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

Reflections on Islam and Modern Thought 261
Muslims retreat in helplessness or that they join with a superficial
sense of happiness that accompanies the seduction of the world.
A word must also be said about the term thought as it appears in
the expression modern thought since this term has been used to an even
greater extent by Muslim thinkers during the last century. ‘Thought’
as used in this context is itself modern rather than traditional. The
Arabic term fikr and the Persian and¥shah, which are used as its equivalents,
hardly appear with the same meaning in traditional texts. In fact
what would correspond to the traditional understanding of the term
would be more the French word pensée as used by Pascal, a term that
can be better rendered as “meditation” in addition to “thought.” Both
fikr and and¥shah are in fact related to meditation and contemplation
rather than only to a purely human and therefore nondivine mental
activity that the modern term “thought” usually evokes. 5 If then we
nevertheless use ‘thought’ it is because we are addressing an audience
nurtured on all that this term implies and are using a medium and
language in which it is not possible without being somewhat contrite
to employ another term with the same range of meaning embracing
many forms of mental activity but devoid of the limitation in the
vertical sense that ‘thought’ possesses in contemporary parlance. Also
it is because the classical term ‘fikr’ itself has undergone a transformation
in the writings of modern Muslim authors to reflect more the
current meaning of thought in English.
All forms of mental activity that together comprise modern
thought and that range from science to philosophy, psychology, and
even certain aspects of religion itself, possess certain common characteristics
and traits that must be recognized and studied before the
answer of traditional Islamic philosophy to modern thought can be
provided on a serious intellectual plane. Perhaps the first basic trait of
modern thought to be noted is its anthropomorphic nature. How can
a form of thought that negates any principle higher than man be anything
but anthropomorphic? It might of course be objected that modern
science is certainly not anthropomorphic, but that rather it is the
premodern sciences that must be considered man-centered. Despite
appearances, however, this assertion is mere illusion if one examines
closely the epistemological factor involved. It is true that modern science
(excluding the recent theory of the anthropic principle) depicts a
universe in which man as spirit, mind, and even psyche is but an
accident and an irrelevant minor phenomenon, and the universe thus
appears as “inhuman” and not related in a meaningful manner to the
human state. But it must not be forgotten that although modern man