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born, 570 CE, into a world of violence and crime
a member of the leading tribe in Mecca (the Koreish / Quraysh)
‘Mohammad’ means ‘highly praised’, and is now the most
common male name in the world
father died a few days before his birth, mother when 6,
grandfather when 8
raised by his uncle, well-loved and accepted in his family
at 25 began a caravan business, worked for Khadija, a wealthy
widow 15 years his senior, whom he later married
became frustrated with wickedness in his world and began
frequenting a cave on Mt. Hira for solitude
while most Meccans were polytheistic and animistic,
some, the hanifs, worshipped one god exclusively, ‘Allah’
became convinced while meditating in his cave that Allah
was the only God, The God
on the Night of Power, the angel Gabriel appears to
Muhammad in human form and urges him to ‘proclaim’
this is the beginning of the writing of the Koran
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earn a living maintaining the 360 shrines to various gods around Mecca
enjoy, as Smith says, ‘licentiousness’
maintain class distinctions Muhammad rejects
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living in a clay house
milking his own goats
mending his own clothes, and
advising the humblest visitors personally
His role as a general emerges as he leads the Medinese against
the Meccans
• first battle his forces win a great victory over a much larger Meccan
force
• second battle he is injured and Medinese lose
• finally, after exhausting themselves laying siege to Medina, the
Meccans retreat and are later finally conquered
Always merciful in victory, Muhammad accepts the Meccan’s
conversion to Islam
• ‘al-Qur’an’ in Arabic means ‘a recitation’ (see Smith, p231)
• Written over 23 years, Smith emphasizes that Muhammad considered it the only
“miracle” associated with himself.
• Illiterate as far as formal education, Muhammad wrote down the Koran in fits and
spurts, describing the experience of inspiration as hearing “the reverberating of
bells.” Smith, p232
• The Koran is composed of 114 chapters, called Surahs (Sura, Surat, Sewar),
arranged in order longest to shortest.
• Muslims believe there are, in a sense, two Korans—an uncreated, eternal Koran,
and an instantiation of it, the written Koran.
• Smith, p232: “If Christ is God incarnate, the Koran is God inlibriate.”
• As literature, Arabic speakers Smith mentions find the Koran poetic and beautiful;
English writers like Carlisle and Gibbon consider it, in translation of course,
“wearisome,” “crude,” “a jumble.”
• See an example of devotion to reading it perfectly, in Arabic. (Begin at the 40:00
minute mark to experience a bit of the competition)
“innovation was to remove idols from the religious scene and focus the
divine in a single invisible God for everyone. It is in this sense that
the indelible contribution of Islam to Arabic religion was
monotheism.”
“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” –Deut. 6:4
Christians have worldwide monotheism, but they have the
Trinity:
“They say the God of mercy has begotten a son. Now have you
uttered a grievous thing … It is not proper for God to have
children.” (Koran, 3:78, 19:93)
Islam eschews all “parental images” of God. They make God
too human; they are anthropomorphic. –Smith, p236
Are ‘Son of God’ and ‘God the Son’ equivalent? __________
Still, Allah’s compassion and mercy are mentioned 192 times in the
Koran, wrath and vengeance 17.
What do you think of Smith’s argument, p237, mid-page:
“Mistakes could be disastrous. Koranic images of heaven and hell are pressed
into service here; but once we come to terms with the fear that life’s inbuilt
precariousness inspires, other lesser fears subside. The second, supporting
root of the word islam is peace.”
What kind of peace is this? __________________________
(Yes, I’m asking a serious question )
Rather than emanating from the divine as in Hinduism, or
from the Form of The Good (Goodness itself), as the
Neo-Platonists held, nature exists because of “a
deliberate act of Allah’s will.” –Smith, p238
Does Allah have to continue willing existence to all other
things to sustain them? ______________
Smith notes two consequences of this view:
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Islamic thinkers
were the first
Western scientists
The world is both real and important
Being the handiwork of Allah, who is both perfectly good and
perfectly powerful, the world must be good.
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Being the handiwork of Allah, who is both perfectly good and
perfectly powerful, the world must be good.
“You do not see in the creation of the All-merciful any
imperfection. Return your gaze … It comes back to you dazzled”
(Koran, 67:4) –Smith, p238
Smith takes this statement to be an endorsement of “confidence
in the material aspects of life”; notes that Christians and Jews
share that confidence.
What does that mean? __________________________
Are nature’s imperfections ignored? _______________
Recall Tennyson’s “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”
2.
Being the handiwork of Allah, who is both perfectly good and perfectly
powerful, the world must be good.
Regarding the creation of the human self or soul, Smith extends the
commitment to such being created ‘good’.
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This could have been inferred, given its Maker, but the Koran states it explicitly:
“Surely we have created humanity of the best stature” (Koran, 95:4) …The closest
Islam comes to the Christian concept of original sin is in its concept of ghaflah, or
forgetting. People do forget their divine origin, and this mistake needs repeatedly to
be corrected….
With life acknowledge as a gift from its Creator, we can turn to its obligations, which
are two.
The first of these is gratitude for the life that has been received. The Arabic word
“infidel” is actually shaded more toward “one who lacks thankfulness” than one who
disbelieves.
The second standing obligation [is surrender … total commitment to God] –Smith,
p238-239 (my brackets)
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the duty to be grateful, and
the duty to surrender and be committed to God
feed ourselves
clothe ourselves
educate ourselves
etc.
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they didn’t ask for, and (say, a diamond)
are hard for them to return (say, a huge fish tank)
and at the same time demand something in return, like
gratitude and or surrender / commitment.
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no duty of gratitude,
no duty to return what’s given,
no duty to treat what was given according to the wishes
of the giver
Consider the
common theatre
device of the
starlet pursued by
the admirer
bearing gifts
Smith explains the human self or soul in Islam by contrasting it
with the ‘no self’ of Buddhism and the ‘ecological’ self of
Confucianism.
Why not compare it to the ‘ultimate self’ of Hinduism?
Recall the question of whether, on dying, the soul becomes one
with Brahman or retains a bit of individuality so as to “taste
honey, not be honey”?
Smith calls the Muslim self an “inexplicable center of experience
that is the fundamental fact of the universe,” (p240) and so it
is clearly not the empirical self.
Nonetheless, Smith rejects the comparison, apparently, because,
In India the all-pervading cosmic spirit comes close to swallowing the individual self. –
Smith, p240
The Muslim soul retains its absolute individuality after death.
The total individuality of the soul leads to its complete
responsibility for its choices.
Whoever gets to himself a sin, gets it solely on his own responsibility
… Whoever goes astray, he himself bears the whole
responsibility of wandering. (4:111, 10:103) –Smith, p241
Islam then provides a complementary picture of the
afterlife.
When life is over, souls are judged by Allah …
When the sun shall be folded up, and the stars shall fall, and when
the mountains shall be set in motion … and the seas shall boil …
Then shall every soul know what it has done. (81, passim) –
Smith, p241
The imagery in the Koran of the afterlife … of heavens and hells
… is extremely sensuous. Lots of sex in the heavens for the
virtuous … men and women … though, mostly men; for the
wicked, the hells present “burning garments, molten drinks,
maces of iron, and fire that splits rocks into fragments.” –
Smith, p241
Do all Muslims accept this as a literal depiction of heaven.
The Koran itself says:
Some of the signs are firm—these are the basis of the book—others are
figurative. (3:5) –Smith, p242
So, no, some Muslims think the imagery is sensuous in order to
be compelling, but is literally false.
See Koller,
p143; Smith,
p242-248
This is to be recited at least once by all Muslims “slowly, thoughtfully, aloud,
with full understanding and with heart-felt conviction.” –Smith, p244
Al-Farabi
870-950 CE
Avicenna
Anselm
Averroes
980-1037 CE
1038-1109 AD
1126-1198 CE
900
Ockham
1287-1347 AD
1300
Al- Kindi
801-873 CE
Al-Ghazali
1058-1111 CE
*All images link to scholarly articles
Maimonides
Aquinas
1138-1204 AD
1225-1274 AD
earliest ‘modern’ scientists
Al-Kindi General Hospital
On First Philosophy … is a particularly good example of how al-Kindi
combines Neoplatonic and Aristotelian ideas in his vision of a coherent
philosophy derived from the Greeks. … [I]n the first section of On First
Philosophy, al-Kindi unleashes a torrent of abuse against unnamed
contemporaries who criticize the use of Greek ideas:
We must not be ashamed to admire the truth or to acquire it, from wherever it comes.
Even if it should come from far-flung nations and foreign peoples, there is for the
student of truth nothing more important than the truth, nor is the truth demeaned
or diminished by the one who states or conveys it; no one is demeaned by the truth,
rather all are ennobled by it. –al-Kindi
animal is one genus, but it is made up of a multiplicity of species;
human is one species but is made up of many individuals; and a
single human is one individual but made up of many bodily parts.
How
Finally, al-Kindi seeks an explanation for the association of unity
and multiplicity in all these things. He argues that the association
does
cannot be merely the product of chance; nor can it be caused by
this
any part of the set of things that are both one and many. So there
relate
must be some external cause for the association of unity and
multiplicity. This cause will be exclusively one, entirely free of
to the
multiplicity: al-Kindi expresses this by saying that it is “essentially”
Ship of
one, whereas the other things are “accidentally” one. He also
Theseus speaks of it as “one in truth,” whereas other things are one
“metaphorically. –Peter Adamson
?
“… the true One possesses no matter, form, quantity, quality, or
relation. And is not described by any of the other terms: it has no
genus, no specific difference, no individual, no proper accident,
and no common accident. It does not move, and is not described
through anything that is denied to be one in truth. It is therefore
only pure unity, I mean nothing other than unity. And every unity
other than it is multiple.” –al-Kindi (from the Adamson article)
We say that the true, first act is the bringing-to-be of beings from
non-being. It is clear that this act is proper to God, the exalted,
who is the end of every cause. For the bringing-to-be of beings
from non-being belongs to no other. And this act is a proper
characteristic [called] by the name “origination.”
–Peter Adamson
al-Farabi tried to demonstrate the basic agreement between Aristotle
and Plato on such matters as the creation of the world, the survival of
the soul and reward and punishment in the afterlife. In al-Farabi's
conception of God, essence and existence [a distinction of Aristotle’s]
fuse absolutely with no possible separation between the two … we see
the Neoplatonic element most of all in the doctrine of emanation as it
is deployed in al-Farabi's hierarchy of being. (my brackets)
At the top of this hierarchy is the Divine Being whom al-Farabi
characterizes as 'the First'. From this emanates a second being
which is the First Intellect. (This is termed, logically, 'the Second',
that is, the Second Being). Like God, this being is an immaterial
substance. A total of ten intellects emanate from the First Being.
…
In Farabian metaphysics, then, the concept of Neoplatonic
emanation replaces that of Qur'anic creation ex nihilo. –Richard
Netton
Does al-Farabi solve a puzzle for al-Kindi by making the
First Intellect at least something immaterial, like God … an
extension of his own existence, perhaps? __________
jealousy
God, the ultimate reality, is eternal beauty, according to Ibn Sina, ….
It is the very nature of beauty to be self-expressive, he says, and
nature is simply the self-expression of God. In God, this selfexpression, not different from His being, is the supreme love, for
love is nothing other than the expression and appreciation of
perfect beauty. …. [B]eauty is the ultimate being of the universe,
and love is its ultimate energy, causing all beings to seek their
original perfection. But being and energy are simply different
aspects of the same reality. –Koller, p146
Avicenna could not make sense of the notion that Allah made the
universe out of nothing.
Ibn Sina … taught that the world was uncreated, existing eternally,
because although the scriptures taught that the world was created by
God out of nothing, reason can make no sense out of something being
created out of nothing. … creation was really a transformation of
something existing previously. Even though it might be a radical
transformation, it was not creation out of nothing. –Koller, p145
(This is certainly the view of Aristotle, however, Avicenna seems to have a more subtle view: see Paul Spade’s
discussion of an “efficient cause,” [search the .pdf file for ‘efficient cause’ or ‘making cause’] as a concept
invented by Avicenna specifically to strike a balance between creation ex nihilo and creation as mere
modification of pre-existing stuff) … for great similar downloadable files from Professor Spade, click the
‘Things to download’ link in the Table of Contents.
About knowledge, recall that for Plato, knowledge is only of the
eternal, unchanging Forms. Avicenna agreed. He carried his
agreement so far as to refuse the notion that God knows all the
details of the material world. Knowledge is strictly limited to
the Forms, for everyone, including God.
Knowledge continued …
Ibn Sina claimed that, since the soul is the knowing part of a person, and
since knowledge is only of forms, therefore, the soul itself is a form. If
the nature of the soul were different from that of knowledge,
knowledge would be impossible. –Koller, p146
Also
… if the soul is a form, then it is universal and indestructible. The body,
on the other hand, is naturally destructible. … it follows … that there
can be no eternal resurrection of the body—a conclusion that
contradicts the Qur’anic teaching of the eternal resurrection of the
body after the Last Judgment. –Koller, p146
From Avicenna, then, Islam is confronted with reason saying ‘No’
to creation ex nihilo, ‘No’ to God’s omniscience, and ‘No’ to
God’s method of rewarding and punishing eternally. Philosophy
had begun to seriously crowd faith.
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
Occasionalism =df The doctrine that God is the sole causal actor and that all
events are merely occasions on which God brings about what are normally
thought of as their effects. -Free Online Dictionary
Nothing in our experience shows us any necessity between one event
thought to cause another event. There is merely an association of one
with another, even if the association is unfailingly regular.
Read about the Occasionalism of al-Ghazali here.
Note: unlike David Hume’s rejection of any necessary connection between
cause and effect, the Occasionalism here, since it posits God as the true
and only causally effective agent, is not in itself a rejection of the Principle
of Sufficient Reason … all events require causes; the cause, though, need
not be what we typically think the cause is … like fire causing something
to burn. Instead, God does the burning when the fire is near.
Avicenna had denied the possibility of miracles, of human
freedom (which would interfere with God’s omnipotence, on
Avicenna’s view), among other Koranic commitments.
By creating combustion every time fire touches cotton, God follows a
certain custom (‘âda). In real terms, however, combustion occurs only
concomitantly when fire touches cotton and is not connected to this
event. [al-Ghazali] maintains that causal processes may simply be the
result of God's habit and that He creates what we consider a cause and
its effect individually and immediately. When God wishes to perform a
miracle and confirm the mission of one of His prophets, he suspends
His habit and omits to create the effect He usually does according to
His habit. –Frank Griffel
As it happens, however, Griffel notes (last paragraph, section 7.4)
that al-Ghazali’s ultimate position is that God never departs
from his habits, and so science can count on events following
the lawful pattern they do; prophet’s miracles are built into the
lawful pattern. The point, though, against Avicenna stands:
there is no necessity that interferes with these commitments of
the Koran.
Incoherence
The Incoherence of the
Ibn Rushd, the consummate Aristotelian, … insists that Ghazzali’s view
would be counter-productive to scientific knowledge and contrary to
common-sense. The universe, according to the human mind, works
along certain causal principles and the beings existing within the
universe contain particular natures that define their existence; if these
natures, principles and characteristics were not definitive, then this
would lead to nihilism (i.e. the atheistic materialists found in the Greek
and Arab worlds). –Chad Hillier
Regarding Creation …
Ghazzali perceived that the philosophers had misunderstood the relationship
between God and the world, especially since the Qur’an is clear on divine creation.
Ghazzali, sustaining the Asharite emphasis on divine power, questioned why God,
being the ultimate agent, could not simply create the world ex nihilo and then destroy
it in some future point in time? Why did there need to be some obstacle to explain a
delay in God’s creative action?
Ibn Rushd … replied that the eternal works differently than the temporal. As humans,
we can willfully decide to perform some action and then wait a period of time before
completing it. For God, on the other hand, there can be no gap between decision and
action; for what differentiates one time from another in God’s mind? Also, what
physical limits can restrict God from acting? –Chad Hillier
Does this response work? __________
Averroes seems to say God is perfectly efficient. Is efficiency an essential
feature of a perfect being? _____________
The events surrounding Ibn Rushd towards the end of his life, including
his banishment, signaled a broader cultural shift in the Islamic world.
…As interest in philosophy waned in the Muslim world after Ibn Rushd,
his writings found new existence and intellectual vigor in the work of
Christian and Jewish philosophers. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries
saw an intellectual revival in the Latin West, with the first great
universities being established in Italy, France and England. Within the
walls of the University of Paris, a group of philosophers came to identify
themselves with the Aristotelian philosophy presented by Ibn Rushd,
particularly certain elements of its relation to religion. Later known as
the “Averroists,” these Christian philosophers sparked a controversy
within the Roman Catholic Church about the involvement of philosophy
with theology. –Chad Hillier
Among Jewish thinkers, however, Ibn Rushd had a more positive impact.
His thoughts on Aristotle and the relationship between philosophy and
religion, particularly revelation, inspired a renewed interest in the
interpretation of scripture and the Jewish religion. Key Jewish
philosophers, such as Maimonides, Moses Narboni and Abraham ibn
Ezra, became associated with Ibn Rushd in the West, even though they
took Ibn Rushd’s doctrines into novel directions. … without the work of
the Spanish-Muslim philosopher, much of what occurred in medieval
philosophy would have not existed. He became an example of how
religions are dynamic and evolving traditions, often shaped by
epistemological influences from other traditions. –Chad Hillier
This is a good place to quit. You are in a good position to
pick up the study of Western philosophy starting with
Anselm and Aquinas, if you’re interested.
Good luck!
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