PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC TRADITION OF MUSLIM THINKERS

Philosophy in Islamic adab (literary work), when tied in with religion has an indistinct parameter which requires an understanding of Islamic faith as a deen (way of life) and an interpretation of theoretical issues of philosophical importance. Many Muslim theological thinkers, scientists and philosophers, reckoning no contradiction between Islamic faith and the philosophical quest, considered philosophy as a legitimate approach to understand and practice the way of Islam. There have been many theological debates amongst the Muslim thinkers and religious scholars which were of profound philosophical significance. Though philosophy was often under attack in much of Islamic history, many Muslim thinkers maintaining that the ideals are not only abstractly valid in the Platonic realm of Ideas but are also realizable in the world of actual existence. Since religion unlike philosophy and science is related with the present and visible world Muslim thinkers believed that by entwining reason and spiritualty it leads humankind towards same everyday life experiences that philosophy and science investigate and address rationally. The tradition of Islamic approach to science and philosophy has always been remarkably manifold. Far from being homogenous or monolithic, philosophy in Islam incorporates a wide range of approaches and positions bringing with it a lively tradition of disputation. For some thinkers it might be difficult to recognize the permeability of philosophy and religion in Islam which, at first, seems perplexing particularly based on the assumption that the natures of religion and philosophy are distinctively antagonistic towards one and another. But this is relatively a recent development as from the eighth to thirteenth centuries—which was the early period of Islamic history—Muslims produced many notable philosophers and scientists who were followers of the religion of Islam. Moreover we find prominent centers of knowledge at Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordova flourished and developed the foundation of knowledge that the towering edifice of knowledge we see today owes its gratitude to the intellectualism of the early Muslim thinkers and scientists. Philosophy in Deen-e-Islam emerged within a context predominantly viewed by the early religious, social, and political scholars within the cultural dimensions of the new faith of Islam. Modern philosophical outlook perceives that in Islam when philosophy attempts to reflect upon the revealed truths it can move in different directions by preserving, clarifying, defending and sometimes appropriating by radically reinterpreting them. However, recognizing the ways Muslim thinkers have presented philosophy intertwining with the religion in Islamic tradition, delving into both the genres, there is sufficient proof that Islamic theology and philosophy can go together. In the history of world philosophies, there is a prominently recognized role of many Muslim thinkers, philosophers and scientists in the interpretation of the Classical Greek philosophy and its transmission to the Europeans in the West and to the Persians and Indians in the East. From the Arab scholars, prominently Al-Kindi (801-873) the “first philosopher” in the history of Muslim philosophy and al-Farabi (870-950) the introducer of Aristotle, followed by many other philosophers of the House of Wisdom at Baghdad to the Persian ibn-Sina (980-1037), progression of knowledge reached its highest point in the history of Islamic literary, scientific, and philosophical achievements. The unschooled Arabs found what the Greek philosophy could help them in explaining the Islamic view of the nature and reality, as well explanation of Qur’anic message to the people of other faiths. Thus, the power of Greek philosophy seemed to them hard to resist, and the temptation to incorporate it in Islamic literature Muslim scholars started translating Greek philosophies in Arabic. As the Arabs found Aristotle’s logic useful in interpreting their new faith to the world far beyond the Arabian Peninsula, they coined the Arabic word mantaq for logic and started the translation of Aristotle’s work. Thus, the depth of Greek philosophy, with the help of powerful Arabic vocabulary by translating the Greek word philosophia as falsafa, created an important impetus to further translation of Greek knowledge into Arabic language. Though the translation movement was the first attraction, but by studying the structure of the cosmos and the physical world, the nature of logic and epistemology, the ethics and morality in good life, and the principles of metaphysics within the perspective of One Transcendent God, they researched and debated with penetrating insight in diverse subjects. By receiving and interpreting Classical Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle, Muslims devised their own metatheory, the “theory of double truth” which philosophized that the truths of religion and philosophy are so distinct that there is no reason of contradicting each other. Early Muslim philosophers and scientists infused an impulse in the quest for philosophy, sciences, and advancement of knowledge in diverse fields not only amongst the Muslims, but also in spreading knowledge to the rest of the world. They established the first university in Europe in the year 841 when Europe was in its Dark age in the city of Salerno (Italy). It was an extension of the Muslim universities in the east. Then the universities in Toledo, Seville, and Granada were opened and non-Muslim students from Europe learned and would graduate from those universities. They played a great role in engendering the Italian Renaissance and the European Renaissance, by delivering an impetus to philosophical speculation to the Western thinkers from Rene Descartes to the modern time philosophers and scientists. There is no doubt that in the progression of knowledge in the western civilization early Muslim thinkers and philosophers have played an important role in laying the foundation of knowledge the whole world is experiencing today. In this book starting from the first chapter on philosophy of religion to the last one about Islamic Enlightenment in modern times, the readers will become familiar with many great Muslim thinkers, scientists and philosophers who have played a key role by one way or another, in the progression of knowledge in all the civilizations of the world. This work will also reveal to the readers that knowledge is not the work of only one scholar, or one nation, but is the legacy of the whole human race. Since the subject of this work is Muslim Thinkers, so out of thousands of Muslim philosophers and scientists, I have mentioned some prominent thinkers in this book.