The thirteenth century mystic Ibn `Arabi was the foremost Sufi theorist of the premodern era. For more than a century, Western scholars and esotericists have heralded his universalism, arguing that he saw all contemporaneous religions as equally valid. In Rethinking Ibn `Arabi, Gregory Lipton calls this image into question and throws into relief how Ibn `Arabi's discourse is inseparably intertwined with the absolutist vision of his own religious milieuthat is, the triumphant claim that Islam fulfilled, superseded, and therefore abrogated all previous revealed religions. Lipton juxtaposes Ibn `Arabi's absolutist conception with the later reception of his ideas, exploring how they have been read, appropriated, and universalized within the reigning interpretive field of Perennial Philosophy in the study of Sufism. The contours that surface through this comparative analysis trace the discursive practices that inform Ibn `Arabi's Western reception back to the eighteenth and nineteenth century study of "authentic" religion, where European ethno-racial superiority was wielded against the Semitic Otherboth Jewish and Muslim. Lipton argues that supersessionist models of exclusivism are buried under contemporary Western constructions of religious authenticity in ways that ironically mirror Ibn `Arabi's medieval absolutism.

About the Author
Gregory Lipton is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Macalester College, where he also held a Berg Postdoctoral Fellowhip in Religious Studies.

Reviews
The book is an attentive reading of Ibn 'Arabi that reveals the ways in which the Traditionalist paradigm has significantly shaped interpretation and perpetuated misreading of Ibn 'Arabi ... this work is a necessary and welcome contribution to beginning a long-overdue debate on the legacy of Schuon in Islamic Studies. * Rebecca Makas, Religious Studies Review *
Lipton helpfully navigates Continental intellectual history, and the resulting genealogy exposes the layers of Enlightenment and Romantic thought fueling Schuonian Perennialism, and also the troubling legacy of 19th century Aryanist scholarship. Ultimately, this is a valuable look at the writings of Ibn 'Arabi which offers a counterpoint to the scholarship that emphasizes the "universal" over the "particular" in his philosophy... Lipton adds to a conversation surrounding what Shahab Ahmed termed "the Sufi-philosophical (or philosophical-Sufi) amalgam" (Ahmed, What is Islam, 2017: 31) * Adam Tyson, University of California, Riverside, Reading Religion *
Nevertheless, Lipton's book will now be required reading for any scholar of Islamic Studies, mysticism, theology of religions, comparative theology or religions, interreligious studies, Muslim-Christian relations, and the history of these fields, and not just for readers of Ibn 'Arabi's corpus. It is my earnest hope that it will provoke a scholarly and respectful discussion between the Ibn ?Arabi interpreters he perspicaciously analyses and his critical conclusions concerning their universalist writings. * Axel M. Oaks Takacs, Harvard Divinity School, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations *
Rethinking Ibn `Arabi provides the first critical study of how the great Andalusian Sufi, Ibn `Arabi, has been turned into a universalist by modern interpreters. Lipton's convincing intervention demands that we read this central figure in a different way. * Carl W. Ernst, translator of Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr *
Lipton's mastery of Ibn `Arabi's writings in some ways mimics the Sufi tradition's own internalizing techniques, but he does not simply reconstruct and assess Ibn `Arabi's thought, but performs a very delicate and painstaking archaeology of Ibn `Arabi's place in European scholastic Sufism and the broader politics of perennial religion. This is a must read for anyone interested in the European appropriation of Sufism and the vagaries of translating Sufi thought for the West. * Tony K. Stewart, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities, Vanderbilt University *
Using critical discourse analysis and careful study of primary sources, Lipton raises provocative questions about scholarly approaches to the work of Ibn `Arabi. Rethinking Ibn `Arabi not only places Ibn `Arabi's thought within its social and historical context, but also challenges the way we think about translation and interpretation, which--Lipton reminds us--are never ideologically neutral undertakings. * Cyrus Ali Zargar, author of The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism *
Gregory Lipton's Rethinking Ibn 'Arabi is a crucial intervention in the studies of Sufism more particularly and mysticism more broadly. No matter how we imagine to be simply reading medieval texts directly, we are always reading these texts through a framework that is also shaped by our own theoretical lens. Lipton's work reminds us that our categories of universalism and mysticism are shaped also by the categories of the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly those shaped by profoundly problematic racial categorizations. It is a work that is urgently recommended for all scholars of Sufism, Islamic studies, and comparative mysticism. * Omid Safi, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University, Trinity College of Arts and Science *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190684501
Author Gregory A. Lipton
Format Hardback
Page Count 304
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 157mm * 25mm