanding, man as a transgressive being Homo Transgressivus has the ability to cross material, social and symbolic boundaries. A human being is responsible - he has the freedom to choose intentions, goals, mental operations, and actions.
 Method: Analysis of the literary work of Karol Wojtyła and the assumptions of Józef Kozielecki's transgressive concept
 Results: According to Karol Wojtyła, man is not only the originator of his action, but also its creator. Human agency is at the same time creativity, the first material of which is the man himself. The concept of psychology of religion proposed by Józef Kozielecki refers to the transgressive theory of man and refers to anthropological and philosophical reflection. Religious experience resembles the inner home of man, the truths of faith are the material that allows it to be built. Religion is a kind of spiritual transgression. The space for transgressive activities is primarily the social world - characteristic of activities aimed at people. Man is the agent whose actions and deeds - especially transgressive ones - determine the relationship of a given person - to the world of values. Creative transgressive activities allow you to transform reality. Going beyond the boundaries is, as it were, another angle of creating - or expanding - the world. It is also an autotransgression brought about by the acts of creation.
 
 Conclusions:
 The literary works of Karol Wojtyła and the treasgressive concept of Józef Kozielecki contain the characteristics of the types of transgressive experiences, show the multidimensionality of "worlds of transgression" and the richness of meanings of the concept of crossing borders. The vision of man and his experiences contain a sense-creating dimension and heuristic potential.

Rereading of the Quran in Light of Nursi’s Risale-i Nur Collection: Shuhudi Exegesis

The concept of tafsiri şuhudi (transempirical exegesis) was coined for the first time by Said Nursi (d. 1960) and was reflected throughout his works. In his tafsiri şuhudi (pronounced shuhudi) methodology, Nursi views the Qur’an as an interpretation of the universe, that is Kitab al-Kabir (a big book). According to Nursi, such an exegesis is needed to reach the degree of iman tahkiki (investigative belief), also known as authentic faith. As part of his methodology, Nursi uses spiritual experience (kashf) and secular sciences as evidence for gaining true faith. Tafsiri şuhudi is an offshoot of ishari (inner meaning) tafsir but one that is injected with rationalism. This tafsir type also injects witnessing (şuhudi) into the dry body of scientific and modern tafsir that emerged in the Muslim world after European enlightenment. This article first examines the original hermeneutical concept of tafsir şuhudi in Nursi’s works and then analyses the sound heart, an essential part of iman tahkiki, in light of Nursi’s transempirical experience. The article argues that Nursi injects rationalism into the ishari tafsir methodology and infuses şuhudi experience by making it not only an epistemic but also an existential understanding of modern tafsir methodology.

Theodore Metochites mosaic at Chora and the relics of the True Cross

This article aims to analyze the ktetorial composition depicted above the west portal of the Chora church (Kariye Camii). Although many researchers provided a description of this composition, the representation of the church in the hands of Logothetes tou Genikou, Theodore Metochites, has not been specifically examined. No matter that the church is depicted with the majority of the architectural elements which correspond to the reality, it is interesting to notice that two large crosses are depicted laterally of the west portal. These crosses do not correspond to the elements of the brickwork of the west facade. Nevertheless, careful analysis of the marble portal between naos and narthex area contains quite particular detail: in the lower third of two jambs of the portal were inserted pectoral crosses (encolpia) which testified to the keeping of small particles of the True Cross relic, hope for salvation and inscribing of the ktetor in the circle of the protected by True Faith.

On Reason and the Power of Life (Tolstoy contra Spinoza)

In his search for the meaning of life, Tolstoy turned to Spinoza’s rationalist teaching about freedom, reason, morality, and religious faith. Spinoza created a philosophy where beliefs are in union with deeds, logic unites with ethics, and knowledge joins faith. According to Tolstoy, it is art that makes a synthesis of all the best attempts of the real, true philosophy. I argue that Tolstoy’s artistic method of linkage (stseplenie) was probably borrowed from Spinoza. Inspired by Spinoza’s “theorems of reason,” Tolstoy created his own “axiom of life” and elaborates on the concept of the “power of life” as a core of religious faith. Tolstoy endorsed Spinoza’s rationalistic critique of religion which helped to liberate true faith from the power of superstition and church dogmatics, but he criticised the geometric form in which Spinoza put the truths he discovered.

RENAISSANCE OF THE EAST - THE SCIENTIFIC BASE OF THE WEST

The future of human civilization is directly related to our ability to learn from the historical experience of both Islamic and Western civilizations. Muslim scholars not only revived the heritage, but supplemented it with their own observations and research in the fields of philosophy, astronomy, history, mathematics, chemistry and medicine. The contribution of Muslim scholars to science testifies to the great progress of scientific development in the Muslim world. Their unique and outstanding research work showed that philosophy, science and technology can exist in harmony as a whole, and that Islam eliminates the contradiction between true faith and practical science. The scientific heritage of the Medieval East laid the foundations for the progress of science and technology in Europe. It is necessary to recognize the role of Muslim scientists and their scientific contribution to world science.