The Transformation of Muslim Societies By Science & Technology?

Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal

Within this broad framework [of colonization] the following changes affected Muslims all over the world.

During the colonial era, this transnational concept of Ummah was replaced by another operating concept that was characteristically western in its origin. This new concept was that of nationalism which gave rise to the idea of state as a basic political unit, defined by concrete boundaries. The emergence of nationalism in the Muslim world during the colonial rule produced, for the first time in their history, an idea which divided the Ummah on national and regional grounds. This division gave rise to numerous countries in the Muslim world and created nations and states out of what was a community of believers.

The second change, which affected the Muslim world deeply, was the position of the Arabic language. Being the language of the Qur'an, Arabic had achieved the status of lingua franca in the Muslim world. In countries where it was not the usual spoken language, it was commonly taught at the elementary level and those who continued their studies beyond the basic level, invariably learned it as the language of scholarship. This shared language was the single most important vehicle of communication in the Muslim world. More than the mere language, it was also a sharing in the flow of ideas, concepts, technical terminology, metaphors and parables. It was as if a river of wisdom and the teachings of the ancestors nourished generation after generation in all regions of the Muslim world. This change produced two effects: it destroyed the vehicle of communication among various Muslim communities and, in those countries where Arabic was not used as a spoken language, it made the Qur'an and the vast corpus of traditional knowledge inaccessible to even the educated class. Thus removed from the language of the Divine revelation, Muslims in these countries were left with no defense against the onslaught of Western ideology.

The third significant change in the colonized societies was the replacement of the traditional system of education by the Western educational system. In the Muslim societies, the governing principle was Unity of God (Tawhid) and submission to His Will and thus education in the Muslim world started with the learning and memorization of the divine Word, it progressed in degrees to prepare the student for a life of piety and observance of the Divine Law. 

In its advanced form, Islamic tradition of learning included various branches which functioned within a hierarchy wherein astronomy, medicine, mathematics and various other disciplines existed in an inter-related form and in harmony with each other. The set of beliefs forming the core of Islamic teachings was operative in the development of curricula. The universe was created by an omnipotent God, it was subject to His Will, it was created with a purpose, there was an end for it and a Day of Reckoning. 

Knowledge was acquired in a manner that required a period of apprenticeship, reverence and respect for teachers and it was not an end in itself, but a means. It was not linked with the gains of this world and least of all with jobs in the administrative system. One learned because it was an obligation (farida) and for the sake of understanding the nature of this life and the universe. All of this was replaced, with far-reaching ramifications, by the Western educational system which had evolved, after the seventeenth century, out of a worldview in which Man, rather than God, held the center stage.

The introduction of this system in the Muslim societies attacked their most basic beliefs and produced a generation of educated men and women who had little knowledge of and far less commitment to their religious beliefs. They served in the colonial administrative systems as low-ranking agents of implementation of the colonial agenda. This educational system is still operative in the Muslim world and it is still producing men and women who see the purpose of education as nothing more than a means for good jobs.

But this was not all. After the colonization, a judgment was pronounced on Islam and Islamic civilization by the victors. Bluntly stated, this judgment was this: Islam was a religion which had its day but which was not suitable for the modern world; it was a religion that was inimical to progress, which was identified with science and technology. As for the Islamic civilization and the tradition of learning, it was grudgingly accepted to have been the harbinger of the Greek heritage, but merely that.

It is not the Orientalists’ judgment itself that is the most painful and devastating aspect of this whole affair; it is the acceptance of this judgment by Muslims.

When the first phase of independence was over, the Muslim masses realized that their struggle had changed little in their lives. This led to a widespread resentment followed by a series of coups and changes of governments through mass uprisings. This produced political instability. In the sixties, this instability gave rise to a series of “revolutions”. The most frequent label for these so-called revolutions was “socialism”, though often with some qualitative adjective like “Arab” or even “Islamic” attached to the label. By the mid-seventies, this trend had also lost its force without affecting any major change in the fundamental structure of the societies. These successive experiments with alien systems made it clear to the masses that they must return to their own process of evolution, based on the teachings of Islam. This gave rise to the present trends of resurgence of Islam in the Muslim societies.

Read full paper: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FmMmiR1gjekJ:www.cis-ca.org/confs/KL-Conf/kl-key~1.pdf+islam+discourse+%2B+muslim+countries&hl=en&gl=pk

Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal: http://www.cis-ca.org/

A scientist by training, an Islamic scholar by vocation, a novelist, and a poet, Muzaffar Iqbal is the founder-president of Center for Islam and Science, Canada, and editor of Islam & Science, a journal on science and civilization from Islamic perspectives.

He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from University of Saskatchewan, Canada, but most of his published work is related to Islam and various aspects of Islamic civilization, including the Islamic scientific tradition. Born in Lahore,Pakistan, he has lived in Canada since 1979. He has held academic and research positions at University of Saskatchewan (1979-1984), Universityof Wisconsin-Madison (1984-85), and McGill University (1986). He is currently working on a major project, Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, a first of its kind reference work on the Qur'an. He is also the General Editor of Ashgate's forthcoming series, Islam and Science: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives.

The Transformation of Muslim Societies By Science & Technology?

Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal

The Muslim world was colonized and the most powerful tool in this process of colonization is generally considered to be western science and technology, although this assertion is open to questioning.

Once colonized, Muslim societies were transformed at the most fundamental level by the replacement of their basic institutions, models, heroes and, in most cases, the language of learning.

Following the conquest, assimilation or annexation, the colonized societies were subjected to a reign of terror. Old and established families were uprooted. Leading figures were executed or exiled, ruling classes and people of wealth and fame were made targets of special retribution. The continuity of institutions was disrupted and in many cases, they were destroyed in both the physical and the functional sense. After this period, which varied in length in different societies, new institutions were planted, a new administrative system was designed, and in time a new elite was created. This elite group was more than willing to cooperate with the colonial rulers.

Educated in the new educational system, these people had little or no knowledge of their history and heritage. Intoxicated by the glamour of their rulers, men and women of this elite group considered it an unbounded honor to speak the language of their colonial masters and think and act like them. They accepted the ideas presented to them by their Western mentors without any critical analysis. Their personalities and world views were shaped by the teachings of Western philosophers, and religion had little importance for them. The members of this elite group slowly became the leading figures in most of the colonized societies and the masses started to look toward them as their models.

The third phase of this process started with the second generation of the elite group. Raised in luxury and comfort and twice removed from the traditional sources, this generation was also removed from the period of terror and violence and was able to seek equality with the Western rulers. Some of them went to Europe for education and their experiences in the West contributed towards the development of a sense of their own self-dignity and equality with the colonizers.

This was the broad historical pattern. 

Read full paper: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FmMmiR1gjekJ:www.cis-ca.org/confs/KL-Conf/kl-key~1.pdf+islam+discourse+%2B+muslim+countries&hl=en&gl=pk

Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal: http://www.cis-ca.org/

A scientist by training, an Islamic scholar by vocation, a novelist, and a poet, Muzaffar Iqbal is the founder-president of Center for Islam and Science, Canada, and editor of Islam & Science, a journal on science and civilization from Islamic perspectives.

He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from University of Saskatchewan, Canada, but most of his published work is related to Islam and various aspects of Islamic civilization, including the Islamic scientific tradition. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, he has lived in Canada since 1979. He has held academic and research positions at University of Saskatchewan (1979-1984), University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984-85), and McGill University (1986). He is currently working on a major project, Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, a first of its kind reference work on the Qur'an. He is also the General Editor of Ashgate's forthcoming series, Islam and Science: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives.

Islam: An Irrational Legalism?

Tim Winter (Abdul Hakim Murad)

Muslim commentators often wish to champion the revelation as a supreme advocate of reason.

God’s word, the Book, as speech (nu~q), is the very ground and guarantor of logic (man~iq), and the Book is itself a set of arguments accessible to the mind (although definitions of ‘mind’ have, as we will see, widely diverged). Nineteenth and twentieth-century apologists were especially concerned to show the Qur’an as the quintessence of aql, or intellect.

Such polemics were reactive against a European belief in ‘Oriental unreason’. Although in the eighteenth century it was not uncommon for Europeans to compare Islam favourably with Catholic ‘superstition and obscurantism’, the racial and imperial confidences of the nineteenth century inverted the image. Ernest Rénan, riding the warhorse of European triumphalism, had attacked Islam as a kind of intensified Judaism, an irrational legalism which rejected the spirit of reason and needed to be fought without mercy. Hence the Muslim apologist’s retort that Islam is quintessentially reasonable, a view which also drew strength from the growing polemic against Sufism, understood in Suhrawardi’s sense as an escape from the city of reason to the wilderness where God can be found.

Bulaç has documented the recurrence of this Islam/rationality trope as perhaps the most characteristic apologetic theme in modern Islam, in Turkey and elsewhere. In the Western milieu, many converts to Islam claim that they are attracted to what they regard as its clear, rationally-accessible teachings, unobscured by elaborate mysteries.

Non-Muslim academic accounts, now frequently draw attention to the central role of reason in Islamic theology.  Josef Van Ess: All these attempts, Muslim and non-Muslim, to portray Islam as the reasonable religion par excellence root themselves in the Qur’anic text. ‘The Qur’an does indeed,’ says Leaman, ‘display an unusual commitment to argument and logic in its self-explanation,’ and a systematic exploration of this has very recently been offered by Rosalind Gwynne. Here, however, lies the great fault-line in modern Islam, whose origins are ancient, pre-dating in some respects the religion itself.

Modern fundamentalist tendencies, emanating frequently from Saudi Arabia and tracing their

ancestry to the scriptures via Ibn Taymiya (d.1328), reject formal dialectics, while not accepting a self-definition as ‘irrationalist’. For such thinkers, all important truth, which is to say, truth which saves, is necessarily explicit in the Book, from which ‘We have omitted nothing’ (6:38).  Scripture is ‘clear’ (mubÏn), and God has not burdened humanity with the demand to evolve elaborate metaphysical interpretations either of His evidences in nature, or in the specific revelation of the Qur’an. Those who do so are guilty of underestimating both the clarity of the Book, and the benign intentions of a God who wishes all to be saved, including those incapable of following a syllogism.

Both advocates and enemies of reason base their positions in scripture. Who is normative? One way of answering might be to point to the unpopularity of Ibn Taymiya’s  Hanbalite fideism, and to the centrality of sophisticated philosophical theology in the medieval madrasa curriculum. Most scholars voted with their feet, and welcomed the logic-based theologies which, finally schematised by Razi, traced their roots back to early Islam’s need to deploy reason against schismatics.

Yet the recent revival of  Hanbalite and Taymiyan fortunes, rooted in an understanding of the intentions of scripture, cannot be dismissed so easily as un-Qur’anic. Any attempt at an arbitration must consider the texts themselves.

The Qur’an is, like any prophetic deliverance, a staccato, ecstatic, collocation of insights. Famously, but not uniquely (one thinks of the Psalms, for instance, or Oriental lectionaries, or most collections of poetry), it does not respect any thematic sequence. Despite Gwynne’s insights, most Muslims experience it not as a set of arguments, but as a dithyramb which irresistibly transforms the soul.

The  account, describing an illiterate woman in India, gives an excellent sense of this. Scripture (kitab) seems to imply writing, and there is a way in which its writing’s form unveils reality in a way that transcends reason. But even more significant has been aurality and a receptivity to the mantic voice of the Unlimited. The illiterate woman of Delhi, finding truth in the Arabic cursive mysteries, is wholly Islamic, but is less representative than the auditor of Qur’anic cantillation, the Islamic art, that is to say, mediator of the sacred, par excellence. Here is Isabelle Eberhardt, in Algiers.

This is the Qur’an as healing (17:82), a balm for hearts. The scripture seems to imply that our tragedy is an ignorant alienation from the Real, wherein lies all wholeness and appropriateness, and that only Heaven can send down the rain which revives the hearts.

Whether it saves through its calligraphy or its cantillation, the Book does not seem to be saving through reason; it does not deny it, but it insists on ‘descending upon your heart’ (2:97), for its Author is not reached by the faculties of perception (6:103).

Islam has a historic hospitality to Platonism, regretted by modernist advocates of a supposed Averroist rationalism, but noted in detail by Henry Corbin and others; and this is to be attributed not only to the Platonic resolution of all diversity to the One Source, so congenial to Islam’s rejection of a triune or other differentiation within the Godhead; but also to the sense that, as in the Timaeus, the One is manifest aesthetically and, particularly, musically, in the ground of creation. Ion, in the early dialogue with Socrates, acknowledges that as a singer of poems he is an instrument played upon by a supernatural power. And the Prophet Muhammmad, like him, is an Aeolian harp: the wind plays him, while his personhood contributes nothing; the Voice is therefore the pure sound of the Unseen. The Qur’an, a web of ‘signs’, is in this rather Platonic sense understood as the voice of the divine substrate of creation; it is the true music of the spheres. The ascent to the One, therefore, is not through the logic-chopping powers of our ‘dingy clay’, but through acquiring a true and loving ear that can properly hear this music. Could it be that the very existence of prophecy, which the scripture proclaims as necessary to man’s salvation, indicates that human reason, unaided, cannot reach truth? Is this the crux of the argument not only between Plato and Aristotle, but between Athens and Jerusalem?

The Qur’an is so replete that Ibn Rushd, the iconic Arab ‘rationalist’, can use its verses as examples of rational induction; and modern Muslim advocates of reason can and do use it to dispel mystical fancies. But the fact of its origin in the empyrean has made it also the religion’s theophany of theophanies, a mystic fact, whose very shape or sound inspires an ecstasy that seems to show God more fully than any logical inference ever could.

The Qur’an, then, seems to be the authentic root of two disciplines whose mutual relations are controversial: formal systematic theology (kal¥m), and Sufism (tasawwuf). Sufism is typically absent from the madrasa curriculum, which gives pride of place to kal'am. And kal'am presents itself as a fiercely rationalistic discipline, according to some more so even than Islamic philosophy (falsafa). A standard kalam text such as Taft¥z¥nÏ’s (d.1390) Shar^ al-¢Aq¥’id devotes three quarters of its length to systematic metaphysics (il¥hiyy¥t), with the remainder dedicated to issues of prophecy and the afterlife which can only be demonstrated through revelation. Such texts defined orthodoxy; yet they seem to have been less influential upon the minds of most Muslims than the passionate Sufism of the likes of Rumi, whose pessimism about kalam is evident.

Here we are faced with an evolving tension within classical Islamic intellectual life and society of a kind which required – and occasionally delivered – brilliant reformers. It is striking that only in a few texts do we observe an attempt to provide a grand synthesis of the two approaches, which we might, to borrow European terminology, describe as the logical and the passional. Ghazali (d.1111) is the most obvious, and successful, example. Other claimants would include Ibn ArabÏ (d.1240), Ibn Kemal (d. 1534), Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi (d.1762), and Sait Nursi (d. 1960), before we enter the purely modern period, where such synthetic theologies have been challenged by modernists and fundamentalists, both of whom, for different reasons, are uneasy with mysticism and kalam.

This synthetic renewal, which often draws in individuals acclaimed as the ‘renewers’ (mujaddid) of their centuries, is a key dynamic in Islamic religion and history. Hence tendencies perceived as erroneous, or even heretical, may be helpfully understood as the result of an imbalance towards one type of epistemology at the expense of the other.

Sachiko Murata and William Chittick have reflected extensively on this inner Islamic metabolism, identifying kalam with the principle of drawing inferences about God as Transcendence (tanzih); and Sufism with the principle of experiencing God as Immanence (tashbih); the dyadic categorisation of divine names as Names of Rigour and Names of Beauty is one outcome. Their conclusion is that these two inexorable consequences of the postulate of monotheism run like twin constants through Islamic religious history. Each is allocated its own realm, form of discourse, and even, on occasion, ritual life and structured authority.

To assess the case we have been making about Islam, we need to set aside as unnecessarily complicated any consideration of the debates in classical Islam about the role of reason and inspiration in metaphysics, and focus on the early period, when this tension did not exist.

Before the third century, it was not customary to record inner experiences and ‘unveilings’, and it is therefore not always easy to discern how these interacted with other registers of religious discourse. However it is likely that a close integration was normal. This was certainly the case with regard to the balance between ‘reason and revelation’, which, again, were not experienced as dichotomous in the first two centuries. The Mu'tazilite theologians who emerged towards the end of this period seem to have been the first to have proposed such a tension ('aql against naql, or tradition), and although the theologians decided against Mu'tazilism on the grounds of its tendency to expand human freedom in a way which radically curtailed the power of God, this Mu'tazilite polarity remained a theme, proving its worth in several autonomously Sunni contexts. In primal Islam, the word 'aql thus had a supple, comprehensive meaning.

In a hadith, the Holy Prophet provides a principle that later underlay juridical definitions of human accountability (taklif): ‘The Pen does not record the works of three people: one sleeping until he awakes, the one who is mentally unsound until he regains his sanity (hatt¥ ya'qil), and the child before maturity.’ In a similar hadith we read: ‘Four [types shall be excused] on the Day of Resurrection: a deaf man who could hear nothing, a stupid person [a^maq], a senile man, and someone who died in the period [fatra] between the decline of one religion and the arrival of the next.’ Here the prophetic voice explains that consciousness is what defines our status as human beings. 'aql is what makes us human, and distinguishes us from other orders of creation for which there will be no judgement. The implication is clear that the unreached, who had no access to prophecy, still possess 'aql, but may still be saved: what is required is a full assent based on knowledge.

Prophetic teaching also insists that 'aql survives death, and this became a feature of Muslim belief concerning consciousness before resurrection while remaining in the grave. ‘God’s Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, once mentioned the angel that asks questions of the dead, and Umar asked: “O Messenger of God, shall our minds [¢uq‰l] be restored to us?”, to which he replied, “Yes, they shall be just as they are today.”’

A further meaning of intelligence comes in a hadith in which the Companions are instructed on the correct position of the body during worship. ‘God’s Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, used to touch our shoulders before the Prayer, saying: “Form straight lines! Do not stand unevenly, lest your hearts be at odds! Let those of you who have minds and intelligence [ulu’l-a^l¥m wa’l-nuh¥] follow me.”’

In other hadiths, a more abstract portrayal of the aql is evident. ‘When God created the aql, he commanded it to come – and it came. Then He commanded it to move away – and it moved away. Then he declared: “I have created nothing nobler than you. It is through you that I take, and through you that I give.”

However such confidences, rooted in the judgement that Islam’s immutable liturgy and values coupled with an uncomplicated and reasonable monotheism, must eventually allow it to prevail over its rivals in the post- Christian battle for hearts and minds, must be moderated by an awareness of the continued strength of literalist radicalism and other unmistakeable signs of Muslim decadence.

The contemporary turn away from kalam and spirituality, and of the great synthetic renewals which reintegrated Islam’s various disciplines, has produced a fragmented and impoverished Muslim intellectuality and spiritual style which, one may foretell, will not long resist the same secularising tendencies which have caused the atrophy of European Christianity.

Islam, which seems called to be Europe’s spiritual and intellectual deliverance following the postmodern collapse of Enlightenment reason and the rise of the new barbarian principle of hedonistic individualism and predatory capitalism, must overcome this internal degeneration as a matter of urgency. Providentially, with a Sunni revival evident on all sides, the atmosphere currently gives reason to believe that the normative will prevail.

Tim Winter, University Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge

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The Place of Rationality & Intellectual Tradition in Islamic Theology

Malik Muhammad Tariq

It was Islamic philosophy, acting as a cultural relay, which kept alive and ensured the continuity of the Greek philosophical tradition until the Italian Renaissance.

Philosophy and theology were continuing to develop and to produce important works, especially between the seventh and fourteenth centuries. The numerous translations undertaken at the beginning of the Abbasid period (9th century) provoked an expansion of thought which generated new philosophies of religion and law, and a philosophy of mysticism. As a result of this massive classicist movement, comparable only to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the translations of Greek philosophers reached Baghdad through Edessa (Urfa) and Harran, where Islamic philosophical schools were created.

The speculative theology (Ilm al-Kalam) of Islam is the “Science that involves arguing with logical proofs in defense of articles of faith and refuting innovations (non-Sunnahs) who deviate in their dogmas from the early Muslims and Muslim orthodox.” Its main concern is the refutation of sectarian beliefs and thoughts.

According to Ibn-Khaldun, the study of Ilm-Kalam was not necessary for his students because the heretics and innovators had been destroyed. This was however not true historically, for the battle of ideologies in Islam is endemic. The different dogmas of main centres of political power, the extension of court patronage to members of their own sect and persecution of their rivals, and the struggle of the competing political groups for dominance by pandering to sectarian fanatism and gullibility have been, and still are, eroding the body-politic of Islam. 

For ideological and political reasons the Sunnis splintered into several sub-groups or sects. Those hostile to the Umayyads evolved into the Quadriya sect. They rejected absolute predestination and advocated that man was the architect of his actions. His Qadr (determination) lay in his own hands. Those who deliberately committed serious sins became heretics. The Qadiriyas rivals were Jabiriyya. They believed that all human actions were subject to divine compulsion (Jabr).10 The extremist amongst the Jabriyya denied the distinct existence of all God’s attributes and was known as Muattila, or “believers in tatil”11 (making God a bare unity). They were called Jahimyya. Pitted against the Jabriyya, Jahmiyya and Qadriyya were Mutazila. The Abbasid Patronage made Mu’tazila the dominant sect.

The Mu’tazila — literally ‘those who withdraw themselves’ — movement was founded by Wasil bin ‘Ata’.13 The Mu’tazila originated in Basra at the beginning of the 2nd century AH (8th century AD.). In the following century it became, for a period of some thirty years, the official doctrine of the caliphate in Baghdad. Mu’tazila’s members were united in their conviction that it was necessary to give a rationally coherent account of Islamic beliefs. Almost all authorities agree that the speculation of the Mu’tazilah centred around the two crucial concepts of divine justice and unity (Tauheed and Adl), of which they claimed to be the exclusive, genuine exponents. Thus, according to a leading Mu’tazilte authority of the end of 9th century, five basic tents make up the strict Mu’tazilite creed: justice and unity, the inevitability of God’s threats and promises, the intermediary position, and injunction of right, and the prohibition of wrong.

Recent historical research revealed, writes Dr. Fazlur Rahman, that the Mu’tazilah were a group of Muslims Intellectuals who in an arena of great ideological conflict in the Middle East in the early centuries of Islam, had successfully defended Islam against Gnosticism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism. They were no mere intellectual idlers. One of the weapon with which they defended Islam adds the writer was the doctrine of free-will and responsibility which they sought to formulate in terms of the current stock of philosophical ideas of Greek origin.

 Iqbal says: The period of Umayyad dominance is taken up, with the process of co-mingling and adjustment to new conditions of life; but with the rise of the Abbasid Dynasty and the study of Greek Philosophy, pent-up intellectual force of Persia bursts out again, and exhibits wonderful activity in all the departments of thought and action. The fresh intellectual vigour imparted by the assimilation of Greek Philosophy, which was studied with great avidity, led immediately to critical examination of Islamic Monotheism.

He says that Mu’tazila carried their rationalism so far as to claim parity for reason with revelation in the discovery of religious truth. They were not content only with a declaration of the superiority of reason over revelation, but put it with equal footing the Word of God as a religious guide.

The Abbasid Caliph, al-Mutawakil (232-247/847-861), reversed Mamun’s policy and in the wake of resurgence of orthodoxy Abul Hasan al-Ashari (260/873 — 324-935) founded the Asharite school. It had its origin in the reaction against the excessive rationalism of the Mu’tazila. Its members insisted that reason must be subordinate to revelation. They accepted the cosmology of the Mu’tazilites but put forward a nuanced rejection of their theological principles.

Al-Ash’ari (d. AH 324/AD 935) was a pupil of Abu ‘Ali al-Jubba’i (d. AH 303/AD 915), the head of the Basran School. A few years before his master’s death, al-Ash’ari announced dramatically that he repented of having been a Mu’tazilite and pledged himself to oppose the Mu’tazila. In taking this step he capitalized on popular discontent with the excessive rationalism of the Mu’tazilites, which had been steadily gaining ground since their loss of official patronage half a century earlier. After his conversion, al-Ash’ari continued to use the dialectic method in theology but insisted that reason must be subservient to revelation.

Abul Hassan defended orthodoxy by rational methods.  Rejecting the Mutazilites view that God has no attributes distinct from his essence, Ashari maintains that God is knowing, seeing, and speaking through his eternal attributes. Although the manner in which God can be seen is not known, the vision of Him in the world to come is a reality. The Qur’ān is God’s speech, an eternal attribute and not created. Everything good and evil is willed by God, and be instigates men’s act by creating the power to do each act in them. According to Ashari, sinners are not unbelievers, but they will be punished in help. Al-Ashari employed reason in the defense of the traditionalist Muslim creed, especially the creed of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855), which was based on the Qur’ān and the hadith (traditions). But, while the latter renounced the use of reason or speculative theology (i.e. kalam), al-Ashari justified its use in defending the true faith against external attacks and internal deviators. 

Al-Kindi is notable for his work on philosophical terminology and for developing a vocabulary for philosophical thought in Arabic, although his ideas were superseded by Ibn Sina in the 11th century. The debate about the allow-ability of philosophy in terms of orthodox Islam also began with al-Kindi. Like other innovators, his ideas may no longer appear revolutionary, but in his own day, to push for the supremacy of reason and for the importance of a ‘foreign science’ — philosophy — as opposed to an ‘Arab science’ — grammar, Qur’ānic studies — was quite astonishing.

Al-Ma’mun (d. 218/833) was a patron of learning and founded an academy called the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-hikma) where Greek philosophical and scientific works were translated.

Al-Farabi was an eclectic thinker who was familiar with the works of Plotinus, Porphyry, and Zeno, the systems of Pythagorus, the school of Cyrene and Aristippus, the Stoics, Diogenes, Pyrrhon, and Epicurus. He tried to form a synthesis of the concepts of Plato and Aristotle,53 and to harmonise science with the Qur’ānic law. The primary activity of the Muslim and Christian philosophers still under the influence of Greek thought was an attempt to reconcile the rational side of Hellenistic philosophy with the principles of monotheistic religion. According to Al-Farabi, only philosophers were capable of contemplating naked truth; others needed to be taught through the veil of religious symbolism.

Malik Muhammad Tariq is Assistant Professor at Department of Philosophy,

University of Balochistan, Quetta (Pakistan).

Read full paper: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MRFGrwGR6WsJ:www.pu.edu.pk/phill/alhikmat/pdf_files/TARIQ%2520Id

Modernism, Secularism, Evolution & Culture

Dr. Ejaz Akram

[Excerpts from Baytunur-Iqbal Academy Pakistan Islam Seminar on Religion & Culture]

The West is missionary about spreading secularism in the world. They lay the blame on religion when religious people cause violence while condoning the secular values when non-religious people cause violence. On the one hand they speak of cultural relativity and on the other they practice cultural absolutism around the world. Modern cultures have a special proclivity towards war. The modern period between 1740 to the present as a cultural period of industrialism related to total war.

The story of origin of modernism, which is built on the denial of religion and on the cadaver of European Christianity, looks at human beings from the point of view of the theory of evolution. 

 Modern philosophical argues that:

“Culture may be thought of as a causal agent that affects evolutionary process by uniquely human means. For it permits the self-conscious evaluation of human possibilities in the light of a system of values that reflect prevailing ideals about what human life ought to be. Culture is thus an indispensable device for increasing human control over the direction in which our species changes”.

Since the theory of evolution denies a sacred and Divine origin of the world, its view of culture is purely terrestrial which does not take into account transcendental realities. If one denies the absolute one stays forever trapped in relativism.

It is ironic to note that the cultures of the modern world and their short history can be quite adequately characterized by political agitation, a condition of anger and restlessness, while the state of terror and violence push the world toward more turbulence. Modern political culture, modern economics and their concomitant social systems have produced anything but peace. Traditional cultures by contrast, also witnessed war and strife, after all these things are a predicament of terrestrial existence, but the frequency and intensity of war and insecurity was much less than that of the modern world as documented by many scholars of war.

The secular order that came in full force in the cold war period on both sides of the iron curtain, put humanity on a path where God became unfashionable, along with the importance of God’s fear, love and knowledge. One who doesn’t fear God can do anything. If we kill God, everything becomes possible. Western imperialism and colonialism were nothing but an outward projection of an inward mindset where men swapped sacred principles of human living for profane and secular ones.

To resuscitate the culture of peace, one must understand and accept the importance of the culture of God. God is Peace. One of the 99 beautiful Names of God (al-Asma’ al-Hasna) is al-Salaam, which means peace. The more of God one has in one’s life, the more peaceful one is, and one ‘gives off’ or radiates more peace and tranquility to others around oneself. By having more of God in oneself, we mean that one follows the injunctions and exhortations of the sacred texts of the revealed religions in an attempt to develop fear, love and knowledge of God, for one who has the fear, love and knowledge of God can in principle be only peaceful.

Read full paper: http://baytunur.blogspot.com/2009/08/religion-culture-contours-of-debate.html

Dr. Ejaz Akram is an Associate Professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.  He holds a Ph.D. in World Politics from the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. He also holds two M.A. degrees; Master of Arts in Comparative & Regional Studies (Middle East & South Asia) from the School of International Service at American University in Washington D.C., and Master of Arts in International Relations from CUA, Washington, D.C.     

His research involves the political philosophies of the Abrahamic and Eastern religious traditions and the interface of religion and politics in international relations. Dr. Ejaz Akram is writing "Traditional Political Philosophy of Islam: Remedy for Disaster Times" and publishing Political Philosophy of Iqbal. 

Colonial, Post-Colonial & Neo-Colonial Nations

"Colonialism" is a term that critically refers to the political ideologies which legitimated the modern invasion, occupation and exploitation of inhabited lands by overwhelming outside military powers. For the local populations, it implied the forceful elimination of resistance, the imposition of alien rules, and the parasitic utilization of natural resources including manpower.
This term appeared in the context of Marxism and became a cornerstone of the discourse of resistance during the 20th century. 


It was meant to counter the positive connotations attached to the use of "colonization" -- understood as a legitimate "civilizing process" often reinforced by a religious agenda -- by calling attention to its actual economic motivations and denouncing its ruthless oppression.  


"Post-colonialism" loosely designates a set of theoretical approaches which focus on the direct effects and aftermaths of colonization. Post-colonialism forms a composite but powerful intellectual and critical movement.


"Post-colonialism" appeared in the context of decolonization that marked the second half of the 20th century and has been appropriated by contemporary critical discourse in a wide range of domains mapped by at least half a dozen disciplines.


Indeed, on the one hand, "post-colonial" may refer to the status of a land that is no longer colonized and has regained its political independence (e.g., post-colonial India).


In this sense, "post-colonialism" will pertain to the set of features (economic, political, social, etc) which characterizes these countries and the way in which they negotiate their colonial heritage, being understood that long periods of forced dependency necessarily had a profound impact on the social and cultural fabric of these societies (the post-colonial condition).


It may also apply to the former colonizers in as much that both extended contacts with the alien societies they conquered, and the eventual loss of these profitable possessions, deeply influenced the course of their economic and cultural evolution.  


On the other hand, "post-colonialism" may designate, and denounce, the new forms of economic and cultural oppression that have succeeded modern colonialism, sometimes called "neo-colonialism".

The term tends to point out that cooperation, assistance, modernisation and the like are in fact new forms of political and cultural domination as pernicious as the former imperial colonialism or colonial imperialism were: the devaluation of autochthonous ways of life and their displacement by the ethos of dominant nations which are technologically more advanced. Obviously, these two senses are intimately linked but foreground different aspects of a single process: the cultural homogeneization of ever larger areas of the globe. 

http://www.semioticon.com/virtuals/postcol.htm