Muslim Heritage

Semester IV:
Spring 2023/2024
Session I /25th Sept.
The Foundations of
lslamic Thought
Professor A. El Bakkali
 Outline

• Introduction
• The foundations of Islamic thought
• At the time of the Medinian caliphs
• The Umayyad period
• The 'Abbasid period
• The philosophical movement in the land of Islam
• Branches of learning in the Muslim world
• Conflict between philosophers, Ash'arites, Mu'tazilites, and Hanbalites
• The principal philosophers
 Introduction
• The impact of Islamic religious, cultural, philosophical, and scientific achievements on
world history.

• Demystify/refute some Eurocentric fallacies that seek to deny Muslim’s contributions to

world civilizations.

• Islamic thought and philosophy are not the kind of imitation of classical philosophy,
especially the Greek.

• Muslim Scholars translated, interpreted, and innovated Greek books and manuscripts;
they went far beyond translation.

• Philosophy and sciences took an Islamic shape in the medieval period thanks to the
contributions of Muslim Scholars/Polymaths

• Arabic became the lingua franca, the common language among Scholars of different parts of
the world at that time.
 The foundations of lslamic thought

• The sudden burst of Greco-Arab philosophy into the Western world in the
thirteenth century irreversibly altered the course of European thought and
continues to reverberate in world history.
• The philosophy of the Arab-Muslim world began as a discovery of an
ancient heritage, and moved on in its own original way.
• Delving into every topic of human interest, it came up with theories that
had serious consequences on religion, society, and the individual. The
questions raised then are still discussed today, and it is worthwhile to see
how they were approached in a different time and culture.
• Philosophy at that time included all kinds of sciences touching on the
destiny of man and religion, such as the existence of God, human
freedom before the omnipotence of God (with the question of evil), the
immortality of the human soul, and the relationship between philosophy
and revelation.
 The foundations of lslamic thought

• We look at the major players, such as al-Kindi, aJ-Farabi, Ibn-S1na et Ibn-

Rushd, while trying to avoid focusing strictly on the Arab or Muslim world.
Some of the great philosophers of this world were non-Arabs or non-
Muslims. Nor can we leave out Latin. It was one intellectual world debating
the same questions with the same philosophical tools.
• A new resume of the thought of the Muslim philosophers is particularly called
for now because of the vast number of publications of the works of these
philosophers over the past thirty years. Even though more specialized work
remains to be done, a new synthesis of the thoughts of these philosophers is
called for.
 At the time of the Medinian caliphs

• During the caliphate of ‘Umar (634-644) the Muslim umma experienced a real booty boom.
The Arab soldiers were inspired by a strong faith. That assured them of a heavenly reward
if they died in battle, and an earthly reward if they did not. As these men sent back to Medina
the fortunes they had gathered, other men of lesser faith now rushed to join the army. But they
found little pickings left in. Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, and the whole Persian empire.

• Boom times had become doom times, and the blame was laid at the feet of the new caliph,
'Uthman (644-656). Mutinous troops demanded his resignation. He refused and they
stabbed him to death, installing 'Ali (656-661) in his place.
• Mu'awiya, the governor of Damascus and a relative of 'Utman refused to recognize 'Ali
and a civil war broke out. Various battles and negotiations took place, and in the end, Mu
'awiya won out, founding the Umayyad dynasty, which lasted almost a century.
 The Umayyad period

• During the lifetime of the prophet Mohammed, a radical

change of attitude took place in the Arab world. Everyone,
including opponents of Islamic rule, found themselves
incapable of thinking or expressing themselves in other than
Qur'anic categories.
• “During the caliphate of Abu-Bakr, some apostates
presented themselves as rival prophets, with revelations
patterned after the Qur' an. During the Umayyad period,
however, any rebel had to claim that he was a better
Muslim than his adversary.”
 The Umayyad period
• "You are the best community raised up among men; you command
what is good and forbid what is evil and believe in God. If those who
have Scripture had believed it would have been better for them ... "
(Qur'an 3:110). This transformation of the public mentality was not
the result of interior conversion involving intellectual conviction and
change of life: We have to distinguish conversion from joining a
movement. The vast majority of new Muslims joined Islam because it
was a winning movement launched by a “prophet” who had full
confidence in his authority and mission as the last prophet.
• It became impossible to escape Qur'anic ideology, which was the
orthodoxy of the society since membership in that society was a
necessity for survival. Qur'anic rules of living, however, were simple,
practical, and adaptable to the still-evolving condition of Islam at
that time, and provided a rallying point for a society in transition.
 The 'Abbasid period (750-)

• Throughout the Umayyad period the Muslim community, by force of

circumstances, adopted a vast amount of new regulative norms not contained in the
Qur' an. These became enshrined in tradition, or Hadith literature, which claimed the
authority of the companions of the prophet and eventually the authority of the prophet
himself. Under the influence of ash-Sha:fi'i (d. 825), Hadith became another source of
revelation alongside the Qur'an.
• As ash-Shii:fi'i put it, Mohamed, the "seal of the prophets" was divinely ordained as
the perfect man, impeccable, infallible, the model and exemplar for all mankind.
Although Hadith was not dictated by God like the Qur’an', all the actions and words
that they relate to are taken as another form of revelation.
• How we must now ask, could a philosophical movement flourish in a milieu so
dominated by Islamic religious thought?
 The philosophical movement in the land of
Islam

• The philosophical movement caught on with the Muslims by contact with

Greek philosophy which their Christian subjects cultivated in Egypt, Syria,
and Iraq. There was also some Jewish influence on the method of qiyiis, or
analogical reasoning in law.
• When the Arabs conquered these Christian territories, they mostly avoided the
schools and educational system that was there because they mistrusted
anything that was not Arab. Their attitude was that it was either anti-Islamic or
useless since everything worth knowing is contained in the Quran. Despite this
general attitude, a few Muslims took an interest in philosophy, for the
following reasons:
• 1. At times Muslims engaged in debates with Christians and found themselves
on the defensive when the Christians used philosophical arguments to defend
their positions. Muslims then were supposed to learn philosophy to have better
answers to the Christians.
• 2. The caliphs and other influential Muslims were interested in philosophy for its
practical advantages. Philosophy was a single package that included all the human
sciences: astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and technology, as well as
metaphysics.
• 3. The caliphs also had a political reason for supporting the philosophers. That was
because the philosophers, along with the Persian civil servants, did not share the
Arabs' disdain for all that was not Arabic or Islamic. They were convenient support
for the caliph when he did not want to be hemmed in by religious scholars insisting
on their narrow interpretation of Shari’a.
 Branches of learning in the Muslim world

• Branches of learning were thereby introduced to the Muslim world.

According to ai-Farabt or lbn-Sina, they included:
• 1. logic, following Aristotle's treatises on reasoning along with
rhetoric and poetry,
• 2. mathematics, with physical applications such as music and
astronomy,
• 3. natural science in all its branches, particularly the study of man
and the practical science of medicine,
• 4. the moral sciences such as ethics and politics,
• 5. and finally metaphysics or natural theology.
 Conflict between philosophers, Ash'arites,
Mu'tazilites, and Hanbalites
• Al-Ma'mun favored the Mu'tazilites theological school which defended certain positions using
philosophical methods which the Hanbalites opposed because they disregarded a literal interpretation
of the Qur'an. For example, the Mu'tazilites taught the freedom of human choice as opposed to divine
predetermination, and the absolute unity of God and all his attributes, except for his word, the Qur'
an, which they held was created- thereby countering Christian teaching on the Logos and a foundation
of Ash' arite determinism.

• Although philosophy and rational theology both flourished after 849, each went its way without
mutual influence until the time of al-Ghazall. Theologians continued to use the philosophical
concepts introduced into theology before 849, and the philosophers developed teachings that
sometimes contradicted the Islamic faith.
• In the meantime, Spain, never subject to the 'Abbasids, continued to harbor philosophers for some
time, especially under Umayyad rule. After this dynasty declined, Spain broke up into small
principalities until the Murabi1 conquest in 1090. The Murabils encouraged the study of Maliki law
and, like the Hanbalites, banished systematic theology (kalam). Yet they tolerated philosophy, maybe
because the philosophers were more cautious and did not publicize their opinions
 References
• Kenny, J., & Köylü, M. (2003). Philosophy of the Muslim world: authors and principal themes.
CRVP.
• Rico, T. (2017). The making of Islamic heritage: Muslim pasts and heritage presents. Springer
Nature.
• Sajoo, A. (Ed.). (2011). A companion to Muslim cultures. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Fakhry, M. (2000). Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism a Short Introduction.
• Nasr, S. H. (2006). Islamic Philosophy from its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land
of Prophecy. suny Press.
• Attar, F. A. D. (2013). Muslim Saints and Mystics: Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-
Auliya'(Memorial of the Saints). Routledge.
• Leaman, O. (2002). An introduction to classical Islamic philosophy. Cambridge University
Press.
• Video: A Short Film about Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK5hmshPmxI