Islāmic thought

Islāmic theology (kalām) and philosophy (falsafah) are two traditions of learning developed by Muslim thinkers who were engaged, on the one hand, in the rational clarification and defense of the principles of the Islāmic religion (mutakallimūn) and, on the other, in the pursuit of the ancient (Greek and Hellenistic, or Greco-Roman) sciences (falāsifah). These thinkers took a position that was intermediate between the traditionalists, who remained attached to the literal expressions of the primary sources of Islāmic doctrines (the Qurʾān, or the Islāmic scripture, and the Ḥadīth, or the sayings and traditions of Muḥammad) and who abhorred reasoning, and those whose reasoning led them to abandon the Islāmic community (the ummah) altogether. The status of the believer in Islām remained in practice a juridical question, not a matter for theologians or philosophers to decide. Except in regard to the fundamental questions of the existence of God, Islāmic revelation, and future reward and punishment, the juridical conditions for declaring someone an unbeliever or beyond the pale of Islām were so demanding as to make it almost impossible to make a valid declaration of this sort about a professing Muslim. In the course of events in Islāmic history, representatives of certain theological movements, who happened to be jurists and who succeeded in converting rulers to their cause, made those rulers declare in favour of their movements and even encouraged them to persecute their opponents. Thus there arose in some localities and periods a semblance of an official, or orthodox, doctrine.

Origins, nature, and significance of Islāmic theology
Early developments

The beginnings of theology in the Islāmic tradition in the second half of the 7th century are not easily distinguishable from the beginnings of a number of other disciplines—Arabic philology, Qurʾānic interpretation, the collection of the sayings and deeds of the prophet Muḥammad (Ḥadīth), jurisprudence, and historiography. Together with these other disciplines, Islāmic theology is concerned with ascertaining the facts and context of the Islāmic revelation and with understanding its meaning and implications as to what Muslims should believe and do after the revelation had ceased and the Islāmic community had to chart its own way. During the first half of the 8th century, a number of questions—which centred on God’s unity, justice, and other attributes and which were relevant to man’s freedom, actions, and fate in the hereafter—formed the core of a more specialized discipline, which was called kalām (“speech”). This term (kalām) was used to designate the more specialized discipline because of the rhetorical and dialectical “speech” used in formulating the principal matters of Islāmic belief, debating them, and defending them against Muslim and non-Muslim opponents. Gradually, kalām came to include all matters directly or indirectly relevant to the establishment and definition of religious beliefs, and it developed its own necessary or useful systematic rational arguments about human knowledge and the makeup of the world. Despite various efforts by later thinkers to fuse the problems of kalām with those of philosophy (and mysticism), theology preserved its relative independence from philosophy and other nonreligious sciences. It remained true to its original traditional and religious point of view, confined itself within the limits of the Islāmic revelation, and assumed that these limits as it understood them were identical with the limits of truth.

The Hellenistic legacy

The pre-Islāmic and non-Islāmic legacy with which early Islāmic theology came into contact included almost all the religious thought that had survived and was being defended or disputed in Egypt, Syria, Iran, and India. It was transmitted by learned representatives of various Christian, Jewish, Manichaean (members of a dualistic religion founded by Mani, an Iranian prophet, in the 3rd century), Zoroastrian (members of a monotheistic, but later dualistic, religion founded by Zoroaster, a 7th-century-BC Iranian prophet), Indian (Hindu and Buddhist, primarily), and Ṣābian (star worshippers of Harran often confused with the Mandaeans) communities and by early converts to Islām conversant with the teachings, sacred writings, and doctrinal history of the religions of these areas. At first, access to this legacy was primarily through conversations and disputations with such men, rather than through full and accurate translations of sacred texts or theological and philosophic writings, although some translations from Pahlavi (a Middle Persian dialect), Syriac, and Greek must also have been available.

The characteristic approach of early Islāmic theology to non-Muslim literature was through oral disputations, the starting points of which were the statements presented or defended (orally) by the opponents. Oral disputation continued to be used in theology for centuries, and most theological writings reproduce or imitate that form. From such oral and written disputations, writers on religions and sects collected much of their information about non-Muslim sects. Much of Hellenistic (post-3rd century BC Greek cultural), Iranian, and Indian religious thought was thus encountered in an informal and indirect manner.

From the 9th century onward, theologians had access to an increasingly larger body of translated texts, but by then they had taken most of their basic positions. They made a selective use of the translation literature, ignoring most of what was not useful to them until the mystical theologian al-Ghazālī (flourished 11th–12th centuries) showed them the way to study it, distinguish between the harmless and harmful doctrines contained in it, and refute the latter. By this time Islāmic theology had coined a vast number of technical terms, and theologians (e.g., al-Jāḥiẓ) had forged Arabic into a versatile language of science; Arabic philology had matured; and the religious sciences (jurisprudence, the study of the Qurʾān, Ḥadīth, criticism, and history) had developed complex techniques of textual study and interpretation. The 9th-century translators availed themselves of these advances to meet the needs of patrons. Apart from demands for medical and mathematical works, the translation of Greek learning was fostered by the early ʿAbbāsid caliphs (8th–9th centuries) and their viziers as additional weapons (the primary weapon was theology itself) against the threat of Manichaeanism and other subversive ideas that went under the name zandaqah (“heresy” or “atheism”).

Theology and sectarianism

Despite the notion of a unified and consolidated community, as taught by the Prophet, serious differences arose within the Muslim community immediately after his death. According to the Sunnah, or traditionalist faction—who now constitute the majority of Islām—the Prophet had designated no successor. Thus the Muslims at Medina decided to elect a separate chief. Because he would not have been accepted by the Quraysh, the ummah, or Muslim community, would have disintegrated. Therefore, two of Muḥammad’s fathers-in-law, who were highly respected early converts as well as trusted lieutenants, prevailed upon the Medinans to elect a single leader, and the choice fell upon Abū Bakr, father of the Prophet’s favoured wife, ʿĀʾishah. All of this occurred before the Prophet’s burial (under the floor of ʿĀʾishah’s hut, alongside the courtyard of the mosque).

According to the Shīʿah, or “Partisans” of ʿAlī, the Prophet had designated as his successor his son-in-law ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, husband of his daughter Fāṭimah and father of his only surviving grandsons, Ḥasan and Ḥusayn. His preference was general knowledge; yet, while ʿAlī and the Prophet’s closest kinsmen were preparing the body for burial, Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and Abū ʿUbaydah from Muḥammad’s Companions in the Quraysh tribe, met with the leaders of the Medinans and agreed to elect the aging Abū Bakr as the successor (khalīfah, hence “caliph”) of the Prophet. ʿAlī and his kinsmen were dismayed but agreed for the sake of unity to accept the fait accompli because ʿAlī was still young

After the murder of ʿUthmān, the third caliph, ʿAlī was invited by the Muslims at Medina to accept the caliphate. Thus ʿAli became the fourth caliph (656–661), but the disagreement over his right of succession brought about a major schism in Islām, between the Shīʿah, or “legitimists”—those loyal to ʿAlī—and the Sunnah, or “traditionalists.” Athough their differences were in the first instance political, arising out of the question of leadership, theological differences developed over time.

The Khawārij

During the reign of the third caliph, ʿUthmān, certain rebellious groups accused the Caliph of nepotism and misrule, and the resulting discontent led to his assassination. The rebels then recognized the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, ʿAlī, as ruler but later deserted him and fought against him, accusing him of having committed a grave sin in submitting his claim to the caliphate to arbitration. The word khāraju, from which khārijī is derived, means “to withdraw” and Khawārij were, therefore, seceders who believed in active dissent or rebellion against a state of affairs they considered to be gravely impious.

The basic doctrine of the Khawārij was that a person or a group who committed a grave error or sin and did not sincerely repent ceased to be Muslim. Mere profession of the faith—“there is no god but God; Muḥammad is the prophet of God”—did not make a person a Muslim unless this faith was accompanied by righteous deeds. In other words, good works were an integral part of faith and not extraneous to it. The second principle that flowed from their aggressive idealism was militancy, or jihād, which the Khawārij considered to be among the cardinal principles, or pillars, of Islām. Contrary to the orthodox view, they interpreted the Qurʾānic command about “enjoining good and forbidding evil” to mean the vindication of truth through the sword. The placing of these two principles together made the Khawārij highly inflammable fanatics, intolerant of almost any established political authority. They incessantly resorted to rebellion and as a result were virtually wiped out during the first two centuries of Islām.

Because the Khawārij believed that the basis of rule was righteous character and piety alone, any Muslim, irrespective of race, colour, and sex, could, in their view, become ruler—provided he or she satisfied the conditions of piety. This was in contrast to the claims of the Shīʿah (the party of Muḥammad’s son-in-law, ʿAlī) that the ruler must belong to the family of the Prophet and to the doctrine of the Sunnah (followers of the Prophet’s way) that the head of state must belong to the Prophet’s tribe, i.e., the Quraysh.

A moderate group of the Khawārij, the Ibāḍīs, avoided extinction, and its members are to be found today in North Africa and in Oman and other parts of East Africa, including Zanzibar Island. The Ibāḍīs do not believe in aggressive methods and, throughout medieval Islām, remained dormant. Because of the interest of 20th-century Western scholars in this sect, the Ibāḍīs have become active and have begun to publish their classical writings and their own journals.

Although Khārijism is now essentially a story of the past, it has left a permanent influence on Islām, because of reaction against it. It forced the religious leadership of the community to formulate a bulwark against religious intolerance and fanaticism. Positively, it has influenced the reform movements that have sprung up in Islām from time to time and that have treated spiritual and moral placidity and status quo with a quasi-Khawārij zeal and militancy.

The Muʿtazilah

The question of whether works are an integral part of faith or independent of it, as raised by the Khawārij, led to another important theological question: are human acts the result of a free human choice, or are they predetermined by God? This question brought with it a whole series of questions about the nature of God and of man. Although the initial impetus to theological thought, in the case of the Khawārij, had come from within Islām, full-scale religious speculation resulted from the contact and confrontation of Muslims with other cultures and systems of thought.

As a consequence of translations of Greek philosophical and scientific works into Arabic during the 8th and 9th centuries and the controversies of Muslims with Dualists (e.g., Gnostics and Manichaeans), Buddhists, and Christians, a more powerful movement of rational theology emerged; its representatives are called the Muʿtazilah (literally “those who stand apart,” a reference to the fact that they dissociated themselves from extreme views of faith and infidelity). On the question of the relationship of faith to works, the Muʿtazilah—who called themselves “champions of God’s unity and justice”—taught, like the Khawārij, that works were an essential part of faith but that a person guilty of a grave sin, unless he repented, was neither a Muslim nor yet a non-Muslim but occupied a “middle ground.” They further defended the position, as a central part of their doctrine, that man was free to choose and act and was, therefore, responsible for his actions. Divine predestination of human acts, they held, was incompatible with God’s justice and human responsibility. The Muʿtazilah, therefore, recognized two powers, or actors, in the universe—God in the realm of nature and man in the domain of moral human action. The Muʿtazilah explained away the apparently predeterministic verses of the Qurʾān as being metaphors and exhortations.

They claimed that human reason, independent of revelation, was capable of discovering what is good and what is evil, although revelation corroborated the findings of reason. Man is, therefore, under moral obligation to do the right even if there were no prophets and no divine revelation. Revelation has to be interpreted, therefore, in conformity with the dictates of rational ethics. Yet revelation is neither redundant nor passive. Its function is twofold. First, its aim is to aid man in choosing the right, because in the conflict between good and evil man often falters and makes the wrong choice against his rational judgment. God, therefore, must send prophets, for he must do the best for man; otherwise, the demands of divine grace and mercy cannot be fulfilled. Secondly, revelation is also necessary to communicate the positive obligations of religion—e.g., prayers and fasting—which cannot be known without revelation.

God is viewed by the Muʿtazilah as pure Essence, without eternal attributes, because they hold that the assumption of eternal attributes in conjunction with Essence will result in a belief in multiple coeternals and violate the pure, unadulterated unity of God. God knows, wills, and acts by virtue of his Essence and not through attributes of knowledge, will, and power. Nor does he have an eternal attribute of speech, of which the Qurʾān and other earlier revelations were effects; the Qurʾān was, therefore, created in time and was not eternal.

The promises of reward that God has made in the Qurʾān to righteous people and the threats of punishment he has issued to evildoers must be carried out by him on the Day of Judgment. For promises and threats are viewed as reports about the future, and if not fulfilled exactly those reports will turn into lies, which are inconceivable of God. Also, if God were to withhold punishment for evil and forgive it, this would be as unjust as withholding reward for righteousness. There can be neither undeserved punishment nor undeserved reward; otherwise, good may just as well turn into evil and evil into good. From this position it follows that there can be no intercession on behalf of sinners.

When, in the early 9th century, the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Maʾmūn raised Muʿtazilism to the status of the state creed, the Muʿtazilite rationalists showed themselves to be illiberal and persecuted their opponents. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (died 855), an eminent orthodox figure and founder of one of the four orthodox schools of Islāmic law, was subjected to flogging and imprisonment for his refusal to subscribe to the doctrine that the Qurʾān, the word of God, was created in time.

The Sunnah

In the 10th century a reaction began against the Muʿtazilah that culminated in the formulation and subsequent general acceptance of another set of theological propositions, which became Sunnī, or “orthodox” theology.

The issues raised by these early schisms and the positions adopted by them enabled the Sunnī orthodoxy to define its own doctrinal positions in turn. Much of the content of Sunnī theology was, therefore, supplied by its reactions to those schisms. The term sunnah, which means a “well-trodden path” and in the religious terminology of Islām normally signifies “the example set by the Prophet,” in the present context simply means the traditional and well-defined way. In this context, the term sunnah usually is accompanied by the appendage “the consolidated majority” (al-jamāʿah). The term clearly indicates that the traditional way is the way of the consolidated majority of the community as against peripheral or “wayward” positions of sectarians, who by definition must be erroneous.

The way of the majority

With the rise of the orthodoxy, then, the foremost and elemental factor that came to be emphasized was the notion of the majority of the community. The concept of the community so vigorously pronounced by the earliest doctrine of the Qurʾān gained both a new emphasis and a fresh context with the rise of Sunnism. Whereas the Qurʾān had marked out the Muslim community from other communities, Sunnism now emphasized the views and customs of the majority of the community in contradistinction to peripheral groups. An abundance of tradition (Ḥadīth) came to be attributed to the Prophet to the effect that Muslims must follow the majority’s way, that minority groups are all doomed to hell, and that God’s protective hand is always on (the majority of) the community, which can never be in error. Under the impact of the new Ḥadīth, the community, which had been charged by the Qurʾān with a mission and commanded to accept a challenge, now became transformed into a privileged one that was endowed with infallibility.

Tolerance of diversity

At the same time, while condemning schisms and branding dissent as heretical, Sunnism developed the opposite trend of accommodation, catholicity, and synthesis. A putative tradition of the Prophet that says “differences of opinion among my community are a blessing” was given wide currency. This principle of toleration ultimately made it possible for diverse sects and schools of thought—notwithstanding a wide range of difference in belief and practice—to recognize and coexist with each other. No group may be excluded from the community unless it itself formally renounces Islām. As for individuals, tests of heresy may be applied to their beliefs, but, unless a person is found to flagrantly violate or deny the unity of God or expressly negate the prophethood of Muḥammad, such tests usually have no serious consequences. Catholicity was orthodoxy’s answer to the intolerance and secessionism of the Khawārij and the severity of the Muʿtazilah. As a consequence, a formula was adopted in which good works were recognized as enhancing the quality of faith but not as entering into the definition and essential nature of faith. This broad formula saved the integrity of the community at the expense of moral strictness and doctrinal uniformity.

On the question of free will, Sunnī orthodoxy attempted a synthesis between man’s responsibility and God’s omnipotence. The champions of orthodoxy accused the Muʿtazilah of quasi-Magian Dualism (Zoroastrianism) insofar as the Muʿtazilah admitted two independent and original actors in the universe: God and man. To the orthodox it seemed blasphemous to hold that man could act wholly outside the sphere of divine omnipotence, which had been so vividly portrayed by the Qurʾān but which the Muʿtazilah had endeavoured to explain away in order to make room for man’s free and independent action.

Influence of al-Ashʿarī and al-Māturīdī

The Sunnī formulation, however, as presented by al-Ashʿarī and al-Māturīdī, Sunnī’s two main representatives in the 10th century, shows palpable differences despite basic uniformity. Al-Ashʿarī taught that human acts were created by God and acquired by man and that human responsibility depended on this acquisition. He denied, however, that man could be described as an actor in a real sense. Al-Māturīdī, on the other hand, held that although God is the sole Creator of everything, including human acts, nevertheless, man is an actor in the real sense, for acting and creating were two different types of activity involving different aspects of the same human act.

In conformity with their positions, al-Ashʿarī believed that man did not have the power to act before he actually acted and that God created this power in him at the time of action; and al-Māturīdī taught that before the action man has a certain general power for action but that this power becomes specific to a particular action only when the action is performed, because, after full and specific power comes into existence, action cannot be delayed.

Al-Ashʿarī and his school also held that human reason was incapable of discovering good and evil and that acts became endowed with good or evil qualities through God’s declaring them to be such. Because man in his natural state regards his own self-interest as good and that which thwarts his interests as bad, natural human reason is unreliable. Independently of revelation, therefore, murder would not be bad nor the saving of life good. Furthermore, because God’s Will makes acts good or bad, one cannot ask for reasons behind the divine law, which must be simply accepted. Al-Māturīdī takes an opposite position, not materially different from that of the Muʿtazilah: human reason is capable of finding out good and evil, and revelation aids human reason against the sway of human passions.

Despite these important initial differences between the two main Sunnī schools of thought, the doctrines of al-Māturīdī became submerged in course of time under the expanding popularity of the Ashʿarite school, which gained wide currency particularly after the 11th century because of the influential activity of the Ṣūfī theologian al-Ghazālī. Because these later theologians placed increasing emphasis on divine omnipotence at the expense of the freedom and efficacy of the human will, a deterministic outlook on life became characteristic of Sunnī Islām—reinvigorated by the Ṣūfī world view, which taught that nothing exists except God, whose being is the only real being. This general deterministic outlook produced, in turn, a severe reformist reaction in the teachings of Ibn Taymīyah, a 14th-century theologian who sought to rehabilitate human freedom and responsibility and whose influence has been strongly felt through the reform movements in the Muslim world since the 18th century.

The Shīʿah

The Shīʿah are the only important surviving sect in Islām. As noted above, they owe their origin to the hostility between ʿAlī (the fourth caliph and son-in-law of the Prophet) and the Umayyad dynasty (661–750). After ʿAlī’s death, the Shīʿah (Party; i.e., of ʿAlī) demanded the restoration of rule to ʿAlī’s family, and from that demand developed the Shīʿite legitimism, or the divine right of the holy family to rule. In the early stages, the Shīʿah used this legitimism to cover the protest against the Arab hegemony under the Umayyads and to agitate for social reform.

Gradually, however, Shīʿism developed a theological content for its political stand. Probably under Gnostic (esoteric, dualistic, and speculative) and old Iranian (dualistic) influences, the figure of the political ruler, the imām (exemplary “leader”), was transformed into a metaphysical being, a manifestation of God and the primordial light that sustains the universe and bestows true knowledge on man. Through the imām alone the hidden and true meaning of the Qurʾānic revelation can be known, because the imām alone is infallible. The Shīʿah thus developed a doctrine of esoteric knowledge that was adopted also, in a modified form, by the Ṣūfīs, or Islāmic mystics (see Ṣūfism). The orthodox Shīʿah recognize 12 such imāms, the last (Muḥammad) having disappeared in the 9th century. Since that time, the mujtahids (i.e., the Shīʿī divines) have been able to interpret law and doctrine under the putative guidance of the imām, who will return toward the end of time to fill the world with truth and justice.

On the basis of their doctrine of imamology, the Shīʿah emphasize their idealism and transcendentalism in conscious contrast with Sunnī pragmatism. Thus, whereas the Sunnīs believe in the ijmāʿ (“consensus”) of the community as the source of decision making and workable knowledge, the Shīʿah believe that knowledge derived from fallible sources is useless and that sure and true knowledge can come only through a contact with the infallible imām. Again, in marked contrast to Sunnism, Shīʿism adopted the Muʿtazilite doctrine of the freedom of the human will and the capacity of human reason to know good and evil, although its position on the question of the relationship of faith to works is the same as that of the Sunnīs.

Parallel to the doctrine of an esoteric knowledge, Shīʿism, because of its early defeats and persecutions, also adopted the principle of taqīyah, or dissimulation of faith in a hostile environment. Introduced first as a practical principle, taqīyah, which is also attributed to ʿAlī and other imāms, became an important part of the Shīʿah religious teaching and practice. In the sphere of law, Shīʿism differs from Sunnī law mainly in allowing a temporary marriage, called mutʿah, which can be legally contracted for a fixed period of time on the stipulation of a fixed dower.

From a spiritual point of view, perhaps the greatest difference between Shīʿism and Sunnism is the former’s introduction into Islām of the passion motive, which is conspicuously absent from Sunnī Islām. The violent death (in 680) of ʿAlī’s son, Ḥusayn, at the hands of the Umayyad troops is celebrated with moving orations, passion plays, and processions in which the participants, in a state of emotional frenzy, beat their breasts with heavy chains and sharp instruments, inflicting wounds on their bodies. This passion motive has also influenced the Sunnī masses in Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent, who participate in passion plays called taʿziyahs. Such celebrations are, however, absent from Egypt and North Africa.

Although the Shīʿah number only about 40,000,000 (Shīʿism has been the official religion in Iran since the 16th century), Shīʿism has exerted a great influence on Sunnī Islām in several ways. The veneration in which all Muslims hold ʿAlī and his family and the respect shown to ʿAlī’s descendants (who are called sayyids in the East and sharīfs in North Africa) are obvious evidence of this influence.


Besides the main body of Twelver (Ithnā ʿAsharīyah) Shīʿah, Shīʿism has produced a variety of more or less extremist sects, the most important of them being the Ismāʿīlī. Instead of recognizing Mūsā as the seventh imām, as did the main body of the Shīʿah, the Ismāʿīlīs upheld the claims of his elder brother Ismāʿīl. One group of Ismāʿīlīs, called Seveners (Sabʿīyah), considered Ismāʿīl the seventh and last of the imāms. The majority of Ismāʿīlīs, however, believed that the imamate continued in the line of Ismāʿīl’s descendants. The Ismāʿīlī teaching spread during the 9th century from North Africa to Sind, in India, and the Ismāʿīlī Fāṭimid dynasty succeeded in establishing a prosperous empire in Egypt. Ismāʿīlīs are subdivided into two groups—the Nizārīs, headed by the Aga Khan, and the Mustaʿlīs in Bombay, with their own spiritual head. The Ismāʿīlīs are to be found mainly in East Africa, Pakistan, India, and Yemen.

In their theology, the Ismāʿīlīs have absorbed the most extreme elements and heterodox ideas. The universe is viewed as a cyclic process, and the unfolding of each cycle is marked by the advent of seven “speakers”—messengers of God with Scriptures—each of whom is succeeded by seven “silents”—messengers without revealed scriptures; the last speaker (the Prophet Muḥammad) is followed by seven imāms who interpret the Will of God to man and are, in a sense, higher than the Prophet because they draw their knowledge directly from God and not from the Angel of Revelation. During the 10th century, certain Ismāʿīlī intellectuals formed a secret society called the Brethren of Purity, which issued a philosophical encyclopaedia, The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, aiming at the liquidation of positive religions in favour of a universalist spirituality.

The late Aga Khan III (1887–1957) had taken several measures to bring his followers closer to the main body of the Muslims. The Ismāʿīlīs, however, still have not mosques but jamāʿat khānahs (“gathering houses”), and their mode of worship bears little resemblance to that of the Muslims generally.

Related sects

Several other sects arose out of the general Shīʿite movement—e.g., the Nuṣayrīs, the Yazīdīs, and the Druzes—which are sometimes considered as independent from Islām. The Druzes arose in the 11th century out of a cult of deification of the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim.

During a 19th-century anticlerical movement in Iran, a certain ʿAlī Moḥammad of Shīrāz appeared, declaring himself to be the Bāb (“Gate”; i.e., to God). At that time the climate in Iran was generally favourable to messianic ideas. He was, however, bitterly opposed by the Shīʿah ʿulamāʾ (council of learned men) and was executed in 1850. After his death, his two disciples, Ṣobḥ-e Azal and Bahāʾ UllāḤ, broke and went in different directions. Bahāʾ Ullāh eventually declared his religion—stressing a humanitarian pacificism and universalism—to be an independent religion outside Islām. The Bahāʾī faith won a considerable number of converts in North America during the early 20th century (see also Druze and Bahāʾī faith).

The ṢūfīĨ

Islāmic mysticism, or Ṣūfism, emerged out of early ascetic reactions on the part of certain religiously sensitive personalities against the general worldliness that had overtaken the Muslim community and the purely “externalist” expressions of Islām in law and theology. These persons stressed the Muslim qualities of moral motivation, contrition against overworldliness, and “the state of the heart” as opposed to the legalist formulations of Islām.

Other groups
The Aḥmadīyah

In the latter half of the 19th century in Punjab, India, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be an inspired prophet. At first a defender of Islām against Christian missionaries, he then later adopted certain doctrines of the Indian Muslim modernist Sayyid Ahmad Khan—namely, that Jesus died a natural death and was not assumed into heaven as the Islāmic orthodoxy believed and that jihād “by the sword” had been abrogated and replaced with jihād “of the pen.” His aim appears to have been to synthesize all religions under Islām, for he declared himself to be not only the manifestation of the Prophet Muḥammad but also the Second Advent of Jesus, as well as Krishna for the Hindus, among other claims. He did not announce, however, any new revelation or new law.

In 1914 a schism over succession occurred among the Aḥmadīyah. One group that seceded from the main body, which was headed by a son of the founder, disowned the prophetic claims of Ghulam Ahmad and established its centre in Lahore (in modern Pakistan). The main body of the Aḥmadīyah (known as the Qadiani, after the village of Qadian, birthplace of the founder and the group’s first centre) evolved a separatist organization and, after the partition of India in 1947, moved their headquarters to Rabwah in what was then West Pakistan.

Both groups are noted for their missionary work, particularly in the West and in Africa. Within the Muslim countries, however, there is fierce opposition to the main group because of its claim that Ghulam Ahmad was a prophet (most Muslim sects believe in the finality of prophethood with Muḥammad) and because of its separatist organization. Restrictions were imposed on the Aḥmadīyah in 1974 and again in 1984 by the Pakistani government, which declared that the group was not Muslim and prohibited them from engaging in various Islāmic activities.

The “Black Muslims”

After World War II an Islāmic movement arose among blacks in the United States; members called themselves the Nation of Islam, but they were popularly known as Black Muslims. Although they adopted some Islāmic social practices, the group was in large part a black separatist and social protest movement. Their leader, Elijah Muhammad, who claimed to be an inspired prophet, interpreted the doctrine of Resurrection in an unorthodox sense as the revival of oppressed (“dead”) peoples. The popular leader and spokesman Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) broke with Elijah Muhammad and adopted more orthodox Islāmic views. He was assassinated in 1965. After the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975, the group was renamed World Community of Islam in the West and officially abandoned its separatist aims. The name was again changed in the late 1970s, to American Muslim Mission.

Islāmic philosophy

The origin and inspiration of philosophy in Islām are quite different from those of Islāmic theology. Philosophy developed out of and around the nonreligious practical and theoretical sciences; it recognized no theoretical limits other than those of human reason itself; and it assumed that the truth found by unaided reason does not disagree with the truth of Islām when both are properly understood. Islāmic philosophy was not a handmaid of theology. The two disciplines were related, because both followed the path of rational inquiry and distinguished themselves from traditional religious disciplines and from mysticism, which sought knowledge through practical, spiritual purification. Islāmic theology was Islāmic in the strict sense: it confined itself within the Islāmic religious community, and it remained separate from the Christian and Jewish theologies that developed in the same cultural context and used Arabic as a linguistic medium. No such separation is observable in the philosophy developed in the Islāmic cultural context and written in Arabic: Muslims, Christians, and Jews participated in it and separated themselves according to the philosophic rather than the religious doctrines they held.

The Eastern philosophers
Background and scope of philosophical interest in Islām

The background of philosophic interest in Islām is found in the earlier phases of theology. But its origin is found in the translation of Greek philosophic works. By the middle of the 9th century, there were enough translations of scientific and philosophic works from Greek, Pahlavi, and Sanskrit to show those who read them with care that scientific and philosophic inquiry was something more than a series of disputations based on what the theologians had called sound reason. Moreover, it became evident that there existed a tradition of observation, calculation, and theoretical reflection that had been pursued systematically, refined, and modified for over a millennium.

The scope of this tradition was broad: it included the study of logic, the sciences of nature (including psychology and biology), the mathematical sciences (including music and astronomy), metaphysics, ethics, and politics. Each of these disciplines had a body of literature in which its principles and problems had been investigated by classical authors, whose positions had been, in turn, stated, discussed, criticized, or developed by various commentators. Islāmic philosophy emerged from its theological background when Muslim thinkers began to study this foreign tradition, became competent students of the ancient philosophers and scientists, criticized and developed their doctrines, clarified their relevance for the questions raised by the theologians, and showed what light they threw on the fundamental issues of revelation, prophecy, and the divine law.

Relation to the Muʿtazilah and interpretation of theological issues
The teachings of al-Kindī

Although the first Muslim philosopher, al-Kindī, who flourished in the first half of the 9th century, lived during the triumph of the Muʿtazilah of Baghdad and was connected with the ʿAbbāsid caliphs who championed the Muʿtazilah and patronized the Hellenistic sciences, there is no clear evidence that he belonged to a theological school. His writings show him to have been a diligent student of Greek and Hellenistic authors in philosophy and point to his familiarity with Indian arithmetic. His conscious, open, and unashamed acknowledgment of earlier contributions to scientific inquiry was foreign to the spirit, method, and purpose of the theologians of the time. His acquaintance with the writings of Plato and Aristotle was still incomplete and technically inadequate. He improved the Arabic translation of the “Theology of Aristotle” but made only a selective and circumspect use of it.

Devoting most of his writings to questions of natural philosophy and mathematics, al-Kindī was particularly concerned with the relation between corporeal things, which are changeable, in constant flux, infinite, and as such unknowable, on the one hand, and the permanent world of forms (spiritual or secondary substances), which are not subject to flux yet to which man has no access except through things of the senses. He insisted that a purely human knowledge of all things is possible, through the use of various scientific devices, learning such things as mathematics and logic, and assimilating the contributions of earlier thinkers. The existence of a “supernatural” way to this knowledge in which all these requirements can be dispensed with was acknowledged by al-Kindī: God may choose to impart it to his prophets by cleansing and illuminating their souls and by giving them his aid, right guidance, and inspiration; and they, in turn, communicate it to ordinary men in an admirably clear, concise, and comprehensible style. This is the prophets’ “divine” knowledge, characterized by a special mode of access and style of exposition. In principle, however, this very same knowledge is accessible to man without divine aid, even though “human” knowledge may lack the completeness and consummate logic of the prophets’ divine message.

Reflection on the two kinds of knowledge—the human knowledge bequeathed by the ancients and the revealed knowledge expressed in the Qurʾān—led al-Kindī to pose a number of themes that became central to Islāmic philosophy: the rational–metaphorical exegesis of the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīth; the identification of God with the first being and the first cause; creation as the giving of being and as a kind of causation distinct from natural causation and Neoplatonic emanation; and the immortality of the individual soul.

The teachings of Abū Bakr ar-Rāzī

The philosopher whose principal concerns, method, and opposition to authority were inspired by the extreme Muʿtazilah was the physician Abū Bakr ar-Rāzī (flourished 9th–10th centuries). He adopted the Muʿtazilah’s atomism and was intent on developing a rationally defensible theory of creation that would not require any change in God or attribute to him responsibility for the imperfection and evil prevalent in the created world. To this end, he expounded the view that there are five eternal principles—God, Soul, prime matter, infinite, or absolute, space, and unlimited, or absolute, time—and explained creation as the result of the unexpected and sudden turn of events (faltah). Faltah occurred when Soul, in her ignorance, desired matter and the good God eased her misery by allowing her to satisfy her desire and to experience the suffering of the material world, and then gave her reason to make her realize her mistake and deliver her from her union with matter, the cause of her suffering and of all evil. Ar-Rāzī claimed that he was a Platonist, that he disagreed with Aristotle, and that his views were those of the Ṣābians of Harran and the Brahmins (Hindu teachers).

Ismāʿīlī theologians became aware of the kinship between certain elements of his cosmology and their own. They disputed with him during his lifetime and continued afterward to refute his doctrines in their writings. According to their account of his doctrines, he was totally opposed to authority in matters of knowledge, believed in the progress of the arts and sciences, and held that all reasonable men are equally able to look after their own affairs, equally inspired and able to know the truth of what earlier men had taught, and equally able to improve upon it. Ismāʿīlī theologians were incensed, in particular, by his wholesale rejection of prophecy, particular revelation, and divine laws. They were likewise opposed to his criticisms of religion in general as a device employed by evil men and a kind of tyranny over men that exploits their innocence and credulity, perpetuates ignorance, and leads to conflicts and wars.

Although the fragmentary character of al-Kindī’s and ar-Rāzī’s surviving philosophic writings does not permit passing firm and independent judgment on their accomplishments, they tend to bear out the view of later Muslim students of philosophy that both lacked competence in the logical foundation of philosophy, were knowledgeable in some of the natural sciences but not in metaphysics, and were unable to narrow the gap that separated philosophy from the new religion, Islām.

The teachings of al-Fārābī
Political philosophy and the study of religion

The first philosopher to meet this challenge was al-Fārābī (flourished 9th–10th centuries). He saw that theology and the juridical study of the law were derivative phenomena that function within a framework set by the prophet as lawgiver and founder of a human community. In this community, revelation defines the opinions the members of the community must hold and the actions they must perform if they are to attain the earthly happiness of this world and the supreme happiness of the other world. Philosophy could not understand this framework of religion as long as it concerned itself almost exclusively with its truth content and confined the study of practical science to individualistic ethics and personal salvation.

In contrast to al-Kindī and ar-Rāzī, al-Fārābī recast philosophy in a new framework analogous to that of the Islāmic religion. The sciences were organized within this philosophic framework so that logic, physics, mathematics, and metaphysics culminated in a political science whose subject matter is the investigation of happiness and how it can be realized in cities and nations. The central theme of this political science is the founder of a virtuous or excellent community. Included in this theme are views concerning the supreme rulers who follow the founder, their qualifications, and how the community must be ordered so that its members attain happiness as citizens rather than isolated human beings. Once this new philosophical framework was established, it became possible to conduct a philosophical investigation of all the elements that constituted the Islāmic community: the prophet-lawgiver, the aims of the divine laws, the legislation of beliefs as well as actions, the role of the successors to the founding legislator, the grounds of the interpretation or reform of the law, the classification of human communities according to their doctrines in addition to their size, and the critique of “ignorant” (pagan), “transgressing,” “falsifying,” and “erring” communities. Philosophical cosmology, psychology, and politics were blended by al-Fārābī into a political theology whose aim was to clarify the foundations of the Islāmic community and defend its reform in a direction that would promote scientific inquiry and encourage philosophers to play an active role in practical affairs.

Interpretation of Plato and Aristotle

Behind this public, or exoteric, aspect of al-Fārābī’s work stood a massive body of more properly philosophic or scientific inquiries, which established his reputation among Muslims as the greatest philosophical authority after Aristotle, a great interpreter of the thought of Plato and Aristotle and their commentators, and a master to whom almost all major Muslim as well as a number of Jewish and Christian philosophers turned for a fuller understanding of the controversial, troublesome, and intricate questions of philosophy. Continuing the tradition of the Hellenistic masters of the Athenian and Alexandrian philosophical schools, al-Fārābī broadened the range of philosophical inquiry and fixed its form. He paid special attention to the study of language and its relation to logic. In his numerous commentaries on Aristotle’s logical works, he expounded for the first time in Arabic the entire range of the scientific and nonscientific forms of argument and established the place of logic as an indispensable prerequisite for philosophic inquiry. His writings on natural science exposed the foundation and assumptions of Aristotle’s physics and dealt with the arguments of Aristotle’s opponents, both philosophers and scientists, pagan, Christian, and Muslim.

The analogy of religion and philosophy

Al-Fārābī’s theological and political writings showed later Muslim philosophers the way to deal with the question of the relation between philosophy and religion and presented them with a complex set of problems that they continued to elaborate, modify, and develop in different directions. Starting with the view that religion is analogous or similar to philosophy, al-Fārābī argued that the idea of the true prophet-lawgiver ought to be the same as that of the true philosopher-king. Thus, he challenged both al-Kindī’s view that prophets and philosophers have different and independent ways to the highest truth available to man and ar-Rāzī’s view that philosophy is the only way to that knowledge. That a man could combine the functions of prophecy, lawgiving, philosophy, and kingship did not necessarily mean that these functions were identical; it did mean, however, that they all are legitimate subjects of philosophic inquiry. Philosophy must account for the powers, knowledge, and activities of the prophet, lawgiver, and king, which it must distinguish from and relate to those of the philosopher. The public, or political, function of philosophy was emphasized. Unlike Neoplatonism, which had for long limited itself to the Platonic teaching that the function of philosophy is to liberate the soul from the shadowy existence of the cave—in which knowledge can only be imperfectly comprehended as shadows reflecting the light of the truth beyond the cave (the world of senses)—al-Fārābī insisted with Plato that the philosopher must be forced to return to the cave, learn to talk to its inhabitants in a manner they can comprehend, and engage in actions that may improve their lot.

Impact on Ismāʿīlī theology

Although it is not always easy to know the immediate practical intentions of a philosopher, it must be remembered that in al-Fārābī’s lifetime the fate of the Islāmic world was in the balance. The Sunnī caliphate’s power hardly extended beyond Baghdad, and it appeared quite likely that the various Shīʿī sects, especially the Ismāʿīlīs, would finally overpower it and establish a new political order. Of all the movements in Islāmic theology, Ismāʿīlī theology was the one that was most clearly and massively penetrated by philosophy. Yet, its Neoplatonic cosmology, revolutionary background, antinomianism (antilegalism), and general expectation that divine laws were about to become superfluous with the appearance of the qāʾim (the imam of the “resurrection”) all militated against the development of a coherent political theory to meet the practical demands of political life and present a viable practical alternative to the Sunnī caliphate. Al-Fāİābī’s theologico-political writings helped point out this basic defect of Ismāʿīlī theology. Under the Fāṭimids in Egypt (969–1171), Ismāʿīlī theology modified its cosmology in the direction suggested by al-Fārābī, returned to the view that the community must continue to live under the divine law, and postponed the prospect of the abolition of divine laws and the appearance of the qāʾim to an indefinite point in the future.

The teachings of Avicenna
The “Oriental Philosophy”

Even more indicative of al-Fārābī’s success is the fact that his writings helped produce a philosopher of the stature of Avicenna (flourished 10th–11th centuries), whose versatility, imagination, inventiveness, and prudence shaped philosophy into a powerful force that gradually penetrated Islāmic theology and mysticism and Persian poetry in eastern Islām and gave them universality and theoretical depth. His own personal philosophic views, he said, were those of the ancient sages of Greece (including the genuine views of Plato and Aristotle), which he had set forth in the “Oriental Philosophy,” a book that has not survived and probably was not written or meant to be written. They were not identical with the common Peripatetic (Aristotelian) doctrines and were to be distinguished from the learning of his contemporaries, the Christian “Aristotelians” of Baghdad, which he attacked as vulgar, distorted, and falsified. His most voluminous writing, Kitāb ash-shifāʾ (“The Book of Healing”), was meant to accommodate the doctrines of other philosophers as well as hint at his own personal views, which are elaborated elsewhere in more imaginative and allegorical forms.

Distinction between essence and existence and the doctrine of creation

Avicenna had learned from certain hints in al-Fārābī that the exoteric teachings of Plato regarding “forms,” “creation,” and the immortality of individual souls were closer to revealed doctrines than the genuine views of Aristotle, that the doctrines of Plotinus and later Neoplatonic commentators were useful in harmonizing Aristotle’s views with revealed doctrines, and that philosophy must accommodate itself to the divine law on the issue of creation and of reward and punishment in the hereafter, which presupposes some form of individual immortality. Following al-Fārābī’s lead, Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence and existence. He argued that the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be due to an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexist with its effect. The universe consists of a chain of actual beings, each giving existence to the one below it and responsible for the existence of the rest of the chain below. Because an actual infinite is deemed impossible by Avicenna, this chain as a whole must terminate in a being that is wholly simple and one, whose essence is its very existence, and therefore is self-sufficient and not in need of something else to give it existence. Because its existence is not contingent on or necessitated by something else but is necessary and eternal in itself, it satisfies the condition of being the necessitating cause of the entire chain that constitutes the eternal world of contingent existing things.

All creation is necessarily and eternally dependent upon God. It consists of the intelligences, souls, and bodies of the heavenly spheres, each of which is eternal, and the sublunary sphere, which is also eternal, undergoing a perpetual process of generation and corruption, of the succession of form over matter, very much in the manner described by Aristotle.

The immortality of individual souls

There is, however, a significant exception to this general rule: the human rational soul. Man can affirm the existence of his soul from direct consciousness of his self (what he means when he says “I”); and he can imagine this happening even in the absence of external objects and bodily organs. This proves, according to Avicenna, that the soul is indivisible, immaterial, and incorruptible substance, not imprinted in matter, but created with the body, which it uses as an instrument. Unlike other immaterial substances (the intelligences and souls of the spheres), it is not pre-eternal but is generated, or made to exist, at the same time as the individual body, which can receive it, is formed. The composition, shape, and disposition of its body and the soul’s success or failure in managing and controlling it, the formation of moral habits, and the acquisition of knowledge all contribute to its individuality and difference from other souls. Though the body is not resurrected after its corruption, the soul survives and retains all the individual characteristics, perfections or imperfections, that it achieved in its earthly existence and in this sense is rewarded or punished for its past deeds. Avicenna’s claim that he has presented a philosophic proof for the immortality of generated (“created”) individual souls no doubt constitutes the high point of his effort to harmonize philosophy and religious beliefs.

Philosophy, religion, and mysticism

Having accounted for the more difficult issues of creation and the immortality of individual souls, Avicenna proceeded to explain the faculty of prophetic knowledge (the “sacred” intellect), revelation (imaginative representation meant to convince the multitude and improve their earthly life), miracles, and the legal and institutional arrangements (acts of worship and the regulation of personal and public life) through which the divine law achieves its end. Avicenna’s explanation of almost every aspect of Islām is pursued on the basis of extensive exegesis of the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīth. The primary function of religion is to assure the happiness of the many. This practical aim of religion (which Avicenna saw in the perspective of Aristotle’s practical science) enabled him to appreciate the political and moral functions of divine revelation and account for its form and content. Revealed religion, however, has a subsidiary function also—that of indicating to the few the need to pursue the kind of life and knowledge appropriate to rare individuals endowed with special gifts. These men must be dominated by the love of God to facilitate the achievement of the highest knowledge. In many places Avicenna appears to identify these men with the mystics. The identification of the philosopher as a kind of mystic conveyed a new image of the philosopher as a member of the religious community who is distinguished from his coreligionists by his otherworldliness, dedicated to the inner truth of religion, and consumed by the love of God.

Avicenna’s allegorical and mystical writings are usually called “esoteric” in the sense that they contain his personal views cast in an imaginative, symbolic form. The esoteric works must, then, be interpreted. Their interpretation must move away from the explicit doctrines contained in “exoteric” works such as the Shifāʾ and recover “the unmixed and uncorrupted truth” set forth in the “Oriental Philosophy.” The “Oriental Philosophy,” however, has never been available to anyone, and it is doubtful that it was written at all. This dilemma has made interpretation both difficult and rewarding for Muslim philosophers and modern scholars alike.

The Western philosophers
Background and characteristics of the Western Muslim philosophical tradition

Andalusia (in Spain) and western North Africa contributed little of substance to Islāmic theology and philosophy until the 12th century. Legal strictures against the study of philosophy were more effective than in the east. Scientific interest was channelled into medicine, pharmacology, mathematics, astronomy, and logic. More general questions of physics and metaphysics were treated sparingly and in symbols, hints, and allegories. By the 12th century, however, the writings of al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and al-Ghazālī had found their way to the west. A philosophical tradition emerged, based primarily on the study of al-Fārābī. It was critical of Avicenna’s philosophic innovations and not convinced that al-Ghazālī’s critique of Avicenna touched philosophy as such, and it refused to acknowledge the position assigned by both to mysticism. The survival of philosophy in the west required extreme prudence, emphasis on its scientific character, abstention from meddling in political or religious matters, and abandonment of the hope of effecting extensive doctrinal or institutional reform.

The teachings of Ibn Bājjah
Theoretical science and intuitive knowledge

Ibn Bājjah (died 1138) initiated this tradition with a radical interpretation of al-Fārābī’s political philosophy that emphasized the virtues of the perfect but nonexistent city and the vices prevalent in all existing cities. He concluded that the philosopher must order his own life as a solitary individual, shun the company of nonphilosophers, reject their opinions and ways of life, and concentrate on reaching his own final goal by pursuing the theoretical sciences and achieving intuitive knowledge through contact with the Active Intelligence. The multitude live in a dark cave and see only dim shadows. Their ways of life and their imaginings and beliefs consist of layers of darkness that cannot be known through reason alone. Therefore, the divine law has been revealed to enable man to know this dark region. The philosopher’s duty is to seek the light of the sun (the intellect). To do so, he must leave the cave, see all colours as they truly are and see light itself, and finally become transformed into that light. The end, then, is contact with Intelligence, not with something that transcends Intelligence (as in Plotinus, Ismāʿīlism, and mysticism), a doctrine criticized by Ibn Bājjah as the way of imagination, motivated by desire, and aiming at pleasure. Philosophy, he claimed, is the only way to the truly blessed state, which can be achieved only by going through theoretical science, even though it is higher than theoretical science.

Unconcern of philosophy with reform

Ibn Bājjah’s cryptic style and the unfinished form in which he left most of his writings tend to highlight his departures from al-Fārābī and Avicenna. Unlike al-Fārābī, he is silent about the philosopher’s duty to return to the cave and partake of the life of the city. He appears to argue that the aim of philosophy is attainable independently from the philosopher’s concern with the best city and is to be achieved in solitude or, at most, in comradeship with philosophic souls. Unlike Avicenna, who prepared the way for him by clearly distinguishing between theoretical and practical science, Ibn Bājjah is concerned with practical science only insofar as it is relevant to the life of the philosopher. He is contemptuous of allegories and imaginative representations of philosophic knowledge, silent about theology, and shows no concern with improving the multitude’s opinions and way of life.

The teachings of Ibn Ṭufayl
The philosopher as a solitary individual

In his philosophic story Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (“Alive Son of Awake”), the philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl (died 1185) fills gaps in the work of his predecessor Ibn Bājjah. The story communicates the secrets of Avicenna’s “Oriental Philosophy” as experienced by a solitary hero, who grows up on a deserted island, learns about the things around him, acquires knowledge of the natural universe (including the heavenly bodies), and achieves the state of “annihilation” (fanāʾ) of the self in the divine reality. This is the apparent and traditional secret of the “Oriental Philosophy.” But the hero’s wisdom is still incomplete, for he knows nothing about other human beings, their way of life, or their laws. When he chances to meet one of them—a member of a religious community inhabiting a neighbouring island, who is inclined to reflect on the divine law and seek its inner, spiritual meanings and who has abandoned the society of his fellow men to devote himself to solitary meditation and worship—he does not at first recognize that he is a human being like himself, cannot communicate with him, and frightens him by his wild aspect. After learning about the doctrines and acts of worship of the religious community, he understands them as alluding to and agreeing with the truth that he had learned by his own unaided effort, and he goes as far as admitting the validity of the religion and the truthfulness of the prophet who gave it. He cannot understand, however, why the prophet communicated the truth by way of allusions, examples, and corporeal representations or why religion permits men to devote much time and effort to practical, worldly things.

Concern for reform

His ignorance of the nature of most men and his compassion for them make the solitary hero insist on becoming their saviour. He persuades his companion to take him to his coreligionists and help him convert them to the naked truth by propagating among them “the secrets of wisdom.” His education is completed when he fails in his endeavour. He learns the limits beyond which the multitude cannot ascend without becoming confused and unhappy. He also learns the wisdom of the divine lawgiver in addressing them in the way they can understand, enabling them to achieve limited ends through doctrines and actions suited to their abilities. The story ends with the hero taking leave of these people after apologizing to them for what he did and confessing that he is now fully convinced that they should not change their ways but remain attached to the literal sense of the divine law and obey its demands. He returns to his own island to continue his former solitary existence.

The hidden secret of Avicenna’s “Oriental Philosophy”

The hidden secret of Avicenna’s “Oriental Philosophy” appears, then, to be that the philosopher must return to the cave, educate himself in the ways of nonphilosophers, and understand the incompatibility between philosophical life and the life of the multitude, which must be governed by religion and divine laws. Otherwise, his ignorance will lead him to actions dangerous to the well-being of both the community and philosophy. Because Ibn Ṭufayl’s hero had grown up as a solitary human being, he lacks the kind of wisdom that could have enabled him to pursue philosophy in a religious community and be useful to such a community. Neither the conversion of the community to philosophy nor the philosopher’s solitary life is a viable alternative.

The teachings of AverroesAverroës

To Ibn Ṭufayl’s younger friend Averroes Averroës (Ibn Rushd, flourished 12th century) belongs the distinction of presenting a solution to the problem of the relation between philosophy and the Islāmic community in the west, a solution meant to be legally valid, theologically sound, and philosophically satisfactory. Here was a philosopher fully at home in what Ibn Bājjah had called the many layers of darkness. His legal training (he was a judge by profession) and his extensive knowledge of the history of the religious sciences (including theology) enabled him to speak with authority about the principles of Islāmic law and their application to theological and philosophic issues and to question the authority of al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarīs to determine correct beliefs and right practices. He was able to examine in detail from the point of view of the divine law the respective claims of theology and philosophy to possess the best and surest way to human knowledge, to be competent to interpret the ambiguous expressions of the divine law, and to have presented convincing arguments that are theoretically tenable and practically salutary.

The divine law

The intention of the divine law, he argued, is to assure the happiness of all members of the community. This requires everyone to profess belief in the basic principles of religion as enunciated in the Qurʾān, the Ḥādith, and the ijmāʿ (consensus) of the learned and to perform all obligatory acts of worship. Beyond this, the only just requirement is to demand that each pursue knowledge as far as his natural capacity and makeup permit. The few who are endowed with the capacity for the highest, demonstrative knowledge are under a divine legal obligation to pursue the highest wisdom, which is philosophy, and they need not constantly adjust its certain conclusions to what theologians claim to be the correct interpretation of the divine law. Being dialecticians and rhetoricians, theologians are not in a position to determine what is and is not correct interpretation of the divine law so far as philosophers are concerned. The divine law directly authorizes philosophers to pursue its interpretation according to the best—i.e., demonstrative or scientific—method, and theologians have no authority to interfere with the conduct of this activity or judge its conclusions.


On the basis of this legal doctrine, Averroes Averroës judged the theologian al-Ghazālī’s refutation of the philosophers ineffective and inappropriate because al-Ghazālī did not understand and even misrepresented the philosophers’ positions and used arguments that only demonstrate his incompetence in the art of demonstration. He criticized al-Fārābī and Avicenna also for accommodating the theologians of their time and for departing from the path of the ancient philosophers merely to please the theologians. At the other extreme are the multitude for whom there are no more convincing arguments than those found in the divine law itself. Neither philosophers nor theologians are permitted to disclose to the multitude interpretations of the ambiguous verses of the Qurʾān or to confuse them with their own doubts or arguments. Finally, there are those who belong to neither the philosophers nor the multitude, either because they are naturally superior to the multitude but not endowed with the gift for philosophy or else are students in initial stages of philosophic training. For this intermediate group theology is necessary. It is an intermediate discipline that is neither strictly legal nor philosophic. It lacks their certain principles and sure methods. Therefore, theology must remain under the constant control of philosophy and the supervision of the divine law so as not to drift into taking positions that cannot be demonstrated philosophically or that are contrary to the intention of the divine law. Averroes Averroës himself composed a work on theology to show how these requirements can be met: Kitāb al-kashf ʿan manāhij al-adillah (“Exposition of the Methods of Proofs”). In the Latin West he was best known for his philosophical answer to al-Ghazālī, Tahāfut at-tahāfut (“Incoherence of the Incoherence”), and for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, works that left their impact on medieval and renaissance European thought.

The new wisdom: synthesis of philosophy and mysticism
Philosophy, traditionalism, and the new wisdom

The western tradition in Islāmic philosophy formed part of the Arabic philosophic literature that was translated into Hebrew and Latin and that played a significant role in the development of medieval philosophy in the Latin West and the emergence of modern European philosophy. Its impact on the development of philosophy in eastern Islām was not as dramatic, but was important nevertheless. Students of this tradition—e.g., the prominent Jewish philosopher Maimonides (flourished 12th century) and the historian Ibn Khaldūn (flourished 14th century)—moved to Egypt, where they taught and had numerous disciples. Most of the writings of Ibn Bājjah, Ibn Ṭufayl, and Averroes Averroës found their way to the east also, where they were studied alongside the writings of their eastern predecessors. In both regions thinkers who held to the idea of philosophy as formulated by the eastern and western philosophers thus far discussed continued to teach. They became isolated and overwhelmed, however, by the resurgence of traditionalism and the emergence of a new kind of philosophy whose champions looked on the earlier masters as men who had made significant contributions to the progress of knowledge but whose overall view was defective and had now become outdated.

Traditionalism and the new wisdom

Resurgent traditionalism found effective defenders in men such as Ibn Taymīyah (13th–14th centuries) who employed a massive battery of philosophic, theological, and legal arguments against every shade of innovation and called for a return to the beliefs and practices of the pious ancestors. These attacks, however, did not deal a decisive blow to philosophy as such. It rather drove philosophy underground for a period, only to re-emerge in a new garb. A more important reason for the decline of the earlier philosophic tradition, however, was the renewed vitality and success of the program formulated by al-Ghazālī for the integration of theology, philosophy, and mysticism into a new kind of philosophy called wisdom (ḥikmah). It consisted of a critical review of the philosophy of Avicenna, preserving its main external features (its logical, physical, and, in part, metaphysical structure, and its terminology) and introducing principles of explanation for the universe and its relation to God based on personal experience and direct vision.

Characteristic features of the new wisdom

If the popular theology preached by the philosophers from al-Fārābī to Averroes Averroës is disregarded, it is evident that philosophy proper meant to them what al-Fārābī called a state of mind dedicated to the quest and the love for the highest wisdom. None of them claimed, however, that he had achieved this highest wisdom. In contrast, every leading exponent of the new wisdom stated that he had achieved or received it through a private illumination, dream (at times inspired by the Prophet), or vision and on this basis proceeded to give an explanation of the inner structure of natural and divine things. In every case, this explanation incorporated Platonic or Aristotelian elements but was more akin to some version of a later Hellenistic philosophy, which had found its way earlier into one or another of the schools of Islāmic theology, though, because of the absence of an adequate philosophic education on the part of earlier theologians, it had not been either elaborated or integrated into a comprehensive view. Like their late-Hellenistic counterparts, exponents of the new wisdom proceeded through an examination of the positions of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. They also gave special attention to the insights of the pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece and the myths and revelations of the ancient Near East, and they offered to resolve the fundamental questions that had puzzled earlier philosophers. In its basic movement and general direction, therefore, Islāmic philosophy between the 9th and the 19th centuries followed a course parallel to that of Greek philosophy from the 5th century BC to the 6th century AD.

Critiques of Aristotle in Islāmic theology

The critique of Aristotle that had begun in Muʿtazilī circles and had found a prominent champion in Abū Bakr ar-Rāzī was provided with a more solid foundation in the 10th and 11th centuries by the Christian theologians and philosophers of Baghdad, who translated the writings of the Hellenistic critics of Aristotle (e.g., John Philoponus) and made use of their arguments in commenting on Aristotle and in independent theological and philosophic works. Avicenna’s attack on these so-called Aristotelians and their Hellenistic predecessors (an attack that had been initiated by al-Fārābī and was to be continued by AverroesAverroës) did not prevent the spread of their theologically based anti-Aristotelianism among Jewish and Muslim students of philosophy in the 12th century, such as Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (died c. 1175) and Fakhr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī. These theologians continued and intensified al-Ghazālī’s attacks on Avicenna and Aristotle (especially their views on time, movement, matter, and form, the nature of the heavenly bodies, and the relation between the intelligible and sensible worlds). They suggested that a thorough examination of Aristotle had revealed to them, on philosophic grounds, that the fundamental disagreements between him and the theologies based on the revealed religions represented open options and that Aristotle’s view of the universe was in need of explanatory principles that could very well be supplied by theology. This critique provided the framework for the integration of philosophy into theology from the 13th century onward.

Synthesis of philosophy and mysticism

Although it made use of such theological criticisms of philosophy, the new wisdom took the position that theology did not offer a positive substitute for and was incapable of solving the difficulties of “Aristotelian” philosophy. It did not question the need to have recourse to the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīth to find the right answers. It insisted (on the authority of a long-standing mystical tradition), however, that theology concerns itself only with the external expressions of this divine source of knowledge. The inner core was reserved for the adepts of the mystic path whose journey leads to the experience of the highest reality in dreams and visions. Only the mystical adepts are in possession of the one true wisdom, the ground of both the external expressions of the divine law and the phenomenal world of human experience and thought.

Primary teachers of the new wisdom
The teachings of as-Suhrawardī

The first master of the new wisdom, as-Suhrawardī (12th century), called it the “Wisdom of Illumination.” He rejected Avicenna’s distinction between essence and existence and Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accidents, possibility and actuality, and matter and form, on the ground that they are mere distinctions of reason. Instead, he concentrated on the notion of being and its negation, which he called “light” and “darkness,” and explained the gradation of beings as gradation of their mixture according to the degree of “strength,” or “perfection,” of their light. This gradation forms a single continuum that culminates in pure light, self-luminosity, self-awareness, self-manifestation, or self-knowledge, which is God, the light of lights, the true One. The stability and eternity of this single continuum result from every higher light overpowering and subjugating the lower, and movement and change in it result from each of the lower lights desiring and loving the higher.

As-Suhrawardī’s “pan-lightism” is not particularly close to traditional Islāmic views concerning the creation of the world and God’s knowledge of particulars. The structure of his universe remains largely that of the Platonists and the Aristotelians. And his account of the emanation process avoids the many difficulties that had puzzled Neoplatonists as they tried to understand how the second hypostasis (reality) proceeds from the One. He asserted that it proceeds without in any way affecting the One and that the One’s self-sufficiency is enough to explain the giving out that seems to be both spontaneous and necessary. His doctrine is presented in a way that suggests that it is the inner truth behind the exoteric (external) teachings of Islām as well as Zoroastrianism, indeed the wisdom of all ancient sages, especially Iranians and Greeks, and the revealed religions as well. This neutral yet positive attitude toward the diversity of religions, which was not absent among Muslim philosophers and mystics, was to become one of the hallmarks of the new wisdom. Different religions were seen as different manifestations of the same truth, their essential agreement was emphasized, and various attempts were made to combine them into a single harmonious religion meant for all of mankind.

As-Suhrawardī takes an important step in this direction through his doctrine of imaginative-bodily “resurrection.” After their departure from the prison of the body, souls that are fully purified ascend directly to the world of separate lights. The ones that are only partially purified or are evil souls escape to a “world of images” suspended below the higher lights and above the corporeal world. In this world of images, or forms (not to be confused with the Platonic forms, which as-Suhrawardī identifies with higher and permanent intelligible lights), partially purified souls remain suspended and are able to create for themselves and by their own power of imagination pleasing figures and desirable objects in forms more excellent than their earthly counterparts and are able to enjoy them forever. Evil souls become dark shadows, suffer (presumably because their corrupt and inefficient power of imagination can create only ugly and frightening forms), and wander about as ghosts, demons, and devils. The creative power of the imagination, which as a human psychological phenomenon was already used by the philosophers to explain prophetic powers, was seized upon by the new wisdom as “divine magic.” It was used to construct an eschatology, to explain miracles, dreams, and other saintly theurgic (healing) practices, to facilitate the movement between various orders of being, and for literary purposes.

The teachings of Ibn al-ʿArabī

The account of the doctrines of Ibn al-ʿArabī (12th–13th centuries) belongs properly to the history of Islāmic mysticism. Yet his impact on the subsequent development of the new wisdom was in many ways far greater than was that of as-Suhrawardī. This is true especially of his central doctrine of the “unity of being” and his sharp distinction between the absolute One, which is undefinable Truth (ḥaqq), and his self-manifestation (ẓuhūİ), or creation (khalq), which is ever new (jadīd) and in perpetual movement, a movement that unites the whole of creation in a process of constant renewal. At the very core of this dynamic edifice stands nature, the “dark cloud” (ʿamāʾ) or “mist” (bukhār), as the ultimate principle of things and forms: intelligence, heavenly bodies, and elements and their mixtures that culminate in the “perfect man.” This primordial nature is the “breath” of the Merciful God in his aspect as Lord. It “flows” throughout the universe and manifests Truth in all its parts. It is the first mother through which Truth manifests itself to itself and generates the universe. And it is the universal natural body that gives birth to the translucent bodies of the spheres, to the elements, and to their mixtures, all of which are related to that primary source as daughters to their mother.

Ibn al-ʿArabī attempted to explain how Intelligence proceeds from the absolute One by inserting between them a primordial feminine principle, which is all things in potentiality but which also possesses the capacity, readiness, and desire to manifest or generate them first as archetypes in Intelligence and then as actually existing things in the universe below. Ibn al-ʿArabī gave this principle numerous names, including prime “matter” (ʿunṣur), and characterized it as the principle “whose existence makes manifest the essences of the potential worlds.” The doctrine that the first simple originated thing is not Intelligence but “indefinite matter” and that Intelligence was originated through the mediation of this matter was attributed to Empedocles, a 5th-century-BC Greek philosopher, in doxographies (compilations of extracts from the Greek philosophers) translated into Arabic. It represented an attempt to bridge the gulf between the absolute One and the multiplicity of forms in Intelligence. The Andalusian mystic Ibn Masarrah (9th–10th centuries) is reported to have championed pseudo-Empedoclean doctrines, and Ibn al-ʿArabī (who studied under some of his followers) quotes Ibn Masarrah on a number of occasions. This philosophic tradition is distinct from the one followed by the Ismāʿīlī theologians, who explained the origination of Intelligence by the mediation of God’s will.

The teachings of Twelver Shīʿism and the school of Eṣfahān

After Ibn al-ʿArabī, the new wisdom developed rapidly in intellectual circles in eastern Islām. Commentators on the works of Avicenna, as-Suhrawardī, and Ibn al-ʿArabī began the process of harmonizing and integrating the views of the masters. Great poets made them part of every educated man’s literary culture. Mystical fraternities became the custodians of such works, spreading them into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent and transmitting them from one generation to another. Following the Mongol khan Hülagü’s entry into Baghdad (1258), the Twelver Shīʿah were encouraged by the Il Khanid Tatars and Naṣīr ad-Dīn aṭ-Ṭūsī (the philosopher and theologian who accompanied Hülagü as his vizier) to abandon their hostility to mysticism. Muʿtazilī doctrines were retained in their theology. Theology, however, was downgraded to “formal” learning that must be supplemented by higher things, the latter including philosophy and mysticism, both of earlier Shīʿī (including Ismāʿīlī) origin and of later Sunnī provenance. Al-Ghazālī, as-Suhrawardī, Ibn al-ʿArabī, and Avicenna were then eagerly studied and (except for their doctrine of the imamate) embraced with little or no reservation. This movement in Shīʿī thought gathered momentum when the leaders of a mystical fraternity established themselves as the Ṣafavid dynasty (1501–1732) in Iran, where they championed Twelver Shīʿism as the official doctrine of the new monarchy. During the 17th century, Iran experienced a cultural and scientific renaissance that included a revival of philosophic studies. There, Islāmic philosophy found its last creative exponents. The new wisdom as expounded by the masters of the school of Eṣfahān radiated throughout eastern Islām and continued as a vital tradition until modern times.

The major figures of the school of Eṣfahān were Mīr Dāmād (Muḥammad Bāqir ibn ad-Dāmād, died 1631/32) and his great disciple Mullā Ṣadrā (Ṣadr ad-Dīn ash-Shīrāzī, c. 1571–1640). Both were men of wide culture and prolific writers with a sharp sense for the history and development of philosophic ideas.

The teachings of Mīr Dāmāẖ

Mīr Dāmād was the first to expound the notion of “eternal origination” (ḥudūth dahrī) as an explanation for the creation of the world. Muslim philosophers and their critics had recognized the crucial role played by the question of time in the discussion of the eternity of the world. The proposition that time is the measure of movement was criticized by Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, who argued that time is prior to movement and rest, indeed to everything except being. Time is the measure or concomitant of being, lasting and transient, enduring and in movement or rest. It characterizes or qualifies all being, including God. God works in time, incessantly willing and directly creating everything in the world: his persistent will creates the eternal beings of the world, and his ever-renewed will creates the transient beings. The notion of a God who works in time was of course objectionable to theology, and Fakhr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī refused to accept this solution despite its attractions. Ar-Rāzī also saw that it leads to the notion (attributed to Plato) that time is a self-subsistent substance, whose relation to God would further compromise his unity. Finally, ar-Rāzī explained that this self-subsistent substance will have to be related to different beings in different ways. It is called “everlastingness” (sarmad) when related to God and the Intelligences (angels) that are permanent and do not move or change in any way, “eternity” (dahr) when related to the totality of the world of movement and change, and “time” (zamān) when related to corporeal beings that make up the world of movement and change.

Mīr Dāmād returned to Avicenna and sought to harmonize his views with those of as-Suhrawardī on the assumption that what Avicenna meant by his “Oriental” (mashriqīyah) philosophy was identical with as-Suhrawardī’s wisdom of “illumination” (ishrāĪ), which he interpreted as a Platonic doctrine that asserted the priority of essence (form) over being (existence). Time, for Mīr Dāmād, was neither a mere being of reason nor an accident of existing things. It belongs to the essence of things and describes their mode and rank of being. It is a “relation” that beings have to each other because of their essential nature. There must, therefore, be three ranks of order of time corresponding to the three ranks of order of being. Considered as the relation of God to the divine names and attributes (Intelligences or archetypes), the relation is “everlastingness.” Considered as the relation between the Intelligences, or archetypes, and their reflections in the mutable things of the world below, the relation is “eternity.” And considered as the relation between these mutable things, the relation is “time.” Creation, or origination, is this very relation. Thus, the origination of the immutable Intelligences, or archetypes, is called “everlasting creation,” the origination of the world of mutable beings as a whole is called “eternal creation,” and the generation of mutable things within the world is called “temporal creation.”

The teachings of Mullā Ṣadrā

Mullā Ṣadrā superimposed Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mystical thought (whose philosophic implications had already been exposed by a number of commentators) on the “Aristotelian”–Illuminationist synthesis developed by Mīr Dāmāad. Against his master, he argued with the Aristotelians for the priority of being (existence) over essence (form), which he called an abstraction; and, with Ibn al-ʿArabī, he argued for the “unity of being” within which beings differ only according to “priority and posteriority,” “perfection and imperfection,” and “strength and weakness.” All being is thus viewed as a graded manifestation, or determination, of absolute, or pure, Being, and every level of being possesses all the attributes of pure Being, but with varying degrees of intensity or perfection.

Mullā Ṣadrā considered his unique contribution to Islāmic philosophy to be his doctrine of nature, which enabled him to assert that everything other than God and his knowledge—i.e., the entire corporeal world, including the heavenly bodies—is originated “eternally” as well as “temporally.” This doctrine of nature is an elaboration of the last manifestation of Ibn al-ʿArabī’Ĩ “nature” or prime “matter,” articulated on philosophic grounds and within the general framework of Aristotelian natural science and defended against every possible philosophic and theological objection.

Nature for Mullā Ṣadrā is the “substance” and “power” of all corporeal beings and the direct cause of their movement. Movement (and time, which measures it) is therefore not an accident of substance or an accompaniment of some of its accidents. It signifies the very change, renewal, and passing of being—itself being in constant “flow,” or flux. The entire corporeal world, both the celestial spheres and the world of the elements, constantly renews itself. The “matter” of corporeal things has the power to become a new form at every instant; and the resulting matter–form complex is at every instant a new matter ready for, desiring, and moving toward another form. Men fail to observe this constant flux and movement in simple bodies not because of the endurance of the same form in them but because of the close similarity between their ever-new forms. What the philosophers call “movement” and “time” are not, as they believed, anchored in anything permanent—e.g., in what they call “nature,” “substance,” or “essence”; essence is permanent only in the mind, and nature and substance are permanent activity. Nature as permanent activity is the very being of natural things and identical with their substance. Because nature is “permanent” in this sense, it is connected to a permanent principle that manifests activity in it permanently. Because nature constantly renews itself, all renewed and emergent things are connected to it. Thus, nature is the link between what is eternal and what is originated, and the world of nature is originated both eternally and temporarily.

Mullā Ṣadrā distinguishes this primary “movement-in-substance” (al-ḥarakah fī al-jawhar) from haphazard, compulsory, and other accidental movements that lack proper direction, impede the natural movement of substance, or reverse it. Movement-in-substance is not universal change or flux without direction, the product of conflict between two equally powerful principles, or a reflection of the nonbeing of the world of nature when measured against the world of permanent forms. It is, rather, the natural beings’ innate desire to become more perfect, which directs this ceaseless self-renewal, self-origination, or self-emergence into a perpetual and irreversible flow upward in the scale of being—from the simplest elements to the human body–soul complex and the heavenly body–soul complex (both of which participate in the general instability, origination, and passing of being that characterizes the entire corporeal world). This flow upward, however, is by no means the end. For the indefinite “matter” (Ibn al-ʿArabī’s “cloud” and the mystics’ “created Truth”) is the “substratum” of everything other than its Creator, the mysterious pure Truth. It “extends” beyond the body–soul complex to the Intelligences (divine names) that are Being’s first, highest, and purest actualization or activity. This “extension” unites everything other than the Creator into a single continuum. The human body–soul complex and the heavenly body–soul complex are not moved externally by the Intelligences. Their movement is an extension of the process of self-perfection. Having reached the highest rank of order of substance in the corporeal world, they are now prepared, and still moved by their innate desire, to flow upward and transform themselves into pure intelligence.

Impact of modernism

The new wisdom lived on during the 18th and 19th centuries, conserving much of its vitality and strength but not cultivating new ground. It attracted able thinkers such as Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi and Hādī Sabzevārī and became a regular part of the program of higher education in the cultural centres of the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent, a status never achieved by the earlier tradition of Islāmic philosophy. In collaboration with its close ally Persian mystical poetry, the new wisdom determined the intellectual outlook and spiritual mood of educated Muslims in the regions where Persian had become the dominant literary language.

The wholesale rejection of the new wisdom in the name of simple, robust, and more practical piety (which had been initiated by Ibn Taymīyah and which continued to find exponents among jurists) made little impression on its devotees. To be taken seriously, reform had to come from their own ranks and be espoused by such thinkers as the eminent theologian and mystic of Muslim India Aḥmad Sirhindī (flourished 16th–17th centuries)—a reformer who spoke their language and attacked Ibn al-ʿArabī’s “unity of being” only to defend an older, presumably more orthodox form of mysticism. Despite some impact, however, attempts of this kind remained isolated and were either ignored or reintegrated into the mainstream, until the coming of the modern reformers. The 19th- and 20th-century reformers Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī, Muḥammad ʿAbduh, and Muḥammad Iqbāl were initially educated in this tradition, but they rebelled against it and advocated radical reforms.

The modernists attacked the new wisdom at its weakest point; that is, its social and political norms, its individualistic ethics, and its inability to speak intelligently about social, cultural, and political problems generated by a long period of intellectual isolation that was further complicated by the domination of the European powers. Unlike the earlier tradition of Islāmic philosophy from al-Fārābī to AverroesAverroës, which had consciously cultivated political science and investigated the political dimension of philosophy and religion and the relation between philosophy and the community at large, the new wisdom from its inception lacked genuine interest in these questions, had no appreciation for political philosophy, and had only a benign toleration for the affairs of the world.

None of the reformers was a great political philosopher. They were concerned with reviving their nations’ latent energies, urging them to free themselves from foreign domination, and impressing on them the need to reform their social and educational institutions. They also saw that all this required a total reorientation, which could not take place so long as the new wisdom remained not only the highest aim of a few solitary individuals but also a social and popular ideal as well. Yet, as late as 1917, Iqbāl found that “the present-day Muslim prefers to roam about aimlessly in the valley of Hellenic-Persian mysticism, which teaches us to shut our eyes to the hard reality around, and to fix our gaze on what is described as ‘illumination.’ ” His reaction was harsh: “To me this self-mystification, this nihilism, i.e., seeking reality where it does not exist, is a physiological symptom, giving me a clue to the decadence of the Muslim world.”

To arrest the decadence and infuse new vitality in a society in which they were convinced religion must remain the focal point, the modern reformers advocated a return to the movements and masters of Islāmic theology and philosophy antedating the new wisdom. They argued that these, rather than the “Persian incrustation of Islām,” represented Islām’s original and creative impulse. The modernists were attracted, in particular, to the views of the Muʿtazilah: affirmation of God’s unity and denial of all similarity between him and created things; reliance on human reason; emphasis on man’s freedom; faith in man’s ability to distinguish between good and bad; and insistence on man’s responsibility to do good and fight against evil in private and public places. They were also impressed by the traditionalists’ devotion to the original, uncomplicated forms of Islām and by their fighting spirit, and by the Ashʿarīs’ view of faith as an affair of the heart and their spirited defense of the Muslim community. In viewing the scientific and philosophic tradition of eastern and western Islām prior to the Tatar and Mongol invasions, they saw an irrefutable proof that true Islām stands for the liberation of man’s spirit, promotes critical thought, and provides both the impetus to grapple with the temporal and the demonstration of how to set it in order. These ideas initiated what was to become a vast effort to recover, edit, and translate into the Muslim national languages works of earlier theologians and philosophers, which had been long neglected or known only indirectly through later accounts.

The modern reformers insisted, finally, that Muslims must be taught to understand the real meaning of what has happened in Europe, which in effect means the understanding of modern science and philosophy, including modern social and political philosophies. Initially, this challenge became the task of the new universities in the Muslim world. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, the originally wide gap between the various programs of theological and philosophic studies in religious colleges and in modern universities narrowed considerably.