Submitted by Mirza Ashraf

Introduction

What went wrong with Islamic civilization, whose compelling religious idea gave birth to a system of beliefs and morals, to a political and social order that has withstood the test of almost thirteen centuries of history across vast regions, cultures, languages, and peoples from Central Asia to Central Africa and Morocco to Indonesia? Martin Kramer, in his article, “Islam’s Sober Millennium,”which appeared in the Jerusalem Post, propounded that:

In the year 1000, the Middle East was the crucible of world civilization. One could not lay a claim to true learning if one did not know Arabic, the language of science and philosophy. One could not claim to have seen the world’s greatest cities if one had not set eyes upon Baghdad and Cordoba, Cairo and Bukhara. Global trade flourished in the fabulous marketplaces of the Middle East as nowhere else. The scientific scholarship cultivated in its academies was unrivaled. An Islamic empire, established by conquest four centuries earlier, had spawned an Islamic civilization, maintained by the free will of the world’s most creative and enterprising spirits…. This supremely urbane civilization cultivated genius. Had there been Nobel prizes in 1000, they would have gone almost exclusively to Moslems.¹ 

In the world of Islam, scientific exchange was routine. Religious scholars, physicians, and philosophers debated in the courts, and educational institutions equipped with vast libraries were the pride of every elite group. On the other hand, according to Martin Kramer, “European knowledge in the sciences paled in comparison, and was sustained through the Middle Ages by crumbs snatched from the Moslem table. From the point of view of a civilized Moslem (or a Jew living under Islam), the lands beyond the Pyrenees were the heart of darkness.”² The course of history has, in a sense, reversed, and a period similar to Europe’s Dark Ages is enveloping much of the Islamic world. One of the various reasons for this downfall is the rise of Arab nationalism, drawing a distinction between Arabs and Turks, not as a reaction to the West, but as a critique of Ottoman-Turkish rule. Today, the students and researchers of Muslim philosophical and scientific knowledge ask: Whereas Muslims transmitted knowledge to the Europeans, what went wrong with their civilization’s philosophical knowledge and scientific culture that today Muslims have lagged behind the Western world? What went wrong that the Muslims abandoned rationalism and put an end to ibn Rushd’s threefold notion of “truth”—rhetorical (religious); dialectical; and philosophical (empirical)? 

There is no single reason for the decline of Islam’s early inventive cultures of scientific and philosophical eminence that for centuries led the world in many areas. It is tragic, both in a historical and a human sense, but many factors contributed to the stagnation of rationalism in Islam. Rationalism of the Mu’tazilites—a rationalist school of Islamic theology that flourished in the cities of Basra and Baghdad—who believed that the arbiter of whatever is revealed has to be theoretical reason, was challenged by the Ash’arites—the foremost theological school of Sunni Islam which established an orthodox dogmatic guideline based on clerical authority founded by the Arab theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash’ari who had laid the foundation of an orthodox Islamic theology. By some, it is also attributed to al-Ghazali (1058-1111), whose arbitral book, The Incoherence of the Philosophy, professed that causality was an illusion and rational philosophy futile. Ibn Rushd of Cordova, on the other hand, in his work The Incoherence of the Incoherence, rejoined that God created a logical universe of cause and effect, and argued, that he who repudiates causality, actually repudiates reason. 

Al-Ghazali, though, had denounced speculative philosophy arguing that philosophical skepticism puts limits on divinity he did not reject scientific investigations. The biggest blow to Islamic rationalism was the fall of the Arab dynasties at Baghdad in the Middle East and Cordova in Arab Spain. In 1493, the Christians conquered Spain, ending eight centuries of Muslim rule. They massacred Muslims and Jews, and expelled many of them from Spain, but retained their philosophical and scientific works. In Baghdad, the crushing impact on the Muslim heartland by successive waves of invasions, led by the Savage Mongols, who threw millions of books in the Euphrates River and burned many libraries in Baghdad to ashes, followed by the Turkic Seljuks, the European Crusaders, the Ayyubid Kurds, the Tamerlane Mughals, and finally the Ottomans who were all successively promotors of mystical philosophies, gradually destroyed the centers of rational philosophical and scientific knowledge.

Abandoning Rationalism

When the books and libraries of a nation or a society are destroyed, there creates a vacuum of knowledge and cultural emptiness, which results in building new societies by the new rulers. One of the most important reason for the loss of wealth of knowledge was that the Arab rulers who loved philosophical knowledge did not establish institutions like the House of Wisdom at Baghdad in other parts of their empire. They should have set up universities and colleges all over the world of Islam. After the Abbasids, later caliphs, sultans, and monarchs who could have patronized and supported centers of learning, were focused on consolidating their positions and fighting battles. Peoples in all walks of life, fearful of the turmoil of the foreigner’s attacks and oppression of the new rulers, looked for solace in religious literacies, specifically in spirituality instead of philosophical argumentation. Muslim lands were now flooded with Sufi saints who were revered for their miracles and teachings of love and peace. Thus, mysticism, known as Sufism, became an inclination and a sigh of relief for the Muslim masses. 

Since Sufism provided a new and peaceful ideology to the caliphs and monarchs, newly-converted to Islam—the Mongols, the Mughal rulers, followed by the Ottoman Turks—instead of patronizing scholars of philosophical learning, began to patronize Sufi saints. The chapter of ibn-Rushd’s philosophical thought was closed and that of al-Ghazali’s mystical outlook was encouraged. Islamic history of knowledge has throughout been dependent on the rulers who would prefer to patronize the genre of knowledge which would cater their needs in consolidating a hold on a variety of people, traditions, customs, and cultures. Followers of Sufism would prove peace-loving and submissive subjects, who instead of asking for their rights from their rulers, started seeking the blessings of saints. Since reason could challenge the rulers, belief in collective piety, hope, and confidence in God’s grace triumphed over the earlier concept of Classical Islam: “submission to God is submission to reason.” Thus, a wave of individualistic quest for God engulfed the seekers of love and peace, and masses of Muslims started seeking solace in prayers and in music as Sama in the Sufic-inspired services.  

With the rise of Central Asian Turkic rulers, Arabic language which proved to be the best medium for philosophical cognition, was replaced by the Persian language with the result that most philosophical works onward started appearing in Persian. Significant philosophical trends after ibn Sina were attempts to reconstruct holistic systems that help refine, rather than challenge and refute philosophical propositions and religious questions. A new trend in philosophy, the “Philosophy of Illumination” of Shihab al-Din Suhrawardy (1153-1191)—second only to ibn Sina—revived with the rise of Sufism. This system defined a new method, the “Science of Lights,” which maintains that human beings obtain the principles of science immediately through the “knowledge of presence.” Almost half a century after the execution of Suhrawardy, philosophy of Illumination was viewed as a more complete system. Its aim was to expand the structure of Aristotelian philosophy to include carefully selected religious topics, defending the harmony between philosophy and religion. This gave rise to Mulla Sadra’s (1572-1641) theory of the unity or sameness of the knower and the known. Sadra’s view of theo-philosophy continues to influence Muslim philosophical knowledge even today.

The Socio-political Paradigms

Though the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula were intelligent people who very soon adopted the new religion of Islam—a discipline intertwined with reason and spirituality had made them warriors first. The way of Islam revealed in the Social paradigms, cultures, and geo-political circumstances play a very important part in the formation of a literary, socio-political, or even a religious social order. We know that the ethos of pre-Islamic Arabian literary, cultural, and traditional etymology inherited by the people who embraced Islam were devoid of philosophical cognition and rational intellectualism. But the Arabs living mostly in the Arabian Desert as roaming nomads had remained engaged in fighting with each other in groups and tribes. The Qur’an as deen-e-Islam or the “way of Islam,” for the Arab believers revealed in their own language seemed to them neither dogma nor an illusion. The Qur’an does not speak of Islam as the “religion of Islam,” rather it is referred to throughout as deen. It is different from those disciplines interpreted as religions which are viewed as dogma. If Islam were a dogma, many Arab believers and scholars would never have touched the rationalistic philosophy and free thinking of the pagan Greeks. However, for the non-Arabic speaking people the Qur’anic Arabic was as sacred as the messages revealed and collected in the scripture. 

After the first four “Rightly Guided Caliphs,” when the first Umayyad caliph Mu’awiya established his rule in the seventh century, a period of intellectual activity began. In order to overturn the tradition of election of a caliph which could have been a Socratic way of democracy or a Roman form of republic, Mu’awiya tempted by Plato’s famous pronouncement, “Until philosophers are kings, or kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy,” took Neoplatonism as a viable rationale to establish a dynasty of hereditary caliphate. For the power monger Mu’awiya who was entrusted the role of scribe by the Prophet to take down the revealed Qur’anic verses during the life time of the Prophet, the philosophy of Plato proved a big blessing. However, Mu’awiya did not patronize Jewish, Christian, and Syriac scholars, thinkers and philosophers who had knowledge of Greek philosophy, but gave them protection. 

When the Abbasids, who were also Arabs, defeated their ancestral cousins the Umayyads with the help of the Persians, the influence of Persian language and culture started posing a big challenge to the Arabic language. In order to meet the Persian infiltration with a superior intellectual weapon, Caliph al-Ma’mun founded the House of Wisdom known as Dar-al-Hikmah to translate Greek philosophy and sciences into Arabic. Thus, a golden era of Muslim intellectualism began, which also curbed the Persian renaissance of the tenth and eleventh centuries and brought revolutionary changes in Muslim thought and scientific achievements. In short, patronage of the Hellenistic philosophy was not the intrinsic passion of the Arab rulers, but rather it was a kind of political weapon—used at times to intimidate the theologians or Fuqaha, and at another time to subjugate political rebels or curb foreign cultural influences. Thus, great Muslim thinkers from al-Kindi to ibn Sina, as well as many scientists, got seriously involved in the pursuit of scientific exploration and rational thinking. Unfortunately, first the Crusades and then the Mongol onslaught brought the fall of the Arab Abbasids of Baghdad, and the spectrum of power slipped out of the hands of the Arabs, which also marked the demise of rational and free thinking. The decline of knowledge in the Muslim world dates roughly from the beginning of the twelfth century—at the end of the Crusades—and an irreversible decadence when Baghdad was burned to ashes. 

When the Mongols sacked Baghdad, the world of Christendom, after having lost the third and final Crusade, proclaimed with great merriment the death of Islam for good. But the rise of the Ottomans and the Turkic-Mongol race known as the Mughals revived the power of Islam. Since both the Ottomans and the Mughals as patrons of mystical Islam, were, though, mostly secular rulers, they banned the Arab thinker ibn Rushd’s rational and scientific discourses of theoretical openness, intellectual intuitiveness, and political freedom. The Ottomans and Mughals believed that rationalism and the separation of politics and religion would weaken their monarchic and authoritarian rule. They promoted the notion that Islam as a religion and its history is the crucial rationale of Islamic discipline and that the truth of its doctrine lies in spirituality. Since there was neither a sociopolitical inclination, nor a cultural requirement for philosophical appreciation, the question of an Islamic renaissance never arose.

Failure of Enlightenment and Nahda in Islam

Today, despite the rising trend of scientific knowledge in the Muslim world, Muslims still construct their polity on the original Islamic rules of community. But an inclination to modernity also exists. Oliver Leaman in A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy, argues:

During the “Nahda” or the “Arab Renaissance” movement of the nineteenth century, the challenge to Islamic thought was clear. How can the Muslims develop a view of society which incorporates the principles of modernity, yet at the same time remain Islamic? … [According to the modernists], “Islamic Renaissance” should follow the Western Renaissance, and put religion in its place; only in this way can the Islamic world participate in the material and political successes of the West.³

Though modern time has seen radical change in the traditional scheme of education, but the world of Islam has failed to produce successful “Renaissance men” like Leonardo da Vinci, Pico-della Mirandola, Francis Bacon, and many others. Painting, making sculptures and depicting many forms of fine art work has remained forbidden in Islamic discipline, which according to Leonardo is an important medium to express knowledge of the world acquired by simply looking at it; the secret being “to know how to see.” Pico living in Florence published a remarkable work as On the Dignity of Man, portraying man as the spiritual center of the universe or perhaps man is one focus and God the other. Such views were offensive for the Muslims who believed in an Omnipotent, Transcendent One God. Bacon’s famous boast, “I take all knowledge for my province,” is for the Muslims to challenge the All-knowing God they believe and remember daily in their prayers. The solution to all the problems of the Islamic world which exist today rests in understanding and appropriately implying the concept of “reason” in every phase of life of a Muslim. Regarding current problems of the World of Islam, Oliver Leaman is of the opinion:

What the Islamic world needed was more or less the same sort of passionate involvement with the Enlightenment Project as occurred, in some ways, in Europe and the United States. Critics of the Enlightenment point to the fact that the Enlightenment did not itself provide grounds for believing that reason is the                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      principle of thought to be followed, so that its adherence to reason is itself unreasonable and uncritical. Critics also discuss the terrible things which came into existence as a result of an unthinking adherence to a principle of rationality which is not in itself rich enough to constitute a sufficiently thorough guide to how we should live. Some critics of the Enlightenment and of ibn Rushd’s place in it comment on the low status which mysticism has in his thought, suggesting that the glorification of rationality as a form of thought ignores and misrepresents the spiritual aspects of humanity and our links with God.⁴                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

The Age of Enlightenment is also known as the Age of Reason and Rational thinking. In the World of Islam the period between ninth and thirteenth centuries was the Age of Enlightenment. It was the heyday of the World of Islam when a series of great philosophers, scholars, thinkers, and scientists appeared who made their great impact on the West. Quest for philosophical knowledge and scientific researches of the Arabs dominated the world of ideas even beyond the frontiers of dar-al-Islam. Failure to continue the progress of Enlightenment and Rationalism or a possible its revival just as the renaissance in the West, in the Islamic World the fall of Arab rule and the end of Arabic as language franca, are considered as one of the major cause out of some other. 

During the second half of nineteenth-century and the early twentieth-century Islamic Renaissance known as Nahda, in its Arabic meaning “the Awakening” which was also referred to as Enlightenment flourished in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria, the Arabic speaking regions of the Ottoman Empire. The Nahda was seen as a cultural shock brought about by the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon. Egyptian scholar Rifa’a al-Tahtawi (1801–1873) is seen as the pioneering figure of the Nahda who was sent to Paris in 1826 by the Turkish Governor Muhammad Ali to study Western sciences and their educational systems. Learning French language, he translated some important scientific and cultural works into Arabic. With his political views changed on many matters, he particularly advocated the parliamentarian system and women’s education.

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1806-1887) who was born in Lebanon, went to Great Britain, became a British citizen and lived there for seven years in pursuit of modern knowledge. From Britain he moved to France and lived there for two years, where he wrote and published some of his most important works. Promoting Arabic language and culture, he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern Arabic literature. However, he was more focused on resisting the Ottoman’s Turkynizing of the Arab world. 

Another scholar, Butus al-Bustani (1819-1893) who was also a Lebanese and an important figure of the Nahda centered mid-nineteenth century Beirut. Influenced by the American missionaries, he became Protestant. In 1863 he founded al-Madrasa al-Wataniya (the National School) on secular principles, employed some leading Nahda pioneers of Beirut and graduated a generation of Nahda thinkers. He compiled and published several school textbooks and dictionaries, and thus, became known as the Master of the Arabic Renaissance.

Hayreuddin Pasha al-Tunsi (1820-1890) focusing on the writings of European Enlightenment and the Arabic political thought, in his many writings envisioned a seamless blending of Islamic tradition with the Western modernization. His theories of modernization, made enormous impact on Tunisian and Ottoman outlook. A Syrian physician, publicist, poet, and scholar Francis Marrash (1835-1874) who had travelled France and Western Asia, expressed socio-political ideas in Ghabat-al-Haqq highlighting his views for the Arabs about two things: Arab patriotism, and modern schooling, free from religious binding. 

Saiyid Jamal-al-Din Afghani (1839-1897) advocating Islamic unity gave a modernist reinterpretation to Islam. Preaching Pan-Islamic solidarity fused with adherence to the faith, he supported an anti-colonial doctrine. Al-Afghani’s views influenced many, but the most prominent follower was Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905). He preached that Muslims should return to the “true Islam” of the first four Rightly Guided Caliphs who had been divinely inspired and rationally guided. Rashid Rida ((1885-1935), one of the students of Abduh continued his legacy and further expanded on the just Islamic government.

The Birth of Nationalism in Islam

Though the introduction of parliamentarian system helped introduce a political class in the Ottoman-controlled provinces, but from which later on emerged several nationalist movements, in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. The Arabs dreamed of restoring Islam to its pristine grandeur, revolted against Ottoman-Turkish rule. Martin Kramer wrote in his book, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival,that, “World War I forced a choice upon the adherents of Arabism. After some hesitation, the Ottoman Empire entered the European war on the side of Germany, prompting Britain and France to fan every ember of dissent in the Empire. The Allies held out the prospect of independence for something they called ‘the Arab nation,’ and they eventually found a partner in a local potentate of Mecca, the Sharif Husayn.”¹⁸ Support from the Western powers proved a major political fallacy of the Arabs. The Arabs did not get the real Arab world they had longed for. Graham Fuller, in Future of Political Islam,argued:

The alternative model, imposed by Western colonialism, divided much of the Muslim world into so-called nation-states that were not in reality based on true ‘nations’ at all as ethnically European states were. The Arab world in particular was ‘artificially’ divided into units that are perceived by the Arabs neither traditional, logical, useful, nor successful. On the contrary, this Western principle of reorganization—based on divisive ethnicity rather than moral principles of Muslim unity—is perceived as a key source of contemporary Muslim weakness that only a move toward Islamic unity can overcome—even if creation of just one single pan-Islamic state is not  realistic.⁵ 

The British and French had replaced the Ottomans, and the Arabs failed to stop the division of Arab land. The Arabs, tricked by the Machiavellian politics of the West, lost their ideal of a universal Islam and failed to restore the grandeur of Islam in this age of scientific materialism. The Arabs committed a blunder in neglecting the concept of universal Islam, since the sole collective identity Islam offers lies in its faith, in which Arabs, Persians, Turks, South Asians, Europeans, Chinese, Africans, and other nations and colors are equal under God’s banner. In effect, Arab nationalism exhausted its role in universal history. By taking the side of the British and French, the Arabs betrayed their fellow Muslims, forgetting that the bond of Islam linked Arabs and Turks, not the British and French. They were betrayed by their Western allies, now turned masters—a just recompense for those who were believers, but placed their trust in nonbelievers of Islam. The Qur’an, giving an account of some mighty nations of the past that perished because of their own wrongdoing, says, “So Allah surly wronged them not, but they did wrong themselves.” ⁶ Thus, Western civilization succeeded in turning the course of history in its favor by politically dividing the Muslim world into small states. The doctrine of dar al-Islam suffered a big blow from this division, but the ideology of universal Islam remained firmly rooted in the heart of every Muslim. Martin Kramer questioned, “Will it ever be possible again for this region to develop as an independent center of political, economic, and cultural power? Or will it continue, as much of it does now, to nurse old wounds and curse the new world order?”¹⁷ Old wounds of failure and victimization are psychobiological complexes that haunt nations for generations. Nations that are oppressed and find themselves hard-pressed under the heels of economic and military power resort to revolts against the oppressors. Those that do not possess the logistics for adequate warfare or enough power to face a much stronger oppressor, either persevere or express their resentment through terrorism.

The Rise of European Power

In the seventeenth century, when European nations began to colonize the continents of America and Australia, they acquired immense wealth from overseas. This enabled them to undertake colonialism in Africa, Asia, and the Muslim world. European imperialism in the Muslim Middle East, India under Muslim-rule, and Southeast Asia, was a final blow to the quest of knowledge in the world of Islam. Colonialism drowned the Muslim world in economic recession and divided into many nation-states with arbitrary borders it came under monarchic and dictatorial rules. Muslim nations were spending money on battles—some on disputes with each other and some fighting for their freedom from their European masters—rather than on scientific and educational projects. In the twenty-first century, almost all Muslim nations are part of the developing world with many problems such as poverty, economic stagnation, educational regression, and above all, political instability. 

Throughout the history of Muslim philosophy, Muslim scholars have been arguing and writing mostly for intellectuals and other philosophers. But in the Western world it was understood that there is a need for philosophy to be read, understood, and practiced alike by the intellectuals and non-intellectuals. Many complex arguments and multiple contradictions need to be addressed to achieve a simple and clear intellectual vision for the common man and his world. The world is moving rapidly ahead, while Muslims, still basking in their past glories, are struggling to revive their lost golden period of philosophical and scientific eminence. 

Today’s Islamic World 

While the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals lost their glories, the European nations went from strength to strength, acquiring more and more territories and trade centers, and succeeded in defeating the Muslims on land and sea. Today, Muslims are divided into nations, lacking an understanding of the Western challenges and its imperialistic threats. Instead of looking back to their past glory, they need to comprehend that the past cannot be revived. Unfortunately, there still exists in all Muslim societies an “Islamist-Utopia” thinking, which stands as an impediment to scientific and political modernity. It is time to move forward. New IT technology and modern scientific exploration can help them catch up quickly the time they have lost.

Since people, today, are now instantly connected by a network of information and knowledge exchange, they are impelled to think and act globally in a world where philosophy is no longer viewed as the “queen of knowledge.” The western world understands that philosophy is now understood through science, phenomenology, and linguistic analysis. Scientific education and research, and the growth of intellectual consortiums have generated a new scientific form of global interpretation. This should be seen as an act of progressive transformation of philosophy, actualized by the scientific revolution in the West where philosophy has now attained a place in the scientific arenas. The world of Islam today is far behind the West in philosophical and scientific knowledge. 

Muslims need to understand that during their Golden Era, the religion of Islam was never an obstacle in their pursuit of philosophical and scientific exploration sponsored by rational thinking, which should not be an obstacle now. Today, the pace of technology is so fast, its impact so deep, that our lives will be irreversibly transformed. The coming era will neither be utopian nor dystopian; it will drastically transform the concept of human beings relying on the conviction to give meaning to their lives. Today, a global IT revolution of “Scientific Enlightenment” is knocking at the door of the whole of mankind, an enlightenment where human intelligence will give way to the artificial intelligence of supercomputers. Time is gone for a seventeenth-century type of Renaissance. In the present era of history of knowledge, the grand role of philosophy as the supreme form of intellectual life, the queen of knowledge and the guide of religious and worldly life, has been demoted to that of handmaiden of science. Today it is “Science as the mother of all knowledge.” The modern period is day by day projecting the increasing authority of science over other cultures, religions, and social fields. Science as a technique has presented in practice a different outlook from the one found in theoretical philosophy and the dogmatic approach of religions. Religion and philosophy now only serve to legitimize models of progress that are wholly ideological. In science many answers enjoy a general consensus because people agree on the assumptions of questions and the application of concepts within that discipline.

The modern age is, day by day, increasing the authority of science over cultural, religious, and social fields that fall under the jurisdiction of philosophy. In the West, science and technology have succeeded on account of their practical utility, becoming more and more a series of easy techniques and less and less a complicated system by presenting a more practicable outlook than the one found in theoretical philosophy. Cutting-edge neuroscience research and the boundless frontiers of computer science have enabled transfer of knowledge and power from intellectual minds to average students. Neurobiology is amazingly drawing philosophy closer to science. Because it is easy to agree on the application of philosophical concepts within the scientific system, consequently, many unanswered questions of philosophy have been answered by science enjoying a general consensus. Therefore, today, instead of looking back to philosophical analysis and rational enquiries, as initiated by al-Kindi and many other Muslim philosophers of the ninth century, Muslims need to understand philosophy through science.  

Notes:

• Kramer, 1999.
• Kramer, 1996, p. 25
• Leaman, 1999, p. 126.
• Ibid. p. 177.
• Fuller. 2003, 3.
• Pickthall, the Qur’an, 9:70.