Glossary

A customary or empirical judgment: affirming a connection between things based on repeated occurrence, while allowing exceptions and denying that either thing independently causes the other.

Compare: Similar to empirical generalization in philosophy of science, but with a stronger theological denial of intrinsic causal power.

Rational: based on reason or intellect.

Compare: Rational or a priori reasoning, depending on context.

A rational judgment: affirming or negating something without relying on repeated experience or convention.

Compare: Comparable to judgments of pure reason or modal logic: necessary, impossible, and possible.

Accident or attribute: something that inheres in a substance and does not subsist independently.

Compare: Comparable to accident in Aristotelian metaphysics.

Accidents: entities or attributes that need both a locus and a specifier, meaning they subsist in something else and are contingent.

Compare: Directly comparable to accidents in Aristotelian metaphysics: properties that exist in a substance.

Accident: an attribute that belongs to a thing but is not essential to what it is.

Compare: Porphyry’s accident.

Common property: a non-essential property shared with other species, such as walking for humans.

Compare: Porphyry’s accident.

Non-essential or extrinsic property: something that can belong to a thing without being part of what makes it that thing.

Compare: Comparable to accidental predication, though the instructor prefers 'property' in English.

Accidental: belonging to a thing without being part of its essence.

Compare: Accidental predication.

Accident: something outside a thing’s essence that may be predicated of it.

Compare: Comparable to an accidental property in Aristotle.

Proper etiquette, discipline, and comportment in seeking and applying knowledge.

Compare: Comparable to intellectual virtue and classroom discipline in classical education.

Proper conduct, etiquette, refinement, and the inner and outer manners required for seeking and embodying knowledge.

Compare: Comparable to formation in virtue ethics, not merely etiquette.

Proper etiquette, discipline, character, and comportment; here, especially the manners of the seeker of knowledge.

Compare: Comparable to virtue ethics plus scholarly etiquette.

Allah’s customary pattern in creation, by which certain events normally accompany others.

Compare: Comparable to laws of nature, but without granting nature independent causal power.

Moral uprightness or integrity required of a reliable transmitter.

Compare: Credibility or moral trustworthiness of a witness.

The denial that created things independently produce effects in one another.

Compare: Related to occasionalism, especially the denial of secondary causal necessity.

The study or expression of beauty; the instructor emphasized that a community’s aesthetics and architecture reveal its worldview.

Compare: A branch of philosophy concerned with beauty and artistic judgment.

Voluntary actions of animate beings; the topic of the second premise concerning divine action and human action.

Compare: Comparable to debates on free will and agency.

The actions of morally responsible persons, which are the subject matter of legal rulings.

Compare: Comparable to legally relevant human acts in jurisprudence.

A positive judgement joining one thing to another, such as “the worlds are incipient.”

Compare: An affirmative proposition in traditional logic.

Legal rulings: determinations of how actions are classified and practiced in the Shari'ah.

Compare: Comparable to legal norms or rulings.

Legal rulings or classifications of actions, such as obligatory, forbidden, disliked, recommended, and permissible.

Compare: Comparable to normative categories in ethics, but grounded in revelation.

The people of remembrance: those who embody and preserve sacred knowledge and should be asked when one does not know.

Compare: Comparable to authoritative living experts, but with spiritual embodiment as well as expertise.

People who did not receive a reliable transmission of the prophetic message; in the discussed Ash'ari view, they are generally treated as excused.

Compare: Comparable to inculpable ignorance in moral theology.

People who did not receive the true message, or received only a distorted version of it, and are therefore not judged like those who knowingly reject it.

Compare: The problem of the unevangelized in theology, though with Islamic categories.

A group of economically poor Companions who spent much time in the Prophet’s mosque learning and serving.

Compare: Comparable to a dedicated residential circle of students around a master.

The Sunni orthodox position in this text: all actions are brought into existence by Allah’s pre-eternal power alone, while voluntary actions are accompanied by a created power that has no causal effect.

Compare: An attempt to preserve both divine omnipotence and meaningful human responsibility, unlike simple determinism or autonomous causation.

The mainstream Sunni theological community; here, the position that Allah creates all acts while humans acquire voluntary acts.

The people of the Sunnah; the mainstream Sunni community that follows the Prophet's way as transmitted through the scholarly tradition.

Compare: Comparable to a broad orthodoxy, though defined through Islamic sources, scholarship, and communal transmission.

The more precautionary religious position when more than one valid opinion exists.

Compare: Similar to choosing the safer legal or ethical course when uncertainty remains.

Bodies or corporeal entities: things that need a specifier but not a locus.

Compare: Comparable to substances or physical bodies in classical metaphysics.

Character traits and moral conduct, such as humility, gratitude, honesty, and restraint.

Compare: Comparable to virtue ethics.

Simple conversion: reversing the subject and predicate of a proposition while preserving truth and quality, with specified rules.

Compare: Conversion in Aristotelian logic.

The absolutely independent One who has no need of anything.

Compare: Aseity: divine self-sufficiency.

The maxim that judging something is dependent on first properly conceptualizing it.

Compare: Comparable to the principle that critique requires accurate understanding of the object being critiqued.

A Qur'anic term in Surat al-Kawthar; the instructor notes that prophetic teaching identifies it as a river in Paradise.

Meanings precede forms; words are vehicles for meanings, not the creators of meaning.

Compare: A realist view of meaning over linguistic constructivism.

The explanatory statement by which a term’s meaning is clarified for the listener.

Compare: A definitional or explanatory account.

Al-Akhdari’s beginner didactic poem in logic, described as a ladder into the discipline.

Compare: A versified introductory logic manual.

A rule-governed instrument; the famous definition describes logic as a tool whose rules protect thought from error when observed.

Compare: Comparable to a formal method or normative rule-system for reasoning.

The world or created order; related to the idea of a sign that points to Allah.

Compare: Comparable to creation as a book of signs.

The created world or cosmos, especially the material world studied through observation.

Compare: Comparable to the natural world in philosophy of nature.

Praise with veneration directed to one deserving it; in its fullest sense, all perfect praise belongs to Allah.

Allah knows best; said when acknowledging the limit of one’s knowledge.

Compare: Comparable to epistemic humility, especially in theology.

Action or practice; the purpose for which religious knowledge is sought.

Compare: Similar to praxis: knowledge embodied in action.

Trustworthiness: guarding all outward and inward limbs from anything prohibited, whether strictly forbidden or disliked.

Compare: A moral virtue involving integrity and self-restraint.

Leader or commander; in the early succession discussion, the political leader of the Muslim community.

Compare: Comparable to a ruler, governor, or executive leader.

A command issued from a superior to an inferior in rank or authority.

Compare: Imperative command based on authority.

A relational or اعتبار-based matter discerned by the mind, not an independently existing external thing.

Compare: A relational property, such as “being above” or “being next to.”

The Helpers: the Muslims of Medina who supported and hosted the Prophet ﷺ and the Makkan emigrants.

In this lesson, the worldview category concerning what a human being is, where human beings come from, and how human life is understood.

Compare: Broader than modern social anthropology; closer to philosophical anthropology.

Creed or doctrine: what Muslims affirm about Allah, prophecy, revelation, and ultimate realities.

Compare: Comparable to systematic theology or doctrine.

Creed or belief system; the Islamic answers to ultimate questions about God, existence, and destiny.

Compare: Theology or metaphysics, especially concerning first principles.

Creed or belief: what a Muslim holds to be true about Allah, prophethood, revelation, the unseen, and related matters.

Compare: Similar to creed or doctrinal theology.

Creed or binding belief; the core doctrines a Muslim holds about Allah, prophethood, revelation, and the unseen.

Compare: Comparable to doctrine or creed in theology.

Possessing rational capacity; a condition for full taklif.

Compare: Competence or rational agency in law and ethics.

Intellect or reason; the faculty by which the mind grasps necessary truths, meanings, and arguments.

Compare: Comparable to reason in epistemology and logic.

Intellect; the rational faculty or stable disposition by which humans understand and reason.

Compare: Intellect or rational faculty, though framed differently from modern brain-based accounts.

Intellect or reason; the faculty by which a person discerns truth from falsehood and becomes morally accountable.

Compare: Reason, especially as a faculty for rational judgment.

The interpretive rules for understanding Arabic texts, especially the Qur’an and hadith, including literal and figurative meaning, general and specific language, and explicit and implied meanings.

Compare: Comparable to biblical hermeneutics or philological interpretation of authoritative texts.

A common non-essential property that belongs to a thing and also to others, such as movement by will shared by humans and many animals.

Compare: A common accident or non-essential predicate.

Occasions or circumstances connected to the revelation of particular Qur'anic verses.

Compare: Similar to historical context in textual interpretation, though not limiting the text to that context.

A major Sunni theological school associated with Imam Abu al-Hasan al-Ash‘ari, followed by Imam al-Sanusi.

Compare: A theological school or tradition, like Thomism within Catholic theology, though with different doctrines and methods.

A major Sunni school of theology associated with Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari. It uses rational argument to affirm Sunni beliefs about God, prophecy, and the unseen.

Compare: Comparable to a scholastic theological school with defined doctrines and methods.

A foundation, basis, or root in the Sharia that can justify a practice or ruling.

Compare: Similar to a legal principle or precedent.

The period of early Arabic whose speech is treated as authoritative evidence for classical language usage.

Compare: Similar to using a classical corpus as linguistic evidence in philology.

The period and setting in which native Arabic usage was considered authoritative proof for language, especially among pristine Arab tribes.

Compare: Similar to using a classical corpus as authoritative evidence for grammar and semantics.

Knowledge in the form of affirming or denying a relation; in the slides it is linked to judgement.

Compare: Comparable to propositional judgement, where one assents to a statement as true or false.

A confident but non-certain judgement; the slide represents it as stronger than doubt but weaker than certainty.

Compare: Similar to probable belief rather than demonstrative knowledge.

Probable rather than definitive. The slides apply it to both text/transmission and interpretation/meaning.

Compare: Comparable to probabilistic evidence or non-conclusive interpretation.

Self-evident first principles: truths known immediately without proof.

Compare: Axioms or first principles.

First principles; immediately known rational truths.

Compare: Axioms or self-evident first principles.

The study of values, including moral good, moral evil, and what is considered valuable.

Compare: Comparable to moral philosophy and value theory.

Firm resolve and determination to act without turning back.

Compare: Comparable to disciplined will or resolve.

The deeper motive that actually drives an action, even beneath one’s stated intention.

Compare: Comparable to underlying motivation in moral psychology.

Arabic rhetoric, the study of eloquence, figurative usage, emphasis, and persuasive expression.

Compare: Comparable to rhetoric in Aristotle, but tied to Qur'anic expression.

Arabic rhetoric: the study of eloquence, figurative expression, metaphor, simile, and effective language.

Compare: Comparable to rhetoric and poetics in the classical Western tradition.

Everlastingness or eternal subsistence: the divine attribute that God has no end.

Compare: Comparable to divine eternity or everlastingness.

An elegant opening that subtly indicates the subject and purpose of the text.

Compare: Comparable to literary foreshadowing.

Sight: treated like hearing as a pre-eternal divine attribute by which existing things are disclosed.

Compare: Unlike physical vision, it is not optical perception through bodily organs.

Inner sight or spiritual insight that lets a person see the reality of dunya and Akhira clearly.

Compare: Comparable to spiritual discernment, not merely intellectual knowledge.

Simple or non-composite; the instructor clarifies that this is not what mufrad means in the verse.

Compare: Metaphysical simplicity.

Saying Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, 'In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful.'

The phrase “Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim,” meaning “In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful.”

Compare: A formal invocation at the beginning of sacred or scholarly work.

Pledge of allegiance given to a recognized leader.

Compare: Comparable to a public oath of allegiance, though with Islamic communal and legal meanings.

Innovation in religious matters, often treated negatively when it corrupts established belief or practice.

Compare: Comparable to unauthorized doctrinal or liturgical innovation, though the Islamic discussions have their own categories.

Religious innovation. In this text it appears as a blameworthy doctrinal deviation with identifiable roots.

Compare: Comparable to heresy or unauthorized doctrinal innovation, though Islamic classifications differ.

An introduced matter in religion; the lecture raises the question of whether all innovations are blameworthy or whether details and qualifications are needed.

Compare: Comparable to debates over innovation and tradition in religious reform.

Innovation; technically, a newly introduced religious belief or practice that departs from the established teachings of Islam, unless it has a valid foundation.

Compare: Comparable to doctrinal or liturgical innovation, though Islamic law gives it precise categories.

A good innovation: a new form or arrangement that has a valid basis in the Sharia and serves a legitimate religious purpose.

Compare: Like a legitimate institutional development within a tradition.

A blameworthy innovation: a religious belief or practice with no valid foundation, or one assigned a false legal ruling.

Compare: Comparable to an illegitimate doctrinal or ritual addition.

Religious innovation; in this lecture, especially misusing verses or hadiths to justify an agenda outside proper methodology.

Compare: Comparable to an illegitimate doctrinal or methodological novelty.

The message of Islam reaching a person in a reliable enough way for moral responsibility to apply.

Compare: Adequate notice of a binding claim.

The true message of Islam reaching a person in a reliable way.

Compare: Receiving sufficient notice or reliable testimony of a truth-claim.

Demonstrative proof. Al-Dardir accepts rational proof as a route to certainty about God.

Compare: Comparable to demonstration in Aristotelian logic.

Demonstration: the highest kind of argument, composed of premises that yield certainty.

Compare: Aristotelian demonstrative proof.

A state based on certain evidence that corresponds to reality.

Compare: Comparable to epistemic certainty: a belief held with conclusive warrant.

Grasping a concept without yet affirming or denying anything about it, such as understanding “tree” or “black.”

Compare: Comparable to simple apprehension in Aristotelian logic: understanding a term before making a proposition.

Something whose absence prevents an act from taking effect, while its presence alone does not necessarily make the act take effect or not. Example: meeting the nisab for zakah.

Compare: Comparable to a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition.

The worldview category dealing with the universe: what it is, what it is made of, and how it is ordered.

Compare: Comparable to cosmology in philosophy and science, though here tied to worldview.

The signifier: the thing that indicates or points to something else.

Compare: Signifier in semiotics.

The signifier: the thing that points to or indicates a meaning.

Compare: Comparable to the signifier in semiotics.

Signification: the way a word, sign, or indicator points to a meaning.

Compare: Similar to signification in semantics or semiotics.

Signification: the way a word points to or indicates a meaning.

Compare: Comparable to semantic reference or signification.

Signification; the way a sign, word, or indication points to a meaning.

Compare: Semiotics: the study of signs and meanings.

Conventional signification; a word indicating a meaning because of established linguistic convention.

Compare: Conventional meaning in philosophy of language.

Necessary implication: a term points to something that follows necessarily from its meaning, though it is not part of the term’s direct meaning.

Compare: Similar to logical entailment or necessary implication.

Complete correspondence: a term points to the whole meaning intended by it.

Compare: Roughly like a term’s full denotation in a given convention.

Complete correspondence: a word signifying the whole meaning for which it was coined.

Compare: Like a term referring to its full intension or complete meaning.

Partial inclusion: a term points to only part of the meaning of a thing.

Compare: Comparable to referring to one component of a definition rather than the whole definiendum.

Evidence or proof that points toward what one is trying to establish.

Compare: Argumentative evidence or proof.

The proof from mutual prevention: if there were multiple gods, their wills would conflict or one would limit the other, showing they are not truly divine.

Compare: A modal argument against multiple omnipotent necessary beings.

A legal maxim meaning harm is to be removed; rulings are not meant to impose unjustified harm.

Compare: Comparable to harm principles in legal reasoning, but grounded in Shariah maxims.

Mood: the specific pattern of propositions in a syllogism, especially with respect to quantity and quality.

Compare: Syllogistic mood, such as Barbara or Celarent in the Latin tradition.

Necessity or hardship that can allow an exceptional legal allowance in specific circumstances.

Compare: Similar to necessity doctrines in law, where exceptional circumstances affect rulings.

Self-evident or necessary knowledge that does not require proof.

Compare: Comparable to axiomatic or immediately evident knowledge.

Immediate or necessary knowledge that does not require reflection or argument.

Compare: Self-evident or immediately known knowledge.

Self-evident or immediately known without needing an argument.

Compare: Axiomatic or properly basic knowledge.

Circularity: reasoning in which something ultimately depends on itself.

Compare: Circular reasoning.

One's religion and way of life; here, Islam as something to be lived, learned, and transmitted.

Compare: Closer to a total way of life than to modern 'religion' as a private belief system.

The religion as a complete way of life, including belief, worship, ethics, law, and spiritual orientation.

Compare: Broader than the modern word 'religion'; closer to a whole life-orienting order.

Religion or the complete way of life oriented around submission to Allah, including belief, worship, law, ethics, and spiritual refinement.

Compare: Broader than the modern Western category of 'religion' as private belief.

The principle that, by default, things are considered permissible unless there is evidence indicating otherwise.

Compare: Comparable to a presumption of liberty in legal reasoning.

Certain or conclusive. The slides apply it to both text/transmission and interpretation/meaning.

Compare: Comparable to conclusive evidence or unambiguous proof.

The belief that God exists and initiated the world but does not actively govern daily affairs through revelation and providence in the way affirmed by revealed religion.

Compare: Common in some Enlightenment-era Western thought.

Precision and reliability in preserving and transmitting reports accurately.

Compare: Technical competence or accuracy in scholarly reporting.

Essence: what belongs to a thing in itself, rather than as an external attribute.

Compare: Comparable to essence in Aristotelian metaphysics.

Essential or intrinsic: something belonging to what a thing is, such that removing it would undermine the thing’s identity.

Compare: Comparable to essential predication in Aristotelian logic.

Essential: belonging to what a thing is in itself.

Compare: Essential predication.

Tasting: direct experiential spiritual knowledge, as opposed to merely theoretical knowledge.

Compare: Comparable to experiential knowledge in mysticism, as distinct from abstract knowledge.

Remembrance of Allah; the instructor describes learning and mutual reminder as a form of dhikr.

Compare: Not merely memory, but devotional recollection.

The religion as revealed and taught by Allah and His Messenger ﷺ; not identical to every individual’s way of practicing it.

Compare: Roughly the revealed tradition itself, as distinct from its imperfect social expressions.

The firm, simple, unwavering faith associated with ordinary believers, such as a grandmother, even if they cannot articulate formal proofs.

Compare: Comparable to non-technical but deeply held religious certainty.

A legal ruling where one is rewarded for leaving the act but not punished for doing it, such as reciting Qur'an in formal prayer while bowing or prostrating.

Compare: Comparable to a discouraged but not strictly prohibited action.

Necessary or self-evident foundational truths that allow debate and reasoning to begin.

Compare: Comparable to first principles or axioms in philosophy and logic.

A weak or unlikely belief, represented in the slide as 25%.

Compare: A low-probability belief or weak supposition.

A request or supplication made from a lower rank to a higher rank.

Compare: Petition or supplication.

Self-evident or necessary knowledge; something known immediately without needing proof.

Compare: Basic or properly basic knowledge in epistemology.

A judgement based on observed custom or repeated experience, such as a treatment being associated with an illness, or fire burning.

Compare: Comparable to inductive or empirical knowledge in philosophy of science, though the slide denies independent causal efficacy between phenomena.

The observed link between two phenomena in existence or non-existence, known through repetition, while allowing that the link may fail and denying that one phenomenon independently affects the other.

Compare: Comparable to regularity theories of causation, but framed theologically to avoid attributing independent causal power to created things.

An approach to knowledge emphasizing observation and sense experience.

Compare: Associated in Western philosophy with thinkers like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, though the instructor discussed it historically rather than textually.

A legal ruling where one is rewarded for doing the act but not punished for leaving it, such as supererogatory prayers.

Compare: Comparable to a recommended but non-obligatory good action.

The study of knowledge: how we know, what counts as knowledge, and what our sources of knowledge are.

Compare: A central field in Western philosophy.

The study of knowledge: how we know what we know and what counts as knowledge.

Compare: A central field in Western philosophy dealing with justification, belief, and truth.

The study of how one ought to live and act once one understands reality and knowledge.

Compare: Comparable to moral philosophy and virtue ethics.

One of the four empirical links: an observed relation between a present customary cause and a present customary effect, such as eating food and being full.

Compare: Comparable to observing a positive correlation between two events.

One of the four empirical links: a relation between a present customary cause and an absent customary effect, such as hunger pangs and not eating food.

Compare: Comparable to cases where an expected outcome is absent despite a relevant condition being present.

Acting or doing; used in the lecture for Allah’s divine doing, unlike kasp which is used for creatures.

The philosophers; often in Islamic scholarly usage this refers specifically to Peripatetic philosophers rather than anyone who uses reason.

Compare: Comparable to the Aristotelian or Peripatetic philosophical tradition.

Philosophy; in this discussion, a broader worldview-building program that investigates existence, soul, causation, eternity, and similar questions.

Compare: Comparable to metaphysics and philosophy as a comprehensive rational system.

Obligatory; in the Maliki school generally equivalent to wajib, except for certain technical discussions such as in Hajj.

Compare: A binding duty.

An individual obligation required of every morally responsible Muslim when relevant to their life.

Compare: Comparable to a personal duty.

A personally obligatory duty or knowledge required of every accountable Muslim.

Compare: Comparable to a universal obligation binding each individual.

A communal obligation: if enough people fulfill it, the rest are absolved; if no one does, all share blame.

Compare: Comparable to a collective civic or professional duty.

A communal obligation: if enough people fulfill it, the rest are not sinful; studying purified logic may serve this role for protecting the community from confusion.

Compare: Comparable to a necessary public function or communal duty.

Dispersion, split attention, and inward distraction.

Compare: Comparable to fragmentation of attention.

Eloquent or classically correct Arabic, especially language that can clarify Qur'anic meanings.

Compare: Comparable to a recognized classical standard of literary language.

A grave sinner. The text applies this to someone who says causes have effect through a power Allah placed in them, while also calling such a person a religious innovator.

Compare: A person morally or religiously culpable while not necessarily outside the faith.

Differentia: the distinguishing essential feature that differentiates one species within a genus, such as rationality for the human in the classical model.

Compare: Porphyry’s differentia.

Differentia: the essential feature that distinguishes a species within its genus.

Compare: Specific difference in Aristotelian definition.

The specific difference that distinguishes a species within a genus, such as rationality for humans.

Compare: Porphyry's differentia.

A juristic answer to a practical question, based on the Qur’an, Sunnah, and scholarly method.

Compare: Somewhat like a legal opinion, though religiously grounded and not identical to a court ruling.

A non-binding legal answer given by a qualified scholar in response to a particular question and context.

Compare: Somewhat like a legal opinion, though religious and not identical to court judgment.

A scholarly legal answer to a specific religious question or situation.

Compare: Comparable to a legal opinion, though rooted in sacred law.

Act or action; in the final discussion, it is contrasted with kasb when used for bringing something into existence.

Compare: Action or efficient production, depending on context.

Thought; the movement of the soul through intelligible meanings, moving from what is known to what is unknown.

Compare: Discursive reasoning or intellectual reflection.

The intellect’s movement through intelligible meanings; reflective thinking or reasoning.

Compare: Discursive reasoning or conceptual thought.

Reflection or ordered thinking by which the mind seeks knowledge.

Compare: Similar to reasoning or reflective thought in epistemology.

Originally understanding in general; technically, the science of practical rulings connected to human actions.

Compare: Comparable to applied sacred law or practical jurisprudence.

Jurisprudence: the disciplined understanding of practical rulings from the Qur’an, Sunnah, and legal methodology.

Compare: Comparable to sacred law and jurisprudence.

The science of understanding practical rulings for worship, transactions, family law, and other actions.

Compare: Comparable to jurisprudence, though rooted in revelation.

The saved group mentioned in discussions of sects; each group may claim it, but the claim must be substantiated by fidelity to the Prophet ﷺ and his community.

Grave sinfulness or immorality that violates the Shariah but does not necessarily remove a person from Islam.

Compare: Comparable to serious moral or religious disobedience short of apostasy.

Trial, turmoil, or civil strife; often used for internal conflict within the Muslim community.

Compare: Comparable to civil discord or crisis.

The original human disposition that naturally recognizes Allah and inclines toward truth.

Compare: Comparable loosely to natural moral or religious intuition.

The innate natural disposition with which human beings are created, including a basic orientation toward truth and goodness.

Compare: Comparable to natural moral intuition, though grounded in Islamic anthropology.

Jurists: scholars trained in understanding practical rulings of Islamic law.

Compare: Comparable to legal scholars, though their law is rooted in revelation and juristic method.

Eloquent, formal, or classical Arabic; in this context, the high Arabic closest to the language of revelation.

Compare: Comparable to classical Greek or Latin as a normative language standard.

A legal ruling where acting and not acting are both permitted, with no preference given to either side, such as marriage or commerce in the examples given.

Compare: Comparable to legally indifferent or permitted actions.

The problem raised by Edmund Gettier that someone can have a justified true belief but still not seem to have knowledge, because the justification may be true only by accident or may rest on a false reason.

Compare: A major twentieth-century challenge in analytic epistemology.

Heedlessness or forgetfulness of Allah and tawhid, leading one to overvalue creation.

Compare: Comparable to spiritual inattentiveness or forgetfulness of first principles.

The principle that the goal or fruit of knowledge is action and practice.

Compare: Comparable to practical wisdom in Aristotelian ethics, where knowledge should shape virtuous action.

Non-definitive; used for a command that indicates recommendation or discouragement rather than strict obligation or prohibition.

Compare: A non-mandatory norm or advisory rule.

A definition that aims to give the essential meaning of a thing.

Compare: Similar to an essential definition in Aristotelian logic.

A definition; in the ten foundations, the first question is the definition of the science itself.

Compare: Comparable to defining a field’s scope and essence.

A formal definition that aims to capture the essence of the thing being defined.

Compare: Aristotelian essential definition by genus and difference.

Major term: the term that appears in the major premise and in the conclusion as predicate in the standard arrangement.

Compare: Major term of a categorical syllogism.

Minor term: the term that is included and appears in the conclusion as the subject in the standard arrangement.

Compare: Minor term of a categorical syllogism.

Middle term: the term shared by the two premises but omitted from the conclusion.

Compare: Middle term in a syllogism.

An incomplete formal definition, such as using only the specific difference or using a remote genus with the difference.

Compare: Partial essential definition.

A complete formal definition, using the proximate genus and proximate specific difference.

Compare: Full essential definition.

A transmitted report, usually with chain and text, that conveys something from or about the Prophet ﷺ.

Compare: A formally transmitted report with source criticism.

Contingent or originated; something that depends on another and is not eternal.

Compare: Contingent being in metaphysics.

Reports of the Prophet Muhammad’s words, actions, approvals, and qualities. Hadith is a primary source for law, theology, ethics, and spirituality.

Compare: Comparable to transmitted reports about a founding religious figure, but with highly developed chains of transmission.

The famous report in which the angel Jibril asks the Prophet ﷺ about Islam, Iman, Ihsan, and the signs of the Hour; used here as the organizing framework for the Islamic sciences.

Compare: Comparable to a foundational curriculum map that defines the major branches of a discipline.

A sacred hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ reports words from Allah, but it is not Qur'an and is not recited in prayer as Qur'an.

Intuitive judgments: truths grasped by a kind of quick intellectual intuition.

Compare: Comparable to intuitive insight, though in a technical logical sense.

Praising Allah by saying alhamdulillah, 'all praise is due to Allah.'

The phrase of praise, especially “al-hamdu lillah,” meaning “all praise belongs to Allah.”

Categorical proposition: a proposition that directly predicates something of a subject.

Compare: Aristotelian categorical proposition, such as “Every human is mortal.”

A categorical proposition that predicates one term of another, affirmatively or negatively.

Compare: Subject-predicate proposition.

Ultimate spiritual reality. In the shari‘a-ṭariqa-haqiqa paradigm, it refers to the deeper truth realized through lawful spiritual wayfaring.

Compare: Comparable to metaphysical or mystical realization of ultimate reality.

Literal or real usage, as opposed to figurative or allegorical usage.

Compare: Comparable to literal meaning in semantics.

Truth, reality, and rightness; that which corresponds to what is truly the case and what Allah has revealed.

Compare: Comparable to truth as both metaphysical reality and moral right.

Forbidden or impermissible according to Sacred Law.

Compare: Legally prohibited.

A gloss or supercommentary, often commenting on a commentary and clarifying technical details or disputes.

Compare: Comparable to marginal scholastic notes or layered commentarial literature.

Filler: unnecessary words or content that do not benefit the listener.

Compare: Comparable to padding in writing or empty rhetoric.

Caprice, whim, or desire that guides judgment when not disciplined by revelation and sound knowledge.

Compare: Comparable to unchecked passion or subjective preference overriding reason.

Stubborn whim or self-willed desire that inclines a person away from truth.

Compare: Comparable to disordered appetite or bias overriding reason.

Life: an attribute that makes it valid for the one in whom it subsists to be described with perception or cognition.

Compare: A metaphysical condition for awareness or cognition.

Intellect; one of the Arabic terms used for the human capacity to grasp meanings and reason.

Compare: Intellect or rational faculty.

Emigration; here explained not only as historical migration to Madinah but also as leaving sin and moving toward Allah and His Messenger ﷺ.

Compare: More than relocation; closer to moral and spiritual conversion of life.

The Prophet’s migration from Mecca to Medina, marking a major shift in the Muslim community’s context.

Compare: A founding migration that marks a new communal and legal order.

Sense perception; one of the routes to immediate knowledge.

Compare: Empirical perception.

A proof or argument used especially in debate against an opponent.

Compare: A formal argument or disputational proof.

Proof or argument by which one arrives at tasdiq, assent to a judgment.

Compare: Comparable to an argument or proof in logic.

Proof, argument, or demonstration by which one reaches or establishes tasdiq.

Compare: Argument or demonstration.

A judgment or ruling; in logic, affirming or denying something of something else.

Compare: Comparable to judgment in Aristotelian logic, especially when forming propositions.

The judgment made in a proposition, such as affirming or denying that one concept applies to another.

Compare: Predicative judgment.

A judgment: affirming or denying something of something else, such as “X is Y” or “X is not Y.”

Compare: Comparable to judgment in epistemology and logic.

A customary or empirical judgment known through repeated observation of patterns in created things.

Compare: Empirical generalization or scientific observation.

A customary or empirical judgment known through repeated observation of patterns in creation.

Compare: Similar to empirical generalizations in the philosophy of science.

A customary judgment based on repeated patterns in creation, such as fire burning or medicine helping, while Allah creates the effect.

Compare: Comparable to empirical regularity in philosophy of science, but theologically grounded in divine creation.

A judgment known by the intellect itself, such as the impossibility of contradiction.

Compare: Comparable to necessary rational truths like the law of non-contradiction.

A rational judgment known by the intellect itself without needing revelation or repeated observation.

Compare: A priori rational judgment.

A rational judgment known by the intellect, not by legal stipulation or repeated observation.

Compare: Comparable to a priori judgment in epistemology.

A ruling known through revelation and the Shariah, such as the details of worship or the unseen.

Compare: Comparable to a revealed religious norm rather than a purely rational principle.

A ruling in Islamic law, such as whether studying a discipline is permissible, recommended, or forbidden.

Compare: A normative legal or moral classification.

A legal judgment in Sacred Law: Allah’s address connected to the actions of morally responsible people.

Compare: Comparable to a binding legal norm, but grounded in divine authority rather than a human legislature.

A revealed/legal judgment known through Allah’s address, such as the obligation of prayer or the prohibition of theft.

Compare: Positive divine law or revealed norm.

A legal ruling in which the Lawgiver places a sign, condition, or preventative connected to a legal ruling.

Compare: Similar to institutional rules where certain triggers activate legal consequences.

A legal or evaluative ruling; in this lecture, the ruling on studying logic is discussed as impermissible, obligatory, or permissible depending on the view and context.

Compare: Comparable to a normative legal classification.

A customary judgment based on observed regular patterns in creation; the instructor connects it to how the natural world is studied.

Compare: Comparable to empirical generalization or scientific regularity, not logical necessity.

A rational judgment concerning what the intellect judges as necessary, impossible, or possible.

Compare: Comparable to modal reasoning about necessity and impossibility.

A revealed legal or religious judgment known through the Sacred Law.

Compare: Comparable to a norm derived from revealed law rather than pure reason or empirical observation.

The disconnected letters that appear at the beginning of some Qur'anic chapters, such as Alif Lam Mim; their ultimate meaning is known to Allah.

Compare: No exact parallel; perhaps analogous to scriptural mysteries whose full meaning exceeds ordinary interpretation.

Goodness, beauty, or moral praiseworthiness; used in different senses, including pleasure, perfection, and legally rewarded acts.

Compare: The good or morally positive.

Acquisition or obtaining of a concept or knowledge in the mind.

Compare: Related to theories of concept acquisition.

The system of Arabic case endings and final vowel changes that affect meaning in a sentence.

Compare: Similar to case endings in Latin or Greek, though expressed through Arabic vowel markings.

Firm belief or conviction; part of al-Razi’s formulation before being refined as firm judgment.

Compare: Certainty or settled conviction.

Devotional acts of worship, such as prayer, fasting, zakah, and Hajj; generally more fixed in form.

Compare: Ritual obligations.

Acts of worship, such as prayer and fasting, whose essential forms remain fixed.

Compare: Comparable to ritual obligations in religious law.

General authorization: the Lawgiver permits both doing and leaving an act without preferring either.

Compare: Comparable to legal permission or liberty.

Permissibility: the Sacred Law permits both doing and leaving an act, without preferring one over the other.

Compare: A legally neutral option in deontic logic.

Cognition or perception; the mind’s apprehension of something.

Compare: Cognition or apprehension.

Perception or cognition. The text mentions it as an attribute affirmed according to one view and likens it to hearing and sight.

Compare: Comparable to perception or awareness.

A state not based on certain evidence and not corresponding to reality.

Compare: In epistemology, this would be a failure of knowledge because truth and/or justification is absent.

A broad encompassing awareness of why one studies, what one studies, and how one should approach it.

Compare: Similar to having an orientation map of a discipline before specializing.

Spiritual excellence: worshipping Allah as though one sees Him, and knowing that even if one does not see Him, He sees the servant.

Compare: Comparable to the ethical-spiritual perfection of practice, not merely correct outward performance.

Spiritual excellence: worshipping Allah with presence and purifying the self.

Compare: Comparable to spiritual perfection or contemplative virtue.

Excellence, beauty, and spiritual-ethical refinement in worship and conduct; not reducible to legal permissibility alone.

Compare: Virtue ethics or moral excellence.

Obligation: a decisive demand to perform an action, such as belief in Allah and His Messenger or the five foundations of Islam.

Compare: A strict duty in deontic logic or moral philosophy.

Affirmation: the quality of a proposition that affirms rather than negates.

Compare: Affirmative quality in categorical logic.

Concise, precise expression that conveys meaning without unnecessary words.

Compare: Comparable to rhetorical brevity or elegant concision.

Authorization from a teacher permitting a student to transmit or teach a text, discipline, or chain of narration.

Compare: Comparable to a license, degree, or certification, though often personal rather than institutional.

Scholarly consensus of the Ummah on a matter; when established, it functions as a definitive proof.

Compare: Not a council vote; closer to a cumulative and stable scholarly consensus across time.

Scholarly consensus; not a vote, but the convergence of qualified scholars on a ruling or principle.

Compare: Somewhat like consensus in a mature scientific field, though with juristic and religious authority.

Consensus of the Muslim scholarly community on a matter, treated in Sunni legal theory as a source of authoritative knowledge.

Compare: Authoritative consensus, though stronger than ordinary academic consensus.

Scholarly consensus; agreement of qualified Muslim scholars on a ruling.

Compare: Somewhat like authoritative consensus within a legal-theological tradition.

Qualified scholarly exertion to derive or determine a ruling according to recognized principles.

Compare: Comparable to disciplined legal reasoning by a trained jurist.

Independent juristic reasoning by a qualified scholar who derives legal rulings from the recognized sources and methods of Islamic law.

Compare: Comparable to high-level legal reasoning by a jurist trained in a legal tradition, not private opinion by a layperson.

Sincerity: seeking knowledge and doing deeds purely for Allah, not for status, ego, or people's praise.

Compare: Comparable to purity of intention in virtue ethics and spiritual theology.

Sincerity: doing an act for Allah and for the right reason, not for ego, envy, or status.

Compare: Related to purity of intention in virtue ethics.

Scholarly difference of opinion, especially when rooted in valid evidence and method.

Compare: Comparable to legitimate disagreement within a legal or philosophical tradition.

The branch of theology dealing with what must be known about Allah.

Compare: Comparable to philosophical theology or doctrine of God.

Knowledge; in this lecture, especially knowledge that enables one to live and worship correctly.

Compare: Comparable to practical wisdom when knowledge is ordered toward action.

Knowledge; in this lesson, treated as a firm, reality-corresponding judgment with proper warrant.

Compare: Epistemic knowledge, compared with justified true belief.

Knowledge; in this lesson, especially knowledge that grounds faith and helps a person navigate inherited assumptions.

Compare: Comparable to justified knowledge in epistemology, though rooted in Islamic categories.

The instrumental science; a name for logic because it serves other disciplines by providing correct method.

Compare: Similar to a methodological tool used across philosophy, theology, and law.

The knowledge required by one's current situation and responsibilities.

Compare: Practical knowledge tied to role-specific obligations.

The discipline of theological argument used to clarify doctrine and refute misconceptions.

Compare: Comparable to dialectical philosophical theology or apologetics.

Systematic Islamic theology that articulates and defends the foundations of belief and clarifies the boundaries of orthodoxy.

Compare: Comparable in part to philosophical theology or scholastic theology.

One of the names of logic, meaning the science of the scale or balance, because it weighs thoughts and arguments.

Compare: Like a standard of rational measurement or validity.

Knowledge of Allah’s oneness and what is necessary, impossible, and possible with respect to Him and His messengers; also includes practical realization of that oneness.

Compare: Comparable to core doctrine plus lived monotheistic spirituality.

Originated or contingent knowledge; the kind of knowledge possessed by created beings.

Compare: Human, finite knowledge in epistemology.

Beneficial knowledge, whether religious or worldly, that brings real benefit to a person or the community.

Compare: Comparable to useful knowledge in philosophy of education.

Eternal knowledge; Allah’s perfect, unoriginated knowledge.

Compare: Unlike human epistemology, this refers to divine omniscience.

The science of the foundations of religion, especially core beliefs about Allah, prophethood, revelation, and the unseen.

Compare: Similar to foundational dogmatics in Christian theology, though with Islamic sources and methods.

A request or appeal between equals, functioning like advice or peer-to-peer asking.

Compare: Peer request rather than command.

Implication: a term signifying something necessarily connected to its meaning, though not part of the meaning itself.

Compare: Necessary entailment or connotation.

Implication: a word signifying something that necessarily follows from its meaning, when the mind recognizes that connection.

Compare: Comparable to necessary implication or entailment.

What one holds to be true concerning Allah, the unseen, and the core beliefs of the religion.

Compare: Comparable to doctrinal belief or theological conviction, though rooted in revelation rather than speculation alone.

Faith: what one holds to be true regarding Allah, revelation, prophethood, and other necessary beliefs.

Compare: Related to theological belief, but also includes trust and assent of the heart.

Faith or belief in Allah, His messengers, and what must be believed in Islam.

Compare: More than assent; closer to committed conviction.

A rational judgement whose affirmation is impossible. The slides give examples such as a physical object being neither moving nor at rest, and God having partners.

Compare: Comparable to logical or metaphysical impossibility.

A form of extreme denial or nihilistic skepticism mentioned by the instructor as the result of pushing relativism too far.

Compare: Similar to radical skepticism or nihilism, where shared truth or reality is denied.

A state of equal uncertainty, represented in the slide as 50%, where affirmation and negation are balanced.

Compare: Comparable to suspension of judgement in epistemology.

The meaning or interpretive indication of a text, classified in the slides as definitive or assumptive.

Compare: Comparable to semantic clarity or interpretive determinacy.

A judgement requiring reflection, reasoning, or inference rather than being immediately known.

Compare: Comparable to discursive or demonstrated knowledge, reached through argument.

Performative or non-informative statement: speech that, in itself, admits neither truth nor falsehood.

Compare: Comparable to imperatives, questions, or performatives rather than propositions.

Production of the conclusion: the successful yielding of a conclusion from premises.

Compare: Valid derivation or inference.

Benefiting oneself from knowledge; another proper intention in study.

Compare: Personal formation or self-cultivation.

Belonging or affiliation, such as belonging to Islam, a tribe, a community, or a scholarly lineage.

Compare: Similar to communal identity or membership.

A one-time sending down; used for earlier scriptures and for the Qur'an's descent on Laylat al-Qadr in a particular sense.

Conjunctive syllogism: a syllogism in which the conclusion is indicated implicitly through the arrangement of premises.

Compare: Comparable to a standard categorical syllogism.

Will, volition, or the capacity to choose one option over another.

Compare: Volition in moral psychology.

Will: the divine attribute by which a possible thing is specified with one of the options possible for it.

Compare: Comparable to volition, especially as the principle selecting among contingent alternatives.

A famous introductory logic work by al-Abhari that outlines principles of Aristotelian logic and influenced later primers.

Compare: Related in name and function to Porphyry’s Isagoge as an introduction to logic.

One term having multiple distinct meanings, such as “eye” meaning organ, storm center, or spring.

Compare: Equivocation or homonymy.

Shared wording or equivocation: one word having more than one meaning.

Compare: Equivocation, a common source of logical fallacy.

In this context, the outward practices of the religion, such as the two testimonies, prayer, zakah, fasting, and hajj.

Compare: Somewhat like the practical or ritual dimension of a religious tradition.

Outward submission to Allah through devotional practice, law, and conduct.

Compare: Comparable to embodied religious practice and observance.

A framework, associated here with Talal Asad, describing Islam as an ongoing tradition of Muslim discourse that links past, present, and future through practices, texts, institutions, and reasoning.

Compare: Comparable to a tradition of inquiry in philosophy, such as Aristotelianism or Thomism, where later thinkers argue within inherited premises.

A chain of transmission that identifies from whom knowledge was received and how it reached the student.

Compare: Like rigorous provenance in historical scholarship, but more central and formalized.

The chain of narrators through whom a report is transmitted.

Compare: Source chain or citation lineage, but more rigorously person-based.

The act or system of supporting a report, text, or knowledge claim through a chain of transmitters. The excerpt quotes the saying that isnad is part of the religion.

Compare: Comparable to citation, provenance, and credentialing combined, but transmitted personally through teachers.

A Qur'anic term used in verses about Allah and the Throne; early scholars affirmed the wording while denying any bodily or creaturely modality.

Compare: A case study in theological language and non-literal interpretation.

The process of reasoning by which one moves from evidence to a conclusion.

Compare: Inference or argumentation.

Calling for help; in this discussion, using language of seeking help while believing Allah alone is the ultimate creator of benefit.

Compare: Appeal for aid, distinguished from worship by belief and intention.

Impossibility / impossible: that whose existence cannot be conceived by the intellect.

Compare: Modal impossibility: what cannot be true or cannot exist.

A technical term agreed upon by scholars to name and discuss a concept.

Compare: Similar to specialized terminology in philosophy, grammar, or science.

Deriving legal rulings from the Qur’an and Sunnah through disciplined juristic method.

Compare: Analogous to legal reasoning or derivation from authoritative texts.

Induction: deriving a general rule by examining many examples or data points.

Compare: Comparable to inductive reasoning in Aristotle and modern empirical method.

Induction: reasoning from particulars to a universal.

Compare: Inductive reasoning in philosophy of science.

Exceptive syllogism: an argument using a conditional premise and an additional premise that affirms or denies one of its parts.

Compare: Comparable to modus ponens and modus tollens for connected conditionals.

Affirmation; saying that a predicate truly applies to a subject.

Compare: Affirmative predication.

A classical definition of knowledge: firm conviction corresponding to reality due to a proper basis; the instructor refined it by emphasizing hukm, judgment.

Compare: Compared in class to, but not identical with, justified true belief.

Purposeful expansion of speech when the listener’s condition requires more explanation.

Compare: Comparable to elaboration in pedagogy when teaching beginners.

Rationally possible: that whose existence and non-existence are both conceivable without contradiction.

Compare: Contingency or metaphysical possibility.

Rationally possible: what can either exist or not exist without contradiction.

Compare: Comparable to contingency or possibility in modal logic.

The fatalist position that all actions are created by Allah with no meaningful relation to human choice or capacity.

Compare: Hard determinism or fatalism, though in a theological form.

A fatalistic position that effectively negates human choice and taklif, making humans compelled in their acts.

Compare: Comparable to hard fatalism, though in a specifically theological setting.

A doctrinal position saying that all actions come into existence by pre-eternal divine power alone, without being accompanied by any originated power.

Compare: Comparable in broad terms to a strong determinist view, though the theological framework is distinct.

Dialectic or structured debate; it can be praiseworthy when seeking truth and guidance, but blameworthy when used merely to win arguments.

Compare: Comparable to dialectic in Aristotle or scholastic disputation.

Dialectic: a kind of argumentation listed among the divisions of hujja.

Compare: Dialectical reasoning, often from accepted premises.

The pre-Islamic state of ignorance, especially when marked by tribalism, idolatry, and resistance to revelation.

Compound ignorance: being ignorant of the truth while also being ignorant of one’s own ignorance.

Compare: Comparable to false knowledge or confident error.

Gatheredness or focus: collecting one’s inner attention toward Allah and the task at hand.

Compare: Comparable to deep concentration or contemplative focus.

Inclusive of everything that belongs under the definition and exclusive of everything that does not.

Compare: Coextensive definition: neither too broad nor too narrow.

Permissibility; the dominant position presented by al-Akhdari for qualified students grounded in Qur’an and Sunnah.

Possibility / possible: that whose existence and nonexistence are both valid in the intellect.

Compare: Contingency in modal logic: something may exist or not exist.

In this kalam context, an indivisible particle or substance-like unit that underlies bodies; it should not be confused with 'essence' in ordinary English.

Compare: Comparable in some ways to an atomistic substance, not the modern chemical atom.

Substance: in kalam and philosophy, a basic entity or underlying thing, contrasted with accident or attribute.

Compare: Comparable to substance in Aristotelian metaphysics.

Definitive or firm; used for a command that decisively requires compliance.

Compare: A categorical legal requirement.

Genus: the shared essential part of a thing’s whatness, such as animality for the human.

Compare: Porphyry’s genus.

A genus: an essential universal said of many things that differ in reality, such as “animal” said of humans and horses.

Compare: Genus in Aristotelian classification.

A genus: a broader essential category shared by multiple species, such as animal for human.

Compare: Porphyry's genus.

A remote genus, a broader but less precise category, such as body rather than animal for human.

Compare: Remote genus.

A remote genus that is true of a thing but too broad for precise definition, such as “body” for human.

Compare: Remote genus.

The proximate or nearest genus under which a species falls; for humans, “animal.”

Compare: Proximate genus in Aristotelian definition.

The proximate genus, the nearest essential category above a species.

Compare: Nearest genus in Aristotelian definition.

An intermediate genus between the remote and proximate genus, such as “growing thing” for human.

Compare: Intermediate genus in a classificatory hierarchy.

Body: a corporeal entity, used in the text as something that occupies space and cannot be devoid of both motion and rest.

Compare: Roughly comparable to a physical body or extended substance in classical metaphysics.

An affirmation or a negation between two things, such as saying “X is Y” or “X is not Y.”

Compare: Similar to predication in Aristotelian logic: affirming or denying a predicate of a subject.

A Western philosophical definition of knowledge: a person knows a proposition when it is true, the person believes it, and the person is justified in believing it.

Compare: Standard modern epistemology; often abbreviated JTB.

Particular: a term or concept that applies to one individual thing.

Compare: Comparable to an individual or particular in logic.

A particular: an individual instance, such as a named person or a specific horse.

Compare: Particular individual in metaphysics or logic.

Particular: a meaning that does not have shared applicability to many individuals in the same way as a universal.

Compare: Comparable to an individual or particular term.

Falsehood: failure of a statement to correspond to reality.

Compare: Falsity under correspondence theory.

Falsehood or lying: the non-correspondence of an informative statement to reality as it is in itself, whether or not it agrees with belief.

Compare: Falsehood as lack of correspondence between proposition and reality.

Islamic rational theology, especially the discipline that defends and clarifies creed using reasoned argument.

Compare: Comparable in some respects to philosophical theology.

Creedal theology: the rational discipline used to clarify and defend beliefs about God, prophecy, divine attributes, and matters of the unseen.

Compare: Comparable to philosophical theology or scholastic theology, especially where logic is used to clarify doctrine.

Speech: pre-eternal speech is the meaning subsisting in the Divine Essence, expressed by different expressions, distinct from letters and sounds and exalted beyond change.

Compare: Comparable only loosely to an eternal meaning or inner speech; it is not equivalent to spoken language as sound.

Quantity: whether a proposition is universal, particular, singular, or otherwise quantified.

Compare: Quantity of a categorical proposition.

Discouragement; a non-definitive command to refrain from something.

Compare: A discouraged but not strictly prohibited act.

Dislikedness: a non-decisive request to refrain from an action, such as reciting Qur’an while bowing or prostrating.

Compare: A discouraged but not strictly forbidden act.

Acquisition: the human being’s responsible relation to an act that Allah creates, without the human being creating it.

Compare: A distinctive Ash'ari account of agency between determinism and independent human creation.

Acquisition: the Ashari doctrine that God creates acts, while human beings acquire them and are therefore morally responsible.

Compare: Comparable to an attempt to reconcile divine omnipotence with human moral responsibility.

Acquisition: the connection of created power to the thing within one’s capacity in its locus, without causal effect.

Compare: A distinct Ash‘ari account of responsibility: the act is created by Allah, but acquired by the servant.

Unveiling: Allah granting a person a deep inward realization of unseen realities.

Compare: Not empirical seeing; closer to spiritual illumination.

Unveiling: spiritual disclosure of realities not reached by ordinary reasoning alone.

Compare: Comparable to mystical illumination or unveiling.

Acquisition: the servant’s relation to a voluntary act such that the servant is responsible, while Allah creates the act.

Compare: A theory of agency that separates moral ownership from ultimate efficient causation.

Quality: whether a proposition is affirmative or negative.

Compare: Quality of a categorical proposition.

The mode or manner of doing something; here, Ihsan is described as the kayfiyya of worship.

Compare: Like asking not only what an action is, but how it is performed and with what quality.

A statement or proposition that can be true or false in itself.

Compare: Declarative proposition.

Declarative speech that can be true or false in itself.

Compare: Declarative statement.

Informative statement: speech that, in itself, admits of truth and falsehood.

Compare: Comparable to a truth-apt proposition or declarative statement.

The servant of the sciences; logic is described as serving other disciplines by clarifying and organizing their reasoning.

Compare: Comparable to a methodological auxiliary science.

The creation of human acts; the theological question of whether Allah creates human acts and how humans are accountable.

Compare: Related to philosophical debates on agency and causation.

A break in the customary pattern, such as an effect not following its usual cause or appearing without its usual cause.

Compare: A suspension of an empirical regularity, relevant to discussions of miracles.

Specific property: a non-essential property that belongs specifically to a species, such as risibility in the classical example of the human.

Compare: Porphyry’s proprium.

A distinctive property unique to a kind but not part of its essence, such as the capacity for laughter in humans.

Compare: Porphyry's proprium.

Property: an attribute proper to a thing but not part of its essence.

Compare: Porphyry’s proprium, a necessary property that is not essential.

A specific property external to the essence but belonging only to one species, such as the human capacity for meaningful writing.

Compare: A proprium in Porphyry’s predicables.

Error in thinking or reasoning, especially the kind logic aims to prevent at the level of form and inference.

Compare: Comparable to fallacy or invalid inference.

An early sect criticized for taking texts without proper scholarly transmission and for opposing the Companions.

Compare: An example of textual literalism detached from authoritative interpretive community.

Allah’s address or communication; in legal theory, the source of revealed judgments concerning human actions.

Compare: Divine command or revealed address.

The speech or address of Allah, especially as it relates to human responsibility and action.

Compare: Like an authoritative legal proclamation, though here the authority is divine.

Rhetoric: persuasive argumentation listed among the kinds of hujja.

Compare: Rhetoric in the Aristotelian logical curriculum.

Betrayal or treachery: failing to guard the outward and inward limbs from prohibited matters.

Compare: The vice opposite to trustworthiness.

Metaphorical or indirect expression. In Arabic rhetoric it refers to conveying a meaning indirectly through an associated expression.

Compare: Comparable to metaphor, metonymy, or indirect expression depending on context.

Firm belief that corresponds to reality and is based on what necessarily entails it, or on demonstrative evidence.

Compare: Compared in the slides to the Western epistemological definition of knowledge as justified true belief.

Major premise: the premise containing the major term.

Compare: Major premise in a categorical syllogism.

Unbelief or rejection of Islam; in scholarly discussions, it may refer to a doctrine incompatible with Islam, but applying it to a specific person is a separate and grave matter.

Compare: Comparable to heresy or unbelief, though Islamic law treats categories and persons with careful distinctions.

Disbelief: rejecting what is necessary for iman, such as Allah, His messengers, or necessarily known fundamentals of the religion.

Compare: Comparable to denial of essential doctrine in theology.

Unbelief. The text states that the first four types of shirk are kufr by consensus.

Compare: Not simply intellectual disbelief, but a theological state of rejecting or violating necessary faith.

A whole: the collective total made up of its parts.

Compare: Whole in part-whole analysis.

Universal: a concept whose meaning does not prevent it from applying to many things.

Compare: Comparable to a universal in Porphyry’s Isagoge and medieval logic.

A universal: something that can be said of many instances.

Compare: Universal concept or predicate.

Universal: a meaning that can apply to many individuals, such as “lion.”

Compare: Comparable to a universal concept in Aristotelian logic.

The five universals: genus, differentia, common property, species, and specific property.

Compare: Closely resembles the Porphyrian predicables in Aristotelian logic.

Universal predicables: the five ways a universal may be predicated of a subject.

Compare: Corresponds to Porphyry’s five predicables.

There is no real dispute over terminology when the intended meaning is agreed upon.

Compare: Substantive agreement matters more than verbal labels.

A spoken term or expression that signifies a meaning.

Compare: A linguistic sign or term.

An unused or meaningless expression: a sound or arrangement of letters with no established meaning in the relevant convention.

Compare: Comparable to a nonsense word.

A used expression: a word or expression that has an established conventional meaning.

Compare: Comparable to a meaningful term in a language.

A verbal definition that explains an unfamiliar term by a clearer synonym.

Compare: Lexical definition by synonym.

Verbal definition: explaining a word by replacing it with a better-known synonym.

Compare: Comparable to a nominal or lexical definition.

A necessary concomitant: something that follows necessarily from a concept or term.

Compare: Comparable to a necessary consequence.

Something whose existence entails the necessity of carrying out an act, and whose non-existence entails refraining from the act. Example: the sun passing the zenith for the noon prayer obligation.

Compare: Comparable to a legal trigger or operative cause.

A judgement based on divine law, such as “the five prayers are obligatory” or “fasting on Ashura is not obligatory.”

Compare: Comparable to a normative religious ruling rather than an empirical or purely logical claim.

On the basis of a warrant or necessitating proof; the reason that justifies the judgment.

Compare: Justification or warrant in epistemology.

Language; the system of meaningful expression used by a community.

Compare: Natural language.

The tools or forms of definition used to clarify unknown concepts.

Compare: Comparable to the theory of definition in Aristotelian logic.

Knowledge, especially knowledge of Allah that is not merely abstract but also spiritually realized.

Compare: A form of knowing that includes experiential or existential knowledge.

Knowledge or recognition; here, the illumination that appears when ignorance is removed.

Compare: Broadly comparable to cognition or knowledge.

Knowledge or knowing an object of knowledge; here used generally for human cognition.

Compare: Cognition or acquaintance with an object.

Dictionaries or lexical works that record word meanings and usages.

Compare: Comparable to lexicons used in classical philology.

The ten introductory foundations used to orient a student to any science, such as its definition, subject matter, benefit, founder, name, and ruling.

Compare: Like a discipline’s prolegomena or methodological introduction.

The foundations of conceptualization; the starting tools used to construct clear concepts and definitions.

Compare: Like basic conceptual categories used before constructing definitions.

Material or content of a proof: the premises and meanings used in the argument.

Compare: Material aspect of an argument, contrasted with formal structure.

A recognized school of Islamic legal interpretation and practice.

Compare: Comparable to a school of law or interpretive tradition.

A school of legal interpretation. The excerpt discusses especially the Maliki school, along with the four Sunni schools generally.

Compare: Comparable to a legal school or jurisprudential tradition, like a school of interpretation in law.

The signified: the meaning or object indicated by a signifier.

Compare: Signified in semiotics.

The signified: the meaning or object pointed to by the signifier.

Compare: Comparable to the signified in semiotics.

A later institutional form for Islamic learning, distinct from the earliest mosque-based circles.

Compare: Comparable to a college or seminary institution, though historically different from the modern university.

A formal institution of Islamic learning that developed as educational needs changed.

Compare: Comparable to a college or seminary in premodern education.

The implied or understood meaning of a text: what is inferred from the wording even if not directly stated.

Compare: Comparable to implication or inference in legal and textual interpretation.

Locus or substrate: that in which something subsists. The text classifies existing things by whether they need a mahall.

Compare: Comparable to a subject or substrate in Aristotelian substance-accident metaphysics.

Whatness or quiddity: what makes a thing what it is and distinguishes it from what it is not.

Compare: Comparable to quiddity or essence in medieval philosophy.

The whatness or essence of a thing: what makes it the kind of thing it is.

Compare: Essence or quiddity in classical metaphysics.

The predicate: what is being affirmed or denied of the subject.

Compare: Comparable to the predicate term in traditional logic.

The predicate of a proposition: what is affirmed or denied of the subject.

Compare: Predicate term in Aristotelian logic.

Sense-perceptions: things known through the senses.

Compare: Sense data or perceptual knowledge.

Metaphorical or figurative usage; generally unsuitable for precise definition unless a clear indicator prevents misunderstanding.

Compare: Metaphor or non-literal language.

Figurative expression: a non-literal use of language where context indicates that the literal meaning is not intended.

Compare: Comparable to figurative language or trope in rhetoric.

Figurative rather than literal usage of language.

Compare: Metaphorical or figurative speech.

A conceptually unknown term; a word or idea whose meaning is not yet understood.

Compare: A gap at the level of concept formation.

The Magians; used here as an example of dualist belief in two independent sources.

Compare: Associated in the lecture with Zoroastrian-type dualism.

Disliked or discouraged, but not strictly forbidden.

Compare: A disfavored act.

One who follows the legal school of Imam Malik in Islamic law.

Compare: A legal school or jurisprudential tradition.

One of the four Sunni legal schools, associated with Imam Malik ibn Anas. Al-Dardir was a leading Maliki jurist and mufti.

Compare: Comparable to a long-standing legal tradition with its own authorities, terminology, and preferred rulings.

Something known necessarily from the religion, not requiring specialist scholarship to establish.

Compare: Comparable to a basic axiom within a tradition.

Recommended; a non-definitive command to do something.

Compare: A supererogatory good act.

Methodology: the way one approaches understanding revelation and deriving conclusions.

Compare: Comparable to method in hermeneutics or philosophy of science.

A preventative factor that blocks a ruling from applying or an act from being required or valid.

Compare: A legal impediment.

A preventative factor that blocks a ruling or blocks the legal cause from producing its effect.

Compare: Comparable to a defeater or disqualifying condition in legal reasoning.

Preventer: that from whose existence the ruling’s nonexistence follows, while its nonexistence does not by itself entail either existence or nonexistence.

Compare: Comparable to a defeating condition or legal impediment.

Preventing combination: a disjunction in which the alternatives cannot both be true together.

Compare: Comparable to exclusive incompatibility regarding joint truth.

Preventing joint absence: a disjunction in which the alternatives cannot both be false together.

Compare: Comparable to exhaustive alternatives.

Classical logic; the science that regulates thinking so that the mind can move correctly from known matters to unknown conclusions.

Compare: Comparable to Aristotelian logic as a discipline of correct reasoning.

Classical logic; a disciplined tool for organizing concepts, propositions, definitions, and inferences so that reasoning proceeds correctly.

Compare: Comparable to Aristotelian formal logic, though used within Islamic sciences as an auxiliary tool.

Classical logic; the discipline that studies correct thinking, definitions, propositions, and valid inference.

Compare: Comparable to Aristotelian logic and later formal logic, especially in its concern with definition and syllogism.

The pronounced or explicit meaning of a text: what the wording directly states.

Compare: Comparable to the literal or express meaning in legal interpretation.

The state, rank, or situation of the listener that determines how speech should be delivered.

Compare: Comparable to audience awareness in rhetoric.

The higher objectives and purposes of the Sacred Law, derived from the Qur'an and Sunnah.

Compare: Comparable to purposive interpretation in legal theory.

The objectives of conceptualization, especially sound definitions that clarify what things are.

Compare: The goal of conceptual analysis: precise definitions.

That which falls within power or capacity; in the definition of kasb, it is the act or object to which created power is connected.

Compare: Comparable to the object of an agent’s capacity or ability.

A primary intelligible: a direct concept grasped from things, such as man, tree, or animal.

Compare: Comparable to first-order concepts.

A secondary intelligible: a concept the mind abstracts about other concepts, such as genus, species, subject, predicate, or definition.

Compare: Comparable to second-order concepts or logical categories.

Things the intellect can meaningfully conceive.

Compare: Comparable to intelligible concepts in logic and metaphysics.

The Peripatetics, the Aristotelian philosophical school associated with figures such as Aristotle and later Muslim philosophers.

Compare: The Peripatetic school of philosophy.

Benefit or welfare; used when considering what serves the genuine good of the community within the sharia.

Compare: Comparable to public interest, though constrained by revelation.

The actual text or wording of a hadith, as distinct from its chain of transmitters.

Compare: The body of a cited text.

A concise core text, often memorized, that summarizes a discipline for study.

Compare: Comparable to a terse textbook or syllabus outline.

A compact teaching text, often memorized and then unpacked through commentary.

Compare: A concise scholastic manual or primer.

A major Sunni theological school associated with Abu Mansur al-Maturidi. The text treats it, alongside Asharism, as part of Sunni theological orthodoxy.

Compare: Comparable to a parallel scholastic theological tradition within the same broader religious orthodoxy.

The subject matter of a science: what that discipline directly investigates.

Compare: Comparable to the object-domain of a science.

In proposition analysis, the subject: what the statement is about.

Compare: Comparable to the subject term in traditional logic.

The subject of a proposition: what the statement is about.

Compare: Subject term in Aristotelian logic.

The limited and useful idea that one should understand a tradition according to its own framework before judging it.

Compare: Comparable to methodological charity or internal critique in philosophy and anthropology.

The Abbasid-era inquisition associated with theological controversy, especially around claims concerning the createdness of the Qur'an.

Compare: Comparable to a state-backed doctrinal inquisition.

A person accountable before the law: possessing sound reason, being post-pubescent, and having received the true message of Islam.

Compare: Comparable to a legally responsible subject in moral and legal philosophy.

Inimitable or rendering others unable to match it; used for the Qur'an's miraculous nature.

Compare: A unique, unrepeatable proof-claim, not merely impressive literature.

The thing being defined.

Compare: The definiendum, the item to be defined.

The clarifying feature or property by which a thing is known and distinguished from others.

Compare: Like the defining feature or differentia that makes a kind intelligible.

Definition or that which makes a thing known.

Compare: Comparable to a definitional formula.

A prophetic miracle; in this lecture it is connected to a break in customary patterns, though further conditions are left for later study.

Compare: A miracle, especially as a sign confirming prophethood.

A theological school associated here with the view that humans create their own acts in order to preserve accountability.

An early theological school that gave a strong role to reason in matters such as divine justice, human acts, and moral knowledge.

Compare: Often compared to rationalist theological tendencies, though the comparison is only partial.

Transactions and social dealings, such as trade, contracts, and financial matters; often more context-sensitive.

Compare: Civil and commercial dealings.

Social and transactional dealings between people, where juristic analysis often engages changing circumstances.

Compare: Comparable to civil, commercial, and social ethics.

Permissible; an act one may do or leave without either side being preferred in itself.

Compare: A legal liberty or neutral option.

Direct operation: producing an effect directly. The text denies that created human power produces acts by mubashara.

Compare: Direct causation.

A religious innovator: one who holds or practices a blameworthy innovation.

Compare: Comparable to someone holding a heterodox theological position.

Studying together through shared reading, discussion, and mutual benefit.

Compare: Comparable to a serious seminar or tutorial, but with a spiritual and transmitted dimension.

A logically singular item of thought or expression; something treated as one unit, even if linguistically complex.

Compare: A term or singular unit in logic.

Singular expression: a term whose parts do not separately indicate parts of its meaning in the relevant usage.

Compare: Comparable to a simple term.

Single or simple expression: an expression whose part does not independently indicate part of its meaning.

Compare: Comparable to a simple term.

A scholar qualified to issue fatwas, or non-binding legal opinions. Al-Dardir became the Maliki mufti after his teacher al-Sa‘idi.

Compare: Comparable to a jurisconsult or legal authority who gives expert legal opinions.

An emigrant; the true muhajir is described as the one who abandons sin.

The Emigrants: the early Muslims who migrated from Makkah to Medina for the sake of Islam.

A renewer: a person believed to revive the religion at the beginning of a century by restoring sound understanding and practice.

Compare: Comparable to a reforming theologian or religious reviver, though within the Islamic idea of cyclical renewal.

Matters known by repeated experience.

Compare: Empirical generalizations from repeated experience.

Affirmative proposition: a proposition that affirms a predicate of a subject.

Compare: Affirmative categorical proposition.

A scholar qualified to exercise ijtihad. The excerpt discusses whether every mujtahid reaches the truth in matters open to interpretation.

Compare: Comparable to a fully qualified legal theorist or judge capable of deriving rulings from first principles of a legal system.

A morally responsible person: one who has intellect, has reached puberty, and has received the true message of Islam.

Compare: A morally accountable agent.

A person who is morally responsible before Allah and therefore subject to the obligations of the Sharia.

Compare: Similar to a legally competent moral agent.

A morally responsible person obligated by the Sacred Law.

Compare: A legally accountable moral agent.

Dissimilarity to created things: God is not like bodies, substances, accidents, directions, dimensions, or any created reality.

Compare: Comparable to apophatic theology, where God is described by negating creaturely limitations.

Specifier or determiner: that which specifies a possible thing with one determination rather than another.

Compare: Comparable to an explanatory principle that accounts for why a contingent thing is this way rather than otherwise.

A concise didactic text, often memorized by students, that summarizes a discipline or school’s key positions.

Compare: Comparable to a compact textbook, manual, or scholastic summa for beginners and intermediates.

A possible or contingent thing: something whose existence and nonexistence are both rationally possible.

Compare: Contingent being in modal metaphysics.

Coextensive in exclusion: a proper definition excludes everything outside what is being defined.

Compare: Comparable to being neither too broad nor over-inclusive.

Something repellent or off-putting; the instructor says the din itself should not be munaffir, though poor practice may repel people.

Separated or disjunctive conditional: a proposition affirming separation or incompatibility between alternatives.

Compare: Comparable to an “either...or” disjunction.

Antecedent: the first part of a connected conditional.

Compare: The “if” part of an if-then statement.

A premise; a proposition placed before another in order to produce a conclusion.

Compare: Premise in formal logic.

A preliminary section or foundational premise in a text; here, one of Imam al-Sanusi’s prolegomena for theology.

Compare: Similar to a prolegomenon or foundational chapter before a main philosophical science.

A premise or introductory foundational section in a scholarly text.

Compare: Like a prolegomenon or preliminary thesis in philosophy.

Premises; the starting propositions from which an argument draws its conclusion.

Compare: Comparable to premises in deductive logic.

Premises or preliminary foundations; here, the introductory principles needed before detailed study of creed.

Compare: Comparable to prolegomena or foundational assumptions before a discipline.

Premises: the propositions from which a conclusion is inferred.

Compare: Premises in deductive reasoning.

Observance or proper application; logic protects only when its principles are actually followed, not merely memorized.

Compare: Comparable to correctly applying a method rather than just knowing its rules.

Composite expression: an expression made of parts where each part contributes to part of the total meaning, such as a sentence.

Compare: Comparable to a compound expression or proposition-like phrase.

Compound expression: an expression whose parts indicate parts of its meaning.

Compare: Comparable to a phrase or proposition made of meaningful parts.

A disciple or aspirant on the Sufi path who seeks guidance from a shaykh or murshid.

Compare: Comparable to a novice or spiritual disciple.

A Sufi guide who directs disciples on the spiritual path. Al-Dardir is presented as a Sufi murshid as well as a scholar.

Compare: Comparable to a spiritual director or master.

The written copy of the Qur’an.

Compare: The physical codex of scripture, as distinct from recitation or interpretation.

The physical written copy of the Qur'an as arranged between two covers.

Compare: A codex or physical scripture volume.

Witnessing: direct spiritual perception or realization of truth.

Compare: Comparable to contemplative or mystical experience, though governed here by Islamic theology.

Observed matters: things known through direct observation.

Compare: Empirical observations.

A homonymous word: one form with multiple meanings, requiring a contextual indicator in definitions.

Compare: Homonym or equivocal term.

Recommended; generally used synonymously with mandub.

Compare: Morally praiseworthy but not obligatory.

Rationally impossible: that whose affirmation entails a contradiction.

Compare: Logical impossibility.

Rationally impossible: what cannot be affirmed as a matter of reason.

Compare: Comparable to logical impossibility.

Complete correspondence: a term signifying the whole meaning for which it was coined.

Compare: Direct denotation of the full concept.

Corresponding to reality; a claim is true because it matches what is actually the case.

Compare: Correspondence theory of truth.

Scholars of kalam, Islamic theology, who used rational argumentation in service of creed.

Compare: Comparable, with caution, to scholastic theologians.

Ambiguous scriptural texts whose meaning is not immediately straightforward, especially texts that could be misunderstood anthropomorphically.

Compare: Comparable to difficult or figurative passages in hermeneutics.

Mass-transmitted through so many independent channels that error or fabrication is inconceivable in ordinary terms.

Compare: Widespread public transmission yielding certainty.

Mass-transmitted: a report conveyed by so many independent transmitters that deliberate fabrication is considered impossible.

Compare: Comparable to extremely strong cumulative testimony.

Mass-transmitted reports: reports conveyed through so many independent channels that they yield certainty.

Compare: A distinctive Islamic epistemic category; loosely comparable to overwhelming testimonial evidence.

A theological school known for giving reason a strong role and for positions later rejected by Sunni orthodoxy.

Compare: Sometimes compared to rationalist theology, though the comparison is limited.

Coextensive in inclusion: a proper definition applies to everything it is supposed to define.

Compare: Comparable to being neither too narrow nor under-inclusive.

Connected conditional: a conditional proposition affirming necessary connection between antecedent and consequent.

Compare: Comparable to an “if...then” conditional.

Core texts, often concise primers, that students memorize or study as foundations before moving to commentaries.

Compare: Comparable to an elementary textbook or canonical primer, but often more condensed and memorization-oriented.

Recommendation: a non-decisive request to perform an action.

Compare: Similar to a supererogatory recommended act: good to do, but not strictly obligatory.

Reflective investigation or contemplation used to understand the truth of foundational beliefs.

Compare: Similar to rational inquiry or philosophical reflection.

Benefit given to others; one of the proper intentions in seeking knowledge.

Compare: Comparable to the ethical aim of public benefit.

The soul or self. In Sufi contexts it can also refer to the lower self with its desires, though al-Dardir also uses it for the human essence.

Compare: Comparable to soul, self, or psyche, depending on context.

Reality as it is in itself: the standard to which a statement corresponds if it is true.

Compare: Comparable to objective reality or the way things are independently of one’s belief.

Negation; denying that a predicate applies to a subject.

Compare: Negative predication.

Arabic grammar, especially syntax; developed to preserve correct understanding and recitation.

Compare: Comparable to grammar in classical language study, such as Greek or Latin syntax.

Arabic grammar, especially the rules governing sentence structure and case endings.

Compare: Comparable to syntax in linguistics.

Transmitted knowledge, especially revelation and reports passed down from earlier authorities.

Compare: Comparable to received testimony or tradition in epistemology, though with formalized chains.

Transmitted: based on report or transmission rather than pure rational inference.

Compare: Comparable to testimonial or textual evidence.

A revealed textual proof, especially from the Qur'an or hadith.

Compare: Comparable to a scriptural text used as authoritative evidence.

A clear, explicit sacred text that leaves little or no room for alternative interpretation.

Compare: Comparable to an unambiguous legal text or statute.

The conclusion that follows from premises in reasoning.

Compare: Conclusion of a syllogism.

Conclusion: the proposition produced by a valid arrangement of premises.

Compare: Conclusion of an argument.

Rational, in the technical logical sense: possessing intellective capacity for abstraction and meaning, not merely the ability to speak.

Compare: Rational animal in Aristotelian anthropology.

Rational, possessing the capacity of intellect; in this context it does not simply mean speaking aloud.

Compare: Rational faculty in classical philosophy.

Species: a universal applying to many individuals that share the same essence, such as “human” applying to many human persons.

Compare: Species in Aristotelian classification.

Species: a universal category under a genus, constituted by genus plus differentia.

Compare: Porphyry’s species.

A real species known in relation to the reality of the thing, not merely through verbal description.

Compare: A species grasped through real acquaintance rather than only nominal description.

A relative or verbal kind known only through description when the learner lacks direct experience of the thing.

Compare: Similar to a nominal definition based on report rather than acquaintance.

Species: the universal that expresses the complete whatness of a thing, such as human in the classical analysis.

Compare: Porphyry’s species.

Intentions; the inner aims one brings to an action, especially seeking Allah’s pleasure in learning.

Compare: Similar to motive or intentionality in ethics.

Discursive inquiry or reflection by which one reaches knowledge through investigation rather than immediate self-evidence.

Compare: Comparable to inferential reasoning or theoretical inquiry.

Knowledge that requires reflection, inquiry, or evidence.

Compare: Discursive or inferential knowledge.

Known through reasoning, inference, or investigation rather than immediately.

Compare: Inferential or demonstrative knowledge.

Knowledge reached through reflection, reasoning, and proof.

Compare: Inferential or demonstrative knowledge.

A rational judgement whose denial is impossible. The slides give examples such as a physical object having spatial extension and God being pre-eternal.

Compare: Comparable to metaphysical necessity or necessary truth.

A judgement denying one thing of another, such as “Allah is not incipient.”

Compare: A negative proposition in traditional logic.

The minimum wealth threshold that functions as the legal cause for zakat.

Compare: A threshold condition in tax law, though here it is a legal cause in sacred law.

The threshold mentioned in the example for zakah: meeting it is a condition for the obligation of paying zakah to take effect.

Compare: Comparable to a minimum legal threshold.

A relation between two concepts, such as the relation between a subject and predicate.

Compare: Predicative relation in a proposition.

The relation between two terms in a judgment, such as the relation between “Allah” and “existent” in “Allah exists.”

Compare: The predicative relation between subject and predicate.

Intention; the inner purpose behind an action.

Compare: Similar to intention in moral philosophy, but spiritually consequential.

Intention; the inward aim that determines for whom or for what purpose an act is done.

Compare: Comparable to intention in moral philosophy.

Intention; the inner aim that gives moral and spiritual value to an action.

Compare: Comparable to motive in ethics, but with direct relevance to worship and reward.

Intention: the conscious purpose for which one performs an action.

Compare: Comparable to moral intention in ethics.

One of the four empirical links: a relation between an absent customary cause and a present customary effect, such as not having hunger pangs and eating food.

Compare: Comparable to cases where an effect occurs without the expected antecedent condition.

One of the four empirical links: an observed relation between the absence of a customary cause and the absence of a customary effect, such as not eating food and not being full.

Compare: Comparable to observing that when the usual antecedent is absent, the usual consequent is also absent.

A judgement known without needing a process of inference. Examples include “1+1=2” for rational judgement and “fire burns” for empirical judgement.

Compare: Comparable to immediate or self-evident knowledge, depending on the type of judgement.

What the Lawgiver posits as an indication for one of the five legal rulings.

Compare: Comparable to legal conditions or triggers that determine when a rule applies.

The branch of theology dealing with prophethood, the prophets, and their necessary attributes.

Compare: Comparable to prophetology.

Prophethood; the prophetic source from which the Islamic tradition and its sciences ultimately grow.

A legal ruling where one is rewarded for doing the act and deserves punishment for leaving it, such as belief in God, His messengers, and the five pillars.

Compare: Comparable to a strict duty in moral philosophy or law.

The study of being: what exists, what it means to exist, and the nature of reality.

Compare: A major branch of Western metaphysics.

The study of being: what exists and what does not exist.

Compare: A major branch of metaphysics in Western philosophy.

Correct belief. The text notes that the term is borrowed from Western religious vocabulary, but uses it to discuss authoritative Sunni belief as defined by recognized scholarly methods and consensus.

Compare: Comparable to doctrinal orthodoxy in Christianity, but Sunni Islam lacks a single church office that defines it.

Correct practice. Al-Dardir links valid practice to the disciplines of fiqh, creed, and tasawwuf.

Compare: Comparable to religiously correct conduct or praxis.

A specific framework of assumptions, standards, and methods that guides how a particular community understands its subject matter.

Compare: Comparable to Thomas Kuhn’s use of paradigm in philosophy of science, though here used more broadly.

A rational judgement that may be affirmed or denied without contradiction. The slides give examples such as human movement, and God punishing the obedient or rewarding the disobedient.

Compare: Comparable to contingency: something that could be otherwise.

Having reached puberty; one of the conditions for being morally responsible.

Compare: Comparable to reaching legal majority, though the standard here is religious puberty rather than modern civil age.

Used in the example “God is pre-eternal,” meaning God is not originated or temporally beginning. The slide presents this as an inferential necessary rational judgement.

Compare: Comparable to a metaphysical claim about necessary being and absence of temporal beginning.

Something whose presence entails refraining from an act, while its absence alone does not necessarily make the act take effect or not. Example: menstruation with respect to the obligation of prayer.

Compare: Comparable to a defeater or disqualifying condition in legal reasoning.

Allah’s decree and determination of what will occur, while humans are still commanded to strive.

Compare: Related to providence and destiny, though with distinct Islamic theological meaning.

The position that human voluntary actions are created by human power, either directly or by a power God gave them.

Compare: A strong libertarian account of human agency, but with theological implications.

A position that attributes the creation of human actions to human beings, either directly or indirectly.

Compare: A libertarian account of agency if taken to include independent causal authorship.

A doctrinal position saying that voluntary actions come into existence by originated human power alone, either directly or through indirect generation.

Compare: Comparable in broad terms to a libertarian account of human agency, though the text presents it as theologically erroneous.

A judge in an Islamic legal system. The excerpt discusses qadis as part of the social roles connected to the ulama.

Compare: Comparable to a judge, especially in a religiously grounded legal system.

A proposition; a statement that can be judged true or false, such as 'the soul exists.'

Compare: Proposition in formal logic.

Proposition: a statement that admits truth or falsity in itself.

Compare: Comparable to a proposition in formal logic.

A proposition: a compound statement capable of being true or false in itself.

Compare: Proposition in formal logic.

Divine decree or destiny; the question of how Allah's will and creation relate to human responsibility.

Compare: Comparable to debates on providence, free will, and determinism.

The heart as the center of spiritual perception, attention, and orientation.

Compare: Not merely emotion; closer to the inner faculty of attention and moral perception.

The heart. In the excerpt it can refer not merely to the physical organ, but to a spiritual faculty connected to knowledge and realization.

Compare: Comparable to the spiritual heart or inner faculty of cognition in mystical theology.

Contextual indicator: a clue that prevents misunderstanding, especially when figurative or equivocal wording is used.

Compare: Comparable to contextual disambiguation.

A contextual indicator that clarifies what is intended by a word or expression.

Compare: Contextual disambiguating clue.

Certain or decisive: not merely probable or uncertain.

Compare: Epistemic certainty or decisiveness.

Conclusive: a proof or text that yields certainty, either in transmission or meaning.

Compare: Comparable to certain or definitive evidence.

The rules of Arabic grammar derived from authoritative Arabic usage.

Compare: Comparable to grammatical rules inferred from a language corpus.

Rules or principles governing correct relations among concepts and propositions.

Compare: Comparable to laws of valid inference.

A clarifying expression that brings about tasawwur; effectively a definition or description.

Compare: Definiens, the expression that defines a term.

An explanatory statement or definition that clarifies what something is.

Compare: A definiens: the phrase that defines.

An explanatory statement or definition by which one arrives at tasawwur, conceptual understanding.

Compare: Comparable to a definition used to clarify a concept.

The prayer direction toward the Kaaba in Mecca, used here as a basic marker of Muslim communal identity.

The direction of prayer toward the Ka'bah in Makkah; facing it is also used in hadith as a sign of Muslim communal belonging.

Beginninglessness: the divine attribute that God has no beginning and is not created.

Compare: Comparable to divine eternity in classical theology.

Beginninglessness: the divine attribute of not having a beginning; the text gives it as something rationally necessary for Allah.

Compare: Comparable to metaphysical eternality, but specifically without origination.

A transmitted mode of Qur’anic recitation; accepted qira'at are those reliably transmitted as Qur’an.

Compare: Comparable to authorized textual/recitational variants, but governed by strict transmission.

Divine aseity or self-sufficiency: God does not need a place, substrate, cause, or anything outside Himself.

Compare: Comparable to aseity in classical philosophical theology.

In logic, syllogistic reasoning: arranging propositions so that a conclusion follows from them.

Compare: Aristotelian syllogism.

Syllogistic inference; an argument where a conclusion follows from premises according to a valid form.

Compare: Comparable to the Aristotelian syllogism.

In logic, syllogistic reasoning: arranging premises so that a conclusion necessarily follows.

Compare: Aristotelian syllogism.

Badness, ugliness, or moral blameworthiness; used in different senses, including pain, imperfection, and legally punishable acts.

Compare: The bad or morally negative.

Allah’s eternal divine power by which He creates all things.

Compare: Divine omnipotence.

Allah’s eternal power, by which all actions and realities are created.

Compare: Divine omnipotence, but understood through kalam categories.

Pre-eternal divine power: the attribute by which every possible thing can be brought into existence or nonexistence in accordance with divine will.

Compare: Comparable to omnipotence, with the qualification that it pertains to what is possible, not the intrinsically impossible.

Created, contingent power associated with human beings.

Compare: Creaturely capacity or finite agency.

A created, contingent human capacity that accompanies voluntary acts but does not create them.

Compare: A created capacity for agency, distinct from ultimate causal power.

Created power: the originated power accompanying voluntary human acts, but having no effect according to Ahl al-Sunna in this text.

Compare: Comparable to human capacity or agency, but not independent causal power.

The revealed book of Islam, regarded as the word of God. It is the first source of Islamic belief, law, worship, and interpretation.

Compare: Comparable to scripture, though Muslims regard it as the direct divine speech revealed in Arabic.

Customary connection: affirming a necessary correlation between two matters based on repeated occurrence. The text lists this as a root of error when treated as necessary.

Compare: Comparable to mistaking constant conjunction for necessary causation, a point reminiscent of Hume, though in an Islamic theological context.

A didactic Arabic poetic meter often used for teaching concise scholarly texts.

Compare: Comparable to mnemonic verse used in premodern education.

A descriptive explanation that identifies something through features or signs rather than its full essence.

Compare: Comparable to a descriptive definition.

A descriptive definition that identifies something by its properties rather than its essence.

Compare: A description by characteristic signs rather than essence.

Descriptive definition: a definition by genus together with a proper attribute rather than the full essence.

Compare: Comparable to definition by characteristic mark or description.

An incomplete description using a distinctive property alone or with a remote genus.

Compare: Partial description by property.

A complete descriptive definition using the proximate genus plus a distinctive property.

Compare: Complete description by genus and property.

A judgement made by reason, such as “10 is an even number” or “7 is not an even number.” It is later defined as affirmation or negation without depending on repeated observation or a legal convention.

Compare: Comparable to a priori judgement in philosophy: known by reason rather than experiment or legislation.

Receiving the true message of Islam; listed as a condition for moral accountability.

Compare: Comparable to notice or access to the relevant law as a condition of responsibility.

Apostasy or leaving Islam; in the lecture, the early ridda wars were tied to weak commitment and refusal of zakat, not primarily speculative theology.

A residence hall or college-like section connected with al-Azhar, often organized by region or student group. Al-Dardir headed the Upper Egypt riwaq.

Compare: Comparable to a college or residential hall within a larger university setting.

Narration or transmission, especially of hadith reports.

Compare: Comparable to source transmission in textual scholarship, but with formal chains and verification.

Narration or transmission of knowledge from one person to another.

Compare: Similar to textual or oral transmission in classical philology.

Showing off in religious acts: performing worship or pious behavior so people will praise or admire one.

Compare: Similar to moral vanity or performative virtue.

Lordship: Allah’s exclusive creative, sustaining, and governing authority.

Spirit. Al-Dardir treats the intellect as connected to a spiritual reality or secret of the spirit.

Compare: Comparable to spirit in philosophical and theological anthropology.

A viewpoint or way of seeing and interpreting reality.

Compare: Similar to a worldview or paradigm in philosophy of science.

A legal cause or indicator placed by Allah that signals a ruling has become operative, such as the entrance of a prayer time.

Compare: A triggering legal condition.

A legal cause whose presence brings a ruling into effect and whose absence means the ruling is not in effect, in itself.

Compare: Not a natural cause, but closer to a legal trigger or activating condition.

A means or ordinary cause through which Allah customarily creates an effect, such as medicine as a means for healing.

Compare: Similar to a secondary cause, though Ash'ari theology denies independent causal power.

Sophistry: deceptive or fallacious argumentation.

Compare: Sophistical reasoning or fallacy.

The Companions of the Prophet ﷺ, who learned from him directly and transmitted the religion after him.

Compare: Comparable to first-generation witnesses and transmitters, though with a unique sacred status in Islam.

The Companions of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ who met him as believers and transmitted the religion after him.

Compare: First-generation witnesses, though their role is religiously unique.

The Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, who directly learned from him and transmitted the religion.

Compare: Comparable to an authoritative first generation of witnesses and students.

The early generations of Muslims; the instructor notes that preserving their religion required later sciences and methods.

Compare: Comparable to an authoritative founding generation.

The early generations of Muslims, especially the Companions and those close to them.

Compare: Comparable to founding generations whose understanding shapes later tradition.

Blessings and prayers invoked upon the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

Negative proposition: a proposition that denies a predicate of a subject.

Compare: Negative categorical proposition.

One who travels a path; used in Islamic writings for a person journeying toward Allah.

Compare: Comparable to a spiritual pilgrim or wayfarer.

Matters known through transmitted revelation, such as angels, Paradise, Hellfire, and events of the Hereafter.

Compare: Comparable to revealed doctrines inaccessible to unaided reason.

Matters known through transmitted revelation, especially details of the unseen such as the afterlife.

Compare: Comparable to doctrines known through revelation rather than philosophical demonstration.

Pre-eternal hearing: an attribute by which every existing thing is disclosed as it truly is, with a disclosure distinct from other disclosures.

Compare: Unlike physical hearing, it is a divine mode of disclosure, not sound reception through organs.

Matters known only through transmitted revelation, such as angels, the afterlife, and end-time events.

Compare: Comparable to revealed eschatology and unseen doctrines beyond unaided reason.

A chain of transmission linking knowledge, practice, or texts back through reliable transmitters.

Compare: Comparable to provenance, but with personal authorization and reliability.

A chain of transmission linking later Muslims back through teachers and narrators to the Prophet ﷺ.

Compare: Comparable to a documented chain of intellectual authority.

A chain of transmission connecting a student to teachers and ultimately to earlier authorities. It confirms that knowledge was received through authorized channels.

Compare: Comparable to an academic genealogy, but with stronger religious and epistemic authority.

An unbroken chain of transmission connecting later students to earlier authorities.

Compare: Like a documented academic genealogy, but with religious and epistemic weight.

Literally 'ceiling'; used here metaphorically for the highest level or overarching loyalty placed above other affiliations.

Compare: Like a supreme ordering principle in a hierarchy of values.

Arabic morphology, the study of word patterns and how added letters change meaning.

Compare: Comparable to morphology in linguistics.

The European historical period in which new scientific methods and empirical approaches challenged inherited religious and Aristotelian frameworks.

Compare: The early modern shift associated with figures such as Galileo and the rise of modern science.

The separation of religion from the state and the relocation of religion into private life rather than public authority.

Compare: A central modern political doctrine in Western political thought.

An exceptional or isolated view that departs from what is broadly transmitted and accepted.

Compare: Comparable to an outlier position in scholarship.

The testimony of faith: bearing witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; the basic entry into Islam.

Compare: Comparable to a formal confession of faith, though in Islam it has legal, communal, and spiritual significance.

Figure: the arrangement of the middle term in the two premises of a syllogism.

Compare: The four syllogistic figures in Aristotelian logic.

A revealed or legal judgment: Allah’s address connected to the actions of morally responsible persons, through demand, permission, or stipulation.

Compare: Closest to a normative legal or moral ruling, though here its authority comes from revelation.

The revealed law or divine legislation.

Compare: Comparable to the source of law, though here it is revelation.

A commentary that explains a concise text in more detail.

Compare: Comparable to a scholarly commentary on a classical text.

A commentary explaining a base text, often unpacking compressed wording, technical terms, arguments, and implications.

Compare: Comparable to a scholarly commentary on Aristotle, Aquinas, or a legal code.

The revealed path of divine guidance, including lawful and unlawful boundaries for human life.

Compare: Not merely law in the modern legal sense, but a comprehensive moral and devotional order.

The divinely revealed way of life, including belief, worship, law, ethics, and spiritual conduct.

Compare: Broader than 'law'; closer to a total revealed moral and religious order.

The divinely grounded path of law and moral guidance. In this excerpt it is linked with fiqh and with Sufism that remains bound by law.

Compare: Comparable to sacred law, but broader than positive law because it includes worship, ethics, and spiritual discipline.

The divinely guided way of life, including worship, law, ethics, and social conduct.

Compare: Broader than 'law'; includes moral and devotional order.

A condition required for the validity or legal effect of an act.

Compare: A necessary condition in legal analysis.

A condition required for a ruling or act to be valid or effective, though its presence alone does not activate the ruling.

Compare: Like a necessary condition in logic, but not a sufficient condition.

Condition: that from whose nonexistence the ruling’s nonexistence follows, while its existence does not by itself entail either existence or nonexistence of the ruling.

Compare: Like a necessary condition that is not by itself sufficient.

Conditional proposition: a proposition involving a conditional or connective relation between two parts.

Compare: Comparable to conditional or disjunctive propositions.

A conditional proposition in which one statement is linked to or depends upon another.

Compare: If-then proposition.

Poetry: poetic discourse listed as one of the recognized kinds of argument or discourse.

Compare: Poetics in the expanded Aristotelian curriculum.

Literally 'party' or 'faction'; historically connected to those claiming affiliation with Sayyidina Ali.

Compare: Comparable to a party or faction in its original linguistic sense.

Associating partners with Allah by giving to another what belongs only to Him in worship, lordship, or divinity.

Compare: Polytheism, though broader than simply believing in many gods.

Associating partners with Allah in worship, divinity, lordship, causality, or intention, depending on the type discussed.

Compare: Comparable to a fundamental theological error about ultimate reality and dependence.

Associating partners with Allah. The text lists six types: independence, division, seeking nearness, imitation, causes, and aims.

Compare: Comparable to theological polytheism or misdirected ultimate devotion, depending on the type.

The shirk of intentions: doing deeds that should be for Allah for other aims, such as reputation, status, or wealth.

Compare: Comparable to corrupt motivation in virtue ethics, but theologically more serious.

The shirk of causes: attributing independent creative power to ordinary causes instead of recognizing Allah as the Creator of effects.

Compare: Contrasts with naturalistic causation; relates to debates on occasionalism and causality.

Affirming two independent self-sufficient deities, such as one source of good and another of evil.

Compare: Religious dualism.

Treating the divine reality as composed of parts or as divided into components.

Compare: A denial of divine simplicity through composition.

The shirk of blind following: worshipping other than Allah because one uncritically follows others, such as ancestors or one’s group.

Compare: Similar to accepting a worldview purely by social inheritance rather than examined conviction.

Worshipping other than Allah as intermediaries in order to become nearer to Allah.

Compare: Intermediary worship in some forms of pagan religion.

Truth: correspondence of a statement to reality.

Compare: Correspondence theory of truth.

Truth or truthfulness: the correspondence of an informative statement to reality as it is in itself, whether or not it agrees with belief.

Compare: Correspondence theory of truth.

The prophetic biography: the study of the Prophet Muhammad’s life and example.

Compare: Comparable to sacred biography, but also a source for ethics and law.

The straight path for which Muslims ask guidance in Surat al-Fatihah.

Compare: Comparable to the right path of moral and spiritual life.

Companionship; spiritually formative association with righteous people or teachers.

Compare: Comparable to apprenticeship or discipleship, but with spiritual transformation.

A person with sound reason or intellect; one of the conditions for being morally responsible.

Compare: Comparable to rational capacity as a condition for moral responsibility.

Minor premise: the premise containing the minor term.

Compare: Minor premise in a categorical syllogism.

Beneficial companionship formed around goodness, worship, learning, and mutual improvement.

Compare: Similar to a learning community, but rooted in moral and spiritual companionship.

Spiritual wayfaring or carving out a path toward Allah through practice and discipline.

Compare: Similar to the idea of a spiritual path or disciplined moral formation.

The prophetic way: the teachings, practices, and normative example of the Prophet Muhammad, known through hadith and inherited practice.

Compare: Comparable to authoritative apostolic practice, though in Islam it is tied to the Prophet’s own model.

The Prophet’s ﷺ teachings, actions, approvals, and way; one of the core sources of Islamic knowledge.

Compare: Not merely custom, but authoritative prophetic precedent.

The Prophet's sayings, actions, approvals, character, and states that guide Muslim life.

Compare: A normative model, broader than a biography or legal precedent alone.

The prophetic way or tradition, including the Prophet’s teachings, practices, ethics, and transmitted path.

Compare: Comparable to normative precedent, but sacred and embodied.

Quantifier: the word showing quantity, such as all, some, no, or not some.

Compare: Comparable to quantifiers in predicate logic.

Form or structure of a proof: the arrangement by which the conclusion is supposed to follow.

Compare: Logical form or validity structure.

Partisanship or group attachment; it can mean healthy solidarity, but here often means blind loyalty to one’s group even in falsehood.

Compare: Similar to tribalism, ideological partisanship, or groupthink.

Definition; the act or expression by which one clarifies what something is.

Compare: Definition in logic.

The expression or mental formulation that gives the definition.

Compare: The definiens, the defining expression.

Definition; the act of explaining a term so that its meaning becomes known.

Compare: Definition in logic.

Blameworthy fanaticism or partisanship that treats one’s own group or school as valid while dismissing others unjustly.

Compare: Comparable to sectarian dogmatism.

The generation after the Companions who learned from them.

Compare: Comparable to the second generation of transmitters in an intellectual lineage.

Simplification or making knowledge accessible. The book presents this as one of al-Dardir’s major methods in teaching creed, law, and spirituality.

Compare: Comparable to pedagogical clarification or producing a clear textbook for students.

Partial inclusion: a term signifying part of the meaning it denotes.

Compare: Part-whole implication within a concept.

Inclusion: a word signifying one part of its total meaning.

Compare: Comparable to a term implying one component of its definition.

The human implementation or practice of the din; how a person or community lives the religion in actual behavior.

Compare: Comparable to the difference between a legal constitution and how citizens or institutions apply it.

People’s lived practice and commitment to the religion, which may strengthen or weaken over time.

Compare: Comparable to religious observance or lived religion.

Remembering death in a way that motivates preparation for the Akhira.

Compare: Comparable to memento mori, but connected to repentance and the afterlife.

Qur’anic exegesis: the discipline of interpreting and explaining the meanings of the Qur’an.

Compare: Comparable to scriptural commentary or biblical exegesis.

Verification or realization. In the text it includes careful scholarly verification of inherited views, and in Sufi usage spiritual realization of truth.

Compare: Comparable to critical verification in scholarship, and in another sense to contemplative realization in mystical theology.

Prohibition; a definitive command to refrain from something.

Compare: A binding prohibition.

Prohibition: a decisive request to refrain from an action, such as drinking wine or zina.

Compare: A strict negative duty: an act one must not do.

Absolute prohibition; the view that studying or engaging logic is categorically impermissible.

Acquiring, attaining, and firmly gaining knowledge through study.

Compare: Comparable to mastery or acquisition of learning.

Rational determination of goodness: the claim that Allah’s acts and rulings are rationally dependent on purposes such as bringing benefits and warding off harms.

Compare: Related to debates in metaethics over whether moral value is known by reason independently of revelation.

Renewal of the community’s practice and understanding of the religion when commitment weakens.

Compare: Comparable to reform in the sense of renewal, not doctrinal innovation.

Renewal of religion by reviving neglected teachings of the Qur’an and Sunna. In this text it does not mean inventing a new religion, but restoring and clarifying authentic practice.

Compare: Closer to reform as restoration than reform as modern innovation.

Experience, practice, trial, and observation used to determine how things work in applied matters.

Compare: Comparable to empirical inquiry or experimental knowledge.

Corporealism: treating Allah as a body or physical object.

Compare: Corporealism or crude anthropomorphism.

Declaring a person or group to be outside Islam; the lecture emphasizes that this is extremely serious and not to be done lightly.

Compare: Comparable to excommunication, though Islamic rules and consequences differ.

Complete distinction between meanings, as between a rock and a human being.

Compare: Difference or diversity of meanings.

Moral accountability before Allah and being subject to divine commands and prohibitions.

Compare: Moral responsibility or culpability.

Being morally and religiously responsible before Allah; it requires sufficient rational capacity and awareness.

Compare: Moral accountability or legal responsibility.

A demand, command, request, or appeal; a compound expression not subject to truth or falsity in itself.

Compare: Imperative or directive speech act.

A command or demand from the Lawgiver, either to do something or to refrain from something.

Compare: Comparable to an imperative in legal theory.

Request or demand: speech that seeks something rather than reporting a truth claim.

Compare: Comparable to imperative or optative speech, not a proposition.

Seeking knowledge as a lifelong religious and spiritual vocation.

Compare: Comparable to lifelong learning, but ordered toward Allah and the Akhira.

A command to refrain from an act.

Compare: A prohibition or negative duty.

A command to perform an act.

Compare: A positive legal duty.

Necessary concomitance: a necessary connection between two parts of a conditional.

Compare: Comparable to entailment or necessary implication.

Consequent: the second part of a connected conditional.

Compare: The “then” part of an if-then statement.

The completion of a lunar year over zakatable wealth; discussed as a condition for zakat to be effective.

Compare: A time-based legal requirement.

Analogy: applying one particular case to another because of a shared factor.

Compare: Analogical reasoning.

Mutual incompatibility: a relation in which alternatives cannot stand together in the relevant way.

Compare: Comparable to logical incompatibility.

Contradiction: opposition between two propositions such that the truth of one excludes the truth of the other in the relevant way.

Compare: Contradictory opposition in the traditional square of opposition.

Declaring Allah transcendent above anything inappropriate, deficient, bodily, or creaturely.

Compare: Comparable to apophatic theology or divine transcendence.

Gradual revelation or sending down over time; used for the Qur'an's revelation over twenty-three years.

Compare: Comparable to progressive disclosure across historical events.

Following another without independently knowing the proof; it can be blameworthy in foundational belief but valid in practical matters when following experts.

Compare: Analogous to relying on expert testimony, though problematic when used for first principles without reflection.

Following an established authority. In jurisprudence it contrasts with ijtihad; in theology the text also uses it for accepting belief without personal verification through proof.

Compare: Comparable to relying on expert authority rather than independently deriving a conclusion.

Following or imitation. The text criticizes blameworthy taqlid: following another out of partisan zeal without seeking truth.

Compare: Comparable to uncritical appeal to authority or group loyalty.

Having belief merely by copying another person, without one’s own conviction; scholars debate validity but agree it is insufficient as an ideal.

Compare: Comparable to second-hand belief without personal assent or justification.

Reducing distracting worldly attachments that occupy the heart and scatter attention.

Compare: Comparable to minimizing cognitive and emotional distractions.

God-consciousness expressed by doing what Allah commands and avoiding what He forbids.

Compare: Comparable to piety joined with moral vigilance.

God-fearingness or mindful piety. The excerpt lists it as an essential quality of a proper spiritual guide.

Compare: Comparable to reverent moral conscience or piety.

Different terms indicating the same meaning, such as insan and bashar both indicating human being.

Compare: Synonymy.

Synonymy: different words sharing the same meaning.

Compare: Synonymy in semantics.

Nurturing formation of the soul, such as the Prophet’s individualized cultivation of the Companions.

Compare: Comparable to moral and spiritual education through mentorship.

A Sufi path or order, usually involving a spiritual guide, litanies, discipline, and a chain of initiation.

Compare: Comparable to a spiritual order or school of contemplative practice.

Weighted preference: choosing the stronger opinion among recognized scholarly views according to accepted criteria.

Compare: Comparable to judicial preference among competing precedents or interpretations.

The ordering and classification of the sciences, showing how fields of knowledge relate to each other.

Compare: Comparable to a philosophy of curriculum or encyclopedia of the sciences.

Infinite regress: an endless chain of dependence without reaching something necessary.

Compare: Infinite regress in epistemology or metaphysics.

The Islamic science of spiritual purification and realization, concerned with inward states and character.

Compare: Roughly comparable to ascetical or mystical theology, though within Islamic law and creed.

The science of spiritual refinement: purifying the heart and actualizing servanthood to Allah in lived practice.

Compare: Comparable in some respects to spiritual theology or moral psychology, but grounded in Qur'an and Sunnah.

The Islamic science of spiritual refinement, sincerity, purification of the heart, and nearness to Allah.

Compare: Sometimes compared to mysticism, though it is better understood as disciplined Islamic spiritual ethics.

Conceptualization: forming a clear idea of what something is before making a judgment about it.

Compare: Comparable to concept-formation in logic or grasping a definition before making a proposition.

Basic apprehension of a concept or meaning without yet judging it true or false.

Compare: Comparable to forming a concept in epistemology.

A concept or mental apprehension of something without yet affirming or denying anything about it, such as grasping the meaning of “human.”

Compare: Comparable to simple apprehension in Aristotelian logic.

Grasping what the relation between subject and predicate means before affirming whether it actually occurs.

Compare: Understanding the predicative link before judging its truth.

A real conception based on direct grasp or experience of the thing, not merely a verbal description.

Compare: Comparable to acquaintance-based knowledge of a concept.

A nominal or verbal conception gained through description or report rather than direct experience.

Compare: Comparable to knowing something by description rather than acquaintance.

A judgment or affirmation involving a relationship between concepts, such as accepting that a proposition is true.

Compare: Comparable to assent to a proposition.

A judgment or affirmation/denial that connects concepts, such as “the human is an animal.”

Compare: Comparable to judgment or proposition-affirmation.

Assent or judgment; affirming or denying that a relation between concepts actually obtains.

Compare: Judgment or propositional assent.

Unequal or graded application of one meaning across its instances, such as “white,” “tall,” or “existence.”

Compare: Analogical or graded predication, though not identical to all Western uses.

Graded or analogical usage: one expression applies to multiple things with priority, intensity, or degree.

Compare: Comparable to analogical predication.

Likening Allah to creation.

Compare: Anthropomorphism when the likeness is human-like.

Simile or comparison. In rhetoric it is one of the literary devices studied under bayan.

Compare: Comparable to simile in classical rhetoric.

Vowel markings and diacritical signs such as fatha, kasra, damma, and sukun.

Compare: Comparable to written vowel/case markings that guide pronunciation and meaning.

Confusion or mental disturbance; used for how people’s thinking can be distorted when categories are not clear.

Compare: Conceptual confusion.

Chasing the easiest dispensations across opinions in a way that erodes religious commitment.

Compare: Like selectively shopping for loopholes rather than following a coherent legal method.

Humility, understood as the balanced virtue between arrogance and self-debasement.

Compare: Close to Aristotle’s virtue as a mean between extremes, also developed by al-Ghazali.

Indirect generation: producing an effect through an intermediate generated effect. The text denies that created human power produces acts by tawallud.

Compare: Indirect or mediate causation.

Supplicating to Allah by means of an intercessory means, such as a righteous person, a good deed, or Allah’s names and attributes.

Compare: Petition through an intercessory means, not worship of the means.

Equal application of one universal meaning to all its instances, such as “human” applying equally to all humans.

Compare: Univocal predication.

Univocal usage: one word used for many instances with the same meaning.

Compare: Comparable to univocity in semantics.

Mass transmission by so many independent routes that it yields certainty.

Compare: A socially transmitted certainty based on overwhelming testimony.

Repentance and returning to Allah by addressing sins without delay.

Compare: Comparable to moral conversion and repair, but directed to God.

Divine enabling or success granted by Allah; the ability to do what is right comes from Him.

Divinely granted success in conforming one’s actions to Allah’s command.

Compare: Comparable to grace-enabled right action.

Affirming Allah’s oneness in Himself, His attributes, His actions, and in one’s worship and lived reliance upon Him.

Compare: Often translated as monotheism, but richer than merely saying there is one God.

Affirming Allah’s oneness and exclusive divinity, lordship, and right to worship.

Compare: Monotheism, but with precise theological implications.

Affirming Allah’s absolute oneness in divinity, worship, lordship, and ultimate agency.

Compare: Strict monotheism, but also a metaphysics of dependence on God.

Practical tawhid: living one’s belief in Allah’s knowledge, will, power, and wisdom through trust, gratitude, and surrender.

Compare: Comparable to lived theology or applied spiritual doctrine.

Dry ablution performed when water is unavailable or genuinely unusable.

Purification of the self or ego from blameworthy traits and impulses.

Compare: Comparable to moral psychology or spiritual formation.

Purification of the self from blameworthy traits and cultivation of spiritual virtue.

Compare: Comparable to moral and spiritual formation.

Purification and refinement of the soul from blameworthy traits and cultivation of virtuous traits.

Compare: Comparable to moral and spiritual formation, but rooted in Qur'an, Sunnah, and Islamic spiritual practice.

The status of a text in terms of its establishment or transmission, classified in the slides as definitive or assumptive.

Compare: Comparable to questions of source authenticity or textual warrant.

A written record of a scholar’s teachers, transmissions, and authorizations. Al-Dardir’s thabat lists the works and chains he received.

Compare: Comparable to an academic CV combined with a transmission pedigree.

The fruit or benefit of a discipline; what studying it practically yields.

Compare: Comparable to a discipline’s practical payoff or intellectual utility.

The disciplined treatment of questions about God, divine attributes, and religious truth.

Compare: From Greek theos and logia; overlaps with philosophical theology.

In this book, tradition means the transmitted principles, norms, methods, and disciplines by which Muslims seek to understand and apply the Qur’an and hadith. It is not mere repetition; it includes preservation, interpretation, and disciplined renewal.

Compare: Comparable to Alasdair MacIntyre’s idea of a living intellectual tradition, where reasoning happens within inherited authorities and practices.

The inherited scholarly tradition: the cumulative books, methods, disciplines, and wisdom passed down by Muslim scholars.

Compare: Comparable to a civilizational canon plus its interpretive tradition.

The inherited Islamic intellectual and spiritual legacy that developed from the Qur'an and Sunna.

Compare: Comparable to a living intellectual tradition rather than a static archive.

The inherited Islamic intellectual and spiritual tradition that developed from the Qur’an, Sunnah, and the work of generations of scholars.

Compare: Comparable to a civilizational canon or inherited intellectual tradition, but with sacred transmission at its core.

Scholars of the Islamic tradition who preserve, understand, and transmit the religion.

Compare: Comparable to a learned scholarly guild, but with a sacred duty of transmission.

Recognized scholars of the Islamic sciences who preserve and transmit religious knowledge.

Compare: Similar to learned authorities in a discipline, but tied to piety, transmission, and practice.

Recognized scholars of the Islamic sciences who preserve, understand, and transmit the religion.

Compare: Comparable to learned authorities, though rooted in transmitted sacred knowledge rather than academic credentialing alone.

Scholars of the Islamic sciences who have the training to interpret complex religious texts and guide others.

Compare: Comparable in some respects to learned theologians or jurists, but without a priestly sacramental role.

Divinity in the sense of Allah’s exclusive right to be worshipped.

Sciences or organized fields of knowledge, whether religious, linguistic, rational, or practical.

Compare: Comparable to disciplines in a university, though traditionally integrated under shared assumptions.

Tool sciences that help a student understand the higher religious sciences, such as Arabic grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

Compare: Comparable to prerequisite disciplines or methodological tools.

Objective sciences studied for their own religious purpose, such as tafsir and hadith.

Compare: Comparable to core disciplines as opposed to auxiliary methods.

The Muslim community as a collective body across time and place.

Compare: A transhistorical religious community, not simply a nation-state.

Mental abstractions or conceptual considerations that are real as meanings in the mind but do not exist as independent objects outside the mind.

Compare: Related to debates about universals, realism, and nominalism, though not identical to Western categories.

A legal ruling where one is rewarded for leaving the act and deserves punishment for doing it, such as drinking alcohol or fornication.

Compare: Comparable to a prohibition in law or ethics.

The foundations of the religion, especially the core beliefs upon which Muslim faith rests.

Compare: Comparable to foundational theology.

The foundations of religion, especially core theological beliefs known through reflection and proof.

Compare: Natural theology or foundational theology.

Juristic methodology: the discipline that studies the sources, principles, and interpretive rules used to derive legal rulings.

Compare: Comparable to legal theory and hermeneutics combined.

Scholars of foundational disciplines, especially usul al-din and usul al-fiqh, concerned with principles of theology and legal theory.

Compare: Comparable to theorists of first principles in theology and law.

Normative stipulation: the Lawgiver places signs, causes, conditions, or preventatives that make legal rulings operative.

Compare: Similar to positive law or enacted legal conditions in jurisprudence.

Legal designation or positing: the Lawgiver appoints something as a sign for one of the five legal rulings, such as a cause, condition, or preventer.

Compare: Similar to institutional rules in law, where certain facts trigger legal consequences.

Original usage or designation of words. The text connects it to debates about literal and figurative meaning.

Compare: Comparable to lexical convention or original semantic designation.

Stipulation or convention by which a term is assigned to a meaning.

Compare: Linguistic convention.

Allah’s absolute oneness, negating multiplicity in His essence, attributes, and acts.

Compare: Divine simplicity and uniqueness, though kalam articulates it in its own way.

Revelation from Allah, especially the Qur'an and what was revealed to the Prophet ﷺ.

Compare: Comparable to revelation in Abrahamic theology.

Divine revelation or inspiration, including the Qur’an and the divinely guided teaching of the Prophet ﷺ.

Compare: A revealed source of knowledge, unlike purely empirical or rational sources.

Revelation from Allah, especially as given to prophets; one of the realities included in an Islamic worldview.

Compare: Roughly comparable to revealed knowledge in theology, but in Islam it has a precise prophetic meaning.

Obligatory; a definitive command to do something.

Compare: A binding duty.

Rationally necessary: that whose denial entails a contradiction.

Compare: Logical necessity.

Necessary or obligatory. In rational theology it means what cannot be negated; in law it can mean religiously obligatory.

Compare: Comparable to necessity in modal logic, or obligation in law depending on context.

The obligation demanded by one’s specific time, context, and capacity.

Compare: Comparable to a contextual moral responsibility or historical duty.

The Necessary Existent: that whose existence is necessary; in reality, this applies only to Allah.

Compare: Comparable to necessary being in philosophical theology.

A pious endowment used to support mosques, schools, scholars, students, and other public or religious institutions.

Compare: Comparable to a charitable trust or endowment.

Scrupulous caution in religious matters, especially avoiding doubtful or potentially harmful actions.

Compare: Moral conscientiousness or prudential ethical restraint.

A means of drawing near or a means by which one seeks closeness.

Compare: Means or mediation.

Loyalty, allegiance, or protective affiliation; in this lecture, the idea that loyalty to the deen must be higher than tribal loyalty.

Compare: Comparable to ultimate allegiance or primary loyalty.

A comprehensive vision of reality that answers major questions about existence, knowledge, humanity, morality, purpose, and history.

Compare: Similar to a philosophical Weltanschauung, a total picture of reality.

Ritual ablution required for certain acts of worship and, according to the juristic point mentioned, for touching the mushaf.

Compare: A ritual purification practice, not simply physical washing.

Ritual ablution; a condition for the validity of prayer, not the cause of prayer becoming obligatory.

Compare: A prerequisite for valid performance.

Clarity: al-Razi’s preferred framing for what definitions provide, rather than claiming they produce entirely new conceptions.

Compare: Similar to conceptual clarification.

Rational necessity / necessary: that whose nonexistence cannot be conceived by the intellect.

Compare: Modal necessity: what cannot be otherwise.

Extra-mental existence; existing as an actual thing outside the mind.

Compare: Mind-independent existence in metaphysics.

Occurrence; the actual obtaining of a relation in reality.

Compare: A state of affairs obtaining.

Certainty: firm knowledge used in demonstrative proof.

Compare: Epistemic certainty.

An ascetic person who lives simply and renounces worldly luxury; used to describe a Reformation-era portrayal of Jesus as a humble common man.

Compare: Comparable to an ascetic monk-like figure, though zuhud has its own Islamic framing.

The time of revelation, meaning the Prophet’s ﷺ lifetime when revelation was being received and he was the living source for the religion.

Compare: Comparable to an originating apostolic or foundational period, though in Islam it is tied to revelation and prophethood.

Presumptive or probabilistic: authoritative but not yielding absolute certainty in transmission or meaning.

Compare: Comparable to probable evidence or defeasible authority.

The sun’s passing the zenith; used as the legal cause for the obligation of Dhuhr prayer.

Compare: A legally recognized temporal marker.

The cream, summary, or distilled essence of a larger science.

Compare: Comparable to an epitome or concise synthesis.

Renouncing unnecessary attachment to worldly things in order to focus on what matters with Allah.

Compare: Comparable to ascetic detachment, but not rejection of lawful life.