Ijtihad Network Being Wise and Faithful Muslim in the Contemporary World
What binds Ibn Arabi and Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i is the conviction that the world is permeated with meaning, that the Divine is not distant but intimately present, and that the human being is designed to perceive that presence, if only they learn how to see.
On a warm afternoon in Damascus, inside a small room lined with manuscripts and the smell of musk, Muḥyi al-Din Ibn Arabi bent over a wooden desk and began to write.
His disciples sat on woven mats as his pen moved quickly if trying to keep pace with something unseen.
What he was producing would eventually become al-Fuṣuṣ al-Ḥikam and parts of al-Fatuḥat al-Makkiyyah, books that changed the vocabulary of Islamic spirituality and continue to perplex scholars.
Eight hundred years later, in another modest room, in the central Iranian city of Qom, Allameh Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabaṭaba’i sat with a small group of students.
In a gentle voice, he explained the intricate meanings of the Holy Qur’an, verse by verse. To those who saw him, his presence was soothing, which made complex ideas feel easy.
Separated by geography, era, language, and style, the two men would never meet. Yet together, they form one of the most unlikely pairings in the history of Islamic thought.
Ibn Arabi was a mystic whose metaphysical vocabulary carved new pathways in the tradition, and Ṭabaṭabai was the modern philosopher-exegete whose intellectual discipline reshaped how Shia Muslims understand scripture, metaphysics, and the unity of being.
The two were not similar; however, they appear as two points on the same arc, distant yet still aligned.
The man who redefined the possible
Ibn Arabi was born in 1165 into the rich cultural landscape of Andalusia, now southeast Spain. He spent his life wandering across the Islamic world – Seville, Tunis, Mecca, Konya, Damascus – writing books and papers.
He was not universally welcomed. His writing forced readers to decide whether he was unveiling the hidden secrets of reality or destroying the stability of theological boundaries.
However, even his critics recognized the scale of his research. He wanted to explain the relationship between God, creation, and the human being, using a vocabulary that, by his own admission, could only be deciphered by the spiritually guided.
A widely held agreement among experts of mystic studies is that very few truly understand Ibn Arabi.
One of those few, centuries later, was Seyyed Ali Qaẓi Ṭabaṭaba’i, the teacher of Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i, who said of Ibn Arabi: “After the rank of infallibility and Imamate, no one among the people matches Muḥyi al-Din Ibn Arabi in mystical knowledge and spiritual truths; no one reaches his level.”
He went further to say: “Mullā Ṣadra owes whatever he has to Muḥyi al-Din and sat at his table.”
Aytollah Morteza Moṭahhari, quoting Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i in Sharḥ-e Manẓumah (book on philosophy), added a line that startles scholars: “In Islam, no one has been able to write even a single line like Muḥyi al-Din.”
These testimonies reveal Ibn Arabi’s central role in Islamic mysticism that modern-era mystics, philosophers, and theologians could not escape.
Philosopher in the age of upheaval
In contrast to Ibn Arabi’s travels, Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i’s life unfolded quietly. Born in 1903 in Tabriz, he spent years studying in Najaf, returned to Iran, and settled permanently in Qom.
He arrived in Iran, which was going through a wave of Westernization, secular pressures, and intellectual fragmentation. Old certainties were dissolving and new ideologies were competing aggressively.
In that challenging environment, Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i started rebuilding a coherent Islamic intellectual tradition.
He did it through al-Mīzānfī Tafsīr al-Qur’ān, a twenty-volume commentary of the holiest Muslim book that fused textual fidelity, philosophical clarity, and spiritual intuition.
Many of his students describe reading al-Mīzān like “standing inside a room whose walls suddenly become transparent. The world becomes visible in ways you didn’t think possible.”
His philosophical writings, including Uṣūl-e Falsafeh va Ravesh-e Realism, brought metaphysical conversation back to life in Iran.
His debates with the French orientalist Henry Corbin opened a new discourse between Islamic philosophy and Western phenomenology.
Allameh Tabataba’i’s method, which was rooted in the Qur’an and refined by spirituality, produced generations of scholars who continue to shape Iran’s intellectual landscape.
Bridges across centuries
Is it fair to compare Ibn Arabi and Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i? At first, it feels almost inappropriate. One is a mystic whose sentences read like coded messages, the other is a religious philosopher whose writings rarely move outside clarity.
However, the comparison isn’t about forcing similarities. It’s about noticing how two different minds approached the same horizon.
What unites them is their search, their lifelong effort to understand how the Divine moves through the world and through the human being.
Both believed that creation is not a random spectacle but a carefully structured expression of Divine Names. It is the human being who is the locus where these Names gather most completely.
Ibn Arabi and Allameh Tabataba’i maintained that understanding reality requires understanding the relation of how God relates to the world, how the world relates to the human being, and how the human being relates to God.
Convergence appears when we examine their views on Divine names; both Ibn Arabi and Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i consider all creatures to be manifestations of the Divine names, among which human beings encompass all Divine names.
Ibn Arabi employs ʿIlm al-Asmāʾ, the knowledge of the names, to elucidate the network connecting God, the Perfect Human, and the cosmos.
For him, the Perfect Human is the closest reflection of the Divine and the channel through which God’s effusion reaches the worlds.
Drawing on the thought of Ibn Arabi, the founder of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini also emphasised that the Perfect Human, in the stage of outward appearance and as the living reflection of God’s names, is the highest representative of the Divine on Earth.
While Allameh Ṭabataba’i did not provide a direct definition of the Perfect Human, he arrived at a similar point through Qur’anic interpretation and rational argument.
He describes the Wali of God or Al-Mukhlasin (the “Perfected One” or “Complete Human”) as the person who attains the station of Divine guardianship, one to whom humanity gravitates in obedience because he reflects God’s Names in their most realised form.
Architecture of being
Ibn Arabi’s philosophy is grounded in the concept of wahdat al-wujūd (unity of existence), though he did not use the term himself. For him, creation was a reflection of the Divine, a mirror through which the infinite revealed itself.
Every thought, every gesture, every atom bore within it the imprint of God. His approach to spirituality was not confined to dogmatism but extended into the very structure of reality, where the human soul navigated a landscape of signs and symbols. In his writings, the Divine and the human are inseparable, each illuminating the other.
Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i, while operating in a later intellectual milieu, arrived at complementary insights. His interpretation of the Holy Qur’an combined meticulous textual analysis with philosophical reasoning.
Central to his method was the idea that understanding the Divine order requires both rational inquiry and spiritual insight.
While he did not articulate wahdat al-wujūd in the same terms as Ibn Arabi, his work touched on the same idea, the integration of the intellect and the heart, knowledge and experience in service of the Divine.
For Ibn Arabi, each soul reflects the multiplicity and unity of existence. He considers self-knowledge to be inseparable from knowledge of God.
Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i similarly frames human perception as a critical site for engaging with the divine. For him, understanding the self and the cosmos are intertwined; man cannot fully grasp one without the other.
Language and symbol
Both Ibn Arabi and Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i were acutely aware of language as a medium bridging the finite and the infinite.
Ibn Arabi’s poetry and prose are intricate, layered, and symbolic. The words, metaphors, and stories are chosen to reflect the multiplicity of reality and the unity of God. For the great mystic, language acts as an instrument for unveiling hidden truths.
Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i, while less poetic and layered in style, shares this sensitivity to language. His exegesis meticulously explores the semantic and philosophical dimensions of Qur’anic terms, revealing subtleties that inform both understanding and practice.
In their different registers, both Islamic thinkers treat words as bearers of meaning, capable of shaping perception and guiding the soul towards deeper insight.
However, some accuse Ibn Arabi of destabilising creed, and others believe he articulated truths too subtle for literalists.
Yet his enormous presence in the Islamic world cannot be bypassed, because his ideas proved too generative to ignore. His influence extended through Sufi orders, philosophical systems, and poets like Maulana Rumi.
Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i helped reshape the landscape of Islamic philosophy. His insistence on integrating reason, revelation, and spirituality gave religious scholarship a centre of gravity during a century of ideological turbulence.
Ultimately, what binds Ibn Arabi and Allameh Ṭabaṭaba’i is the conviction that the world is permeated with meaning, that the Divine is not distant but intimately present, and that the human being is designed to perceive that presence, if only they learn how to see.
Source:Presstv
