"Your Old Life was Frantic, Running From Silence"

Poem by Maulana Jelaluddin Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

Die..and be quiet

Quietness is the surest sign that you've died

Your old life was frantic, running from silence

The speechless full moon comes out now

The 'Islamization of Knowledge'?

Akbar S. Ahmed Updated by Anis Ahmed

Scientific knowledge is generally considered objective, real, and value-free. The very concept of “Islamization of knowledge” or “Islamic science” raises a basic question: Are the realms of physics and chemistry, or sociology and political science, for instance, and “religion” exclusive and independent of each other, or is a marriage between “religion” and empirical knowledge possible? In the context of the twenty-first century, it becomes more important to understand why, when the postmodernist scholars were questioning even so-called modernity, some Muslim social scientists try to go back to a “tradition” that is perceived as the opposite of modernity. Any call to return to the norms of the Qurān and the sunnah, supposed to be seventh-century texts, creates questions about its relevance to the modern world.

Islam and Modernity.

This perception of European society as modern and enlightened, and of traditional societies as locked in the past, has been an integral part of the colonization project. The role of religion in a supposedly enlightened European society was marginalized and reduced to personal faith and practice. Those who believed otherwise were, consequently, regarded as unenlightened, deprived of the light of reason and critical thinking. This and other presuppositions of the western social sciences filtered into the mind and soul of the Muslim elite who were educated and trained in the western tradition. Against this backdrop, when a group of Muslim social scientists in the early 1970s came forward with the idea of Islamization of knowledge, not only their western friends but many Muslim scholars could not appreciate the concept. Three major responses could be discerned among them. First, knowledge is neutral; we cannot have a Hindu physics or a Christian sociology. Second, the mixing of “religion” and empirical sciences would be a step backward. Third, “Islamization” is only a political slogan for the legitimacy of certain Muslim rulers who acquired power through undemocratic means.

From a historical perspective, the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries saw a serious crisis in the Muslim communities. External political pressures, including the spread of secular and missionary educational institutions, caused tension and a visible divide in the Muslim society. The traditionalist response was twofold. Its total rejection of so-called western secular education was followed by efforts to protect ʿaqīdah (faith), assuming that formal teaching in how to recite the Qurʿān and read some legal texts, without full understanding of the spirit and message of the Qurʿān, was enough to protect ʿaqīdah in an increasingly secularized world. Second, the tension created by westernization and secularization resulted in a mushrooming of religious schools in rural as well as urban areas. Religious institutions in the early and medieval periods were centers of learning and produced intellectuals and scholars. The rise of formalism in madaris (sing: madrasah or school), on the contrary, resulted in the loss of critical thinking and freedom of ideas,thus contradicting the Qurʿānic and Prophetic dictum, “Conduct deep thinking indīn (religion)” (al-Tawbah 9:122; also the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim).

A new concept of reform was introduced in the early 1970s when a group of Muslim social scientists, mostly trained and educated in American, Canadian, and British universities, founded the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in 1971. Its founding Executive Board included Professor Ismāīl al- Fārūqī (United States), Professor Anis Ahmad (Pakistan), Dr. Abdul Ḥamid Abū Sulaymān (Saudi Arabia), Dr. Al-Tijani Abugidiere (Sudan), and Dr. Abdul Haq Ansari (India). The purpose was not merely to add a few references from the Qurān or ḥadīth as a prefix to the existing knowledge of social sciences. They called for basic research, for critical review of the presuppositions of western social science theory and research, and for taking stock of the Islamic intellectual tradition. One of their major objectives was to reconstruct the social sciences on Islamic epistemic foundations.

The founders of this movement, under the leadership of Professor Ismāīl al-Fārūqī (d. 1986), organized seminars, workshops, and working groups on the methodological and applied dimensions of Islamization of the social and human sciences. In due course there evolved a community of Muslim social scientists with a common vision. The First International Conference on the Islamization of Knowledge was held in Europe in 1977. The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) was established in Washington in 1981. A work plan and a theoretical framework on Islamization of knowledge was presented at the Second International Conference on Islamization of Knowledge, held in Islamabad in 1982. The proceedings of this conference provided both theoretical and applied models of Islamization of disciplines such as history, sociology, the physical sciences, and technology.

The genesis of this enormous task, taken up by the AMSS and the IIIT, of Islamization of knowledge, can be traced back to 1962, when Sayyid Abū al-Alā Mawdūdī, while launching the Islamic Research Academy at Karachi, focused on conducting basic research and reorientation in social sciences. In his inaugural address he called for an epistemic paradigm shift in the disciplines of the social sciences. He also called for a three-pronged strategy for social change. First and foremost, a critical appraisal of western thought in social sciences was needed in order to liberate the Muslim mind from the intellectual and cultural colonialism of the west. Second, classification and reorganization of the social sciences on the basis of Islamic value systems would lead to value-based psychology, sociology, economics, and political thought. Third, a curriculum reflective of this approach should be developed, and new textbooks produced for the various social sciences (2000, pp. 13–15).

Methodology.

The proponents of the Islamization of knowledge defined their project as follows:“It is rather a way and a method to formulate a methodological, scientific, mental approach to the humanities, social sciences and applied sciences. The ‘Islamization of Knowledge’ is scientific knowledge—the knowledge that originates from Divine norms and ideas. It is rational in its outlook, its approach, its search, its critical examination of the problems of life, and its treatment of individual society, nature and laws that govern its working” (Sulaymān, p. 85).In other words, it offers a general theory of knowledge founded on the integration of revealed knowledge and values with the rational, empirical socioeconomic and political thought and behavior of modern man. It is not a backward movement or a revival of premodern conservatism. It calls for moving forward with an ethical and moral worldview in a world of high technology.

A twelve-step plan for this ambitious task was proposed.

http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0212#e0212-s0005

Western-Educated Muslim Modernists, Orientalists, Politicized Islam & Women's Education

Nimat Hafez Barazangi, Donald Malcolm Reid, Syed Rizwan Zamir, Dietrich Reetz, Joseph S. Szyliowicz, Akbar S. Ahmed, Anis Ahmad

Nasr (1982)  criticizes Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) and other “modernist” Islamists for understanding “Greek philosophy through the eyes of its modern Western interpreters” and, hence, separating Islam from philosophy. For Rahman (“Islam: An Overview,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 7, edited by Mircea Eliade, 318–322, New York), Iqbal was a “neofundamentalist” who was reacting to modernism but also “importantly influenced by modernism.” Iqbal (1962) himself asserts that the Qurān is a book that emphasizes “deed” rather than “idea.” Barazangi (2004) asserts that Iqbal's contention is significant to the understanding of the Islamic educational process and its transformation. However, she warns, a Muslim's deed that is habitual without basic knowledge of the Islamic principles imposes certain cultural-laden practice as the norm for Islamic behavior.

To educate in Islam, Iqbal states, means to create a living experience on which religious faith ultimately rests. For Rahman (1982), it means Islamic intellectualism. Though Nasr believes that the Islamic theory of education can be reconstructed within Qur'ānic philosophy, Iqbal emphasizes that the birth of Islam is the birth of inductive intellect, wherein “to achieve full self-consciousness, man must finally be thrown back on his own resources.” For Barazangi, it means autonomous identification with and internalization of the Qur'ān without intermediary interpretation.

These diverse views suggest that Muslims, particularly in the past two centuries, not only neglected philosophy, as Nasr suggests, but, as Ismā'īl Rājī al-Fārūqī (1981) points out, also lost Islam's connection to its pedagogical function and its methods of observation and experimentation. As centers of higher religious learning began formal transmission of “book knowledge” and inculcation in particular interpretations, a dichotomy arose between philosophy, or the ideal, and pedagogy, or the practice. Encouraged by skepticism in modern Western philosophy, this dichotomy widened. The transformation of Islamic thought from the building of rules for public life to a distinct political or juridical affiliation, beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has affected the nature of the Islamic education process negatively, despite many attempts to revive it.

Western-educated Muslim modernists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not aware that the underlying philosophy of Western education differed from that of Islam, were satisfied with teaching courses on religion in the traditional style and neglected to restructure the traditional system. Meanwhile, “traditionalists” emphasized the primacy of Islamic doctrine over falsafah(philosophy), creating, in Husaini's words, a schism between the traditionalists and the modernists and destroying the integrated educational system. Western-educated thinkers who reaffirm the validity of traditional practices (also known as “neotraditionalists”) interpret the philosophy of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) as the “finally established” Islamic educational theory and hold an absolutist perspective on Islamic education. This perspective, discussed elsewhere by this author (1998, 2004), results, unknowingly, in dichotomies between the Islamic worldview and its pedagogical process and between educating males and females.

The assaults on Islamic culture as an “oppressor of women” by European Crusaders, Orientalists, and colonial governments, combined with their differentiation between private and public domains, caused premodern Muslim leaders to lose sight of the essence of Islamic education, particularly its informal sector, and take extreme attitudes at the expense of a revival of traditional Islam. In the Indian subcontinent, for example, most girls attending Qur'ānic kuttāb not only are denied the opportunity to continue their religious education once they reach puberty but are rarely instructed by their families, as was the practice among learned Muslim families before British colonization and interaction with Western educational practices. Movements to revive traditional Islam that were predominantly led by males, beginning with those of the eighteenth-century Wahhābī puritan movement, also propagated the view that women need a different type of education because their primary concern is the home. Despite their enrollment in kuttābs in earlier times, for example, Saudi girls were not allowed to enroll in religious institutions of higher learning such as Umm al-Qurā in Mecca until 1970 and 1971, when only eighty women as compared to more than two thousand men were admitted (Saad al-Salem, 1981). “Reformists” such as the Egyptian Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1845–1905) emphasized Islamic ideals of womenʾs higher status in Islam and the obligation of both men and women to seek knowledge; yet, in practice, they did not recognize womenʾs right to access a thorough knowledge of the Qurʿān as a key to Islamic intellectual development.

Revivalists, such as Sayyid Quṭb (1906–1966) and Sayyid Abū al-Aʿlā Mawdūdī (1903–1979), though attempting to restore Islamic education in post–World War II nation-states, used the traditional rationale about women's education and asserted that womenʾs “natural” disposition is to transmit culture to the next generation (both boys and girls); but they did not restructure the traditional practices of teaching Islam to allow for this transmission. The primary objectives of womenʾs education in Muḥammad Quṭb's (1961–1981) curriculum were to prepare them for the biological and emotional aspects of their roles as mothers and housewives. Such objectives further confused and marginalized womenʾs education in Islam. Neotraditionalists are reemphasizing these objectives in the face of globalization but are failing to listen to the voices of emancipated women from within Islam.

The post-1969 “Islamization” movements have leaned toward a politicized Islam and have had implications for women's Islamic and religious education. Contrary to the Islamizationists’ intellectual tradition, which culminated in Ismā'īl Rājī al-Fārūqī's (1921–1986) concept of the “Islamization of Knowledge,” proponents of these movements emphasized morality, which overshadowed their presumed goal: to restructure the secular system of higher learning in order to address the religious and cultural needs of Muslim societies as part of the new development strategies. The Indonesian and Malay development policies of involving all segments of the population in education and training, reported by Ahmat and Siddique (1987), seem to be a first step toward recognizing women's role in social development. Emphasis on morality, however, particularly when women became part of the Malay madrasahs of the 1970s and 1980s, led religious education to take the form of moral dogma. The Indonesian pesantren system, which was established in rural areas in the early nineteenth century and spread to urban development in the 1970s and 1980s, maintained an integrated system, and Indonesian women, unlike those in any other Muslim country, occupy a full range of religious-leadership roles. Armijo (2007) also suggests that in “southwest China, Muslim women generally take part in communal prayer in mosques,” while “in central China, there is a centuries-old tradition of women having their own separate mosques.” Armijo adds, “not only is there a long history of women imams in this region … women have active involvement in both Islamic education and religious leadership.” The mosque must be understood as a “multi-purpose building: a place for worship, for political gatherings, for negotiations and judgment, for personal prayer and for religious instruction and study” (Küng, 2007), in order to appreciate its importance for women's Islamic identity development, let alone for the children's Islamic character building.

Neo-traditionalists have attempted to “liberate Islam from Western cultural colonialism” in the 1980s and have given women's education the form sometimes called “reversed feminism,” emphasizing segregated education for different but unequal roles. This trend is flourishing in North American and Western European countries, where Muslim males are demanding single-sex schools and, in their private “Islamic/Muslim” schools, are segregating children from the first grade onward. Curricula in these schools are the same as that in public schools except that courses on religion and Arabic language are included (Barazangi, 1998). The same movement of segregating education took strong hold in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the late twentieth century to the point of barring women from any educational institution.

http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0212

Maktab & Madressahs: Elementary & Higher Religious Schools in Islamic Societies

Donald Malcolm Reid, Updated by Syed Rizwan Zamir

As the nineteenth century opened, Islamic societies had highly developed educational institutions—elementary Qurān schools (Ar., kuttāb or maktab) and higher religious schools called madrasahs. Less formal education was available from Ṣūfī lodges (khanqah), literary circles at princely courts, private tutors, private study circles (ḥalaqah), and apprenticeships in state bureaus and craftsmen's shops.

This article discusses five phases of the development of educational institutions in the Islamic world since 1800. In phase one, Islamic schools were unaffected by the West. In phase two, reforming Muslim rulers set up Western-style military and professional schools. In phase three, colonial rulers subordinated schools to their own imperial interests. This phase also saw major reforms of traditional institutions in which the process of transmission of religious knowledge was formalized and standardized according to Western institutional models. More importantly, the transformations that took place during this period have proven to be conclusive for later eras. In phase four, newly independent states unified their school systems and rapidly expanded all levels of schooling. Phase five saw, as an aftermath of various sociopolitical developments, a renewed interest in educational reforms along Islamic lines.

The chronology of these phases varied from place to place, and some countries bypassed a phase or two. The Ottomans entered phase two as early as 1773 by opening a naval engineering school; isolated North Yemen and Saudi Arabia had not yet entered it in 1950. The colonial rule of phase three began before 1800 in the Dutch East Indies and India, but reached Syria and Iraq only after World War I. North Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan skipped the colonial phase. Turkey and Iran won the independence of phase four in the 1920s without having been fully colonized, while the emirates of the lower Gulf did not begin phase four until the British left in 1971.

The most significant aspect of premodern madrasah education was its informal character, as seen in the lack of central administrative control and the absence of strictly defined categories of religious and nonreligious subjects. This is despite the fact that madrasahs helped construct, shape, and homogenize religious authority and knowledge by encoding standard Islamic religious texts and canon collections. Their informal character was, however, replaced by a much more standardized religious education in the colonial period and onward.

Qurān schools stressed memorization of the Qurān, reading, and writing. Memorization did not always mean comprehension, particularly for non-Arab Muslims. Teachers taught in homes, mosques, or shops, receiving their pay from pupils’ fees or waqfs (pious endowments).

Advanced schooling in mosques went back to the seventh century, but the formal madrasah—an endowed residential college stressing the sharīah—took shape only in the eleventh century. The Niẓāmīyah in Baghdad was a renowned prototype. In common usage, distinctions between mosque schools and madrasahs disappeared. Subjects more directly tied to the revelation were stressed: Qurānic exegesis, ḥadīth, jurisprudence, theology, Arabic grammar, and logic. Others such as arithmetic, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and poetry, which were not strictly religious, were also taught in many madrasahs. There were no formal admissions or graduation ceremonies, no grade levels, written examinations, grades, classrooms, desks, or school diplomas. It was not the institution but the teacher with whom one studied and from whom one received a certificate (ijāzah) that determined a student's authority in the subject.

Al-Azhar in Cairo, the Süleymaniye in Istanbul, Qarawīyīn in Fez, the Zaytūnah in Tunis, and various mosque-madrasahs in Mecca, Medina, and Damascus stood out in the Sunnī world of 1800. For the Shīah, the madrasahs of Najaf (Iraq) were foremost, with others in Isfahan and other Iranian cities.

Defeat in wars with Russia and Napoleon's invasion of Egypt (1798) forced Muslim rulers to reform their armies and military support services along Western lines.

Three related phenomena (which persist into the early twenty-first century) accompanied the new schools: (importing Western educators, dispatching students to study in the West (small missions first left Egypt in 1809, Iran in 1811, and Istanbul in 1827), and putting new printing presses to work publishing translated Western textbooks. Importantly, all these developments bypassed any consultation or collaboration with the existing madrasah institutions.

Read more: http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0212

Imam Ghazali: Debate as a Means of Searching after the Truth

Imam Ghazali (1058 - 1111), Khorasan

...You will understand this ambiguity between debate and consultation when I relate to you the following, namely, that co-operation in the search after truth is a part of religion but has… distinguishing features and conditions.

Whereas debate as a means of searching after the truth is one of the fard kifayah duties, no one who has not yet fulfilled his fard ‘ayn duties should take it up.

Thus whoever has a  fard ‘ayn duty to fulfil, but addresses himself to the fulfilment of a  fard kifayah instead, claiming that he seeks thereby the truth, is a liar; he is like the person who neglects prayer and traffics in weaving and tailoring saying that his purpose is to cover the nakedness of him who prays naked because he finds no clothes. Such a thing may occur and is quite possible just as the occurrence of the rare cases which are the subject of research in those debates is possible.

Those who spend their time in debate neglect several duties which are, by general agreement,  fard‘ayn duties. Similarly, anyone who has been expected to return a deposit to its owner at once, but, instead of so doing, seeks refuge in prayer which is the worthiest of all obligations before Allah, transgresses because it is not enough that a person be obedient and his works constitute acts of service unless he observes therein the rules of time, condition and sequence.

Debate as a means of searching after the truth is justified provided the doer is not confronted with a more important  fard kifayah duty.

Thus whoever finds an important obligation waiting for him and turns to perform something else, transgresses. In fact he is like a person who comes upon a group of people and finds them, having been neglected, about to die of thirst, but instead of saving them by giving them water to drink, buckles down to study the art of bleeding, claiming that it is a fard kifayah and that unless the town had a bleeder the people will perish. On being told that a number of bleeders already exist within his region and, therefore, there is no need for his services he insists that notwithstanding all this, bleeding remains a  fard kifayah.

 Likewise, he who does this and neglects to give his attention to the calamity which has befallen a group of thirsty Muslims is like the person who devotes his time to debate while several fard kifayah duties remain neglected in the town. Thus several have taken up the profession of law(fatwa) while a number of obligatory duties remain neglected in every town and no jurisprudent ever pays any attention to them. More specifically let me single out medicine in which there is not, in almost all the land, a Muslim physician whose word could be legally accepted in important matters. Nevertheless not one of the jurisprudents has taken up medicine. The same is true of the Muslim obligation to enjoin what is just and to forbid what is evil¹which is a fard kifayah duty.

A debater might perhaps be arguing in the midst of a hall draped with silk and among men apparelled with it, but would say nothing about it and instead would debate concerning a hypothetical case which might never come to pass, even if it should occur there would be several jurisprudents ready to attend to it.

All this time he claims that he desires to come nearer to Allah through performing the fard kifayah duties. It was related by Anas that the Apostle of Allah was once asked, “When will the Muslim obligation of enjoining what is just and forbidding what is evil be neglected?” To which he replied, “When the best among you take to hypocrisy and the wicked, to adultery; when government shall pass to the hands of the least deserving among you and knowledge to those who are corrupt.”

The third condition which justifies debate is that the debater should have the ability and right to form an opinion of his own (mujtahid), and should be one who can give decisions on his own responsibility without being bound be the opinions of either al-Shafi‘i or abu-Hanifah or any other imam, so that whenever he would find that the school of abu-Hanifah is right on a particular point he would hand down his opinion accordingly, just as the Companions and the imams used to do, and would ignore what the Shafi’ite school holds on the subject. On the other hand, he who lacks the right and the ability of independent interpretation (ijtihad), as is the case with all contemporaries, but would hand down his opinions on the authority of his imam, would not be able to reject the stand of another even though he should discover its weakness. Of what use to him there is debate when his system is well-known and his opinions are bound to conform to it? And whenever a doubtful point confronts him he would be compelled to say that the founder of his school might have an answer as he himself was not independent in interpreting the sources of the law. It would have been more fitting for him if his discussions were on points which lend themselves to two opinions, for then he might hand down his opinion in favour of the one and against the other and become thereby more and more disposed to one view and opposed to the other. Yet debates are not confined to this type of two-sided questions; often these are ignored in favour of cases in which the points of controversy have been fully discussed and decided.

The fourth condition which justifies debate is that there should be none except on actual cases or cases likely to be so. Thus the Companions held consultations only as questions arose or were likely to arise, as for example questions of inheritance. We do not, however, see debaters concerning themselves with the criticism of cases in which the handing of opinions has caused widespread tribulations. Rather they seek the spectacular cases which attract attention and consequently, no matter what the nature of the case may be, discussion of the issue becomes widespread. They may even ignore cases of frequent occurrence saying that they are reported cases or rare events which are not spectacular. That the aim of a debate should be the truth is nothing short of a miracle. They would also drop a case because it has been reported although the way to truth is through such reports; or they might drop it because it was not spectacular and would lend itself to little discussion. Truth, however, aims at reducing debate and arriving at conclusions concisely and not flatulently.

Read more: http://www.ghazali.org/works/bk1-sec-4.htm

Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge is Perfection & Perfection is Happiness

Dr. Shams C. Inati

Knowledge is the intellect's grasp of the immaterial forms, the pure essences or universals that constitute the natures of things, and human happiness is achieved only through the intellect's grasp of such universals. 


They stress that for knowledge of the immaterial forms, the human intellect generally relies on the senses. Some philosophers, such as Ibn Rushd and occasionally Ibn Sina, assert that it is the material forms themselves, which the senses provide, that are grasped by the intellect after being stripped of their materiality with the help of the divine world. However, the general view as expressed by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina seems to be that the material forms only prepare the way for the reception of the immaterial forms, which are then provided by the divine world. They also state that on rare occasions the divine world simply bestows the immaterial forms on the human intellect without any help from the senses. This occurrence is known as prophecy. While all Muslim philosophers agree that grasping eternal entities ensures happiness, they differ as to whether such grasping is also necessary for eternal existence.

1. Nature of knowledge

Muslim philosophers are primarily concerned with human happiness and its attainment. Regardless of what they consider this happiness to be, all agree that the only way to attain it is through knowledge. Their intellectual inquiries, beginning with logic and ending with metaphysics and in some cases mysticism, were in the main directed towards helping to understand what knowledge is and how it comes about.


Following in the footsteps of the Greek philosophers, Muslim philosophers consider knowledge to be the grasping of the immaterial forms, natures, essences or realities of things. They are agreed that the forms of things are either material (that is, existing in matter) or immaterial (existing in themselves). While the latter can be known as such, the former cannot be known unless first detached from their materiality. Once in the mind, the pure forms act as the pillars of knowledge. The mind constructs objects from these forms, and with these objects it makes judgments. Thus Muslim philosophers, like Aristotle before them, divided knowledge in the human mind into conception (tasawwur), apprehension of an object with no judgment, and assent (tasdiq), apprehension of an object with a judgment, the latter being, according to them, a mental relation of correspondence between the concept and the object for which it stands.

2. Sources of knowledge

In Islamic philosophy there are two theories about the manner in which the number of unknown objects is reduced. One theory stresses that this reduction is brought about by moving from known objects to unknown ones, the other that it is merely the result of direct illumination given by the divine world. The former is the upward or philosophical way, the second the downward or prophetic one. The proof (al-burhan) is the method for moving from the known objects of assent to the unknown ones. The explanatory phrase and proof can be either valid or invalid: the former leads to certitude, the latter to falsehood. The validity and invalidity of the explanatory phrase and proof can be determined by logic, which is a set of rules for such determination. Thus logic is described as the key to the knowledge of the natures of things. This knowledge is described as the key to happiness; hence the special status of logic in Islamic philosophy.

3. Logic and knowledge

We are told that because logic deals only with the known and unknown, it cannot deal with anything outside the mind. In other words, logic can deal with realities only in that these realities are subjects or predicates, universal or particular, essential or accidental and so on.


Because the ultimate human objective is the understanding of the realities, essences or natures of things, and because the ultimate logical objective is the understanding of conceptions, logicians must focus on the understanding of those conceptions that lead to the understanding of the essences if they intend to serve humanity. Ibn Sina points out that since the essences are universal, such expressions are also universal in the sense of representing universal conceptions such as 'human being', not in the sense of being universal only in expression, such as 'Zayd'. A universal expression can be applied to more than one thing, as the last two examples show, but one must keep in mind Ibn Sina's distinction between these two types of universal expressions: the former represents reality, although indirectly, the latter does not. It is only the former with which the logician should be concerned (see Logic in Islamic philosophy).


Considering that the discussion of universals occupies a central place in Arabic logic, it is important to focus briefly on this subject to ensure understanding of the proper objects of the knowledge of the natures of things.

Muslim philosophers divide universal expressions into five types, known together as the five predicables: genus, species, difference, property and common accident. Genus refers to the common nature of all the species that fall under it, such as 'animality' for 'human being', 'dog', 'cat' and so on. As such, it tells us what the general nature of a thing is. Species refers to the common nature of all the individuals that fall under it, such as 'human being' for 'John', 'George' and 'Dorothy'. As such, it tells us what the specific nature of a thing is. Difference refers to that which differentiates the members of the genus, such as 'rational', which differentiates the species of being human from other animal species; it tells us which thing a being is. These three universals are essential to a thing; that is, without them the essence will not be what it is. Property and common accident are accidental, in that they attach to the thing but are not part of its essence. Property refers to something that necessarily attaches to one universal only, such as 'capacity for laughter' for 'human being'. Common accident refers to a quality that attaches to more than one universal, either in an inseparable manner, such as 'black' for 'crow', or in a separable manner, such as 'black' for 'human being'. The inseparability of the common accident, however, is only in existence.

Only the first three of the above universals constitute the essences of things. If one is to understand the essence of a thing, one must first understand its genus, species and difference or differences. The understanding of these three universals takes place through the explanatory phrase and proof, of which these universals are simple elements. The explanatory phrase is either definition or description. The definition is a phrase which mirrors the essence of a thing by indicating its general and specific essential qualities, that is, its genus, species and difference; the description is like the definition except that it indicates the property instead of the difference. Thus the description does not give a complete picture of the essence of a thing as does the definition. The proof is a set of propositions, which consist of conceptions joined or separated by particles. The proof that helps in the understanding of the essences of things is that which moves from known universal judgments to an unknown universal one.


The important question that concerned Muslim philosophers is how the universals or forms that are essential to the natures of things arrive at the human mind before it has the chance to employ the explanatory phrase and proof to compose known conceptions and known judgments from them. In order to answer this question, Muslim philosophers first discussed the structure of the human soul and then the steps through which the universals pass on their way to the place of knowledge (see Soul in Islamic philosophy). As stated above, conceptions come to the mind through either the philosophical way or the prophetic way. The philosophical way requires one first to use one's external senses to grasp the universals as they exist in the external world, mixed with matter. Then the internal senses, which like the external senses are a part of the animal soul, take in these universals and purify them of matter as much as possible. The imagination is the highest internal sense, in which these universals settle until the next cognitive move. It is from this point to the next step in the philosophical journey that the details seem particularly unclear.

4. The role of the mind

All Muslim philosophers believe that above the senses there is the rational soul. This has two parts: the practical and theoretical intellects. The theoretical intellect is responsible for knowledge; the practical intellect concerns itself only with the proper management of the body through apprehension of particular things so that it can do the good and avoid the bad. All the major Muslim philosophers, beginning with al-Kindi, wrote treatises on the nature and function of the theoretical intellect, which may be referred to as the house of knowledge.


In addition to the senses and the theoretical intellect, Muslim philosophers include in their discussion of the instruments of knowledge a third factor. They teach that the divine world contains, among other things, intelligences, the lowest of which is what al-Kindi calls the First Intellect (al-'aql al-awwal), better known in Arabic philosophy as the 'agent intellect' (al-'aql al-fa''al), the name given to it by al-Farabi (§3), or 'the giver of forms' (wahib as-suwar).

5. Philosophical and prophetic knowledge

The prophetic way is a much easier and simpler path (see Prophecy). One need not take any action to receive the divinely given universals; the only requirement seems to be the possession of a strong soul capable of receiving them. While the philosophical way moves from the imagination upward to the theoretical intellect, the prophetic way takes the reverse path, from the theoretical intellect to the imagination. For this reason, knowledge of philosophy is knowledge of the natures of things themselves, while knowledge of prophecy is knowledge of the natures of things as wrapped up in symbols, the shadows of the imagination.


Muslim philosophers agree that knowledge in the theoretical intellect passes through stages. It moves from potentiality to actuality and from actuality to reflection on actuality, thus giving the theoretical intellect the respective names of potential intellect, actual intellect and acquired intellect. Some Muslim philosophers explain that the last is called 'acquired' because its knowledge comes to it from the outside, and so it can be said to acquire it. The acquired intellect is the highest human achievement, a holy state that conjoins the human and the divine realms by conjoining the theoretical and agent intellects.


Ibn Sina rejects the view that the theoretical intellect is potential by nature. He argues instead that it is eternal by nature because unless it is, it cannot grasp the eternal objects. For him, happiness is achieved by this intellect's grasping of the eternal objects, for such grasping perfects the soul. Muslim philosophers who believe that eternity is attained only through knowledge also agree with Ibn Sina that knowledge is perfection and perfection is happiness.

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Shams C. Inati is a specialist in Islamic philosophy and theology with particular emphasis on Ibn Sina (Avicenna), metaphysics, and the problem of evil.  She is also a poetess and a song writer. She teaches at Villanova University, USA.