HOMMA Ryusei

Positions, degrees

Research Associate; JSPS Research Fellowship

Research Keywords

Sufism; South Asian Area Studies

Email

rhomma1545[at]aa.tufs.ac.jp

Exploring Islamic thought in South Asia with a focus on Sufism

My research explores the development of Sufism in South Asia by analyzing Sufi texts from the Mughal to the British period. I am especially interested in how the Sufi metaphysical doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (the oneness of being), which originates from the thirteenth-century Andalusian mystic Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240), has been accepted and interpreted within the social and religious contexts of South Asia. During the Mughal era, for example, the worldview of waḥdat al-wujūd, which sees the cosmos as God’s self-disclosure, shaped syncretic ideas through intellectual interactions with local religious and philosophical traditions in India; later, during the colonial period, as the Islamic revival movement gained momentum, reformist interpreters emphasized reconciling the doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd with the divine norms of Shariah. By examining the regional development of the philosophical and speculative aspect of Sufism, I aim to contribute to the understanding of the intellectual discourses on South Asian Islam.