filth. This is what is meant by falling asleep in Hades, of those who have come there.”
— Plotinus
(First Ennead, Book VIII, as translated by Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation (1891) pp. 38-39
“When the soul has descended into generation (from its first divine condition) she partakes of evil, and is carried a great way into a state the opposite of her first purity and integrity, to be entirely merged in which, is nothing more than to fall into a dark mire. The soul...
dies as much as it is possible for the soul to die: and the death to her is, while baptized or immersed in the present body, to descend into matter and be wholly subjected by it; and after departing thence to lie there til it shall arise and turn its face away from the abhorrent
The Qur’anic statement “they neither killed home nor crucified him” is merely the denial that Jesus Jewish enemies had killed him. Who is THEY?
The verse comes after a sequence of verses starting around 7:153 criticizing disobedience Israelites for breaking their covenant with God. The last misdeed the Quran accuses these people of doing is slandering Mary and boasting about their killing of Jesus. The Quran denies their claim and instead says Allah raised up Jesus to himself in the next verse. The Jewish claim to have killed Jesus is in the Talmud and other texts like Taldot Yeshu which contain a Jewish polemic against Jesus and Mary in which Jewish rabbis happily take credit for killing Jesus as a heretic and accuse Mary of being a harlot.
Read all this alongside Quran 3:55 where God tells Jesus “I am causing you to die and raising you to myself and cleansing you of those who disbelieve”. So God caused Jesus to die by taking Jesus soul and raising his soul to His presence and purified Jesus repute from his enemies attacks. The reality of Jesus is his soul - which nobody can kill or crucify. They only crucified his material body.
This isn’t a denial of Jesus physical death on cross; it’s a denial of the agency and power of his Jewish enemies in putting him to death. This is also what the Bible teaches in Acts and in Paul’s letters - that Jesus was put to death according the plan of God and his enemies didn’t know that divine plan.
This is true. The original “dawah” was Fatimids calling muslim soldiers and intellectuals to establish and expand the Fatimid caliphate.
The idea of standing on the street begging for converts is completely degenerate.
“In our view there no disputing the fact that the Essence is unknown. To It are ascribed descriptions that make It incomparable with the attributes of temporal things (al-hadath). It possesses eternity (al-qidam), and to Its Being is ascribed beginninglessness (al-azal)...
relationship, nor with any assurance. For names act to make known and to distinguish, but this door is forbidden to anyone other than God, since 'None knows God but God. So the names exist through us and for us. They revolve around us and become manifest within us..”
— Ibn Arabī
There exists a Necessary Existent that: Exists by itself, does not depend on anything else, does not change or cease, is the ultimate cause of all contingent things
This Necessary Existent is what Avicenna identifies as God.
Thanks, correct me if I misunderstood his argument.
If the cause is outside all contingent things, then it must be necessary. Because we already established that everything is either contingent or necessary. If something is not contingent, then it must be necessary. So the cause of all contingent existence is a necessary existent