A Comparative Study of Commonalities between God in Islamic Mysticism and the Light of Lights in the Illuminationist Philosophy

Comparing the intuitions and thoughts of Muslim mystics and Suhrawardī regarding the existence of God and the Light of lights and extracting the differences and commonalities of their views provide the ground for promoting their thoughts and also the optimal use of their works. This article, with a descriptive-analytical method, tries to prove the states of inclusive unity (wāḥidiyya) and exclusive unity (aḥadiyya) in the essence of the Light of lights and argue for the ontological primacy of existence in the Illuminationist philosophy of Suhrawardī. Two questions are dealt with in this article. The first is whether, despite his lack of explication, the intuitive divine states of inclusive and exclusive unity of mystics' God can be ascribed to Suhrawardī's Light of lights, too. The second issue is whether according to Suhrawardī's implicit endorsement of the primacy of existence, the existence of Suhrawardī's God is the same as the existence of mystics' God, and according to his endorsement of the primacy of quiddity, they are not the same. The result is that Suhrawardī has implicitly accepts the mystic states of inclusive and exclusive unity of God and renders the existence of God and the Light of lights identical, not their quiddities.