Speaker Series: Encountering the Divine through His Most Beautiful Names in Islamic Contemplative Practice

Registration requested.

Please join Prof. Maria Dakake for a public talk entitled “Encountering the Divine through His Most Beautiful Names in Islamic Contemplative Practice”.

This talk will examine contemplative practices related to the names of God in traditional Islamic thought. The Qur’an asserts that “to God belong the most beautiful names” and that believers should “call Him by them.” Muslims have traditionally identified 99 names or attributes of God mentioned in the Qur’an that reflect God’s transcendence and immanence, His beauty and majesty, His compassion and power. The Qur’anic command to call God by His “beautiful names” has led to the development of these names, and various practices of invoking them, as keys to contemplative practice (dhikr) in Islam, and particularly in the mystical perspective of Sufism.

Dr. Maria Dakake researches and publishes on Islamic intellectual history, Quranic studies, Shi`ite and Sufi traditions, and women’s spirituality and religious experience. She recently completed work on a major collaborative project to produce the first HarperCollins Study Quran, which comprises a verse-by-verse commentary on the Quranic text (November 2015). This work draws upon classical and modern Quran commentaries, making the rich and varied tradition of Muslim commentary on their own scripture, written almost exclusively in Arabic and Persian, accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time in such a comprehensive manner. She is also currently working with Daniel Madigan on a co-edited volume, The Routledge Companion to the Qur’an, and is working independently on a monograph on the concept of religion as a universal phenomenon in the Quran and Islamic intellectual tradition.

http://www.uvacontemplation.org/content/speaker-series-encountering-divine-through-his-most-beautiful-names-islamic-contemplative