Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem
This introduction will be based on two Surahs from the Holy
Quran - part of the first Surah, Al-Fatihah, often called Umm-al-Quran
(the essence of the Quran), and Surah 112, Al-Ikhlas, the Purity.
By philosophy we mean here the rational study of the nature of Existence. The foundation of Islamic philosophy - like the foundation of Islamic Science(1) - is Allah, the supreme Being. That is, Islamic philosophy starts from an acceptance of the premise that Existence, or reality, actually and already exists, external to and independent from ourselves as human beings, and it names the very Being of Existence itself as Allah. This may be said to be the first fundamental principle of Islamic philosophy.
The fundamental quest of Islamic philosophy is therefore to understand the nature of Allah, our own relation to Allah, and in general how the nature of all beings relate to the Being which is named Allah.
The Being which is Allah is the fundamental Being from which all beings - all things which exist or have existed - derives. We must understand that Being is independent of our 'minds' and our bodies, and must be apprehended and understood through its nature, its essence, and not through the limitation (or appearance, or form) of our own being.
Thus, unlike Western philosophy, Islamic philosophy accepts and understands that our apprehension of Being and beings - our understanding and knowledge of Being and beings, of Existence - also does not depend on language. That is, that our apprehension is or should be of the essence that language itself often obscures or covers up. For the grammatical structure of propositions is of no real value in trying to understand Being and beings. (2)
To apprehend and understand Being and beings we must use pure reason. For reason is the essence of both Being and beings: reason expresses the nature of Existence itself. That is, reason expresses how beings derive from Being. This is the second fundamental principle of Islamic philosophy, derived from an understanding of the nature of Being, the nature of Allah. Expressed another way, Islam accepts that existence works or unfolds and manifests in an ordered way. Pure reason is an apprehension, a knowing, which is beyond the thought expressed in words, and beyond the projection of attributes of our own being upon Being itself.
Logic is our means of reasoning - of determining sound reasoning from false
reasoning - and although the principles of logic have been and can be expressed
through words, such an expression is not the essence or basis of logic itself.
For logic exists beyond this and all such expressions (such as mathematics)
which are but a means which we, as a particular type of being, use or try to use
to apprehend the reasoned order of Existence.
To understand these two fundamental principles of Islamic philosophy - and to understand why they form the foundations of Islamic philosophy - it is necessary to understand the Holy Quran.
Knowledge about the true nature of Being - a knowledge of Allah, as Allah is - is given in the Holy Quran. For Islam, the Holy Quran is a revelation from Allah - that is, an expression, or manifestation, of the essence which is beyond our own limited being(3). All Muslims - all who accept and adhere to the Way of Life which is Al-Islam - believe this. Indeed, this is the very foundation of Islam itself.
Thus, a study of the Holy Quran is not only an 'academic' study of the foundations of Islamic philosophy, but also, for Muslims, a means to discover and know the nature of Being itself. From this discovery and knowledge of Being, of Unity, comes an understanding of beings and thus of ourselves and all those things which derive therefrom and which have become - separated from their essence, their own being - categorized as 'ethics', 'politics' and so on.
This knowledge of Unity - this beginning of the quest of understanding from
Unity, from Being, from the very essence - is what distinguishes the Islamic way
from the Western way. For the West has sought and still seeks to describe Being
in terms of beings, and in particular in terms of our own being. Because of
this, the Western apprehension of Being is limited and fundamentally flawed.
The nature of Being - of Allah - is outlined in the two particular Surahs (Chapters) mentioned above.
Surah 112:
Ayat(4) 1: Allah is described as "Allah, the One - the only One". That is, Unique, and Supreme: Being itself, which is undivided, a Unity.
Ayat 2: "Allah-us-Samad" - that is, self-sustaining; not dependent on any other being or anything at all: above and beyond the being and beings of the physical world with the need such beings have for sustenance and which are born, then die. Thus, Allah is eternal, without beginning or end, and infinite.
Ayat 3: "(Allah) begets not, and neither was begotten" - that is, Allah is above and beyond the causal time(5) of birth-life-death, and does not and cannot become incarnate in human form, in finite and causal Space and Time: for the Infinite, the Eternal, cannot exist in such a way. Further, the Being which is Allah is: Allah was not born or created from some other being; Allah Exists, because Allah is Existence.
Thus speculation about the origin (and fate) of Allah is wrong because there is no origin or fate to speculate about: such concepts, such apprehensions as 'origin', 'fate' and 'birth' belong to beings, not Being.
Ayat 4: "And there is no-thing, and no-being, comparable to (Allah)" - Allah
cannot be apprehended in terms of beings, not in the causal time of some of
these beings, and in particular not through our being: that is, not in
anthropomorphic terms.
Surah 1:
Ayat 2: "All praises, all thanks, are for Allah, Rabb of the Alamin". The Alamin is all that exists: all beings and all of the worlds (or planes of existence, 'universes') where beings have existence.
'Rabb' means Master, Creator, Sustainer, Lord - that is, the giver of, the creator of and the taker away of the being of beings. Allah is The Creator of beings, and The One Who determines and brings about their end.
Allah is the Master of, the Creator of the Ghaib, the Unseen [Surah 2:33] - those realms of existence containing beings which we with our limited physical senses cannot see. The Ghaib, the unseen realms, are part of the Alamin.
Further, no human vision can grasp, capture or express Allah [Surah 6: 103],
Who is Al-Latif - so subtle, so fine as to be far beyond our seeing.
The above explains the nature of Being, and of beings, according to Islamic philosophy. Islamic philosophy thus takes us far beyond our limited and causal perceptions, enabling us to apprehend Existence itself, as existence is. This truthful apprehension is the apprehension of the causal and the acausal, and of the Unity which exists beyond both, the Unity from which both were created and by which both are sustained. Pure reason is the apprehension of Unity behind the appearance of causal and acausal: a manifestation of the essence of Being
Being itself is the Unity, the Oneness which is beyond the realms, the worlds, of the causal, and the realms, the worlds, of the acausal. Allah created these realms of causal Space, causal time, and of acausal Space, acausal time. Allah sustains these realms, and is beyond and above both the causal and the acausal.
In every realm, there are beings, created by Allah and who depend on Allah - who cannot exist other than by the laws, the will, of Allah. For all such beings exist because of Allah, are sustained by and depend upon Allah, they all obey the laws of Allah: that is, they are all knowable, capable of apprehension. Such beings are Signs of Allah; a revelation of Allah; a means to apprehend the essence which is Allah. For such apprehension is the apprehension beyond the nature, beyond the limited being, the limited existence, of such beings.
The causal realms include our own phenomenal world: the plane where we have our physical being and which we can know through our senses. This is the realm of the physical world: the realm of planets, stars, galaxies. This is the realm of physical Space-Time as described by the science of Physics and which obeys the 'laws of Physics'. And these 'laws of Physics' are but a causal and limited apprehension, or reflection in the causal, of the true unified laws, or will, of Allah.
There are acausal realms, of acausal Space and acausal time, beyond our
phenomenal world, where acausal beings (or acausal 'things') exist - with some
these beings having 'life', with such life conforming to what is the nature of
acausal life and thus differing from our own causal life and the causal life we
observe on this planet of ours.
Abdul Aziz
Rajab 1419
1. See The Basis of Islamic Science. See also Allah, Islamic Science and the Nature of the Acausal
2. See Allah, Islamic Science and the Nature of the Acausal
3. The scientific or rational nature of this revelation is outlined in Concerning Angels, Jinn and Paradise. See also The Basis of Islamic Science.
4. An 'Ayat' is a Sign, a revelation - a manifestation of the nature, the essence, of Allah, of Being itself. It is usually translated as 'verse' which is both incorrect and mundane.
5. Causal time - the time of beings such as ourselves - is outlined in The Basis of Islamic Science.