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

The Meaning and Role of Philosophy in Islam 33
Christian and Jewish philosophy and then refuse to accept the reality
of Islamic philosophy. 6 One can with some logic assert, as has been
done by Fernand van Steenberghen 7 and certain others, that philosophy,
as understood by the scholastics was not called specifically “Christian”
by them but was conceived of as philosophy as such, but that
did not make it any less Christian. In the same way in classical Islamic
texts one reads usually of the term al-falsafah (philosophy), but not alfalsafat
al-islåmiyyah (Islamic philosophy), which is of a more current
usage, just as most classical Islamic authors have usually referred to
al-d¥n (the religion), when writing about Islam rather than using the
term al-islåm. The homogeneity and unity of traditional civilization
was such that for its members their world was the world. Western
civilization certainly produced Christian art during the Middle Ages,
but this art was usually called “art” as such. Islam produced some of
the greatest architectural marvels in the world, which were, however,
very rarely referred to as “Islamic architecture” by their own creators.
They simply called them “architecture.” This characteristic is a profound
aspect of the medieval world and of traditional civilizations in
general, which must be taken into full consideration in the present
discussion. But if we stand “outside” of these worlds and study them
in comparison with the secular modern world or with other sacred
civilizations, then in the same way that we can call Chartres “Christian
architecture” and St. Thomas a “Christian philosopher” we can
refer to the Alhambra as “Islamic architecture” and Ibn S¥nå and
Suhraward¥ as “Islamic philosophers.”
In all honesty and taking into consideration the long tradition
and the still living character of Islamic philosophy we cannot refuse to
recognize the reality of this distinct type of traditional philosophy as
being just as closely allied to the structure of Islam, and just as closely
related to a particular dimension of it, as other traditional philosophies
such as the Hindu or Neo-Confucian are related to the tradition
in whose bosoms they have been cultivated. For the Islamic philosophers,
especially those of the later period, traditional philosophy has
always been a way in which the truths of revelation have been seen
and discussed through intellectual and rational discourse and the
philosophical significance of the message of prophecy and of reality
itself as it reveals itself in the land of prophecy brought out. The truth
reached by traditional philosophy is for the ÷ukamå˘, an aspect of the
Truth itself, of al-¡aqq, which is a Divine Name and therefore the
source of all revealed truth. 8 For the Islamic ÷ukamå˘, as for Philo,
philosophy was originally a form of revealed Truth, closely allied to
revelation. For Muslims it was connected with the name of the prophet