Holistic Islam by Kabir Helminski, and: In Days To Come by Avraham Burg, and: Renovatio, and: The New Cosmic Story by John F. Haught (review)

Holistic Islam
Kabir Helminski White Cloud Press, 2017

In Days To Come
Avraham Burg Nation Books, 2018

Renovatio
The Journal of Zaytuna College Vol. 1, no. 1, 2017

The New Cosmic Story
John F. Haught Yale, 2017

Some of the most creative philosophical thinking is happening today in the realm of religious studies. While the anti-religious authors attack conceptions of God or religion from the middle ages and that survive largely in the teachings of fundamentalists in every religion, the newest thinking is fresh, exciting, provocative, often environmentally engaged and spiritually rich.

We welcome as a sister publication to Tikkun the new journal Renovatio which, under the brilliant editorship of Hamza Yusuf (a founder of the progressive Islamic college Zaytuna) is seeking to do for the Islamic world what Tikkun seeks to do for the Jewish world—provide the intellectual and metaphysical foundations for a religious tradition that has been hijacked by fundamentalists and those who are spiritually dead. Grappling, with the same issues that Tikkun takes on, for example, can materialism explain the mind, the objectivity of ethics, technophilic addictions, can science and economics honor nature, Renovatio is a breath of fresh air. And as if this was not blessing enough, we also celebrate the publication of Kabir Helmisnki's Holistic Islam which presents a Sufi version of Islam similar in important ways to much of Christian and Jewish liberation theologies, which opens up the reader to the creativity, beauty and wisdom of this spiritual tradition. Reading Helminski will give you new insights about why 1.5 billion people on our planet are attracted to Islam.

Talking about metaphysics, Georgetown U professor James Haught's book invites us to consider the New Cosmic Story from the perspective of each of us being inside our wakening universe. Critical of "Big History" accounts that tell the story of the evolution of humanity from the standpoint of the external validatable perspective of an empiricist worldview, Haught invites us instead to the inside story of the universe that has produced conscious human beings and spiritual/religious traditions and perceptions. Haught is careful to note that religions are at times mixed up with monstrous evil, but that since human life is itself in the middle of an evolutionary process which is far from complete, what we see is only the partially evolved humanity and its partially evolved religions, though even those at this unfinished state of evolving nevertheless assume "the existence of an interior life and of the need to undergo awakening and transformation. They nourish a sense of obligation" and they seek a world made "right." These are not the values and insights that get taught in universities or promoted by our culture, corporations or political movements.

Avraham Burg's book may appear to be mostly autobiography, but within it as he affirms a new hope for Israel he paints a picture of a religious sensibility disentangled from what we at Tikkun have called "settler Judaism" and embraced what we describe as "a Judaism of Love." Burg is best known for being chair of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization and then chair of the Knesset. Yet his most important book in our is his commentary on Torah "Very Near to You" with its rich theological interpretations, and in this new book he once again embraces the hopeful message of Tikkun—that a Judaism that can survive must be one that treasures genuine caring for everyone on earth and for Earth itself. Coming from this most brilliant Jewish leader to emerge from Israel gives us hope for Israel, which someday may embarace Avraham Burg as president, though what we need is for him to become the Israeli prime minister, the first he takes Judaism's highest ethical teachings seriously and rejects the worship of power that has become the pernicious legacy of the Holocaust.