Comment:- Though this appears to be a very enlightened and laudable aim, it strengthened the Theologians as well as Jurists, but weakened the Philosophers. It should be remembered that the Sciences were originally a branch of Philosophy and only became separate disciplines later. Thus it caused the decline of Islamic Science as well. The Theologians and Jurists were specialists who confined their attention to the scriptures, were not trained in the instruments of logical thinking and did not widen their experiences and knowledge or keep up with contemporary developments. They remained close minded and failed to adapt and develop their subjects. The tendency to replace faith with reason also weakened morals, knowledge and confidence. This is because reason being an intellectual faculty does not provide motives.

Ibn Taymiyah in the 13th and 14th century, seeing the general moral degeneration and decadence around him, mounted an intense campaign of reform employing legal, theological and philosophical arguments for a return to original pure Islam and the removal of all the innovations and extraneous influences which had entered into it. This drove Philosophy underground for a period. But it re-emerged in a new guise as Hikmah (the New Wisdom). This preserved the physical, logical and some metaphysical features from al-Ghazali and Ibn Sena, but the principles by which the relationship of Allah to the Universe and to man was to be understood were to be based only on personal experiences, inspiration and visions.

Comment:- Thus the distinction between sense knowledge, reason and mystical experience was at last accepted. By making religion a personal matter it removed authority, conformity and social unity. It allowed people to practice religion without knowledge or understanding and to justify their superficialities, personal desires, whims and fantasies. It encouraged diversity but also sectarianism. It divided the religious from the secular, which could now flourish unhindered by moral and religious scruples. By allowing the mystics to exist freely, their number increased greatly and a great many cults, often extreme in form, began to flourish. Most or many of them were quite spurious. It was obviously much easier to set oneself up as a mystic since no proof was possible than to undertake the discipline required for philosophy, which could be more easily judged. The effect of this was to make it more difficult to find genuine Mystics and Saints. In short, we could regard this system as an example of what later became the conditions of the modern Western World.

As-Suhrawardi (1155-1191) was the first exponent of the New Wisdom, the Illuminate School. Apart from his Theological and Philosophical works, he was also a founder of a Sufi (Mystic) School. He rejected the Aristotalian distinctions between essence and existence, substance and accidents, possibility and actuality, matter and form, as mere distinctions of reason, not of reality. There was only a distinction between Being and Non-being (Light and Darkness) with gradations of perfection owing to their mixture. There was only one continuum culminating with Allah at one end and dead matter at the other. Movement and change takes place along the continuum either by the power of the higher over the lower or the love of the lower for the higher. He made much of the power of Imagination since this is the creative principle in human beings, and therefore, integral to Being. It has perfection in Allah who created the whole Universe by it. All beings, according to their various states, have this power to various degrees, so that the Universe is essentially a creative process. It is also responsible for Prophethood, visions, miracles and healing. It is activated by faith. The enlightened or purified souls moves towards Allah and, on death, reach the position corresponding to their state. The unpurified, after death, escape to a world of images suspended between the higher light and the corporeal world. Partially purified souls remain suspended but are able to create desirable images for themselves. Evil souls become dark shadows and can create only frightening images and wander about as ghosts, demons and devils. As there was only one continuum emanating from Allah, all religions were one, though they may exist at different points on the continuum.

Comment:- This doctrine is compatible with the Light verse in the Quran. The idea of the continuum can also be found in such verses as "Allah is He Who created seven heavens, and of the earth the like of them. The Commandment continues to descend among them slowly, that you may know that Allah has power over all things and that Allah indeed encompasses all things in knowledge." (65:12).

Though his ideas appears to be similar to the Neo-platonic doctrine, it solves some of the difficulties in that doctrine, namely, how the Universe can proceed from the One - Does He disintegrate into the many? Does He diminish by emanation? How can He know the Particular if He is Universal?. Suhrawardi says that the emanation proceeds spontaneously and necessarily out of His self-sufficiency without affecting Him. But if it is a necessary aspect of Him then this would mean that the Universe is Eternal - it has no beginning or end and is not created. One way of getting round this is to suppose that Allah creates it in His imagination and that this Universe is not the only creation, but there were others before this one and there will be others after it. Emanation is something permanent, which comes out of Allah, is part of Him and yet distinct from the main body, while a creation is something that is quite distinct and happens at a particular instant. Emanation could refer to the Spirit, a word which also means the breath, which like the breathing of Parabrahma in Hindu philosophy, comes out from and returns to Allah. But this would mean that in order to give rise to all the other beings this spirit has to be organized to various levels, so that there are wholes having distinguishable parts. The creative Word, then refers to this organization or order, and Truth refers to this. Organization, however, takes place at different levels - perhaps spirit into electromagnetic photons, which are organized into sub-atomic particles which are formed into atoms, these into molecules, then into cells, multi-cellular organisms such as plants, animals, man and Perfect Man. These organized into communities and so on. There may well be other kinds of organization at each of the levels or combination of levels. And each object at any level contains and is also surrounded by the objects in the previous level. We exist in a field of molecules of air but also contain them, in an electromagnetic field but also contain it, in a field of cells (bacteria) but also contain them. The Quran also insists that Allah comprehends and surrounds all things, and is both the Inner and the Outer. This seems to imply that all things are within Allah - they are not external emanations.

Ibn al-Arabi (1165 -1240) gave a philosophic expression to the esoteric mystical aspect of Islam. He first devoted his time to the study of traditional exoteric Islam (Theology and Law) and then traveled through Spain and North Africa in search of the Islamic mystics (Sufis). He also met and admired the Philosopher Ibn Rushed. Later he settled to a life of contemplation, teaching and writing in Demascus. He made a distinction between (1) The Absolute One which is undefinable truth, Haqq (2) The self-manifestation of it, Zuhur (3) Creation, Khalq which is always new, in perpetual motion and change, uniting all things. He called it Nature, the Dark Cloud (Ama) or Mist (Bukhar) arising from the breath (or Spirit) of Allah, through which Truth is manifested. It is the primordial substance (Unsur) from which all things arise in sequence:- intelligence, the celestial bodies, the elements, material objects, plants, animals, human beings, angels ending with Perfect Man (Insan Kamil). This Dark Cloud is regarded by him as the female principle, Allah being the male, which gives birth to these creations, the Daughters. Thus, though Intelligence is not the first Principle after Allah because Nature (Primordial matter or Spirit) has been inserted before it, it is the First Born. This explains how Unity gives rise to multiplicity. It is the carrier, firstly, of Potentialities, secondly of Archetypes in Intelligence, and thirdly, because of its desire to manifest them, Actuality, the existing things.

Comment:- The Prophet Muhammad tells us that Intelligence was the First Creation. The Quran, tells us that Allah created all things by His Word which is Truth (3:47, 16:3, 6:74) and denies that He begets (112:3) and that the Spirit is by the Command of Allah (17:85). Truth should be regarded as an attribute of Allah. He, in essence, is beyond it, Absolute Reality (38:66, 112:4, 6:101-104, 37:158, 22:64, 31:12, 39:4 etc.). The Quran also tells us that Allah has created pairs in all things (51:49). These may be called male and female, and are creations. In Arabi's system Nature is a feminine mediator, the mother, fertilized by the Father, and Intelligence (identified with Angels) is the First Begotten. In fact, the Father should be the Word while Mother is Spirit. The Word is the creative principle and the Spirit is the receptacle, which carries the Word. It is thought that in inserting Nature al-Arabi has borrowed a Greek idea, from Empodocles through the mystic Ibn Massarah. Some people say that he borrowed from Christianity because he may have wished to reconcile Islam and Christianity. In Christianity, Allah, His Word (also called Son) and His Spirit (breath) form a Trinity. According to Christian Theology the Spirit emanates from the Word (or Son), not the other way round and the Quran agrees (ignoring the naïve or superstitious interpretation). First Begotten Son does not refer to Intelligence. However, Arabi uses the concept Nature to refer to the whole of Creation, beginning with Intelligence, and all the natural processes that give rise to it. This accords with Quran 65:12. But the Quran in chapter 112 and elsewhere also insists that "begetting" is the wrong concept. This may be because most Christians understand the term in the physical sense, that the man Jesus was a literal son of God, thereby trivializing the concept of God - making Him into a man. In fact, Jesus may be regarded as a manifestation or a carrier of the Word as are other Messengers of Allah. Some Christians because they take Jesus to be God, the Son (rather than "God-with-us"), also speak of the "Mother of God", identifying Mary with Nature (or Spirit) and Son with Intelligence.

Allah is both separate from and connected to the Universe by His Attributes.

But much of these controversies could be regarded as being based on confusion caused by the different use and understanding of words. From the Islamic point of view, it might be better to describe things as follows:- From Allah emanates the Word which gives rise to the Spirit. His Word is the creative principle, Truth, and the Spirit is the receptacle that carries Truth. It is these that are respectively Father and Mother (symbolically speaking). These two interact to create Intelligence, from which arises the Universal Soul. These two are also masculine and feminine, or active and passive principles respectively. Interaction between these produce further pairs, and so on. All things arise progressively from this process. As there was nothing but Allah and Allah surrounds all things, then all things are in the mind of Allah. If we make a distinction between Truth (order) and Intelligence (adaptation), then we must suppose that Intelligence is the Offspring of Truth and Spirit. It may be better to suppose that the Universe is the result of three interacting principles, namely Truth, Spirit and Intelligence. To say that the Universe comes out of nothing is to say that there is nothing besides Allah from which it could come. When we analyze matter we find nothing but pattern and substance, which can itself be analyzed into pattern and substance. Ultimately, we would find nothing but Allah. It should also be pointed out that, lest the distinction between Light and Darkness be construed as Dualism, Darkness is merely the absence of Light and not its opposite. "Allah, He is Truth, and that which they call on instead of Him it is the False." (22:62), "Truth hath come and Falsehood hath vanished away. Lo falsehood is ever bound to vanish." (17:81), "Nay but We hurl the true against the false, and it doth break its head, and lo! It vanishes away." (21:18)

The main purpose of the theory of Emanation and the notion of "begetting" arises from the inability to understand how something can come out of nothing and how, if Allah is absolutely distinct from Creation, He can affect it. The Universe is, therefore seen as coming out of Allah's substance, thereby denying creation out of nothing. This problem also worries Science. But "begetting" implies that something is created outside, separate from, and like, the original. This idea is false. There is nothing outside Allah. In fact, since all human knowledge refers to relationships, it has to be admitted that we cannot know about the Absolute and pre-existing things. And yet according to the Big Bang Theory there was once no Universe and now there is. It has, therefore, been created from nothing. There was no knowledge, now there is. Even for us, knowledge is something in our mind and nothing can be known which is not an affect on our minds. Objectivity means that our minds are constrained by a greater Universal mind. There must be something X, which is fundamental and self-existent, containing the potentialities for all the phenomena which we see, including matter, energy, life, intelligence and consciousness, which is also the cause of the arising of the Universe. That is what has been named Allah. No object, because it has a relative and dependent existence, can be like Allah. He is not an object, but objects, including the Universe, must be dependent on Him by definition.

Jalal-ad-Din Rumi (1207 -1273) was born in Balkh (Afghanistan). But, owing to the threat of the Mongol invasion, his family moved to Nishapur (Iran) while he was still young. Here he met the Sufi, Farid ad-Din Attar, who introduced him to the religious mysteries. Later they migrated to Rum (Anatolia), hence his title, Rumi. Here they found peace under the Turkish rule of the Seljuks. His father, Burhan ad-Din, who also contributed to his spiritual development, took up the post of teacher in a Madrasa (Religious School) in Konya, Capital of Rum. In 1240 Rumi undertook several journeys into Syria and other Middle Eastern countries and met numerous Sufis, including Arabi and his son. On returning to Konya he took up the post of teacher after his father, and gathered many pupils and disciples. Here he met his teacher, Shams ad-Din (Sun of Religion) of Tabriz (1244), association with whom transformed his life. He developed so strong an attachment to Shams that it caused him to neglect his duties. This led to hostility towards Shams and eventually to his disappearance in 1247. (He was probably murdered). Rumi was heart broken, and he seems to have devoted his life to keeping Shams alive in mind, which he did in a book of Poetry, the Divan-e-Shams. Later he transferred his devotion to Hasam ad-Din Chalebi, who became his successor in the leadership of the Mawlawiyah order, which Rumi had founded. This order is known by their spiritual dance, as the Whirling Dervishes.

Rumi is mainly known for his mystical love poetry and dances. Though he has added little new to Islamic Philosophy, his verses incorporate and popularize the doctrines of the Sufis of his time, but in an unsystematized manner. His importance lies in this that he supplied the third, neglected, ingredient of Islam, namely the impulse that dealt with feeling, emotion and motivation (the other two ingredients being Theology and Law, which deal with thought and action respectively). His work, particularly his Masnawi-ye-Manavi (Spiritual Couplets), composed under the influence of Husam ad-Din, is considered by many, to be of the greatest importance for Islam, second only to the Quran. It is this that made him so popular throughout the Muslim World and allowed a revival and deeper general understanding of Islam. He also has appeal and influence in the West to this day. It is to a large extent through his writings that Sufi ideas are known. He also left a book of talks gathered by his disciples known as Fihi ma Fihi (There is in it what is in it).

Mir Damad (? - 1630) was concerned mainly with the nature of Time - The Prophet had said that Allah was Time. He rejected the notion that Time was a measure of motion. On the contrary, Time pre-existed and made motion or change possible. It was neither a separate substance nor an accident of existing things. It was part of the essence of things, of Being, or rather the relationship between beings. There should, therefore, be three types or dimensions to time corresponding to the three orders of being. (1) The relationship of Allah to His Attributes (These were regarded as the Intelligences, Archetypes or Angels by various people). This is known as Everlastingness (2) The relationship of the Attributes or Archetypes among themselves which is reflected in created things, the persisting things such as the laws of nature and classes of objects. This is known as Eternity. (3) The relationship of the Attributes or Archetypes to mutable or changing individual things. This is known as Time. The word "creation" refers to such relationships. Accordingly, we have three kinds of Creation - Everlasting, Eternal and Temporal. Allah's Eternal Will creates Eternal beings and His ever renewed will or re-creative activity, produces Transient things.

Mulla Sadra (1571-1640) was a pupil of Mir Damad. He accepted al-Arabi's unity of being and thought that beings differed only according to priority/posteriority, perfection/imperfection and strength/weakness. His unique contribution was the assertion that the whole of creation (everything other than Allah) is originated both Eternally and Temporally. Nature is the substance or power of all things, the direct cause of all events and changes. These movements and changes are not accidents but inherent in nature. They produce the new forms. Motion and change, hence Time, is not a property of something called nature, substance or essence, since these are permanent only in the mind, but is permanent activity. Nature is constant renewal. Thus he advances the notion of Energy which became an integral part of Western Science. He distinguishes between (a) this primary inherent movement from (b) accidental or compelled movements requiring an external cause. The former has a direction, the desire or urge towards perfection through constant self-renewal and the latter has none but is haphazard and may produce conflicts and impede the first. It is this inherent urge which produces evolution from the simplest elements through more complex objects, living things, physical man to spiritual man. This upwards motion continues towards unity with the Archetypes, Universal Intelligence, the Attributes. These ideas re-emerged both in Western Science as the Theory of Evolution and in several systems of Western Philosophy.

Comment:- The idea of Time and its three dimensions can probably be accepted, as also the two types of motion, one ordered and directed and the other chaotic. The notion of entropy is connected with these in Physics. Whenever directed energy is used to produce any effect, disordered energy emerges owing to the transfer of order to the new effect. Matter has been found to be reducible to energy, ordered energy. A material object is no different from any other kind of system. We may also see the notion of Satan as being connected with disorder. This planet or any system contains a certain amount of ordered energy and is in exchange of energy with the greater system to which it belongs. Changes in the sub-systems, therefore, depend usually on the introduction of energy from the higher systems. However, if something is done within a system to change this adjustment between the lower and higher, tensions are created which leads to chaos. Any particular entity could cause or be affected by this chaotic energy. Both social and psychological disorders could be seen in this light, and perhaps also physical and environmental ones. It should be noted, however, that this theory turns upside down a fundamental Newtonian principle accepted in science - The Law of Motion is incorrect. Things are not basically constant so that change requires us to find a cause for it. On the contrary, we need an explanation for why things remain constant. Things do not require external causes to change, but when things interact the change depends on all the interacting objects. Mulla Sadra's theory also accords with Taoist Philosophy. This subject requires much more attention, thought and meditation than it has so far received.

It appears that nothing new was added to Islamic thought after this. Ahmad Sirhindi was a reformer who attacked al-Arabi's Unity of Being in order to re-establish older mystical ideas with little success. The New Wisdom continued to have its adherents in the 18th and 19th centuries with minor modifications. Among its exponents were Shah Wali Shah and Hadi Sabzevari. It became part of higher education in the Islamic colleges, but had little impact on the general public which was either diluting or abandoning its adherence to religion or returning to the simple, practical traditional ritualistic, legal and theological forms. The weakness of the New Wisdom lay in this that it had little to say about social, political and cultural matters. The emphasis was on personal ethics and mysticism, which appealed only to the few. It created no Political Philosophy and reduced interest in the affairs of the world. Ideas and enterprise stagnated and became fossilized. As there was little devotional Art, leisure was devoted to non-spiritual matters. The rulers, authorities, those who had power, control and leadership became self-indulgent lovers of ease and luxury, and devoted their time to the arts, particularly poetry and music. The intelligentsia withdrew into itself leaving the general population to its own devices. The result was intellectual isolation from development in the rest of the World, specially the West, which was now on the march aided by influences which came from Islam. All these factors opened out the Muslim countries to the opportunity for foreign invasion, domination and exploitation.

Stage 17.

In the 19th and 20th centuries reformers such as Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and Muhammad Iqbal, having been educated in Western idea and the New Wisdom, realized the social ineffectiveness of the latter and proposed radical changes. But they were not Philosophers, and concerned themselves with the reawakening of political consciousness in the people and the overthrow of foreign domination through literature. They saw that religion was the only force capable to re-energizing people and set out to initiate a return to traditional Islam. But in doing so they ignored and even encouraged the persecution of mysticism. They do not appear to have possessed the capacity to reconstruct Islam from first principles and reinterpret it in the light of the new circumstances of the age. They were, therefore, unable to do without a certain amount of systematized thinking which they obtained by reviving the obsolete systems of the Mutazilah and Asharis. These systems began to be taught in Muslim colleges. But the narrowness of their interests continued to isolate them from modern developments restricted their understanding of the world they were living in, and rendered them ineffective. More modern reformers understand:- (1) that they must also study, critically examine and adapt Science, Technology, and Social and Political Philosophy as developed in the West, (2) that these are disciplines concerned with truths which transcend national or religious boundaries, (3) that there is a historical process which cannot be reversed.

There is currently a New Awakening in Islam, and a new stage is currently in progress.

It is necessary that it should be based on the lessons learnt from all the previous stages. These lessons can be summarized as follows:-

From the above accounts the following conclusions can be drawn:-

(1) The interpretation and teaching of Islam vary with the social, political or historical circumstances. They also vary according to what conceptual or ideological tools are available.

(2) The teachings show a progression of their own, each built on what was achieved before.

(3) It could be argued that Islam liberated the mind from superstition, but that this new freedom led it inevitably to experiment and make mistakes from which it had to learn. But the lessons were not always learnt and the same mistakes re-occurred. The whole of Islamic history concerns these mistakes and the learning process. It is as yet incomplete and not guaranteed. It reflects the Fall as well as the Ascent of Mankind.

(4) The various teachings appear to contradict each other not only because of the above mentioned factors, but also because each teacher selects or concentrates attention on some one aspect of the whole which differs from the selection of other teachers. There is no necessity that there should be controversy and conflict between them as long as it is understood by all that they are different angles and partial views not to be confused with the whole.

(5) Some ideas are falsified, distorted or rendered incomprehensible by the use of foreign or extraneous concepts. These destroy the self-consistency of the Islamic teaching and fragment, confuse and render it ineffective. As far as the majority of people are concerned the introduction of foreign concepts or sophisticated systematization causes confusion, bewilderment and eventually cynicism. It does not aid faith.

(6) The available conceptual tools are used deliberately by some teachers to elucidate the religious doctrines, institutions and practices and to aid understanding, but these must be regarded as explanatory tools, pointers only, which should not be confused with the religious truth itself. All this is true not only about Islam, but it can be shown that it is true also of every other religion and to Religion as a whole. The difference between the Religions, therefore, arises in the same way as the different sects and teachings within each.

(7) Adaptation will continue and must continue because the World does develop and cultural changes do continue to take place. Some of the concepts used by the Philosophers have become difficult to understand in this modern age. It is also necessary to try to see religion from all angles.

(8) This history of Islamic thought shows how it causes as well as reflects the gradual degeneration of Islam, though with periods of reformation and revival. We see also how the impulse that was in Islam was transferred to Europe which it regenerated at the same time.

(9) It seems that what is required is that Islam must return to its roots and start again from first principles, but with the benefit of the developments which have taken place in the West. This is necessary for the whole world because the West is now undergoing degeneration and must be replaced, but the peoples to whom power is gradual passing are even more materialistic, ruthless, spiritually dead and godless.

(10) A new formulation of Islam for the modern world is required. It must differ from the Philosophies considered above in that it uses the results of scientific thinking as the conceptual tools. The use of these tools, however, also implies that the method used will be different. It cannot be an ordered dialectical discussion as found in philosophical works.