“Khalil Andani wrote an excellent paper that dealt with the problem of evil from the perspective of Ismaili Neoplatonism and made a huge intervention in the field of philosophy of religion.”
Professor Mohammed Rustom
(Professor of Islamic Thought, Carleton University)
In 2023, Routledge will publish a volume featuring how contemporary Islamic philosopher draw on Islamic thought and spirituality to explain, engage, and reconcile the existence of evil and suffering in the world.
Muhammad U. Faruque and Mohammed Rustom (editors), From the Divine to the Human: Contemporary Islamic Thinkers on Evil, Suffering, and the Global Pandemic (New York: Routledge, 2023)
As an emerging scholar of Islamic history, theology and Ismaili Studies and a publicly engaged philosopher of Ismaili thought, Dr. Khalil Andani (Assistant Professor of Religion) was invited to address the topic from a Shi’i Ismaili Muslim perspective.
Dr. Andani’s chapter is titled “Necessitated Evil: An Islamic Neoplatonic Theodicy from the Ismaili Tradition”. In this paper, Andani shows that the classical Ismaili Neoplatonic worldview — in which God is absolutely one beyond all attributes, the First Intellect is the first and eternally perfect creation of God, and the Universal Soul is the demiurgic maker of the physical universe — is best suited to answer the classical Problem of Evil.
His chapter is a key intervention in Ismaili studies to show the contemporary relevance and value of Ismaili Neoplatonism to solving major existential issues of our own time and in the field of modern analytic theology where most answers to the Problem of Evil are Christian.
Read Khalil Andani’s chapter here:
https://www.academia.edu/92920186/Necessitated_Evil_An_Islamic_Neoplatonic_Theodicy_from_the_Ismaili_Tradition_Contemporary_Islamic_Thinkers_on_Evil_Suffering_and_the_Global_Pandemic
Watch a video presentation of his chapter:
Ismailimail 