In the Name of God, the Infinitely Good, the All-Merciful - ISLAM Is My Religion

in #islam7 years ago

Islam is both a religion and a civilization, a historical
reality that spans over fourteen centuries of human history
and a geographical presence in vast areas stretching over the
Asian and African continents and even parts of Europe. It is
also a spiritual and metahistorical reality that has transformed the inner and outer life of numerous human beings
in very different temporal and spatial circumstances. Today
over 1.2 billion people from different racial and cultural
backgrounds are Muslim, and historically Islam has played
a significant role in the development of certain aspects of
other civilizations, especially Western civilization. Not only
is Islam a major presence in today’s world, but its influence
is also evident in the history of the Christian West, not to
mention that of India and other regions of Asia and Africa.
That is why knowledge of Islam is so important for those
concerned with the situation of contemporary humanity and
those interested in Western intellectual and cultural history,
as well as those attracted to the reality of religion and the
world of the Spirit as such.

One would think, therefore, that the study of Islam would
be widespread in the West and especially in America, which
has a notable Muslim minority and which is now able to
project so much power globally—including within the Islamic world. Such, however, is not the case, despite the rise of
interest in Islam since the tragic events of September 11,

  1. Moreover, much that is presented today in the English
    language as the study of Islam by so-called experts is strongly colored by various prejudices and ideological biases,
    although there are exceptions. In fact, although Islamic studies have been carried out in the West for over a thousand
    years, in each period such studies have been distorted and
    tainted by a particular set of errors and deviations.
    The study of Islam in the West began in the tenth and
    eleventh centuries. Because this was a time in which Europe
    was thoroughly Christian, Islam was seen as a Christian
    heresy, and its founder as an apostate. Soon the imminent
    threat to Western Christendom from Islam led many to call
    the Prophet of Islam the Antichrist, and the Quran itself was
    translated by order of Peter the Venerable in order to be
    refuted and rejected as sacred scripture. The Middle Ages
    were marked by strong religious opposition to Islam. Yet it
    was at this time that the West showed the greatest interest in
    Islamic thought, including philosophy and the sciences, and
    Islamic education, arts, and technology were greatly respected. The first translations into Latin of works of Islamic
    thought, ranging from philosophy and even theology to
    astronomy, mathematics, and medicine, belong to this period. Formal Islamic studies in the West may in fact be
    said to have begun during the Middle Ages.
    The Renaissance perpetuated religious opposition to
    Islam, but also began to show disdain not only for Europe’s
    own medieval past, but also for Islamic learning, although
    there were some exceptions. Furthermore, the emphasis on
    Euro-centrism during the Renaissance and the rise of
    humanism caused many European thinkers of that time to
    consider people of other civilizations and ethnic groups,
    including Muslims, inferior. Although Islamic studies were
    still carried on during the Renaissance, and in some places,
    such as Bologna, even within the framework of the older
    medieval respect for Islamic thought, in many places they
    were distorted by a sense of Western superiority and even
    hubris, characteristics that were to continue into the modern
    period.
    The Enlightenment turned against the theological assertions of Christianity and substituted rationalism for a worldview based on faith. Moreover, it further developed the idea
    that there was only one civilization, the Western one, and
    that other civilizations were significant only to the extent of
    their contribution to Western civilization, which the French
    Encyclopedists referred to as thecivilization (la civilisation). Obviously in such a situation Islam and its civilization
    could only play an inferior and secondary role. Although
    some new translations of Islamic sources were made into
    European languages at this time and Islamic studies
    remained an intellectual and academic discipline, little was
    done to understand the teachings of Islam on their own
    terms. Many of the leading thinkers of this period, in fact, maintained the older European disdain for Islam, but at the same time tried to make use of
    some of its teachings to attack Christianity. Such a dual attitude toward Islam is evident in the works of Voltaire, among
    others.
    During the nineteenth century, historicism in its absolutist sense took the center of the philosophical stage with
    Hegel, who considered all other civilizations stages in the
    march of the Geistin time leading to the final stage, which
    was supposedly realized in modern Western history. And
    yet this was also the period when the Romantic movement
    began, when many minds, tired of the rationalism of the
    Enlightenment, turned anew to the Middle Ages as well as
    to seeking meaning beyond the borders of the West. This
    was the period when many of the greatest spiritual masterpieces of Islamic literature, especially many of the Suficlassics, were translated into German, English, and French and
    seriously attracted major Western writers and thinkers, such
    as Goethe, Rückert, and Emerson. This was also the period
    when the exotic image of the Islamic East, with its mysterious casbahs and
    . h aramsfull of nude females, developed, as
    reflected in nineteenth-century European art associated with
    “orientalism.”
    Moreover, this period marked the beginning of official oriental studies, including Islamic studies, in various Western
    universities, often supported by colonial governments such as
    those of Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. Oriental
    studies, in fact, developed as an instrument for furthering the
    policy of colonial powers, whether they were carried out in
    Central Asia for use by the Russian colonial office or in India for the British government. But there were among the orientalists in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth
    century also a number of noble scholars who studied Islam
    both objectively and with sympathy, such as Thomas Arnold,
    Sir Hamilton Gibb, Louis Massignon, and Henry Corbin.
    Later Western orientalists who belong to this tradition
    include Marshall Hodgson, Annemarie Schimmel, and several other important scholars. But the main product of the
    orientalist manner of studying Islam remained heavily
    biased not only as a result of the interests of those powers it
    was serving, but also through the absolutization of current
    Western concepts and methodologies that were applied to
    Islam with the sense of superiority and hubris going back to
    the Renaissance definition of the “European man.”
    The last half of the twentieth century witnessed a major
    transformation in Islamic studies in the West, at least in certain circles. First of all, a number of acutely intelligent and
    spiritually aware Westerners who realized the spiritual poverty of modernism began to seek wisdom in other worlds.
    Some turned to the objective and unbiased study of the
    deepest teachings of Islam, which only confirmed for them
    the reality of the presence of a perennial sophiaat the heart
    of all heavenly inspired religions. This group, which includes
    René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, Titus Burckhardt, Martin
    Lings, Gai Eaton, Michel Vâlsan, William Chittick, Michel
    Chodkiewicz, James Morris, Vincent Cornell, and many
    other notable contemporary Western writers on Islam, has
    produced a wholly new type of literature in the West as far
    as Islam is concerned. It has created a body of writings rooted in the authentic teachings of Islam,
    yet formulated in the intellectual language of the West and
    based on the confirmation—not the denial—of the spiritual
    teachings on which traditional Western civilization itself
    was founded.
    Furthermore, during this same period authentic representatives of the Islamic tradition, those who were born and
    brought up in that tradition, began to study Western thought
    and languages and gradually to produce works in European
    languages on Islam that were not simply apologetic (as had
    been the earlier works in English of a number of Indian
    Muslim writers), but explained clearly and without compromise the teachings of Islam in a manner comprehensible to
    Westerners. Needless to say, during this period there also
    appeared a large number of completely modernized Muslim
    writers who wrote about Islam not from within the Islamic
    worldview, but from the point of view of the ever changing
    categories of modern and, more recently, postmodern Western thought.
    Finally, a younger generation of scholars have appeared
    on the scene during the past few years who are both Muslim
    and Western. Either they are Muslims born in the West or
    Westerners who have openly embraced Islam, have lived in
    the Islamic world, and know it well from within. Scholars
    belonging to this category are now beginning to occupy a
    number of academic positions in Europe and America and
    to produce pertinent works of an authentic nature on various
    aspects of Islamic studies. (continue)