Cultural Intellectual Landscape and Islamic Enlightenment
Abstract
In this essay, I trace the cultural and intellectual constellation that paved the way for Islam’s path to enlightenment and modernity, culminating in the colonial form of modernity embodied by the Nahda, which emerged as a reform movement, particularly in Egypt. The Nahda should be examined within the context of its own historical constellation, rooted in its cultural renaissance and philosophical enlightenment, as influenced by figures such as al-Fārābī, Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, and Averroes. I argue that Averroes represents an epistemological break from both the philosophy of Avicenna and the theology of al-Ghazālī, the latter of which was tainted by Gnostic mysticism.
Historical Constellation
As we examined earlier, Islamic rational theology and philosophical enlightenment remain key intellectual sources for an Islamic alternative path to modernity, democracy, and civil society. In the comparative study of the Barbarian period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE—roughly lasting from 400 to 800 CE—and the rise of the Arab world, the Arabs subsumed more than half of the Mediterranean territories, creating a unique blend of Greco-Roman, Persian, and Islamic cultures.
According to leading economic historian Robert Lopez, the Caliphate and the splinter states that began to emerge in the late eighth century embraced the most diverse lands, peoples, and traditions. There was scarcely a ‘barbarian’ interlude comparable to the long depression in the West following the collapse of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world as a whole, the economic cycle was roughly a hundred years ahead of Catholic Europe. By the tenth century, while Europe was just emerging from its depression, many Muslim countries were well on their way to reaching their medieval peak in terms of civilization and prosperity.
In the Sasanian (Persian) Empire, as well as in Syria, Egypt, and Northwest Africa, the Arabs absorbed the techniques of two mature civilizations, ultimately amalgamating them under one flag. This expansion included the Iberian Peninsula, large parts of Central Asia, and some regions of India.[1]
Islam fostered a cultural renaissance and philosophical enlightenment during the Golden Age of Baghdad, as well as in Muslim Córdoba in Spain. Intellectuals such as Al-Fārābī (870–950), Ibn Sīnā/Avicenna (980–1037), and Ibn Rushd/Averroes (1126–1198) had a significant impact on the development of scholastic theology, influencing the works of Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus. These scholars integrated Islamic thought into the works of earlier Christian thinkers such as St. Anselm (1033–1109), Peter Abelard (1079–1142), and Albert the Great (c. 1200–1280).[2]
Islam and Modernity
In the historical and sociological approach to Islam, political power, and legal rationality, several questions arise. Will the Muslim world be able to overcome the impasse into which contemporary political Islam has become trapped? Is Islam, like other religions, capable of making a reinterpretation of religious ideas and ethics to support the necessary social transformation? The sociology of Islam focuses on translation and transculturation, while undertaking a creative path toward its own development. This process requires a new theory of interpretation that is involved in the adaptation, renewal, and synthesis of Islamic thought.
In encountering Islam, it is essential for local Christianity in Islamic-dominated cultures in Asia and Africa to engage with the study of Islam, as well as foster interreligious recognition and collaboration. Islam is spreading and expanding in the aftermath of colonial rule in these regions. In the postcolonial era, Muslim leaders are driving political agitation for their public agendas, notably pressing for Sharia law to be adopted as penal law. They seek to fill the vacuum of public morality and cultural practices that were once shaped by Christianity.[3]
Given the political and cultural complexity, I draw attention to the history of symbiosis and emancipation in the historical context of Islam. This historical legacy would play a significant role in underlying an alternative form of modernity in comparison with Eurocentric discourse.
The concept of alternative modernities is philosophically elaborated by Charles Taylor, who deals with Western modernity as a wave, but this wave is acultural and technologically advanced, along with capitalist rationalization and progress. This acultural wave of modernity imposes a falsely uniform pattern upon and understanding of the multiple encounters of non-Western cultures. However, the latter entails its own history in terms of science, technology, and industrial development. Without consideration of the multiple encounters of non-Western culture, “we will fail to see how other cultures differ and how this difference crucially conditions the way in which they integrate the truly universal features of modernity.”[4]
In sociological context, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt insists that the progress of modernization showed that “modernity” and “Westernization” were not identical.[5] Western modernity itself was never a single phenomenon: “practically from the beginning of modernity’s expansion multiple modernities developed, all within what may be defined as the Western civilizational framework.”[6]
I use the terms alternative modernities and multiple modernities interchangeably, with a focus on the postcolonial implications in which Weber’s idea of economic and technological advancement has resulted in the reality of the ‘iron cage.’
The multiple exchanges between Eastern and Western cultures are essential for paving the way toward an alternative form of modernity. This alternative model preserves the Western traditions of philosophical enlightenment, democracy, civil society, and the common good—values that have been enriched through their encounter with Islam, yet were often undermined during the historical development of colonialism.
Cultural Renaissance and Enlightenment
In the sociological study of multiple forms of modernity, it is crucial to recognize the significant contribution of Islam to civilization, intellectual achievements, and cultural renaissance. In fact, there were flourishing civilizations and a period of enlightenment in Baghdad and Islamic Spain, serving as models of symbiosis and cosmopolitan character.
During the period of the Abbasid Caliphate, religious toleration was granted to the Jewish community, which was provided judicial autonomy and exemption from military service, while acknowledging the supremacy of the Islamic state.
Under the rule of the Moors in Spain (since 711), the majority of the Christian population converted to Islam, while the Christian minority became Arabized, known as the Mozarabs. Muslims and Jews shared close relations based on their monotheistic beliefs, with Islam’s legal tolerance toward the Jewish community.
At the beginning of the eighth century, a mixed army of Arabs and Muslim Berbers began to conquer the Iberian Peninsula. When the Abbasid Caliphs overthrew the Umayyads in 750 CE, Spain remained independent under an Umayyad ruler. In the tenth century, the Jewish statesman Hisdai Ibn Shaprut (915–970) served as court physician, administrator, and diplomat in the Umayyad Caliphate of Spain. Acting as the head of the Jewish community, he became a patron of Jewish scholarship. Córdoba, the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, became a center of Jewish civilization.
Córdoba also experienced a cultural florescence, even though the Umayyad Caliphate in Spain eventually collapsed in 1010 and disintegrated into a number of rival independent courts. The Spanish Renaissance was particularly renowned for its poetry, which resembled the French poet-musician culture—a troubadour courtly tradition that flourished from the 11th to the 13th centuries.[7] Even after the Christians took Toledo, scholars there translated the works of Ibn Sina, along with those of other Muslim and ancient Greek philosophers, under the patronage of Alfonso X, King of León and Castile (1252–1284). Parallel efforts in Toledo also saw translations from Arabic into Hebrew, highlighting the inter-confessional intellectual life that characterized the concept of Convivencia.[8]
One of Spain’s later intellectual stars was the philosopher Abu al-Walid Ahmad ibn Rushd (1126–1198), whose rationalistic thought influenced Jewish and Christian philosophers such as Maimonides (1135 or 1138–1204), Thomas Aquinas, and Albert the Great.
Ibn Rushd, often Latinized as Averroes, was born in Córdoba and placed himself in the tradition of the falāsifah (Islamic philosophers). He distinguished himself from other philosophers through his active participation in public life as a lawyer, deeply engaged with the daily realities of society. In 1169, he was appointed qāḍī (judge) of Seville, which had become the capital of Andalusia. After being reappointed in 1179, he became the chief qāḍī of Córdoba.[9]
Between 1169 and 1195, Ibn Rushd wrote a series of commentaries on most of Aristotle’s works, which were later incorporated into the Latin translation of Aristotle’s complete works. In Padua, a stronghold of Averroism, rational philosophy, alongside a revived Neoplatonism, became a central component of Renaissance thought for three centuries.[10]
By the tenth century, Moorish Spain had become a fertile symbiosis of Muslims and Jews. The great symbolic figure of Spanish Judaism was Moshe ben Maimon, known in the West as Moses Maimonides. Born in Córdoba, he spent much of his life as a court physician in Cairo, serving the Muslim ruler of Egypt. Maimonides was also a leader of the Jewish community in Cairo and remains one of the greatest figures in the intellectual history of medieval Jewry.
His intellectual foundation was deeply influenced by the philosophers of Muslim Spain, such as Al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes, who endeavored to reconcile revealed religion with the philosophies of ancient Greece. Maimonides was particularly influenced by the Muslim Aristotelians’ identification of Aristotle’s Prime Mover with the Neoplatonic ideal of the One, from which all multiplicity emanates. This philosophical perspective helped address key theological challenges within Judaism, guiding it toward intellectual and logical consistency in harmony with reason.[11]
In addition to the Islamic civilization of toleration and dialogue in Córdoba, it is argued that the true origin of Islamic philosophy lies in the glorious epoch of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–850), during which Islam reached its classical form. Islamic philosophy has its roots in the translation of Greek philosophical works in cosmopolitan Baghdad, where the Persian lifestyle was more prominent. “[Its] scientific and technical knowledge was absorbed, particularly in fields such as medicine, mathematics, astronomy, agronomy, and weaponry.”[12]
Philosophical Enlightenment and Theology
Activity in Islamic philosophy began in the ninth century in Baghdad, influenced by Greek and Syriac philosophical texts, particularly those belonging to the school of Aristotle and his Neoplatonic commentators. It inherited much of the philosophy and science of Greco-Alexandrian antiquity, with the first outstanding intellectual figure being al-Kindi (d. ca. 873), who sought to synthesize Islamic teachings with Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophy.[13]
Cairo also became a vital center of art and learning under the Fatimids (909–1171), Shia Muslims. Philosophy flourished there, and in the tenth century, the caliphs founded al-Azhar, a college that would later become the most important Islamic university in the world.[14]
From the ninth to the twelfth century, Arabic philosophy emerged and reached its zenith with figures like Al-Fārābī, a practicing Sufi who completed al-Kindi’s synthesis, and Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), a Persian philosopher during the Islamic Golden Age (980–1037), whose influence played a key role in reviving Islamic philosophy in the East.
Al-Fārābī was born around 870 in Farab, Turkestan, likely of Turkish origin. He is reported to have studied logic in Baghdad under the Christian scholars Yūḥannā ibn Ḥaylān (d. 910) and Abū Bishr Mātā (d. 940), both of whom were involved in translating Aristotle’s works into Arabic. The School of Baghdad became the principal heir in the Arabic world to the philosophical and medical tradition of Alexandria.
In addition to his works on logic, al-Fārābī wrote extensively on political philosophy, based on Platonic ideas, as well as on the philosophy of religion and language. In the Jewish philosophical tradition, Moses Maimonides praised al-Fārābī as one of the greatest authorities in the field of logic.
Al-Fārābī’s interest lay in political theory, particularly concerning the requirements of the ideal state and its ruler, as well as the relationship between philosophy and religion within such a state. He sought to unify Plato’s political philosophy with Islamic political thought. For Muslims, Aristotle’s works included the teachings of Plotinus, whose Enneads were believed to have been written by Aristotle.
In recent scholarship, it is noted that al-Fārābī carefully avoided mentioning Neoplatonic emanational metaphysics in his accounts of Aristotelian philosophy.[15] Nonetheless, al-Fārābī adopted the concept of emanation to fill the gaps left by Aristotle. His emanational theory forms a significant part of his contribution to Islamic philosophy, especially in relation to Avicenna.
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), who affirmed the revelation and law as the goal of God, approached them through a rational exegesis of the Qur’an and hadith. In his Aristotelian-Neoplatonic metaphysics, reason is in harmony with revelation.
Although Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) was a disciple of al-Fārābī, he took religion more seriously. For him, the prophet was the ideal philosopher. Ibn Sīnā was also interested in Sufism and acknowledged that mystics attained an experience of the divine that could not be reached through logical reasoning. However, this experience was not contradictory to the ideas of the Faylasūf. Both Falsafah and the mystical faith of the Sufis, as well as the conventional piety of the masses, were, in his view, in harmony.
Being eternally prior to everything in existence and the source of all that exists, this Existent is referred to as the first cause, the Necessary Existent, or Being—none other than God. From this Necessary Being, everything else comes into existence through the process of emanation and contingency, extending to all of creation. The first to emanate are the celestial intellects, followed by the celestial souls, celestial bodies, and finally, terrestrial beings. All of these emanate from the Necessary Being in eternity.[16]
In his magnum opus The Book of Healing (Kitāb al-Shifā’), a monumental encyclopedia of both philosophy and the natural and mathematical sciences, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) had a decisive impact on Jewish thinkers and European scholasticism. His conception of God as the unchangeable primal ground may have had a critical influence on Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).
In the theological debate with Arabic philosophy, it was al-Ghazālī (c. 1058–1111), often called ‘the greatest Muslim after Muhammad,’ who paved the way for a new philosophical mode of theology centered on faith and revelation. Through his synthesis of traditional theology (of the ‘ulamā’) and mystical Sufism, he created the ‘ulamā’-Sufi paradigm, which eventually became widely normative for the Sunni majority.
Al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), a protege of the vizier Nizām al-Mulk, was a lecturer at the madrasah in Baghdad under the Seljuk Turks and an expert in Islamic law. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1095 and, in the midst of his personal crisis, traveled to Jerusalem, where he engaged in Sufi practices. Ten years later, he wrote his masterpiece, Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn (The Revival of the Religious Sciences). In this work, he demonstrates the important insight that only ritual and prayer could give human beings direct knowledge of God.
In light of the ‘ulamā’-Sufi model, Max Weber argues that Islam’s distinctive religiosity experienced an infusion of intellectualism only after the penetration of Sufism, whose orientation was not initially intellectual. In the popular dervish tradition, there was a notable lack of tendencies toward rationalism.[17]
Theology (kalam) and Falsafah, however, could provide no certainty about the divine. No reliable guide to spiritual matters went beyond the use of reason. All the rules of Shari‘ah were given a devotional and ethical interpretation, encouraging Muslims to cultivate them as a way of achieving a righteous life. In Weber’s account, al-Ghazālī combined mysticism with orthodoxy, with leadership remaining partly in the hands of the official religious hierarchy and partly in the hands of a newly developed aristocracy trained in theology.[18]
In his book Tahāfut al-Falāsifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), al-Ghazālī critiques twenty key teachings of the falāsifah, a loosely defined group of Islamic philosophers from the 8th to the 11th centuries, most notably Avicenna and al-Fārābī. In his critique of the falāsifah‘s metaphysics and natural science, al-Ghazālī aimed to make space for the epistemological claims of revelation. Faith seeks understanding, but philosophical understanding should not override the domain of revelation. In this way, al-Ghazālī can be compared to Thomas Aquinas.[19] Faith seeks understanding, but philosophical understanding should not violate the specific area of revelation. Ghazali can be compared to Thomas Aquinas.[20]
Al-Ghazālī’s powerful critique effectively silenced the school of falsafah for a century and a half. However, Islamic philosophy experienced a revival in Spain. The tenth to twelfth centuries marked a golden age of cultural renaissance and Islamic philosophy. The most famous Spanish Muslim philosopher from this period was Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), whose influence on Western intellectual life surpassed that of later Islamic thinkers.
Ibn Rushd: Mutual Witness between Truths
In the Decisive Treatise, Averroes begins: “The purpose of this treatise is to examine, from the standpoint of the study of the Law, whether the study of philosophy and logic is allowed by the Law, prohibited, or commanded—either by way of recommendation or as obligatory.
Averroes sets out to defend his distinctive philosophy, particularly in the realm of philosophical theology. In his later work, Incoherence of the Incoherence, Averroes acknowledges that religions are obligatory, guiding all human beings toward wisdom in a universal sense. They “seek the instruction of the masses generally.”
However, For Averroes the Fasl al-Maqal (“Decisive Treatise”) serves as an introduction to the methodology of philosophical and religious reflection. The Qur’an itself (59:2; 17:184) recommends rational study. He reintroduces allegorical interpretation, while avoiding arbitrary speculation.
Ibn Rushd does not hesitate to defend philosophy against the accusation of impiety, using a legal form of argument. There are two distinct levels of language: symbolic for the masses and demonstrative for the philosopher. These do not oppose each other but rather require mutual recognition.[21]
Averroes’ position opens up an interpretation of conflict within the philosophical realm, and he provides demonstrative reasoning to address the philosophical-theological system. This reasoning, along with the dialectical and rhetorical methods, aids in comprehending scriptural passages. However, it does not reduce or exhaust the inner meaning of Scripture for unlearned believers, nor does it adopt a rationalist approach in the sense of the double truth theory.
For him, Scripture, in each passage, does not admit allegorical interpretation indiscriminately. The philosophical demonstrative approach also has a specific role in understanding and exploring the truth of the inner meaning as symbolized in Scripture. This holds true for both dialectical and rhetorical reasoning.
He rejects a purely literalist interpretation for its excessive tendency toward anthropomorphism. He takes issue with both the Ash’arite (allegorical) and Mu’tazilite (transcendental-dialectical) approaches to Scripture, although the latter generally presents a more coherent statement than the former. However, their incorrect interpretation of the law has had the opposite effect in Muslim societies, fostering hostility, sectarianism, and war—divisions that have been sown among Muslims.[22]
An affinity with revelation remains an undercurrent in Averroes’s approach to the proper relationship between philosophy and religion, while acknowledging the normative conditions of belief. In Averroes’s vision, reason and faith are both equally efficacious, though they follow different paths to the same truth. The term revelation signifies a high level of philosophical knowledge at the level of correlation,[23] enabling Averroes to reinforce the significance of philosophical theology, which respects the inner meaning of Scripture.
Since Muhammad’s Prophecy is an effective tool for leading people to the truth, it provides us with epistemic reasons, meaning it cannot conflict with philosophy. As he says: “If the judge, after exerting his mind, makes the right decision, he will receive a double reward; and if he makes the wrong decision, he will still receive a single reward.”[24]
Philosophy should be the ultimate arbitrator of religious disputes when dealing with legal issues. Theology does not necessarily contradict philosophy, since dialectical reasoning (like rhetorical or analogical reasoning) can be epistemic, leading to the truth, just as philosophical (demonstrative) reasoning does. Averroes speaks about the unity of truth, famously asserting at the beginning of Chapter Two of his Decisive Treatise that “truth does not contradict truth,” or more fully: “Now since this religion is true and summons to the study which leads to knowledge of the Truth, we the Muslim community know definitely that demonstrative study does not lead to [conclusions] conflicting with what Scripture has given us; for truth does not oppose truth but accords with it and bears witness to it.”[25]
Philosophical truth and prophecy are in accord, such that demonstrative truth and scriptural truth cannot conflict or oppose each other. Religious truth is either the truth arrived at through demonstrative, rhetorical, or dialectical methods, all of which yield epistemic reason. When the subject matter of Scripture concerns theoretical truths, they are in harmony with theoretical truths known through philosophy.
Averroes responded to Ghazali’s critique of philosophy, particularly in relation to Avicenna. His Tahafut al-Tahafut (“Incoherence of the Incoherence”) refutes, point by point, the objections raised by al-Ghazali. Affirming the superiority of a religion based on revelation should not necessarily be opposed to reason or rational understanding. Philosophical reasoning must be the best way of understanding the Quran. Conforming to the Divine Words, Averroes asserts, “Those who are deeply versed in knowledge say: ‘We believe in it; it is all from our Lord.’”[26]
Concluding Reflection: Epistemological Break
Averroes remains a central figure in Arab thought. Since the mid-nineteenth century—a period generally known as the Nahda (Renaissance)—there has been a growing acknowledgment of the perceived inferiority of the Arab and Islamic world in the present. Within an Aristotelian framework, tinged with some Neo-Platonism, Muslim thinkers understood Greek thought, especially that of Aristotle.
Against this traditional paradigm, Averroes marks an epistemological break between the philosophers of the East (the eastern parts of the Islamic Empire) and those of the West (Andalusia and Morocco). This epistemological break signifies that Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was not the best representative of Islamic rationalism in the East, but rather a thinker who consecrated irrationalism and Gnostic mysticism in his philosophical legacy.
Both Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali (often seen as opposing intellectual figures by most historians of Islamic thought) are part of the same philosophical problematic. This shared problematic is also present in the works of al-Farabi as a practicing Sufi and many other Eastern thinkers.
This argument is further developed in al-Jabri’s three-volume critique of Arab reason (Naqd al-‘Aql al-‘Arabi), in which he provides a theory of episteme grounded in a critical analysis of the historical phases within the classical Islamic intellectual tradition. Al-Jabri, one of the leading Arab philosophers in Morocco, traces the development of thought in the region and its impact on contemporary issues.[27]
The epistemological system of demonstration is based on inferential evidence, with its origins in Greek thought, particularly that of Aristotle. The concept of demonstration is central to the rationality of Ibn Rushd, who is a staunch proponent of this system. The epistemological break occurs within the philosophical paradigms of the eastern parts of the Islamic world, which are tainted with Gnostic elements. This system has little in common with the intellectual tradition of the West, particularly in Andalusia and Morocco.
In Averroes’s critique of Avicenna and al-Ghazali, an epistemic break occurs within the hermeneutical approach to the Qur’an, legal systems, and Aristotle. Averroes adheres to Aristotle’s distinction between demonstrative and dialectical arguments. However, he does not place intellectual reasoning above religious truth, which can be reached through dialectical, rhetorical reasoning, or allegorical interpretation.
If Plato understands God in multifaceted ways through his Ideas of the Form of the Good as the ultimate source, he introduces the Demiurge, a divine craftsman who fashions the physical world based on the eternal Forms, using pre-existing matter. Plato envisions a divine realm that encompasses various aspects of divinity, as well as the immortality of the soul and its migration between bodies after death.
In contrast, Aristotle begins with substance, where matter and form (potentiality) emerge through practice and various causes—particularly the four causalities: material, formal, efficient, and final (working together). These causes undergo a continuous process of change, alteration, privation (through violence), and self-realization toward actuality in a teleological frame. This framework underlies the dialectic between potentiality and actuality (qualitative change).
In his conception of nature (phusis) as both matter (the motive principle) and form (essence), the latter is the end, and everything else is instrumental to that end. To be means to be potentially or actually (Physics, Bk. III, Ch. 6). To be is to become in respect to potentiality and fulfillment.
If everything comes to be from the underlying substance and form, it implies a reality of self-disclosure (aletheia) through the dialectical process of absence and presence, which effects change through the four major causes. Analogy is useful to grasp the underlying nature in relation to actuality: as A is in B (or to be), C is in D (or to D). For example, as bronze is to a statue, or wood is to a bed. Out of the primary underlying substance, something as a constituent comes to be (Physics, Bk. I, Chs. 7, 9).
Aletheia (self-disclosure) becomes manifest through human life, society, culture, and history. Actuality is prior to potentiality because the mover already exists in actuality. The actual is always produced by an actual thing, like a musician producing music; therefore, actuality is in the order of becoming and time, prior to potentiality, extending back to the actuality of the eternal prime mover. Imperishable things are limited by those that undergo change. Ideas in the Platonic sense are potentialities for actualities, which are prior to potentiality and every principle of change (Metaphysics, Bk. IX, Ch. 8).
Aristotle’s dialectical-demonstrative thinking entails religious implications, describing God as eternal, living, and beautiful. God, as the first mover, is one, eternal, and permanent, so the universe must also be permanent. If the first mover necessarily exists, it is good. Aristotle defines God and life as belonging to God: “For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality. God’s essential actuality is life, most good and eternal.” Thus, Aristotle says, “God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration, continuous and eternal, belong to God; for this is God.” (Metaphysics, Bk. XII, Ch. 7).
Indeed, demonstration in the Aristotelian system is the highest form of philosophical reasoning, which uncovers truths through empirical, rational explanation. Aristotle does not reject God as pure actuality—perfect and unchanging, existing outside the material world—despite his critique of traditional Greek gods, religion, or myths. He acknowledges the practical value of religious belief and practice, which shape human behavior and social structures.
In keeping with Aristotle’s remarks in Metaphysics XII.7, Averroes understands God’s role as the ultimate efficient, final, and formal cause of the universe—the ultimate principle of creation. Islam is common to all humankind. Since the law is true, the Muslim community knows that demonstrative reasoning does not contradict what the law sets down. Truth does not oppose truth; rather, it bears witness to it in agreement (Decisive Treatise, 12).
Averroes reconciles Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic theology, highlighting that reason and revelation, when properly understood, should lead to the same truth. His philosophy of recognition respects religious truth, despite its different approach to God, who shares His life with both faith and reason.
Averroes’s position on God and creation is distinguished from Thomas Aquinas, who relied on Averroes’s interpretation of Aristotle but disagreed with him on many points. Avicenna and Aquinas might share the notion that created beings emanated from God. In Aquinas’s explanation, the emanation of all beings is from the universal cause, God. This emanation is designated as creation.[28]
In our study of the total reality of Islam, both as a religion and in its interaction with the modern world, it is important to take into account Seyyed H. Nasr, who emphasizes the importance of recognizing Islam’s rich intellectual tradition. This tradition has spanned over a millennium. The diversity of perspectives and the continuous vitality of the various schools of Islamic thought have offered profound reflections on God, the universe, and humanity—reflections in which “human beings are condemned to seek meaning by virtue of being human.”[29]
[1] Lopez, The Commercial Revolution, 24.
[2] Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadows of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
[3] Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003), 18-19.
[4] Charles Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” in Alternative Modernities, ed., Dillip P. Gaonkar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 180.
[5] Eisenstadt. “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus, 1-3.
[6] Ibid., 13.
[7] Armstrong, Islam, 83.
[8] Bloom and Blair, Islam, 137.
[9] Domonique Urvoy, “Ibn Rushd,” History of Islamic Philosophy, eds. Seyyed H. Nasr and Oliver Leaman (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 606.
[10] Küng, Islam, 382.
[11] Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History (New York, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1980), 395.
[12] Küng, Islam, 257.
[13] Seyyed H. Nasr, Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization (New York: HarperOne, 2003), 164.
[14] Armstrong, Islam, 83.
[15] Deborah L. Black, “Al-Fārābā,” History of Islamic Philosophy, 350.
[16] Shams Inati, “Ibn Sīnā,” ibid., 448.
[17] Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 132.
[18] Ibid, 121.
[19] Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazali’s Philosophical Theology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 97. 99.
[20] Küng, Islam, 355.
[21] Domonique Urvoy, “Ibn Rushd,” History of Islamic Philosophy, 617.
[22] Averroes, Decisive Treatise, 68.
[23] Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 351.
[24] Averroes, Decisive Treatise, 55.
[25] Ibid., 50.
[26] Averroes (E-text): 420.
[27] Muhammad Abed al-Jabri, The Formation of Arab Reason: Text, Tradition and the Construction of Modernity in the Arab World (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010).
[28] ST 1a.45.I.
[29] Seyyed H. Nasr, Islam, 172.