Modernity is one of the most contentious paradigms in intellectual history, evolving across various ages. For instance, Romanization represented modernity in its era, contrasting Greek and Celtic traditions. The most common contemporary notion, however, is post-structuralist modernity, which questions the structural foundations of other identities, particularly through the lens of (post-)colonialism. This dialectic transcends the Arab-Islamic context, shaping Japan’s transformation since the Meiji era and Kyoto Symposia(s) of 1933, and reflecting in the post-WWII landscape (Harootunian, 2000). The (post)structuralist colonial narrative during the Cold War further sought to suppress Eastern and indigenous cultures (Alnasir, 2023a). This paper reexamines the East-West dichotomy as a North-South clash of values, with Western-Northern ideals confronting Eastern-Southern resistance. Drawing on psycho-social and inter-group dynamics (Heine et al., 1999), the paper highlights the deep cognitive dissonance between universal Northern values and local Southern ethical sovereignty, urging interdisciplinary academic inquiry into these tensions as an update proposal for the theory of Colonial Psychology.

As a logician the philosopher Suhrawardi is best known for the almost sneering simplification of logic in the first part of his masterwork The Philosophy of Illumination. However, in his so-called “Peripatetic” works, he writes much more extensively about logic and in a conventional Aristotelian/Avicennan style and terminology—about 1000 pages in the recent printed editions of the three major Peripatetic texts. These works have been largely neglected, with only the metaphysics of each edited in the older Corbin edition. Almost nothing has been written about Suhrawardi’s logic beyond The Philosophy of Illumination, apart from a monograph by Hussein Ziai dealing mainly with epistemology. The most extensive treatment of Suhrawardi’s logic occurs in the commentary on Suhrawardi’s Talwihat, the middle of the three Peripatetic works, by the 13th century Jewish philosopher Ibn Kammuna, apparently the earliest of the followers of Suhrawardi’s Illuminationist tradition. He analyzes Suhrawardi’s text paragraph by paragraph. He is a sympathetic commentator, generally treating omissions and lapses as simplifications appropriate to the level of the text and then filling in the gaps. Like other logicians of the period, Ibn Kammuna elaborates the divisions of propositions and considers the effects these new kinds of propositions have on various forms of inference. In the syllogistic Ibn Kammuna derives the many moods of the syllogism from the first figure, going back by preference to Barbara, the simplest mood. In a departure from Suhrawardi’s text, he adds the vexed fourth figure, which had been controversial since Galen added it a thousand years earlier. Recent scholarship has begun to show that Suhrawardi’s philosophy cannot be understood in isolation from his Peripatetic works. Likewise, recent scholarship on Islamic logic in this period, notably the works of El Roueyheb and Street, have shown that the 13th and 14th centuries were periods of major innovation in Islamic logic, parallel to while different from the European logic of the same period, though the details are only gradually becoming clear. Both differ in basic ways from modern formal logic. This paper contributes towards understanding the changes going on in Islamic logic in this period, a time when modern scholars have only serious examined less than half a dozen Islamic logicians.

In this paper, I argue that the reworking of what counts as authority in Islam and the re-imagining of how Islamic knowledge is produced are at the core of the formation of intersectional identities within the Muslim community in North America. This claim is based on an analysis of the discourses and collective actions of organizations such as HEART, Queer Crescent, Muslims for Just Futures, Muslim Abolitionist Futures, and Vigilant Love which cooperate with one another on a cross-section of interrelated issues, such as gendered violence, reproductive justice, gendered Islamophobia, the war on terror, anti-racism, the carceral system, and transformative justice. Such analysis reveals that the worldviews of the activists of the organizations under study are informed by a refusal to uncritically accept the inherited Islamic tradition and an openness towards non-Islamic modes of thinking. Their narratives, life trajectories, and socio-political activism are marked by three key elements: rejection of Sunni supremacy, of patriarchal and heteronormative interpretations of Islam, and of authoritarianism within Muslim communities; commitment to the Islamic practice of iqra (knowledge seeking) as a habit of sitting in doubt, questioning, and learning; and incorporation into Islamic frameworks of theories, concepts, and practices borrowed from non-Islamic sources (non-Muslim feminist, queer, Black, and Indigenous thinkers and movements). Queer Crescent, for example, defines Muslimness as an “expansive, racialized, and self-determined identity” and emphasizes that through collective liberatory practices Muslims can achieve unity and cohesiveness both internally (that is, within themselves) and externally (that is, with others - Muslims and non-Muslims alike). Thus, paying attention to both the social spaces and the cognitive processes through which this cross fertilization between Islamic knowledge and Black, Indigenous, feminist, and queer wisdom takes places is pivotal in understanding shifts in Islamic authority and epistemology and new patterns of allyship between Muslim and non-Muslim actors in the US.

The rhetorical affect of Qur’anic speech has been regarded inimitable in Islamic tradition. However, the Qur’anic composition has not been systematically examined as structured rhetorical delivery in both Muslim and Western Qur’an studies. While paying close attention to the rhetorical contexts (maqām) of Qur’anic material, Muslim rhetorical analysis in traditional and modern scholarship centers on the grammatical construction (naẓm) of individual Qur’anic verses with a focus on eloquence (bālagha) and linguistic purity (faṣāḥa). In Western research, Qur’anic rhetoric has been treated peripherally. A primary reason lies in the tension between recognizing the intrinsic orality of the pre-redactional Qur’an and adopting a quasi-textual perspective in the analysis of post-redactional Qur’anic material, often characterized as secondary compositions. Textual orientation eclipses the modes, objectives, and composition of rhetorical delivery, contributing significantly to the impression of disjointedness in the Qur’anic narrative. Despite significant developments based on thematic and formal markers, such as the model developed by Angelika Neuwirth and the case made for ring composition by Michel Cuypers, the question of structural unity resists easy resolution. This paper posits that the Qur’anic sura exhibits a distinct oratorical character, featuring a sequential organization of three types of rhetorical speech: ceremonial, legal, and political. The features and objectives of these forms, outlined in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, serve as a partial frame of reference. These forms also markedly intersect with various rhetorical genres identified in Muslim Qur’an exegesis and rhetorical analysis. However, the specific character of these forms, and their formulaic consecutive ordering, within the Qur’anic matrix reside in their self-referential vertical arrangement. Within this rhetorical framework, ceremonial speech introduces God and representations of transcendent authority on the higher level; political speech engages with God’s subjects on the lower level; and legal speech oversees and mediates the relationship between God and His subjects on the middle level. The succession of these independent forms into a unified discourse results in a dynamic and expressive oratorical style and amply variational intertextuality across both thematically homogenous and disparate Qur’anic material. The paper aims to demonstrate this structural framework and stylistic character by examining several short and thematically diverse Meccan suras frequently recited within the liturgical context: al-Fātiḥa (Q 1), al-Kawthar (Q 108), al-Māʿūn (Q 109), al-ʿAṣr (Q 103), and al-Qadr (Q 97). The analysis reveals that the sura structure systematically maintains the formulaic sequential ordering of the three rhetorical modes, characterized by their vertical interrelationship across various thematic contexts.