Islam and philosophy...

  Islam and philosophy: This is the way we would make it*

America had Ralph W. Emerson and his transcendentalism. She had Whitman, the posthumously celebrated poet, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who witnessed and “gave a name to an age-the Jazz Age-“(1) and “invented a generation,” (2), E. Miller Hemingway, his own- lifetime legend. She had, and still has, her pragmatism. She has Francis Fukuyama whose “end- of-history” theories are continuing to shape world politics (if there still exist any, as it is he who decided it is “dead”).

Germany, then all Europe, had Immanuel Kant and Heidegger. Germany, and along with her the whole world, had the Czechia-born and Austria-bred Sigmund Freud and his invaluable Freudism. They also had Hegelian idealism making it to the top in 1989 ( thus inspiring Fukuyama’s theories).

On the other side, Great Britain for her part, had Darwin. She had Herbert Spencer with his social Darwinism. She had Adam Smith and his economic “free exchange”.

As for France, she had Lamartine’s romanticism. She had Descartes and B. Russell with their theories of the innate mind. She had J.P. Sartre’s, Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialism, together with Albert Camus’ philosophy of the absurd.

The whole Occident, among other geopolitical entities, should be grateful to the Austrian- British Friederich von Hayek, “mastermind of all modern liberals” (4) and founder of capitalism; he who has stretched A. Smith’s liberalism to extremes.

Belgium and the whole world behind her owe Ilya Prigogine his “chaos theory”.

After all, all those “folks” have been able , in the name of certain noble principles, laicism being on the lead, to come up with the right philosophy ( or the right philosophies) , the one that best fits in with their respective environment.

We, too, who aspire to rise towards a higher footing on the social and individual progress scale, should we not set to work in this regard?

I presume the answer is «yes”.

Be it as it were, we who are Moslems ( at least through heritage or education , for the least -believing among us) we will never be able, in the name of whatsoever ( it looks as if it is a determinism)to elude this deal of utmost importance.

In other words, is not laic (secular) who wants to ; this attitude which I regard with much respect actually came to life in a Christian Europe torn apart by a kind of obscurantism resulting from a counter-nature blend of the religious and the temporal; while for Islam, this kind of blend was, conversely, the birth certificate of both Umma and the State. Paradoxical though it may seem, a repeat of the “blend” on our part, in the contemporary era, can never be in the picture.

On the contrary, we would no doubt be confined to give up (oddly) setting comparisons between those philosophies on one side and Islam on the other side, as some people are doing, and to cease discarding those philosophies from our actual daily experience, in order to eventually learn how to make do with them.

In other words, it seems that, in order that a philosophy for the future stems from our deepest self, there remain only the following alternatives : either to persistently stick to the belief that any non-religious philosophy is necessarily irreligious ; an extremism-generating attitude , that is, for sure.; or a profoundly rooting action, willingly inspired from any philosophy having proven trustworthy  ( under the Western patronage) in the general human development field, until the day comes when the circumference of a life philosophy ( of our own) would be drawn : the outcome of an all-philosophy experience, which  _on grounds that it would be indigenous _ would allow us to reach our proper cruising speed in so much as “all-inclusive” development is concerned.

It goes without saying that one would not be tempted into becoming a romantic , a pragmatist, an empiricist or even an anarchist…overnight. But, paradoxically, we would be , from such perspective, and in the long term, compelled to be all that altogether. Eclectic and wholesome, hence well-balanced. That would be hard, but there needs to be a price to pay for progress. And that is one, indeed.

To be all that altogether. And for a reason : Is it not written that Islam is “ valid for any epoch and for any time”? A Divine truth, definitely. But it is nonetheless true that in the humans’ sphere, it is still nothing but a desire. And what a desire! Each one of those philosophies being a pair of spectacles through which you will see the (same) world differently, the fact of having no other choice than to put them on , all at a time but through the “microscope “of the Koran (5), would not be an opportunity for the punctual and contemporary  realization of an age-old desire?

Now, the strangest idea ever, which seems to have sought refuge within many an Islam-caring thinker, is this: to make up their mind to look through neither the spectacles nor the microscope!

Mohamed Hammar

This article was published in The Beirut Times on November 17, 2008.

* This reflection is of the Infrajtihad genre we are attempting to put forward. Also refer to our article “The Capsule theory: a strategy for a new Ijtihad” published in The Beirut Times.

(1) In the introduction to The Great Gatsby, Penguin Books, 1974.

(2) From a New York Times editorial; quoted in the previous source.

 (4)Reported by Guy Sorman in Les Vrais penseurs de notre Temps, France Loisirs,1989, page 243.

(5) The metaphor is borrowed from Youssef Seddik, author of Nous n’avons jamais lu le Coran.

(We have never read the Koran), l’aube Ed. In an interview published in the Tunisian Arabic

newspaper “Achaab”, Saturday April 2, 2005, page 16, the writer says, “And this text called ‘Koran’ is

a microscope, not a statement, to be utilized to read the world…”