Seyyed H. Nasr

Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "one of the world's leading experts on Islamic science and spirituality, is University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. Professor Nasr is the author of numerous books including Man and Nature: the Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (Kazi Publications, 1998), Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford, 1996) and Knowledge and the Sacred (SUNY, 1989)." At Harvard he wrote his dissertation under the direction of three professors: I. Bernard Cohen, Hamilton Gibb and Harry Wolfson. 

"Seyyed Hossein Nasr is among the world's top 50 Muslims, according to The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Jordan... It is interesting that Nasr makes the list, and also interesting that his two main achievements are given as "Reviver of Tradition" and "Islamic Environmentalism." "  Anne Marieke Schwencke writes that Nasr "shares common ground with deep-ecology thinkers and venerated icons of the environmental movement like E. F. Schumacher (Small is Beautiful)." 

As Mark Sedgwick writes: Frithjof Schuon's "most important follower, now the shaykh of the most important Islamic branch of the Maryamiyya Sufi order, was Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Author of numerous books on Islam, Sufism, and religion, Nasr is currently a distinguished professor of Islamic studies in America, and is taken increasingly seriously as a philosopher as well. Although Iranian by birth, he went to highschool and university in America, and was introduced to the works of Guénon by a philosopher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined Schuon's Maryamiyya.

"On his return to Iran, Nasr taught at Tehran University, where he became professor of philosophy. His teaching concentrated on Iranian esoteric philosophers such as Mulla Sadra, until then ignored in the Iranian university system, but since then central to it. Nasr also founded and directed the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, a Traditionalist school of advanced studies that quickly became internationally renowned. He also established the first non-Western branch of the Maryamiyya, and introduced Traditionalism and Traditionalist perspectives into the mainstream of Iranian philosophy and intellectual life. All these activities were, however, brought to an end by the Iranian Revolution. Nasr had enjoyed excellent relations with the court and had carried out various confidential missions for the empress. As a consequence, Nasr was seen as an enemy of the revolution, whatever the positions taken in his writings and speeches. These had in fact generally been in favor of the Islamization of Iranian life along traditional lines, though hostile to the modernist and socialist elements in the Islamist opposition to the Shah. ."

Affiliations

 * President, Foundation for Traditional Studies
 * Member, World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality
 * International Expert Group, World Council of Religious Leaders
 * International Advisory Council, Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation
 * Patron, Alister Hardy Trust

Autobiography

 * Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Ramin Jahanbegloo, In Search of the Sacred: A Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on his Life and Thought (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010).

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Islamic caliphate
 * Vali Reza Nasr
 * International Advisory Council, Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation
 * Forum on Religion and Ecology: Advisory Board of Area Specialists for the Forum
 * Watkins Review's 2012 list of the world’s 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People
 * William Chittick
 * Ewert Cousins
 * Oliver Leaman
 * Former chair of the Foundation for Traditional Studies headed by Katherine O'Brien
 * The anarchist Hakim Bey worked with him in the 70s
 * Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani