Islamic philosophy

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Islamic philosophy is a branch of Islamic studies. It is the continuous search for Hekma (Wisdom) in the light of Islamic view of life, universe, ethics, society, and so on. Islamic philosophy, understood as a "project of independent philosophical inquiry" began in Baghdad in the middle of the eighth century.^[1]

Introduction

Islamic philosophy refers to philosophy produced in an Islamic society. It is not necessarily concerned with religious issues, nor exclusively produced by Muslims. [Oliver Leaman, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Formative influences

Islamic philosophy as the name implies refers to philosophical activity within the Islamic milieu. The main sources of classical or early Islamic philosophy are the religion of Islam itself (especially ideas derived and interpreted from the Quran), Greek philosophy which the early Muslims inherited as a result of conquests when Alexandria, Syria and Jundishapur came under Muslim rule, along with pre-Islamic Indian philosophy and Iranian philosophy. Many of the early philosophical debates centered around reconciling religion and reason, the latter exemplified by Greek philosophy. One aspect which stands out in Islamic philosophy is that, the philosophy in Islam travels wide but comes back to conform it with the Quran and Sunna.

Early Islamic philosophy

An Arabic manuscript from the 13th century depicting Socrates (Soqrāt) in discussion with his pupils.

In early Islamic thought, which refers to philosophy during the "Islamic Golden Age", traditionally dated between the 8th and 12th centuries, two main currents may be distinguished. The first is Kalam, that mainly dealt with Islamic theological questions, and the other is Falsafa, that was founded on interpretations of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. There were attempts by later philosopher-theologians at harmonizing both trends, notably by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) who founded the school of Avicennism, Ibn Rushd (Averroës) who founded the school of Averroism, and others such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen) and Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī,

Kalam

Main article: Kalam

Kalām (Arabic: علم الكلام‎) is the philosophy that seeks Islamic theological principles through dialectic. In Arabic the word literally means "speech". One of first debates was that between partisan of the Qadar (Arabic: qadara‎, to have power), who affirmed free will, and the Jabarites (jabar, force, constraint), who believed in fatalism.

At the second century of the Hijra, a new movement arose in the theological school of Basra, Iraq. A pupil, Wasil ibn Ata, who was expelled from the school because his answers were contrary to then sunni tradition and became leader of a new school, and systematized the radical opinions of preceding sects, particularly those of the Qadarites and Jabarites. This new school was called Mutazilite (from i'tazala, to separate oneself).

The Mutazilites, compelled to defend their principles against the sunni Islam of their day, looked for support in philosophy, and are one of the first to pursue a rational theology called Ilm-al-Kalam (Scholastic theology); those professing it were called Mutakallamin. This appellation became the common name for all seeking philosophical demonstration in confirmation of religious principles. But subsequent generations were to large extent critical towards the Mutazilite school, especially after formation of the Asharite concepts.

More simply put Kalam means duties of the heart as opposed to (or in conjunction with) fikh duties of the body. Theology verses jurisprudence.^[2]

Falsafa

Falsafa is a Greek loanword meaning "philosophy". "Science" is the Latin word for "philosophy".

Divisions of the Philosophic Sciences

These sciences, in relation to the aim we have set before us, may be divided into six, sections:^[3]

(1) Mathematics

(2) Logic

(3) Physics (The object of this science is the study of the bodies which compose the universe: the sky and the stars, and, here below, simple elements such as air, earth, water, fire, and compound bodies animals, plants, and minerals; the reasons of their changes, developments, and intermixture.) also includes medicine.

(4) Metaphysics

(5) Politics

(6) Moral Philosophy (ethics)

From the ninth century onward, owing to Caliph al-Ma'mun and his successor, Greek philosophy was introduced among the Arabs, and the Peripatetic school began to find able representatives among them; such were Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd (Averroës), all of whose fundamental principles were considered as criticized by the Mutakallamin. Another trend, represented by the Brethren of Purity, used Aristotelian language to expound a fundamentally Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean world view.

During the Abbasid caliphate a number of thinkers and scientists, some of them heterodox Muslims or non-Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. Three speculative thinkers, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Kindi, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam.

From Spain Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew and Latin, contributing to the development of modern European philosophy.

Some differences between Kalam and Falsafa

Aristotle attempted to demonstrate the unity of God; but from the view which he maintained, that matter was eternal, it followed that God could not be the Creator of the world. According to Aristotelianism, the human soul is simply man's substantial form, the set of properties that make matter into a living human body.^[4] This seems to imply that the human soul cannot exist apart from the body. Indeed, Aristotle writes, "It is clear that the soul, or at least some parts of it (if it is divisible), cannot be separated from the body. [...] And thus, those have the right idea who think that the soul does not exist without the body."^[5] In Aristotelianism, at least one psychological force, the active intellect, can exist apart from the body.^[6] However, according to many interpretations, the active intellect is a superhuman entity emanating from God and enlightening the human mind, not a part of any individual human soul.^[7][8] Thus, Aristotle's theories seem to deny the immortality of the individual human soul.

Wherefore the Mutakallamin had, before anything else, to establish a system of philosophy to demonstrate the creation of matter, and they adopted to that end the theory of atoms as enunciated by Democritus. They taught that atoms possess neither quantity nor extension. Originally atoms were created by God, and are created now as occasion seems to require. Bodies come into existence or die, through the aggregation or the sunderance of these atoms. But this theory did not remove the objections of philosophy to a creation of matter.

For, indeed, if it be supposed that God commenced His work at a certain definite time by His "will," and for a certain definite object, it must be admitted that He was imperfect before accomplishing His will, or before attaining His object. In order to obviate this difficulty, the Motekallamin extended their theory of the atoms to Time, and claimed that just as Space is constituted of atoms and vacuum, Time, likewise, is constituted of small indivisible moments. The creation of the world once established, it was an easy matter for them to demonstrate the existence of a Creator, and that God is unique, omnipotent, and omniscient.

Main protagonists of Falsafa and their critics

The twelfth century saw the apotheosis of pure philosophy and the decline of the Kalam, which latter, being attacked by both the philosophers and the orthodox, perished for lack of champions. This supreme exaltation of philosophy may be attributed, in great measure, to Al-Ghazali (1005–1111) among the Persians, and to Judah ha-Levi (1140) among the Jews. It can be argued that the attacks directed against the philosophers by Ghazali in his work, "Tahafut al-Falasifa" (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), not only produced, by reaction, a current favorable to philosophy,^{[citation needed]} but induced the philosophers themselves to profit by his criticism.^{[citation needed]} They thereafter made their theories clearer and their logic closer. The influence of this reaction brought forth the two greatest philosophers that the Islamic Peripatetic school ever produced, namely, Ibn Bajjah (Avempace) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës).

Since no idea and no literary or philosophical movement ever germinated on Persian or Arabian soil without leaving its impress on the Jews, the Persian Ghazali found an imitator in the person of Judah ha-Levi. This poet also took upon himself to free his religion from what he saw as the shackles of speculative philosophy, and to this end wrote the "Kuzari," in which he sought to discredit all schools of philosophy alike. He passes severe censure upon the Mutakallamin for seeking to support religion by philosophy. He says, "I consider him to have attained the highest degree of perfection who is convinced of religious truths without having scrutinized them and reasoned over them" ("Kuzari," v.). Then he reduced the chief propositions of the Mutakallamin, to prove the unity of God, to ten in number, describing them at length, and concluding in these terms: "Does the Kalam give us more information concerning God and His attributes than the prophet did?" (Ib. iii. and iv.) Aristotelianism finds no favor in Judah ha-Levi's eyes, for it is no less given to details and criticism; Neoplatonism alone suited him somewhat, owing to its appeal to his poetic temperament.

Ibn Rushd or Ibn Roshd (Averroës), the contemporary of Maimonides, was one of the last of the Islamic Peripatetics. The theories of Ibn Rushd do not differ fundamentally from those of Ibn Bajjah and Ibn Tufail, who only follow the teachings of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Al-Farabi. Like all Islamic Peripatetics, Ibn Rushd admits the hypothesis of the intelligence of the spheres and the hypothesis of universal emanation, through which motion is communicated from place to place to all parts of the universe as far as the supreme world—hypotheses which, in the mind of the Arabic philosophers, did away with the dualism involved in Aristotle's doctrine of pure energy and eternal matter.

But while Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and other Persian and Muslim philosophers hurried, so to speak, over subjects that trenched on traditional beliefs, Ibn Rushd delighted in dwelling upon them with full particularity and stress. Thus he says, "Not only is matter eternal, but form is potentially inherent in matter; otherwise, it were a creation ex nihilo" (Munk, "Mélanges," p. 444). According to this theory, therefore, the existence of this world is not only a possibility, as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) declared, but also a necessity.

Islamic philosophy found an audience with the Jews, to whom belongs the honor of having transmitted it to the Christian world. A series of eminent men—such as the Ibn Tibbons, Narboni, Gersonides—joined in translating the Arabic philosophical works into Hebrew and commenting upon them. The works of Ibn Rushd especially became the subject of their study, due in great measure to Maimonides, who, in a letter addressed to his pupil Joseph ben Judah, spoke in the highest terms of Ibn Rushd's commentary.

It should be mentioned that this depiction of intellectual tradition in Islamic Lands is mainly dependent upon what West could understand and received (or was willing to understand) from this long era. In contrast, there are some historians and philosophers who do not agree with this account and describe this era in a completely different way. Their main point of dispute is on the influence of different philosophers on Islamic Philosophy, especially the comparative importance of eastern intellectuals such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and of western thinkers such as Ibn Rushd. (For more discussion, refer to the History of Islamic Philosophy by Henry Corbin.)

Judeo-Islamic philosophies

Main article: Judeo-Islamic philosophies (800 - 1400)

The oldest Jewish religio-philosophical work preserved in Arabic is that of Saadia Gaon (892-942), Emunot ve-Deot, "The Book of Beliefs and Opinions". In this work Saadia treats the questions that interested the Mutakallamin, such as the creation of matter, the unity of God, the divine attributes, the soul, etc. Saadia criticizes other philosophers severely. For Saadia there was no problem as to creation: God created the world ex nihilo, just as the Bible attests; and he contests the theory of the Mutakallamin in reference to atoms, which theory, he declares, is just as contrary to reason and religion as the theory of the philosophers professing the eternity of matter.

To prove the unity of God, Saadia uses the demonstrations of the Mutakallamin. Only the attributes of essence (sifat al-dhatia) can be ascribed to God, but not the attributes of action (sifat-al-fi'aliya). The soul is a substance more delicate even than that of the celestial spheres. Here Saadia controverts the Mutakallamin, who considered the soul an "accident" 'arad (compare Guide for the Perplexed i. 74), and employs the following one of their premises to justify his position: "Only a substance can be the substratum of an accident" (that is, of a non-essential property of things). Saadia argues: "If the soul be an accident only, it can itself have no such accidents as wisdom, joy, love," etc. Saadia was thus in every way a supporter of the Kalam; and if at times he deviated from its doctrines, it was owing to his religious views.

From the ninth century onward, owing to Caliph al-Ma'mun and his successor, Greek philosophy was introduced among the Persians and Arabs, and the Peripatetic school began to find able representatives among them; such were Al-Kindi, Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd (Averroës), all of whose fundamental principles were considered as criticized by the Mutakallamin. Another trend, represented by the Brethren of Purity, used Aristotelian language to expound a fundamentally Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean world view.

During the Abbasid caliphate a number of thinkers and scientists, some of them heterodox Muslims or non-Muslims, played a role in transmitting Greek, Hindu, and other pre-Islamic knowledge to the Christian West. They contributed to making Aristotle known in Christian Europe. Three speculative thinkers, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Kindi, combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with other ideas introduced through Islam.

From Spain Arabic philosophic literature was translated into Hebrew and Latin, contributing to the development of modern European philosophy.

Later Islamic philosophy

The death of Ibn Rushd (Averroës) effectively marks the end of a particular discipline of Islamic philosophy usually called the Peripatetic Arabic School, and philosophical activity declined significantly in western Islamic countries, namely in Islamic Spain and North Africa, though it persisted for much longer in the Eastern countries, in particular Iran and India. Contrary to the traditional view, Dimitri Gutas and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy consider the period between the 11th and 14th centuries to be the true "Golden Age" of Arabic and Islamic philosophy, initiated by Al-Ghazali's successful integration of logic into the Madrasah curriculum and the subsequent rise of Avicennism.^[9]

Since the political power shift in Western Europe (Spain and Portugal) from Muslim to Christian control, the Muslims naturally did not practice philosophy in Western Europe. This also led to some loss of contact between the 'west' and the 'east' of the Islamic world. Muslims in the 'east' continued to do philosophy, as is evident from the works of Ottoman scholars and especially those living in Muslim kingdoms within the territories of present day Iran and India, such as Shah Waliullah and Ahmad Sirhindi. This fact has escaped most pre-modern historians of Islamic (or Arabic) philosophy. In addition, logic has continued to be taught in religious seminaries up to modern times.

After Ibn Rushd, there arose many later schools of Islamic Philosophy. We can mention just a few, such as the those founded by Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra. These new schools are of particular importance, as they are still active in the Islamic world. The most important among them are:

• School of Illumination (Hikmat al-Ishraq)
• Transcendent Theosophy (Hikmat Muta'aliah)
• Sufi philosophy
• Traditionalist School

Illuminationist school

Main article: Illuminationist philosophy

Illuminationist philosophy was a school of Islamic philosophy founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi in the 12th century. This school is a combination of Avicenna's philosophy and ancient Iranian philosophy, with many new innovative ideas of Suhrawardi. It is often described as having been influenced by Neoplatonism.

In logic in Islamic philosophy, systematic refutations of Greek logic were written by the Illuminationist school, founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155-1191), who developed the idea of "decisive necessity", an important innovation in the history of logical philosophical speculation.^[10]

Transcendent school

Main article: Transcendent theosophy

Transcendent Theosophy is the school of Islamic philosophy founded by Mulla Sadra in the 17th century. His philosophy and ontology is considered to be just as important to Islamic philosophy as Martin Heidegger's philosophy later was to Western philosophy in the 20th century. Mulla Sadra bought "a new philosophical insight in dealing with the nature of reality" and created "a major transition from essentialism to existentialism" in Islamic philosophy, several centuries before this occurred in Western philosophy.^[11]

The idea of "essence precedes existence" is a concept which dates back to Ibn Sina (Avicenna)^[12] and his school of Avicennism as well as Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi^[13] and his Illuminationist philosophy. The opposite idea of "Existence precedes essence" was thus developed in the works of Averroes^[12] and Mulla Sadra^[14] as a reaction to this idea and is a key foundational concept of existentialism.

For Mulla Sadra, "existence precedes the essence and is thus principle since something has to exist first and then have an essence." This is primarily the argument that lies at the heart of Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Theosophy. Sayyid Jalal Ashtiyani later summarized Mulla Sadra's concept as follows:^[15]

"The existent being that has an essence must then be caused and existence that is pure existence ... is therefore a Necessary Being."

More careful approaches are needed in terms of thinking about philosophers (and theologians) in Islam in terms of phenomenological methods of investigation in ontology (or onto-theology), or by way of comparisons that are made with Heidegger's thought and his critique of the history of metaphysics.^[16]

Logic

Main article: Logic in Islamic philosophy

Al-Ghazali's successful integration of logic into the Madrasah curriculum in the 11th century led to increased activity in logic, mainly focusing on Avicennian logic.^[9]

Ibn Hazm (994-1064) wrote the Scope of Logic, in which he stressed on the importance of sense perception as a source of knowledge.^[10] Al-Ghazali (Algazel) (1058–1111) had an important influence on the use of logic in theology, making use of Avicennian logic in Kalam.^[17]

Fakhr al Din al Razi Amoli (b. 1149) criticised Aristotle's "first figure" and developed a form of inductive logic, foreshadowing the system of inductive logic developed by John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Systematic refutations of Greek logic were written by the Illuminationist school, founded by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155–1191), who developed the idea of "decisive necessity", an important innovation in the history of logical philosophical speculation.^[10] Another systematic refutation of Greek logic was written by Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), the Ar-Radd 'ala al-Mantiqiyyin (Refutation of Greek Logicians), where he argued against the usefulness, though not the validity, of the syllogism^[18] and in favour of inductive reasoning.^[10]

Philosophy of history

Main article: Early Muslim sociology

The first detailed studies on the subject of historiography and the first critiques on historical methods appeared in the works of the Arab Ash'ari polymath Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), who is regarded as the father of historiography, cultural history,^[19] and the philosophy of history, especially for his historiographical writings in the Muqaddimah (Latinized as Prolegomena) and Kitab al-Ibar (Book of Advice).^[20] His Muqaddimah also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history,^[21] and he discussed the rise and fall of civilizations.

Franz Rosenthal wrote in the History of Muslim Historiography:

"Muslim historiography has at all times been united by the closest ties with the general development of scholarship in Islam, and the position of historical knowledge in MusIim education has exercised a decisive influence upon the intellectual level of historicai writing....The Muslims achieved a definite advance beyond previous historical writing in the sociological understanding of history and the systematisation of historiography. The development of modern historical writing seems to have gained considerably in speed and substance through the utilization of a Muslim Literature which enabled western historians, from the seventeenth century on, to see a large section of the world through foreign eyes. The Muslim historiography helped indirectly and modestly to shape present day historical thinking."^[22]

Social philosophy

Main article: Early Muslim sociology

The most famous social philosopher was the Ash'ari polymath Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), who was the last major Islamic philosopher from North Africa. In his Muqaddimah, he developed the earliest theories on social philosophy, in formulating theories of social cohesion and social conflict.

His Muqaddimah was also the introduction to a seven volume analysis of universal history. He is considered the "father of sociology", "father of historiography", and "father of the philosophy of history", for being the first to discuss the topics of sociology, historiography and the philosophy of history in detail.

Contemporary Islamic philosophy

Main article: Contemporary Islamic philosophy

Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), a notable Muslim philosopher, poet and scholar from Pakistan (then British India)

The tradition of Islamic Philosophy is still very much alive today despite the belief in many Western circles that this tradition ceased after the golden ages of Suhrawardi's Hikmat al-Ishraq (Illumination Philosophy) or, at the latest, Mulla Sadra's Hikmat-e-Mota'aliye or Transcendent (Exalted) Philosophy. Another unavoidable name is Allama Muhammad Iqbal who reshaped and revitalized Islamic philosophy amongst the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent in the early 20th century [1]. Beside his Urdu and Persian poetical work, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam [2] is a milestone in the modern political philosophy of Islam.

In contemporary Islamic Lands, the teaching of hikmat or hikmah has continued and flourished.

• Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Rebublic of Iran, was a famous teacher of the philosophical school of Hikmat-ul-Mutaliya. Before the victory of the Islamic Revolution, he was one of the few who formally taught philosophy at the Religious Seminary at Qum.
• Abdollah Javadi-Amoli, Grand Ayatollah is an Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja. He is a conservative Iranian politician and one of the prominent Islamic scholars of the Hawza in Qom.Tasnim (Tafsir)
• the Iranian علامه طباطبائى or Allameh Tabatabaei, the author of numerous works including the twenty seven-volume Quranic commentary al-Mizan (الميزان),
• Buya Hamka or Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amirullah was a prominent Indonesian author, ulema politician, philosophical thinker, and author of Tafir Al Azhar. He was head of Indonesian mufti council(MUI). He resigned when his fatwa for moslem to do not celebrate Christmas condemned by Suharto regime.Not just as a scholar and a writer in his country, but he was also highly appreciated in Malaysia and Singapore.
• Murtaza Motahhari, the best student of Allamah Tabatabai, a martyr of the Iran Islamic Revolution; and author of numerous books (an incomplete compilation of his works consists of 25 volumes). He, like his teachers Allama Tabatabai and Ayatullah Khomeini, belong to the philosophical schools of Hikmat-ul-Mutaliya
• Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, who is credited with creating modern Islamist political thought in the 20th century, was the founder of "Jamaat e Islami" and spent his life in attempting to revive the Islamic Intellectual Tradition.
• DR. Israr Ahmed, ( April 26, 1932 – April 14, 2010) was a Pakistani Islamic theologian[1] followed particularly in South Asia and also among the South Asian diaspora in the Middle East, Western Europe, and North America.[2] Born in Hissar, (today's Haryana) in India, the second son of a government servant, he is the founder of the Tanzeem-e-islami, an off-shoot of the Jamaat-e-Islami.A great Scholar of Islam and Quran.
• Muhammad Hamidullah (February 9, 1908 - December 17, 2002) belonged to a family of scholars, jurists, writers and sufis. He was a world-renowned scholar of Islam and International Law from India, who was known for contributions to the research of the history of Hadith, translations of the Koran, the advancement of Islamic learning, and to the dissemination of Islamic teachings in the Western world.
• Fazlur Rahman was professor of Islamic thought at the University of Chicago
• Wahid Hasyim first Indonesian minister of religious affairs. Former head of Indonesian Nahdwatul Ulema, and founder of Islamic state universities in Indonesia. His best known idea is reformation of the Madrasah curriculum.
• Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
• Imran Nazar Hosein.- Author of Jerusalem in the Quran
• Javed Ahmad Ghamidi is a well-known Pakistani Islamic scholar, exegete, and educator. A former member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, who extended the work of his tutor, Amin Ahsan Islahi.
• In Malaysia, Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas is a prominent metaphysical thinker.;
• In Southern/South East Europe the teachings of the skeptic Al-Ibn Theodorakis have found considerable favour.

Criticism

Philosophy as such has not been without criticism amongst Muslims, both contemporary and past. The imam Hanbali, for whom the Hanbali school of thought is named, rebuked philosophical discussion, once telling proponents of it that he was secure in his religion, but that they were "in doubt, so go to a doubter and argue with him (instead)."^[23] Today, Islamic philosophical thought has also been criticized by scholars of the modern Salafi movement.

There would be many Islamic thinkers who were not as enthusiastic about its potential. But it would be incorrect to assume that they opposed philosophy simply because it was a "foreign science". Oliver Leaman, an expert on Islamic philosophy, points out that the objections of notable theologians are rarely directed at philosophy itself, but rather at the conclusions the philosophers arrived at. Even al-Ghazali, who is famous for his critique of the philosophers, was himself an expert in philosophy and logic. And his criticism was that they arrived at theologically erroneous conclusions. The three most serious of these, in his view, were believing in the co-eternity of the universe with God, denying the bodily resurrection, and asserting that God only has knowledge of abstract universals, not of particular things (but it should be noted that not all philosophers subscribed to these same views).^[24]

In recent studies by Muslim contemporary thinkers that aim at 'renewing the impetus of philosophical thinking in Islam', Nader El-Bizri offers a critical analysis of the conventions of methodology and historiography that dominate the mainstream academic and epistemic approaches in studying 'Islamic philosophy' from 'archival' standpoints, within Oriental and Mediaevalist Studies, which fail to recognize the fact that 'philosophy in Islam' can still be a living intellectual tradition, and that its renewal requires a radical reform in ontology and epistemology within Islamic thought.^[25]

See also

• Early Islamic philosophy
• Contemporary Islamic philosophy
• Islamic ethics
• Islamic metaphysics
• List of Islamic studies scholars
• Islamic Golden Age
• Islamic science
• Islam and modernity

Notes and references

Notes

Citations

1. ^ Pasnau, Robert (2010). "Introduction". The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-521-76216-8. 
2. ^ Wolfson, Harry Austryn (1976). The philosophy of the Kalam. Harvard University Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN 9780674665804. http://books.google.com/books?id=fuv8J-g7EdAC&pg=PA1. Retrieved 28 May 2011. 
3. ^ "The Confessions of al-Ghazli # Divisions of the phiosophic sciences". http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Confessions_of_al-Ghazali#Divisions_of_the_Philosophic_Sciences. Retrieved 28 May 2011. 
4. ^ Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 24, 26, 28
5. ^ De Anima 413a4-5; 414a19-20
6. ^ "This intellect is separate, unaffected, and unmixed [...] In separation, it is just what it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal" (De Anima 430a18, 23-24).
7. ^ Medieval Philosophy, ed. John Marenbon (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 54
8. ^ Timothy Robinson, Aristotle in Outline (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995) p. 51
9. ^ ^{a b} Tony Street (July 23, 2008). "Arabic and Islamic Philosophy of Language and Logic". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-language. Retrieved 2008-12-05. 
10. ^ ^{a b c d} Science and Muslim Scientists, Islam Herald
11. ^ Kamal, Muhammad (2006). Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. pp. 9 & 39. ISBN 0754652718. 
12. ^ ^{a b} Irwin, Jones (Autumn 2002). "Averroes' Reason: A Medieval Tale of Christianity and Islam". The Philosopher LXXXX (2). 
13. ^ (Razavi 1997, p. 129)
14. ^ (Razavi 1997, p. 130)
15. ^ (Razavi 1997, pp. 129–30)
16. ^ For recent studies that engage in this line of research with care and thoughtful deliberation, see: Nader El-Bizri, The Phenomenological Quest between Avicenna and Heidegger (Binghamton, N.Y.: Global Publications SUNY, 2000); and Nader El-Bizri, 'Avicenna and Essentialism', Review of Metaphysics 54 (2001), 753-778; and Nader El-Bizri, 'Avicenna's De Anima Between Aristotle and Husserl', in The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 67-89
17. ^ ""The Canon of Medicine" (work by Avicenna)". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-92902/The-Canon-of-Medicine. Retrieved 2008-06-11. 
18. ^ See pp. 253–254 of Street, Tony (2005). "Logic". In Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (edd.). The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 247–265. ISBN 9780521520690. 
19. ^ Mohamad Abdalla (Summer 2007). "Ibn Khaldun on the Fate of Islamic Science after the 11th Century", Islam & Science 5 (1), p. 61-70.
20. ^ S. Ahmed (1999). A Dictionary of Muslim Names. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 1850653569.
21. ^ H. Mowlana (2001). "Information in the Arab World", Cooperation South Journal 1.
22. ^ Historiography. The Islamic Scholar.
23. ^ al-Hilyah (6/324)
24. ^ Leaman, O. (1999). A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy Polity Press. p21.
25. ^ Nader El-Bizri, 'The Labyrinth of Philosophy in Islam', Comparative Philosophy 1.2 (2010), 3-23 -- See also references above in this section of the footnotes to some of El-Bizri's other related earlier studies.

Bibliography

• Corbin, Henry (April 1993). History of Islamic Philosophy. Liadain Sherrard (trans). London and New York: Kegan Paul International. ISBN 0-710-30416-1. 
• History of Islamic Philosophy (Routledge History of World Philosophies) by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman [ed.]
• History of Islamic Philosophy by Majid Fahkry
• Islamic Philosophy by Oliver Leaman http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/H057
• The Study of Islamic Philosophy by Ibrahim Bayyumi Madkour
• Falsafatuna (Our Philosophy) by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr

External links

• Philosophy in Oxford Islamic Studies Online
• Islamic Ethics and Philosophy Dictionary
• Islamic Philosophy Online
• In the Footsteps of Averroes - The Reformist Islamic Thinker Muhammad Shahrur by Loay Mudhoon
• History of Philosophy in Islam by T. J. De Boer(1903)
• The Study of Islamic Philosophy
• Islamic Philosophy From the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Can the Islamic Intellectual Heritage Be Recovered?
• History of Islamic philosophy by Henry Corbin, part one
• History of Islamic philosophy by Henry Corbin, part two
• The Parables of Sophism - Islam Redefined Through Western Philosophy