School · 65 thinkers

Philosophy in the Islamic World

Philosophy in the Islamic world, one continuous tradition from the eighth century to the present; “Islamic world” names a historical and cultural space, not the faith of each thinker. It begins with Rabia al-Adawiyya in Basra, al-Kindi in Baghdad and the Arabic reception of Greek philosophy (al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd). After al-Ghazali philosophy did not end but changed its setting: theologians took up Avicenna’s philosophy in philosophical theology (kalām), logic became a school subject from the Maghrib to India, Suhrawardi’s philosophy of illumination was carried on in Shiraz and Isfahan up to Mulla Sadra, and Ottoman, Maghribi and Indian scholars wrote on ethics, theology and Sufi metaphysics. The Arab Nahda and the reform movements of the nineteenth century in Egypt, Iran and South Asia opened the modern period, which today includes secular critics, Muslim feminist readers of the Qur’an, sociologists and anthropologists. The older picture of a decline after al-Ghazali or Averroes is rejected by current scholarship (P. Adamson, Philosophy in the Islamic World, 2016; K. El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century, 2015; F. Griffel, The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam, 2021). Besides Muslim thinkers, the school includes Jewish philosophers who wrote in Arabic (Saadia, Maimonides) or in Hebrew within the same Arabic-Aristotelian tradition (Gersonides, Hasdai Crescas).

65 thinkers of Philosophy in the Islamic World on the Agora star map, from Rabia al-Adawiyya to Amina Wadud, in chronological order.

• traditionally c. 714–801Rabia al-Adawiyya

  The sayings handed down from her teach that God should be loved for his own sake, not from fear of hell or hope of paradise.

• c. 801–873al-Kindi

  Greek philosophy and the Qur’an lead to the same truth, so Muslims should welcome reason and learn from the Greeks.

• c. 855–955Isaac Israeli

  Isaac Israeli held that God created first matter and form, wisdom or intellect, by will and power, and that soul and nature emanate from them in stages; philosophy is becoming like the Creator’s works, and the soul’s goal is union with the light of wisdom.

• c. 865–925Abu Bakr al-Razi

  According to his opponents’ reports, reason is given to everyone and is worth more than the authority of prophets – and God, soul, matter, space and time have all always existed.

• c. 872–950al-Farabi

  The best state is led by a ruler who is also a philosopher, and philosophy and religion express the same truth in different languages.

• c. 874–936al-Ashari

  God creates everything that happens, including our actions; we do not create our deeds but “acquire” them – and so we are still answerable for them.

• 882–942Saadia Gaon

  Reason and revelation teach the same truths, so Jewish faith can be defended with arguments anyone can follow.

• c. 932–1030Miskawayh

  Miskawayh held that virtue is the mean between excess and deficiency in each faculty of the soul, that character is not fixed by nature but can be changed by habit and education, and that human beings need friendship and society to reach happiness.

• c. 965–1040Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)

  Ibn al-Haytham held that we see because light and colour travel from each point of an object into the eye, not because the eye sends out rays; perception also involves judgement and inference, and claims about nature must be tested by controlled experiment.

• 973–1048al-Biruni

  Al-Biruni held that claims about nature, even Aristotle’s, must answer to observation and measurement, and that another people’s religion and philosophy should first be described accurately from its own texts, compared with one’s own, and only then judged.

• 980–1037Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

  What a thing is and whether it exists are two different questions – and only God exists necessarily, everything else depends on him.

• 994–1064Ibn Hazm

  Ibn Hazm held that revelation must be read by its plain, apparent meaning, without analogy or speculation in law, while logic, properly understood, serves every science; in love and in the care of the self he saw the soul’s search for its kin.

• c. 1021–1058Solomon ibn Gabirol

  Everything except God, even angels and souls, is made of matter and form – and God’s will is the bridge between him and the world.

• 1058–1111al-Ghazali

  Philosophers cannot prove what they claim: there is no necessary link between cause and effect, only God acting – and certainty comes through mystical experience.

• c. 1075–1141Judah Halevi

  The God of the philosophers is an abstraction; the living God is known through history and the experience of a people.

• c. 1085–1138Ibn Bajja (Avempace)

  In a corrupt society the philosopher must live as a solitary, perfecting the mind until it joins the universal intellect.

• c. 1086–1153al-Shahrastani

  Al-Shahrastani held that the doctrines of every religion and school should first be reported faithfully in their own terms; against Ibn Sina he argued that the philosophers’ proofs of the one Necessary Existent and of an eternal world do not succeed.

• c. 1105–1185Ibn Tufayl

  A person growing up alone on an island could reach the highest truths by reason alone – and would find them in harmony with revealed religion.

• 1126–1198Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

  Philosophy and religion cannot contradict each other, because truth is one – and the Qur’an itself commands people to use reason.

• 1138–1204Maimonides

  For Maimonides, the Torah and reason agree when the Torah is read rightly – and we can say only what God is not, never what he is.

• c. 1150–1210Fakhr al-Din al-Razi

  Philosophy and theology should test each other in close argument – and even Avicenna must be questioned point by point.

• 1154–1191Suhrawardi

  Reality is light in many degrees of intensity, and we know it most truly by direct inner presence rather than by definitions and proofs.

• 1165–1240Ibn Arabi

  There is only one true reality, God, and everything that exists is a way in which he shows himself.

• c. 1194–1265Athir al-Din al-Abhari

  Al-Abhari held that logic is the instrument every science needs and can be taught in a few pages to beginners; in advanced logic he revised Ibn Sina, reading some propositions as claims about what exists only in the mind, so that reasoning can cover the merely possible.

• 1201–1274Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

  Avicenna’s philosophy stands up to its critics, and ethics covers the whole of life – personal character, the household and the state.

• 1203–1277Najm al-Din al-Katibi

  Al-Katibi held that logic is a rule whose observance guards the mind from error in thinking; building on Ibn Sina and his critics, he set out conversion, contradiction and syllogism for many more modal propositions than Ibn Sina had examined, in a form compact enough for teaching.

• 1236–1311Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi

  Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi held, with Suhrawardi, that the deepest knowledge comes from the direct presence of things to the knower, illuminated by the light of lights, and needs no definition; he joined this to Ibn Sina’s philosophy, medicine and a reformed, non-Ptolemaic astronomy.

• 1263–1328Ibn Taymiyya

  Greek logic adds nothing to what sound human reason already knows, and properly understood reason never contradicts revelation – so the Qur’an and the Prophet’s example are the measure, not the philosophers.

• 1281–1355Adud al-Din al-Iji

  Al-Iji held that theology must begin with a theory of knowledge and a general metaphysics before it treats God, prophecy and the afterlife; only by examining the philosophers’ arguments on their own terms can the theologian defend the doctrines of the Ashʿari school.

• 1288–1344Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom)

  God knows the order of the world completely, but not in advance what free beings will choose – otherwise our choices would not be free.

• 1322–1390Sa’d al-Din al-Taftazani

  Al-Taftazani held that absolute being is a concept formed in the mind, not something existing outside it, and therefore cannot be identified with God, as the school of Ibn Arabi did; theology must use reason and logic, but within the limits set by revelation.

• 1332–1406Ibn Khaldun

  For Ibn Khaldun, societies rise and fall in cycles: group solidarity builds a dynasty, and comfort and luxury then wear it down within a few generations.

• c. 1340–1411Hasdai Crescas

  Aristotle was wrong that an infinite or an empty space is impossible, and the goal of human life is not knowledge but loving God.

• 1340–1413al-Sharif al-Jurjani

  Al-Jurjani held that the sciences depend on exact definitions and on testing every step of an argument; in his commentaries he examined the textbooks of logic, theology and rhetoric line by line, correcting their authors where their reasoning failed.

• c. 1426–1502Jalal al-Din al-Dawani

  Al-Dawani held that existence in the strict sense is God alone, while created things are existent through their relation to it; in logic he argued that the Liar is not a genuine statement, and in ethics he taught rulers that justice holds society together.

• c. 1428–1490Muhammad al-Sanusi

  Al-Sanusi held that every adult believer must know by rational proof what is necessary, impossible and possible for God and the prophets; belief taken over by imitation alone is deficient, mystical inspiration does not replace reasoning, and God is the only real agent of all events.

• 1510–1572Kınalızade Ali Çelebi

  Kınalızade held that practical philosophy has three parts – the ethics of the individual, the household and the state – and that a realm lasts only through justice, which binds ruler, soldiers, revenue and subjects together in a circle in which each depends on the others.

• c. 1561–1631Mir Damad

  The world has no beginning in time, yet it truly comes into being after non-being on a level above time – so it is created, not eternal, and wholly dependent on God.

• 1564–1624Ahmad Sirhindi

  Ahmad Sirhindi held that the mystic’s experience of the oneness of all being is a stage of the path, not its end; at the higher stage of the “unity of witnessing” God and creation are seen as distinct, and mystical insight stays bound to revelation and law.

• c. 1572–1640Mulla Sadra

  Existence itself is what is real, it comes in degrees, and everything is constantly changing in its very substance toward greater perfection.

• 1598–1680Muhsin Fayd Kashani

  Fayd Kashani held that philosophy, mystical knowledge and the teachings of the Shiʿi imams express one truth; ethics is the revival of the heart that al-Ghazali described, but it must rest on the reports of the imams, and between spirit and body lies a world of images.

• 1615–1659Dara Shikoh

  Dara Shikoh held that the Sufis and the Hindu seekers of truth describe the same one reality in different words; the Upanishads, he argued, are the “hidden book” mentioned in the Qur’an, so that translating them serves the knowledge of God’s unity.

• 1703–1762Shah Waliullah

  Islamic law serves rational purposes and fits the stage a society has reached, so it can be renewed by fresh reasoning.

• 1797–1873Hadi Sabzawari

  Sabzawari held, with Mulla Sadra, that existence, not essence, is what is real in things, and that it is one reality in many grades of intensity, from God to matter; philosophy, taught in verse, must be completed by ascetic practice and inner purification.

• 1801–1873Rifa’a al-Tahtawi

  Rifa’a al-Tahtawi held that Muslims can learn the sciences, institutions and education of Europe without abandoning Islam, since these serve its own aims; a just ruler is bound by law, and love of the homeland and education for girls as for boys are duties.

• 1838–1897Jamal al-Din al-Afghani

  Muslims must unite against imperialism and embrace reason and science, which belong to Islam as much as to Europe.

• 1849–1905Muhammad Abduh

  Islam rightly understood is a religion of reason, and believers should think for themselves instead of blindly imitating tradition.

• 1877–1938Muhammad Iqbal

  Islam calls for an active, creative self that shapes the world, not for fatalism or withdrawal from it.

• 1889–1973Taha Hussein

  Taha Hussein held that the scholar must begin, as Descartes did, by doubting what tradition hands down, even about the oldest Arabic poetry; Egypt belongs to the Mediterranean world of Greek reason, and education should be free for all, like water and air.

• 1904–1981Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai

  Tabatabai held, with Mulla Sadra, that knowledge reaches a reality independent of the mind, against dialectical materialism; moral and social concepts are “constructed” by human beings for the sake of action, and the Qur’an is best explained by the Qur’an itself.

• 1905–1973Malek Bennabi

  Colonial rule succeeded where a society had already lost its creative force; a renaissance needs people, land and time brought together again by a living idea.

• 1919–1988Fazlur Rahman

  To apply the Qur’an today, first understand what its rules meant in their own time, then carry their moral principles into the present.

• 1928–2010Mohammed Arkoun

  Islamic tradition should be studied with the tools of modern scholarship to uncover what it has never allowed itself to think.

• b. 1932Talal Asad

  Talal Asad holds that there is no universal essence of religion: the concept took shape in Christian and modern European history; Islam is a discursive tradition of practices tied to founding texts, and the secular is itself a historical formation of the modern state.

• b. 1933Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  There is a timeless sacred knowledge shared by the world’s religions, and modern science has lost it by stripping nature of the sacred.

• 1933–1977Ali Shariati

  Shia Islam, read as a religion of justice and protest, can liberate people from Western domination better than Marxism can.

• 1934–2016Sadiq Jalal al-Azm

  Sadiq al-Azm held that Arab societies must face their defeats through self-criticism and that religious thought cannot compete with scientific knowledge; the critique of Orientalism, he argued against Said, must not turn into an Orientalism in reverse that posits an unchanging Arab essence.

• 1935–2010Mohammed Abed al-Jabri

  Arab thought has three ways of knowing – reading texts, mystical insight and logical proof – and only the last, Averroes’ way, can renew it.

• 1935–2021Hassan Hanafi

  The Islamic heritage should be reread as a resource for human liberation, and the West, long the observer of others, should itself become an object of study.

• 1940–2015Fatima Mernissi

  The seclusion of women comes not from the Qur’an but from the male elite that shaped tradition – Islam itself allows women a full public life.

• 1943–2010Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

  The Qur’an speaks in the language and culture of its time, so understanding it requires interpretation – and no interpreter may claim to speak with God’s own authority.

• b. 1944Taha Abderrahmane

  Modernity is not a Western possession: its spirit of maturity, critique and universality can be realised in an Islamic, ethically grounded way, and the heritage must be judged as a whole.

• b. 1945Abdolkarim Soroush

  Religion itself does not change, but our understanding of it does, together with all our other knowledge; so no interpretation can be fixed by the state as final.

• b. 1950Asma Barlas

  Asma Barlas holds that the Qur’an, read as a whole and by the principles of God’s unity, justice and incomparability, does not teach patriarchy: God is beyond sex, no man is God’s deputy over a woman, and patriarchal readings come from interpreters.

• b. 1952Amina Wadud

  Read as a whole and from a woman’s viewpoint, the Qur’an gives no basis for male superiority – all people stand equal before the one God.

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