Beyond the Post-Modern Mind

Abstract

What can an accomplished Western theologian and philosopher offer to modern Islamic thought‘! Is there a need for the contemporary Muslim intelligentsia to learn from outside sources? And, if "a conscious and intellectual defence must be made of the Islamic tradition,” does it mean that Muslims have to live in a state of mental inertia vis-i-vis the impressive Western tradition in philosophy, theology, and other humanistic and social sciences? Finally, what are the intellectual dangers of borrowing from a Western heritage which is diffuse in nature, and which is not free from ideology most of the time? Would we be accused of eclecticism and a lack of historicism? Undoubtedly, a major North African philosopher like Abdallah Laroui would dismiss the whole theological project of Islam and Christianity, or even the whole theoretical enterprise of comparative religion, as irrelevant, ahistorical, anti-intellectual, nxluctionist, and obstructionist. The same attitude is shared by not a small number of Arab and Muslim social scientists who consider metaphysics a fading religious pastime that should have been driven away from the human mental endeavor long before Kant appeared on the scene. This orientation is sociologically developed by Bassam Tibi in his recent book entitled The Crisis of Modem Islam: A Reindustrial Culture in the Scientific-Technological Age, where he argues that the only viable approach to Islam in the modern wrld is the sociological method. Therefore, his aim is not to study the spiritual, philosophical, and social manifestations of Islam in today‘s world, but to understand it, “as it is incorporated into reality as a fait social-that is, a social fact.” Metaphysics and the Search for a Method in Religious Studies Prokssor Huston Smith, who sees the validity of the argument that religion is a social fact, argues that the religious question is primarily metaphysical. Thus he offers a “synthetic construct” of religion: metaphysical and social. Put differently, Smith maintains that, transcendentally speaking, religion is a priori and universal; whereas socially spealung, religion is subject to diversity and particularism. It is when we understand his “synthetic argument” that we begin to unravel his conceptual concerns: Smith is troubled by the modern philosophical assertion that truth is made and not found ...