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

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.

Read full paper: http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H019.htm#H019BIBENT4

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.

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

Read full paper: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mAUA83UabwsJ:www.cambridgemuslimcollege.org/Papers/CMC%2520Papers%25203%2520-%2520Reason%2520As%2520Balance%2520by%2520TJ%2520Winter.pdf+Imam+Ali+%2B+rationality&hl=en&gl=pk

The Difference in Europe & USA on the separation of 'Church and State'

Blandine Chelini-Pont

In the United States, two interconnected theories of the public sphere are particularly relevant. In the liberal tradition of democratic theorists the public sphere has been viewed as the space common for all, where citizens can freely discuss and deliberate ideas, commit themselves to voluntary associative forms, and improve and control the various levels of their common life. The second theory locates the public sphere not so much in the legal and material organization of this space but in civil society itself, moved by a continuing deliberative and critical process.

The concept of the public sphere in Europe relies on the old notion of the common good, originally understood to include the responsibility of accounting to God for one's actions, but which now also includes accounting to the citizens of the state for the actions of the State. In this conception, the State is responsible for the public order (safely and health)-a concept with ramifications that justify all kinds of circumstantial and legal limitations in the public sphere.

The different perceptions of the concept of public sphere in the United States and in Europe accordingly translate into different perceptions of the State's place and role within that public sphere. There is a difference in the power given to the State by its citizens, and there is especially a difference in the State's legitimate actions in service of its citizens.

In the European public sphere…Religion was, more than anything else, an issue of law and order. Kings required the conformity of their subjects to the king's religious precepts, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, or Calvinist. This requirement is illustrated by the famous adage, Cujus regio ejus religio, Latin for "whose rule, his religion

The legacy of these former times remains influential, as evidenced in two ways: first, by the frequent and legal occurrence of a specific relationship between the state and religion-with the state granting religious status and limiting the scope of a religion's activities; and second, by the normative tendency to consider religion as a public, charitable, medical, educational, and even spiritual service. Consequently, it seems natural for the State to collaborate with religious leaders as much as possible in order to help citizens in need of such services.

Paradoxically, because of the historical relationship between the state and religion, and the subsequent reaction against it, separation between church and state was reached. In Europe, separation between church and state connotes the State's regulation of the public sphere and religious freedom in the private sphere. Consequently, this separation has resulted in the fading of religion from the European public sphere. This concept of separation, however, has surely led to a more visible secularization of the public sphere, where the State now has a monopoly. To some extent, the secularization of the State-that was gradually or abruptly reached, depending on the nation's history-allowed the citizens to exert their freedom of conscience and to avoid membership in a single or state-authorized religion. However, this secularization led to the visible disappearance of religion from the public sphere. The departure from the fused relationship between religion and the State in Europe led not only to a secularization of the public space but also to a privatization of religion. The fear that religion might once again take on a public role, however painfully reduced this role may be, drives officials and politicians to consider new movements like Islam as a threat to the now-secularized public sphere. 

In comparison, U.S. citizens do not consider the State to be a supervisor that must oversee religion or drive it out of the public sphere to avoid possible manipulation. To the contrary, the State is seen as guaranteeing most scrupulously all forms of religious manifestation. U.S. citizens consider religion in the United States to be foremost a personal freedom. The public sphere is seen as a place where individuals exercise multiple personal freedoms in their capacity as religious citizens, politicians, legislators, or as members of religious groups or institutions. For Europeans, it is surprising that a President, elected by a majority of citizens, could call publicly for the blessing of God, or justify his actions with his faith. In the United States, religion is often present in political debates and in legislative ceremony. Religions enjoy a long associative tradition, a liberal tax policy, ample freedom of worship, and open expression in the public sphere.

Blandine Chelini-Pont, Equipe Droit et Religion du Laboratoire Droit et Mutations Sociales (Jeune Equipe 2425), Responsable du Master Lacit et Droit des cultes, Universite Paul Czanne, Aix-en-Provence, France.

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Modernism & Postmodernism: Higher Levels of Reality Became Eliminated

Omar KN

Because of the process of isolation of reason and rationality from their transcendant and immutable principles, a tendency which became ever more dominant since the French revolution of 1789 in Western, European thought and imagination, it happened that the higher levels of reality were eliminated from intellectual research and attention.

From now on man himself became the centrepoint of being and there was nothing higher than human reason and no object of science more dignified to receive scientific attention than what was possible to perceive empirically through the human senses.

It meant that from now on man was "not able to go further than outward appearances".  Seeing that every science centered around man, however, made his research and therefore his civilization restricted to only one level of being, the materialistic viewpoint.

In postmodernism human rationality and what was left of human intelligence became relativized, relying on the sub-human and the irrational. In this restricted scientific field sense-experience has become the only source of knowledge. But man thinks according to what he is; or as Aristotle knew for sure, 'knowledge depends upon the mode of the knower.'" 

A study of the modern concept of man as being 'free' of Heaven, complete master of his own destiny, earth-bound but also master of the earth, oblivious to all eschatological realities which he has replaced with some future state of perfection in profane historical time [utopia], indifferent if not totally opposed to the world of the Spirit and its demands, and lacking the sense of the sacred, will reveal how futile have been and are the efforts" ... 

... of wishing to modernise an integrated tradition such as Islam, or even 'harmonizing' Islam and modernism.

In the traditional sciences however, where everything is related to and dependent on the higher levels of reality, there is in consequence always a vast field of scientific investigation above those practical applications which are the result of what modern man usually depicts as science. 

 This was shown for example by Imam Al-Ghazali, who in his Ihya 900 years ago, described the "only intellectually rigorous escape from the trap of postmodernity." 

He and his his school taught that "no universal statements about the world or the human condition can be reached by purely ratiocinative or inductive methods, because these cannot transcend the material context of the world in which they are framed." 

Read More: http://www.livingislam.org/mmt_e.html#rhn