Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic Theology, Philosophy, and Cosmology.

• Author: Druart, Therese-Anne

This book attempts to trace the evolution of the conception of God in Islamic philosophy broadly understood, since it includes not only al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and Ibn Sina but also Isma ili thinkers, as well as al-Suhrawardi and Ibn Arabi. Yet, as the author did not intend to present a full and exhaustive study, he felt free to leave aside al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd.

The method of analysis or, more exactly, "the theoretical approach used in this book is based upon a series of insights derived from the twin disciplines of structuralism and semiotics" (p. 17). Those insights highlight a basic theme of progressive alienation of Islamic philosophical thought from what Netton calls the "Quranic Creator Paradigm." This paradigm presents a God characterized in four ways: God creates ex nihilo; acts in historical time; guides His people in such time; and can in some way be known indirectly by His creation. These four traits underline the immanent aspect of God as portrayed in the Quran - even if the Quran also includes a transcendent aspect - and the aim of the book is to show how medieval Islamic philosophy progressively distanced itself from this immanence. The analysis of each thinker's theology focuses on its structure and semiotics. Their language of transcendence is deemed to mirror the gradual intellectual, theological, and linguistic alienation from the Quranic creator paradigm, which leads to a conception of God as an utterly remote unknowable God who does not even create (p. 27). For, "where creation ex nihilo was the principal motor of the Quranic God, Neoplatonic emanation was that of the transcendent and alien God of the Islamic philosophers" (p. 27).

In his concluding chapter Netton adumbrates a theory of semiotics for Islamic theology, be it medieval or modern, which can be pursued in four distinct ways: the way of the Ulama, i.e., the "bila kayf"; the way of unknowing espoused by both the Islamic Neoplatonists and the Islamic proponents of the via negativa; the way of the mystic which signals the utter unity of being by dissolving all language; and finally, a way not present in medieval Islam, the way of the deconstructionist. Netton concludes that "the stress on transcendence among some thinkers in Medieval Islam, if pursued to its ultimate point . . . leads inexorably to the `death' of the word `God"' (p. 332).

As one...