THE PHILOSOPHY AND ONTOLOGY OF IBN ARABI IN CONTEXT OF ISLAM AND SUFISM

Abstract

Philosophy had always been an uprising theme and motif among Muslim scholars and Ibn Arabi was the most celebrated among them.Ibn Arabi was the pioneer of extending the meaning of philosophy just beyond the limits of faith and ideologies. This paper is aimed to discuss the philosophy and ontology of Ibn Arabi in context of religion Islam and Sufism. A brief discussion on the life and philosophical approach of Ibn Arabi for the religion of Islam and Sufism is elaborated in views of authors and researchers who have dedicated their work for the field of Islam and Sufism. This is a review paper that describes the biography of the great Sufi and Islamic scholar, Ibn Arabi in light of available literature on the life events of his personality. The literature review approach has been taken to analyze the ontology of Ibn Arabi as one of the most important and basic teachings of Ibn Arabi include the concept of Wahdat-ul-Wujud, which literally means the presence of something. This review paper discussed the three main ontologies elaborated by Arabi in context of religion Islam; the Wahdat-ul-Wujud, Repeatability and Delimitation and the Imagination. Second part of the literature review has presented the discussion of the approach of Ibn Arabi on Sufism, this section answers the many controversies related to the religious and spiritual philosophies of Arabi. These findings of the paper are based on previous literature only as no primary sources and data is included to answer the research questions of this study. That is the main limitation of underlying study.