History of Islamic Philosophy - With View of Greek Philosophy and Early History of Islam (Paperback)

The following 74 page section on the early history of Islam is irrelevant to the history of Islamic philosophy. It begins with a legend of how an Abyssinian army besieged the Ka'aba and tried to bulldoze it by using elephants; how the elephants refused to go beyond the boundaries of the sacred city; and how the Abyssinian army was then devastated by a flock of birds which killed many of them by dropping small sharp stones on them. True, the incident is referred to four decades later in a (here mis-spelt) passage in the Qu'ran, but what bearing has such a legend (and there are others to come) on philosophy? We then embark on a history of Islam which is based almost entirely on contemporary or near-contemporary chronicles, which are sometimes reproduced verbatim but without any explanation of their significance. This plodding narrative mercifully but strangely stops with the death of Husain in 680 - strangely because the history that could be relevant to understanding Islamic philosophy only begins about a 150 years later, during the Abbasid dynasty.

About half way through the next chapter, 19 pages long, on Islamic Movements and Schools, we at last reach the Mutazilites, the movement with which Islamic philosophy began. There follow nine pages on the translation movement, which made texts in Greek, Syriac, and other languages accessible to Muslim thinkers.

We now come to the meat of the book: substantial chapters devoted to each of seven major Islamic philosophers, and these do convey the kind of information, though often clumsily and stodgily written, for which people will have bought the book. I must take issue with the blurb which says that the book 'provides a perfect bridge between amateurs and professionals': medieval philosophy, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, is not for the amateur. Much of it finds little resonance with the modern mind: its zeal for classification, for example, or its scientific theories (important though scientific advances were during that period). The main philosophical problem which still preoccupies religious-minded people today, is the relationship between religious study and secular investigations. Islamic thinkers like Avicenna (980 to 1037) and Averroes (1126 to 1198) grappled with this issue during the four centuries or so when early medieval Christian thinkers were still extremely suspicious of secular studies. It was only with Aquinas (1225 to 1274) that a synthesis between faith and reason was made. In both the Christian and the Islamic world, the suspicions remained; but Aquinas was canonized whereas, under the influence of Al-Ghazali (1058 to 1111), the works of Avicenna were burnt and Averroes was declared a heretic. After Averroes there would be only one other major Islamic philosopher, Ibn Khaldun (1332 to 1406), who wisely confined himself to the philosophy of history, and significantly, Al-Jubouri's book on Islamic philosophy ends there. Muslims are rightly proud of the great philosophers in their history; but after the triumph of Al-Ghazali, Islamic philosophy, which had been so gloriously open to the influences of Greek, Persian and Indian thought, would now be controlled by the religious establishment and become closed to outside influences. In due course some western philosophy separated itself from religion, often against the unavailing resistance from its own religious establishment; religious thought itself was often modified in response; and as a result western philosophy, both secular and religious, has remained vibrant, investigative and innovative.