220816P - CONTROVERSY ABOUT TRANSMISSION VS. REASON

Presented at the IIIT European Summer School on 16 August 2022 by Omar Hasan K Kasule Sr. MB ChB (MUK), MPH (Harvard), DrPH (Harvard) Professor of Epidemiology and Bioethics

ORIGINS OF GREEK REASON

• Socrates سقراط (d.399 BC) the father of European philosophy asked a lot of questions, provided few answers, and wrote nothing down. He inspired the thinking of philosophers who came after him.
• Plato افلاطون (d. 347 BC) was Socrates’s student. He denied the reality of the material world and taught that the apparent and constantly changing world of concrete objects grasped by the senses was different from the unseen world of abstract objects that was grasped by pure reason.
• Aristotle ارسطو (d. 322 BC) called the first teacher (al mu’allim al awwal) by Muslim philosophers, was Plato’s student who synthesized previous philosophies to create the lexicon and methods of inquiry of today’s European philosophy. His interests were an empirical study of physical and biological sciences, logic, and ethics. He had an impact on Christian and Muslim theologians

MUSLIM THINKERS INFLUENCED BY REASON - 1

• Al Farabi, Abu Nasr Muhammad bin Muhammad Al-Farabi (d. 950 CE) was known as the second teacher (al mu’allim al thaani) following Aristotle. He preserved original texts of Greek philosophy and wrote comments and treatises about them. His epistemology was near that of Plato inclined to rational knowledge.
• Ibn Sina, Abu Ali al Husain Ibn Abdullah Ibn al Hasan ibn Ali (d. 1037 CE) was a physician and philosopher influenced by Aristotelian philosophy. He was midway between the rationalism of Plato and the empiricism of Aristotle.

MUSLIM THINKERS INFLUENCED BY REASON - 2

• Ibn Rushd, Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rušd.  (d. 1198CE) wrote commentaries on Aristotle and became famous in Europe. He was closer to the empiricism of Aristotle.
• Fakhruddin AlRazi, Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Umar Ibn al Husayn al Bakri al Tabaristani (d. 1210CE) was a polymath, a philosopher, a pioneer of inductive logic, and a mufassir. In his book Asas al taqdiis fi ilm al kalam listed 4 alternatives when evidence from aql and naql are apparently contradictory: (a) accept the contradiction, (b) reject both, (c) accept naql and reject aql, (d) accept aql and interpret naql (t’awill). The 4^th alternative caused much controversy.

IMPACT OF GREEK REASON ON MUSLIM THOUGHT - 1

• I have a hypothesis that most controversies among Muslims past and present arise out of how they use the two sources of knowledge.
• ‘Ilm al kalam (The science of discourse) with the main concern about the sources of knowledge (naql vs ‘aql) arose as a defense of the Islamic ‘aqidah using against doubters and detractors who used reason. It also mediated the dispute between ahl al hadith and ahl al ra’ay.
• The main Sunni Schools of Kalam were Maturidiyah and Ash’ariyah which combined transmission with reason. The Tahawiyyah emphasized transmission. The Mu’tazilah went to the extreme of using reason.

IMPACT OF GREEK REASON ON MUSLIM THOUGHT - 2

• The Ash’ari school named after Imaam Abu Alhasan al Ash’ari (d. 936CE) followed the basic tenets of Islam and opposed the mutazilah for their over-emphasis on reason and opposed those who over-emphasized transmission and taqlid: literalists (dhahiriyah), anthropotheists (mujasimiin) and traditionalists (ahl al hadith).
• The Maturdi school was named after Abu Mansur Muhammad Al-Maturidi (d. 944CE). The school agreed with the Asharis on most doctrines and differed on others.

IMPACT OF GREEK REASON ON MUSLIM THOUGHT - 3

• Al Tahawiyyah[1] took the position regarding attributes of Allah accepting them as they are mentioned in the Qur’an (tafwiidh) without interpretation (ta’awiil). Those who interpreted the attributes were aiming at a complete separation of divine and human attributes (tanziih) and trying to avoid resemblance & anthropomorphism (tashbiih & tajsiim) but were accused of rejecting the attributes (ta’atwiil & nafyu).
• Mutazilah engaged in speculative theology and used reason to reach conclusions rejected by a majority of Muslims for example that the Qur’an was created and not part of Allah’s essence, good and evil can be derived from reason, etc

IMPACT OF GREEK REASON ON MUSLIM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - 1

• Greek thought, logic, and epistemology impacted the ummat in 2 episodes
• In the first 3 centuries of hijra Muslims translated Greek science into Arabic. They also added their experimental findings.
• In the colonial and post-colonial eras when European education systems influenced by Greek epistemology were imposed on the ummat. The educated elite was brought up on Greek epistemology and worldview. They experienced a dichotomy because these views did not always agree with their Islamic worldview. Unlike the earlier generation, the new generation mostly consumed and did not add to the knowledge in a significant way.

IMPACT OF GREEK REASON ON MUSLIM SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - 2

• The Qur’an and empirical observation: Driven by the Qur’anic motivation to observe the environment for signs of Allah signs in people (anfus) and the cosmic horizons (aafaaq) [41:53] early Muslims observed and experimented with correcting wrong Greek scientific facts.
• Improved Muslim science passed to Europe during the Crusades triggered the European Renaissance that led to the scientific, agricultural, and industrial revolutions that made Europe a World power.
• The decline of Muslim science: Muslims learned and benefitted from Greek empirical science and technology. Muslim scientific knowledge declined by the end of the first Abbasid era due to political instability and Greek philosophy, epistemology, and logic that were more deductive than inductive and discouraged experimentation.
• I hypothesized that Muslim science and technology would have developed more if there was no contact with Greek knowledge.

MUSLIM SCHOLARS’ REJECTION OF GREEK REASON-1

• Al-Ghazali, Hujjat al Islam Al Mujaddid Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭūsiyy al-Ġaz(z)ālīy; (d. 1111 CE) wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa) rejecting the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and attacking Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina and Al Farabi, etc. He disproved their arguments using logical arguments and texts from the wahy. Al Ghazali’s writings impacted European scholars like Thomas Aquinas (who knew Arabic), David Hume, Dante, Moses Ben Maimon
• Ibn Rushd responded to Al Ghazali’s attack on Greek philosophy in a book Tahatuf al Tahatuf (incoherence of the incoherence) arguing that reason cannot contradict wahy because they are two different methods of reaching the truth and ‘truth cannot contradict truth’. Ibn Rushd argued that if wahy and ‘aql contradict wahy must be interpreted allegorically (ta’awil) by the people of intellect (ulu al albaab) [3:7].

MUSLIM SCHOLARS’ REJECTION OF GREEK REASON-1

• Ibn Taymiyah, Sheikh al Islam Taqī ad-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328 CE). His name is from the female side of his family named after Taymiyah famous for her scholarship and piety. He refuted Aristotelian philosophy. He authored Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa al-naql (Removing Conflict between Reason and Revelation) also called Al-Muwāfaqa (Harmony). He used logical arguments and textual evidence to prove that clear ‘aqli (sariih al ma ‘aquul) agrees with correctly transmitted naqli (sahih al manquul).
• Lack of contradiction between ‘aql and naql underlies the movement of integration of epistemology (i.epistemology) and integration of knowledge (IOK)

ILM NAQLI vs ILM NAQLI: PURPORTED CONTRADICTION - 1

• Intellectual battles arose between the Muslim philosophers and the traditionalists. Abu Hamid al Ghazzali who studied and admired philosophy and later turned against it wrote Tahafut al Falasifah (incoherence of the philosophers) with a rejoinder by Ibn Rushd the grandson in Tahafut al Tahafut (incoherence of the incoherent).
• Greek ideas influenced the intellectual debate about ‘aql and naql and many Muslim scholars wrote about the contradiction between ‘aql and naql. A common thread was giving ‘aql more prominence than it deserved vis-à-vis naql.

ILM NAQLI vs ILM NAQLI: PURPORTED CONTRADICTION - 2

• Fakhr Alddiin Al Razi and other philosophers developed the general rule, (al qanun al kulli), to handle the purported contradiction between ‘aql and naql. Al Razi in his book Asas al taqdiis fi ilm al kalam listed 4 alternatives when evidence from ‘aql and naql are ‘apparently’ contradictory. 
• The 4 alternatives
• combine them (jam’u bainahuma) - impossible
• reject both (radduhuma) – not realistic
• accept naql and reject ‘aql - not accepted because ‘aql is necessary to understand naql. Rejecting ‘aql means also rejection of naql
• accept ‘aql and re-interpret naql (t’awiil) – This is the only alternative

IBN TAYMIYAH’S ARGUMENTS AGAINST CONTRADICTION - 1

• Ibn Taymiyah rejected the contradiction in his major work ‘Rejection of the contradiction between aql and naql’ dar’u taarudh al aql wa al naql. The main purpose of the book was to reject the general rule Ibn Taymiyah used rational arguments supported by Qur’an to reject the contradiction between ‘aql and naql.
• Ibn Taymiyyah like others in his times looked at ‘ilm aqli mainly as rational knowledge so his arguments are difficult to follow by those in our generation where data-driven empirical knowledge is the main expression of ‘ilm aqli

IBN TAYMIYAH’S ARGUMENTS AGAINST CONTRADICTION - 2

• The book has a lot of relevant digressions that are difficult to follow for those of our generation who did not experience the philosophical battles in the era of ilm al kalam
• The conclusion of Ibn Taymiyah was that clear aql (sariih al ma’aquul) does not contradict correct naql (sahih al manqul)
• We can reach the same conclusion from the tauhidi paradigm: all knowledge (‘aqli and naqli) is from the same Creator God so it cannot be contradictory

NO CONTRADICTION BETWEEN TRANSMISSIIN AND REASON Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa al-naql [FROM UKRAINE LECTURE]
 

[1] متن العقيدة الطحاوية  بيان عقيدة اهل السنة والجماعة للالمام ابي جعفر الطحاوي