“This is [an excerpt from the] transcript of a talk [Kenan Malik] gave at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels on 10 May 2015 on ‘The many roots of Christian Europe, the many sources of the Islamic world.’ It was part of a series of talks to accompany an exhibition of ‘The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art’ entitled ‘L’Empire du Sultan.’”
[….] “The translation into Arabic of Aristotle, Plato and other Greek philosophers helped transform Islamic thinking. In particular, it helped create what is sometimes called the Rationalist tradition, a tradition that began with the Mu’tazilites in the eighth century and culminated with the two greatest of Muslim philosophers, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rush’d, some four hundred years later.
The Rationalists saw learning as an ethical duty. They took from the Greeks not just their spirit of rational inquiry but also their faith in the almost boundless power of the human intellect. Most were deeply pious, and accepted the Qur’an as the word of God. But they challenged the idea that religious truths could be accessed only through divine revelation, insisting that reason alone would suffice. Most insisted, too, that all theological arguments must adhere to the principles of rational thought. Even the interpretation of the Qur’an and the Sunna were, in Rationalist eyes, subordinate to human reason.
By the time the greatest of these philosophers, indeed the greatest Muslim philosopher, Ibn Rushd, was publishing his translations of, and commentaries on, Aristotle, the Rationalist tradition was already on the wane. Islam came eventually to define itself not through rationalism, but through mysticism on the one hand – the Sufi traditions – and, on the other, a more literal understanding of Revelation, such as that embodied in the Sunni traditions.
The tradition of Muslim Rationalism is these days barely remembered in the West. Yet its importance and influence, not least on the ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition, is difficult to overstate. It was through Ibn Rushd that West European philosophers rediscovered their Aristotle, and his commentaries shaped the thinking of a galaxy of thinkers from Moses Maimonides to Thomas Aquinas. And Córdoba, Ibn Rush’d’s home, became a principal meeting point of Islam and Christianity, a centre through which Christian scholars came to access not simply Islamic thinking, but to rediscover Greek philosophy too.
While today we may have forgotten the importance of Muslim philosophers, Christians of the time certainly recognized it. In The Divine Comedy, Dante places Ibn Rushd with the great pagan philosophers whose spirits dwell not in Hell but in Limbo ‘the place that favor owes to fame.’ One of Raphael’s most famous paintings, The School of Athens, is a fresco on the walls of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, depicting the world’s great philosophers. Among the pantheon of celebrated Greek philosophers including Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras and Diogenes stands Ibn Rushd.
It was not just Greek philosophers that shaped Islamic thinking. From Persia to India to China, civilizations across the globe became sources for Islamic culture and learning. India, in particular, with the establishment of Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century indelibly shaped Islam. When we think of the Muslim world today, we usually think of the Middle East. But the largest Muslim communities are in Asia – in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, China – and here Islam draws upon a multitude of cultural and religious sources.
Today, there is a tendency to think of Islam as walled-in, insular, hostile to reason and freethinking. Much of the Islamic world came to be that way. But the fact remains that the scholarship of the golden age of Islamic thinking helped lay the foundations for the European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Neither happened in the Muslim world. But without the Muslim world, it is possible that neither may have happened, at least in the form they did.” [….]
For the entire transcript of his talk, please see Kenan Malik, “A Cathedral, a Mosque, a Clash of Civilizations,” at Pandaemonium
The respective images (from Malik’s post): Roger Hayward, Watercolor painting of the Hagia Sophia, and 13th century Arabic translation of ‘Material Medica.’
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