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There are a number of major trends in modern Islamic philosophy. First,
there is the challenge of the West to traditional Islamic philosophical and
cultural principles and the desire to establish a form of thought which is
distinctive. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Islamic philosophers
have attempted to redefine Islamic philosophy; some, such as Hasan Hanafi
and Ali Mazrui, have sought to give modern Islamic philosophy a global
significance and provide an agenda for world unity.
Second, there is a continuing tradition of interest in illuminationist
and mystical thought, especially in Iran where the influence of Mulla Sadra
and al-Suhrawardi has remained strong. The influence of the latter can be
seen in the works of Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr; Mulla Sadra has
exercised an influence over figures such as Mahdi Ha'iri Yazdi and the
members of Qom School, notably Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The philosopher
Abdul Soroush has introduced a number of concepts from Western philosophy
into Iran.
Finally, there have been many thinkers who have adapted and employed
philosophical ideas which are originally non-Islamic as part of the normal
philosophical process of seeking to understand conceptual problems. This is
a particularly active area, with a number of philosophers from many parts
of the Islamic world investigating the relevance to Islam of concepts such
as Hegelianism and existentialism. At the same time, mystical philosophy continues
to exercise an important influence. Modern Islamic philosophy is thus quite
diverse, employing a wide variety of techniques and approaches to its
subject.
There has been a tendency in the Islamic world since the late nineteenth
century to explore the issue of the relative decline or decadence of Arabic
intellectual thought and science as compared with its Western equivalent.
During the Christian medieval period the Islamic world was in its cultural
and political ascendancy, and was at the centre of theoretical work in both
science and philosophy. However, by the nineteenth century an enormous gap
had opened between the Islamic world and the West. A wide variety of
explanations for this decline have since been sought.
The realization that this gap existed led to the Nahda (rebirth or renaissance)
movement between 1850 and 1914. Beginning in Syria but developed largely in
Egypt, the movement sought to incorporate the main achievements of modern
European civilization while at the same time reviving classical Islamic
culture which predated imperialism and the centuries of decadence.
The main problem facing the Nahda
thinkers had was how to interpret the Islamic cultural tradition, including
philosophy, in an environment dominated by the West. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad 'Abduh both argued that Islam is inherently rational and
need not be abandoned in the face of the encroachment of Western forms of
scientific and cultural thought. The Egyptian philosopher Mustafa 'Abd
al-Raziq also argued that it is possible to demonstrate the authenticity of
traditional Islamic philosophical work and its modern relevance within
Islamic society. He posits an inseparable link connecting rationalism and
revelation in Islam, and he defends the traditional Islamic sciences as
compatible with science and rationality. In this he constitutes what might
be thought of as a more conservative position than his predecessor 'Abduh,
who was more dubious about the values of some of the Islamic schools of
thought, in particular of Sufism (see Mystical
philosophy in Islam).
Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri suggests that a viable Arab future can only
come about through a deconstruction and critique of the reasons for the
decline of the Arab world. He criticizes the dichotomy between the
Islamicists, who hark back to a Golden Age in the past, and the liberal
Westernizers, who praise the principles of the European Renaissance from
which colonialism originated. The solution he offers is the freeing of
modern Arabic thought from both the language and the theological
limitations of the past. The Arab mind has become very much part and parcel
of traditional ways of exploring the world, and is restricted in its
potential if it remains too closely wedded to its Islamic heritage.
Fu'ad Zakariyya' argued that the Arab world declined due to its inability
to historicize the past and its dependence on tradition, while Zaki Najib
Mahmud brought out the importance of philosophy in taking us from the known
to the unknown, and was critical of the ability of religion to interfere
with this movement in thought. Hasan Hanafi presents a form of
phenomenology which argues that a new concept of tawhid (divine unity) should be developed which will involve
a principle of unity and equality for all people. Hanafi also throws the
charge of decadence back at the West, suggesting that the West is now
entering a period of decadence and will require an infusion of ideas and
energy from the East. He uses the language of liberation theology, which
holds that revelation is adaptable to the language of each age (see Liberation
theology). The original revelation was suited
to the time and place of the Prophet and not necessarily of the current
world. Modern Muslims should reinterpret revelation in modern language and
in accordance with present demands; fossilized conservatism is a
misinterpretation of the true dynamic and dialectical spirit of Islam.
Fazlur Rahman also contends that Islamic conservatism contradicts the
essence of Islam. Islam's aims are economic reform and the establishment of
a just social order (see Islamic
theology §6). According to the Qur'an, he
argues, moral and economic decline are related events. Therefore Islamic
societies should turn away from petrified conservatism and educate their
children in the new technologies. Islam should not be limited to
communities of the faithful, but should seek a prominent place in the new
ethical and social world order.
Another movement in Islamic political philosophy depicts Muslims not as
the antagonists of Western culture, but rather as being in the vanguard of
the globalization of peace and social justice. The most popular thinker of
this school in the USA is Malcolm X, who began his career as an
isolationist minister for the Nation of Islam movement. At first he used
Islam to separate African-Americans from white people, but later he
preached an internationalized Islam that reaches beyond racial and national
differences.
An important African thinker in this tradition is Ali Mazrui, who tries
to harmonize several interdependent factors in Islamic theology with
current global realities. Mazrui proposes a marriage between the Islamic
monotheistic jihad
(universal struggle), Islam's anti-racist and humanist agenda, and the need
for global economic cooperation; he employs culture as a vehicle for social
change through his integration of multiculturalism, the politics of
pan-Islamicism and the need for globalism. He takes Islam to be the first Protestant
revolution in Christianity. Moreover, he suggests that Islam's economic
message turns monotheism from isolated spirituality to communitarian
humanism - in the form of a Muslim world order among a community of
faithful (umma) - through
global economic cooperation, social justice and the brotherhood of all. The
essence of a multicultural perspective implies the acknowledgement that
cultures project their own biases onto their perceptions of other
societies. In a world which demands global economic policy-making and
increasing interdependency, Mazrui believes that Muslims should see their
religion of 'all is Godism' as a type of globalism. His innovation (ijtihad) interprets the Islamic jihad as an agenda of global
peace and justice, thereby transforming what is taken to be a negative
image of Islam into a signal for economic unity and world peace.
The area of the Islamic world which continued most forcefully the
Islamic tradition in philosophy after the decline of Peripateticism is
undoubtedly Persia (see Islam,
concept of philosophy in §§3-4). Interestingly, one of the most staunch advocates of the form of
thought which might be called neo-Illuminationism, and which stems from the
ishraqi principles of
al-Suhrawardi, is Henry Corbin (1903-78), a French philosopher who worked in
Iran. Corbin was active in translating and interpreting post-Avicennan
Islamic philosophy with an emphasis on shi'ism, ishraqi thought and the mysticism of Ibn
al-'Arabi. He posited the existence of a
perennial school of philosophical wisdom, which can be detected through the
recurrence of archetypal symbols such as the icon of light. Such icons
exist in the works of Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi in the early twelfth century ad, and have their
source in Eastern (ishraqi)
traditions such as Zoroastrianism, Hermeticism and Manicheism. (The term ishraq, which signifies 'light',
also means 'East' or 'Orient'.)
For Corbin, 'ishraq'
designates not only a static spatial direction but a prescriptive
invitation for a hermeneutic reorientation, whereby persons scrutinize
their spiritual needs and points of return to archetypal origins. Corbin
also discusses the role of the imagination, a faculty which exists between
the senses and the intellect. While the senses perceive discrete data and
the intellect categorizes, imagination is concerned with the world of
archetypes ('alam at-mithal).
For example, the notion of the perfect person (al-insan al-kamil) is an icon for the psychic centre. This
centre signifies peace and the perfection of the self-realization process.
Corbin asserts that by means of a series of epistemic states - which
include revelation (kashf)
and recollection (or archetypal memory) (dhikr) - one may return to the eternal origin. This process
describes a cycle, thereby reasserting the Islamic theme of the unity of
being (al-wahdat al-wujud).
Corbin's followers, such as Hermann Landolt, William Chittick and
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, have developed his ideas in a variety of different
ways. The latter is the best known contemporary Islamic philosopher.
According to him, people share a spiritual component that cannot be
actualized by either descriptive or pragmatic accounts of nature. Nasr's
world perspective includes a normative element which integrates people in
the same way as earlier religions and cosmologies (Nasr 1993). In the past, everyone considered their religion
to be the true religion; today, however, we are confronted with a plurality
of religions. How can a Muslim attain a workable relation with the sacred
in such an environment? Nasr employs Sufism to refer to the archetypal
dimensions common to all religions; it is through the realm of mysticism
that different forms of spirituality meet. The contemporary world creates
the need for followers of different creeds and cultures to communicate.
Islam must coexist with the Western world, but this does not imply an
Islamic surrender to all the practices of Western society. Nasr's views on
Western scientific progress show his dissatisfaction with many Western
perspectives. Citing the ecological disasters of overpopulation and
pollution, Nasr criticizes the value of Western technological advances.
According to him, the fault lies in the mistaken metascientific
presupposition that an innate nature exists which is disconnected from
humanity and can be investigated separately and controlled. Moreover, the
increasingly pervasive quantitative perspective supplied by units of
measurement - like that by which the size of a building might be described
- is an incomplete outlook because it does not articulate the qualitative
effects of what it describes on the surrounding environment. By contrast,
Nasr holds that Islamic and Eastern perspectives on science and technology
are integrative and harmonious. They stress unity in their studies of
nature, thereby acknowledging the long-term ecological significance of
development. Unless religious and spiritual values are embedded in a
technological agenda, ecological disasters as well as a general lack of a
sense of meaning in life are inevitable. Western science and its
technological consequences are of ecological import to modern civilization.
Consequently, neither science nor technology can consider itself irrelevant
to environmental ethics (see Environmental
ethics). Philosophy along Neoplatonic lines
should be pursued, since only this form of analysis does justice to the
spiritual wholeness of humanity.
The main emphasis in recent Persian philosophy has been on the thought
of Mulla
Sadra and al-Suhrawardi. Islamic
philosophy has moved from the madrasa
(traditional school) system and became an important part of the university
curriculum. One of the most interesting thinkers is Mahdi Ha'iri Yazdi,
whose work on knowledge by presence ('ilm
al-huduri) provides an example of the fruitful combination of ideas
from Western analytical philosophy and the ishraqi tradition in order to elucidate metaphysical and
epistemological problems (Ha'iri Yazdi 1992). Recent Shi'ite theologians, as students of the
work of Mulla Sadra, were versed in the dialectics of time and change. 'Ali
Shari'ati, another student of Corbin, is an important social thinker whose
work advocates a social process of Islamization. He rejects both the
Peripatetic philosophers and the mystical thinkers, claiming that the
existential being of each person contains a determination formed through
mutual trust and compassion between them and God as their essence. This
presumption is the ground for each person's being and the very core of each
subject's potential for therapeutic unity (tawhid); its purpose is justice in both the providential and
the social contexts. Islamization is achieved through an existential
empathy and a phenomenological assimilation of exemplary people - such as
the Imam Hossein (the Prophet's grandson) or Fatima (his daughter and the
wife of Imam 'Ali) - into archetypal memory. The martyrdom of 'Ali or
Hossein is a paradigmatic message, not for sorrow but for the assimilation
of their characters into the self. Further, Shari'ati depicts history as a
dialectical process which does not exclude economic and material realities,
Islam as a practical religion or people as potential agents of justice. He
replaces the Platonic theory of epistemic recollection with a theory of
normative archetypal recollection. One may gain normative knowledge through
the archetypal recollection of a religion's most exemplary mythical
figures. Religion provides social ideals, and yet it demands not a
withdrawal to a secret realm but a social revolution in the everyday world.
A creative commentary on Mulla Sadra was produced by Ruhollah Khomeini,
who argues that people are primarily social as well as private citizens.
Thus religious teachings relate not only to the personal morality of
individuals but also to their social responsibilities and political actions
(see Social
sciences, philosophy of). In practice, these ideas imply a theocracy that does not distinguish
between politics and religion. Bringing such a dominion into existence, he
claims, requires an internal revolution from the masses directed against
the existing ruling class, but this revolution must be guided by the
directives of the religious authorities. He modifies Islamic theology with
the notion of the religious jurist-ruler's guardianship (velayat-e-faqih), whose role is
to guide the community of faithful in their universal struggle (jihad). This jihad is not essentially
military, but is largely educational and seeks the expansion of
monotheistic (that is, Islamic) ethics (see Ethics in
Islamic philosophy).
Khomeini was a member of the School of Qom, based on the college in
that city, which also produced Muhammad Hossein Tabataba'i, Murtaza
Mutahheri and Muhammad Taqi Misbah Yazdi, all of whom have directed their
influential thought at confronting the challenge to Islamic philosophy coming
from the West. It should not be thought that this is an essentially
reactionary strategy, however; Misbah has encouraged many of his students
to study in the West and to take seriously scientific and logical thought
as practised in the West. Also, although much of Misbah's work has been on
Mulla Sadra, he has been far from uncritical of the latter. In particular,
he criticizes the notion of prime matter, which Mulla
Sadra (§§1-2) identifies as the pure potentiality
for existents. He questions the principle that a potentiality for existents
exists prior to existents themselves; after all, there is nothing but
existents. Misbah argues further that many relations are not truly essences.
For example, in the mind-dependent realm, we may ascribe 'below' as a
relation between a table and book, but this subject-directed ascription
does not imply that below is an essence in the actual world.
An interesting and quite recent controversy in Persian philosophy has
been that between Abdul Soroush on the one hand, and the philosophers of
the school of Qom, as well as those influenced by the Corbin school, on the
other. Soroush introduced a number of concepts from Western philosophy into
Iran, in particular the leading ideas of Popper, Moore, Berlin and Wittgenstein. This led him to suggest that we should use a
notion like that of collective reason to understand and interpret religious
ideas. Collective reason is the best way of dealing with theoretical and
practical problems, and is preferable to relying solely on solutions
attainable through the efforts of the jurisprudents and religious
authorities. Not surprisingly, this aroused the ire of the school of Qom
philosophers, and their representative Sadiq Larijani engaged Soroush in a
debate which largely dealt with the correct interpretation of thinkers such
as Popper, Watkins and Stalnaker, and in particular Hempel's paradoxes of
confirmation (see Hempel,
C.G. §2). Soroush was also attacked by the
Corbin circle, whose basic philosophical approach relies very much on Heidegger along with traditional Islamic philosophy, and
who were quite out of sympathy with the analytical nature of Soroush's
books. This controversy is interesting in that it brings out the fact that
philosophers in Iran are generally familiar now not only with traditional
forms of Islamic philosophy but also with the current philosophical ideas
of the West. Modern philosophers do not entirely reject Western views, but
neither are they completely taken over by the West; they are prepared to
examine Western views with a critical sympathy.
A very vibrant area in Islamic philosophy is the history of philosophy,
in particular the Greek tradition in Islamic philosophy. There exists both
in the West and in the Islamic world a large number of scholars who have
developed accounts of this close relationship and who continue to edit,
translate and work on important texts in order to get some idea of the
nature of the philosophical material which was produced in the early
centuries of Islam. In addition, many philosophers in the Islamic world
have adapted Western philosophy so as to make sense of the philosophical
problems in which they are interested. C.A. Qadir in Pakistan developed an
account of Islamic philosophy which he thought was in line with logical
positivism, while 'Abd al-Rahman Badawi applied existentialism to Arab
society. Zaki Najib Mahmud followed William James in presenting a pragmatic account of philosophy.
Some thinkers applied particular techniques in the Islamic tradition to
philosophy, so that 'Ali Sami al-Nashshar for example based his work on
Ash'arite theology (see Ash'ariyya
and Mu'tazila), while Muhammad 'Aziz Lahbabi (1954) used Hegelianism to develop a theory of being
which is quite unusual within the context of Islamic ontology. Hichem Djait
(1986) combines Hegelianism with existentialism. He
argues that only dialectical epistemology can be used to understand the
modern situation of the Arab world, and that the apparent opposites of
decadence/renaissance, Arab/non-Arab, orthodox/heterodox, tradition/modernity
need to be transcended if we are to understand the present nature of
Islamic culture. Abdallah Laroui (1976) and Muhammad Arkoun (1985) both stress the contrast between Islam and
modernity, and the former advocates the adoption of Westernization as the
appropriate strategy for the Islamic world. In his approach to the Qur'an,
Arkoun uses the semiotic ideas current in modern French literature to argue
that Islam has always been changing and developing, so that there is no
point in referring to a particular constant orthodoxy.
While many of these thinkers are hostile to mysticism and its Islamic
form, Sufism, there can be little doubt that the latter represents a very
potent framework for a good deal of present Islamic philosophy. The
tradition of Sufism presents both a way of life which avoids many of the
rigidities of traditional Islam and also a complex conceptual system which
enables the philosopher to develop ideas and arguments which are
intellectually satisfying. Modern Islamic philosophy employs a wide variety
of different techniques and approaches to the subject.
References and further reading
* Arkoun, M. (1985) La pensée
arabe (Arab Thought), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
(Account of how theoretical concepts in the Arab world have changed in
response to influences from the West.)
Brown, S., Collinson, D. and Wilkinson, R. (eds)
(1995) Biographical Dictionary of
Twentieth-Century Philosophers, London: Routledge. (Contains
information on a number of modern Islamic philosophers. Relevant entries
include 'Arkoun, Mohammed'
(30-1), 'Corbin, Henry'
(159-60), 'Hanafi, Hasan'
(305-6), 'Lahbabi, Muhammad Aziz'
(431), 'Nagib Mahmud, Zaki'
(562), 'Nasr, Seyyed Hossein'
(563-4), 'Qadir, C.A.'
(641), 'Rahman, Fazlur'
(645-6), and 'Yazdi, Mehdi Hairi'
(859). These and many other thinkers are also discussed in Nasr and Leaman
(1996).)
Corbin, H. (1993) History of Islamic Philosophy, with the collaboration of
S.H. Nasr and O. Yahya, trans. P. Sherrard, London: Kegan Paul
International. (Discussion of the links between Islamic philosophy and
contemporary Persian thought.)
Clarke, J.H. (1993) Malcolm X: The Man and his Times, Trenton, NJ: Africa World
Press. (Study of the Nation of Islam leader and his thought.)
* Djait, H. (1986) Europe and Islam: Cultures and Modernity, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press. (Discussion of how the Islamic renaissance
came about through contact with the West, and how it has revived Arab
culture.)
* Ha'iri Yazdi, M. (1992) The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by
Presence, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. (A
combination of modern Western epistemology with illuminationist philosophy
into a creative and interesting synthesis, representing the openness of
modern Islamic philosophy to Western thought.)
Khomeini, R. (1981) Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations, trans. H.
Algar, Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press. (An account of the theological and
philosophical bases of the Shi'i notion of the Islamic state.)
* Lahbabi, M. (1954) Le personalisme musulman (Muslim Personalism), Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France. (The application of Hegelianism and
existentialism to Islamic thought, together with the argument that the
latter has to develop in accordance with changing cultural and material
trends.)
* Laroui, A. (1976) The Crisis of the Arab Intelligentsia: Traditionalism or
Historicism?, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
(Argument for the replacing of traditional Islamic issues with Western
ones, since the Islamic world needs to transcend its past to come into real
contact with modernity.)
Morewedge, P. (1990) 'The Onyx Crescent: Ali A. Mazrui on the Islamic-Africa Axis',
in O.H. Kokole (ed.) The Global
African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press,
217-65. (On Mazrui's African-Islamic philosophy.)
Morewedge, P. (1995a) Essays in Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism,
Oneonta, NY: Oneonta Philosophy Series. (Interesting account of the basic
ideas of Islamic philosophy, theology and mysticism.)
Morewedge, P. (1995b) 'Theology', in J.L. Esposito (ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, vol. 4, 214-24. (Description of modern theological
issues, with their underlying assumptions from Islamic philosophy.)
* Nasr, S.H. (1993) The Need for a Sacred Science, Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press. (Defence of the notion of a firm of knowledge which is
thoroughly based on contact with the sacred.)
Nasr, S.H. (1996) 'Islamic Philosophical Activity in Contemporary Persia: A Survey of
Activity in the 50s and 60s', in M.A. Razavi (ed.) The Islamic Intellectual Tradition in
Persia, Richmond, VA: Curzon. (Useful account of the forms of
philosophical thought in Iran during this period.)
Nasr, S.H. and Leaman, O. (eds) (1996) History of Islamic Philosophy,
London: Routledge. (See the section 'The Modern Islamic World', 1037-1169,
in particular M. Aminrazavi, 'Persia',
1037-50; M. Suheyl Umar, 'Pakistan',
1076-80; I. Abu-Rabi', 'The Arab
World', 1082-1114; M. Campanini, 'Egypt', 1115-28; Z. Moris, 'South-East Asia', 1134-40; P. Lory, 'Henry Corbin', 1149-55; S. Akhtar, 'The Possibility of a Philosophy of Islam', 1162-69. This
section contains discussions of all the thinkers mentioned in this entry.)
Rahman, F. (1982) Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition,
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (A defence of modernism and the
importance of independent judgment, and an emphasis on ethics as opposed to
metaphysics in philosophy.)
Shari'ati, A. (1980) Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique,
trans. H. Algar, Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press. (An advocate of the
significance of the people of the Third World using their culture to
overthrow imperialism, arguing for an Islamic state on different and more
liberal principles as compared to Khomeini.)
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