Preface

This book is the product of some forty years’ study of Arabic and Islamic thought and culture. I wrote my first essays on Ghazālī, Ibn Khaldūn and Ibn ufayl in the 1960s, my first book-length treatments of Maimonides and the Ikhwān al-afā in the 1970s, and a number of comparative thematic studies of Jewish and Islamic philosophy and literature in the 1980s. In the ’90s I published Avicenna, a philosophical appreciation of one of the greatest of the Muslim philosophers, and I began the studies of Arabic universal history writing that are reflected in chapter 4. I wrote Islamic Humanism during my sabbatical year in 2001, supported by a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a supplemental Research Scholars Grant from Vanderbilt University. Throughout the writing, my bride, Roberta Goodman, has stood at my side. My recent philosophical study, In Defense of Truth: A Pluralistic Approach, was dedicated to her, quite fittingly, in view of the insight and integrity she shows in her work, in her relations, and in her character. The present book is dedicated to Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Arabic and Islamic studies, whose erudition, wit, insight, and versatility as a historian and a scholar of literature are exceeded only by his forthright courage in behalf of truth and understanding in a realm where half-truths and misdirections too often prevail.

Islamic Humanism was written for Oxford University Press. It is my third title for them (after God of Abraham and Judaism, Human Rights and Human Values). All were prepared under the astute editorship of Cynthia Read. Fred Denny of the University of Colorado in Boulder, after serving as an anonymous external reader of the preliminary text, made known his identity and expressed his profound understanding of the project I had in hand. He and another reader who remains anonymous made many helpful suggestions, which I have taken to heart.

The first chapter of this book grew from the embryo of the Halmos Lecture I gave in Tel Aviv in 1988. Sasson Somekh, who holds the Halmos Chair of Arabic Literature at Tel Aviv University was my host. A friend since our D. Phil, studies together at Oxford, he encouraged the project that led to the present book, from its inception. I began the relevant work on the interplay of sacred and secular themes in Arabic literature under a fellowship at the East West Center in Honolulu and published an early version in Mustansir Mir’s festschrift for James A. Bellamy. The underlying essay is much revised and expanded here.

The second and third chapters grow out of essays I wrote for Brian Carr and Indira Mahalingam, the founders of the journal Asian Philosophy and the editors of the Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosphy, where I first tried out some of the language and ideas that are developed here.

The final chapter began its life as my keynote for the international conference on the uses of history at the University of Denver. The conference, organized by Seth Ward, was sponsored by the Institute for Islamic/Judaic Studies, founded by Stanley Wagner and led by S. D. Goitein and William Brinner. It was my privilege to co-chair some of that institute’s meetings after Professor Goitein became unable to travel. The work of the institute, which resulted in the publication of several conference volumes and the formation and strengthening of important cross-cultural friendships, was terribly important to me. I attended that last conference to present my keynote (again much expanded and revised here) in October 1996, only days after the death of my first wife, Dr. Madeleine Goodman. I will not forget the strength imparted to me when the Jewish participants joined their voices to mine when I said kaddish in her memory.

The many scholars whose studies, texts, and commentaries contribute to the understanding that underwrites the present book are cited in the notes and bibliography. Among my own contemporaries, teachers, colleagues, friends, or simply authors of superb monographs and essays, particular mention should be made of M. A.-H. Ansari, Mohammed Arkoun, A. F. L. Beeston, J. N. Bell, Clifford Bosworth, Michael Cook, Herbert Davidson, D. M. Dunlop, A. A. Duri, Majid Fakhry, Walter Fischel, Sir Hamilton Gibb, Lois Giffin, S. D. Goitein, Gustave von Grunebaum, Dimitri Gutas, Andras Hamori, Nicholas Heer, George Hourani, Stephen Humphreys, Toshihiko Izutsu, Tarif Khalidi, Joel Kraemer, Bruce Lawrence, Ilse Lichtenstadter, Richard McCarthy, Muhsin Mahdi, James Monroe, Roy Mottahedeh, Eric Ormsby, Frank Peters, Fazlur Rahman, Franz Rosenthal, Everett Rowson, Abdulaziz Sachedina, Ahmad Shboul, M. A. Sherif, Yedida Stillman, Richard Walzer, John Wansbrough, Charles Wendell, Brannon Wheeler, and John A. Williams. From somewhat earlier generations: A. J. Arberry, Miguel Asín Palacios, Henry Farmer, Ignaz Goldziher, Paul Kraus, David Margoliouth, Adam Mez, R. A. Nicholson, Joseph Schacht, William Montgomery Watt, A. J. Wensinck, and Constantine Zurayk.

As I reflect on this little constellation of thinkers who have themselves reflected on the cosmopolitan and humanist traditions of Islam, I’m reminded of a story told me by another student of Islamic thought and civilization, on his return from lecturing in countries with large Muslim populations. He was often asked during that overseas assignment how long he had been studying Islam. His account of his several decades of study invariably provoked the same response: “Then what are you waiting for?” That, in turn, brings to mind the mild irony of Ibn ufayl, who writes of his fictive mystic Absāl’s motive on his first encounter with ayy Ibn Yaqān, who had grown up on an equatorial island without human contact: When he saw “that ayy did not know how to talk, the fears he had felt of harm to his faith were eased, and he became eager to teach him to speak, hoping to impart knowledge and religion to him, and by so doing to earn God’s favor and a greater reward.”1 But Absāl learns that Hayy’s independent thoughts and meditations have already brought him to an understanding of the deeper truths that Absāl’s own religion sought to symbolize. That discovery itself is revelatory for Absāl: “The eyes of his heart were unclosed. His mind caught fire. Reason and tradition were at one within him. All the paths of exegesis lay open before him. His old religious puzzlings were solved; all the obscurities clear. Now he had ‘a heart to understand’” (Qurān 3:7).