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ABSTRACT
This paper evaluates the potentials of Mullā Şadrā’s philosophy to explain the possibility of the Islamization of philosophy. This contributes to a more general, yet controversial, project in post-revolutionary Iran, namely the Islamization of knowledge, especially in the humanities. If there would be a mechanism through which Islamization of philosophy – as a historical example and as a field of knowledge that provides theoretical grounds of other humanities – can be plausibly explained, then one might think of Islamizing the humanities, as well. One famous explanation in Iran is based on the distinction between contexts of discovery and justification. It explains how a philosopher is permitted to use the Islamic content in the context of discovery – not justification – and how this helps to Islamize philosophy. In this article, we claim a new explanation which is based on Mullā Şadrā’s transcendent philosophy. Such a philosophical explanation not only acknowledges using the Qur’an and authentic narrations in the context of discovery but also necessitates involving revelation as a philosophical criterion in the context of justification and a highly valid epistemic source in producing the new philosophical content. This provides a strong account of the Islamization of philosophy.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for the constructive advice and helpful comments from the anonymous referees. We also thank Georg Theiner whose kind support was really encouraging and Claryn Spies for her helpful comments on the English text.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Islamization of knowledge is more appropriate than Islamization of science since it is more encompassing (Furlow 2008).
2. Khosropanah believes that before al-Attas, Abu al-Aʿla Mawdudi (d. 1979), a Pakistani Islamist and scholar, had raised the issue of religious science, albeit more naively, and was concerned with the Islamization of science and academia (Khosropanah 2011, 387–388; see also Ahmad 2012). Mawdudi believed that the new sciences should be Islamized and that the growth of unfaithfulness should be prevented by employing committed teachers in schools and universities (see Mawdudi 1938, 31–33).
3. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, by order of Imam Khomeini in 1980, universities were closed so that the content of university courses be reviewed based on Islamic teachings and values. This can be considered the starting point for the localization and Islamization of universities, but for some reason, including the devastating Iraq war against Iran, it was taken out of focus. Again, in the last two decades, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has reiterated the need to produce ‘Islamic humanities’. Among the institutions established since the beginning of the revolution until now, with the aim of creating and expanding Islamic sciences, especially Islamic humanities, the following can be mentioned: Cultural Revolution Headquarters (1980; renamed the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution in 1984), The Organization for Researching and Composing University Textbooks in the Humanities or SAMT (1984), Islamization of Universities Headquarters (1997) and the Special Council of Transformation and Promotion of Humanities (2009) under the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, and Research Institute of Hawzeh and University (which was established in 1982 with the initial name of ‘Hawzeh and University Cooperation Office)’. See Ramezani and Hamani (2014).
4. For instance, Al-Faruqi considers the harmony between relation and reason as one of the principles for Islamizing knowledge (see al-Faruqi and AbuSulayman 1989, 39–41). Stenberg in his analysis of four popular positions in the discourse of Islamization of knowledge maintains that all of them share an overall presupposition that there is no dichotomy between reason and revelation (Stenberg 1996, 326).
5. Soroush calls it ‘Islamic knowledge in its strong sense’ and thinks that such knowledge – if possible, at all – can be best attributed to Islam (Movahed Abtahi 2013, 119–120).
6. The distinction between the context of discovery and justification is rooted in the work of Hans Reichenbach and Karl Popper, who were trying to improve empiricism as a philosophy of science (Swedberg 2012, 3; see also Howard 2006, 3). The distinction is usually traced back to Reichenbach’s Experience and Prediction (Schickore and Steinle 2006, vii), in which he emphasized that epistemology cannot be concerned with the context of discovery but only with the context of justification (Reichenbach 1938, 6–7, 382) and that the act of discovery escapes logical analysis and logic is concerned only with the context of justification (Reichenbach 1951, 231). Popper (2002, 7) argues that scientific research ‘consists of putting forward and testing theories. The initial stage, the act of conceiving or inventing a theory and the question how it happens that a new idea occurs to a man – whether it is a musical theme, a dramatic conflict, or a scientific theory – … is irrelevant to the logical analysis of scientific knowledge’.
7. Some maintain that the contemporary stream of neo-Sadrians in Iran and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in Malaysia – one of the pioneering institutes in introducing and developing the concept of Islamization of knowledge – have potentials for serious interaction and dialogue (Sajedi 2021).
8. Although Soroush’s more recent views do not seem to agree with the realization of religious science in practice, some have tried to show that even the foundations of his views can subconsciously lead to the production of at least two types of religious science derived from religious texts. They have also, through historical analysis, shown some of the drawbacks of Soroush’s claim that any attempt to produce religious knowledge has been fruitless. See Movahed Abtahi (2013). Also, for a detailed account of Soroush’s criticisms of the Islamization of knowledge and their counter-criticisms, see Shahgoli (2020).
9. Some proponents of Islamization of knowledge like Al-Attas have also emphasized the validity of intuition among other epistemic sources and thought that knowledge continuously requires direction, supervision and confirmation from revelation (see Hashim and Rossidy 2000, 24–25); although such claims are somehow similar to those of Ṣadrā’s and, as a result, they confirm our claim about the potential of Ṣadrā’s philosophy to pave the way for an Islamic intellectual knowledge, they lack sufficient philosophical explanation, and are, in fact, based on religious grounds rather than pure rational principles.
10. This view is clearly in contrast to another less popular Shiʿī approach to knowledge called Maktab-e Tafkīk which insists that knowledge of reality and the faith only derives from the teachings of the Shiite Imams and should not be contaminated with the mere rational philosophical method, and therefore, the synthesis of revelation and rational inquiry pursued by philosophers like Ṣadrā must be avoided. For a detailed overview of Maktab-e Tafkīk and its comparison with philosophical thought, especially that of Mullā Ṣadrā, see Rizvi (2012).
11. Other Muslim thinkers outside of philosophy also consider revelation as the epistemological fulcrum of other sources of knowledge; for instance, Sardar takes the Revealed Knowledge as the Absolute Reference Frame (ARF) in Islamic epistemology (see Galadanci 2000).
12. Alizadeh (1998), Salavati (2015), Siraj, Rahbar, and Yathrebi (2016), and Mazinani and Akbarzadeh (2016, 874–876) also maintain that Mullā Ṣadrā has used religion as a philosophical criterion in the context of justification.
13. According to Naderi and Khodabakhshian (2014, 676–679), the dispute over the possibility of religious knowledge is rooted in the two opposite standpoints of maximalist religion or minimalist religion, and the supporters of the former enjoy a more reasonable ground for defending religious knowledge. Soroush (2018, 341) also considers the comprehensiveness of religion as a reason for the tendency to religionize knowledge and maintains that if one considers their religion as comprehensive and complete, they will logically conclude that religious knowledge can and should be inferred from that religion.
14. For a detailed discussion of the relation between reason and revelation, see Javadi Amoli (2010) and Parsania (2009).
15. Because it has been reported by a large group of persons from a large group of persons across different generations, and reason firmly refutes the possibility of such a report being suspicious because in practice such a large group could not have assembled together to fabricate a falsehood (Nyazee 2016, 186).
16. The degree of explicitness of all religious texts is not the same; a few propositions in the Qurʾan and ḥadīths are so explicit that they only bear one single meaning and are called naṣṣ. Many of them, however, can convey more than one meaning; if the other probable meaning or meanings are not considerable and are usually ignored by people, they are called ẓāhir (apparent). Muslim scholars use different principles to determine the correct meaning(s), such as ‘the principle of appearance’; see Hodaee (2013, 6–7).
17. For a detailed explanation of different classifications of ḥadīth, especially categories of sound (ṣaḥīḥ), fair (ḥasan), and weak (ḍaʿīf), and also the qualifications of ḥadīth narrators, see Kamali (2005, chapters 15–18).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Amir Rastin Toroghi
Amir Rastin Toroghi is assistant professor at the Department of Islamic Philosophy and Theosophy, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM), Mashhad, Iran. After his PhD in Transcendent Theosophy, he held a post-doctoral fellowship in Mullā adrā’s philosophy at FUM. His current research interests lay at the intersection between Mullā adrā’s thought and different philosophical and theological fields, especially philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and epistemology.
Vahideh Fakhar Noghani
Vahideh Fakhar Noghani is assistant professor at the Department of Islamic Teachings, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) Mashhad, Iran. Her primary research interests are in comparative philosophy of religion with special attention to Mullā adrā’s Transcendent philosophy, comparative theology between Islam and Christianity, and Islamic epistemology. Currently Fakhar and Rastin are working on a joint research project in comparative theology, with special focus on Mullā adrā’s philosophical and theological framework.