Podcast episode
January 3, 2025
Episode 200: Introducing Islām
Episode 200 of the SHWEP introduces Islām onto the stage of our narrative. We hardly discuss Islām the religion, but note instead some of the important characteristics of Islām as a social and political force in the seventh century and beyond which ensured that it would become the home of western esotericism for centuries to come.
Works Cited in this Episode:
Shahab Ahmed. What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2016.
Peter Frankopan. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. Bloomsbury, London, 2015; we quote pp. 100-101.
Antoine Faivre. Introduction. In Antoine Faivre and eds. Jacob Needleman, editors, Modern Esoteric Spirituality, pages xi-xxii. SCM Press, New York, NY, 1992; we cite the 4 essential and 2 optional characteristics from p. xv of the introduction. Cf. Antoine Faivre. Questions of Terminology Proper to the Study of Esoteric Currents in Modern and Contemporary Europe. In Antoine Faivre and Wouter Hanagraaff, editors, Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion: Selected Papers presented at the 17th Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Mexico City 1995, pages 1-10. Peeters, Leuven, 1998.
Garth Fowden. Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Re-focused. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ/Oxford, 2014.
Marshall Hodgson. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1974.
Robert Hoyland. Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion. In S.F. Johnson, editor, The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, pages 1053-77. The University Press, Oxford, 2012.
Francis Yates. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1964; we cite pp. 80-81 on the `old, dirty magic’.
Recommended Reading:
SHWEP Episode 200 Recommended Reading
Themes
Astrology, East Rome, Ibn al-'Arabī, Islam, Islamicate Alchemy, Magic, Maimonides, Monotheism, Polytheism, Qur'ān, Western Esotericism
Kenneth Selens
January 4, 2025
BRAVO, or brafu!!… consummate 200th
Ian Wright
January 5, 2025
Another fantastic episode! Thank you! https://x.com/ianpaulwright/status/1875866134039470550
Joel M Zahn
January 6, 2025
Love this introduction. I wondered if this would be our 200th episode treat! If the 100th episode Hermes series is any guide, then this will be a particularly amazing run of the SHWEP. Thank you for all your work and all the amazing scholars who contribute to this worthy project.
I can’t help but recommend the amazing YouTube channel Let’s Talk Religion headed up by the talented Filip Holm. He has a huge range of videos on Islamic esotericism, but certainly is not limited to that topic. I know that YouTube is usually filled with some dubious scholarship, but this channel is an exception and well worth your time if you haven’t checked it out.
Earl Fontainelle
January 6, 2025
Joel, thanks very much for the kind words. Funnily enough, I may soon be appearing on said youtube channel, but speaking about the Pseudo-D.
Nedim Kulenovic
January 6, 2025
Strange to say there were no doctrinary persecutions when there was that whole Mihna episode right at the start?
Earl Fontainelle
January 6, 2025
Nedim,
To quote the episode, `But, practical or not, a religious monoculture was the Roman imperial model, the ideological party line. This was never the case in the Islamic lands (at least until the twentieth century, when we see such ideas imported, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps unsurprisingly, from Europe). The Islamic never even tried to become a religious monoculture, and thus became a place where pretty much all religions could and did flourish – not without friction and even persecution, I hasten to say – this wasn’t THAT kind of utopia. But it was pretty good for the seventh, eight, ninth centuries …’.
The argument isn’t that there was no doctrinal persecution in the Islamicate world, but rather that the notion of a single, uniform religious identity for the entire dar al-islām was never considered. Within that plural framework, all manner of persecutions and other nastiness occurred.