Seyyed Hossein Nasr
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Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Iranian-born Shi'a philosopher and renowned scholar of Islam, for his view of ecology, comparative religion and sufism. Like Thomas Berry the Catholic scholar of "reconciliation with creation", Nasr sees the emergence of khalifa focused strictly on the natural world and the furtherance of biodiversity to create a Garden of Eden-like planet, as a convergence of scientific, aesthetic, and religious views of human destiny.
Traditional Muslim notions of stewardship, haram, hima are seen in his work as fundamental, and records of sira and hadith ("sunnah") the derivatives of a general ethics of pure stewardship.
He is the author of many works on Islamic science and religion and the environment including:
- An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines ISBN 0791415163
- Science and Civilization in Islam ISBN 1930637152
- Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study ISBN 1567443125
- Man and Nature ISBN 1871031656
- Religion and the Order of Nature ISBN 0195102746
- The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity ISBN 0060099240
- Ideals and Realities of Islam
Professor Nasr was a student of Allameh Tabatabaei, a Shi'ite icon of the 20th century. He received his PhD from Harvard after receiving his degree in Physics from MIT. In the 1970s, Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran appointed professor Nasr as head of the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy: the first academic instituton to be conducted in accordance with the intellectual principles of the Traditionalist School. This experiment ended with the arrival of the fundamentalist Islamic Revolution.
Nasr is currently a faculty member at The George Washington University.
See also
External links
- The Seyyed Hossein Nasr Foundation (http://www.nasr.org/)
- Islam and ecology - Nasr (http://www.crosscurrents.org/islamecology.htm)
- short biography of Nasr (http://www.gwu.edu/~religion/nasr.htm)
- Nasr on PBS (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week623/feature.html#)
- George Washington University commemorating Nasr (http://www.beaconofknowledge.com/)