A Comparison of Spiritual Love in Postmodern Spirituality and Islamic Mysticism

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of Religions and Comparative Mysticism, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

10.22081/jsr.2024.67344.1043

Abstract

By considering love in both the meaning of extreme loving and compassion, we can refer to "spiritual love" which is a transcendental, strong, comprehensive, unconditional love that leads to spiritual growth. The problem of this research is whether new or postmodern spiritualities use "spiritual love" in the same sense as authentic spiritualities, especially Islamic spirituality. The method of this article is to separate the position of proof, i.e., external realization, from the position of explanation, i.e., normative description. As a proof, it is revealed that "spiritual love" in novel spiritualities is a superficial and humanistic reading of its traditional high, noble and rare concept. Because they do not provide a solid and reasonable root for the existence and norm of unconditional love, and sometimes they relate it to the cliché of God worship so that the mother - God, inspires affection and love, and sometimes they associate it with free sex. As an explanation, since novel spiritualities are human-centered, in accordance with the culture of modernity and postmodernity, and religions reject it in its traditional sense, they are naturally unable to provide practical context for the realization of love in the existence of human beings.

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History

  • Receive Date: 11 September 2023
  • Accept Date: 09 February 2024

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