The Abode of Islam is Philosophically Infertile Ground

by Paul Austin Murphy (November 2013)

During the short time in which philosophy and science prospered in Muslim lands, it did so only in spite of Islam, not because of it. This is partly shown by the fact that the Arab hegemony, as it were, hardly ever produced any philosophers of its own. Most Muslim philosophers were Persian. Many others were Christians and other non-Muslims who happened to live and work within Muslim lands.

Science had an easier time only because of the technological and practical benefits it offered the various Islamic empires (e.g., curing Muslims and providing them with better weaponry).

In addition, in Part One of this essay it can be seen that the Arab Muslim conquerors often invaded lands which already had thriving philosophical and scientific cultures. Not surprisingly, then, philosophy and science were passed onto these Muslim invaders who, some years later, passed some of that knowledge and culture onto Western Europe.

What has just been said about Islamism can also be said about Wahhabism. The latter too has its most direct and obvious roots in the 13^th century. (Wahhabis themselves stress this 13^th century link.) However, Wahhabism, like Islamism, really goes back to Muhammad and his Companions as well as back to the hadith and the Koran itself.

Part One

Exactly the same happened when the Arab Muslims conquered Syria and Iraq. In these areas, the study of Greek science and philosophy (amongst many other things) was being pursued by Christian Nestorians and Christian Jacobites.

If we deal specifically with Baghdad and the Abbasid Empire, we can see that not only did these pre-Islamic traditions continue, they sometimes did so in the heart of the Muslim world.

When it comes to the translations of Greek philosophical and scientific works within the Muslim world, most of it was done by Christians who spoke Syriac. This means that on the whole Greek works were firstly translated in Syriac and then into Arabic (although later, some works were directly translated from Greek into Arabic).

More specifically, take the case of the most famous of all Arab translators within the Muslim world, an Arab by the name Hunayn ibn al-Ibadi (808-73). He too was a Nestorian Christian. He started out as a disciple of another Nestorian in the heart of the Muslim world: Ibn Masawayh, the Baghdad-based physician. Masawayh too was part of a medical hegemony of Christian Nestorian families in the Abbasid Baghdad court which had all originally come from the city of Gundishapur in Persia.

So, here again, non-Muslims passed on Greek science and philosophy to either their Muslim hosts or to their Muslim conquerors.

Part Two

Wahhabism 900 Years Before Muhammad ibn al-Wahhab

As for Taymiyah (1263-1328) himself.

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1) Albert Hourani A History of the Arab Peoples (Faber and Faber, 2005) page 75.

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