Voices of Islam (235 page)
Authors: Vincent J. Cornell
35. Muslim,
Sahih,
4:2059–2060.
They differed, for example, in the use of nontextual sources like the established practice of Medina, recognized as authoritative in the Maliki and Hanbali school, and took different positions on the authority of isolated hadiths, hadiths with- out complete chains of transmission, and the reports and opinions of the Companions and Successors. See Umar F. Abd-Allah, ‘‘Malik’s Concept of
‘Amal
in the Light of Maliki Legal Theory’’ (Ph.D. dissertation: University of Chicago, 1978), 1:155–195.See al-‘Amili,
Wasa’il al-Shi‘a,
18:22–24.See al-Kindi,
Bayan al-Shar‘,
1:92–93.Al-Isfahani,
Mufradat,
111.Al-Shatabi,
Al-I‘tisam,
2:568.Al-Shatabi,
Al-I‘tisam,
1:50.Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr,
Al-Istidhkar,
5:153.Al-Shatabi,
Al-I‘tisam,
2:570, 594.Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr,
Al-Istidhkar,
5:152.20
Voices of ChangeIbn Hajar,
Fath al-Bari,
4:253.Sulayman ibn Khalaf al-Baji, ed. Nazih Hammad,
Kitab al-Hudud fi al-Usul(Beirut: Al-Zu‘bi li-al-Tiba‘a, 1973), 64.
George Makdisi,
The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West
(Edinburgh, U.K.: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 2, 66.Bernard G. Weiss,
The Spirit of Islamic Law
(Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 89.Fazlur Rahman,
Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition
(Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 7–8.Weiss,
The Spirit of Islamic Law,
88–89.Makdisi,
The Rise of Colleges,
2, 66.Discussion of the hadith comes later in the paper. I presume the Ibadis also relate this hadith in their books but did not chance upon attestation of it in the limited number of their works currently available.
‘Ali ibn al-Qassar, ed. Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Sulaymani,
Al-Muqaddima fi al-Usul
(Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1996), 114–115; Sulayman ibn Khalaf al-Baji, ed. ‘Abd al-Majid al-Turki,
Ihkam al-Fusul Ihkam fi Ahkam al-Usul
, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1995), 2:714–716; ‘Ubayd-Allah ibn ‘Umar al-Dabbusi, ed. Mahmud Tawfi al-Rifa‘i,
Al-Asrar fi al-Usul wa al-Furu‘ fi Taqwim Adillat al-Shar‘,
4 vols. (Amman: Wizarat al-Awqaf, 1999), 3:114–116; Ibn Amir al-Hajj,
Al-Taqrir wa al-Tahbir,
3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 3:306. The Ibadis took essentially the same position. See al-Kindi,
Bayan al-Shar‘
, 1:92–93.See al-Dabbusi,
Al-Asrar,
3:116; cf. al-Kindi,
Bayan al-Shar‘,
1:92.Al-Dabbusi,
Al-Asrar,
3:114.Al-Kamal ibn al-Hammam,
Al-Tahrir,
3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1983), 3:306; Ibn Amir al-Hajj,
Al-Taqrir wa al-Tahbir,
3:306.Sulayman ibn Khalaf al-Baji,
Kitab al-Muntaqa sharh Muwatta’ Imam Dar al-Hijra Sayyidina Malik ibn Anas,
7 vols. in 4 (Cairo: Matba’at al-Sa‘ada, 1984), 1:207–208.Makdisi,
The Rise of Colleges,
290.Weiss,
The Spirit of Islamic Law,
128.Al-Baji,
Ihkam al-Fusul,
2:727; Ibn al-Qassar,
Al-Muqaddima,
26; Moojan Momen,
An Introduction to Shi‘i Islam
(New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1985), 204–205.See Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, ed. Muhammad al-Mu‘tasim bi-Llah al-Baghdadi,
I‘lam al-Muwaqqi‘in ‘an Rabb al-‘Alamin,
4 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1998), 3:5.Al-Dabbusi,
Al-Asrar,
3:115–116.Taken from al-Qarafi
Furuq
as quoted in the work of my student, friend, and colleague ‘Adil ‘Abd al-Qadir Quta,
Al-‘Urf: Hujjiyyatuhu wa Atharuhu fi Fiqh al-Mu‘amalat al-Maliyya ‘inda al-Hanabila,
2 vols. (Mecca: al-Maktaba al-Makkiyya, 1997), 1:64.Quoted from Ibn Qayyim’s
I‘lam al-Muwaqqi‘in
in ‘Adil Quta,
Al-‘Urf,1:65.
Creativity, Innovation, and Heresy in Islam
21Makdisi,
The Rise of Colleges,
4, 290; Wael B. Hallaq,
A History of Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni Usul al-Fiqh
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 201–202 and 202, 59n; Christopher Melchert,
The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th–10th Centuries C.E.
(Leiden: Brill, 1997), 16–17.See Kamali,
Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence,
374–378.‘Umar Kahhala,
A‘lam al-Nisa’,
5 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risala, 1991), 4:94.See Nehemia Levtzion and John O. Voll, eds.,
Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Reform in Islam
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 3–20; Etan Kohlberg, ‘‘Aspects of Akhbari Thought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,’’ in
Eighteenth-Century Renewal
, 133–153; Bernard Haykel, ‘‘Reforming Islam by Dissolving the
Madhhabs
: Shawkani and his Zaydi Detractors in Yemen,’’ in Bernard G. Weiss, ed.
Studies in Islamic Legal Theory
(Leiden: Brill, 2002).See Charles Kurzman, ed.,
Modernist Islam 1840–1940: A Sourcebook(Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3–27.
Richard W. Bulliet,
The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 81.See Gilles Kepel,
Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam
, trans. Anthony F. Roberts (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002), 23–27, 33–35, 39–41.See Bulliet,
The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization,
83–86.Marshall Hodgson,
The Venture of Islam,
vol. 3,
The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times
(Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1974),3:431.See Kepel,
Jihad,
xviii, 24.Rahman,
Islam
(Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 212.Bulliet,
The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization,
158–159.
I
S
‘‘I
SLAMIC
’’ P
HILOSOPHY
I
SLAMIC
?
•
Mohammad Azadpur
At the outset, I want to disown two trivializing approaches to the question that guides this chapter. One such approach responds in the affi tive, pointing to the apparent circularity of the question that is posed. The second approach answers in the negative, arguing that Islamic philosophy refers to the species of philosophy (understood as radically other than what consti- tutes a religious activity) that is cultivated in the Islamic civilizations. Both of these approaches trivialize the relation between philosophy and religion and I mean to underscore that relation. A perhaps more sophisticated take on the question of whether Islamic philosophy is Islamic would be to examine the claims of the various Islamic philosophers in order to determine their conformity to Islamic doctrines. This third approach, however, faces two principal obstacles. On the one hand, it is not easy to come up with a list of beliefs to which a particular philosopher in this tradition has consistently adhered, not to mention one shared by all such philosophers. This is not to say that Islamic philosophers are incoherent; it is rather a declaration that one must exercise caution in ascribing theses to any philosopher. On the other hand, it is even more difficult to subject the beliefs of Islamic philoso- phers to those constitutive of Islamic faith and measure their allegiance to Islam. To be sure, there are constitutive beliefs such as
tawhid
, the belief in the oneness of God;
nubuwwa,
the belief in the prophecy of Muhammad; and
ma‘ad,
the belief in resurrection and the day of judgment. But given the many possibilities of interpretation, the demands of these beliefs are not hard to meet and expanding the set of such beliefs is disputable. To be sure, there have been efforts to assess the Islamic quality of Islamic philosophy by expanding these theses and limiting their interpretations. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s (d. 1111
CE
) polemic against the Islamic Peripatetics is perhaps one such effort and I will return to this later.
My strategy is to answer the question whether Islamic philosophy is Islamic in a metaphilosophical way—that is, I want to begin by asking what philosophy itself is. I do not pretend to be na¨ıve about this question,
24
Voices of Change
as I am not interested in proposing an account of philosophy that transcends all cultural and historical constraints; this is not to say that there is no such account. So let me be more precise about my initial step. Islamic philosophers inherited something from the Greeks and they called it
falsafa,
in close adherence to the Greek word
philosophia.
What was that something? I want to argue that the common understanding of what Muslims inherited from the Greeks involves a misunderstanding. Historians of Islamic philosophy consider Greek philosophy to be made up of bodies of rational knowledge formulated by different philosophers or schools of philosophy, but I want to argue with Pierre Hadot that for the Greeks philosophy was primarily the practice of spiritual exercises aimed at the transformation of the self and the acquisition of wisdom. I submit that this is how Islamic philosophers under- stood what they inherited from the Greeks. If this point is granted, then it is not hard to see that Islamic philosophy is the Islamic practice of philosophical spiritual exercises. Of course, something more needs to be said about this, and I will—by working out aspects of the prophetology that makes the philosophical way of life advanced by Islamic philosophers Islamic.
Hadot, throughout his writings and especially in
Philosophy as a Way of Life,
revives the ancient distinction between philosophical discourse and philosophy itself in order to criticize the condition of modern scholarship on ancient philosophy. He writes: ‘‘Historians of philosophy pay little atten- tion to the fact that ancient philosophy was, first and foremost, a way of life. They consider philosophy as, above all, philosophical discourse.’’
1
By philo- sophical discourse, Hadot means the production of a ‘‘systematic explanation of the whole of reality.’’
2
In contrast, philosophy, for Hadot’s ancient Greek philosopher, is a way of life; it is not in the service of producing a work—a rational account of reality, rather ‘‘the goal is to transform ourselves, to become wise.’’
3
Philosophers, as lovers of wisdom, are in training for wisdom and wisdom is not contained in a philosophical treatise, but it is a condition of the human soul.
4
The significance of the production of systematic philosophical works (for ancient philosophers) was rather in its pedagogical role in the training of the soul. Philosophy yielded systematic texts
