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Ismail Raji Al-Farouqi

Personal Info

  • Country of residence: Palestine
  • Gender: Male
  • Born in: 1921
  • Age: 102
  • Curriculum vitae :

Information

Ismail Raji Al-Farouqi (1921 AD - 1986 AD) is a Palestinian researcher and thinker who specialized in comparative religions. He was one of the first to consider the Islamic knowledge project. He was elected the first president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought. In the United States of America, stabbed with knives.

 

Biography

Dr. Ismail Raji Al-Farouqi was born in the Palestinian city of Jaffa in 1921 AD to one of the ancient and wealthy Palestinian families. His father worked as a Sharia judge, and despite that, he preferred that his son receive a modern civil education, as is the custom of some wealthy Palestinian families. So he enrolled him in the French Dominican Frère School (Saint Joseph), from which he obtained his high school diploma in 1936 AD, and from there he joined the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the American University in Beirut, where he obtained a Bachelor of Philosophy in 1941 AD. After his graduation, he worked in some government jobs under the British Mandate government. With the outbreak of fighting in Palestine in 1948 AD, he participated in some jihadist operations, but he left for the United States with the end of the war and the establishment of the Jewish state. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1952 for his thesis entitled “Theory of the Good: Metaphysical and Epistemological Aspects of Values.”

 

Despite obtaining the highest academic degrees, Al-Farooqi sensed a deficiency in his knowledge formation because he was limited - until then - to knowledge and in-depth knowledge of Western culture and thought, as he drew from a single knowledge tributary, which is the western tributary, so he decided to turn to Islamic studies in order to complete his scientific formation. So he went to Cairo and spent about four years there, during which he devoted himself to studying Sharia sciences from their original sources in Al-Azhar Al-Sharif. Orientalists in the West have to do with Islam, and in this regard, Al-Farouqi says: “Some people think that my ideas are of my own making, but whenever I am confused about an issue, I find its answer with Sheikh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah.”

 

In addition to these Islamic influences, Dr. Al-Faruqi was exposed during his stay in Cairo to some Nasserist influences when he believed for some time in the idea of Arabism, which he saw as having Islamic roots in that the Arabs had some credit because of their playing the greatest role in communicating the final religion, in contrast to the concept of nationalism, which is a product of Western civilization experience cannot be generalized globally. However, the faltering of Gamal Abdel Nasser's national project and the political failure that befell him in the June War (1967 AD) made Al-Farouqi turn towards Islam, so that he no longer mentioned Arabism in his writings.

 

literature

With the completion of the cognitive formation, Dr. Ismail Al-Farouqi traveled again to the United States, where he worked since the late fifties as a professor of the philosophy of religions in a number of American and Western universities, and he has distinguished books in this field. In English and has not been Arabized, we mention: Historical Atlas of the Religions of the World, The Great Asian Religions, Christian Ethics. Close to this are his writings on the Jews and the Zionist phenomenon, such as The Origins of Zionism in the Jewish Religion and Islam and The Problem of Israel, which were praised by the thinker Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri in his encyclopedia (Jews, Judaism and Zionism) as being able to go beyond the political and reach the cognitive in understanding phenomena associated with the Jews.

 

As for the rest of his knowledge production, it revolves around Islamic civilization, which Al-Farouqi singled out in a huge author called “Atlas of Islamic Civilization,” which was transferred to Arabic after his departure. In this regard, we do not forget his most important book, which he published in English under the title (Al Tawhid; Its Implications for Thought and Life) monotheism and its effects on thought and life. Al-Farooqi also has a number of research papers on (Islamic knowledge), which he is rightfully considered the first theorist of, some of which have been translated and published through the International Institute of Islamic Thought and the (Modern Muslim) periodical. Al-Farouqi has a very important collection of research and studies published in English, which was edited and published after his death by Attaullah Siddiqui under the title: (Islam and Other Faiths), in addition to some of his translations into English, such as his translation of the book The Life of Muhammad by Muhammad Husayn Haikal.

 

Dr. Al-Farouqi had extensive activities during his stay in the United States, through which he expressed his communication with the issues of the Islamic world, especially the knowledge ones, and he proved that leaving the homeland does not mean separation and interruption from pursuing his issues and working for them. In this regard, we mention that he established with a group of members The Muslim Students Union «Association of Muslim Social Scientists» in 1972 AD and assumed its presidency from its founding until 1978 AD, and through the association and its discussions, a specific vision was crystallized for him about «Islamic knowledge», which is the mother idea around which the International Institute of Islamic Thought was founded in the United States in (1981 AD).

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