The Closing of the Muslim Mind

The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist by Robert R. Reilly, ISI Books, 2010. 

Reason versus Dogmatism

This book is about how Islam turned away from reason and embraced religious dogmatism. The author explains at the outset that this book is a history of Sunni, and not Shia,  Islamic theology. He mentions Shia theology only briefly. Much of the history of Islamic theology is about reason versus revelation.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

During the development of modern Christianity, Saint Thomas Aquinas was successful in reforming dogmatic Christianity by tempering it with Greek Aristotelian philosophy. Similar efforts in the Islamic world were met with greater opposition, as chronicled in this book.

Free Will versus Determinism

In the early days of Islam, there were the Qadariyya, who believed in free will, and the Jabariyya, who were determinists. The Jabariyya believed that God controls man’s actions. When Muslims say insha’ Allah (God willing), they are expressing the theological doctrine that God controls everything that happens.

The Qur'an

Another important issue in Islamic theology is whether the Qurʼan has always existed, or was created by the prophet Mohammad. The more mystical Islamic thinkers believed that the Qurʼan has always existed in Heaven, and that all the Prophet Mohammad and his disciples did was write it down in material form. The more rational Islamic thinkers believe that the Qurʼan was created by the Prophet Mohammad based upon divine inspiration.

Mu’tazilite School

Wasil ibn ‘Ata (700 A.D. –748 A.D.) founded the Mu’tazilite school of Islamic theology, based on the earlier Qadariyya school. The Mu’tazilite school was strongly influenced by Aristotle and believed in reason. The Mu’tazilites believed that God is not only power, but is also reason and justice. On the issue of time and the Qu’ran, the Mu’tazilite teaching was that the Qur’an was created in time, and not eternal. Baghdad Caliph al-Ma’mun (813 A.D. – 833 A.D.) supported the Mu’tazilits.  We know about the Mu’tazilites from Abd al-Jabbar, who wrote Book of the Five Fundamentals.

Outlawing of the Mu’tazilite School

Caliph Ja’afar al-Mutawakkil (847 A.D. – 861 A.D.) outlawed the Mu’tazilite school of Islamic philosophy. It became illegal to copy or sell Mu’tazilite books. This Caliph also freed Ahmad ibn Hanbal from jail. Ahmad ibn Hanbal was a critic of Mu’tazilite theology and the founder of the most literalist school of Islamic jurisprudence (Hanbali).

Persia

Persia took in the Mu’tazilites refugees from Arab lands. Eastern Persia (which was Shia) was more tolerant of the Mu’tazilites, than was orthodox Sunni Islam. By the end of the Abbasid Age, Mu’tazilism existed only near the Caspian Sea and Yemen.

Ash’arite School

Abu Hasan al-Ash’ari (874 A.D. – 936 A.D.) was the founder of the Ash’arite school of Sunni theology. The Ash’arites objected to philosophy, because it implied that the human mind could understand reality without the need of scripture. The Ash’arite school eventually defeated the Mu’tazilite school. The Ash’ari believed that:

• God is power and will, unknowable, arbitrary, and not teleological

• There is no connection between cause and effect

• There are no natural laws

• Everything that happens is a miracle, because its cause is an unknowable

• There is no restraint on God’s omnipotence:

• God is not obligated to do good

• The Qu’ran is eternal, and was not created at some point in time

• God cannot be just if he allows men the free will to choose evil, therefore there must be no free will

Al-Ghazali and Avicenna

Al-Ghazali (born in Tus in Iran in 1058 A.D.) was a Muslim theologian who wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers, a criticism of the earlier attempts to incorporate Greek rationality into Islam. In particular, he criticized Ibn Sina (980 A.D. – 1037 A.D.) the Persian philosopher and physician, whose Westernized name is Avicenna. Al-Ghazali favored Sufi mysticism over reason, because reason sometimes made mistakes. Al-Ghazali was responsible for incorporating Sufism into Sunni orthodoxy. Al-Ghazali terminated the influence of Greek philosophy on Islam.

Averroës

Ibn Rushd (Western name: Averroës) was a Spanish Andalusian Muslim who wrote a criticism of Al-Ghazali called The Incoherence of the Incoherence. In 1195 in Cordoba 108 of Averroes’s books were burned. Averroes had his main impact in Europe, not in the Arab world.

Ibn Taymiyya and Wahhabism

Ibn Taymiyya (1263 A.D. -1328 A.D.) feared that scholastic theology (kalam) would lead to atheism. Ibn Taymiyya was even more opposed to reason than was Al-Ghazali. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 A.D. –1792 A.D.), the founder of Wahhabism, was a follower of Ibn Taymiyya.

Four Main Sunni Legal Schools

• Imam Al-Shafi’i

• Abu Hanifa

• Ahmad ibn Hanbal

• Malik ibn Anas

Jurisprudence and Theology

Current Islamic scholarship is about jurisprudence not theology. The theological issues are regarded as being settled. All that needs to be discussed is how to interpret the Qur’an’s rules regarding proper behavior and how these rules should be enforced.

Human Action

The jurist Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi classified human actions into five groups:

• Obligatory

• Recommended

• Permitted

• Discouraged

• Forbidden

A Theology Without Reason

The result of rejecting reason has been the curtailment of economic development in the world of Islam. Excluding oil, the entire Arab Middle East exports less than Finland. The main obstacle to democracy in Arab countries is not dictators but rather Islamic epistemology (opposition to reason).