Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

Dimensions of the Islamic Intellectual Tradition 129
Al¥ (d. 1347/1928). Even Mu±ammad Iqbål (d. 1337/1938), although
more a philosopher than a mutakallim, could be included in this group
if one considers his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. To what
extent these and similar works reflect traditional Islamic intellectuality
and spirituality is another matter. Whatever one’s view might be of
these tendencies, one can say with certitude that they reflect more the
concern for an apologetic defense of Islam and the accommodation of
modernity than the preservation of traditional Islamic intellectual life.
THE MESSAGE OF ASH‘ARISM
When one ponders the message of Ash‘arism and its philosophical
and spiritual significance, one becomes aware of the central concern of
this school to bring the reality of God into the everyday world by
making intelligence subservient to the Will of God. It therefore corresponds
to a possibility that was bound to manifest itself in a world
dominated by the reality of prophecy as we also see in traditional
Jewish and Christian thought. Ash‘arism also envisages man as a being
who is in obedience to God because his being is determined by God,
not as a being who is free with a freedom that is of necessity granted
to him by God by virtue of his being created in “His form” and as a
creature who is the central reflection of God’s Names and Qualities. In
a similar manner Ash‘arism takes away from the intellect its function
of being able to know God and His revelation starting with the freedom
and independence of the human agent.
Omnipotentialism [of the Ash‘arite school], which in practice
denies the human mind all capacity to understand
Divine motives, and which refers our intelligence to Revelation
alone, has the function of suggesting that it is “God
alone who knows,” but it does this arbitrarily ab extra and
forgets that, if it is indeed God who is always the thinker,
then He is also the thinker in us and in pure intellection or
inspiration. . . . But Ash’arism thinks only of one thing: to
make the immensity of God concretely present in the world;
and it is perfectly realistic in its presentiment that for the
average man, the acceptance of higher truths passes through
the will and not through the Intellect, and that consequently
it is the will that must receive the shock; this shock, both
crushing and sacramental, is provided precisely by all but
blind omnipotentialism. 11