By Ed
Husain
22
September 2020
The world
will turn its attention to Saudi Arabia this year as the Kingdom hosts the
Future Investment Initiative global conference under the theme of
neo-Renaissance. Some will sneer: what do have Arabs to do with renaissance? I
meet this arrogance and amnesia often. In fact, the Arabs have a long and rich
history of civilization and renaissance. This history serves as a deep base on
which to build a new future and lasting prosperity.
Six
points illustrate how the Arab world was central to civilization and
renaissance throughout its history.
First, the
Arabs, even before Islam, always held the Greeks —forefathers of Western
civilization—in high respect. It was Persia that attacked and repeatedly
invaded ancient Athens and unleashed half a century of war. Seeking to add
Greece to their empire, the Persians destroyed the original Acropolis,
inspiration of art and architecture to this day. The Persians failed. The
Arabs, however, from earliest times saw the Greeks as allies and family. Yunān
(hence Ionian), forebear of the earliest Greeks, was believed to be the brother
of Qaḥtān, ancestor of the Arabs.
Greek
reason, laws, ideas and institutions continued with the rise of Rome. Herodotus
wrote warmly of the Arabs as traders, merchants, and a loyal people of
civilisations, including that of the Nabatean Arabs in Petra. That cultural
acceptance of the Arabs as natural allies and loyal citizens led to Philip the
Arab (Marcus Arabus) becoming Emperor of Rome. The Persians were at war with
Rome, too. The Roman-Iranian wars lasted for 700 years (54 B.C.-628 A.D.). If
the West remains suspicious of Iran today, it is partly because of this long
Iranian aggression dating back to antiquity.
Second,
with the coming of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad found himself in Mecca during
this long war between Iran and Rome. Famously, the Prophet sided with Rome: His
pro-Persian pagan opponents mocked him for being a Roman ally. He owned a Roman
shirt and believed in the sanctity of the Christian faith, by now the religion
of Rome. He called to the principle of a rational belief in the one God of
Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and firmly rejected Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and
the other pagan belief systems of Persia. The Arabian prophet created a
community of committed monotheists.
It was
these Arabian believers that the Prophet molded in Mecca who went on to change
the world and create civilizations. By the seventh and eighth centuries,
Christianity became doctrinal and dogmatic, closed to philosophy and free
inquiry. Tertullian, an early church father, asked dismissively “What does
Jerusalem have to do with Athens?” Hardline Christians destroyed the academies
of Greek philosophy in Athens and burned the libraries of Alexandria, killing
Hypatia the Philosopher for her rejection of Christians. What Christianity
closed, Arabian Muslims soon sought to open.
Third, the
Quran commands believers to read, reflect, think and ponder repeatedly
throughout the text. That spirit gave birth to the first great Arab philosopher
al-Kindi, who was then followed by others with undeniable Arab influences in
their thinking and choice of Arabic for writing, including al-Farabi, Ibn Sina,
Ibn Tufayl. Where Christians had dismissed Greek knowledge and wisdom as pagan,
Muslim philosophers led a new Renaissance from al-Kindi and al-Fārābi to Ibn
Khaldūn, of Yemeni Hadrami heritage, who cherished the words of Socrates, Plato
and Aristotle.
The court
of the early Umayyads in Damascus was so eager to learn from and about the new
peoples they had conquered in Syria and Egypt, that the Caliph Mu’awiya, a
scribe and wise Meccan companion of the Prophet, held sessions of debate and
discussion in court on history, theology and philosophy. The Umayyads happily
absorbed Roman modes of governance as testified by their retention of Christian
Roman civil servants, including Saint John of Damascus who wrote extensively of
his experiences.
Fourth, the
Arabian believers did not wait to be attacked by the Persians as the Greeks and
Romans before them, but took war and conquest successfully to Iran. That Islam
rescued Iran from paganism and permanent warfare against the rest of the world
is thanks to the Arabian Muslims that subdued a nation of long wars against
Greece and Rome. Arabs and Islam now dominated large parts of the previous
Byzantine and Persian territories and with that unity of faith came a new
renaissance of inventions, science, confidence and books that shaped the world.
But the spirit of philosophy was not to last: The Persian mystic, Imam
Ghazzali, declared Aristotelian philosophers of Islam to be disbelievers. That
rejection of the free mind, critical intellect and philosophy was quickly
institutionalised. But not so easily.
Fifth,
Ghazzali’s attempts to close the Muslim mind were rejected by the great jurist
and philosopher, Ibn Rushd (famous in the Latin West as Averroes). Ibn Rushd
wrote books, taught students and advised Spanish Muslim rulers making the case
for philosophy as “ḥikmah,” wisdom, that Muslims are religiously obliged (“wajib”) to
protect and pursue. Ibn Rushd’s greatest contribution to civilisation was not
only that he refuted Ghazzali, but this great Arab philosopher found ways to
reconcile reason and religion, two valid ways in which to seek truth. It was
that method of reason and rational thought of Arabian philosophers that gave
Andalusia eight hundred years of a booming civilisation, until 1492 when Jews
and Muslims were expelled by Catholic monarchs Isabelle and Ferdinand. Ibn
Rushd and the Muslims of Andalusia were descendants of Caliph Mu’awiya, the
Umayyads. In the Muslim East, Arabs gave way to others to rule: ‘Abbasids,
Seljuks, Mamlukes, Mughals, Ottomans. But in the Muslim West, Andalusia, Sicily
and Portugal it was the Arabian spirit of Mecca that shone.
Sixth, this
renaissance of Muslims in Andalusia, shunned by the East, was fully embraced by
two other religious civilizations: Catholicism and Judaism. The Judeo-Christian
civilization that is the modern West is rooted in the rational methods of
Arabian thinkers, particularly Ibn Rushd. In the universities of Paris, Padua
and Oxford, ‘Latin Averroists’ emerged as those who saw, like the ancient
Greeks, reason and philosophy can lead us to truth too. The Christian mind was
now again open to philosophy in the form of the Scholastics. In Judaism, it was
the great rabbi, Musa bin Maimun al-Qurtubi al-Israili (known as Maimonides)
who merged Aristotelian philosophy with the Talmud. In our times, the great
philosophers of the English-speaking world, Bertrand Russell, Leo Strauss and
Roger Scruton acknowledge the Western debt to Arab Muslim civilisations in the
West.
What the
Arabians gave to the West and Israel, Saudi Arabia should now reclaim and
revive at home and abroad again. The neo-Renaissance is rooted in this deep
history of open-minded Arabians from Mecca that rekindled what Spinoza called
the ‘natural light of reason,’ to strengthen our faith in God with use of our
intellect—not sheepish adherence to fatwas of clerics and ayatollahs who forbid
Aristotelian philosophy of critical thinking. Adam Smith wrote his “Wealth of
Nations” with observations of human behaviour and rational choices in the markets
that are identical to the Arabian sociologist Ibn Khaldun.
For Saudi
Arabia to promote the ‘natural light of reason’ in its neo-Renaissance is to
fulfil what its ancestors did for humanity previously for many centuries.
Prosperity comes from philosophy: the harmony between reason and religion.
Doubt me? Read Ibn Rushd and then Adam Smith. Where Saudi Arabia leads, 1.8
billion Muslims will follow.
Original
Headline: On philosophy, renaissance and Saudi Arabia: Civilization in six
points
Source: The English Al-Arabiya
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/neo-renaissance-saudi-arabia-some/d/122927
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism