(Associate Professor of Islam and Global Affairs, the University of Delaware)

Islamic intellectual culture suffers from a philosophy deficit. While there are a few philosophical thinkers in the Muslim World today none of them enjoys the rock star status that many pedestrian preachers and YouTube stalwarts enjoy. What this tells us is that people are beginning to value knowledge but are unable to distinguish between preaching and thinking.

What we need today are critical thinkers who force Muslims to think and not feel-good narratives that create comfort bubbles and inhibit thought. It is only through reading and engaging in philosophical discourses will the intellectual level of the Muslim community rise. Towards that end I want to recommend five Muslim philosophers that all Muslims must read. The purpose of this introduction is to generate enough curiosity so that people can start reading them.

One does not need to be a student or teacher of philosophy to read the works of these great philosophers. The complexity and sophistication of their work is an indication of the quality of intellectual life that prevailed in what is often referred to as the golden age of Islam. All educated Muslims should familiarize themselves with their work just to be intellectually plugged into their own heritage. One does not have to read them in the original, great if you can. Reading at least secondary sources of their works can go a long way in helping one grasp the broad intellectual contours of Islamic civilization.

Al-Farabi (872-951 AD)

Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi, also known in Arabic as Al-Muallim Al-Thani, the second teacher (after Aristotle) is easily one of the greatest philosophers of the world. His contribution to both Aristotelian and Platonic thought is immeasurable and the modern age owes a great debt to this Central Asian polymath who not only preserved but developed Greek philosophy. He contributed to philosophy, mathematics, music and metaphysics, but I am partial to his work in political philosophy. His most important book on political philosophy was ārā ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila (The Views of the People of The Virtuous City).

In his Virtuous City, Al-Farabi seeks to establish a city based on justice, much like Plato’s Republic, that seeks the ultimate happiness of its citizens and is guided by the enlightened views of its philosophers. I think of Al-Farabi as the first Muslim to explicitly consider the merits of democracy. For someone who has been arguing that Islam and Democracy are compatible, it was delightful to read his views on democracy, which are very positive. Al-Farabi suggests that free societies have the potential to become virtuous societies because the good people in free societies have the freedom to pursue virtue.

Reading Al-Farabi is illuminating. He not only makes you think about a just polity, but also makes you think about thinking itself.

Al-Ghazzali (1058-1111 AD)

Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali is one of the most important scholars of Islamic thought. He was a philosopher, a legal scholar and a theologian and towards the end of his life a mystical thinker in the class of Ibn Arabi. For many Muslims al-Ghazzali is the paragon of the Mujaddid, a reviver of Islam. Coming at a time when there were many disputations between philosophers and theologians, between rationalists and traditionalists and the Mystical and the orthodox, he tried to bridge these divisions. His Ihya Ulum al-Din, The Revival of Religious Sciences embarks on a massive endeavor to find a golden mean between all these diverging trends.

The mature al-Ghazzali is very interesting. After his intellectual crisis and subsequent spiritual awakening he becomes more like Sheikh Rabbani of India who balanced Shariah and Tariqah (law and mysticism). While his Ihya is important and should be read by all Islamic scholars, all Muslims who go to college should at least read Al-Ghazzali’s Kitab al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (Deliverance from Error) in which the esteemed Shaykh discusses his intellectual and spiritual doubts and his quest for truth. This one book is an entire liberal arts education in itself.

Ibn Rushd (1126-1198 AD)

Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes, has probably had a bigger impact on Western religion and philosophy than on Islamic thought. Some Muslim historians have described the modern enlightened West as the imagination of Averroes. Ibn Rushd was a remarkable thinker. He was a judge, expert in Islamic law (Maliki), a physician and a philosopher.

In his Fasl al-Maqal (The Decisive Treatise) he makes the case for philosophy and for the compatibility of science and religion, faith and reason. His Tahafat al-Tahafat(Incoherence of Incoherence) is a systematic rebuttal to Al-Ghazzali’s Tahat al-Falasifah (Incoherence of Philosophy) and a strong defense of Aristotelian philosophy. Together the two classics by Ibn Rushd and Al-Ghazzali are a highlight of Islamic philosophical heritage. Muslims must read these philosophers; some of their arguments are still germane. Click link below for full article

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/muqtedar-khan/5-islamic-philosophers-every-muslim-must-read_b_6912014.html

posted by f. sheikh

Meet Oliver. Like many of his friends, Oliver thinks he is an expert on 9/11. He spends much of his spare time looking at conspiracist websites and his research has convinced him that the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, of 11 September 2001 were an inside job. The aircraft impacts and resulting fires couldn’t have caused the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center to collapse. The only viable explanation, he maintains, is that government agents planted explosives in advance. He realises, of course, that the government blames Al-Qaeda for 9/11 but his predictable response is pure Mandy Rice-Davies: they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Polling evidence suggests that Oliver’s views about 9/11 are by no means unusual. Indeed, peculiar theories about all manner of things are now widespread. There are conspiracy theories about the spread of AIDS, the 1969 Moon landings, UFOs, and the assassination of JFK. Sometimes, conspiracy theories turn out to be right – Watergate really was a conspiracy – but mostly they are bunkum. They are in fact vivid illustrations of a striking truth about human beings: however intelligent and knowledgeable we might be in other ways, many of us still believe the strangest things. You can find people who believe they were abducted by aliens, that the Holocaust never happened, and that cancer can be cured by positive thinking. A 2009 Harris Poll found that between one‑fifth and one‑quarter of Americans believe in reincarnation, astrology and the existence of witches. You name it, and there is probably someone out there who believes it.

You realise, of course, that Oliver’s theory about 9/11 has little going for it, and this might make you wonder why he believes it. The question ‘Why does Oliver believe that 9/11 was an inside job?’ is just a version of a more general question posed by the US skeptic Michael Shermer: why do people believe weird things? The weirder the belief, the stranger it seems that someone can have it. Asking why people believe weird things isn’t like asking why they believe it’s raining as they look out of the window and see the rain pouring down. It’s obvious why people believe it’s raining when they have compelling evidence, but it’s far from obvious why Oliver believes that 9/11 was an inside job when he has access to compelling evidence that it wasn’t an inside job.

I want to argue for something which is controversial, although I believe that it is also intuitive and commonsensical. My claim is this: Oliver believes what he does because that is the kind of thinker he is or, to put it more bluntly, because there is something wrong with how he thinks. The problem with conspiracy theorists is not, as the US legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues, that they have little relevant information. The key to what they end up believing is how theyinterpret and respond to the vast quantities of relevant information at their disposal. I want to suggest that this is fundamentally a question of the way they are. Oliver isn’t mad (or at least, he needn’t be). Nevertheless, his beliefs about 9/11 are the result of the peculiarities of his intellectual constitution – in a word, of his intellectual character. click link below for full article

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/intellectual-character-of-conspiracy-theorists/

Posted by F. Sheikh