Toshihiko Izutsu (1914-1993) was a prolific scholar of Islamic theology and philosophy. He authored the standard translation of the Qur’an into the Japanese language and holds the honor of being the only non-Iranian and non-Muslim to have been a member of the Society of Iranian National Heritage (Anjuman-i Asār o Mafākhir-i Millī). He produced a number of works devoted to Islamic studies, including “God and Man in the Qur’an: Semantics of the Qur’anic Weltanschauung,” “The Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology: A Semantic Analysis of Īmān and Islām,” “Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an,” and “Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts.”

Join us as we examine Izutsu’s most important contribution, elaborated at length in Sufism and Taoism, and discuss the Islamic philosophical doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (unity of being) constituting what he called a “meta-philosophy of oriental philosophies.”