Mutazili and Reason in Islam
A Srinivas Rao
Lazing as a couch potato would, remote in hand I accidentally chanced upon an interesting biopic titled “Destiny” by Yousseff Chahine (NDTV Lumiere) on the life of the last of the Islamic Philosophers Averroes (Inb Rushd) (CE 1126-1198). So impressive was his life and scholarship that I thought it a pity that we haven’t been educated as legatees of the whole of human history of thought. What is more impressive, less acknowledged and ironic is that the West received Greek-Hellenic thought thanks to the legacy of Islam who had nurtured the rationalist traditions of the Greeks until the Renaissance. It was due to the great Islamic scholars Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) that the West re-discovered the legacy of Greek and Hellenic thought. What however is tragic is that Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina were denounced by their own people for using frameworks that were non-Islamic especially Greek methods of logic to clarify ideas within Islam. What is ironic is that the West celebrates their achievements. Even today in the great painting called “The School of Athens” by Raphael, Averroes has a prominent place, So also in Giorgion's painting the Three Philosophers. What follows is the context of the times of Averroes (not his biography).
In the long and tortuous history of human rationality we unwittingly promote a myth that rationality is a precious legacy of the modern West. There is a corollary to it that the non-West was utterly devoid of rationalist traditions. The great contest in every society between faith and reason is an interesting tale to tell for ears that would care to hear. Even in Ancient India the tale unfolds as the contest between the Mimamasakaras of the Brahmin orthodoxy and the rationalist discourse of the Buddhists; but that’s a different story.
