God and Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of Reason

Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
Illustrations......Page 13
Preface and Acknowledgements......Page 15
Spelling, Names, and Sources......Page 17
Introduction......Page 19
PART ONE: THE FORMATION OF THE ISLAMIC TRADITION OF REASON......Page 25
1 The Problem of Reason in Islam: Is Islam a Non-Rational Religion and Civilization?......Page 27
2 The Diversity of Reason......Page 33
The definition of reason and rationality......Page 34
Logos and Rationality among the Greeks......Page 36
Scholasticism: Reason as the Tool of Theology......Page 38
Scientific Reason......Page 39
Utilitarian Reason and Practical Rationality......Page 40
Relativism......Page 41
Protestant Textualism......Page 42
The civil war of reason in the west......Page 43
Islam and western conceptions of reason......Page 45
3 Empirical Knowledge of the Mind of God......Page 48
The enterprise of hadith collection......Page 50
The historicity of the hadith......Page 52
The intellectual world of the hadith scholars......Page 56
The Authority of the Hadith......Page 60
Classification as Codification......Page 61
The historical priority of fiqh to hadith......Page 64
Literalist challenge and rationalist cooption......Page 68
4 The Failure of the Farabian Synthesis of Religion and Philosophy......Page 73
Philosophy and religion before islam......Page 75
The first encounter of islam with philosophy: from the syrians to kindi......Page 82
Farabi’s philosophy of religion......Page 85
Religion Subsumed within Philosophy......Page 92
God as Intellect and the Intelligibility of God......Page 94
Prophecy as a Matter of Psychology......Page 96
The Symbolic Interpretation of Scripture......Page 98
The Role of Fiqh and Kal¯am......Page 99
The failure of the farabian political philosophy of religion......Page 100
5 Mysticism, Postclassical Islamic Philosophy, and the Rise and Fall of Islamic Science......Page 104
The emergence of mysticism......Page 105
Suhrawardi......Page 107
Ibn ‘Arabi......Page 111
Aristotelianism in the Madrasas......Page 113
The “failure” of islamic science......Page 114
PART TWO: LOGIC, EDUCATION, AND DOUBT......Page 123
“Where is islamic logic?”......Page 125
Arabic grammar......Page 129
Arabic rhetoric......Page 131
Usul al-fiqh......Page 132
Kalam......Page 135
Institutions and the boundaries of logic......Page 137
7 The Long Afternoon of Islamic Logic......Page 139
Islamic logic to the thirteenth century......Page 142
The textbooks and their commentaries......Page 144
The educational use of the school logic texts......Page 147
Content of the school logic......Page 153
The modernization of the school logic......Page 157
8 The Institutionalization of Disagreement......Page 160
The classical islamic attitude to disagreement......Page 161
An education of form without content......Page 169
PART THREE: THE FALL AND THE FUTURE OF ISLAMIC RATIONALISM......Page 173
The collapse of traditional education......Page 175
“What went wrong?”......Page 180
10 A Chaos of Certitudes: The Future of Islamic Reason......Page 188
Disagreement in the contemporary islamic world......Page 191
The great issues......Page 193
General references on islam, islamic history, and historiography......Page 205
Classical and early christian thought and literature......Page 206
Qur’an and hadith......Page 207
Islamic law and jurisprudence......Page 208
Islamic theology......Page 209
Islamic philosophy......Page 211
Islamic mysticism......Page 215
Science and islam......Page 216
Logic......Page 217
Islamic and indian education......Page 219
Fundamentalism and issues in contemporary islam......Page 220
Index......Page 221