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An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines pdf

AN INTRODUCTION TO ISLAMIC COSMOLOGICAL DOCTRINES
Book Title An Introduction To Islamic Cosmological Doctrines
Book AuthorSeyyed Hossein Nasr
Total Pages346
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LanguageEnglish
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An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

AN INTRODUCTION TO ISLAMIC COSMOLOGICAL DOCTRINES

This study opens up a relatively unexplored, hence unfamiliar, aspect of Islam.

The majority of modern Muslim ration lists will no doubt join in chorus with the formalist orthodox theologians to deny that its subject can be identified with Islam “in any true sense.” But their perspective is false.

The theme of Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s study is one no less vital than the tracing out of one line in the complex pro­ cess by which the Islamic Community gradually discovered its own nature and habitat.

To most Western readers also this study may appear no less paradoxical.

It is commonly held that all scientific thought and writing in the medieval Islamic world was derived from the legacy of Greek thought, as modified by a number of orientalizing factors in the later Hellenistic age.

So much has been written about the great Arabic scientists and philosophers and their influence upon the awakening mind of Europe that it comes as something of a shock to be confronted with the thickening web of “irrational” elements in the writings of such a personality as Avicenna.

It would be impossible within the compass of a preface to elucidate these paradoxes in detail.

Its more limited aim must be to outline, for both Muslim and Western readers, a particular view of Islamic thought as it developed in the first seven centuries of Islamic history (the seventh to thirteenth centuries of our era), and to hope that, seen in the light of this development, the historical and religious significance of Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s analysis will be more fully appreciated.

In the common exposition of both Eastern and Western scholars, the history of Islam is presented in a series of stages.

 After the first century or so of simple piety and political conflict, the energies of the Islamic Community were for a space of two or three centuries centered on the development of the schools of law and on theological dispute.

 Owing to the intellectual ferment resulting from the impact of Hellenism, the third and fourth centuries were the “Golden Age” of Islamic culture, when literature and science widened out in every direction, and economic prosperity also reached its climax.

By the fifth century the legal and theological structures of both the Sunni and Shi’ite wings had been rigidly consolidated, and political issues had largely been removed from the sphere of controversy by the expanding hegemony of the Turks.

The sixth century saw the beginnings of the process of decay, simultaneously with the infiltration of sufi mysticism into the general religious life of the Community; and with the Mongol invasions of the seventh century its course was irretrievably set toward a general intellectual and religious decadence.

The question raised by this presentation is whether these concepts of progress and decadence do not rest upon partial criteria which fail to take adequate account of the complexities and contradictions inherent in any society, and not least in Muslim society.

From an ecumenical religious point of view, for example, one can scarcely doubt that the moral integration of the Christian West was far greater in the fourteenth century than in the twentieth; on this criterion, then, the Renaissance initiated a process of gradual decadence. So also in Islam, the course of moral and religious integration and the progress of the Community toward a deepening self-consciousness and universality call for entirely different standards of measurement than those by which the intellectual breadth or economic prosperity of the Islamic civilization in its “Golden Age” is judged.

From the beginning of its existence the Community was made aware (and daily reminded) by the Qur’an of the purpose for which it was created and the destiny to which it was called.

It was to represent on earth, before the eyes of all mankind, the principle of Divine Jus­ tice, that is to say, of integral Reality, Harmony and Truth. Justice in this sense has little or nothing to do with the political or judicial application of man-made laws.

It is a principle of order and whole­ ness: that all elements, endowments, and activities of life shall be in harmonious relation with one another, each fulfilling its proper purpose and ends in a divinely-appointed system of interlocking obligations and rights.

If the Community were to fulfill its purpose, three needs must be continuously and adequately met. One was the continuing need of a spiritual intuition that should maintain its perception of the universals.

The second was the bikmah,the “wisdom” to discern by the use of reason their proper application to particular cases.

The third was the function of government to protect the integrity of the Community and the peaceful and harmonious coordination of other functions with it.

In the cold light of History, the Community was manifestly falling far short of this ideal. Spiritual intuition was too often dulled or replaced by theological disputes and formularies.

The efforts of the jurists to define the applications of divine justice had produced, in the Shari’a, magnificent (if rival) corpora of legal doctrine, but their legal

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