If we remember nothing else about intellectual knowledge, we need to keep in mind that it is achieved by taḥqīq, which is to know things by verifying and realizing their truth and reality for oneself. One cannot verify the truth and reality of things without knowing them first hand, in one’s own soul, without any help from anyone other than God. If knowledge is based on the words of the “authorities” or the “experts,” it is not realized knowledge, but imitative knowledge. It makes no difference if the authorities happen to be traditional prophets, like Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, or modern-day prophets, like Darwin, Marx, and Einstein.
Some would respond that Muslims do not need to know things for themselves, because they can follow “consensus” (ijmā‘), but this is true only in transmitted matters, not in intellectual matters. There is no such thing as ijmā‘ in the Islamic intellectual disciplines. Basic issues such as tawḥīd do not depend for their truth-value on the agreement of the ulama, as if the truth of a mathematical formula could be established by vote. Rather, the truth of the issues is self-evident to those who understand them.
One of the sure signs of the loss of intellectual knowledge is the strange phenomenon of Muslim thinkers apologizing for modern science by appealing to the “consensus” of the scientists. Even stranger is that they think they have taken an “intellectual” position. This shows that they have confused transmitted learning with intellectual learning. Modern science is indeed built on consensus, but this simply shows that it is fundamentally a transmitted science, not an intellectual science. Scientists do not verify and realize most of what they think they know. Rather, they accept it from their own authorities.
The truth of transmitted learning depends not on its self-evidence, but on the authority of its prophets and the reliability of its transmitters. It cannot be verified by individuals. Rather, it must be accepted on faith and trust, precisely because it is knowledge by imitation. For the Muslim intellectuals properly so called, the only possible way to know truth was to know it for oneself. When we do not know for ourselves, we have entered into the arena of transmitted beliefs. Modern science and learning is built on a vast structure of beliefs and presuppositions. The truth of its foundational beliefs is far from self-evident, and it certainly cannot be proven by the scientific method, given that the reliability of the method depends precisely on the presuppositions. The beliefs are part and parcel of a worldview, which is accepted on the basis of hearsay and consensus.
It can be argued that a modern scientist who makes a new discovery has “verified” and “realized” it for himself. The Muslim intellectual tradition would not have called this taḥqīq, however, because it does not extend deeply enough into the depths of the soul and spirit to recognize the real nature of things. Great scientific breakthroughs are achieved rather by what might be called “flashes of intuition,” which pierce the limitations of consensual knowledge. On occasion this may be analogous to what the Sufi tradition calls “unveiling” (kashf ), but the Sufi teachers always warn of the dangers of unveiling if it is not understood in light of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. However this may be, the flashes of insight necessary for scientific breakthroughs merely highlight the “prophetic” character of the great scientists. It says nothing about the gods from whom the revelations are received.
Whatever may be the exact nature of great scientific breakthroughs, the fact remains that the vast majority of scientists play the role of clerks, clerics, and workaday mullahs. In the very best cases, they are scientific mujtahids, who apply scientific laws to new situations. The one thing a modern scientist or scholar can never be is a muḥaqqiq, a “realizer,” unless he steps outside the context of his own discipline and allies himself with a living intellectual tradition.
In short, modern scientists – and, with far greater reason, the gullible public – accept scientific discoveries and “facts” on the basis of hearsay and consensus. They trust the promise that the discovery can be replicated by empirical research. They are usually unaware that modern theories are devices employed to interpret data for certain ends. They do not comprehend that the prestige of the theories derives not from their inherent truth, but from their usefulness for achieving certain specific ends and the degree in which they are accepted by the scientists, that is, the degree in which the scientific ulama reach consensus on the theory.
Having alluded to some of the profound differences between intellectual understanding and scientific findings, let me say something about the content of intellectual learning. What sort of knowledge can properly be verified and realized? What were Muslim intellectuals trying to know by themselves and for themselves, without following authority?
Note first that the purpose of the intellectual quest was not to gather information or what we call “facts.” It was not to contribute to the progress of science, much less to build up a data base. Rather, its purpose was to refine human understanding. In other words, seekers of knowledge were trying to train their minds and polish their hearts so that they could understand everything that can properly be understood by the human mind, everything about which it is possible to have certain, sure, and verified knowledge. Each seeker of knowledge was trying to realize his knowledge for himself. He wanted to know his subject firsthand, with unmediated knowledge. If he took his knowledge from a teacher or a book instead of realizing its truth for himself, he was an imitator. Imitation can provide only transmitted knowledge.
Generally speaking, four major areas were considered the proper domains of realization: metaphysics, cosmology, spiritual psychology, and ethics.
Metaphysics is the study of the first and final reality that underlies all phenomena. The topic of discussion is God, though God is frequently called by impersonal names such as “Being,” or “the Necessary,” or “the Real.”
Cosmology is the domain of the appearance and disappearance of the universe. Where does the universe come from, and where does it go? Naturally, it comes from the Real and goes back to the Real. But how exactly does it get here, and how exactly does it return? The intellectual tradition maintained that it was possible to verify the actual route of coming and going.
Spiritual psychology is the domain of the soul, the human self. What is a human being? Where do human beings come from, and where do they go? Why are people so different from each other? How can people develop their potentialities? How can they become everything that they should and must become if they are to be fully human?
Finally, ethics is the domain of practical wisdom and interpersonal relations. How does one train one’s soul to obey the dictates of intelligence, follow the guidelines of God, and carry out one’s activities in harmony with the Real, the cosmos, and other human beings? What are the virtues that need to be achieved by a healthy and wholesome soul? How can these virtues become the soul’s second nature?
It should be noted that the center of attention in all four domains was nafs – the self or soul. The human self is the key issue because it alone can come to know God and the cosmos. The way it does this is by developing and refining its own inner power, which is called “intellect” (‘aql) or “heart” (qalb). If people are to develop and refine this power, they need to know what sort of self they are dealing with. You cannot know yourself by asking the experts to tell you who you are. You do not reach knowledge of yourself from outside, only from inside. Until you know yourself from within, your self-knowledge will be based on imitation, not realization.
All knowledge in the intellectual tradition was considered an aid in the process of coming to know oneself. The ancient maxim, “Know thyself ” – often in the version attributed to the Prophet or ‘Alī, “He who knows himself knows his Lord” – was taken seriously. The soul that is fully aware of itself is the soul that has perfected its potentiality as a knowing subject. In other words, through being fully conscious of its own reality, such a soul has become fully conscious of what God created it to be. The philosophers frequently called it ‘aql bi’l-fi‘l, an actual intellect, or a fully actualized intellect. Such an intellect is nothing other than the soul that has perfected both its theoretical and its practical powers, both its vision and its virtue. Having become an actual intellect, the soul lives in harmony with God, the universe, and other human beings.
When the greatest masters of the tradition wrote about these four topics, they were writing about what they had realized, not simply what they had heard from someone else or reasoned out on the basis of someone else’s theories or discoveries. They were critical of those who tried to grasp the issues merely on the basis of transmission, imitation, consensus, or argumentation. Intellectual questions demand intellectual answers, and the place to pose the questions and to understand the answers is within the self itself.
Among philosophers, Avicenna sets the tone of the quest when he describes the perfection of the soul in a passage found in two of his major philosophical statements, al-Najāt (“The Deliverance”) and al-Shifā’ (“The Healing”):
The perfection specific to the rational soul is for her [the soul] to become an intellective world within which is represented the form of everything, the arrangement intelligible in everything, and the good that is effused upon everything, beginning from the Origin of everything and proceeding on to the unconditioned spiritual substances, then the spiritual [substances] connected in a certain way to bodies, then the high corporeal bodies along with their guises and potencies. Then [she continues on] like this until she fully achieves in herself the guise of all of existence. She turns into an intelligible world, parallel with all the existent world. She witnesses unconditioned comeliness, unconditioned good, and real, unconditioned beauty while being united with it, imprinted with its likeness and guise, strung upon its thread, and partaking of its substance.2
I will not try to unpack this passage here. Let me just note that the four major domains of philosophical inquiry are all present and that the focus is precisely on the soul that needs to be transformed into an actual intellect. Such a soul, coming to know itself through spiritual psychology, finds in itself metaphysical reality (the Origin), the whole cosmos in its various levels, and the realm of real and actualized ethics or virtue (the likeness of unconditioned good and beauty).
The key to the Islamic intellectual tradition is precisely the intellect, which is nothing but the soul that has come to know and realize its full potential. Inasmuch as the soul possesses this potential, it is often called fiṭra or innate disposition. If we employ the language of the Qur’an, the fiṭra is the very self of Adam to whom God “taught all the names” (2:31). It is the primordial Adam present in every human being. At root, it is good and wise, because it inclines naturally toward tawḥīd, which stands at the heart of all wisdom and forms the basis for the acquisition of true knowledge of God, the universe, and the self.
The problem that people face with their fiṭras is that they are typically immersed in ignorance and forgetfulness. As long as the soul stays ignorant and forgetful of God, it cannot know its own fiṭra and cannot properly be called an “intellect.” First, it must actualize its original, innate disposition and come to know all the names taught to Adam. Only then can it be called an “intellect” in the proper sense, that is, a fully actualized intellect.
To the extent that people fail to actualize their fiṭra, they remain ignorant of who they are and what the cosmos is. To the degree that they are able to actualize their fiṭra, they come to understand things in their principles, or in their roots and realities. In other words, they grasp things as they are related to God or as they are known to God. They do not remain staring at phenomena and appearances. Rather, they see with God-given insight into the real names of things. These names subsist eternally in the divine intelligence, which is the spirit that God blew into Adam after having molded his body from clay.
In short, the goal of the intellectual tradition was to help people come to know themselves so that they could achieve human perfection. To do so, one had to actualize both the theoretical intellect, which is the human self inasmuch as it knows all the realities and all the names, and the practical intellect, which is the human self inasmuch as it knows how to act correctly on the basis of the names taught by God.
From the perspective of this tradition, if we know things outside the divine context, we do not in fact know them. To the extent that we think we know them, we will be afflicted by compound ignorance. The more confident we are about the truth of our knowledge, the more difficult it will be to cure the disease. Moreover, it should be obvious that activity done on the basis of ignorance – not to mention compound ignorance – leads to ill consequences, not only for the individual, but also for society, the environment, and humanity.
I repeat that, according to the masters of the intellectual tradition, you cannot gain intellectual understanding by listening to others or reading books. You have to find it in yourself. Nonetheless, it is useful to listen to what the great teachers have said in order to grasp the nature of their quest. When we do listen to them, we find that they agree on a large number of points, though they tend to use a diversity of expressions. Mentioning a few of these points can help us understand what exactly premodern Muslim intellectuals were trying to verify and realize. Let me list ten of them:
Having taken a quick look at the intellectual tradition, let me perform a thought experiment. It is commonly imagined that if our ancestors could be brought from the past in a time machine, they would be amazed and dumbfounded by the feats of modern science and civilization. But how would a Muslim intellectual of the past react to the modern world, and in particular to its intellectual ambience? What would an al-Fārābī, or an Avicenna, or a Mullā Ṣadrā think of contemporary science and scholarship?
For the purpose of this experiment, I will borrow the name of our time-traveler from the famous philosophical novel of Ibn Ṭufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, “Alive, son of Awake.” The name refers to the soul that has been reborn by actualizing the intellect. I will simply call him Ibn Yaqẓān.
No doubt Ibn Yaqẓān would be astonished by the ready availability of an enormous amount of information. However, he would be much more astonished by the fact that people have no idea that all this information is irrelevant to the goal of human life. He would see that people’s understanding of their true situation has decreased roughly in proportion to the amount of information they have gathered. The more “facts” they know, the less they grasp the significance of the facts and the nature of their own selves and the world around them.
Ibn Yaqẓān would be appalled at the loss of any sense of what knowledge is for. People think that they should gain knowledge to control their social and natural environments and to make their physical lives more comfortable. In Ibn Yaqẓān’s view, the “quest for knowledge” that the Prophet made incumbent upon all believers is not, however, a quest for information or a “better life.” Rather, it is a quest to understand the Qur’an and the Hadith, and then, on the basis of that understanding, it is a search for self-knowledge, self-awareness, and the recognition of God’s signs in the universe and the soul. It is a quest for wisdom and mastery of self, not for control and manipulation of the world and society. Ibn Yaqẓān would certainly be struck by the misuse of words like “scientist” and “intellectual.” He would immediately see that people use the word “scientist” to designate possessors of a knowledge that is deemed uniquely true and reliable. He would see, however, that “scientific” knowledge is simply a means for understanding appearances so that they can be manipulated to achieve the desires of human egos. To him, it would seem that what people call “science” is strikingly similar to what in his times was called “sorcery.” Certainly, the goal is exactly the same: to manipulate God’s creation by recourse to means that escape ordinary human abilities for the sake of short-sighted if not demonic goals.
As for the word “intellectual,” he would think that an intellectual is someone who knows God, the world, and the human soul on the basis of realization, not imitation. An intellectual is someone who claims to know only what he has realized for himself, and otherwise quotes the authorities or admits his ignorance. Ibn Yaqẓān would see, however, that modern scientists, intellectuals, and scholars have acquired all their knowledge by imitation, not realization. They take what they call “facts” from others, without verifying their truth, and then they proceed to build their own theories and practices on the basis of these borrowed facts, producing an endless proliferation of new facts that go back to no firm foundation. Experts in the modern scientific and critical disciplines do not know things as they are, but rather in terms of the consensus of their colleagues, mathematical constructs, theoretical fantasies, and ideological presuppositions.
Ibn Yaqẓān would think that the modern learned classes imagine that they know all sorts of things, but in fact they know nothing. Verified and realized knowledge carries with it the self-evidence of certainty, but people have no certainty about anything. Since all their information and learning is of the transmitted variety, they do not know for themselves and in themselves.
Ibn Yaqẓān would be amazed at the blatant polytheism that drives mental and social endeavor. He would see that the modern world asserts a great multiplicity of gods with respectable, scientific-sounding names like development and progress. Instead of a worldview of tawḥīd, he would see a worldview of takthīr. He would quickly understand that the diverse technical, scientific, social, and political solutions that are offered to bring peace and harmony to the world simply intensify the reign of takthīr.
Ibn Yaqẓān would be astonished that even scholars and scientists who consider themselves religious are convinced that the only way truly to know something is to begin with the many, not the One. In his intellectual tradition, all thinking began with an understanding of the Primal Unity that lies beneath and beyond surface multiplicity and gives meaning to all things – from stars and celestial phenomena to minerals and plants, from prophetic teachings to logic and mathematics. But he would see religious people claiming that modern science does not contradict the Primal Unity because it is simply a “method,” or a way to understand mechanisms and workings. He would wonder at a blatant polytheism that thinks that there can be any real understanding of the many apart from the One. How can we deal with methods and mechanisms without reference to the Creator of the mind that devises the methods and mechanisms and without reference to the goals and aspirations of the devising mind? All this is to set up a series of independent realities. And to set up realities, objects, and methods without demonstrating explicitly how these are subservient to the laws of the One is precisely takthīr.
Along with a multiplicity of gods called by abstract, respectable names, Ibn Yaqẓān would see ranks upon ranks of priests serving the gods and encouraging their followers to immerse themselves in dispersion and confusion. He would see that each priesthood jealously guards its esoteric knowledge from the common people. He would also notice, however, that the common people – who consider themselves among the enlightened few in history – no longer believe in priests. Hence the priests call themselves doctors, surgeons, physicists, biologists, engineers, sociologists, political scientists, programmers, lawyers, professors, and experts. Ibn Yaqẓān would be surprised that so many people think that these priests have a sacred, transmitted knowledge that is worthy of imitation and blind obedience.
Ibn Yaqẓān would be coming from a religious tradition that has a dim view of priests in the first place. He would not be surprised to see that each contingent of priests contends with the others for a greater share of wealth, prestige, and social control. He would perhaps be impressed by the enormous sanctuaries that they build for themselves in the names of their gods, the great cathedrals of Medicine, Technology, and Scholarship. However, he would be horrified by the ugliness of the buildings and the unspeakable rituals that some of the priests force upon their followers, such as the last rites reserved for believers in Medicine.
To make a long story short, Ibn Yaqẓān would be appalled not only by the misguided beliefs of the common people, but also by the sophisticated takthīr of the learned classes. In both cases, he would see that people have lost any sense of what is truly real. He would be shocked by the way people immerse themselves in meaningless hopes and illusory endeavors. He would be dismayed by the willful blindness toward the permanent, everlasting, omnipresent reality that is the intelligent and intelligible light of God. He would be aghast at the loss of any sense of the hierarchical structure of the cosmos and the soul, at the flattening of the world that makes material appearance seem to be the only reality. He would be astonished that people have surrendered their freedom to the esoteric knowledge of priests. He would be amazed that a class known as “intellectuals” thinks that tawḥīd and all that was considered worthy of aspiration in past times were misguided delusions, self-serving fantasies, rationales for social injustice, and epiphenomena of psychological contingencies.
As for Muslims living in the modern world, he would be dumbfounded that most of them accept the gods and priests just like the non-Muslims. What would perhaps sadden him most, however, is that Muslim parents have lost any sense of how to guide their children on the path of tawḥīd. They have come to believe that religion means ignorance and superstition, and that studying the Islamic heritage is a total waste of time, since it has been replaced by scientific knowledge. They refuse to allow their children to study religion except when all other avenues of advancement are barred. Medicine, science, engineering, and business administration are the professions of choice, and – in North America at least – law, since lawyers make a lot of money too. So, instead of encouraging their children to search for knowledge of God and his guidance, they insist that they join one of the priesthoods. The learning that their children gain is still of the transmitted variety, but joining the priesthood of doctors is much more respectable – not to mention lucrative – than becoming a Muslim cleric.
After taking a quick look around, Ibn Yaqẓān would no doubt be anxious to return to a world that has preserved some sense of proportion.