Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

**NOTES
**1. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science, London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1991, p. 51. The first part of the title is derived from Pervez Hoodbhoy’s reference to the ‘closing of minds’

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The Mutazilites believed that the truth could be reached by using reason based on what is given in the Quran, and in this way they reached answers to the questions already presented. If any contradiction arises between what the Quran said and what reason concluded then, according to these rationalists, the Quranic verses should be interpreted metaphorically and not literally.11 The intellectual revolution initiated by the Mutazilites produced, after the death of its founders,12 a galaxy of Muslim thinkers starting with al-Kindi (c. 801–866), al-Khwarazmi (c. 800–847), al-Razi (865–925), and al-Farabi (d. 950) to Avicenna (980–1037) and Averroes (1126–1198). The last two names are well known to the West but long forgotten by Muslims themselves. The Muslims publicly set fire to their works just as orthodox Christians in the sixteenth century burnt Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) alive accusing him of heresy. During his last days Averroes was virtually under house arrest imposed by the Almohads.13 However, it was the efflorescence of free thinking under the influence of the Mutazilites that ushered in the era of the Hellenization of Islam that was largely responsible for the intellectual and scientific achievements of Islam during the medieval period. Unfortunately, this movement of rationalism came to an abrupt end within a period of roughly 100 years. Averroes was a late comer and he was probably the last of the rational thinkers in Medieval Islam. Thereafter it was the anti-philosophic orthodoxy that reigned supreme in the Muslim world.

The Mutazilite doctrine received even state support for about 40 years under the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, Caliph al-Mamun (813–833) went to the extent of carrying out an inquisition (minha) against those scholars and thinkers who did not support this doctrine. The Hanbalites, the followers of ibn-Hanbal (c. 780–855) and the Hanbali School, fell victim to this repression in particular. Eventually, the Mutazilites themselves had to endure the same fate when another Abbasid ruler, al-Mutawakkil(847–861), withdrew his support to their philosophy. With this and with the gradual ascendancy of religious orthodoxy the doors of ijtihad were said to have been closed perhaps until the nineteenth century, which meant the freezing of “dispersed discourse and diffused opinion” in the interaction with the divine texts. From thereon it was largely taqlid that came to rule Muslim thought and action. The Mutazilite doctrine lingered but marginally for another two centuries before it disappeared totally after the towering influence of al-Gazzali (1059–1111), the most renowned scholar and thinker in orthodox Sunni Islam.

Untitled Document

http://ravi.lums.edu.pk/sabieh/science-islam.pdf

REVIEW: Rewriting history -DAWN - Books and Authors; January 13, 2008