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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Ali Asani

Notes on a Jewish Sufi

20 Sunday Oct 2024

Posted by Amod Lele in African Thought, Islam, Judaism, Politics, Prayer, South Asia, Sufism

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Abraham Maimonides, Ali Asani, Altaf Hussain Hali, Egypt, Elisha Russ-Fishbane, Harvard University, Israel/Palestine, Jay Harris, Moses Maimonides, Muhammad Iqbal, mystical experience

I don’t wish at the moment to weigh in on the terrible current conflict in Israel and Palestine, save to offer my condolences to anyone whose loved ones are hurt by its horrors. I salute those on either side who are still striving, in the midst of it all, for a world where both Jews and Arabs can go about their lives in peace and freedom. But I have no idea how to get there; if there is a way, it will require the complex and difficult work of diplomats and politicians more than philosophers, and ones who know that situation far better than I do. What I hope I can offer today is merely a bit of historical perspective. That is: most of us alive today have only known a world where Jews and Muslims make headlines for being at each other’s throats. But it wasn’t always that way.

The years of the Abbasid caliphate‘s reign in Baghdad, from the 8th to 13th centuries, are often considered the Muslim golden age, where Muslim societies were the envy of the world for their civilizational achievements from poetry to medicine. 20th-century South Asian poets like Hali and Iqbal looked back with envy and nostalgia to that golden age, lamenting how far they had fallen from it under British colonialism.

What’s less frequently noted is that that era was also a Jewish golden age.

Continue reading →

To play a flawed role

19 Sunday Sep 2010

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Bhakti Poets, Deity, German Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Islam, Play, Rites

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Adolf Hitler, Ali Asani, autobiography, Constantin Stanislavski, David Haberman, film, Immanuel Kant, Krishna, LARP, Muharram, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Plato, Rūpa Gosvāmi, Seven Virtues

In the past few years I’ve become involved in live-action role-playing (usually known by the acronym LARP, or “LARPing”): a cross between long-form improv theatre and tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. This hobby is often maligned, partially because it looks very strange to those not involved (especially on video), and partially because of its association with the kind of intelligent but socially awkward “geeky” subcultures that develop around Star Trek, comic books, collectible card games, Japanese animation and the like. But as I’ve been a part of those subcultures all my life, this is hardly a barrier to my participation. (I hope you didn’t expect that someone who blogs about Sanskrit philosophical texts was one of the popular kids in high school.)

LARPing for me is genuinely a hobby. It’s not an avocation, a “neither career nor hobby” passion like I intend this blog to be; it’s just for fun. Still, lately I’ve been noticing its philosophical implications, largely because of a splendid game I play called Seven Virtues. Continue reading →

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