by James Winston Morris.
Beneath
today's violent media stereotypes of an apocalyptic 'clash of
civilisations,' could we be witnessing instead the epochal and
challenging birth of new spiritual, ethical and cultural forms of
communion, of a nascent global civilisation that has not yet found its
name?
Orientations
begins with those intimately familiar situations of disorientation,
painful conflict and confusion-almost inescapable in the contemporary
world-whose most dramatic expressions are daily so visible in emblematic
images from each Jerusalem or Sarajevo. But it introduces three
classical Islamic thinkers-both philosophers and spiritual
teachers-whose seminal works together provide the inspiration for
positive, realistic, concrete and lastingly constructive responses to
those dramatic challenges, at each level of our own lives and
responsibilities.
The
purpose of this study, through the far-reaching insights and guidance
of these three masters, is to turn our attention toward those universal
elements of Islamic thought and spirituality which are explicitly
grounded in the deepest common dimensions of human experience:
dimensions that can alone provide us with the indispensable foundations
for true communication, for genuine moral and spiritual communities
rooted at every level-from family to workplace and beyond-in our shared
responsibilities of spiritual insight, clarity, creativity and the
uniquely human processes of realisation and transformation.
The
focus of Orientations is on those recurrent human tasks and challenges
which these three thinkers and their traditions can help illuminate,
even today.
James W. Morris holds the Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.