Islamic Philosophy

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry,

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the studios of KAOW in San Francisco,

John Perry
Continuing conversations that began at Philosopher’s Corner on the lovely Stanford campus.

Ken Taylor
And today we’ll talk about Islamic philosophy.

John Perry
We’re going to assume that most of us, like Ken and I, are much less familiar with Islamic philosophy than we are with Western philosophy. To get oriented, we’re going to go back to the common historic roots that both have in Greek philosophy, particularly reactions to Plato and Aristotle.

Ken Taylor
Then, in the second part of our show, we’ll look at how some specific and important lines of thought in Islamic philosophy and the influence these have had on Western philosophy and science. That influence is considerable. I mean, in a way, the Greek tradition came to Christendom via the translations of Greek philosophy into Islamic philosophy.

John Perry
And in our final segment, we’ll look at the prospects for maybe reconciling Islamic and Western worldviews at a philosophical level, and maybe as a helpful addition to the failure to reconcile them at other levels. But you know, Ken, for the last week or two preparing for this program, I’ve learned a lot. I still don’t know very much about Islamic philosophy, but I certainly know a great deal more than I did. Particularly the extent to which these great Islamic philosophers anticipated ideas that in Western philosophy only came up much later with people like Hume. But just to make sure we’re both using words the same way, let’s get straight about some terminology. And and you can answer me this question: Why do we say Islamic philosophy rather than Muslim philosophy or Arabic philosophy?

Ken Taylor
Well, to begin with, John, Islam is the name of a religion whose adherents are called Muslims. It was founded on the Arabian Peninsula by an Arab, Muhammad, and the Quran is written in Arabic. That’s that’s to be sure. But not all Arabs are Muslims, and only a fraction of Muslims are Arabs. Islam is a world religion and it spread from the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent to Europe, parts of Africa. I mean, it’s a and most Muslims are not Arabs.

John Perry
And and you know the reading I’ve done, of which I must admit is more at a Wikipedia level than digging into original sources, but according to that, a lot of the key philosophers are are not Arabs either. the the The first big names is Ilkindi, who was lived in the eight hundreds, and he he wasn’t Arab. He lived right there in the cities we hear so much about now, Baghdad and Basra. It’s it’s hard hard to think of these war torn places as as the cradle of this important Islamic tradition, but El Farabi and Al Ghazali and Avicenna, those are all non-Arabs. Those are all Persians. Avarois, I guess, was of Arab descent, but he lived in Spain. So a lot of the big names are not Arabs per se.

Ken Taylor
Right. So so then, why would we use Islamic? You might wonder rather than Muslim for this thing, that’s because the word Islamic is used broadly, as we said in the opening teas, for all aspects of the culture, art, architecture, literature, and philosophy that comes out of the out of Islamic civilization. So Islamic philosophy is not like that phrase. Isn’t quite like the phrase Christian philosophy. We tend to use the phrase Christian philosophy narrowly for philosophers writing and defending various aspects of Christian belief. Many, many Islamic philosophers do that too. But Islamic philosophy-the phrase is more like Western philosophy, so it includes philosophers who don’t even have a religious focus in particular.

John Perry
You’ve been very helpful, Ken. I knew that someday your broad Notre Dame education would be useful to me. Not, not to mention your insomnia, which gives you so much time to read up on things, but now that we know what we’re talking about when we say Islamic philosophy and why we call it that, let’s turn to our roving philosophical reporter Polly Stryker, who dug a little deeper into the annals of Islamic philosophy. She files this report.

Polly Stryker
Suppose you’re a philosophy major, and someone tells you there are a bunch of philosophy jobs. In Baghdad, you might snicker and imagine writing to work in a Humvee carrying your copy of Plato’s Republic, but turn back the clock to 11th-century Baghdad when it was a hotbed of Islamic philosophy for Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Hossein Ziai
The Academy of Philosophy in Baghdad was subsidized tremendously by the state, and they gave it a name, Darul Hikkima, which means house of wisdom or house of philosophy, rather, inspired by the notion of the academy in Athens, and they subsidize translations.

Polly Stryker
Hossein Zia’i is professor of Islamic and Iranian studies at UCLA, the translations he’s talking about were from original Greek texts into Arabic.

Hossein Ziai
There was a tremendous translation movement centered in Baghdad. Almost all of the Aristotelian corpus, most of Plato, some of the Neoplatonist traditions, some of the Stoic traditions, etc.

Polly Stryker
Ziai explained that Islamic philosophy is not the philosophy of Islam.

Hossein Ziai
The attribute Islamic should not be understood in religious or theological terms, as when we talk about Christian philosophy. Islamic here really only means the origins and development and activity of philosophy under Muslim rule,

Polly Stryker
and Muslim rulers of the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries A.D. were amazingly tolerant and inclusive.

Hossein Ziai
In in some of the madrassas in Baghdad, the Muslim Syria and the Nizamia, there were Jewish professors.

Polly Stryker
Famous Islamic philosophers include the Persians Farabi and Avicenna. Zia’s says they and other philosophers under Muslim rule grappled with many issues, but a few stand out.

Hossein Ziai
The crucial three are the problem and question of eternity, the problem and question of immortality, and the problem and question of God’s knowledge of particulars.

Polly Stryker
Eternity and immortality seem fairly straightforward, but what’s God’s knowledge of particulars?

Hossein Ziai
Knowledge of particular means that we have a Godhead that knows what you and I, for instance, to put it in a caricaturized way, did today or yesterday, and so on, so the distinction has major impact on religion. Can there be religion where the God does not know particulars and the God is a principle who thinks thought?

Polly Stryker
Religion eventually overshadowed the golden age of Islamic philosophy, which ended by the 13th century. The

Hossein Ziai
brand of theology that became the dominant and dominates until today in the Muslim lands is a an anti-rationalist perspective known as at the time as the Asharite system of theology, and the great champion of Ashraism was this Persian Muhammad Razzoli, whose book, known as the Incoherence of the Philosophers, as you can imagine, really was detrimental.

Polly Stryker
Lucky for the West, Islamic philosophers had already taken Greek philosophy to Europe with their own refinements via Sicily and Moorish Spain.

Hossein Ziai
Most of Aristotle, most of Plato and a host of other other material in the sciences and philosophy, etc. including all of Farabi, including all of Avicenna, were translated into Latin, and together this collectivity, if you like, then plays a very important role in the European Renaissance.

Polly Stryker
And so modern philosophy in the West exists thanks to Islamic philosophers. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Polly Streicher.

John Perry
I’m John Perry. With me is Ken Taylor,

Ken Taylor
and our guest is Mashad Al Alaf. He’s chair of Islamic Studies and professor of philosophy at the University of Toledo. He’s author of *The Essential Ideas of Islamic Philosophy* Mashad, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Mashhad Al Allaf
Thanks, Mashad.

John Perry
Mashad, first, let me ask you a little about yourself. You are a philosopher. You’re a student of Islamic studies. You call yourself an Islamic philosopher. You see yourself in this great tradition. And briefly, how did you end up having this set of interests and specialties?

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, my background is all philosophy, and in specific, Western philosophy and philosophy of science. Most of my early work was publications in actually the area of operationalism, structure of scientific theory, concepts and meanings and so on, but then after the tragedy of September 11, I thought there is some need for education about Islamic philosophy, and I was invited by many chairs of the departments to speak and talk about and teach courses on Islamic philosophy. So from that. Time like about six years ago, I established myself in the area of Islamic philosophy and tried to teach courses, new courses, and publish books on on the topic. And I think it’s a necessary need to establish the link between the East and the West.

John Perry
Well, you sound like you sound like an excellent person to take on that role. Now let’s plunge into Islamic philosophy. the The golden age of Islamic philosophy seems to have been between the eighth and 15th centuries, and to have started with the study of Plato and Aristotle, maybe maybe also the Neoplatonists. So, what was the initial reaction of the Islamic thinkers to to Plato and Aristotle, and what what what are the problems that coalesced between making sense of Islam as a from a philosophical point of view, and and and what Plato and Aristotle had to tell them? Briefly, tell us briefly.

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, I mean, first of all, the Greek traditions was translated based on the will of Muslim scholars and the governors of the caliph to open themselves to other cultures and have dialog with them intellectually speaking and translate their books. Their movement of translations was highly encouraged and well paid. And Muslim scholars, Christians, and other people of other religions were actually heading the institute of called Darul Hekma or the House of Wisdom, and actually the the director of the House of Wisdom was a Christian, Hunain ibn Shāk, and also as Hak ibn Hunayn. All these indications seems that there is a willingly open dialog with the West, with the Greek philosophy, Indian arithmetics, Persian culture, and so on. Let me ask you a question about that.

Ken Taylor
Let me ask you a question about that, Masad. So, what was it about? Why? Why did they feel so? This is a big deal. Translating these, let’s call them pagan works, right? Why? You know, Christianity and Islam and Judaism all seem to have in common that they saw these Greek philosophers and they went, “Wow! or something. I mean, what was it that? Why did they? Why did these? This religious tradition feel such a compulsion to translate these pagan works.

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, philosophers, as you know, are products of their own culture, and Muslim philosophers are not an exception to this. So their culture highly encouraged the seeking of knowledge. Quran is all about questioning, questioning things, questioning nature, questioning the very structure of human being, looking for the argument of design, the designer of the world, the creator. It started with the revelation of read and seeking knowledge become an obligatory search in Islamic in Islamic life. So, what Quran created in the culture is the very culture of asking questions, and we know asking questions in philosophy is more important than even answering them. To the point, thus, in answering the truth and seeking the truth, answering the questions, Al Kindi said, and I would like to quote him briefly here. He said, “We ought not to be embarrassed to appreciate the truth and obtain it wherever it comes from, even if it comes from races distant and nations different from us. Nothing should be dearer to the seeker of the truth than the truth itself. This is the attitude of the Muslim philosopher at that time: is the truth, regardless of the race or the ethnicity or the color or the culture or religion. Let me just

John Perry
let me just check my sense of geography here. This was all happening right in Baghdad and Basra, the the very same places that are that are in the news today. This devotion to truth and the translations that really are the bedrock of the Renaissance. It’s just to me quite amazing as a Californian whose idea of an old city is Monterey. I mean, Monterey, California, a couple 100 years old. Baghdad, the center of all this, is that right?

Mashhad Al Allaf
Right. Muslims have the idea, which is also derived from the religion, that there is no contradiction between reason and revelation. The truth is the one called Wahdahl Hakika, the unity of the truth, whether you reach it by reasoning, rationalizations, or by revelation, God challenged people that things in your domain of knowledge, in the realm of reality called the the world of witness, alam a shahada, that people should seek knowledge in their own, which is senses and rationalizations. However, alam al-hayb, which is the realm of reality that is only God knows about, then God would reveal knowledge about them. For example, no one knows about the description of paradise, so God will reveal some information that paradise is such and such description. But when it comes to astronomy, physics, human body, medicine, then God will ask human being to do their own job, to rationalize it, to sense it, and think about it.

John Perry
Thanks, Mashad.

Ken Taylor
That’s really fascinating. We’re going to have to dig into this a lot more. It’s some fascinating stuff here. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk today. We’re discussing Islamic philosophy with Mashad Alala from the University of Toledo.

John Perry
We’ve been talking about the origins of Islamic philosophy as a reaction to Greek philosophy and translation of the same. Starting in the eighth century, in our next segment, we’re going to look at some of the big themes in Islamic philosophy and how these ideas had a powerful impact on Western thought. How about you? If you’re new to Islamic philosophy, if you’re hearing about it really for the first time, what what what are the big questions you have about it? And we’ve got some Muslim listeners out there. We’d like to know: Does does the study of Islamic philosophy and the inspiration of these Islamic philosophers is that has that played a role in in your understanding of your own culture? You can join us by calling toll free at 1-800-525-9917. That’s 1-800-525-9917.

Ken Taylor
We’ll talk about some big ideas in in Islamic philosophy, and we’ll explore further this quest for knowledge. Place your calls and emails when Philosophy Talk continues.

John Perry
It’s philosophy talk, and we’re looking at the ideas of Islamic philosophers. Does Islamic philosophy present a different side of Islam than you’re used to from the newspapers and television? Does this venerable philosophical tradition, much older than Western philosophy, play much of a role in the consciousness of today’s Muslims? I’m John Perry,

Ken Taylor
and I’m Ken Taylor. Tell us your thoughts. The toll-free number 1-800-525-9917. That’s 1-800-525-9917.

John Perry
Our guest is Mashad Alaf from the University of Toledo.

Ken Taylor
Mashad, I want to ask you about the one of the last things you were talking about about the encounter of of Islam with this Greek tradition, and you and you said a bunch of fascinating things, and it’s kind of different from the mindset many people have about Islam today as intolerant, closed off, you know, wanting to convert the infidel and all that stuff. I mean, that’s in the popular imagination in America, whether it’s correct or not. But it’s right. You you talked about a a culture and a religion that was hungry for knowledge from whatever source, and you also talked about the difference between the role of reason and revelation. We’re supposed to do our work with reason, astronomy, mathematics, all that stuff, and and revelation, the stuff that God knows He reveals to us, but the rest of it, I just found that fascinating. And is there something that changed in Islam, or is that, is the idea that Islam is somehow closed off, is that just a misperception? I mean, talk to me about that a little bit.

Mashhad Al Allaf
Okay, well, Islam used the core sources of its legal theory or Sharia, which is the Quran and Sunnah, and Quran is always the same. Is the same book that was revealed to Muhammad, asking him, or or or inspiring him on the relationship with non-Muslims such as Christians and Jews, and with giving wonderful first of all acknowledgment of their religion that is a valid religion or valid religions. Second, social way to interact with them on issues of marriage, on social life, buy and sell, and so on. Neighbors, neighborhood-all those issues were well regulated in the Quran and still are the same. And and Fokaha jurists discuss this clearly, but for some people to interpret those issues differently, it doesn’t seem to be well founded actually in Islamic jurisprudence and and Sula al-Fakhr, the principle of jurisprudence. So what we are talking about, the valid source of knowledge, is the same Quran still ask people to be very nice to the neighbors, regardless of their religion, the same religion that asked Muslim to be not judgmental at all, and when people ask the Prophet Muhammad, “What about those people of other religions? God revealed a verse saying, “That’s not your business. Allah, God will judge them at the day of judgments. So Muslim is not judgmental, but other and and should be actively involved and cooperating with people of other religion. The Prophet himself, peace be upon him, was an example of of of cooperating and having relationship with people of other religions. So, so does that matter?

John Perry
Mashad, that’s that’s interesting and even inspiring. I want to now though push a little on on help our understanding of the big philosophical movements in the classic age. Are are the person interviewed before by our roving philosophical reporter mentioned this work on the incoherence of philosophy, and I think there was a response to that by a later Islamic philosopher called on the incoherence of the incoherence of philosophy. So that sounds like a big debate just on this question of reason and religion, and how seriously philosophy can be taken. Who won the debate, and what what was it about?

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, first of all, Muslims actually replied not only to philosophers on this issue; they replied first of all to Aristotle on the lack of emphasis on empirical method, for example. So, Jabir Ibn Hayyan in chemistry. Al-Haytham al-Hazan in optics both criticized Galen, Ptolemy, and Aristotle that there is the lack of inductive reasoning or empirical scientific method to study nature, and then Ghazali criticized philosophers only on issues not of science or mathematics or logic, only on issues of metaphysics, and there are only three issues of metaphysics that he criticized. One of them that the philosopher emphasized: the issue of of the eternity of the universe. And Islam teaches that the universe was created by God. So this this goes

John Perry
this goes against Aristotle, and it’s pretty clear in religion that if God created, it’s not eternal. So this is a big issue. That was a big issue, and the

Mashhad Al Allaf
second issue was that God knows only universal, such as the concept man or or woman or human, and He doesn’t know particulars, such as John, Mary, Fatima, Muhammad, and so on. And Islamic teaching that God knows everything, and this is how you, when you supplicate to God, God would respond to you in specific. Would not respond to would not respond to universal thing called human. He would respond to John when John asking something that he needs, or she, or or Nancy needs, or Fatima needs. The second, the third thing that Ghazali criticizes is the idea that resurrections is only soul and not bodies, which is adopted by Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina after Aristotle, Ghazali thinks that resurrection is both body and soul, according Islamic teaching. Now,

John Perry
on all three of these, it seems to me that the Christians that come later, like Saint Thomas, are going to have to fight Aristotle on these very same issues. Don’t you think, Ken? Yeah, I

Ken Taylor
think that’s right. I mean, I think that’s right. I mean, Aristotle wasn’t just a source of inspiration. I think you’re telling us Aristotle wasn’t just a source of inspiration and somebody from whom the Islamic and then later Christian philosophies sought to learn, but he was somebody they thought they had to combat and do battle, philosophical battle with. But let me remind our listeners: you’re listening to Philosophy talk. We’re talking about Islamic philosophy with our guest Masad Al Alaf, and we’d love to have your input. 1-800-525-9917. That’s 1-800-525-9917. And Samuel and Tiburon’s on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Samuel. Let

Speaker 1
me call you back. Good morning. Good morning, Samuel. It appears that the school of Baghdad was like a plant that sent out seeds into other parts of the Islamic world, and one of the places where those seeds landed was in Muslim Spain, which temporally, at least, seems to have taken up where Baghdad left off, giving rise similarly to schools of philosophy that were ecumenical in that they involved Christians and Jews. In fact, gave rise to a flowering of Jewish culture and Jewish mysticism, as you know. So I was hoping that Dr. Alaf could comment a little bit upon that relationship between Baghdad and Muslim Spain. Thanks for this

Ken Taylor
question, Sam. A very learned question, Masad. What’s your

Mashhad Al Allaf
yes? in fact, Muslims in Spain enjoyed even more freedom to discuss philosophical ideas openly than than Muslim in the East, as he mentioned in Baghdad and as center. Even Tufail, Ibn Badger, Veroas, Maimonides, all those people had nice philosophical dialogs and coexisted. That’s the most important. Lived together, learned from each other, and never had the intention to eliminate each other from from the philosophical existence. As a result, Ibn Tafar wrote a very nice piece of philosophical literature called Hayyib ben Yaqwan, in which he speaks about a child born spontaneously on an island without parents, and how this child going to reason and discover God existence, even though there is no no society and no revelation. The point that Ibn Tufail was bringing into existence is that there is a possibility for reason by itself, even for a child in island, to to to get the idea of of God existence without revelation or scriptures. Right. Ibn Ibn Baja and Abarish actually took more of Aristotelian philosophy and had great influence on the West more than on the East. Like Abarakism was a school actually famous in the West more than it’s famous in the East.

Ken Taylor
So let me, Mashad. Let me ask you. Let me back you up for a second because you said something about reason on its own without revelation can figure out about God’s existence. Tell me if I’ve got this right. Islam was founded in a in a place where there were many religions already intact and ongoing surrounding it, and and it seems it’s do I have this right? It seems that the the the founders of Islam believed that to win people over to to Islam, they had to use a rational persuasion. So they thought of Islam as a religion that wasn’t just a revealed truth, and you had to have religious experience, but you could kind of be rationally won over to it. Do I have that right?

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, there is definitely in the Quran itself a challenge for people to accept Islam on basis of religion, not blind faith. There is even hadith of saying of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him that the one who prays and and realizing and rationalizing what he is praying or she is praying for has actually more reward from God than one who just imitate in the prayer the parents or or the society. So after later on, Ghazali himself raised a big question. He said, “I would like to seek the truth. Therefore, I should doubt everything, and I should not imitate other people or culture or scholars, and I have to seek it by myself. And this is how he established a method of doubt called methodological doubt that became a philosophical method for Descartes later on. So there is an element of encouraging rationality for faith, and faith blindly is not accepted. Actually, is not well ranked in Islam. Yeah,

Ken Taylor
I think that’s I think that goes against many people’s common conception of Islam. I mean, the deep rationalistic tradition with Islam is, I think, something not known to many people. But we’ve got many callers on the line. John and Richmond, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Speaker 2
Hi, I had a question about the Western philosophy of just basically like what you want to do with your life versus the Islamic philosophy. If there’s a general like sort of consensus on like what your life’s meaning should be about, and if those are contradictory, like how is it possible for two people that are different in their main philosophy to get along?

Ken Taylor
Thanks for the question, John Mashad. What do you think?

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, if the question about the meaning of life and was the mission of of a person in a personal life, yeah,

Ken Taylor
I think he’s wondering. He’s, I think he’s thinking that somehow in Islam, your fundamental orientation to the world and to your life and your purpose is somehow fundamentally different from in Christendom and Western philosophies, and that somehow makes us irreconcilable or something like that. It might go back to

John Perry
Aristotle, who had this notion of you, you don’t. Anyway, it’s usually translated happiness, right? Now that seems like a pretty sensible goal of life. Is that is that totally opposed to Islamic philosophy?

Mashhad Al Allaf
Definitely, the meaning of life, the goal of life, is well defined in Islam, Islamic philosophy. A Muslim, whether a philosopher or not, need to be actively involved in social life to the point that mere spirituality away from the society is really discouraged in Islam. Is not rewarded, and action itself, what’s called amal or working or interacting, is rewarded in Islam as a religious act. So people working during the day, serving their families or the neighborhood or certain like family relief, all of those people are rewarded as doing as being actively interacting with the society, so so the the perceptions of what’s the goal and meaning of life is to be actively doing things, successful things and good or right things in this life in order to be rewarded in the hereafter, and not judge judging other people, not devaluating their actions is just supporting them to be better.

Ken Taylor
1-800-525-9917. That’s 1-800-525-9917. We’d like you to join this conversation. I think we’re having a fascinating conversation. And Keith in San Francisco’s on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Keith. Hello, and thank

Keith
you for this very interesting program. I’d like the guest to elaborate on the relationship between the analytical techniques of the four major Sunni schools of Muslim jurisprudence and various Islamic philosophical movements.

Ken Taylor
Wow, that’s a tough question, Chief. Doing short compass on the radio, but Mashad, I’m sure you’re up to the challenge of doing this briefly and and succinctly, and not losing the rest of our audience.

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, the four schools he mentioned four, but there are more than four schools of jurisprudence actually in Islam. There are also a school for the Shiati called Jaffari. There’s a school called Bahari for Ibn Hazmah Spain. But let’s go at least what he asked for. Schools, the schools of jurisprudence or legal school, they have background or foundation called the principles of jurisprudence, which is basically nothing more than the methodology of reasoning. So, for example, if there are two saying of the prophets, one of them is contradicting the other, or there is a text that is so general. How how you are going to specify it? Then the Suli faq, the Asuli methodology, is going to use reason, senses, another evidence, or maybe an isma or consensus. For example, Islam would say prayers are five for Muslims are five times a day. Now, this is a very general text. How we are going to make this specifically apply to certain people? Then, by akal, by reasoning that first of all, non-Muslims are excluded because the command is only for Muslims. Second, the one who is not mature, such as a child. Is excluded because the command is only for someone who is mature. Third, someone who is mentally incompetent is excluded because the prayer is someone who is aware of what he or she is saying. So, by akal by reasoning, the the jurist can actually make the general text specific and can solve the issues Of contradictions, this is how this is called the methodology of faqr. This methodology itself was shared by some philosophers at early time and mutakalimun theologians. So Al Kindi has some, Al-Qzali has some of that, and this is the logic or the background methodology of both legal theory and Islamic philosophy.

John Perry
So that was a very intriguing question, especially to people who know more about Islam than I do. Let me ask you a question. You’ve already mentioned that Descartes was anticipated by Islamic philosophy with the methodological doubt, but one of the one of the great things that people think about Western philosophy of of the Enlightenment eras, so forth, was Hume’s critique of causation, and it turns out that Hume’s critique of causation, I guess, was anticipated by at least one, maybe two, very early Islamic philosophers. You want to tell us a little bit about that story,

Mashhad Al Allaf
right? Al-Ghazali, in his book *The Incoherence of the Philosophers* chapter 17, he discussed natural philosophy, and and he discussed the issue of causality, and he said that when people see something causing something else, such as fire burns cottons, after period of time of observation, people make correlations of ideas that this causes that. Ghazali think that the correlation is not necessary, and it is habitually established in the mind. Therefore, there is no necessity or certain knowledge to say that in the future there is there is a necessity that the fire is going to burn the cotton. This issue of of causality actually affected some a philosopher called from France called Malibranch, and Gazali would say it’s only at the occasion of cotton meeting fire the burning occurred or taking place, and this occasionalism became philosophy of Malibranch, and I think through Malibranch Hume took these ideas of causality.

Ken Taylor
This is fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff, and the the deep roots of Western philosophy and Islamic philosophy. And we’ll talk about this stuff a little bit more. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re discussing Islamic philosophy with Mashad Alala from the University of Toledo.

John Perry
We’ve talked about the original inspiration for Islamic philosophy, some of the key problems it’s tackled, and the contrasts and anticipations of Western philosophy. In our next segment, we’ll ask whether the two great philosophical traditions, with their interesting connection, provide a more hopeful place to find some reconciliation of the Islamic and Western worldviews than war or or religion.

Ken Taylor
Achieving mutual understanding between Islam and the West when philosophy talk continues.

John Perry
Welcome back to Philosophy Talk. You know, folks, it’s going to be pretty hard to build the 21st century on the shared insights and values of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious extremists. Not to mention the Buddhist religious extremists. I’m sure there must be some of those, although I don’t know much about them. And we’re not going to get a shared worldview on the basis of the insights of our political leaders because they don’t have any insights to share, by and large, with some exceptions. But how about building a shared worldview on the basis of philosophical traditions? Do you see any hope for that? I’m John Perry, and I do. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Ken Taylor
except your intelligence. And I’m Ken Taylor, and join us 1-800-525-9917. We’re going to talk about reconciling Islam and and and the West in this segment. So we’d like your insights on that. Our guest is Mashad Al Alaf from the University of Toledo.

John Perry
Mashad, American and European thought, setting aside religious extremisms with all the noise they make, but the really serious thought seems to be increasingly dominated by a sort of scientific secularism. What insights of traditional and modern Islamic philosophy do you see as providing maybe a helpful corrective to this scientific secularism, or or not? Talk about that, will you?

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, first of all, I just would like to comment on one thing related to relationship between Islam and the West. It is not really about founding a common ground in philosophy and theology. It’s not a theological issues. It’s a sociological issues. In fact, in theology, most of the time, people of the same religion get disagreed on issues. Yeah, good point. In in Islam, in Islam itself. There are many schools of theology, about at least three, four schools, and in Christianity, I would assume there are some, and so on. So this is a field that bring differentiation and disagreements. But we are talking about sociological: how to coexist, how to live together, regardless of the theological disagreements. The Prophet himself, Muhammad peace be upon him. Had a neighbor, a Persian neighbor. He came and invited him. Said, “You are invited to eat dinner with me. Then the prophet said, “What had he? And this, pointing to his wife Aisha, he said, “No, you come by yourself. He said, “No, I’m not coming with you. And he came and invited them another time. And he said, “And this, the wife? He said, “No. And then, for the third time, he finally the the friend said the neighbor said, “Okay, bring your wife. Then the prophet took his wife, laughing in his way, going to to to the neighbor’s house and pushing each other and laughing. This is an indication that the prophet himself took his wife to neighbor’s house, who is not Muslims, and and and he insisted that goes he goes as a family. The whole issue is there is there is an excellent model in the life of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him to establish a relationship with non-Muslims on a social level, regardless of the theological. There is one time when the Prophet met a person, a Muslim person, arguing with the Jew on issue of theology, and ask him why you are arguing. He said, “I was I was forced into the the discussion. He said, “Look, next time if you get forced into something like that, theological issues, just tell them this: your Lord and our Lord is one and the same, and you will be we will be held accountable for your deeds, and we will be held accountable for our deeds, and that’s it. That’s the end of the discussion in theology. We we need to coexist. We need to live together, not to to to discuss philosophical issues that bring disagreement.

Ken Taylor
Okay, that’s that’s a good point. And we you know we have a caller in the line, John from Berkeley. I gather you’re in an interfaith seminary, John. So I assume you have lots of insights about bridging different traditions. Share one with

Speaker 3
us. Oh yes, thank you so much for taking my call. I’m an interfaith seminary. I’m also a retired psychologist, so I bring the two traditions together. And every time we get together, we visit a different religious tradition. We were at the Islamic Cultural Center last month in Berkeley and had a wonderful introduction to Islam and and erased most of our foolish misconceptions. Anyway, my my main insight is to say that when we are truly present to one another without a lot of belief systems, then we reach the heart of the human circumstance, which is we all have the same ultimate questions. We are all struggling to survive. How how can we build bridges and and reach across these divides to to share the beauty of each tradition without getting tangled up with its apparent differences.

Ken Taylor
Good, good question, John. But Mashad, I’m going to put that question to you in a slightly different way. I like the question, but here’s the thing. Here’s one thing that happened in the West, the Enlightenment and all, and lots of stuff. Philosophy stopped looking for religious foundations. Started thinking about the state and shared life in ways that weren’t necessarily grounded in religion. In ways that could coexist across religious differences and all that. You know, the Lockean state and all that. That anything like that ever has anything like that? The Enlightenment, which says human beings have to get together as human beings, despite whatever differences they have, did anything like that happen in sort of modern Islam? Is there a correlate to the Enlightenment?

Mashhad Al Allaf
Yes, in the modern Islamic movements and and philosophy, there is a lot of influence actually from the West. So there is a line of of people who thinks in in in the Marxist way or or existentialist or just analytical analytic philosophy, there are many different trends in the societies nowadays because Islamic Muslim society is so wide and vast. But the idea that science should be without the framework of ethics or religion maybe will not be so pushed and accepted by Islam because Islam operates not as really the empirical method itself, but the framework of stimulating people to work and bring something beneficial to the point in Islam that alm and amal that that reason and sorry actions or practice and theory should be always connected to each other and bringing good results to the society. So Islam would offer to those people and a background and a framework to correct whenever science goes away beyond the ethics. Nowaday we have field called medical ethics, for example, and the reason for discussing medical ethics because we are afraid that human being would be used, for example, in in in the field of medicine, Islam will operate in the same way as as the framework of of building an ethical world view that’s not necessarily theological always. I get

Ken Taylor
your point. Jim in San Francisco has some insights about how we might reconcile. Jim, welcome to four.

Speaker 4
Yeah, thanks. Some of this reconciliation is already going on in shared philosophy. I mean, there’s a group in in Israel in the Middle East called Jerusalem Peacemakers, and they bring together 1000s, in fact, 1000s of conservative Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and Orthodox, and they did a big hug around the old city in May, and they hold gatherings already. Just underscore, and a couple of their people were just in the Bay Area, and it just underscored for me how the differences are much more contemporary and political than religious and historical, of course, differences have existed. But I mean, I think there’s cause for hope, and it’s not just theoretical and and down the road. And we just have to remember that, you know, even in during the Crusades, where did Jews flee? I mean, Jews were attacked as the Crusaders were on their way to attack Muslims, and there’s a lot of shared history that we’re made to think is longer-standing difficulties. And I just wanted to throw that conversation. Yeah. So,

Ken Taylor
Mashad, thanks for the call, Jim. What, Mashad? What do you think? What’s your reaction?

Mashhad Al Allaf
I think that’s an excellent idea. When you bring the the issue of coexistence to reality, where people like demonstrate things for for the very basics of human rights, and and people hug each other and show show the the need for peace, this is the main premise that Islam itself is all about peace. Even the name itself is derived from peace, and people cannot operate and cooperate and with each other unless there is a presupposed state of peace, and and some set of rules and regulations, which nowadays should be actually international law that regulates the the the interactions among among states and and so on. Even he mentioned, like in Spain, when when Muslims were chased or pushed out away from from the the country, the Jews actually after three months, I think in August in 1492, also being pushed by the Christians to to leave the the country, leave Spain, and immediately they move to Morocco, and they still exist in Morocco in a peaceful way. Practice their religion. They have their own scholars, and and they enjoy the religious freedom. There is such a peaceful life actually in the Middle East exists for many centuries, where Muslims and non-Muslims work together, and they know the the boundaries of each other religion with with total respect for like worship, churches, synagogues, and things like that.

John Perry
So, so, Mashad, in order to increase that, let me ask you a practical question from the point of view of a of a you know Westerner who’d like to know more about Islam and Islamic philosophy. Now, I admit, over the years, I’ve tried to read the Quran, and it’s been very difficult. I mean, it’s even worse than reading the Bible because the Quran isn’t really organized like a history book. It seems to have some more literary organization. Now, your book, the Essential Ideas of Islamic Philosophy, that’s not true of that book, from what I’ve read of it. It’s very good reading. But what what what what should we be looking at? What what can we do to learn more about Islamic philosophy and a little bit more about the Islam itself? What what what are your suggested readings for the ignorant Westerners? Two or three or

Ken Taylor
four big highlights.

Mashhad Al Allaf
Well, first of all, in the curriculums of the West, most of the part of Islamic philosophy and medieval philosophy was eliminated. So people teach philosophy. They jump from ancient Greek, a little bit maybe sometimes Vaticanus to Descartes modern philosophy. So they are missing almost 1000 years of education. That’s a big gap. Nowadays, universities are opening classes and offering positions for this part, which is medieval Islamic philosophy and Jewish philosophy. That would be essential for general education because you study systematically in school, but outside the school, people should actually read some verses of the Quran. It’s very hard to read the whole Quran because the beauty of it is actually in Arabic language. But with the translation of the meaning, it’s possible to read it and read some of the interpretations or a little bit of Hadith or saying of the Prophet with it, and and I would really advise people to do it with either a course or or a scholar in the area, or someone can give them some hints about it. For someone to come just to do it on self education, it will be it’s possible, but will be hard tasked to do it. So, reading short verses of the Quran that exist at the very end of the Quran, and take each one of them with commentaries from Muslim scholars who who have been translated into English language, such as Ibn Kathir, for example, or whatever, or Ibn Jari or Tabari, whatever available for translation, with the most. Practical part of the Quran is the saying of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him because he received the Quran as revelation and he commented on it. He so what he did is actually an explanation of the Quran that makes sense.

John Perry
Okay, okay, Mashad, that’s that’s very helpful. We’re running out of time, but thanks a lot, and we’ve really enjoyed having you here on Philosophy Talk. Our

Ken Taylor
guest has been Mashad Al-Alaf. He’s chair of Islamic studies and professor of philosophy at the University of Toledo. He’s author of the Essential Ideas of Islamic Philosophy. We learned a lot from him today, John. We’re not going to be able to dig deeply into what we learned, but we learned a lot from him. Don’t don’t you agree?

John Perry
Yes, absolutely. And we’re going to learn one little bit more, or a lot more, from our next segment, because we’ve got a special treat for the final word on the philosophical legacy of Muhammad. We’re going to turn to Ian Shoals, the 62nd philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoals, when Muhammad died in 632 A.D. the first Muslims had not made any plans for succession. After much violent disagreement, they created a caliphate. Caliph means successor, and the first four kilos, were either relatives or followers of Muhammad, and the early caliphate flourished despite the occasional violent disagreement. Well, even today, violent disagreements happen over the line of succession, right-Muslim leadership. As the Dark Ages reigned in Europe, early Islam experienced a golden age. Muslims controlled most of the world’s wealth. Scholars translated the Greek philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, into Arabic. The Muslims invented algebra. A Muslim mathematician gave us the algorithm. A Muslim invented zero, azimuth, nadir, zenith-all Arabic words. In the 11th century, Muhammad al-Ghazali, since considered by many to be the top thinker in the history of Islamic thought, quit his job as a Baghdad teacher and went into seclusion. He was disturbed by the great wealth, ostentation, and corruption among the viziers and sultans that increasingly vied with each other for pieces of the caliphate pie. He devoted himself to meditation, embracing a mystical Sufi attitude, and eventually wrote 70 books. The most well known in the West was an examination of the ancient Greek species of Islam, called the Incoherence of Philosophy. It was very influential in the West, studied by folks like Thomas Aquinas, and said to be an inspiration for Rene Descartes. One of the many interesting things in this book is his refutation of cause and effect, or rather the impossibility of proving cause and effect by observation. He wrote, “The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary. With any two things, it is not necessary the existence or the non-existence of one follows necessarily from the existence or non-existence of the other. Their connection is due to the prior decision of God. This is a clockwork universe. In other words, if you set fire to a piece of wood once, it does not necessarily follow that the wood will catch next time. Cause and effect is just God’s habitual way of doing things. If He wants to unleash a miracle on us from time to time, disrupting apparent cause and effect, that is God’s privilege. He also discussed what is proper for Muslims to study and what not. Mathematics, no problem. But Muhammad al-Ghazali disapproved of what we now call physics because it is based on observation of the physical world, which can’t really teach us anything because only God knows anything about the physical world. Some scholars believe that the distrust of science, which he represented, is the reason that Islam declined as a force in the world. Muslims may have invented algebra, but it was Leibniz or Newton who turned it into calculus, and it was the West that took the algorithm and turned it into computing and the internet. Also, in the incoherence of philosophy, Al-Ghazali listed three anti-Islamic positions: one, that the world has no beginning in the past and is not created in time; two, that God’s knowledge includes only classes of beings and does not extend to individuals; and three, that after death the souls of humans will never again return into bodies. He issued a brief fatwa declaring that anyone who declares or teaches these positions publicly is an apostate from Islam and can be killed. Now, say what you will about Western geniuses, they never issued fatwas. Though I have a hunch Sir Isaac Newton might have cottoned to the notion. I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
Ian shows the only man who can solve a philosophical problem in 60 seconds.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Manila Productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Copyright 2007.

Ken Taylor
Our executive producer is David Demarest.

John Perry
Special thanks to Devon Strollovich, Daniel Elstein, Zoe Cornelli, Merle Kessler, and Mark Stone.

Ken Taylor
Philosophy Talk is sponsored in part by Powell City of Books on the web at powells.com. Support also comes from the Templeton Foundation

John Perry
and from various groups at Stanford University, the Friends of Philosophy Talk, and the members of KALW San Francisco, where our program originates. The

Ken Taylor
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John Perry
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org. I’m John Perry,

Ken Taylor
and I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening,

John Perry
and thank you for thinking