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

270 Part 4: The Current Situation
of the cyclic renewal of Islam through a “renewer” (mujaddid) has been
always alive, as has the wave of Mahdiism that sees in the Mahd¥ the
force sent by God to return Islam to its perfection, Islam has never
faced within itself that type of secular utopianism that underlies so
much of the poltico-social aspects of modern thought. It is therefore
essential to be aware of the profound distinction between modern
utopianism and Islamic teachings concerning the mujaddid or renewer
of Islamic society or the Mahd¥ himself. It is also basic to distinguish
between the traditional figure of the mujaddid and the modern reformers,
who usually, as a result of their feeble reaction to modern thought,
have hardly brought about the renewal of Islam. Nor have the socalled
Islamic fundamentalists, who are in general opposed to the
Islamic intellectual tradition, succeeded where the modernists have failed.
In fact, “Islamic fundamentalism” is itself a form of reform opposed to
traditional Islam. Moreover, certain forms of so-called fundamentalism
have combined with Mahdiist trends in some parts of the Islamic world
to create a dangerous new form of utopianism. It is true that this form
of utopianism is different from what one sees in the West, but it is
nevertheless something alien to the integral Islamic tradition. Moreover,
it is highly anti-intellectual and while claiming to strengthen Islam often
leads to the further secularization of Islamic society. It is remarkable
how such movements, while opposed to the modernists on a certain
level, join the supporters of modernism in opposing the millennial intellectual
traditions of Islam and especially that philosophy that
flourished in the land of prophecy in its Islamic form.
There is finally one more characteristic of modern thought that
is essential to mention and that is related to all that has been stated
above. This characteristic is the loss of the sense of the sacred. 26 Modern
man can practically be defined as that type of man who has lost
the sense of the sacred, and modern thought is conspicuous in its lack
of awareness of the sacred. Nor could it be otherwise seeing that
modern humanism is inseparable from secularism. But nothing could
be further from the Islamic perspective, in which there does not even
exist such a concept as the ‘profane’ or ‘secular,’ 27 for in Islam, as
already mentioned, the One penetrates into the very depths of the
world of multiplicity and leaves no domain outside the domain of
tradition. This is to be seen not only in the intellectual, philosophical,
and scientific aspects of Islam that breathed in the land of prophecy 28
but also in a blinding fashion in Islamic art. The Islamic tradition can
never accept a thought pattern that is devoid of the perfume of the
sacred and that replaces the Divine Order by one of a purely human
origin and inspiration. The fruitful response of Islamic thought to mod-