Monday, June 07, 2010

Traditionalists in the AK

Omar commented: "Just wanted to remind you that Erdogans chief advisor is Ibrahim Kalin who is also a disciple of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. That means traditionalism is now at the core of a modern political movement, the AK Party."

Dr Ibrahim Kalin is Chief Foreign Policy Adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and so certainly close to the AK leadership.

Dr Kalin of Turkish origin and is an assistant professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he works on post-Avicennan Islamic philosophy, notably Mullah Sadra; he has just published a book on Mullah Sadra's concept of "transcendent wisdom," Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect and Intuition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Dr Kalin is also active in the Common Word initiative, which has been pursuing real dialog with Western churches since 2006.

I have often been told of interest in Traditionalism among the AK leadership, which would not be a great surprise, given the popularity in Turkey of the work of Dr Nasr. Dr Kalin seems very much to follow the model of Dr Nasr. Both men are of Muslim origin, both teach in DC and are authorities on "traditional" Islamic mystical philosophy, and both are active in the Common Word initiative.

My thanks to Omar for this information.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ohh...this is very intresting news. Thankyou so much for the information.

Mark Sedgwick said...

Comment below edited by Mark Sedgwick to delete a name:

About two years ago I was told by *** *** (Tariqa name "*** ***"), who has now defected from Maryamiyya, that Ibrahim Kalin was a member of the Tariqa. Kalin has written about Guénon and also contributed to the anthology Betrayal of Tradition.

If you listen to him you realize that he even sounds like Nasr ...