Skeptical And Counter-Skeptical Trends In Medieval Islam

Like his predecessor al-Kindi and his successor Ibn Sina, he (al-Razi) was also a philosopher but unlike them, he made no attempt to reconcile Greek philosophy and Islamic religion. To him the two were irreconcilable. In fact, he was a radical thinker who

rejected the concept of prophecy, challenged Koranic dogma, and subordinated theology to philosophy. In this respect, he was rare if not exceptional in Islam. (Hitti,10)

Have you not seen how Allah created the seven heavens one above the other, setting in them the moon as a light and the sun as a lantern? Allah has caused you to grow from the earth, and to it He will return you. Then He will bring you forth. (Quran, ch. 71:15-16)

The tenth principle is that Allah – the Exalted – has sent Prophet Muhammed – the praise and peace be upon him – as the seal of prophets and as an abrogator of all previous religions before him: the religions of the Jews and the Christians and the Sabians (a Judaeo – Christian sect). He (Allah) upheld him with unmistakable miracles and wonderful signs such as splitting of the moon, the praise of the pebbles, and causing the dumb animals to speak, as well as water flowing from between his fingers and the unmistakable sign of the Glorious Koran with which he challenged the Arabs. (Al-Ghazali,5)


INTRODUCTION

The Arabs did not have philosophy, mathematics, or any rational sciences as part of their culture and tradition before the advent of Islam. Although they were aware of Jewish and Christian religions because Jews and Christians lived among them, they themselves were idolaters. They were unsophisticated in their beliefs and outlook. When they had embraced Islam and they conquered territories outside Arabia in the seventh and eighth centuries, they came in contact with other civilizations and cultures, philosophy, and other rational sciences such as mathematics, astronomy, physics etc. that had been transmitted from Greece into these countries.

During the time of the Abbasi’d Khalifah (Caliph) Mamun-al-Rashid who had established a Bait-el-Hikmah (House of Wisdom) in Baghdad, the influence of the exotic thought seeped into Islamic culture and its impact on the Arab way of understanding the teachings of Quran was inevitable. Works of Greek philosophy and natural sciences were available in Alexandria, Egypt, and some other Syrian cities. Mamun-al-Rashid employed scholars of all religions, Jewish, Christianity, Islam, etc. for the purpose of translating these works into Arabic. In spite of the strong hold of Islamic theological dogma on the minds of the Arabs, skepticism and rational thinking gradually germinated and flowered under the encouragement and protection provided by the Khalifah.

The first skeptics of Islam called themselves Mutazilites, those who keep to themselves. They preached that God was a Perfect Being and took no attributes other than His unity into account. This led to the belief that the text of Quran was created and not eternal (qadim). Encouraged by the spirit of free thought, many notable philosophers and scientists emerged, in due time, who continued with the development of sciences and philosophy building upon the Greek heritage. Al-Kindi was the first such Muslim Arab philosopher who created a doctrine for conciliation between Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies. This approach became quite popular in later Arabian philosophical thought. He started interpreting Quranic text rationally and wherever he encountered conflict, he devised an easy escape through allegorical exegesis for the resolution of the conflict. He suggested that wherever the Quranic text appeared contrary to reason, the Quranic text should be interpreted allegorically or symbolically.

Subsequent scholars used this device with mixed results. For example, Ibn Rushd proclaimed (11), “Since the religion (Islam) is true and summons to the study which leads to knowledge of the Truth, we the Muslims know definitely that demonstrative study does not lead to (conclusions) conflicting with what Scripture has given us; for truth does not oppose truth but accords with it and bears witness to it.” Thus it was a given that the Scripture was infallible and true, every thing else needed to be brought in harmony with the book by allegorical interpretation, by twisted argument or simply by subterfuge. Ibn Rushd was later criticized by others for having double standards.

There were hundreds of noteworthy Muslim philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, and contributors to other sciences, who had developed original knowledge in the medieval times from which the rest of the world benefited; however all of them cannot be discussed herein for lack of space and scope. Instead only a few philosophers who were most prominent in their own time and who have left a permanent imprint on the history of the evolution of sciences and philosophy will be discussed here. Of necessity, the discussion will be restricted to al-Razi, the great doctor of medicine who is latinized in the western world by the name of Rhazes, Ibn Sina, the successor of al-Razi, the unsurpassed medical doctor and the great philosopher, al-Ghazali, Hujjat-el-Islam (Proof of Islam), a great philosopher who had everlasting influence on Islamic thought and who used the rational argument to counter the philosophy of Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, and lastly Ibn Rushd who is most revered in the western world than in the Islamic world to which he belonged. Other philosophers will be mentioned en passant only when occasion arises for reference.

Al-RAZI – A BELIEVER OF GOD BUT NOT OF PROPHETS

The smallest measure of original thought, even if it does not reach un-revisable truth, al-Razi insists, helps to free the soul from its thrall in this world and secure for us that immortality which was so wrongly described and so vainly promised by the Prophets. (Goodman, 8)

Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakarya Al-Razi (865-930) was born at Rayy near modern Teheran in 865. He derived his last name al-Razi (or latinized version Rhazes) from his birth- place. He is mainly remembered for his work in medicine although he was much more versatile and the range of his intellectual activities hardly left any area of knowledge current in his time, unexplored and in which he did not make a significant contribution. He was a prolific writer, he is said to have written more than two hundred works.

According to Hitti (10), “Al-Nadim’s Fihrist …. lists one hundred and thirteen major and twenty-eight minor works by al-Razi. One of his principal works on alchemy, the Kitab-el-Asrar, (the book of secrets) was rendered into Latin by the eminent translator Gerard of Cremona and became a chief source of knowledge until superseded in the fourteenth century by Jabir’s works.” Hitti (9) further dwells on al-Razi’s contributions: “Two of his medical works may be singled out: al-Hawi (the comprehensive book) and al-Judari-wal-Hasbah (small pox and measles). True to its name, al-Hawi was a veritable medical encyclopedia summing up what the Arabs knew of Greek, Syriac, Persian, and Hindi medicine and enriched by the addition of the author’s experiments and experience.”

Al-Hawi was first translated in Latin by the Sicilian Jewish physician Faraj ben Salim. It was printed under a new title Continents from 1486 onwards. A fifth edition was printed in Venice in 1542. According to Hitti (9), “al-Razi’s monograph on small pox and measles, an ornament to Arab medical literature, is considered the earliest of its kind. Translated into Latin, it was printed about forty times between 1498 and 1866; it was translated into a number of modern languages including English (1848). It confirmed the author’s reputation as one of the keenest thinkers and greatest clinicians not only of Islam but of Christendom.”

As recent as May 1970 (4), the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized that “..his (al-Razi’s) writings on small pox and measles show originality and accuracy and his essay on infectious diseases was the first treatise on the subject.” Writing in their book “The History of Psychiatry”, Alexander and Sheldon (2) noted, “In the field of psychiatry, Rhazes was as good as the finest of the Hippocratic physicians. He was a careful describer of all illnesses, including mental ones. He combined psychological methods and physiological explanations in a way reminiscent of Hippocratics, and he used psycho-therapy in a primitive but dynamic fashion.”
Al-Razi’s picture hangs in the Hall of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Paris.

While al-Razi’s medical contributions are lauded and prominently described by historians, his philosophical work is generally bypassed without much comment. His views about prophet-hood, religion, and divine revelation made him unpopular in the Islamic world. “Given the general repugnance toward al-Razi’s philosophical ideas among his contemporaries and medieval successors, few of these works were copied”, remarked Goodman(8). Goodman (8) further stated that his “.. Other works deal with eros, coitus, nudity and clothing, the fatal effects of Simoom…One work defends the proposition that God does not interfere with the actions of the other agents.” Al-Razi described in his Sira-el-falsafiyya (Philosophical Way of Life) that “..his has been a life of moderation, excessive only in his devotion to learning, he associated with princes never as a man at arms or an officer of state but always, and only, as a physician and a friend (8).” Al-Razi believed in God but not in prophets. He considered prophets to be impostors.
According to Alexander and Sheldon (2), “Rhazes always fought charlatanism and stood by his principles as a physician and a man. When the patriarch of Bokhara argued with Rhazes and could not budge the great teacher from his point, he sentenced him to be hit over the head with his own book until the book or the head broke. Rhazes was blinded by this punishment and remained sightless because he would not undergo an operation by a surgeon who was unfamiliar with the anatomy of the eyeball.”

IBN SINA – THE AL-SHAYKH AL-RAIS (THE DEAN OF THE LEARNED)

In the 1950’s three millenary (according to the lunar calendar) celebrations were held in Ibn Sina’s honor by Persians, Turks, and Arabs. The Turks claimed him because of his father’s birthplace Balkh, where Turkish and Persian were spoken.The Teheran and Baghdad celebrations were distinguished by including participants from four continents. A feature of the Teheran celebration was unveiling Ibn Sina’s statue at Hamadan, where a new tomb for him was built. (Hitti,9)

Abu Ali al-Hussain Ibn Abdallah Ibn Sina (981-1037) , popularly known as Avicenna in the western world, was born in 981 at Afshana near Bokhara (Transoxania). Although he was Persian (Iranian) by birth, Ibn Sina wrote most of his works in Arabic, the prevalent language of the scientific and philosophical expression at that time. Ibn Sina was a truly gifted person and had a knack of absorbing easily whatever he set his eyes on to read. At the age of ten years, he had memorized Quran and at the age of sixteen, he had mastery on most of the known sciences at that time. He is said to have difficulty in grasping the Aristotelian Metaphysics in the beginning but when one of al-Farabi’s books on the subject came to his hand, it was as if a light shone inside him and his difficulties disappeared. He gained access to the well-stocked library of Bokhara’s Governor after he cured him of his illness. He virtually devoured the reading material available in the library.

He was born in politically turbulent times and went through ups and downs several times in his life. He wrote his al-Qanun-fi-al-Tibb (popularly known as Canon in the west) at Hamadan. His Canon was really encyclopedic in its coverage of the Hippocratic and Galenic traditions “synthetized with Syro-Arabic and Indo-Persian sources and supplemented by the author’s experience and experimentation. He made even old material in it look like new and usable:more methodical in arrangement, classification and presentation than al-Hawi, (9).” It was translated in Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the third of the fifteenth century and ran into three editions. According to Alexander and Sheldon (2), “The book (Canon) became the medical bible in Asia and later in Europe and was used until the dawn of anatomical experimentation in the sixteenth century. Robinson, the medical historian, considered The Canon the most influential book ever written.” Like al-Razi, Ibn Sina wrote prolifically and on every subject that was prevalent in his time. He wrote on mathematics, mechanics, music, philosophy, and even poetry. “His most celebrated Arabic poem describes the descent of soul into the body from the Higher Sphere (1)”.

In philosophy, he built on Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic foundations and formulated his own ideology. According to Ibn Sina (11), “God was the First Cause or Creator, the necessary Being in whom essence and existence were one. From Him there emanated a series of ten intelligences, ranging from the First Intelligence down to the Active Intelligence which governed the world of embodied beings. It was from the Active Intelligence that the ideas were communicated to the human body by a radiation of the divine light, and thus the human soul was created.” “He (Ibn Sina’s God) differs from the Islamic God in the rational interpretation of his attributes and in his creativity. Creation was not ex nihilo. Matter was eternal (qadim) and the process was limited in neither time nor place. It was rather one of his emanations as a consequence of His will and being (11).” This question of eternity of matter became contentious and was one of the three issues on which al-Ghazali declared al-Farabi and Ibn Sina as kafirs (infidels) and those who believed in it, punishable by death.

Ibn Sina also believed that bodily resurrection after the death cannot be explained rationally and is therefore denied. He however believed that the soul was eternal and would survive without its physical embodiment. Such verses in Quran that refer to physical resurrection should be understood and explained ‘allegorically’. He also had a different understanding of the nature of prophet-hood than the traditional belief. According to him (11), “..prophecy was not simply a grace of God; it was a kind of human intellect, and indeed the highest kind. The prophet would participate in the life of the hierarchy of intelligences, and could rise as high as the First Intelligence. This was not an exclusive gift to prophets only, however; the man of high spirited gifts could also attain to it by the way of ascesis.”

Ibn Sina was a free thinker who believed in the existence of God; he would not however accept facts without analyzing them rationally. His contributions to medical science were monumental and his impact on medieval Islamic science and philosophy noteworthy. Among many of his views divergent from the Islamic tradition was the issue of freewill. “If human beings were controlled by divine necessity, they are not responsible for wrong doing and should not be punished by a just God. If they are not controlled, God’s sovereignty is compromised,” reasoned Ibn Sina (9). According to Quran, “Had Allah pleased He could have guided all people” (Ch. 13:31).

Ibn Sina’s book on philosophy was titled al-Shifa (healing) and its abridgment al-Najah (deliverance). Al-Shifa gained worldwide readership like his Canon and was much appreciated for its depth and originality. It was published in the twentieth century in six volumes (Cairo, 1952-65) and is considered to be the largest work by one author. Ibn Sina had a kind of free style of living. He rationalized his drinking of wine by suggesting, “By religious law wine is illegal for the fool; by intellectual law it is legal for the intelligent.” He said that he started drinking wine to keep awake during night for study. Despite his rationalization, Quran forbids drinking alcohol for every one.

Ibn Sina was unique and deservingly one of the greatest versatile human beings of the last millennium. “An impressive monument to the life and works of the man who became known as the ‘doctor of doctors’ still stands outside Bukhara museum and his portrait hangs in the Hall of the Faculty of Medicine in the University of Paris (1).”

AL-GHAZALI – THE GREATEST MYSTICAL THEOLOGIST OF ISLAM

Our present life in relation to the future is perhaps only a dream, and man, once dead, will see things in direct opposition to those now before his eyes; he will then understand that word of the Quran, “Today we have removed the veil from thine eyes and thy sight is keen.”

Such thoughts as these threatened to shake my reason, and I sought to find an escape from them. But how? In order to disentangle the knot of this difficulty, a proof was necessary. Now a proof must be based on primary assumptions, and it was precisely these of which I was in doubt. This unhappy state lasted about two months, during which I was , not, it is true, explicitly or by profession, but morally and essentially, a thoroughgoing skeptic….. I owed my deliverance, not to concatenation of proofs and arguments, but to the light which God caused to penetrate into my heart. (Al-Ghazali,6)

Abu Hamid Ibn Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al-Shafi’i al-Ghazali (1058-1111), known as Al-Gazel in the western world, was born in 1058 in Khorasan , Iran, twenty-one years after the death of Ibn Sina and one hundred and eight years after the death of al-Farabi. He received his education in the prevalent curricula at Nishapur and Baghdad. He excelled in the studies of Islamic theology and philosophy in recognition of which he was appointed a Professor of Law at the Nizamiyah university of Baghdad that was the most prominent university at that time. But after a few years, he forsook this prized appointment and became a wandering ascetic.

At the age of thirty-six years, he went through an intellectual crisis, a sort of catharsis, a period of doubt and soul-searching, and skepticism. However, he returned to his faith in Islam with renewed vigor and determination and abandoned rationalism that had created the doubts in his mind to start with. He narrates this experience in his book “Munkidh min-al-Dalal (Confessions, or Deliverance from Error), “Again, the eye sees a star and believes it as large as a piece of gold, but mathematical calculations prove, on the contrary, that it is larger than the earth. These notions, and all others which the senses declare true, are subsequently contradicted of falsity in an irrefragable manner by the verdict of reason. Then I reflected on fundamental principles…Who can guarantee you that you can trust to the evidence of reason more than to that of the senses?”

By tenuous and convoluted arguments against rationalism but wholly satisfactory to himself, al-Ghazali chose the path of divine revelation, in which he had undivided faith, and spent most of his life in waging a vendetta against philosophical ideas of al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and others who had adopted Aristotelian and Neo-Paltonic philosophy as their point of departure. He wrote his universally renowned book Tahafut-al-falasifa (The Incoherence of Philosophers) between 1091 and 1095, some fifty four to fifty nine years after the death of Ibn Sina. His polemic is mainly aimed at al-Farabi and Ibn Sina.

In this monumental book, al-Ghazali had considered twenty questions attributed to the philosophers and he refuted them on every count. He used the philosophical argument and approach in pointing out the defects in Ibn Sina’s philosophy. The book is known for its excellence of argument and remains a book of reference to this date. In the conclusion of his Tahafut, al-Ghazali (7) stated:
If some one says, “You have explained the doctrine of these (philosophers); do you then say conclusively that they are infidels and that the killing of those who uphold their beliefs is obligatory?” We say: pronouncing them infidels is necessary in three questions. One of them is the question of the world’s pre-eternity and their statement that God’s knowledge does not encompass the temporal particulars among individual (existents). The third is their denial of the resurrection of bodies and their assembly at the day -of -judgment.

Al-Ghazali took issue with the philosophy of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina and conceded (7), “Regarding mathematical sciences, there is no sense in denying them or disagreeing with them. For these reduce in the final analysis to arithmetic and geometry.” The verdict dealt by al-Ghazali against philosophy proved fatal for further development of analytical thought in Islamic society. Although he seems to have tolerated the study of mathematics as seen above, in fact five years after writing his Tahafut, he very much discouraged the study of mathematics also as we shall see herein later. Study of philosophy in particular and of rational sciences in general was not encouraged in the Islamic world later on, and in due time, these sciences became foreign to the Muslim culture. Even in the modern times, rational sciences and philosophy do not have deep and self-sustaining roots in the Muslim society; they are imported and planted into the society from abroad. Al-Ghazali (6) classifies the philosophical system into three sub-systems, in his Munkidh, as follows.

1. The Materialists: They reject an intelligent and Omnipotent Creator and disposer of the universe. In their view the world exists from all eternity and had no author. The animal comes from semen and semen from the animal; so it had always been and will always be; those who maintain this doctrine are atheists.
2. The Naturalists: They devote themselves to the study of nature and the marvelous phenomenon of the animal and vegetable world… Acknowledging neither a recompense for good deeds nor a punishment for evil ones, they fling off all authority and plunge into sensual pleasures with the avidity of brutes. These also ought to be called atheists.
3. The Theists: This school refuted the systems of the two others, i.e., the Materialists and Naturalists; but in exposing their mistakes and perverse beliefs, they made use of arguments, which they should not. “God suffices to protect the faithful in war” (Quran, 33:25).

Al-Ghazali divided the Philosophic Sciences into six categories, first of which is mathematics. His attack on mathematics is guarded but sure. He asserted in his Munkidh (6), “Falling a prey to their passions, to a besotted vanity, and the wish to pass for learned men, they persist in maintaining the pre-eminence of mathematicians in all branches of knowledge. This is a serious evil, and for this reason those who study mathematics should be checked from going too far in their researches…It is rarely that a man devotes himself to it without robbing himself of his faith and casting off the restraints of religion.”

The philosophical concepts change with time; mathematical and scientific theories grow and evolve with time. Divergent views are not worthless; in fact they help to advance knowledge. Banning the study of natural sciences out of fear that people may lose faith is ludicrous and a step in the wrong direction. It is only reasonable that difference of opinion should be recognized and accommodated. It is preposterous and inhuman to declare those who do not testify to the religious dogma, punishable by death. Freedom of individual thought and choice should be an inalienable right of citizenry. Expulsion of rationalism from man’s intellectual engagements in order to protect religious dogma is the worst kind of discrimination.

If a religion cannot stand the test of reason and common sense, why defend it? Religion should be individual’s own choice and should not be imposed by the clergy. The notion that reason is not complete and comprehensive may be true but if it is allowed to nurture, it grows and keeps on refining itself. Self-correction is the best thing by which the rational sciences refine themselves; religion on the other hand, is petrified and rigid. It is bound to become outdated in due time.

Scientific edifice is built brick by brick; scientific truths are not attained by a leap of faith. A leap of faith is not very certain. Even though reason is not perfect but what good is there in replacing reason by religion whose mainstay is blind faith. What guarantee is there that the blind faith is true and better than a rational truth? A society, which banishes reason and rational sciences from its culture, becomes a barren society and is doomed to degrade and decay in spite of the supremely divine and unblemished religion it may claim to possess.

Islamic society is a classic example of this degradation and decay. During the times of Al-Razi and Ibn Sina, the Muslim society was the apex of excellence in terms of scientific achievements. After Al-Ghazali banished the philosophical and scientific pursuits from the Muslim society, it gradually and persistently sank to its present decadent condition. In place of rational thought, look at what Al-Ghazali offered (5): “If the child were to be brought up on this firm belief then occupy himself with gaining his livelihood, he might not be more enlightened. But according to the belief of the people of the truth he will be saved. This is because the religion did not obligate the uncivilized Arabs more than believing and certifying in the apparent articles of belief. They were never obligated to research, inquire, nor to be burdened with the classification of arguments.” At another place (5), he offers, “To teach them disputation is decidedly harmful to them as it will perhaps arouse doubts in their minds which will shake their belief. Once these doubts are aroused, it will not be possible to remedy their shaken belief.”

Al-Ghazali (5) also prescribed that the faith in the “Bridge which is stretched over Hell and is finer than a hair and sharper than the edge of the sword” is obligatory. It should be understood literally and not metaphorically because “Allah who is able to make the birds fly in the air is also able to make mankind walk over the bridge.” Al-Ghazali’s influence against nurturing free thought that leads to the developments of material sciences proved mortal to the Muslim society from which it has still not recovered. Muslim society is confused and perplexed. It wants the fruits of the material sciences and technological advancements without which it is difficult to survive with dignity, yet it does not want to loosen the grip of religion as codified by Al-Ghazali and his successors. Believing literally in the ‘allegorical parable’ of the bridge stretched over the hell is nothing but anachronism in the age of space exploration and the nuclear research. If religious faith one must have, let the allegorical device be used to make it appropriate for the modern times. Sufficient space should be allowed to those people who believe, for their own reasons, that religion has become redundant and has outlived its usefulness to human society. One should be tolerant of divergent views. There are hundreds of religions in the world, each one of them claiming to be the only true religion. All of them cannot be right; on the other hand, there is a greater probability of all of them being wrong.

IBN RUSHD – THE LAST GREAT PHILOSOPHER OF ISLAMIC SPAIN

Averroes was a confirmed Aristotelian but compromised with religion by maintaining that there is a “double truth”, one begotten by faith and the other from “rational philosophy”. This compromise was important for medical psychology; it established the tradition of a medical man keeping his religious convictions and still believing in scientific discoveries. (Alexander and Sheldon,2)

Abu-al-Walid Muhammad Ibn-Ahmad Ibn-Muhammad Ibn-Rushd (1128-1199), popularly known as Averroes in the west, was born in 1128, seventeen years after Al-Ghazali’s death, in Cordoba into a family of Juris-consults. His father and grandfather were Grand Qadi’s (Chief Judges) in Cordoba at a time when Muslim Spain was a leading center of unparalleled excellence in every respect in Europe. Ibn Rushd received his education in the curricula that were current in those days at the mosque-based university of Cordoba and specialized in law and medicine.

Philosophy was included in the curriculum of medicine under one title hikmah. At the invitation of Abu-Yaqub Yusuf, the Khalifah of Morocco, Ibn Rushd went over to Morocco. He was commissioned to prepare a “simplified and meaningful text on philosophy. The commission carried with it an honorarium, a robe of honor, and appointment as Chief Justice (Grand Qadi), first in Seville and then in Cordoba” (9).Ibn Rushd was appointed as Khalifah’s personal physician in 1182. After Abu-Yaqub’s death, his son Yaqub-al-Mansur became the Khalifah.

According to Hitti (9), “The cordial relationship between the new patron and his protégé was interrupted in 1194 when the king sent the sixty-eight-year-old scholar into exile and ordered burning of his books. The reason for the unexplained action is not difficult to unearth. Theologians exerted pressure to have the philosopher considered a traitor to his religion…Ibn Rushd’s attempt to keep one foot in Islam and the other into the realm of philosophy was no more successful than Ibn Sina’s or Al-Kindi’s. Two years later the expatriate was reinstated in royal favor but it was too late. Humiliated and heart-broken over the destruction of his books, the aged philosopher died on December 10, 1198. His remains were later removed to Cordoba.”

Although Ibn Rushd is better known for his commentaries on Aristotle’s philosophy, his contributions in medicine and other fields were also remarkable. His book on medicine entitled al-Kulliyat-fi-al-Tibb, latinized as Colliget, was translated in Hebrew and Latin and was used as text book in Europe but it was no match for Ibn Sina’s al-Qanun or Al-Razi’s Al-Hawi. He wrote a treatise on the motion of the planets also which was entitled Kitab-fi-Harkat-al-Falak (Book on the Heavenly Movements). He contributed to jurisprudence (Fiqh). He belonged to Maliki School of Fiqh. He wrote thirty-eight commentaries on Aristotle’s philosophy, of which thirty-six survived in Hebrew, thirty-four in Latin, and only twenty-four in Arabic. According to Hitti, “Within fifty years after his death, Averroes, to use his Latin name (as it came from Hebrew), became known as ‘the great commentator’, and Averroism, his brand of philosophy, achieved currency.”

His epochal book, however, is ‘Tahafut Al-Tahafut’ (The Incoherence of The Incoherence). In this book, Ibn Rushd has discussed Al-Ghazali’s twenty questions on which he (Al-Ghazali) criticized and refuted the philosophy of Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, and attempted to show defects in Al-Ghazali’s arguments. His attempt was noteworthy but failed to soften the deadly impact of Al-Ghazali’s verdict on the status of philosophy in the Islamic world. Ibn Rushd tried to build a bridge between philosophy and the divinely revealed knowledge but did not succeed, in as much as the Islamic world was concerned.

Some of his rationalizations appear far-fetched; Al-Razi’s statement that the rationalism and revelation cannot be reconciled resurfaces in this perspective. For instance, regarding bodily resurrection after death, Ibn Rushd goes into a lengthy discussion , partially agreeing with Al-Ghazali, and suggests, “..it must be assumed that what arises from the dead is simulacra of these earthly bodies, not these bodies themselves, for that which has perished does not return individually and a thing can only return as an image of that which has perished, not as being identical with what has perished. Therefore the doctrine of resurrection of those theologians who believe that the soul is accident and that the bodies which arise are identical with those that perished can not be true (12).” The verses on resurrection appear in several chapters in the Quran. For instance: “They say what! When we are reduced to bones and dust, should we really be raised up (to be) a new creation? Say: (Nay!) be ye stones or iron, or created matter which, in your minds, is hardest (to be raised up), (yet shall ye be raised up)!” (Quran, ch.17:49-51).

Similarly, there is disagreement between Al-Ghazali and the philosophers regarding the miracles. The miracle of Moses’ staff turning into a serpent that devoured the snakes of the magicians as described in Quran is interpreted by the philosophers as “the refutation by the divine proof, manifest at the hand of Moses, of the doubts of those who deny (the one God)” (7). The philosophers denied the splitting of the moon because they “claim that there has been no soundly transmitted, indubitable reporting of it.” Ibn Rushd is somewhat evasive and ambiguous on this matter when he states (12): “Most things which are possible in themselves are impossible for man, and what is true of the prophet, that he can interrupt the ordinary course of nature, is impossible for man, but possible in itself; and because of this one need not assume that things logically impossible are possible for the prophets, and if you observe those miracles whose existence is confirmed, you will find that they are of this kind.”

In spite of his guarded caution in denying the miracles outright, Ibn Rushd could not save himself from the wrath of the fanatics and blind believers of his time who set his books on fire because they believed him to be an atheist. Both Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd were excellent scholars, the former steeped to his skin in theology and had absolute faith in the Scriptures and the latter having an open, not completely, mind and a defender of reason and rationalism; yet they were so very different in interpreting the same basic issue and arriving at completely different results. The former is celebrated in the Islamic world and the other is largely ignored but has been accorded a unique position in the history of the philosophic thought and science, in the west. According to Karen Armstrong, “Ibn Rushd was a revered but secondary figure in Islam, but he became very important indeed in the West, which discovered Aristotle through him.”

An interesting question comes to mind: Were both of them (Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd) living in the modern time, what kind of scholars would they be? Al-Ghazali, most probably, would still be Al-Ghazali, an influential Ayatollah beckoning people to the purity of his brand of Islam. Ibn Rushd, on the other hand, would perhaps be a much more liberated philosopher in his outlook with his analytical skills honed by the knowledge of the modern empirical sciences, and would be much more forthright in expressing his ideas freely and fearlessly. He would probably not need the doctrine of “double truth” to uphold that cannot be upheld. He would be more like Al-Razi. For that matter, Al-Razi was a modernist who never cared to concoct arguments to rationalize religious belief to make it more akin to reason. He considered such efforts mere waste of time and exercise in intellectual dishonesty.


REFERENCES

1. Ahmad, M., “Ibn Sina (Avicenna) – Doctor of Doctors”,
http://www.ummah.net/history/scholars/Ibn sina/
2. Alexander, F.G., and Sheldon, T.S., “The History of Psychiatry”, Harper and
Row Publishers, New York, 1966, pp.64, 62-63.
3. Armstrong, K., “A History of God”, Ballantine Books, New York, 1993,
p.194.
4. “An Introduction to Al-Razi”, http://library.thinkquest.org/17137/Main/Math Science/Medicine/al razi.html
5. Al-Ghazali, “The Foundations of The Islamic Belief”, tr. Shaykh Ahmad
Darwish Mosque of the Internat P.O.Box 601, Tesque, NM 87574,USA, Chapter 3, Pillar 3, p.21 of 26.
6. Al-Ghazali, “Munkidh min al-Dalal (Confessions, or Deliverance from Error”,
Fordham.edu/halsal/1100 ghazali-truth.html
7. Al-Ghazali, “Tahafut-al- falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers)”, tr.
Marmura, M.E., Brigham Young University Press, Utah, 1997, pp. 230, 166, 11.
8. Goodman, L.E., “al-Razi – The Encyclopedia of Islam”, ed. C.E. Bosworth et al, 1995, pp. 474-77.
9. Hitti, P.K., “Islam – A Way of Life”, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1970.
10. Hitti, P.K., “History of the Arabs”, St. Martin’s Press, New York, p. 435.
11. Hourani, A., “A History of the Arab People”, Warner books, A Time- Warner Company, 1991, pp. 174-75.
12. Ibn Rushd, “Tuhafut Al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of The Incoherence)”, Published by The Trustees of the “E.J.W. Gibb Memorial”, tr. Simon Van Den Bergh, 1987, pp. 362, 315.