ISLAMIC PHILOPHY
. Muslim philosophy, on the other hand, would comprise the
philosophical speculations of the one who is a Muslim by convention: these
speculations themselves might well be nihilistic and un-Islamic in character.
This distinction, however, is not entirely justified for Muslim philosophy, in
general, cannot possibly afford to be un-Islamic. If, in a particular case, it
actually happens to be so, it may be the philosophy of this or that particular
person or even, if one likes, the philosophy of this or that particular Muslim,
but it will not be Muslim philosophy' properly speaking.
Actually the
distinction between the two concepts is only one of relative emphasis. In
Islamic philosophy the emphasis is on Islam' while 'philosophy' is secondary in
significance, meaning only a sort of rational understanding. In Muslim
philosophy the characteristic terminology of philosophy in vogue at a
particular period in history is visibly the dominant factor, because it is in
that terminology that the meaning of the Qur'an is to be expressed and conveyed
to others. Due to this the traditional problem of the reconciliation between
philosophy and religion is, and has been, a problem of Muslim philosophy',
rather than of Islamic philosophy'.
Muslim philosophy'
and Islamic philosophy' can be shown to be mutually fitting in another way
also. A Muslim, we understand, can profess his religion at two levels: either
he may hold only to the ritual and moral principles enunciated by the Qur'an
and thus be a good Muslim in the socially acceptable sense of the term; or he
may identify himself with the essence of Islam and so interiorise the ideals
set forth by the 'Book of God'. The second meaning can be expressed no better
than by an incident relating to the Holy Prophet (peace be on him). When
someone asked Hazrat Aisha about his moral character, replied that his
character was the Qur'an itself. Now when a Muslim is stationed at this level
-- more or less, all his activities without exception will be Islamic'. Even
his apparently ordinary and purely worldly behaviour will be 'religious' in the
fullest and most genuine sense of the term. Specifically, for our present
purposes, when he speculates consistently about any matter whatsoever, his
philosophy will be no less Islamic philosophy' than Muslim philosophy'. It will
be impossible to make a distinction between the two concepts.
Thus, ultimately, it
is a matter of choosing a point of view, acquiring a vision of life and values.
In the history of philosophy we encounter a number of godless, heretical
doctrines. There is definitely nothing wrong in knowing and understanding these
doctrines: Knowledge is virtue", Socrates is reported to have said. What
he meant obviously was that a recognition -- with the deepest concern and
conviction at one's disposal -- of what virtue is irresistibly would lead one
to the virtuous action. It can be complementarily added here that knowledge of
vice is a virtue too because the more sincerely and honestly we are convinced that
something is vicious, the more we shall tend to avoid it and, correspondingly,
act virtuously. Analogically, given an organic assimilation of the Islamic
spirit by one of faith, a study of even atheistic and naturalistic philosophies
will fail to do any harm, but rather would put one to a test for which one is
bound to qualify and as a result thereof to become a still better person in the
scale of moral and spiritual values. Thus, it is the subjectivity of the person
which is basically important.
Physical sciences
today have, by and large, an entirely naturalistic worldview whose validity is
not questioned. The man of science has a firm belief in sense-experience as the
only source of knowledge, and in human reason as the adequate instrument of
manipulation. The ground of this belief is not the principles of naturalism
itself for this belief could be the discovery neither of sense-experience nor
of reason. In reality, it has been occasioned by the vested motive of
implementing a forced and artificial separation between the worldly and the
religious, the natural and the supernatural -- the former to be reserved for
so-called specialised scientific treatment and the latter placed under the
suzerainty of the spiritual, the mystical and even the mythical. This unfortunate
watertight distinction is not at all recognised by the Qur'an, whose
epistemology as well as metaphysics is comprehensive and total. It lays great
emphasis on the observation of nature and its exploitation by humans for their
own benefits; but, at the same time, it holds that there are signs of God in
various facts of sense-experience. Nature comprises no less than the habits of
God. Knowledge of nature," says Iqbal, "is the knowledge of God's
behaviour. In our observation of nature we are virtually seeking a kind of
intimacy with the Absolute Ego."8
The Qur'anic concept
iman bil ghaib, which is one of those essential qualifications without which a
person would simply be incapable of getting guidance from the Qur'an,9 implies
this metaphysical dimension of a study of the physical universe. It means that
the spatio-temporal aspect of the world of ordinary observation is not the
be-all and end-all of everything and that there is also a 'world beyond'. Just
as the realm of life presides over the realm of matter and the realm of mind
presides over the realm of both life and matter, so the mo'min has a strong
conviction that at the highest level there is the realm of the Divine which
permeates and presides over all the lower realms of existence -- matter, life
and mind. Thus there is no absolute separation and no polarity between the
'natural' and the 'supernatural'. Conviction in this state of affairs was the
rationale of the earliest Muslim pioneering interest in scientific studies,
despite infatuation with the idealistic metaphysics of the Qur'an.
How does one
determine the meaning of the statements which I have already described as the
primary function of Muslim philosophy? It is illustrative to refer here to a
distinction drawn by philosophers of language between primary and secondary
meanings of words. The primary meaning of a word is its literal meaning, its
lexical or reportive definition. Secondary meanings, on the other hand, are the
various shades of significance of a word that it acquires during its lifetime
i.e., its actual usage in situations of diverse characters. We can take up any
dictionary to confirm this fact. This, really, is the economy measure woven
into the very nature of conventional language so that a separate word need not
be coined for every individual situation that one encounters. The Qur'an makes
a distinction, which it is relevant to mention here, between the muhkamat and
the mutashabihat among its verses.10 The former ones are basic and fundamental
to the overall objectives of the Qur'an. Being thus of primary importance, their
meanings are fixed and determined, and are the same everywhere and always. The
latter, on the other hand, are amenable to various interpretations in accord
with differing environmental situations, needs of people and even levels of
human intellect and understanding. Being allegorical in nature, they have many
layers of meaning, at least one of which must be relevant to a particular
spatio-temporal context. Thus they ensure that the Qur'an is a book of guidance
for everyone and for all times to come.
How should one
interpret the allegorical verses which relate incidentally to the metaphysics
of the Qur'an? There is a special inherent difficulty in the language of the
Qur'an. It is truly believed that the Qur'an is the word of God: it is God's
speech.11 After having 'sent down' His speech, He has taken upon Himself to
preserve its originality and save every syllable of it from any possible human
interference and corruption.12 On the other hand, it is also a plain fact that
the Qur'an is couched in human language which Arabs developed over a period of
time. Those thinkers who have exclusively stressed the latter position have
been encouraged to understand the entire Qur'an literally i.e., in the sense in
which we human beings would normally understand the meanings of words and
propositions. For instance, God is described as hearing, moving, sitting on the
throne, having eyes, a face and so on.13 These attributes of God were
consciously or unconsciously accepted almost exactly in the same way in which
they are employed as regards human beings. Similarly, angels for them were
creatures with wings who flew here and there, sometimes assuming a human form.
Heaven and hell were localities with all the actual paraphernalia ascribed to
them in the Qur'an. And so on.14 These thinkers were the mujassimah, who
wanted, in their own way, to remain closest to the word of God.
However this approach
has never fitted in well with the requirements of a theistic religion and
invariably has led to linguistic confusions. For example, when a human is
called 'good' it is meant that he submits to the moral law or that he resists
temptations, etc. When this epithet with these conventional meanings is applied
to God, immediately we observe the oddities involved in our position. A God who
is required to obey an alien moral law or who may harbour evil intentions is
not at all the Supreme God of Islam Who deserves our unqualified obedience and
Who is the Grand Ideal of all moral and spiritual endeavours. God is unique; so
all His attributes are singular and have no proportion to the apparently
corresponding human attributes.
Those philosophers,
on the other hand, who have emphasised the essentially and exclusively Divine
character of Qur'anic language, tend to believe that religious symbols are
totally unmeaning marks insofar as ordinary human comprehension is concerned:
they have no cognitive content for man. It is observed that religious
statements are not statements worth the name because they do not mark out any
one state of affairs. They are taken by the religious person to be compatible
with any and every human situation. Specifically, our knowledge of objects and
events has nothing to do with our knowledge of God's character. For instance,
when we see floods, tempests and earthquakes upsetting human habitations,
innocent persons dying in wars and accidents, or small children being snatched
away by death from their parents, we still tenaciously hold on to the assertion
that God is kind, loving, just, and so on. In this regard, a parable was
developed by Antony Flew from a tale told by John Wisdom:
Once upon a time two
explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many
flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, 'Some gardener must tend this plot'.
The other disagrees: 'There is no gardener'. So they pitch their tents and set
to watch. No gardener is ever seen. 'But perhaps he is an invisible gardener'.
So they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with
bloodhounds. . . . But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received
a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The
bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the believer is not convinced. 'But there
is a gardener invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener
who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look
after the garden which he loves'. Al last, the sceptic despairs: 'But what
remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible,
intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or
even from no gardener at all?'15
Substituting God for
gardener, the above is the celebrated 'argument from falsification' against the
reportive and descriptive character of religious propositions. This argument
has been criticised on many counts. For our present purposes we may simply
point out that the assertion of a proposition and the falsification of its
opposite cease to be complementary to each other specially when we are dealing
with two different levels of existence. When we assert the attributes of God,
we are describing a transcendental reality and our language is symbolic, but
when we have to deny the opposites of these attributes we are dealing with the
world of our normal experience and our language is literal. The words that we
use in both these cases may be the same, but still their meanings are widely
different because of the different universes of discourse to which they belong.
Hence no comparison can be made between them nor can they stand at par with
each other. However, to a layman or even to a rationalist for whom faith in God
is extremely relevant to everyday life and for whom the Qur'an is the book of
guidance in all departments of life, such a dissociation of normal experience
from the Qur'anic metaphysics is simply unthinkable.
We have explained two
extreme points of view regarding the meaning of religious language and have
seen reasons to reject the claim of each one of them to exclusive truth. But,
as both do have some elements of truth in them, the correct state of affairs
must lie somewhere between them. The Muslim philosopher should set before
himself the task of determining and delineating that middle state of affairs.
He must search out the meaning of religious language which takes care of its
Divine origin as well as its human context. How is this to be done? How and at
what platform is a meeting between man and God to be arranged?
The way usually
recommended in this connection and unwarily followed by laymen is the method of
analogy. To understand what analogy is let's take the word 'healthy'. Normally
this characteristic is attributed to a living organism. But then we also say
about a complexion that it is healthy or that a particular drink or habit is healthy
and so on. Similarly, we attribute sweetness to sugar, a smell, a song, a
breeze or a little baby. This is the basis of an argument by analogy. Sugar, a
smell, a song, a breeze or a little baby are sweet, not exactly in the same
sense and not absolutely in different senses. Each one is sweet but so only
according to its own specific nature. On this pattern, when we say about God
that he is knowing, powerful, kind, just, or that He sees, hears, and so on, we
usually understand these attributes on the analogy of verbally the same
attributes in human beings. Man possesses them according to his nature and God
would possess them according to His own nature.
But what God's nature
is we don't know. It is obvious that unless we already know God to some extent
analogy cannot operate fruitfully for a comprehensive understanding of His
character. So the entire reasoning is misleading. Analogy is tolerably
effective as long as all the analogates belong to the sensible nature. But the
moment we talk about supersensible realm we are involved in a circle: in order
to know God we must use analogy and for the use of analogy itself we must
already know God's nature. However, if, for a moment, we do not take into
account this 'unknown nature of God', the reasoning ultimately results in a
position which is not very different from anthropomorphism.
Due to these
difficulties some philosophers of religion have, instead, recommended what they
call analogy of grace. According to this kind of analogy it is the
characteristics of God that are ontologically first; their human analogues are
derivative and secondary. It is by virtue of the grace of God that a liaison, a
community, is established between Himself and human so that it is rendered
possible for us to talk of Him in human terms. One cannot possibly talk about
God in divine language, but He can condescend, if He chooses, to communicate
with human in their language. "If," for instance, "we know about
God as the creator, it is neither wholly nor partially because we have a prior
knowledge of something which resembles creation. It is only because it has been
given to us by God's revelation to know Him, and what we previously thought we
knew about originators and causes is called in question, turned around and
transformed."16 In the religious -- specifically, mystical -- literature
of Islam, taufiq of God is pretty equivalent to the grace of God mentioned
here. Ghazali calls it nur-e-Ilahi (light of God). In his autobiography
Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal,17 Ghazali writes:
This (i.e. the truth)
did not come about by systematic demonstration or marshalled argument, but by a
light (nur) which God, Most High, cast into my breast. That light is the key to
the greater part of knowledge. Whoever thinks that the understanding of things
Divine rests upon strict proofs has in his thought narrowed down the wideness
of God's mercy. . . . From that light must be sought an intuitive understanding
of things Divine. That light at certain times gushes forth from the springs of
Divine generosity, and for it one must watch and wait.18
However, this
'watching and waiting' for Divine generosity' is not an entirely passive
expectancy, but rather an acquisition with a positive content. In order to
establish the credentials, the genuineness and authenticity of this state,
which the Qur'an describes by the term iman or, more appropriately,
iman-bil-ghaib a lot of concerted effort is required. Faith indicates an
attitude of receptivity and preparedness to accept the will of God. The man of
faith may be put on trial out of which invariably he emerges successful with a
receptivity keener still and so a stronger and more indomitable faith. Even
death in the way of God', the shahadah,19 would be incurred with a smiling
face. It earns for the shaheed eternal life and constant companionship with
God.
The grace or light of
God as available to the man of faith necessarily requires that we establish a
direct personal encounter with Him. By virtue of this encounter ultimately one
is steeped in divinity so as to be able to look at everything, including the
language of the Qur'an, with Divine effulgence and thus discover the true
significance of His revelations. Canonical prayer, which is an effective
instrument of encounter, has been given very great importance among the duties
enjoined by the Islamic shari'ah. The Qur'an mentions it no less than 80 times.
In the mystic literature of Islam, it is pointedly described as spiritual
ascendance par excellence for the believers.
There is no special
way for the realization of this encounter. A mystic who struggles hard to
realise his own selfhood (I-amness), a natural scientist who gets involved in
the study of the physical universe, a historian who tries to discover the
principles of the rise and fall of nations, a moralist who is in search of
higher and higher ideals involved in human nature, and so on -- all are equally
legitimate candidates for a meeting with God provided they are honest in their
intentions, sincere in their efforts and strongly committed to the faith that
beyond this world of space and time there is also a supersensuous and
supernatural reality. According to the verdict of the Qur'an itself, the signs
of God are spread everywhere in the universe: "And Allah's is the East and
the West, so whithersoever you turn, thither is Allah's face."20
What I have said
concerning the function of Muslim philosophy appears to have a family
resemblance with that known in the modern Anglo-American world as
'philosophical analysis'. The traditional philosophers, we know, had raised
certain questions about the constitution of the universe, its relationship with
appearances, etc. They laboured hard to answer these questions of supreme
significance, but failed to arrive at any answer on which they could all agree.
The modern linguistic philosophers are firmly of the opinion that the failure
was due not to any defective reasoning on the part of these thinkers, but
rather to their inability to evaluate the status of the questions themselves.
These questions, it is now believed, were pseudo-questions and could not in
fact admit of any answer: that is why even the most thorough investigations of
the philosophers turned out to be futile and fruitless. Thus the language of
the questions is to be analysed and their logic understood so that they can be
dealt with properly. The philosophers of today are not only reformulating and
rephrasing the questions; they are, in general, making efforts to construct a
model language free from the ambiguities and vaguenesses that usually infest
the ordinary, conventional language. Philosophical analysis is neither more nor
less than "an obstinate pursuit of clarity in our meanings and in the way
our meanings are expressed through language." However, as must be evident
from above, the operation proposed here is different. Linguistic analysis in
the West has been inspired by Logical Positivism, an empirical, naturalistic
and anti-metaphysical movement which thrived on the idea that a truth in order
to be genuine and valid must be either analytically or empirically verifiable.
But as the language of the Qur'an is a revelation from God, every syllable has
an avowed metaphysical context. It has to be given a special kind of treatment,
as detailed above.
God-consciousness, I
reiterate, is of immense significance for the truest and the most authentic
comprehension of the Qur'anic language. For the inculcation of
God-consciousness what is required further is the purification of the self and
bringing out its essential nature by eradicating from it all that is redundant
and accretive. This, however, is the ideal and, like all ideals, is not
completely realisable: it has to be approximated as much as is humanly
possible. The more free from all contamination is a person's self the clearer
becomes one's vision and the better equipped one's not only to see things in
true perspective but also to act in a truly moral manner. One then attains a
super-rational, mystical understanding of God, His will and His entire scheme
of things, which is the subject-matter of the Qur'anic text.
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