The Religion of Abraham: Sufi Perspectives on the Abrahamic Reality

Abstract

This essay examines the Quranic narratives of Abraham as interpreted by Ibn al-ʿArabī and his followers. Ibn al-ʿArabī was keen to identify the essential reality of the prophets in his famous work Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam. While in the Fuṣūṣ, Ibn al-ʿArabī focuses on his epithet al-khalīl (intimate friend) and his relation to the affirmative attributes of God, the Abrahamic reality is further gleaned from the ways in which the Quran describes his spiritual trajectory. This central prophet of the three major world religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is at once an iconoclast and the paragon of divine unity (tawḥīd), but also represents true religion, life, light, the divine names of origination and the intellect.