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A Critical Exposition of Ibn Arabi’s Doctine of Wahdat ul Wajood

Mohiuddin Ibn Arabi and Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi two leading thinkers of Islamic mystical tradition had a great impact on Islamic thought. Both of these thinkers focused on the nature of the divine, but on many issues their thinking were immensely different from each other and totally opposite. Nonetheless they both derive their ideological framework from the mystical folklore and philosophy of Islam. The role of the latter it appears was to purge Sufism from what he regarded as doctrines that were alien to the Quranic discourse. The philosophies of the two leading thinkers revolved around the concept of Wahdut ul Wajood in the case of Ibn Arabi and Wahdat ul Shuhud, a competing concept within Sufism, expounded by Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi. This is a descriptive expository paper in which the author is trying to present a critical exposition of the doctrine of Wahdat ul Wajood of Ibn Arabi.



- Diwan Taskheer Khan *