Islamic philosophy

Islamic philosophy (الفلسفة الإسلامية) is a part of the Islamic studies. It is a longstanding attempt to create harmony between faith and reason or philosophy and the religious teachings of Islam. The revealed nature of the Quran in Islam has put philosophy at odds with both Muslim theologians and the general Muslim community. Islamic philosophy has been shaped largely by the Islamic religious tenets and is more concerned with ethics and social order based on revelation than on philosophy as such.

Definition

The attempt to fuse religion and philosophy is difficult because there are no clear, commonly shared preconditions. Classical religious believers hold a set of religious principles as fact which is not necessarily accepted by philsophy. Due to these divergent goals and views, some might hold that one cannot simultaneously be a philosopher and a true adherent of Islam. In this view, all attempts at synthesis ultimately fail.

However, others believe that a synthesis between Islam and philosophy is possible. One way to find a synthesis is to use philosophical arguments to prove that one's preset religious principles are true. This is a common technique found in the writings of many religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but this is not generally accepted as true philosophy by philosophers. Another way to find a synthesis is to abstain from holding as true any religious principles of one's faith at all, unless one independently comes to those conclusions from a philosophical analysis. However, this is not generally accepted as being faithful to one's religion by adherents of that religion. A third, more difficult path is to apply analytical philosophy to the religious doctrine. In this case a religious person would also be a philosopher, by asking questions such as:

• What is the nature of God? How do we know that God exists?
• What is the nature of revelation? How do we know that God reveals his will to mankind?
• What is the nature of divinely guided Messengers vis à vis philosophers?
• What is the nature of Imamat or vicegerency of humans on earth?
• Which of our religious traditions must be interpreted literally?
• Which of our religious traditions must be interpreted allegorically?
• What must one actually believe to be considered a true adherent of our religion?
• How can one reconcile the findings of philosophy with religion?
• How can one reconcile the findings of science with religion?

Introduction

Islamic philosophy may be defined in a number of different ways, but the perspective taken here is that it represents the style of philosophy produced within the framework of Islamic culture. This description does not suggest that it is necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor even that it is exclusively produced by Muslims.[Oliver Leamman, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Formative influences

Islamic philosophy as the name implies refers to philosophical activity within the Islamic milieu. The main sources of classical or early Islamic philosophy are the religion of Islam itself - especially ideas derived and interpreted from Quran - and the Greek philosophical heritage which the early Muslims inherited as a result of conquests when Alexandria, Syria and Academy of Gundishapur|Jundishapur came under Muslim rule. Many of the early philosophical debates centered around reconciling religion and reason, the latter exemplified by Greek Philosophy.

Also pre-Islamic Iranian and Indian influences are worth mentioning.

Early Islamic philosophy

Early Muslim philosophy is considered influential in the rise of modern philosophy. Thomas Aquinas knew of at least some of the Mu'tazilite work and the Renaissance and the use of empirical methods were inspired at least in part by Muslim works taken in Spain in 1492. The most significant achievements of early Muslim philosophers are:

• the development of a strict scientific citation, the isnad or "backing"
• the development of a scientific method to disprove claims, the ijtihad, which could be generally applied to many types of questions (although which to apply it to is an ethical question)
• willingness to both accept and challenge authority within the same process
• recognition that science and philosophy are both subordinate to morality, and that moral choices are prior to any investigation or concern with either.

Early Muslim philosophy can be starkly divided into four clear sets of influences, listed below.

Muhammad

The life of Muhammad (or sira) generated both the Qur'an (revelation) and hadith (his daily utterances and discourses on social and legal matters). Philosophy was defined by acceptance or rejection of his message. Together the sira and hadith constitute the sunnah and are validated by isnad ("backing") to determine the likely truth of the report of any given saying of Muhammad. Key figures are Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, Al-Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, Abu Dawud and Al-Nasa'i. Each sifted through literally millions of hadith to accept a list of under 10,000. This work, which was not completed until the tenth century, began shortly after The Farewell Sermon in 631, after which Muhammad could not mediate disputes. After his death, Abu Bakr began to collect all fragments of his sayings. During this period, philosophy was subsumed under Muhammad's authority and the revelations.

Dominance of Kalam

Kalam is an Arabic word for speech, used in a similar sense to the Greek term logos. Kalam accepts the ideas introduced by Muhammad in the Qu'ran as reality and so might be considered closer to theology than philosophy in its commonly accepted sense. As the Sunnah (accounts of Muhammad's life) became published and accepted, philosophy separate from Muslim theology was discouraged due to a lack of participants. During this period, traditions similar to Socratic method began to evolve, but philosophy remained subordinate to religion.

Mutazilite school

Mu'tazili theology emerged out of the Qadarite-Murji'ite dispute over the status of Muslims in the eighth century. This dispute contested two different readings of the Qur’an in regards to the status of believers and non-believers. The group is sometimes labeled as ‘rationalists’ due to their stance on the reading of the Qur’an from a rationalist standpoint. Later, Mu'tazilis expanded on the logic and rationalism of philosophy, seeking to combine them with Islamic doctrines and show that reason and revelation were inherently compatible. Early Muslim medicine and Early Muslim sociology in particular benefited from the Mutazilite approach. The Mu'tazili school of thought had a wide influence on early Islamic philosophy. Their basic tenets maintained monotheistic notions of God and essentially a ideological stance which attempted to reconcile the disputes which would put reason at odds with revelation. Their use of analogy and rationalist explanations were eventually countered and opposed by comparatively theologically conservative schools and the masses.

Rise of the Asharite school

The Asharites were the mainstream group within the Islamic world that gained ideological dominance following the fall of the Mu'tazili. Their conservative views and mass following put an end to philosophy as such in the Muslim world. Yet, philosophy continued to maintain a foothold in the Islamic worlds of science and technology. This marked the 12th-to-14th century peak of innovation in Muslim civilization, after which lack of improvements in the basic processes and confusion with theology and law had degraded methods. During this period many remarkable achievements of engineering and social organization were made, and the Ulema began to generate a fiqh based on taqlid ("emulation") rather than on the old ijtihad. An influential 12th-century work, "The Incoherence of the Philosophers", by Al-Ghazali, laid the groundwork to "shut the door of ijtihad" later on in the 15th-century, with the assistance of the new Ottoman Empire.

The Classical Period

In the early Islamic thought two main currents may be distinguished. The first is Kalam, that mainly dealt with theological questions and the other is Falsafa, that was founded on the reception of Greek thought.

Kalam

Independent minds exploiting the methods of ijtihad sought to investigate the doctrines of the Qur'an, which until then had been accepted in faith on the authority of divine revelation. One of first debates was that between partisan of the Qadar (Arabic language: qadara, to have power), who affirmed free will, and the Jabarites (jabar, force, constraint), who maintained the belief in fatalism.

At the second century of the Hegira, a new movement arose in the theological school of Basra, Iraq. A pupil, Wasil ibn Ata, who was expelled from the school because his answers were contrary to then orthodox Islamic tradition and became leader of a new school, and systematized the radical opinions of preceding sects, particularly those of the Qadarites. This new school was called Mutazilite (from i'tazala, to separate oneself, to dissent). Its principal dogmas were three:

1. God is an absolute unity, and no attribute can be ascribed to Him.
2. Man is a free agent. It is on account of these two principles that the Mu'tazilites designate themselves the "Partisans of Justice and Unity".
3. All knowledge necessary for the salvation of man emanates from his reason; humans could acquire knowledge before, as well as after, Revelation, by the sole light of reason. This fact makes knowledge obligatory upon all men, at all times, and in all places.

The Mutazilites, compelled to defend their principles against the orthodox Islam of their day, looked for support in philosophy, and are one of the first to pursue a rational theology called Ilm-al-Kalam (Scholastic theology); those professing it were called Mutakallamin. This appellation became the common name for all seeking philosophical demonstration in confirmation of religious principles. The first Mutakallamin had to debate both the orthodox and the non-Muslims, and they may be described as occupying the middle ground between those two parties. But subsequent generations were to large extent critical towards the Mutazilite school, especially after formation of the Asharite concepts.

Falasafa

From the ninth century onward, Greek philosophy was introduced among the Persians and Arabs, and the Peripatetic school began to find able representatives among them. Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd (Averroës), among others were criticized for their epistomology and metaphysics by the Mutakallamin.

During the Abbasid caliphate a number of thinkers and scientists, many of them non-Muslims or non-orthodox Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian Western world. They contributed to preserving Aristotle's works while they were being destrored in Christian Europe. Three speculative thinkers, the two Persians al-Farabi and Avicenna and the Arab al-Kindi, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam. They were considered by many as highly unorthodox and by some were even described as non-Islamic philosophers.

From Spain, Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew and Latin, contributing to a developing modern European philosophy. The philosophers Moses Maimonides (a Jew born in al-Andalus) and Ibn Khaldun (born in modern-day Tunisia) were also important in the areas that would eventually become sociology and historiography.

Some differences between Kalam and Falsafa

Aristotle attempted to demonstrate the unity of God from the view followed that God could not be the primal mover of the world. To assert that God's knowledge extends only to the general laws of the universe, and not to individual and accidental things, is tantamount to denying prophecy. Aristotle and the later Peripatetics' views on metaphysics and epistemology were not well-received. The Peripatetics taught that the human soul was only an aptitude: a faculty capable of attaining every variety of passive perfection and through information and virtue became qualified for union with the active intellect, which emanates from God. This theory denied the immortality of the human soul and was considered contrary to Islamic tenets.

The Mutakallamum attempted to establish a system of philosophy to demonstrate the creation of matter. To this end, they adopted Democritus' theory of atoms. They explained that atoms were created by God and are created now as occasion requires. This suggests that atoms possess neither quantity nor extension and bodies come into existence or die through the aggregation or the sunderance of these atoms. For, indeed, if it be supposed that God commenced His work at a certain definite time by His "will," and for a certain definite object, it must be admitted that He was imperfect before accomplishing His will, or before attaining His object. In order to obviate this difficulty, the Mutakallimum extended their theory of the atoms to Time, and claimed that just as Space is constituted of atoms and vacuum, Time, likewise, is constituted of small indivisible moments. On the basis of this theory of the creation of matter, the Mutakallimum argued the existence of a Creator, and that God is unique, omnipotent, and omniscient.

Main protagonists of falsafa and their critics

The twelfth century saw the apotheosis of pure philosophy and the decline of the Kalam. The latter, being attacked by both the philosophers and the orthodox, perished for lack of champions. The supreme exaltation of philosophy may be attributed, in great measure, to Al-Ghazali (1005-1111) among the Persians, and to Judah ha-Levi (1140) among the Jews. It can be argued, that the attacks directed against the philosophers by Ghazali in his work, "Tahaafut al-Falaasifa" (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) produced a current favorable to philosophy and induced higher standards of logic within Islamic philosophies. In response to al-Ghazali the the Islamic Peripatetic philosophers, including Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), undertook the defense of philosophy.

Ibn Rushd (or Ibn Roshd or Averroës), the contemporary of Maimonides, closed the first great philosophical era of the Muslims. The boldness of this great commentator on Aristotle aroused the full fury of the orthodox, who, in their zeal, attacked all philosophers indiscriminately, and had all philosophical writings committed to the flames. The theories of Ibn Roshd do not differ fundamentally from those of Ibn Baja and Ibn Tufail, who only follow the teachings of Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi. Like all Islamic Peripatetics, Ibn Roshd professed the hypothesis of the intelligence of the spheres and the hypothesis of universal emanation, through which motion is communicated from place to place to all parts of the universe as far as the "Supreme World" hypotheses which, in the mind of the Arabic philosophers, did away with the dualism involved in Aristotle's doctrine of pure energy and eternal matter.

While Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and other Persian and Muslim philosophers bypassed subjects entrenched in religious dogmas, Ibn Rushd delighted in dwelling upon them with full particularity and stress. He is quoted as saying: "Not only is matter eternal, but form is potentially inherent in matter; otherwise, it were a creation ex nihilo" (Munk, "Mélanges," p. 444). According to this theory, therefore, the existence of this world is not only a possibility, but a necessity.

Later Islamic philosophy

The death of Ibn Rushd effectively marked the end of a particular discipline of the Islamic Peripatetic School. Philosophical activity declined significantly in the west of Islamic lands, namely in Spain and North Africa, though it held for much longer in the Eastern lands, mainly Iran and India.

After Ibn Rushd, new disciplines in Islamic Philosophy arose out. We can mention just some few like Ibn Arabi, Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra schools.

Modern Islamic philosophy

Image:Iqbal.jpg|thumb|right|Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) - Noted Muslim philosopher, poet and scholar of Pakistan

Modern Islamic philosophy revives some of the trends of medieval Islamic philosophy, notably the tension between Mutazilite and Asharite view of ethics in science and law, and the duty of Muslims and role of Islam in the sociology of knowledge and in forming ethical codes and legal codes, especially the fiqh (or "jurisprudence") and rules of jihad (or "just war"). See list of Islamic terms in Arabic for a glossary of key terms used in Islam.

Key figures representing important trends include:

• Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi who is credited with creating modern Islamist political thought in the 20th century, argued that science was itself merely re-discovering that all matter and energy obeys laws, and that Kafir claims that humankind was free of obligation to comprehend and obey such laws, had to be resisted by Muslims. Caliphate and Monarchy was his most important work. He established the Jamaat-e-Islami in India. This and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were revivals of the tarika tradition and committed to religious, political, and intellectual reform of Islam. Nasser exploited the latter to gain power in 1952 but then turned against the Brotherhood, murdering and torturing many members. The leader Sayed Qutb was executed with five others in 1966. But the key difference between the Indian Maududi and the Egyptian Qutb was that the former accepted democratic means, albeit of a limited form. This contrasts with Qutb who developed a liberation theology, requiring "true" Muslims to declare war on anyone who opposed their ultimate goal.

• Muhammad Iqbal sought an Islamic revival based on social justice ideals and emphasized traditional rules, e.g. against usury. He argued strongly that dogma, territorial nationalism and outright racism, all of which were profoundly rejected in early Islam and especially by Muhammad himself, were splitting Muslims into warring factions, encouraging materialism and nihilism. His thought was influential in the emergence of a movement for independence of Pakistan, where he revered as the national poet. Indirectly this strain of Islam also influenced Malcolm X and other figures who sought a global ethic through the Five Pillars of Islam. Iqbal can be credited with at least trying to reconstruct Islamic thought from the base, though some of his philosophical and scientific ideas would appear dated to us now. His basic ideas concentrated on free-will, which would allow Muslims to become active agents in their own history. His interest in Nietzsche (who he called 'the Wise Man of Europe') has led later Muslim scholars to criticise him for advocating the dangerous ideals, that according to them have eventually formed in certain strains of pan-Islamism. Some claim that the Four Pillars of the Green Party honor Iqbal and Islamic traditions.

• Fazlur Rahman was professor of Islamic thought at University of Chicago, and an expert in Islamic philosophy. Not as widely known as his scholar-activist contemporary Ismail Raji al-Faruqi, he is nonetheless considered an important figure for Islam in the 20th-century. He argued that the basis of Islamic revival was the return to the intellectual dynamism that was the hallmark of the Islamic scholarly tradition (these ideas are outlined in Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism and his magnum opus, Islam). He sought to give philosophy a free-reign, and was keen on Muslims appreciating how the modern nation-state understood law, as opposed ethics; his view being that the shari'ah was a mixture of both ethics and law. He was critical of historical Muslim theologies and philosophies for failing to create a moral and ethical worldview based on the values derived from the Qur'an: 'moral values', unlike socioeconomic values, 'are not exhausted at any point in history' but require constant interpretation. Rahman was driven to exile from his homeland, Pakistan, where he was part of a committee which sought to interpret Islam for the fledging modern state. Some of his ideas from English (which he claimed were from the Islamic tradition) were reprinted in Urdu and caused outrage among conservative Muslim scholars in Pakistan. These were quickly exploited by opponents of his political paymatser, General Ayyub Khan, and led to his eventual exile in the United States of America.

• Ali Shariati was a sociologist and a Professor of Tehran University. He was one of the most influential figures in Islamic world in 20th century. He attempted to explain and provide solutions for the problems faced by Muslim societies through traditional Islamic principles interwoven with and understood from the point of view of modern sociology and philosophy. Shariati was also deeply influenced by Rumi|Mowlana and Muhammad Iqbal.

• Musa al-Sadr was a prominent Muslim intellectual and one of the most influential muslim philosophers of 20th century. He is most famous for his political role, but he was also philosopher who had been trained by Allameh Tabatabaei. As Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr said: "his great political influence and fame was enough for people to not consider his philosophical attitude, although he was a well-trained follower of long living intellectual tradition of Islamic Philosophy". One of his famous writings is a long introduction for the Arabic translation of Henry Corbin's, History of Islamic Philosophy.

• Liberal movements within Islam have attempted to reconcile Islamic sharia law with feminism and human rights norms of international law. Numerous efforts have been made in Iran among other countries to make democracy and religion compatible. Mohammad Khatami voiced concepts like civil society, democracy and tolerance in Iran and other parts of Islamic world. Modern efforts in Indonesia, Afghanistan and the proposed state of Proposals for a Palestinian state have often emphasized the traditional role of women's control of the household finances. In Bangladesh the Grameen Bank has been involved in microcredit financing of small businesses run exclusively by women.

• Modern Islamists movements are considered the 'dominant' voice today, though this belies the reality. Some Islamists (the word itself has yet to be well-defined, since there is no overall global "Islamist" movement) have entered the limited democratic processes in the Persian Gulf States, and others, such as those in Pakistan, have long been on the political stage. The vast majority of Muslims remain within, what has been termed, Traditional Islam, which is largely apolitical and accomodationist (and so a subject of criticism from certain activists). Advocates of violence, like Qutb, were opposed to the traditional scholars of al-Azhar, because they regard them as complicit in the crimes of the secular state. One general feature of Islamist movements is that they advocate creation of "the Islamic state", though this often means "Islamisation" of the modern nation-state.

In general, the first two trends are more commonly understood in the Islamic World whereas the latter trends, are more known in non-Muslim and Muslim-minority nations, or ones receiving substantial aid from developed nations. Some argue that this suggests that these trends are insincere and that alternations between fundamentalism and secular military dictators are somehow inherently part of the politics of the Arab World in particular. One response is that such trends were likewise observed in other regions, e.g. Latin America, with Communism as a form of fundamentalism, and that those regions often democratize once outside interference is limited.

External links

• Islamic Aid Islamic Aid is working to help alleviate poverty and suffering of the world's poorest communities. Islamic Aid has developed and implemented some very innovative income generation projects based on Islamic financing principles.
• Modern Islamic Philosophy by Oliver Leaman
• Islamic Philosophy by Oliver Leaman

Further reading

1. Islamic Philosophy Online http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/
2. History of Islamic Philosophy by Henry Corbin
3. History of Islamic Philosophy (Routledge History of World Philosophies) by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman [ed.]
4. History of Muslim Philosophy: With Short Accounts of Other Disciplines and the Modern Renaissance in Muslim Lands by M. M. Sharif http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/hmp/default.htm
5. History of Islamic Philosophy by Majid Fahkry
6. Islamic Philosophy by Oliver Leaman http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/H057
7. Modern Islamic Philosophy by Oliver Leaman http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/h008.htm
8. The Study of Islamic Philosophy by Ibrahim Bayyumi Madkour
9. Falsafatuna (Our Philosophy) by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr

External links

• History of Philosophy in Islam
• http://www.al-islam.org/al-tawhid/study-philosophy.htm
• http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/pd/d-intro.htm

Category:Philosophy and religion

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