The Closing of the Muslim Mind

IIIOIII

I want to start a discussion here on the topic of a book, entitled 'The Closing of the Muslim Mind' which addresses the topic of faith and reason in Islamic thought. It seems the debate has been closed in islamic thought, not because one argument was more convincing or truthful, but because 'might was right'.

An excerpt from this article form CatholicCulture:

The Mu’tazilites attempted the same synthesis of faith and reason that medieval philosophers accomplished within Christianity. While fully accepting the authority of the Qu’ran, the Mu’tazilites believed that the Islamic faith could be subjected to logical analysis, and the works of Allah would conform to the demands of human reason.

Not so the Ash’arites. This school of thought insists that Islam requires utter subjection to the will of God. To think that Allah is subject to reason is impudent, even blasphemous, in the Ash’arite view. The Ash’arites do not accept even the most fundamental logical analysis of the Qu’ran; they demand unquestioning obedience to the word of Allah.

When some passages of the Qu’ran contradict others, the Mu’tazilites say that reason should guide the faithful to the truth. The Ash’arites make no such concession to human reason. If Allah wishes to be contradictory, they argue, who are we mortals to question the almighty? Thus the principle of non-contradiction, the most fundamental principle of rational thought, is wiped off the boards, and Islam enters the province of unreason.

The triumph of the Ash’arites, Reilly tells his readers, represents the final closing of Islamic mind. With Mu’tazilites, some inter-faith dialogue would have been possible. But with Ash’arites, there is no basis for a reasoned discussion because reason itself is held in disdain.

The article continues:

Pope Benedict was playing a very interesting gambit, then, when he suggested in his famous Regensburg address that Islam, like Christianity, should be held to the standards of reason. The Holy Father was offering a serious dialogue with any Muslim leaders who might be willing to take up the Mu’tazilite cause.

Surely the Pope knows that it would be dangerous for any Islamic scholar to head down that road. But as things stand, the entire world is headed down a dangerous road, toward a confrontation between Islam and the West. It would be best, surely, to avoid a violent confrontation. But if we hope to avoid violence we must have some other means of resolving disagreements. Before we can engage in productive dialogue with Islam, we must find interlocutors who will treat that dialogue seriously—who will treat reason seriously.

I guess the Pope was making the point that faith must be subject to reason. The Muslims responded with unreasonable violence and murder throughout the world in response to the Pope's quoting of an Emperor commenting on violence in Islam.

So, let us discuss this matter. I am interested in the views of the Irish Muslims on this.

You can read the short article here before commenting:
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=748

Hobbes

IIIOIII wrote: »

So, let us discuss this matter. I am interested in the views of the Irish Muslims on this.

Why? What are your views on this (which you are supposed to post on these kinds of threads).

IIIOIII

Hobbes wrote: »

Why? What are your views on this (which you are supposed to post on these kinds of threads).

My view is, at present, represented by the short article. I've not read the book, nor do I know anything about the various divisions if Islam. Like I said, I am interested in what the resident Muslims have to say about this, hence I started this thread.

hivizman

The book being referred to is Robert R Reilly The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, published in 2010. I have not read this book, but (based on the article cited in the original post and also an interview with Reilly on a Roman Catholic website) I think that it over-simplifies the theological debates between the Mu'tazilite school of theology (which Reilly characterises as the "good guys", suggesting that they placed human reason above revelation) and the Ash'ari school (who are clearly the "bad guys" in Reilly's account).

However, this seems to contradict the view of various commentators who see the Mu'tazilite position as ultimately incoherent - among the Muslim scholars, the most obvious person to refer to would be Al-Ghazali, whose many works include The Incoherence of the Philosophers, written to rebut the Aristotelian views of Muslim philosophers and theologians who put human reason above divine revelation. Al-Ash'ari himself has been described (by Hans Küng, Islam: Past, Present & Future [Oneworld, p. 296]), as someone who "combined the naive faith of the adherents to tradition with rational arguments, . . . referring to numerous hadith in which the Prophet himself argues rationally." In The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, a "chronology of major philosophers in the Arabic tradition" contains Al-Ash'ari's name about one-fifth of the way down the list, implying that philosophical debate continued in Islam long after Reilly implies it was terminated by the dominance of Ash'arite thought.

Al-Ash'ari's position (I'm summarising the discussion on Al-Ash'ari in Roy Jackson Fifty Key Figures in Islam [Routledge: 2006, pp. 57-62]) was that the Mu'tazilites gave too much precedence to human reason, which he believed had the by-product of making thinking about God too abstract and mechanistic. He was not someone who simply adopted a literalist position with respect to the Qur'an, but he believed that reliance on reason alone was as dangerous as relying on literal readings of scripture. "The best approach, he believed, was to combine reason with revelation. The Qur'an can be justified by reason alone up to a certain point, and beyond that it simply must be accepted as revealed truth. Certain aspects of doctrine, therefore, were 'off limits' to rational speculation and one must simply accept 'without asking how' (bila kayfa)." For example, humans simply cannot use reason to predict whether individuals will end up in Paradise or in the Hellfire, as the Mu'tazilites argued - this is a matter for the will of God.

Clearly, this sort of position can be taken to extremes, and it cannot be denied that one of the intellectual strands within Islam has been hostile to the sort of "rationalist" critique of religious belief that Christianity has faced (often from devout Christians) since the 18th century if not sooner. However, to characterise the dominance of Ash'arite thinking over Mu'tazilite in the 9th century as closing the door on reason in Islam is, in my view, a gross overstatement.

As is my custom in this sort of response, I point out that I am not a Muslim, and I am myself probably guilty of oversimplification.

PDN

I think the Pope is a bit of a hypocrite given that his own organisation played the 'might is right' card for well over a thousand years by murdering anyone who disagreed with them.

goose2005

PDN wrote: »

I think the Pope is a bit of a hypocrite given that his own organisation played the 'might is right' card for well over a thousand years by murdering anyone who disagreed with them.

Actually, they hardly ever did. Even the Spanish Inquisition only executed about 4,000 people over 350 years, at a time when the death penalty was used for many minor crimes.

irishconvert

goose2005 wrote: »

Actually, they hardly ever did. Even the Spanish Inquisition only executed about 4,000 people over 350 years, at a time when the death penalty was used for many minor crimes.

Where does the 4,000 figure come from?

hivizman

irishconvert wrote: »

Where does the 4,000 figure come from?

I'm not sure where the 4,000 figure comes from, but it is consistent with the analysis provided by Henry Kamen in his book The Spanish Inquisition (first published in 1965, revised edition in 1998). Kamen points out that the Inquisition was more active in the early years (between roughly 1480 and 1530) than in subsequent years. After reviewing the extant evidence, he concludes: "Taking into account all the tribunals of Spain up to about 1530, it is unlikely that more than 2,000 people were executed for heresy by the Inquisition." Although the Spanish Inquisition continued into the 19th century, Kamen suggests that the level and focus of activity varied considerably. In the early years, the main targets were "conversos", who were mainly Jews who had converted to Christianity. The "moriscos", Muslim converts to Christianity, were of less interest to the Inquisition until the second part of the 16th century. Kamen estimates that, even in the worst periods, around 2% of those punished by the Inquisition were actually executed, the remainder suffering imprisonment, loss of assets and a range of lesser punishments. Obviously, some of those who became subject to the Inquisition would have died in prison or during questioning, or as a consequence of impoverishment, or during flight from Spain, so the total of all the victims of the Spanish Inquisition is likely to be higher, but the estimate of 4,000 executed by the Inquisition seems to be of the right order of magnitude.

The Wikipedia article on the Spanish Inquisition supports this, but the article appears to draw heavily on Kamen, so it may not count as an independent source.

PDN

goose2005 wrote: »

Actually, they hardly ever did. Even the Spanish Inquisition only executed about 4,000 people over 350 years, at a time when the death penalty was used for many minor crimes.

Only 4000? Ah that makes it all OK then.

But what your post overlooks is that most of the 'heretics' killed at the orders of the Catholic Church were not killed by the Spanish Inquisition. So figures of 4,000 over 350 years are rather misleading.

For instance, during the Albigensian Crusade the entire population of Béziers was put to the sword. So, on the 22nd July 1209, anywhere between 15,000 and 60,000 were killed for the crime of adhering to the Cathar heresy instead of Catholicism.

ISAW

PDN wrote: »

Only 4000? Ah that makes it all OK then.

But what your post overlooks is that most of the 'heretics' killed at the orders of the Catholic Church were not killed by the Spanish Inquisition. So figures of 4,000 over 350 years are rather misleading.

For instance, during the Albigensian Crusade the entire population of Béziers was put to the sword. So, on the 22nd July 1209, anywhere between 15,000 and 60,000 were killed for the crime of adhering to the Cathar heresy instead of Catholicism.

You happened to pick the largest population killed in such a way. and the "Crusade" as you call it is usually used to denote a war between Islam and Christianity. In fact this was a war between different Christian factions.

The point is being made about the popes "murdering anyone who disagreed with them" and it is frankly a sweeping statement. In fact religious organisations whether Islamic Judaic or Christian pale into insignificance when compared to atheistic slaughters. I include Buddhist as atheistic in this definition as well as atheistic communism. They killed hundreds of millions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade
The Cathari did not believe in one all-encompassing god, but in two, both equal and comparable in status. They held that the physical world was evil and created by Rex Mundi (Latin, "king of the world"), who encompassed all that was corporeal, chaotic and powerful; the second god, the one whom they worshipped, was entirely disincarnate: a being or principle of pure spirit and completely unsullied by the taint of matter. He was the god of love, order and peace

Contrary to popular legend, the Inquisition proceeded largely by means of legal investigation persuasion and reconciliation. Judicial procedures were used and although the accused were not allowed to know the names of their accusers, they were permitted to mount a defence. The vast majority found guilty of heresy were given light penalties. 11 percent of offenders faced prison. Only around 1 percent, the most steadfast and relapsed Cathars were handed over to the secular authority to face burning at the stake.[55]
Christopher Tyerman, God's war: a new history of the Crusades, 2006, p 602
http://books.google.com/books?id=ULDUopVCVPoC&pg=PA602&dq=Gods+war+inquisition&hl=en&ei=UFu7TNO7IMKZOrHI2Y8N&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

If you read the history you can see the pope had little to do with the battles and most were land grabs by french Kings and Dukes.

Probably by far the largest number of deaths linked to any popes are those relating to slavery in America but this happened under one of the Borgia popes and the pope after him reversed the position on slavery!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Alexander_VI
Rodrigo Borgia was Pope from 1492 until his death on 18 September 1503. He is one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, and his italianized surname - Borgia - became a byword for the debased standards of the Papacy of that era; he is hardly representative of over 2000 years of Christianity.

ISAW

PDN wrote: »

Only 4000? Ah that makes it all OK then.

Nope but it doesnt make it "murdering anyone who disagreed with him ( the Pope) does it?

But what your post overlooks is that most of the 'heretics' killed at the orders of the Catholic Church were not killed by the Spanish Inquisition. So figures of 4,000 over 350 years are rather misleading.

Who were they killed by then?

For instance, during the Albigensian Crusade the entire population of Béziers was put to the sword.

Dealt with in other reply.
[/quote]
So, on the 22nd July 1209, anywhere between 15,000 and 60,000 were killed for the crime of adhering to the Cathar heresy instead of Catholicism.[/QUOTE]

Not by the Pope or on his orders but by local French Lords in a land grab. In fact the Inquisition which did act for the Pope was scarce in killing [reference in last reply ].