PROPHETHOOD IN THE TEXTS OF IKHWAN AL-SAFA
İHVÂN-I SAFÂ METİNLERİNDE NÜBÜVVET

Author : Muhammet AYDIN
Number of pages : 251-265

Abstract

The community of Ikhwan which emerged in Basra in 4th/10th century and which had some religious, philosophical, political and scholarly purposes aimed for cleaning up the Muslim society intellectually. Because of the fact that their aim was to resolve the conflict among madhhabs and pave the way for brotherhood, the community which came up with religious and ethical concerns was eclectical. They used all the scholarly, religious and philosophical information which they could reach. The same eclectical attitude concerning prophethood could also be seen. The issue of miracle which is one of the important topics of prophethood is subjected to esoteric and symbolic reading. With the religious rhetoric which they used against the political oppression, Ikhwan al-?afa got beyond the limits of 10th century in the field of religion, philosophy and culture. According to Ikhwan the aim of philosophical and religious sciences is “the effort to resemble Allah by means of human power.” Because of this, the aim of revelation/prophethood is to clean the human soul, to save him from hell, and to enable human beings to reach the blessings of paradise and hereafter. According to Ikhwan these are the point of both philosophical and religious sciences. They went out of the religious, racial, ethnic and cultural fanaticism. Aside from the classical texts of ?aqa?id/kalam, they used a different approach concerning problems of prophethood. By reason of the fact that they gave priority to the ethical aspect of religion, they approached the texts with practical and pragmatic motives. However, protecting the legacy of thought being in our tradition and transmitting it to the next generations is significant. Their evaluation that the relation between prophethood and politics in the time of some prophets is occasional and not fundamental has a special importance in the field of religion and politics. The main deviations related to the topics of prophethood began with the death of the prophet and the relation between religion and politics ascribed to the Prophet could not be evaluated properly.

Keywords

Ikhwan al-Safa, Prophethood, Metaphysics, Politics, Messenger

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