Date of death of Marie Huot

Marie Huot, the anarchist, vegetarian, and animal rights activist who was indirectly responsible for introducing Ivan Aguéli to Sufism, died in 1930, and was cremated at the Père-Lachaise cemetry.

In Against the Modern World I was able to give only her date of birth, 1846.

My thanks to Jean-Yves for supplying this information.

T. J. Winter on Valentine de St.-Point

Thanks to Mohsin R of Lahore for drawing attention in a comment to this blog to a 2009 lecture by T. J. Winter on “The Prophet (PBUH) and his wives.” This 57-minute lecture is of interest partly because almost half of it deals with Valentine de St.-Point (see also later post), Guénon's friend and associate in Cairo, providing three answers to the question asked by a comment on this blog: why would a woman like her convert to Islam? It is also of interest because Winter is a leading non-Guénonian (small-t) traditionalist, and shows here what an excellent lecturer he is.

So, why did  St.-Point become Muslim? Winter suggests three answers. One is that she saw Islam as an “authenticity that industrial man has finally lost.” Another is that Islam provides an alternative to the “fragmentation of the human persona imposed by Christianity.” And the third answer is that St.-Point was far from being the only European artist who looked to the Muslim world and Islam for answers to questions raised by the problems of European civilization.

I think Winter is  probably right, though I am not sure that “the take on gender” follows as directly from views of sexuality as he seems to think.

The lecture is in six parts.

New book on Toshihiko Izutsu

Just published: Japanese Contribution to Islamic Studies: The Legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu Interpreted, ed. Anis Malik Thoha (Kuala Lumpur: IIUM Press, 2010). ISBN: 978-967-5272-63-9.

I have never quite understood the relationship between Toshihiko Izutsu and Traditionalism, and this new collection may hold some of the answers to that question. It is the proceedings of a 2008 conference held in Kuala Lumpur, with 19 articles, including:

• "The Place of Mulla Sadra's Kitāb Al-Mashāʻir in Izutsu's Philosophy" (Shigeru Kamada)
  "Reconsidering Izutsu in a Post-Postmodern Framework" (Janan Izadi and Ahad Faramarz Gharamaleki)
• "God and Man in the Works of Toshihiko Izutsu" (Ibrahim Abu Bakar)
• "Communicating Pure Consciousness Events: Using Izutsu to Address a Problem in the Philosophy of Mysticism" (Sajjad H. Rizvi)
• "The Significance of Izutsu’s Legacy for Comparative Religion" (Kojiro Nakamura)
• "The Legacy of Toshihiko Izutsu in Turkey: Application of Semantics in Contemporary Qur’anic Studies" (Necmettin Gökkir)

The remoter origins of the perennial philosophy

For those interested in the remoter origins of the perennial philosophy, I will be presenting a paper on "Orientalists and Sufis: The European Reception of Sufism and Its Consequences" at the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in San Diego, California, November 18-21, 2010. The earliest date mentioned is 1577, but we don't really get down to business until 1671. Isaac Newton makes a guest appearance. The most recent name to be mentioned is Inayat Khan. Traditionalism will not be mentioned explicitly, but those who know it will spot something familiar.

Panel #2330, "Middle Eastern-European Intellectual Encounters," Saturday November 20, 8:30-10:30 am.

Producing Islamic Knowledge in Western Europe

Just published: Producing Islamic Knowledge: Transmission and Dissemination in Western Europe, ed. Martin van Bruinessen and Stefano Allievi (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010).

This book covers a variety of ways in which "Islamic knowledge" is being produced and spread in Europe, and has one article (by me) on the role of Traditionalism, "Guénonian Traditionalism and European Islam" (pp. 169-87). This article is remarkable mostly for the length of time it took to get into print: it was originally a paper given in 2003, before the publication of Against the Modern World, much of which it summarizes. It does, however, give some new details, and it places Traditionalism in a wider European Islamic context.