Daughter of the West

This excellent article by Tariq Ali on Bhutto and Pakistan is well worth reading in full. Robert Fisk called it “one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year” in his recent piece in the Independent which can be found here. Tariq Ali writes:

Arranged marriages can be a messy business. Designed principally as a means of accumulating wealth, circumventing undesirable flirtations or transcending clandestine love affairs, they often don’t work. Where both parties are known to loathe each other, only a rash parent, desensitised by the thought of short-term gain, will continue with the process knowing full well that it will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf.

The rest is here.

 

Comparison of Christian and Platonic Doctrine

I talked briefly about Causality and Necessity a while ago. That was in respect of the impact of Platonic and Neo-Platonic teachings on Islamic philosophy and mysticism. The following article by Phillip Sherrard looks at the same theory of emanation from a comparative approach which is very instructive for us as Muslims. It also tackles the problem of evil and though rather difficult in style is well worth reading in full. Part 1 is here and part 2 here.

I have taken this article from a new website of the traditonalist journal called Studies in Comparative Religion which contains a full archive of the journal dating back to 1963. Lots of interesting material.

 

Sprituality and Intellect

This is an interesting interview with the contemporary philosopher Jacob Needleman about the real meaning of philosophy and its relation to spirituality. Here’s an extract:

MISHLOVE: One has the sense — and I imagine you feel this quite acutely yourself — that contemporary philosophy, academic philosophy, has deviated a great deal from the path that was set down by the ancient philosophers such as Socrates.

NEEDLEMAN: The whole culture has deviated from that. We’ve all deviated from that. The whole modern culture tempts us and draws us into just one part of ourselves, and Socrates and Plato after him taught that only the completely integrated being is a true human being. So yes, academic philosophy has deviated from that. But almost all of our lives, we no longer have that in our hands.

Read it all right here.

 

Philosophy and Religion- Allama Iqbal (trans)

Here is a translation of the poem that is recited in the video in the previous post.

What is this sun and what are these starry heavens?

I have yet to understand this continuation of night and day

Am in in my homeland or am I a stranger here?

Seeing this vast and desolate desert fills me with fright

I am unable to attain the secret of this journey of life

From where can I bring the man of true vision?

Avicenna is wondering where he came from and

Rumi is concerned about where he should head for

“With every wayfarer I travel a short while

I do not yet know who my real guide is”.

 

Philosophy and Religion- Allama Iqbal

Here’s a nice little poem from Hz Allama called Falsafa o Mazhab (philosophy and Religion). Its last two verses particularly strike a chord with me these days. Listen, look and enjoy.

 

Pakistan in Crisis

Pakistan is in crisis again. Gen Musharraf has declared a state of emergency in the country and began a process of meddling in the judiciary. His stated reason is to counteract the terrorist and extremist threat in the country. This is difficult to believe since his primary targets have so far been members of the judiciary, human rights activists and the media. It seems this is yet another desperate attempt by the General to stay in power.

It is a time of tough choices for the people of Pakistan. Do they value civil liberties, rule of law and democracy enough to actually fight for it. The establishment has become used to treating its citizens like cattle. They can be herded with the stick whenever needed. The General even implicitly admitted this in his address to the nation when he requested his friends in the West (whom he is “milking” in the name of terrorism) not to expect the same level of “human rights” in Pakistan. Obviously in his view Pakistanis have still not evolved to the human level where they would merit these rights. It is now up to the people to prove that the the dictator is wrong.

This is a tough choice, but then liberty doesn’t come cheap. See the excellent Democracy and Freedom blog for details and updates.

 

Causality and Necessity

Another interesting piece related to the previous post.

Discussions of causality and necessity in Islamic thought were the result of attempts to incorporate the wisdom of the Greeks into the legacy of the Qur”an, and specifically to find a philosophical way of expressing faith in the free creation of the universe by one God. Moreover, that article of faith was itself a result of the revelation of God’s ways in the free bestowal of the Qur”an on a humanity otherwise locked in ignorance, which a purportedly Aristotelian account of the necessary connection of cause and effect might be taken to rule out. Thus free creation of the universe and free gift of the Qur’an formed a logical unit. The challenge, therefore, was to compose an account of metaphysical and ethical matters which permits rational discourse about them, without obscuring their ultimate source or precluding divine action in the course of world events and human actions.

The scheme of emanation elaborated by al-Farabi sought to give ‘the First’ the place of pre-eminence which the Qur’an demanded for the Creator, but did so by modelling creation on a logical system whereby all things emanated necessarily from this One. It was this necessity, further articulated by Ibn Sina, which al-Ghazalii took to jeopardize the freedom of God as Creator and as giver of the Qur’an. al-Ghazali’s objections were honed by a previous debate among Muslim theologians (mutakallimun), who had elaborated diverse views on human freedom in an effort to reconcile the obvious demand for free acceptance of the Qur’an with its claims regarding God’s utter sovereignty as Creator over all that is. Natural philosophy was also affected by these debates, specifically with regard to the ultimate constitution of bodies as well as accounts that could be given of their interaction. However, the primary focus was on human actions in the face of a free Creator.

Read the rest here.

 

Neo-Platonism in Islam

Here is a brief but interesting summary of the impact and influence of Neo-Platonisn on Islamic thought by Ian Richard Netton who is the author of a number pf works on Islamic philosophy and mysticism. He writes:

Islamic Neoplatonism developed in a milieu already saturated with the thought of Plotinus and Aristotle. The former studied in Alexandria, and the Alexandrine philosophical syllabus included such figures as Porphyry of Tyre and Proclus. Associated with these scholars were two major channels of Islamic Neoplatonism, the so-called Theology of Aristotle and the Liber de Causis (Book of Causes). Other cities beloved of the philosophers at the time of the rise of Islam in the first century ah (seventh century ad) included Gondeshapur and Harran.

Islamic Neoplatonism stressed one aspect of the Qur’anic God, the transcendent, and ignored another, the creative. For the Neoplatonists, all things emanated from the deity. Islamic philosophers were imbued to a greater or lesser degree with either Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism or, as was often the case, with both. Al-Kindi, the father of Islamic philosophy, has a Neoplatonic aspect, but the doctrine reaches its intellectual fruition in the complex emanationist hierarchies developed by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Their views are later developed (or metamorphosed) by later thinkers into an emanative hierarchy of lights, as with Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi, or the doctrine of the Unity of Being espoused by Ibn al-’Arabi. While al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd both vigorously opposed Neoplatonic views, the latter attacked the former for his general opposition to the philosophers.

Neoplatonism itself had a major impact on that sectarian grouping of Muslims known as the Isma’ilis, and became the substratum for its theology. Historically, Neoplatonism in Islam achieved its climax with the Fatimid Isma’ili conquest of Egypt towards the end of the fourth century ah (tenth century ad). While Neoplatonism later declined in philosophical importance in the face of rampant Aristotelianism and Hanbalism, it may be said to have bequeathed an important religious, historical and cultural legacy to the Islamic world, which in the Isma’ili movement endures to this day.

Read the rest of the article here.