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The
Spirit of Muslim Culture
‘Muhammad
of Arabia ascended the highest Heaven and returned. I swear by God that if I
had reached that point, I should never have returned.’1 These
are the words of a great Muslim saint, ‘AbdulQuddës of Gangoh. In the whole
range of Sufi literature it will be probably difficult to find words which,
in a single sentence, disclose such an acute perception of the psychological
difference between the prophetic and the mystic types of consciousness. The
mystic does not wish to return from the repose of ‘unitary experience’;
and even when he does return, as he must, his return does not mean much for
mankind at large. The prophet’s return is creative. He returns to insert
himself into the sweep of time with a view to control the forces of history,
and thereby to create a fresh world of ideals. For the mystic the repose of
‘unitary experience’ is something final; for the prophet it is the
awakening, within him, of world-shaking psychological forces, calculated to
completely transform the human world. The desire to see his religious experience
transformed into a living world-force is supreme in the prophet. Thus his return
amounts to a kind of pragmatic test of the value of his religious experience.
In its creative act the prophet’s will judges both itself and the world
of concrete fact in which it endeavours to objectify itself. In penetrating
the impervious material before him the prophet discovers himself for himself,
and unveils himself to the eye of history. Another way of judging the value
of a prophet’s religious experience, therefore, would be to examine the
type of manhood that he has created, and the cultural world that has sprung
out of the spirit of his message. In this lecture I want to confine myself to
the latter alone. The idea is not to give you a description of the achievements
of Islam in the domain of knowledge. I want rather to fix your gaze on some
of the ruling concepts of the culture of Islam in order to gain an insight into
the process of ideation that underlies them, and thus to catch a glimpse of
the soul that found expression through them. Before, however, I proceed to do
so it is necessary to understand the cultural value of a great idea in Islam
- I mean the finality of the institution of prophethood.2
A prophet
may be defined as a type of mystic consciousness in which ‘unitary experience’
tends to overflow its boundaries, and seeks opportunities of redirecting or
refashioning the forces of collective life. In his personality the finite centre
of life sinks into his own infinite depths only to spring up again, with fresh
vigour, to destroy the old, and to disclose the new directions of life. This
contact with the root of his own being is by no means peculiar to man. Indeed
the way in which the word WaÁâ (inspiration) is used in the Qur’«n shows
that the Qur’«n regards it as a universal property of life;3
though its nature and character are different at different stages of the evolution
of life. The plant growing freely in space, the animal developing a new organ
to suit a new environment, and a human being receiving light from the inner
depths of life, are all cases of inspiration varying in character according
to the needs of the recipient, or the needs of the species to which the recipient
belongs. Now during the minority of mankind psychic energy develops what I call
prophetic consciousness - a mode of economizing individual thought and choice
by providing ready-made judgements, choices, and ways of action. With the birth
of reason and critical faculty, however, life, in its own interest, inhibits
the formation and growth of non-rational modes of consciousness through which
psychic energy flowed at an earlier stage of human evolution. Man is primarily
governed by passion and instinct. Inductive reason, which alone makes man master
of his environment, is an achievement; and when once born it must be reinforced
by inhibiting the growth of other modes of knowledge. There is no doubt that
the ancient world produced some great systems of philosophy at a time when man
was comparatively primitive and governed more or less by suggestion. But we
must not forget that this system-building in the ancient world was the work
of abstract thought which cannot go beyond the systematization of vague religious
beliefs and traditions, and gives us no hold on the concrete situations of life.
Looking
at the matter from this point of view, then, the Prophet of Islam seems to stand
between the ancient and the modern world. In so far as the source of his revelation
is concerned he belongs to the ancient world; in so far as the spirit of his
revelation is concerned he belongs to the modern world. In him life discovers
other sources of knowledge suitable to its new direction. The birth of Islam,
as I hope to be able presently to prove to your satisfaction, is the birth of
inductive intellect. In Islam prophecy reaches its perfection in discovering
the need of its own abolition.4 This involves the keen perception
that life cannot for ever be kept in leading strings; that, in order to achieve
full self-consciousness, man must finally be thrown back on his own resources.
The abolition of priesthood and hereditary kingship in Islam, the constant appeal
to reason and experience in the Qur’«n, and the emphasis that it lays on
Nature and History as sources of human knowledge, are all different aspects
of the same idea of finality. The idea, however, does not mean that mystic experience,
which qualitatively does not differ from the experience of the prophet, has
now ceased to exist as a vital fact. Indeed the Qur’«n regards both Anfus
(self) and ÿf«q (world) as sources of knowledge.5 God reveals
His signs in inner as well as outer experience, and it is the duty of man to
judge the knowledge-yielding capacity of all aspects of experience. The idea
of finality, therefore, should not be taken to suggest that the ultimate fate
of life is complete displacement of emotion by reason. Such a thing is neither
possible nor desirable. The intellectual value of the idea is that it tends
to create an independent critical attitude towards mystic experience by generating
the belief that all personal authority, claiming a supernatural origin, has
come to an end in the history of man. This kind of belief is a psychological
force which inhibits the growth of such authority. The function of the idea
is to open up fresh vistas of knowledge in the domain of man’s inner experience.
Just as the first half of the formula of Islam6 has created and fostered
the spirit of a critical observation of man’s outer experience by divesting
the forces of nature of that Divine character with which earlier cultures had
clothed them. Mystic experience, then, however unusual and abnormal, must now
be regarded by a Muslim as a perfectly natural experience, open to critical
scrutiny like other aspects of human experience. This is clear from the Prophet’s
own attitude towards Ibn Âayy«d’s psychic experiences.7 The
function of Sufism in Islam has been to systematize mystic experience; though
it must be admitted that Ibn Khaldën was the only Muslim who approached it in
a thoroughly scientific spirit.8
But inner
experience is only one source of human knowledge. According to the Qur’«n,
there are two other sources of knowledge - Nature and History; and it is in
tapping these sources of knowledge that the spirit of Islam is seen at its best.
The Qur’«n sees signs of the Ultimate Reality in the ‘sun’, the
‘moon’, ‘the lengthening out of shadows’, ‘the alternation
of day and night’, ‘the variety of human colours and tongues’,10
‘the alternation of the days of success and reverse among peoples’
- in fact in the whole of Nature as revealed to the sense-perception of man.
And the Muslim’s duty is to reflect on these signs and not to pass by them
‘as if he is dead and blind’, for he ‘who does not see these
signs in this life will remain blind to the realities of the life to come’.9
This appeal to the concrete combined with the slow realization that, according
to the teachings of the Qur’«n, the universe is dynamic in its origin,
finite and capable of increase, eventually brought Muslim thinkers into conflict
with Greek thought which, in the beginning of their intellectual career, they
had studied with so much enthusiasm. Not realizing that the spirit of the Qur’«n
was essentially anti-classical, and putting full confidence in Greek thinkers,
their first impulse was to understand the Qur’«n in the light of Greek
philosophy. In view of the concrete spirit of the Qur’«n, and the speculative
nature of Greek philosophy which enjoyed theory and was neglectful of fact,
this attempt was foredoomed to failure. And it is what follows their failure
that brings out the real spirit of the culture of Islam, and lays the foundation
of modern culture in some of its most important aspects.
This intellectual
revolt against Greek philosophy manifests itself in all departments of thought.
I am afraid I am not competent enough to deal with it as it discloses itself
in Mathematics, Astronomy, and Medicine. It is clearly visible in the metaphysical
thought of the Ash‘arite, but appears as a most well-defined phenomenon
in the Muslim criticism of Greek Logic. This was only natural; for dissatisfaction
with purely speculative philosophy means the search for a surer method of knowledge.
It was, I think, Naïï«m who first formulated the principle of ‘doubt’
as the beginning of all knowledge. Ghazz«lâ further amplified it in his ‘Revivification
of the Sciences of Religion’,10 and prepared the way for ‘Descartes’
Method’. But Ghazz«lâ remained on the whole a follower of Aristotle in
Logic. In his Qist«s he puts some of the Quranic arguments in the form
of Aristotelian figures,11 but forgets the Quranic Sërah known
as Shu’ar«’ where the proposition that retribution follows
the gainsaying of prophets is established by the method of simple enumeration
of historical instances. It was Ishr«qâand Ibn Taimâyyah who undertook a systematic
refutation of Greek Logic.12 Abë Bakr R«zâ was perhaps the first
to criticize Aristotle’s first figure,13 and in our own times
his objection, conceived in a thoroughly inductive spirit, has been reformulated
by John Stuart Mill. Ibn Àazm, in his ‘Scope of Logic’,14
emphasizes sense-perception as a source of knowledge; and Ibn Taimâyyah in his
‘Refutation of Logic’, shows that induction is the only form of reliable
argument. Thus arose the method of observation and experiment. It was not a
merely theoretical affair. Al-Bârënâ’s discovery of what we call reaction-time
and al-Kindâ’s discovery that sensation is proportionate to the stimulus,
are instances of its application in psychology.15 It is a mistake
to suppose that the experimental method is a European discovery. Dü hring tells
us that Roger Bacon’s conceptions of science are more just and clear than
those of his celebrated namesake. And where did Roger Bacon receive his scientific
training? - In the Muslim universities of Spain. Indeed Part V of his Opus
Majus which is devoted to ‘Perspective’ is practically a copy
of Ibn Haitham’s Optics.16 Nor is the book, as a whole,
lacking in evidences of Ibn Hazm’s influence on its author.17
Europe has been rather slow to recognize the Islamic origin of her scientific
method. But full recognition of the fact has at last come. Let me quote one
or two passages from Briffault’s Making of Humanity,
‘.
. . it was under their successors at that Oxford school that Roger Bacon learned
Arabic and Arabic science. Neither Roger Bacon nor his later namesake has any
title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon
was no more than one of the apostles of Muslim science and method to Christian
Europe; and he never wearied of declaring that a knowledge of Arabic and Arabian
science was for his contemporaries the only way to true knowledge. Discussions
as to who was the originator of the experimental method . . . are part of the
colossal misrepresentation of the origins of European civilization. The experimental
method of the Arabs was by Bacon’s time widespread and eagerly cultivated
throughout Europe’ (pp. 200-01). . . .
‘Science
is the most momentous contribution of Arab civilization to the modern world,
but its fruits were slow in ripening. Not until long after Moorish culture had
sunk back into darkness did the giant to which it had given birth rise in his
might. It was not science which brought Europe back to life. Other and manifold
influences from the civilization of Islam communicated its first glow to European
life’ (p. 202).
‘For
although there is not a single aspect of European growth in which the decisive
influence of Islamic culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous
as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the paramount distinctive
force of the modern world, and the supreme source of its victory - natural science
and the scientific spirit’ (p. 190).
‘The
debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries
or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it
owes its existence. The ancient world was, as we saw, pre-scientific. The astronomy
and mathematics of the Greek were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized
in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized, and theorized, but the
patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute
methods of science, detailed and prolonged observation, experimental inquiry,
were altogether alien to the Greek temperament. Only in Hellenistic Alexandria
was any approach to scientific work conducted in the ancient classical world.
What we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry,
of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement,
of the development of mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit
and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs’
(p. 191).
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Notes]
Date/Time Last Modified: 6/18/2002 8:03:32 AM
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