A Compilation of Islamic Philosophy and Theology [Edited]

Chapter Eight: Al-Kindi

Abu Yusuf Ya’qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi is generally held to have been the first Muslim philosopher. This does not mean, however, that the Muslims prior to al-Kindi had no cognizance at all of Greek philosophical ideas. On the contrary some philosophical knowledge, though fragmentary, can be attributed to the early Mu’tazili kalam.

Some of their main representatives - Abu’l-Hudhayl al-‘Allaf and al-Nazzam -developed a theology built on certain Greek philosophical elements. Thus the theologian Abu’l-Hasan al-Ash’ari named Aristotle as the source of some of Abu’l-Hudhayl’s doctrines, and al-Baghdadi blamed al-Nazzami for having borrowed from Greek philosophers the idea the idea of matter being infinitely divisible. The impact of Greek philosophy upon early Mu’tazili kalam is eveident and has been stated also by early Muslim theologians and heresiographers. But this impact remained after marginal; for none of the early Mu’tazili theologians ever elaborated an encyclopediac system of Greek philosophy as this was out the range of their interests.

It was al-Kindi who pursued this aim and who may therefore rightly be called the first Muslim philosopher, whereas the representatives of Mu’tazili kalam were theologians and no philosophers. This fact alone puts al-Kindi in some opposition to the Mu’tazili with whom he should not be identified.

Ibn al-Nadim listed some 260 titles of al-Kindi’s, and ernomous scientific bibliography, even if many of the works may have been of small extent. Al-Kindi’s treatises encompass the whole classical encyclopedia of sciences: philosophy, logic, arithmetic, spherical, music, astronomy, geometry, cosmology, medicine, astrology, etc., according to Ibn al-Nadim’s arrangement. Ibn al-Nadim’s bibliographical list reveals al-Kindi’s predilection for natural science. Only few manuscripts, approximately ten per cent of all his literary output, have come to light and been edited up to now. It seems that the vast majority of the manuscripts have been lost. It is hardly surprising that later Muslim philosophers rarely quote from any of al-Kindi’s philosophical treatises. Both facts -loss of the bulk of his manuscripts and the lack of reference to him by later authors -need an explanation. Some books may have been lost already during the reign of the caliph al-Mutawakkil who fought vehemently against the rationalizing tendencies of his time and confiscated for a while al-Kindi’s library. The famous eighth/fourteenth century historian Ibn Khaldun adds further proof to the lack of manuscripts when he says: “We have not found any information concerning (al-Kindi’s) book (called al-Jafr), and we have not seen anyone who has seen it. Perhaps it was lost with those books which Hulagu, the ruler of Baghdad threw into the Tigris when the Tatars took possession of Baghdad and killed the last caliph, al-Musta’sim.” The obscurity of al-Kinda’s language, due to lack of an Arabic philosophical terminology, rendered his writings hard of access and made them obsolete while al-Farabi’s philosophical oeuvre eventually overshadowed them.

Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani al-Mantiqi recorded the ruler of Sijistan, Ja’far ibn Babuyah, as having criticized al-Kindi because of his bad language.

It is, nevertheless, the merit of al-Kindi to have made access to Greek philosophy and science possible and to have established from rare and obscure sources the foundation of philosophy in Islam, partly continued and enlarged later on by al-Farabi.

Al-Kindi enjoyed the confidence and support of the seventh and eighth ‘Abasid caliphs, al-Ma’mun and his brother and successor. To al-Mu’tasim he dedicated his On First Philosophy, and some other treatises to the caliph’s son Ahmad with whose education he was entrusted. Unlike his contemporary Hunayn ibn Ishaq, al-Kindi knew neither Greek nor Syriac. He therefore commissioned or adopted translations, e.g. those made by Ibn Na’ima, Eustathius (Astat) and Ibn al-Bitriq. The old translations, commissioned or used by al-

Kindi, still lack the high philological standards set later on by Hunayn ibn Ishaq.

But it was al-Kindi who broke new ground in a fertile soil and introduced into the Arabspeaking world the first translations of Greek philosophy. He was above all interested in gathering and translating works of Plato and Aristotle, both of whom he mentioned by name. But under the cover of these two philosophers other pseud epigraphic works became known, e.g. Porphyry’s paraphrase of part of Plotinus’ Enneads known as Aristotle’s Theology. Al-Kindi, however, had a good grasp of the genuine works of Aristotle. He commissioned a translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and commented upon some of Aristotle’s logical writings, such as Categorize, De interpretation, Analytica posterior and Analytica priora - and also on De caelo, as we are informed by Ibn al-Nadim. He had before him even the otherwise lost Aristotelian dialogue Eudemus, a fragment of which he transmitted.

Al-Kindi was eager to intgroduce Greek philosophy and science to his Arabicspeaking “co-linguists” (ahl lisanina), as he often stressed, and opposed the orthodox matakallimun who rejected foreign knowledge. As long as he enjoyed the caliphs’ protection he was free to do so and did not feel compelled to defend his philosophical stand as was the case with so many later scientists who came under pressure at the hand of the orthodox legalists. As long as al-Kindi clung to tenets held by Late Greek Neo-Platonists, mostly Christians, who believed in one God who had created the world out of nothing, he was in apparent harmony with the divine law of Islam. But as soon as he adopted pagan philosophical doctrines, especially those of Aristotle, he openly deviated from the revealed truth of Islam. His view adduced in the name of Aristotle - that one should gratefully accept any contribution to truth, wherever it comes from, even from Greek philosophy - is incompatible with the exclusive postulate of Islam as the sole mediator of truth.

Al-Kindi’s own philosophical stand reflects the doctrines he found in Greek Classical and, above all, Neo-Platonism sources. His treatises On Definitions and Descriptions of Things may be accepted on the whole as the base of his own views. He supposedly extracted the definitions from Greek literature with the intention of giving a summary of Greek philosophy in definitions.

As I have shown elsewhere, many of these definitions from Aristotelian works and his predilection for Aristotle cannot be ignored even where he extracted from spurious sources which were at the time attributed to Aristotle. The lemmata and their arrangement correspond to a Neo-Platonist source. God is referred to in the first definition as the “First Cause”, similar to Plotinus’ “First Agent”, an expression al-

Kindi has likewise made use of, 26or to his “the One is the cause of the cause”. 27The subsequent definitions in al-Kidi’s treatise are arranged in an order that distinguishes between the upper world and the lower world. The former is marked by the definitions of Intellect, Nature and Soul, followed by definitions of body (jirm), Greation (ibda), Matter (hayula). Form (surah), etc. Thus al-Kindi conceived an upper world of uncreated spiritual beings and a lower of created corporeal beings.

The soul is an un-created, spiritual being, whereas Matter, Time and Place are finite, created and corporeal. Creation (ibda) in this Muslim context is Creation from nothing in time. 28 Both worlds, the upper and the lower one, go finally back to one and the same source which is the common cause of everything. From this final source which is the Godhead everything proceeds subsequently by hypostases.

In his treatise On Definitions and Descriptions of Things al-Kindi explained the world through emanation, a system that later was adopted and enlarged also al-Farabi. 29 The Muslim orthodox, however, was on the whole irritated by the attempt to explain creation as an incessant outflow from the ultimate source, an argument that could not be upheld by scriptural evidence.

They were especially offended by extolling Intellect to immediate proximity to God as His first hypostasis. Emanating from the Uppermost Cause, everything passes through, and develops from, the reflexion of the first intellect. Thus the intellect was to replace the angels as the mediator of divine truth. Al-Farabi took the sharp edge off the doctrine of emanation by equating the Active Intellect with the Angel Gabriel and by explaining prophecy as the result of the soul’s faculty of imagination.

Nevertheless, emanation could not explain the divine act of creation in a way acceptable to the orthodox community of the faithful. “It should be known,” said Ibn Khaldun, “that the (opinion) the (philosophers) hold is wrong in all its aspects. They refer all existential to the first intellect and are satisfied with (the theory of the first intellect) in their progress toward the Necessary One (the Deity). This means that they disregard all the degrees of divine creation beyond the (first intellect).”

Al-Kindi did not intend to explain the “progress toward the Necessary One”, i.e. the way of attaining knowledge of God, as an intellectual progress. On the contrary, towards the end of his On First Philosophy he made it clear beyond all doubt that God cannot be comprehended by intellect. 31

Account to al-Kindi the philosopher is unable to make any positive statement concerning God. All he is able to state is in the negative: that “He is no element, no genus, and no contingent accident”. 32

Thus al-Kindi’s philosophy leads to a negative theology, i.e. where God is described only in negative terms. In this he followed Plotinus 33who taught: “We state, what is not; what is, we do not state. 34If the intellect is unable to lead people to knowledge of God in positive terms, philosophy is not superior to theology. On its “progress towards the Necessary One” philosophy reaches up to the intellect, but does not go “beyond the intellect”, to use again Ibn Khaldun’s words. 35

What is “beyond the intellect”? For the Muslim faithful it is the world of the angels.

They are God’s messengers and are the mediators between humans and God. It is the Angel Gabriel, as the Muslim faithful say and not the intellect, as the philosophers have it who conveyed the divine revelation to the Prophet. The angelic essence is of “pure perception and absolute intellection”. 36 Al-Kindi does not speak of angels. According to him the intellect is in immediate proximity with God. The longest text of al-Kindi’s treatises that have come down to our time is his on First Philosophy (only the first part of this treatise has been preserved). This is another name for metaphysics. Aristotle had called metaphysics the “first philosophy”. 37 Al-

Kindi, adopting this name, explained its meaning in the following way: Knowledge of the first cause has truthfully been called “First Philosophy”, since all the rest of philosophy is contained in its knowledge.

The first cause is, therefore, the first in nobility, the first in genus, the first in rank with respect to that knowledge which is most certain; and the first in time since it is the cause of time. 38

The first cause is, therefore, explorerand it is the intellect that transmits “most certain knowledge” of it. The aim of writing his treatise was to establish “the proof of His Divinity and the explanation of His Unity” as al-Kindi declared in the introduction. 39 In spite of the intellectual certainty which can be attained of the Deity, al-Kindi admits at the end of his treatise that the intellect is able to describe God only in negative terms.

God’s unity stood at the very centre of the Mu’tazili doctrine so that the Mu’tazilah were called accordingly “the people (who made) the confession of (God’s) unity (the basis of their creed)” (ahl al-tawhid).

Supported by the evidence of Mu’tazili themes like God’s unity in al-Kindi’s philosophical writings, al-Kindi was held to be “the philosopher of the Mu’tazilite theology”. 40Later researches, however, made it evident that this statement, linking al-Kindi peremptorily with the Mu’tazilah was brought to light by further research. 41

One point of dissent was the structure of matter. Most of the Mu’tazilah was of the opinion that matter consisted of small and indivisible particles, i.e. atoms. They were led to this opinion by supposing that everything created is finite in spatial and temporal extension. Hence they conclude that the divisibility of matter must also be finite. So they assumed the existence of atoms. Al-Kindi, however, denied the atomistic structure of matter, a topic he elaborated in his treatise On the Falsity of the Statement of Whoever Thinks that a Body Exists that is Indivisible. He adopted Aristotle’s view of the continuous structure of matter. This difference of opinion had a great impact on many parts of the physical sciences. The Mu’tazilah accepted the discontinuity of matter and believed in the existence of a vacuum, denied by Aristotle.

Contrary to the Mu’tazilah, however, al-Kindi conceived matter as being continuous and of un-intermittent structure, but not of infinite extension. The universe is a finite body, a statement that al-Kindi expounded in a separate treatise. By its finiteness the universe is separated from the immaterial, upper world of the spiritual beings.

Right after the introduction of his treatise On Allah’s Unity and the Finiteness of the Body of the Universe al-Kindi stated six primary propositions which can rationally be comprehended “without mediation” (ghayr mutawassit). Al-Kindi referred obviously to those propositions “that cannot be proved syllogistically by means of a middle term”. 45 Propositions of this kind convey knowledge that cannot be proved (anapodeiktos), i.e. that is achieved a priori (‘ilm awwal, ilm badihi). As an example of a proposition that conveys primary knowledge al-Kindi stated that, if one joins two finite bodies one with the other, the new body is again finite. It is, however, impossible to disjoin a certain, finite part from a body which is held to be infinite. This is to prove that the corporeal world is finite.

In the same way al-Kindi proved that time is finite. For you cannot pass a certain amount of time and suppose that rest of time is infinite and eternal.Likewise al-Kindi proved that the world cannot be eternal and that is created in time (muhdath).Al-Kindi’s arguments go ultimately back to the late school of Alexandria. John Philoponus (Arabic Yahya al-Nahwi) used them in his refutation On the Eternity of the World against Proclus. 48He wrote his book in the year 529 against the Neo-Platonist philosopher Proclus. 49 Philoponus’ refutation on the Eternity of the world against Proclus was translated into Arabic 50 and furnished al-Kindi with some philosophical arguments which were current among Christian Philosophers in late Hellenistic Alexandria. This has been attested by a recently found text of John Philoponus in an early Arabic translation. 51

Al-Kindi has been influenced to a great extent also by Proclus. Traces of his Institution theosophy,52 they attest to al-Kindi’s efforts at harmonizing the Aristotelian and the Neo-Platonist systems of philosophy within the religious climate of Islam.

Al-Kindi’s predilection for Aristotle’s philosophy, witnessed already in his treatise On Definitions and Descriptions of Things is most strikingly felt also in his on First Philosophy. In writing this treatise al-Kindi lavishly quoted from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. 53 But it seems that the subject matter used by al-kindi differed from the text now generally accepted. Book Alpha elatton allegedly written by Pasicles of Rhodes, a nephew of Eudemus, was apparently missing, but appears in ‘Abd al-Latif Ibn Yusuf al-Baghdadi’s 54 parahrase of Airstotle’s Metaphysics, although in a reversed order, i.e. preceding book Alpha.55 Although al-Kindi elaborated many of the ideas that go back to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, his on First Philosophy is not a mere paraphrase of this book. For him relied extensively also upon other books of Aristotle. Thus many of al-Kindi’s conceptions reflect ideas expressed by Aristotle in his physics, De anima and categorised, to name only those books most quoted. 56

As well as giving a summary of Aristotle’s Metaphysics he supplemented his on first Philosophy by drawing upon other writings of Aristotle.

The knowledge of the true nature of things, the foremost aim of philosophy, was not confined to the world of senses. For al-Kindi philosophy included also knowledge of the divinity. 57 This led to the merging of physics and metaphysics, science and theology. For later Muslim generations this amalgamation became offensive. The faithful accused the philosophers of valuing intellectual speculation higher than the revered tradition and establishing the articles of faith as correct through reasoning and not through tradition. 58

Thus al-Kindi’s philosophy, and especially his natural theology, contained already the seeds of the later conflicts between the orthodox and the intellectuals in Islam. Only as long as he was protected by the caliph al-Mu’tasim was he safe to engage in philosophy.

Al-Kindi did not conceal his indebtedness to earlier and alien philosophers by acquiring the truth “wherever it comes from”. 59 For him the truth of the philosopher cannot differ from the truth of the Muslim faithful. Philosophy and theology served one end: the knowledge of the True One, of God.

Acclimatizing philosophy in an Islamic society was made easier through the medium of texts of late Greek philosophy.

From among these texts it was the so-called Theology in which al-Kindi took an interest.

Falsely attributed to Aristotle, the Theology was in the nineteenth century identified as Porphyry’s paraphrase of Plotinus’ Enneads, 4-6. 60 With all these texts at his disposal al-Kindi elaborated a philosophy that was an able instrument to support by rational arguments the Muslim belief founded upon revelation and tradition, thus creating harmony between speculation and revelation.

In spite of this apparent harmony al-Kindi’s language is distinct from that of the Qur’an.

Instead of “Allah”, which is the common name of God in the Qur’an and even in kalam literature, al-Kindi used “al-bari” (Creator) or “al-‘illat al-ula’ (the First Cause).

The former name is recorded only once in the Qur’an ; 61 the latter is of course completely missing from the Qur’an and the Holy Scriptures, for the faithful reject as polytheism the idea that God Almighty is the first of a series of causes that emanate from Him. God is for the faithful the only cause, the Creator of all. Al-Kindi referred to creation out of nothing by the word ibada which replaced the Qur’qnic khalq, jirm was chosen instead of jism, etc.

The choice of language gives the impression that al-Kindi deliberately avoided the corresponding Qur’anic expressions, holding aloof the language of speculation from the inimitable languages of Qur’an.

“First Philosophy” means the knowledge of the True One. Whereas everything is the effect of what precedes and the cause of what follows, the True One is the only cause. The world, emanating ultimately from the first cause, is thus dependent on, and connected with, the True One, but is separated from Him by being finite in time and space. The oneness of the first cause is contrasted with the plurality of the created world: everything has five predicables: genus, species, difference, property and accident. The modes of existence are explained by the categories. Al-Kindi is in full harmony with Islam in Stating that the world has been created out of nothing and is created in time, having come into existence after not having existed. This is not only his religious credo but also his conviction as philosopher.

Al-Kindi was, apart from metaphysics, also interested in mathematics and natural sciences. His efforts to study the whole encyclopedic range of sciences proved him to be a true follower of Aristotle. With regard to his strong inclination towards mathematics he even surpassed Aristotle.

He wrote a treatise entitled that Philosophy cannot be acquired except with a Knowledge of Mathematics. 62 His predilection for mathematics is emphasized also in his treatise On Definitions and Descriptions of Things.

Many of the definitions are expressed in a double way: physically (minjihat) and mathematically (min jihat al-ta’lim). 63 It was also in the field of mathematical computation that he exerted his greatest authority as teacher. His two famous pupils, Ja’far ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Umar al-Balkhi (Allbumasar in Medieval Latin literature) 64 and Abu’l-‘Abbas Ahmad ibn al-Tayyib as- Sarkhs, 65 continued and enlarged the mathematical research of their teacher. 66

Al-Kindi’s strong inclination for mathematics probably influenced also the so-called Brethren of Purity in the late fourth/ tenth century. Favouring practical application of science, al-Kindi elaborated a system of calculating the efficacy of medical drugs.

This becomes necessary since the physicians moved over from simple to compound drugs. The first physician recorded as having used compound drugs was Abu’l-Hakam from Damascus. 67 In order to achieve the intended efficacy the pharmacist had to calculate the right proportion of the ingredients of the drug.

Al-Kindi undertook to divide the medical ingredient into grades according to the strength of their curative properties. 68 He was also the author of many treatises and handbooks of medical and pharmaceutical concern. 69

In one of these medical treatises, recently found, al-Kindi again connected medicine with mathematics by giving the rule for calculating in advance the critical days of a developing disease. 70 Being the quickest planet in the firmament, the moon was held to influence acute diseases.

On certain days of the lunar monthly revolution the diseases were held to change for the better or the worse. This theory, already expounded by Galen, was further elaborated by al-Kindi.

Al-Kindi’s mathematical curiosity did not halt even before the Holy Scripture. He wrote a treatise On the Duration of the Reign of the Arabs, 71 and based his calculation upon the letters at the head of twenty-nine chapters of the Qur’an. They from fourteen enigmatic words that contain fourteen different letters out of the twentyeight letters of the Arabic alphabet. By adding the numerical value of each of these letters, counting only once those letters which are repeated several times, one receives the approximate number of years of Arab rule until the Mongols in 656/1258 conquered Baghdad and “Arab hegemony was lost.

It is generally held that al-Kindi’s philosophy is in harmony with the Muslim creed. This is supported for example by the argument that al-Kindi speaks of creation out of nothing. It should be kept in mind, however, that in his treatise on Definitions and Descriptions of Things al-Kindi speaks of the existence of an upper world that is above the world of creation. This is incompatible with the Muslim faith. The same is true with regard to the theory of emanation, which opposed the article of faith that the world was created in one instant by God’s command.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to give a conclusive judgment of an author whose literary work has been preserved only to a very small extent. Nevertheless, the treatises that have come down to us and Ibn al-Nadim’s bibliographical list that contains the titles of al-Kindi’s writings allow us to express an approximate evaluation of al-Kindi as philosopher and scientist. Such an evaluation has to take into account that al-Kindi could not have recourse to any of his “co-linguists”. There were, it is true, also learned men besides al-Kindi who commissioned scientific translations or translated themselves, like the sons of Musa ibn Shakir, Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Thabit ibn Qurrah and ‘Umar ibn al-Farrukhan, as we are told by Abu Ma’shar.73 But al-Kindi was the first to transfer Greek philosophy systematically from foreign literary sources and to channel it into his Islamic environment where philosophy was received with coldness and even with hostility. At some time in his life he enjoyed the support of the caliph. But, like most of the later philosophers, he had no authority as an academic teacher because there was no official philosophy teaching. He kept himself aloof through his choice of language from colliding with the orthodox faithful or the mutakallimun.

Apart from metaphysics he engaged in research on almost all the natural and mathematical sciences.

Though Latin translations, al-Kindi influenced medieval European philosophers. They became acquainted with works from the whole spectrum of his literary output, especially with those that dealt with natural sciences and mathematics. 74Gerard of Gremona 75 and Avendauth 76 translated several of al-Kindi’s scientific works, among them on Optics (Deaspectibus) which Roger Bacon, 77 dealing with the speed of light, used. 78

Also translated by Gerard of Cremona were On Degrees (of compound Medicines), One Sleep and Vision, and on the Five Essences (De quinque essentiis) 79 cited also by Roger Bacon in his Nature and Multiplication of Light or species. 80 De quinque essentiis was one of the main sources for the knowledge of al-Kindi the philosopher until Abu Ridah edited in 1950 a collection of fourteen treatises mostly on philosophical subjects.

Besides these works only fragments of other works were known from medieval secondary sources. Thus for example the historian al-Mas’udi 81 cited from a treatise of al-Kindi in his Muruj al-dhahab, 82 where he denied the possibility of artificially producing gold and siver. Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya’ al-Razi 83 wrote a refutation of this treatise. 84

Notes

1 c. 185/801-252/866.

2 Died c. 235/849.

3 Died between 220/835 and 230/845.

4 260/873-324/935.

5 Ritter (1929-39): 486.

6 Died 429/1037.

7 Laoust (1965):

8 Corbin (1964): 219; lvry (1974): 22ff.

9 Died 380/990.

10 232/847-247/861.

11 732/1332-808/1406.

12 Ibn Khalbun (1970), 2: 562f 13 Died c. 375/985.

14 Wiedemann (1970), 2: 562

15 Died 339/950

16 Died 218/833.

17 died 227/842

18 192/808-260/873.

19 Astat/Eustatius translated Aristotle’s Metaphysic; ‘Abd al-Masih ibn Na’imah translated Porphyry’s interpretation of Plotinus’ Enneads, 4-6, known as Aristotle’s Theology (cf. Brockelmann (1937), Suppl.

1:364) and Yahya ibn al-Bittriq translated Aristotle’s De caelo, De anima, Plato’s Timaeus, possibly also writings of Proclus, e.g the summary of his Institutio theological (cf. Endress (1973) passim).

20 Walzer (1963): 14.

21 Cf. e.g Abu Ridah (1950): 260.8;

Rosenthal (1956),2: 445.

22 Walzer (1945), 29: 20f. Ess (1966): 235.

23 Abu Ridah (1950): 103; cf. Gutas (1975):

196, Nr 69

24 Klein-Franke (1982b): 191 -216.

26 E.g Abu Ridah (1950): 207, I. 11; cf.

Rosenthal (1952): 474; Plotinus (1959):

275; (1955): 184.

27 Plotinus (1963). 8.18.

28 Walzer (1963): 189; Endress (1973): 231.

29 Died 313/925.

30 Ibn Khaldun (1958), 3: 250.

31 Abu Ridah (1950): 160, I. 6; Walzer (1963): 188

32 Abu Ridah, op. cit.

33 Ibid: 205-70.

34 Plotinus (1959): 324=Enn. 5.3(49), 14.6:

‘kai legomen ho me estin, ho de estin Ou legomen:.

35 Supra ann. 11; cf. Zintzen (1983): 312-28, esp. 314.

36 Ibn Khaldun (1958), 1: 195.

37 Cf. the Neoplatonic philosopher Simplicius (first of sixth century)

commenting on Aristotle’s De caelo 277b 10, in Simplicus (1894): 269.31.

38 Ivry (1974): 56, 1. 6.

39.Ibid.59.1.3.

40 Walzer (1950): 9.

41 Ivry (1974): 27ff.

42. Ibn al-Nadim (1871): 259, 1. 19.

43 Abu Ridah (1950): 201-7.

44.Ibid. 202. 1.4.

45 Aristotle (1831): Analytica Priora 72b 19:

amesos =ghayr mutawassit, cf. Bohm (1967): 67.

46 Abu Ridah (1950): 201-7.

47.Ibid. 207, 1. 1.

48 Philoponus (1899)

49 412-85. This year was remarkable also because of two other events: the Roman Emperor Justinian closed the school of philosophers in Athens (cf. Gibbon, chapter 40) and St. Benedict founded the religious order named after him.

50 Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah (d. 668/1270)

(1882/4), 1: 105, 1. 5.

51 Pines (1972): 320-52.

52 Especially with reference to prop. 1-3

and prop. 5; Endress (1973): 242ff.

53 Ivry (1974): 205-7.

54 557/1162-629/1231.

55 Neuwirth (1977-8): 84-100.

56 Ivry (1974): 205-7.

57 Abu Ridah (1950): 104,1. 5.

58 Ibn Khaldun (1958), 3: 347.

59 Abu Ridah (1950): 103, 1. 4. This reminds one of Pliny, who admitted: “We are swept by the puffs of the clever b INS of Greece”;

Pliny (1963), 8:188f.

60 Steinschneider (1960): 77.

61 Surah 59 (al-Hashr): 24.

62. Ibn al-Nadim (1871): 255 ult.

63. Klein-Franke (1982b): 194.

64 Died 272/886.

65 Died 286/899.

66 Rosenthal (1943): 17.

67 Fl. Second half of the first/seventh century; cf. Klein-Franke (1982a): 35.

68 Harig (1974): 148 and 200.

69 Sezgin (1970): 244-7.

70. Klein-Franke (1975): 161-88.

71 Loth (1875): 261-309.

72 Hitti (1958): 484; Rosenthal (1949): 122;

Plessner (1962): 184f.; Noldeke (1919), part 2: 68-78.

73 Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah (1882/4), 1: 207;

Wiedemann (1970), 2: 551.

74 Thorndike and Kibre (1963), col. 1731 et passim.

75 c. 1114-87.

76 First half of the sixth/twelfth century; cf.

Alverny (1954), 1: 19-43.

77. c. 1214 too soon after 1292.

78 Grant (19749; 396.

79. Ibid., 494.

80 Nagy (1897).

81 Died 345/956.

82 al-Mas; udi (1974), 5: 159f.

83 Died 313/915.

84 Ibn Abi Usaybi’ah (1882/4), 1: 316, 1. 12;

Ranking (1913): 249, Nr 40: “Responsio ad Philosophum el-Kendi eo quod artem al-

Chymiae in impossibili posuerit”;

Wiedemann (1970), 1: 51ff.

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18- Ivry, A. L. (1974), Al-Kindi’s Metaphysics: a Translation of Ya’qub al-Kindi’s Treatise “On First Philosophy” (fi al-Falsafah al-Ula) with Introduction and Commentary (Albany).

19- Klein-Franke, F. (1975) Die Ursachen der Krisen bei akuten Krankheiten: Eine wiederentdeckte Schrift al-Kindi’s, Israel Oriental Studies (Tel Aviv).

20- (1982a) Vorlesungen uber die Medizin im Islam, Sudhoffs Archiv: Zeitschrift fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Beiheft 23 (Wiesbaden).

21- (1982b) “al-Kindi’s On Definitions and Descriptions of Things”, Le Museon: Revue des Etudes Orientales, 95.

22- Laoust, H. (1965) Les Schismes dans L’Islam (Paris).

23- Loth, O. (1875) “al-Kindi als Astrolog”, in Morgenlandische Forschungen: Festchrift fur H.L. Fleischer (Leipzig) (repr. 1981).

Al-Mas’udi (1974) Les Prairies d’Or, ed. B.de Meynard and P. de Courteille, revue et corrigee par C. Pellat, Publications de l’Universite Libanaise: Section des Etudes Historiques XI (Beirut).

24- Nagy, A. (1897) “Die philosophischen Abhandlungen des Ja’qub Ben Ishaq Al-Kindi”, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittlealters, 2(5)

25- (Munster). Neuwirth, A. (1977/8) “Neue Materialien zur arabischen Tradition der beiden ersten Metapysik-Bucher”, Die Welt des Islams, n.s., 17.

26- Noldeke, Th. 1919 Geschichte des Qorans (Leipzig).

27- Philoponus (1899) De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum, ed. H. Rabe (Leipzig).

28- Pines, S. (1972) “An Arabic Summary of a Lost Work of John Philoponos”, Israel Oriental Studies, 2.

29- Plessner, M. (1962) “Picatrix”: Das ziel des Weisen von Pseudo-Magriti (London).

30- Pliny (1963) Natural History, with English trans., 10 vols, vlo. 8 by W.H.S Jones (Cambridge Mass.).

31- Plotinus (1955) Plotinus apud Arabes: Theologia Aristotelis ET fragmenta quae supersunt, ed. ‘A. Badawi (Cairo).

32- (1959) Opera, 2, Enneades 4-6, ed. P. Henry and H.-R. SCHwyzer (Paris).

33- (1963), Enneades 6, ed. And trans. E.Brehier (Paris).

34- Ranking, S.A. (1913) “The Life and Works of Rhazes”, Acts of the XVII. International Congress of Medicine (London).

35- Ritter, H. (1929-39) Die dogmatischen Lehren der Anhanger des Islam von Abu ‘l-

36- Hasan ‘Ali ibn Isma’il al Ash’ari (Leipzig).

37- Rosenthal, F. (1943): Ahmad B. At-Tayyib, as-Sarahsi (New Haven).

38- (1952) “As-Saih al-Yunani: and the Arabic Plotinus Source”, Orientalia, Commentarii Periodici Pontificii Instituti Biblici, 21.

39- (1956) “al-Kindi and Ptolemy”: in Study orientalistici in onore, di Gorgio Levi Della Vida, 2 vols (Rome).

40- Sezgin, F. (1970) Geschichte des arabischen Schriftutums, 3 (Leiden).

41- Simplicius (1894) De caelo, ed. I.L. Heiberg, in Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, 7 (Berlin).

42- Steinscheneider, M. (1960) Die arabischen Ubersetzungen aus dem Griechischen (Graz) (repr.) (Beihefte zum Cantralbatt fur Bibliothekswesen, 12, 1893).

43- Thorndike, L. and Kibre P. (1963) A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin (London).

44- Walzer, R. (1945) Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 29: 160-83.

45- (1950) “The Rise of Islamic Philosophy”, Oriens, 3. (1963) Greek into Arabic (Oxford).

46- Wiedemann, E. (1970) Aufsatze zur arabischen Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2 vols (reprint) (Hildesheim).

47- Zintzen, C. (1983) “Bemerkungen zum Aufstieg der Seele in Jamblichs De Myteriis”, in Platonismus und Christentum:Festschrift fur Heinrich Dorrie, ed. H.D.

48- Blume and F. Mann (Jahrbuch Antike und Christentum, Suppl. 10) (Munster).

3 A community oriented description of Islam

Who belongs to Islam, and what themes and activities can be called Islamic? These questions are supposed to have some kind of an answer as soon as one starts writing about Islamic Finance or about Islamic Logic. The simplest option is to assume that Islam is a well-known notion provided with useful definitions elsewhere so that the matter need not be discussed in further detail. That assumption seems tounderly much writing in these areas but I doubt its validity. Below I will provide a description of the extension of Islam which yields a reasonably explicit criterion allowing to assess to what extent an approach to finance may be called Islamic and to what extent a contemporary approach to logic deserves being labeled (Real) Islamic.15

It is assumed that at any moment of time Islam consists of a collectionIt of persons with 720 t. This setIt needs to be identified for various t. A sequence of 8 sets of persons It 0, It 1, It 2, It 3, It 4, It 5, It 6 and It 7 will be defined, each less inclusive. These sets change in time, for instance because the deceased must be deleted from each set in which they have been included at the time of their death. New persons can enter for the first time at all stages except stage 6 and 7. Only death removes persons from the set I0. Members can move up and down through the various levels this hierarchy so to speak.

By means of this sequence a reasonably precise definition of who belongs to Islam at time t can be provided. This nested series of sets can also be used to determine when an activity can be called Islamic. Thus at any instant of time t the sets have a specific extension It n with0 n 7 each consisting of persons living at time t, with It n It n+1

for 0 n < 7.

At any time Islam will mean one of the setsIt n, however with It 5 constituting the default extension of Islam. If another extension is meant that must be mentioned explicitly.

Why is this relevant? For instance, even after having read extensively about Islamic Finance one may still wonder: what justifies the label Islamic for these financial activities?16 Can someone, at least in principle, define his or her own system of Islamic Finance (or of Islamic Logic) as a theoretical project in a Northern European University carried out by non-muslims , or is such a state of affairs impossible by definition?

None of these questions can be given a reliable answer if no extension of Islam and of points of view “held by Islam” is known, and the objective of this section is to make some progress on that matter. Unfortunately but not uncharacteristically we will make use of sources that are not full in agreement with one-another. Except for the design of the sets It 0−7, and except for issues concerning Islamic Finance, the knowledge of Islam used in this section has been taken mainly from the following sources Armstrong [3], Donner [14], and Esposito [18].

Donner’s book, proposes an intriguing and attractive picture of the prophet Muhammad and his contemporaries, organized as a community of believers, until the creation of Islam some 80 years after the death of the prophet. He departs from the conventional picture as sketched by Armstrong. Esposito forcefully argues against North American prejudice. He bases his arguments on several international survey studies, conducted by Gallup, about the opinions held by members of Islam regarding a range of issues. In terms of the sequence It 0−7 that will be defined in more detail below, I guess that Esposito describes the result of interviews of members of the stage I5 in that listing. Supporters of the 9-11 attacks have been included in the reported polls, but there is no quantitative information provided in [18] about the coverage of the distribution of questionnaires over the different streams within Islam that Esposito intends to distinguish.

3.1 Extension independent aspects of Islam

As stated above our objective is to shed light on the following: who belongs to Islam (the extension of Islam), what are Islamic points of view, what qualifies an approach or method as Islamic. We begin with an “axiom”.

AXIOM 1: What Islam has to say about a topic T is entirely and exclusively determined by the points of view of those persons who currently are to be considered as belonging to Islam.

This axiom has several implications which are rather independent of time and for that reason from the actual extension of the membership of Islam:

• Islam’s view concerning T, if it exists at all, can change over time.

• Islam’s view on T cannot be discovered exclusively by reading old sources.

• During the life of the prophet Muhammad Islam did not yet exist, the Qur’an for that reason, assuming that it coincides with Muhammad’s spoken words, is not an immediate source for “Islamic viewpoints”.

• In most cases (that is for most T) some kind of “voting”, either explicit or implicit will be required to arrive at an Islamic viewpoint about topic T.

• Islam is entirely man made, even if its sources may have been be revealed.

• Confirmation of the revealed status at time t of the original sources is part of becoming a member of the set It 0

• The construction of Islam is an ongoing process with revealed sources and their continuous interpretation playing a very important role.

• The elevation around the year 720 of Muhammad’s oral tradition, after its written compilation (perhaps around the year 650), to the status of the primary revealed source of Islam has been an extremely successful conscious design decision that went into the construction of Islam. Further successful design decisions were to come.

• Design decisions about Islam are exclusively taken by members of Islam. Such design decisions are just points of view about certain topics turned into assertions that must be confirmed by new members of stages 5 and 6. In terms of the hierarchy of sets such a decision can adapt the bundle of points of view adhered to by mainstream communities and for that reason incorporation of a decision may reduce the number of mainstream communities (thus moving their members back from level 6 to level 5.)

• Who belongs to Islam, is exclusively decided by members of Islam, and this cannot be undone retrospectively, that is who belongs to Islam at time t will always belong to Islam at time t′ > t though perhaps at a different level of the stratification.

3.2 A stratified membership description

In order to gain insight in the extension of Islam at an arbitrary moment in time an axiom is used that allows for a layered decomposition of its membership.

AXIOM 2. Islam provides unity in diversity. For membership of Islam distinguish 7

levels can be distinguished, which are incrementally more demanding.

ABBREVIATION: V is used as an abbreviation of the following vow: “God is the only god and Muhammad is his most prominent and most recent prophet”.

Retrospective subjective members. It 0 consists of those (living) people who have at some time r t expressed V (with or without the presence of witnesses).

According to some It 0 coincides exactly with members of Islam at time t. What can be held against this viewpoint is that persons may be insufficiently aware of the consequences when making the vow V.

Members of It 0 may be members of other religions as well (usually only after revoking vowV ) .17

Subjective members. It 1 consists of the members of It 0 who have not revoked their vow V since asserting it.

It 1 is disjoint with Judaism, all Christian religions, and with most religions from India, Japan, China. It 1 is a well-known separator in topological terms and it can be used as a definition of Islam if atheistic (who do not accept the concept of god) andzerotheistic (who acknowledge the concept of god but are in addition of the opinion that currently no god exists) persons are not taken into account.

Conscious subjective members. It 2 consists of the members of It 1 who are at time t willing to renew the vow V.

Active members. It 3 consists of the members of It 2 who (at time t) perform conventional religious tasks (regular prayer, regular gifts to the poor, making a journey to Mecca), Community members. It 4 consists of members of It 3 who perform their conventional religious tasks in the context of and in accordance with a community of persons all members of It 3, Thus It 3 is the union of a collection of communities each made up from members of It 3.

No attempt is made to decompose communities intosubcommunities . Doing so may be important for various purposes. It leads to a partially ordered refinement of the proposed stratification.

Traditional community members. It 5consists of the members of those communities that constitute It 4 of which the members are (collectively) aware of:

• a package of viewpoints collectively considered a consequence of Islam (though in fact often only in their specific community), • a line of descent in terms of communities from the initial phase of Islam, • a line of descent in terms of packages of viewpoints (the community lineage consists of a sequence of communities and intervals of their existence; it must be equipped with a package of viewpoints held during each of these phases). This theological lineage must have significant explanatory value for the community’s current positions.

Mainstream traditional community members. It 6 comprises (the union of) a collection of communities who have decided that they are among the mainstream communities accounted for in stage 5, while other communities have been left out. The different communities at this level may share:

•some beliefs (neutral assertions), • some elements of orthopraxy, • some objectives concerning thepreferrered development towards a next stage of the community’s existence.

For a reliable demarcation of It 6 as a subset of It 5 it is necessary that the entire genealogy of branching communities composing It 5 is assessed with a degree of centrality within Islam. This is a matter of sociology and group structure and group interconnection analysis rather than a matter of deciding about the centrality of viewpoints.

Anyhow, It 6 singles out the mainstream communities from the marginal,excentric and extremist communities.18

Mainstream based forward movers. It 7 consists of selected members of various communities existing at level It 6, who actively perform Jihad and in various ways are quite visible at least within the membership of It 5 and perhaps also outside It 5 and even outside It 0. Here Jihad may take various forms, for instance:

• spreading the word, • living a life with visible piety, which may be convincing for others.

• developing innovative activities that allow groups of persons to perform their life compatible with a package of viewpoints held by their community as mentioned in the specification of It 5.

3.3 Qualification of views and activities

Having dealt with the classification of individuals and groups the classification of activities and viewpoints can be put on a reasonably firm footing.19

DEFINITION 1. An assertion belongs to the points of view of Islam if some community as mentioned in the definition of It 5 adheres to the assertion.20

DEFINITION 2. An assertion belongs to the points of view of mainstream Islam if some community as mentioned in the definition of It 6 adheres to the assertion.

DEFINITION 3. An assertion belongs to the shared points of view of Islam if a large majority (over 75%) of communities as mentioned in the definition of It 5 adheres to the assertion.

DEFINITION 4. An assertion belongs to the shared points of view of mainstream Islam if a large majority (over 75%) of communities as mentioned in the definition of It 6 adheres to the assertion.

DEFINITION 5. A theory, methodology or system can be called Islamic if it is endorsed by at least one community included in It 5. It is a mainstream Islamic theory, method or system, if it is endorsed by one of the communities constituting It 6. It is shared (or shared mainstream) if it is endorsed by a significant (over 75%) of communities of It 5, respectively of It 6.

Here are some examples of the use of these definitions.

• That a woman should not be driving a car is a point of view of mainstream Islam.

• That a woman is allowed to drive a car is a point of view of mainstream Islam.

• That drinking alcohol must be avoided is a shared point of view of Islam.

• That non-Islamic (or rather outside I2) western civilians can be aggressively attacked is a non-shared, non-mainstream point of view of Islam.

• That the poor should be supported is a shared point of view of Islam.

• That interests on loans should neither be paid nor collected is a non-shared point of view of mainstream Islam. The support for this point of view is growing, however, and it may well become a shared point of view of mainstream Islam in the next 100 years.

Some further consequences of the stratified definition of Islam can be mentioned:

•from outside It 2, on cannot design a system of Islamic finance, by definition, unless appropriateendorsment is obtained. (This is the impact of definition 5.)

• The set of points of view of Islam is inconsistent, mainly because viewpoints that stem from more than one community are taken into account.

• In fact even the family of shared points of view of mainstream Islam is not protected against logical inconsistency. But that is a matter related to the fact that majority voting processes can lead outside logical validity, which is generally a fact of social choice theory unspecific for Islam.

• Given this layered architecture of Islam it is not even difficult to design (by way of a thought experiment) a package of LinkedIn groups which allow to capture all of Islam as well as the dynamics of its constituting communities as dedicated (an perhaps preferably closed) LinkedIn groups. That requires 1.500.000.000 persons to be covered by LinkedIn, which is rapidly becoming technologically feasible. Leaving aside legal and political objections before long large movements like Islam can be entirely covered by social media, at least in principle.

• Islam has held inconsistent views since its earliest days. Both Christianity and Islam may be in part understood in terms of their coming to grips with an event of political assassination of a major figure (Jesus, andUthman respectively). A major distinction between these religions arises, however, from that fact that Islam has kept both sides of this deep moral dilemma21 within its ranks (an even within the mainstream communities composing stage It 6), whereas all of Christianity has taken side for the victim of the assassination so to speak.

• The logic used by Islam, if any, is aparaconsistent propositional logic. Many forms ofparaconsistent logic have been developed since 1900 andill require an extensive study to find out which version fits best.22 The Roman Catholic Church on the other hand has made an attempt to live up to a consistent logic. For the union of Christian churches and their collective points of view findingaparaconsistent logic is also the best one can hope for, while for particular churches the search for full consistency has been important. That has led to fragmentation and diversity in Christianity to which Islam seems to be less prone due to its principled compatibility with localinconsistencies, that is by its ability to settle for mere pragmaticparaconsistency .

Paraconsistent logics are notmainstream in the west. This is remarkable, because removing local inconsistencies is as difficult as anywhere else. I believe that “western” scientific paradigms tend to develop into completions of consistent subsets of originallyparaconsistent theories, this process leading to a fragmentation not unlike the religious fragmentation just mentioned.

Now we all know that if a mother asserts that her child C needs to sleep at 8 PM while its father insists that it may stay awake until 9 PM both may successfully and consistently agree that it must wake up next morning at 7.30 AM, expecting that the latter goal will be aimed at unconfused by the parental disagreement about the preferred timing of C’s going to bed. Making sense of this situation requiresaparaconsistent logic of parental behavior, however.

• Finally the classification mechanism can be applied to the main theme of this paper.

– Doing applied research on a particular system of Islamic Finance constitutes an Islamic activity and it requires being a member of stage 5 or beyond at least.

– Making proposals for systems of Islamic Finance is not necessarily an Islamic task (that is it can be done by individuals who are not stage-0 members.)

– Labeling a proposed financial system as a system of Islamic Finance can only be done by a group of members of stage 5 together representing at least one of its communities.

– Doing applied work within Real Islamic Logic is a task only accessible for members of stage 5 or beyond.

– Drafting proposals for real Islamic Logic is accessible to non-members of stage 0. (It is not always an Islamic activity.)

Besides questioning to what extent it is reasonable to label activities in finance and logic as Islamic, one may consider this matter from the other extreme position: which processes, tasks and entities can be called Islamic, and more generally can be labeled with a religious identity. I will dwell on that matter briefly below merely coming to the conclusion that matters are far from clear.

3.4 Some reflection on the use of a religious adjective

I will now confront the question whether or not a seemingly neutral theme like finance or logic might be provided with the adjective “Islamic” or with any other religious adjective.

By way of example I will consider the adjective “Roman catholic” (in the remainder of this section abbreviated to catholic) instead of the adjective Islamic. Consider the catholic priest John active in a rural area, who administers a parish P, who owns a horse H and who regularly serves the mass in ”his” church C. In addition he is in charge of school S.

It seems rather absurd to label horse H Roman catholic merely because it is owned by a catholic priest. An object or structure X being catholic must say something significant about X itself, merely a reference to an owner is definitely not sufficient.

3.4.1 Religious labeling of material objects, books, theories and thoughts

So what about the school. If the horse cannot be catholic can the bricks and glass constituting the school be catholic? It seems more plausible to assume that the term “school” must be disambiguated, because it refers both to an organization, which might be labeled catholic, and to a physical building which is used by this organization, the building being less amenable to a religious adjective. For the church building the same remark may apply: as a building it is hardly amenable to an application of the adjective catholic, whereas the community making use of the church is plausibly labeled catholic.

But where is this reductionist strategy leading to. The organization running the school and the community constituting the parish (and making use of the church) can be labeled catholic merely because the members of these groups are considered catholic. But that is obviously insufficient, because if these organizations/communities are to be perceived as catholic, besides a constraint on their membership this also imposes the requirement of having acquired an adequate accreditation by the local catholic bishop, acting on behalf of the catholic pope. This brings us reasonably close to the definition of a catholic school (or parish).

One may then consider a book with catholic religious hymns used in church C. Is this book with hymns catholic, and if not is the collection of hymns itself catholic, or is it merely a neutral tool for an activity performed by a catholic community. Similarly a book may contain the catechism of thecatholic church , which is not to say that the book itself is catholic.

Finally one may face the question to what extent a body of ideas can be considered catholic. This leads to the specific question whether or not the catholic faith (as a collection of ideas) is itself catholic. If not then X being catholic is not even a precondition for “catholic X” to make sense. If so, then that faith constitutes a body of ideas which is rightfully labeled catholic. Alternatively one might also hold that “catholic faith” rather than referring to something catholic specifies someone’s state of mind which then might be considered catholic. That state of mind is not amenable toepiscopal accreditation, however, neither is any other property a person inherits from his or her state of mind.

Summarizing these considerations I conclude that the question “when can an X be called Islamic” is quite difficult to answer but this difficulty is not specific for Islam, but rather independent from Islam. Further for a specific theme or these T the question “can T be called Islamic” can be analyzed in sociological terms by making use of the layered stratification of its extension. Application of these matters is not at all obvious, however. The question “is the Qur’an an Islamic text” indicates some of the complications involved. The answer to this question may be negative if one thinks of Qur’an primarily in the time of its writing but it may be positive when it is analyzed in terms of its much later reception. So it appears that the latter question is insufficiently specific to allow for a definite answer.

3.4.2 An instrumental view on the label Islamic

The simplest way to appreciate Real Islamic Logic and Islamic Finance is to assume that logic and finance get colored in religious terms because of the intended application. An instrument used for Jihad may be labeled an Islamic instrument, even if it might be used alternatively for the opposite purpose just as well.

This convention being somewhat unsatisfactory I suggest that an instrument might be labeled Islamic (mainstream Islamic) if the following three (four) criteria are met:

•it is used for Jihad, using a very liberal and preferably non-violent interpretation of that term, and, • it is specific (or has been designed specifically) for that particular use, and, • if the previous observations are confirmed by an uncontested group of leading figures in a stage 5 (or higher) community.

• (If the confirmation is provided by a stage 6 (or 7) community it is a mainstream Islamic instrument.)

Given this convention about using Islamic as a label, some further remarks can be made considering the plausibility of religious labeling in various circumstances, now rendered specifically for Islam:

• A recent copy of the Qur’an is a (mainstream) Islamic book (instrument for distributing information, whereas its content has been transformed from non-Islamic to Islamic around the year 720.

• At second inspection the decisive argument that horse H above can’t be labeled Roman catholic lies in the fact that H is in no way specific for the catholic faith, although the way he is used may be dedicated towards strengthening that particular religion. This same argument generalizes to all animals.

• A person is Islamic if he or she is a member of Islam. This is a matter of degree in accordance with the stratification.

• No animal and no natural location can be Islamic. Except for persons only artifacts (including their abstract designs) can plausibly be labeled Islamic.

• Islamic Finance is a plausible term because the particular form of finance is supposed to satisfy the four criteria mentioned above. In fact it may be labeled a mainstream Islamic activity.

• If the design of Real Islamic Finance is sufficiently specific and its intended application is sufficiently compatible with some form of Jihad that will validate the use of the phrase given the mentioned criteria.

•the introduction of RIL in this paper does not qualify as an Islamic activity.

4 Comparing Real Islamic Logic and Islamic Finance

Before working out a specific proposal for Real Islamic Logic in some detail, that notion which is transpiring in an abstract or distant formalready, will be compared to Islamic Finance which has been used since around the year 1930 onwards. This comparison is supposed to be helpful for developing an understanding of what RIL can be given a perspective on Islamic Finance.

After that comparison the companion notions Crescent-star Finance and Crescent-star Logic will be briefly compared.

4.1 Comparing IF and RIL in some detail

It has been argued that whether or not the label Roman catholic can be assigned to some concept is a difficult matter and that difficulty is similar for the adjective Islamic.

Nevertheless some convention has been formulated and that convention underlies the understanding of the adjective Islamic in the sequel of this paper. I will now make an attempt to highlight in detail some important merits and demerits of the phrase Islamic Finance while contrasting it with Real Islamic Logic.

1. As I have noticed already above Islamic Finance seems not to be used in existing literature with the historic bias which is dominantly assumed for Islamic Logic.

2. I briefly consider Islamic Astronomy. That has a historic connotation by default.

One might seek for a modern version of it “Modern Islamic Astronomy” or even aJihadic form“ Real Islamic Astronomy” (or a movement with similar objectives).

None of these exist because Modern Islamic Astronomy is simply Astronomy.

3. There is no contemporary Islamic Astronomy for the simple reason that conventional astronomy is entirely acceptable from an Islamic perspective. Real Islamic Logic may be considered meaningless in the same way as contemporary Islamic Astronomy is. Likewise some hold Islamic Finance to be a self-contradictory notion. However, these arguments are flawed because although Islam suggests no alternative ways for pursuing astronomy, Islamic Finance definitely involves a rather specific set of financial conventions and the logic for Islamic Finance may be designed quite specifically as a customized toolbox for applications in an Islamic context. A similar argument can be put forward concerning RIL.

4. The logic involved in Real Islamic Logic can be pursued both in a philosophical style and in a more formalist style. At least for philosophical logic the potential to work in anIslamization oriented mode cannot be ruled out as easily as for instance for physics and mathematics.

5. Islamic Finance is a successful intellectual construction that could have originated outside Islam in theory (not what actually happened, it was a mainstream Islamic development). Pursuing Islamic Finance is by definition a matter formuslims only.

6. A significant result of Islamic Finance is the appearance of Arabic terms and concepts in the financial world. A similar development is not to be expected from the pursuit ofReal Islamic Logic.23 About this phenomenon the following can be said:

• The appearance of Arabic jargon in the financial world cannot simply be understood as a consequence ofIslamization , in the same way as the appearance of English in many areas of activity is not a symptom of Christianization. It merely indicates the importance of Arab speaking authors and financial workers in the pursuit of Islamic Finance.24

• Islam has Arabic language as a major carrier of its cultural sources in very much the same way (though significantly more pronounced) as Christianity has (medieval) Latin as a source. I am assuming that conceptually Islam can and must be separated from Arabic.25

• Not only language and religion must be separated but to some extent history and language need separation as well. For instanceShari’ah may be replaced by “Islamic Legal Process” and that replacement immediately removes potential misunderstandings. For instance one may think that extremely harsh punishments are characteristic forShari’ah ignoring the fact that the local history of some well-known traditions of the Islamic Legal Process have developed in nomadic societies where imprisonment was not considered a practical option and punishment of an instantaneous form was more easily applicable. In different conditions, however, the Islamic Legal Process leads to different ways of dealing with undesirable behavior.

• It is quite difficult to translate classical Arabic terms into English. For instancegharrar (accepting an excessive downside risk) is forbidden in Islamic Finance but explanations of this limitation invariably involve digressions into the meaning of the termgharrar . The concept of Islamic Finance should not be allowed the degree of freedom to proclaim thatgharrar is forbidden whatever it means so to say, thus leaving those who don’t master Arabic uninformed about which behavioral limitation is imposed by means of this proclamation.26

7. Currently Real Islamic Logic may be considered to be about as plausible or implausible as Islamic Economics with the difference that the phrase Islamic Economics is widely used. In spite of being often mentioned Islamic Economics has not really come off the ground except for its specialized financial branch.

8. Islamic Finance acquires significant visibility and profile from a single assumption namely the prohibition of interests. Opinions about the foundations of this prohibition vary from a fully religious grounding (promising no economic advantages compliant with Islamic social objectives) to a fully economic grounding (expecting that this prohibition will contribute significantly to the reduction of phenomena of individual hardship27 and of structural crisis). At a closer inspection Islamic Finance is based on a combination of restrictions amongst which interest prohibition is only the most well-known ingredient. These other restrictions are:

• Avoidance of excessive downside risks.

• Non-reliance on excessive upside chances (gamble).

• Sold items must exist at the time of transaction (but payment may be deferred).

• All parties involved in a sales transaction must have comparable and complete information about what is being sold.

• Parties involved in a financial transaction may not be forced into participation.

9. Real Islamic Logic has no counterpart to the dogma of interest prohibition. That is no single element carries significantly more visibility than other elements. If any counterpart to the above concise specification of Islamic Finance must be found it consists of a cluster of elements for which the following listing may be a candidate:

• Inconsistencies abound, andparaconsistency is the best one may aim for. In particular:

– Revealed sources are a fundamental source of the body universally quantified assertions from which reasoning must take place.

– The totality of revealed sources is not claimed to be consistent. (Many inconsistent subsets may exist.) Informed scholars must resolve contradictions when needed.

– Original eye-witness accounts produce evidence, and so do indirect testimonies.

These may have higher priority than the original source facts these accounts are commenting upon. This also holds if the source facts are understood in a metaphoric fashion.Proximity in time to the causes of creation of the original sources (for instance measured by means of counting number of intermediate witnesses) increases confidence.

– Science (including logic and mathematics) may produce valid assertions which may be inconsistent with revealed sources. Scientific fact wins out against revealed fact, moving the latter into a metaphoric status, which is then in need of explanation by interpreting scholars.

– A improved level of knowledge of science may lead to modified assertions to which a higher degree of confidence is assigned.Ordinary resolution of inconsistencies amongst scientific results.

• Distributed and autonomous humanjudgement performed by groups of informedscholars plays and will play a major role in legal decision making which may overrule at any time all formalized deduction from acquired database of accepted legal assertions. As a consequence:

– Islamic legal reasoning cannot become outdated, it is essentially a contemporary phenomenon, and, – the Islamic Legal Process proceeds concurrently at different locations and different courts may judge quite differently about similar cases at the same time,28 and, – logic is supposed to be supportive of this mechanism and must not in any way be construed as an “objective” replacement of conscious group decision making by informed scholars.

• Resolution of contradictions makes use of geographically based priorities, with local Islamic courts having more impact than distant ones,29 recent courtjudgements have more relevance than older ones of the same court.30

• Altogether Real Islamic Logic deals with (at least) eight priority mechanisms at the same time:

– priority of science over revelation, – priority of improved science over previous scientific findings, – priority of confirmed interpretation (if sources are understood metaphorically) over revelation, – priority of direct witness reports over indirect ones, – priority of propositions put forward by highly regarded scholars over propositions produced by less highly regarded ones, – priority of propositions put forward by directly involved (concerning the issue at hand) individual scholars overjudgements made by individual scholars from a more distant position, – priority of recent courtjudgements over olderjudgements of the same court, – priority of nearby (physically or community wise) courtjudgements over more distant ones.

As it stands human decision making is essential to balance the relative weights that must be assigned to these different priorities.31

The simultaneous presence of a number of priority mechanisms renders Real Islamic Logic astonishingly complex but it constitutes no reason not to analyze its working in detail, on the contrary, it suggest that much work can be done.

4.2 Comparing Crescent-star Finance and Crescent-star Logic

Crescent-star Logic stands for Real Islamic Finance stripped from its political and religious objectives. Similarly Crescent-star Finance is Islamic Finance stripped from its religious, political and ideological objectives. Both themes can be contemplated and advanced by non-muslims . There is a difference, however, because for a non-muslim Islamic Finance represents a reasonable comprehensible deviation from conventional finance and the effect of adherence to that deviation can be investigated in an impartial way both in theory by way of making use of thought experiments and in practice by means of observation of real or of artificial (that is experimental) economic processes.

Work on Crescent-star Finance may, at least in principle, reveal weak points concerning Islamic Finance that need to be taken into account bymuslims pursuing Islamic Finance in its full meaning. It may also lead to the discovery of new financial products which Islamic scholars are likely to consider morally adequate (halal ).

At this early stage Crescent-star Logic is a hypothetical matter altogether because the inclusion and exclusion of formal techniques as well as philosophical methods for Real Islamic Logic needs to be worked out from an application perspective. Nevertheless a stage can be imagined where Crescent-star Logic can be abstracted from real Islamic Logic in way comparable to the way logic programming has been obtained from programming in PROLOG.