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Revival, Reform, and Reason in Islam: Alfarabi on the Proper

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Revival, Reform, and Reason in Islam: Alfarabi on the Proper The Dissertation Committee for Ahmed Ali Siddiqi Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Revival, Reform, and Reason in Islam: Alfarabi on the Proper Relationship Between Religion and Politics Committee: Thomas Pangle, Supervisor Lorraine Pangle Devin Stauffer Hina Azam Revival, Reform, And Reason in Islam: Alfarabi on the Proper Relationship Between Religion and Politics by Ahmed Ali Siddiqi Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2018 Revival, Reform, and Reason in Islam: Alfarabi on the Proper Relationship Between Religion and Politics By Ahmed Ali Siddiqi, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2018 SUPERVISOR: Thomas Pangle This dissertation applies the teachings of Alfarabi to the debate between Muslim revivalists and reformists. Reviewing selected works of Khomeini, Maududi, and Qutb, I argue that Islamist revivalism constitutes a fundamental challenge to rational political science insofar as the former demands subordinating reason to revelation. Next, through a critical analysis of several liberal Muslim theorists, I show that these leading reformists fail to vindicate the role of reason in political matters and therefore leave the Islamist challenge unmet. I subsequently turn to Alfarabi's "Book of Religion" (Kitāb al-Milla) with an emphasis on the philosopher's treatment of political science. In doing so, I find that Alfarabi is able to offer a far more compelling response than the liberals to that view of piety on which the Islamist position depends. I therefore suggest that it is Alfarabi, above all, who points modern scholars toward the necessary theoretical foundations of any successful intellectual engagement with Islamism. iii Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................... 1 Islam and Political Philosophy .................................................................... 3 Three Poles of Islamic Thought ................................................................ 13 Why Alfarabi? ........................................................................................... 17 Outline of the Work ................................................................................... 20 Chapter 1: Major Themes in Twentieth-Century Islamism ... 24 The Political Character of Islam ................................................................ 29 Subordination of Reason to Revelation ..................................................... 34 Permanent Validity of Divine Law ........................................................... 38 The Importance of Worldly Happiness ..................................................... 42 Synopsis ..................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 2: Liberal Reform Efforts in Islam ............................. 46 Apolitical Islam ......................................................................................... 48 ‘Ali ‘Abd ar-Raziq .................................................................................................... 49 Muhammad Sa‘id al-‘Ashmawi ................................................................................ 54 Law Above Reason ................................................................................... 61 iv Muhammad ‘Abduh .................................................................................................. 62 Muhammad Iqbal ...................................................................................................... 68 Epistemological Relativism ....................................................................... 76 Ziauddin Sardar ......................................................................................................... 76 Abdolkarim Soroush ................................................................................................. 81 Synopsis ..................................................................................................... 88 Chapter 3: Alfarabi's Book of Religion ..................................... 90 Previous Scholarship ................................................................................. 93 Alfarabi’s Manner of Writing ................................................................... 98 Title, Structure, and Interpretive Approach ............................................ 104 The Text ................................................................................................... 106 Religion and Philosophy (Sections 1-6) ................................................................. 106 Succession and Jurisprudence (Sections 7-10) ....................................................... 127 Political Science (Sections 11-14d) ........................................................................ 136 Philosophy and Theology (Sections 15-27) ............................................................ 152 Chapter 4: Alfarabi's Defense of Political Rationalism ......... 174 Alfarabi and Liberal Islamic Theory ....................................................... 175 Political Rationalism and the Case for Divine Law ................................ 183 v Divine Law as Educative ........................................................................................ 184 Divine Law as Entirely Otherworldly ..................................................................... 186 Divine Law as Mysterious ...................................................................................... 191 Divine Law as Demanding Obedience ................................................................... 194 The Availability of Suprarational Wisdom ............................................................. 197 Conclusion: Reading Alfarabi in the Modern World ............ 200 Democracy ............................................................................................... 205 Liberalism ................................................................................................ 210 Pluralism .................................................................................................. 212 Secularism ............................................................................................... 216 Bibliography ............................................................................... 219 vi Introduction The founding of political philosophy in the Islamic world is properly traced to the tenth-century figure Abu Nasr Alfarabi. Although preceded by roughly one hundred years by the Arab al-Kindi and roughly contemporaneous with the Persian ar-Razi, Alfarabi, whose own ethnic origin remains a matter of dispute, was the first Muslim philosopher to give a central role to politics, and in doing so, reach depths of insight into human nature left unexplored by his forerunners and contemporaries. This turn from natural philosophy and metaphysics to matters of morality and politics mimics the career of Socrates, who “was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and set her in the cities of men”.1 The Socratic turn to the human things is therefore reenacted in the Islamic world by Alfarabi's philosophic shift away from his coreligionists.2 Indeed, Alfarabi makes no attempt to disguise his indebtedness to Ancient Greek philosophy, going so far as to claim that true philosophy “was handed down to us by the Greeks from Plato and 1 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V, iv, 1-3; see also Aristotle, Metaphysics 987b1-3. 2 This is not to deny that Alfarabi devotes a great deal of energy to metaphysics and natural science, or that al-Kindi and ar-Razi addressed themselves to political questions. However, politics receives a particular emphasis in the thought of Alfarabi; consider the role accorded political science in the Enumeration of the Sciences and Book of Religion. Concerning al-Kindi, Butterworth states that he “does raise questions pointing to the need for political philosophy, even though he does not provide sufficient answers to them” (59). Walker speaks of ar-Razi's “value as a negative voice against which an 'Islamic' political philosophy was to develop” (66). Maimonides, in contrast to his singularly high praise for Alfarabi, dismisses ar-Razi as a “mere physician” (226). 1 Aristotle only” (2001, 47, emphasis added). Alfarabi therefore sees himself as engaged primarily in the recovery and reestablishment of true philosophy, as practiced by Plato and Aristotle. Nevertheless, it cannot be overlooked that Alfarabi occupied a dramatically different historical context from his primary influences. Traveling across the Muslim world over the course of his life in the early years of the Islamic golden age, Alfarabi was far removed, both geographically and temporally, from ancient Athens. And while many dramatic changes had occurred in the roughly fifteen hundred years separating Alfarabi from his Greek predecessors, none is more historically influential, nor more relevant to our present purposes, than the emergence of Islam. By the year 750, little more than a century after the death of Muhammad, Islam had expanded from its birthplace in the Arabian Peninsula to the Indian Subcontinent in the east, to Morocco and Spain in the west, and to the Caucases and Transoxiana in the north. Thus, by the time Alfarabi was writing in the early tenth century, the Pax Islamica had been firmly established
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