Volume 1, Number 1
Publications
Editor’s Preface
Preface by Rami Koujah
Date: 1 September 2026.
The study of religion has largely worked its way through the positivist and functionalist paradigms that treated mystical claims as objects to be explained away rather than as modalities of knowing in their own right. The recent move across various academic departments — e.g., religious studies, history, anthropology — to engage with and center categories like the supernatural, esotericism, the occult, the weird, and magic as serious topics of inquiry is a welcome development, with parallels in the growing interest among psychologists and other scientists in researching altered mental states and parapsychological phenomena.¹ Scholars such as Jeffrey J. Kripal, Wouter Hanegraaff, Marshall Sahlins, and Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm have persuasively argued that the epistemic parameters established by what we might call “Enlightenment rationality” — which deploys categories like “superstition” and “(dis)enchantment” to adjudicate between knowledge and flights of fancy — are not only contingent, but historically and culturally parochial. ²
It is in this spirit that Nūr: Journal of Sufi Thought and Praxis, an initiative of the Al-Karkari Institute for Sufi Studies, was launched. One of the aims of the journal is to offer another outlet to challenge these same epistemic barricades by providing a forum to study those modalities of knowledge/knowing that define the Islamic philosophical and mystical traditions that broadly fall under the category of Sufism. The academic study of Islam has made tremendous leaps in uncovering the rich intellectual output of this tradition, exposing the limitations of those interpretations of Sufi thought that reduce it to political gestures and paraphernalia, symbolic social capital, and claims to authority — i.e., ideology, sociology, and psychology. But the decolonial move remains incomplete until the academic study of Islam and religion, at the very least, considers the prospects of Sufi epistemologies themselves. Thus, this journal seeks to recover notions such as kashf/mukāshafa (unveiling or disclosure), dhawq (immediate experience), ilhām (inspiration), and ḥads (intuition) as credible and legitimate avenues of knowledge-making — or at least ones that cannot be dismissed a priori. Nūr strives to move beyond Sufism as a mere object of study to a mode of scholarship that looks upwards to the cosmos and inwards to the self. Like most intellectual initiatives, this journal is an experiment in the possibilities and promise that come with carving out new pathways of knowing. The essays in this inaugural volume exemplify the kind of bridges this journal hopes to construct and the methods it is receptive to.
REFERENCES.
1 Cardeña, Etzel. “A Call for an Open, Informed Study of All Aspects of Consciousness.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (January 27, 2014): 17. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00017.
2 E.g., Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities (University of Chicago Press, 2022); Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Esotericism in Western Culture: Counter- Normativity and Rejected Knowledge (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025); Marshall Sahlins, The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022); Jason A. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
Secret of the Word (Sirr al-Kalima)
Secret of the Word by Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari
Translated from the Arabic by Rami Koujah
Date: 28 Oct 2024.
ABSTRACT. This essay presents a gnostic (ʿirfānī) reading of machine intelligence, written in response to a specialist’s inquiry regarding the epistemological limits of modern technology. Setting aside the utilitarian and technical paradigms of computer science, the author situates artificial intelligence within the framework of traditional Islamic cosmology. Central to the discussion is a “Theory of the Word” (naẓariyyat al-kalima), which posits that the cosmos is a continuous manifestation of the Divine Names. These Names, the author explains, become specified through the all-comprehensive Name—Allāh—whose ontological root is delineated through three Arabic letters: Alif, Lām, and Hāʾ. Within this metaphysical context, the author re-evaluates fundamental categories of human reality. The intellect (ʿaql), knowledge (ʿilm), the heart (qalb), and religion (dīn) are discussed not as mere cognitive or social functions, but as cosmic modes of receiving, fettering (ʿiqāl), housing, and exalting the Divine Word. Genuine intellection, the essay argues, should not be confused with the rapid, delimited analysis of stored data. It is, rather, a qualitative receptivity to the Unseen (al-ghayb). The author cautions that humans are currently in danger of repeating the idolatry of the golden calf by creating an artifact only to subject themselves to its determinations. To serve as a mercy rather than an instrument of disintegration, technology must be repatterned according to the Purified Intellect (al-ʿaql al-muzakkā) found in the prophet, the messenger, and the saint—that is, the station of the perfect human (al-insān al-kāmil). The essay concludes by suggesting a conceptual shift in the mathematical foundations of computer engineering. The author challenges the sufficiency of binary logic (the zero and the one), urging a move toward a ternary system modeled on the structure of the Basmala—zero, one, and the dividing isthmus (barzakh) between them. In doing so, he calls for a re-examination of the ontological and mathematical reality of zero as the boundary between existence and non-existence.
KEYWORDS. Artificial Intelligence; Sufism; Theory of the Word; Divine Names; gnosis (maʿrifa); the Purified Intellect; Karkariyya; ethics of technology
INTRODUCTION
When the divine gave us the opportunity to teach at some of the world’s most prestigious universities, and after witnessing their dedication to knowledge, and how they were blessed with a passion for learning without flattery or prejudgment, and following lectures at several universities, I observed that many scholars’ primary focus was on what they call “artificial intelligence.” I was asked about it multiple times and lectured on it at several universities, not from the technical aspect — as this field has its experts — but from the ethical and gnostic perspective. Through numerous lectures and meetings, I noticed confused and conflicted understandings about the meaning of intellect, knowledge, and gnosis. I also observed that what is called artificial intelligence is merely an attempt to compensate for the deficiency humans perceive in themselves and nothing more, for that which is complete needs no complement.
During a private session, fortune brought forth an expert in this field. He spoke to me as a student would to a teacher, explaining the weaknesses in artificial intelligence and the limitations they had encountered. He asked me to provide insights to solve this dilemma. He confided that the achievements of human progress are fundamentally based on the words and guidance of the People of God and what prophets and messengers have left for us, as the human mind cannot comprehend its ultimate purpose on its own because it is constrained by its sensory faculties.
When I gave him a short explanation of the solution, he was taken aback and bewildered by my words. He asked me to write down the solution in brief, hoping it might be a harbinger of good for humanity. The following pages were written in response to his request and the keenness of those who are eager to learn the essence of this art.
As I see it, humanity has once again returned to the calf of its idolatry, though this time in the form of a technology. The hope is to rely on it in a state of stagnant helplessness, until the technology becomes a god. This has been the pattern throughout the ages: people create an idol and then worship it. But over time, the idol of their polytheism transforms from a stone to a calf with a lowing sound,¹ and now to an intelligent technology they want to create and then be enslaved to, giving it the power of decision and judgment over themselves. People see this technology as mirroring the perfection they aspire to, forgetting that this perfection is rooted in the original state they were created in, which is to have comprehensive knowledge, both general and specific, through learning the science of the Names: “And He taught Adam all the Names” (Q 2:31).
Before I begin to detail this branch of knowledge, it is necessary to explain that the words and intellect of a saint cannot be comprehended by a limited intellect. When a saint speaks, he speaks from the perspective of sainthood, because the saintly aspect of his humanity is for communication, and the human aspect of his sainthood is for witnessing.
When a saint communicates through writing, his words come from the niche of sainthood. A saint only expresses meanings that language is capable of conveying and ink is able to inscribe. As for divine secrets and higher gnosis, they cannot be found in books, for the ink of divine proximity and the pen of divine success only inscribe them in the hearts that the divine has permitted to be elevated.² Such hearts view themselves as unworthy of anything, so the divine has chosen them, and they have attained knowledge through ignorance, ascension through descent, and elevation through humility.
When we, the people of sainthood, express ourselves, if our speech is conveyed through language, then know that we have eased it into the shade. We offer it so you may perceive Separation, and we draw it back toward us slightly so you may recognize Union. Otherwise, what is the benefit if you do not understand the meaning of our words, their intent, and their purpose?
Here I extend the shade of reality to the bearers of knowledge so that they can become acquainted with how gnosis descends, and what it means to be a Knower of God, but in a new light characterized by a simplicity of expression. Most of what has been written by the People of God has not been understood; its meanings have not been grasped because the readers are blind and the writers are sighted. How can the blind understand other than by gauging meaning through the sensory and the absolute through the restricted? Thus, their understanding is askew, and no meaning becomes clear in their mind, which is limited by the boundaries established by cosmic wisdom. Therefore, they end up in one of two states: either they deny the words of the People of God, or they misunderstand and perceive what was not intended to be understood, yielding no benefit.
REFERENCES.