
Renovatio - "And God Calls to the Abode of Peace"
Regular price $14.95In Renovatio's Fall 2024 edition, "And God Calls to the Abode of Peace," we present essays that help us understand and navigate the rising militarism and disorder that our world suffers from today. Several contributions take a hard look at the manifold problems of nationalism—from its similarities to and differences from religion, to its rejection by a key figure in modern Islamic philosophy, to its indisputable and continuing role in the tragic conflict that plagues the contemporary Middle East. Other essays offer a way forward: the role of mercy is discussed from the vantage of those with authority; two of the ancient world's literary luminaries explain the path of transcending anger; and music's role in the harmony of society is considered. Renovatio's writers provide original thinking grounded in faith and scholarship, allowing us to learn how the knowledge and wisdom in our respective traditions can restore our world to a more balanced and harmonious state.
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Table of Contents
Nationalism as Idolatry
The problems with nationalism do not disappear when “religious” nationalism gives way to “secular” nationalism, because nationalism itself is a kind of religion.
William T. Cavanaugh
The Misunderstood Muhammad Iqbal
We remember the poet-philosopher as the spiritual father of the nation-state of Pakistan, which is a curious inheritance given he was a fervent critic of nationalism.
Hina Khalid
Music and the Decline of Civilization
Both Greek and Chinese traditions see the abandonment of musical laws as calamitous for the common good.
Esmé L. K. Partridge
Islamic Science and the West: A Case of Collective Amnesia
Significant knowledge transfers from Muslim societies to European ones were pervasive— and remain largely ignored in mainstream historiography.
Jonathan Lyons
The Imaginary Narrative Distorting the History of Palestine
A conversation about the forgotten colonial context that helps us understand the tragic conflict in the Middle East.
Khalid Yahya Blankinship and Hamza Yusuf
Rumi and Shakespeare: On Forgiveness and Reconciliation
Two of humanity’s greatest literary masters show a particular interest in how seemingly intractable conflicts can be resolved through forms of reconciliation.
Juan Cole
Can a State Have a Moral Right to Exist?
It is often claimed as a self-evident premise that existing states have a presumptive right to exist. But this is a premise democrats must reject.
Andrew F. March
The Exclusivist Logic of Nationalism
Unlike general human logic, which requires one to examine all sides of a question, nationalist logic is concerned with the interests of only a given group.
Khalid Yahya Blankinship
Antigone and the Conflict of Mercy and Justice
How might our sympathies shift if we read Sophocles’s play from the perspective of the one responsible for the well-being of a community?
John Walbridge
What Muslims Should Know about Intellectual Conservatism
The conservative tradition contains the West’s richest resources for building a stable commitment to religious freedom that does not slide into relativistic nihilism.
Jacob Williams