Views of Islam: A Short History of Islamic Philosophy (Part-1)
Islam is concerned with Truth. It is not in favour of Philosophy, in so far as that can be regarded as speculation. Truth is not something that can be invented. It must be discovered. This can be done by asking - either asking nature empirically by observation, experiment and interaction, or by insight as a result of pondering, meditation and prayer or through revelation as a result of appropriate attunement and empathy, and asking those who have experience, insight, understanding and revelation. Islam favours Science, but not as an abstraction or impersonal intellectual exercise, but as something integral to living and participation in the World Process. As such it is part of religion.
Three sources of knowledge are recognized called Ilm-ul-Yaqin (102:5), Ayn-ul-Yaqin (102:7) and Haqq-ul-Yaqin (69:51) which may be regarded as roughly corresponding to empirical (experiential), rational (verbal) and inspirational (insight) knowledge. Whereas thinking is an activity which depends on motives and requires human beings to participate in the world process, observation and inspiration (or revelation) require the passivity and receptivity of consciousness. This makes them mutually exclusive though the process of living requires both. Life is an interaction with and adjustment to Reality (ultimately Allah) and this implies receiving an input, process it, and producing an output, action. These three processes are inter-dependent. Many, if not most, people suppose that consciousness is the same as thinking. But self-observation shows that we think without being conscious and that consciousness stops when thinking begins and vice versa. Thinking leads to fantasies unless constrained by the data of experience. However, the data provided by the senses, are by themselves useless. In order to live intelligent, conscious beings require facts, meanings and values. Facts arise from observation; values inform conscious actions; and meanings arise from the combination of facts and values and mediate between them. Facts have to be given meaning by interpretation. That is, they have to be related with other facts and with the observer himself. These relationships can have several dimensions - they can be described as associations in space, time, quality, quantity, causality and so on.
A human being is a Unity X, but he may be regarded as having three interacting aspects:- the Spiritual S (consciousness, conscience and will), the Mental M (thought, feeling and voluntary action) and the Physical P (having faculties for sensation, instinct, motor reaction). People may differ according to the relative strength of these aspects and so will their thoughts, institutions and cultural systems. These will also change with time and a person or community may evolve or degenerate. That is, a movement can take place along the series:-
X, SMP, SPM, MASP, MPS, PSM, PMS, (where the left position denotes dominance, the middle denotes mediation and the right position denotes passivity.)
It is not difficult to see that their subdivisions correspond to each other and also to the other distinctions made above. When the emphasis is on action, it is concerned with the physical aspect of man. The main concern then is with discipline, and thinking is mainly formal and legalistic. When the emphasis is on the mind, then we have rational thinking which is concerned with relationships between concepts usually in a linear manner. Inspirations (insight, intuition, or revelation) are concerned with the spiritual "being" of a person. It consists of the data falling into self-consistent systems such that each has multiple connections with others, and form a self-consistent whole. The whole, owing to the pattern is always more than the sum of the parts. The parts are seen as having a function with respect to the whole and arise because of this. The data must also harmonize with the information or truth inherent in the human organism itself. This is because the organism is made of the materials, energy, forces and laws operating in the Universe (as created by Allah) and has arisen by interaction and adjustment to it. Inspiration depends on the degree of consciousness and requires the suspension of thought. In general values refer to the whole, facts to the parts and meaning to the relationship between parts. Though the three terms are inter-dependent, Values can be regarded as prior to Facts. This is so, not only because the Universe has a beginning and the impulse that produced it must be regarded as an Intention, there being nothing outside the original Self-existing Reality, Allah. But also because we human beings, containing a spark of that Reality, create facts by our actions and inventions. We are part of the creative process.
There is a difference between the reality, the experience of it and the verbal description of the experience. Socrates, who may be regarded as the founder of Philosophy (defined as "Love of Truth"), appears to have used it in the analysis of concepts and their meanings. As such it could be regarded as a useful, something that lies between science and religion where one deals with facts and the other with values. Meaning can be thought of as arising by their combination, necessary for interpretation and understanding of the data of experience. But later thinkers appear to have mistaken words for reality and missed out experience altogether. Philosophy, then, became mere sophistry or invention. Philosophy will be understood here as something lying between Science and religion. It is concerned not so much with gathering facts, as science is, but with interpreting them, not with information but with understanding it, whereas religion is concerned with the application of knowledge to the process of living. In fact, these three are not completely separate things. Science has a Philosophical aspect and Philosophy does need scientific information and does sometimes affect the Way of Life. Religion is concerned with adjustment to Reality and this also requires an understanding of the nature of Reality, a doctrine that provides the Philosophical justification for it. This is usually confused with Theology. But Theology, from the Islamic point of view, should be a science that deals with ultimate Truths. The facts are provided in the main but not exclusively through Revelation. But an examination of the History of Islamic thought shows that a great amount of speculation from Greek Philosophy has entered into it. This, in its turn, latter affected a great amount of Western Theology and Philosophy.
Islamic thought should be regarded as beginning with the Prophet Muhammad (AD. 570 - 632) during the period beginning with his first religious experience when he was 40 years old (AD. 610) and ending with the time his mission proper began (AD. 613). This was a period of preparation when the fundamental ideas of Islam were laid down. These original ideas were so comprehensive and compact that they were inspirations accessible only to a heightened state of consciousness. All the other Islamic ideas flow from these and can be regarded as the gradual elaboration, extraction, explanations, expositions or actualization of the contents of the fundamental ideas.
Stage 1.
While the Prophet Muhammad was alive the Muslim community was guided exclusively by him - that is, by the Quran and Hadith. The ideas, institutions and laws were not explicitly systematized but given in small pieces as appropriate to the circumstances that arose. However, there is an implicit self-consistency among them since they all derive from the same basic origin:- That Allah, the Absolute One, is the ultimate Creator, Lord and Guide of the Universe; that He manifests His Will to man through the Prophet; and that man must Surrender to Him in loyalty and obedience, work on His behalf and with the powers given by Him; and that he will ultimately be judged and rewarded according to his works. He suffers because he has fallen far short of his correct function and needs forgiveness and healing from Allah, who is Merciful and Bountiful. Thus the perfection of man refers to his potentialities not hi actuality. Religion has been provided to lead him to this perfection. But man's imperfection causes religion to deteriorate. It must, therefore, be regenerated from time through more highly developed individuals. These ideas were simple and self-consistent enough for all to understand and required no great elaboration.
Stage 2.
After the Prophet Muhammad's death the leadership passed in turn to the Four Righteous Caliphs, Abu Bakr, Omar, Osman and Ali (AD. 632 - 661). During this time the Doctrines, institutions and Law were progressively systematized and explained. But they remained pure without introduction of extraneous material. Though a distinction could be made between the mystical, the intellectual (theological) and the institutional (Law) elements, and different Muslims placed their emphasis on each according to their nature and qualities, they still formed a unified system. Islamic thinking was confined to Theology and Law. The practical sciences were separate but subordinate according to the words of the Prophet, "If I tell you something about your religion then accept it, but if I tell you something about anything else then I am but a man." The Quran itself provided the three ingredients corresponding to the three faculties of man, namely the thoughts, the instruction for action, and also the motivational force of feeling and devotion.
Cooperation, mutual consultation and consensus was also required in the running of Islamic affairs. Thus a distinction was made between revealed truth, reason with consensus, and experience. But all human beings were Vicegerents having within them the spirit and faculties given by Allah. The Prophet also said that if the community followed the Quran and his Sunna (Traditions of the Prophet) then they would always be rightly guided. Reason meant, not invention, but measuring or analogy so that the data of experience would be analyzed, compared, related and synthesized. Reason could and was also applied to the interpretation of the revelations of Allah. It was, therefore, thought that when human reason is properly cultivated and applied to these subjects and subjective desires and fantasies kept in check, then there could be no contradiction between these sciences, social consensus and the revelations of Allah. Though this idea persists until this day, most Muslims appear to have forgotten the qualifications under which this would be true.
The Muslim community and Empire grew rapidly, and the original Muslims came into contact with many different peoples, religions, cultures and ideas and were forced into dialogues with them. The process of thinking itself required that the various aspects of experience should be unified. Political conflicts often made strategy and expediency more important than truth, and the practical considerations of surviving and making a living in difficult circumstances distracted people from the spiritual life. This was particularly true when the increasing size of the population through conversions diluted the guidance and influence of a relatively decreasing number of men of high spiritual excellence. The development of the doctrine and the increasing variety to which religious principles needed to be applied made, what was originally simple, increasingly more elaborate. Thus complexity as well as unfavourable conditions increased, but the ability to deal with them diminished.
Stage 3.
When Ali (AD. 600 - 661), the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law, became the fourth Caliph, he was opposed and eventually murdered by Muawaiyah who founded the Umayyad Dynasty, thereby destroying Theocratic Democracy and replacing it with a secular dynastic power. This episode should be regarded as the end of pure conscious Islam, though it continued to have ever diluting, mechanical social effects until this day at least at the public, political or exoteric level. Pure Islam could be said to have gone underground in that it survives among some individuals or groups in a less obvious or esoteric way.
A separation occurred between three groups - the Secular Powers (including commercial, political and cultural authorities), the Intelligentsia and the Common people who followed their various crafts. The Intelligentsia divided into (a) the Mystics, (b) the Philosophers, and © the set of religious authorities who systematized various aspects of Religion, and defined Institutional or Orthodox Religion. This includes the Theologians and the Lawmakers. These may be regarded as corresponding to the human faculties for thought and action, and a measure of rigidity was introduced into both. The third faculty, feeling and emotion, on which motives are based and concern such things as love, hope and faith, appear, unfortunately, to have been mostly ignored though they are an integral part of the Quranic teachings. It was, however, incorporated in the works of Artists such as storytellers, poets, singers and musicians, painters and in the general culture. It came to be heavily adulterated by extraneous un-islamic elements mainly because the religious authority failed to give it importance or attention. It is this that is responsible for the deterioration of Muslims. Satan found a loophole through which he could enter unobstructed if not unnoticed.
The Shiah sect in Islam regarded Ali as the only legitimate successor (Imam) to the Prophet both as leader and teacher, and remained loyal to him and his descendants. The Khawarij (Succeeders) broke away because they thought Ali had submitted to human institutions rather than the laws of Allah by recognizing the three former Caliphs. In short, they regarded him as a traitor. This sect continued to attack and harass the Umayyad government. The reasoning which lay behind the behaviour of this extremely puritanical and perhaps, fanatical, sect was as follows:- True faith is shown by action. Where action is lacking both in doing good and fighting against evil, there no faith exists. The Muslim community, those who have surrendered and are faithful to Allah, must be led by the most qualified, those who have the most knowledge, righteousness and ability in the religious sense, not those who obtain power through convention or by force. The Ummayads were not, therefore, Muslims but infidels, evil doers and oppressors who had to be fought against by all true Muslims. This was part of the universal struggle against Satan.
Comment:- Here we have a case of the tendency of the human mind to cause division into two extreme positions, the one leading by reaction to the other. The Shiah attachment to Ali, reflecting Christian attachment to Jesus, seems to be justified on insecure speculative grounds. The Prophet had named no successor and Ali himself had accepted the previous Caliphs. Various verses in the Quran are quoted to support their position, but none explicitly name Ali and his descendants. One would presume that such an important matter would be made absolutely clear. For example, Quran 4:59 speaks of obedience to Allah, the Messenger and "those in authority amongst you". The verse has a general meaning that ought not to be interpreted narrowly. Shiah understand it as referring to Ali and the descendants of the Prophet through his daughter Fatima, wife of Ali, the Ahl-ul-Bayt. There is no justification for this, especially as descent was reckoned through the male and not the female line e.g. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Indeed, the Quran itself states that "Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is the Messenger of Allah and the Last of the prophets; and Allah is Aware of all things." (33:40). It also tells us that it is not physical descent from Abraham but spiritual descent (kinship of righteousness) which is important (2:124, 3:68). The Quran requires Muslims to cling to the cable of Allah and not to divide into sects (3:103-105, 6:160 etc.). The Light verses (24:35-37) also indicate that it that Islam requires that Muslims be led by the righteous, the spiritual descendants of the Prophet. Mistaking this for a right by physical descent is a misunderstanding or corruption.
Nor do the teachings of the Quran and the history of Islam under the Prophet show the kind of extreme intolerance shown by the Khawarij. Certainly, the Muslim is required to oppose evil, but he is also required to uphold brotherhood and unity. Faith must show itself in action, but it is correct faith that justifies the action. It is not the action that justifies faith. The idea that the leadership and authority in a community should rest in the spiritually most advanced person does conform to the teachings of the Quran and Hadith, But it is not a hereditary right. As consultation and consensus is always required, such a leader is to be sought and accepted by the people for their own good, not imposed on them. Imposition means tyranny, whereas the leader is to work for the welfare and development of the community and educate them. Nowadays the so-called Terrorists may claim some justification from the Khawarij tradition, though it is doubtful that the Khawarij encouraged indiscriminate and ineffective targets. As invariably happens throughout history and in the Cosmos in general, this sect gave rise to its own opposite.
The Umayyads were able to rule because of another sect, the Murjiya (Postponers) who defined a Muslim by faith not deed. The evil deed, including that of the leader or ruler, is not judged here and now, but would be judged by God alone in the Hereafter.
Comment:- Whereas this allowed greater tolerance and social order to be maintained, it also allowed the non-believing, hypocritical or misguided people to get away with their misdeeds with impunity, and corrupt the whole nation. This teaching became a refuge for cowards, hypocrites, doubters, the apathetic and lazy, and those with a weak faith and moral fiber. Unfortunately one extreme always leads to another and the Balance is lost. Things always swing, like a pendulum between one extreme and the other, until they reach a midpoint. It seems to be a Law of nature that eventually, a third middle movement should also arises.
Stage 4.
The Mutazilah (Those Who Stand Apart, 8th - 10th century) took a position between these two sects. The believer who sins lies midway between the faithful and infidel. Hasan al-Basri called him a hypocrite, but his disciple, Wasil ibn-Ata (699 - 749) preferred to call him Fasiq (Transgressor). Sins could not be removed except by conscious confession of infidelity. Other contributers to this Philosophy were Ibn al-Mutamir (?-825), Abu al-Hudhayl al-Allaf (?-841), an-Nazzam (?-846), They were condemned as heretics and free thinkers by another group, the Hambalis (Traditionalists), because they elevated reason to the highest status as a source of knowledge. They are known for four main dogmas:-
(1) Tawhid, the Absolute Unity and immateriality of Allah. He was completely distinct from His creations and could not, therefore, be known by the senses in this world or the next, but His creations could be known through Aql (Reason) given to man by Him. Evil was created by man. It cannot exist in Allah, since Allah is Unity, and good and evil form a duality. His attributes were divided into (a) the Eternal or Unchanging such as knowledge, power, life which were part of Him, and (b) those of Action such as willing, hearing, seeing and speech which were not Eternal but temporal. The Quran, being the speech of God, was not, therefore, Eternal but created. Ideas, time, space and matter were also creations, not pre-existing.
(2) The Justice and Laws of Allah conforms to reason as opposed to being the Will of Allah to which man must conform without question - they can be known through reason. Repentance is, therefore, a matter of reasoning. Prophets are merely sent because of Allah's goodness to remind man of what he already knows through inherent reason.
(3) Man had been given free will, otherwise he could not be held responsible for his action and could not be judged, nor could he exercise reason. Allah's Justice, reward and punishment, Paradise and Hell, were, therefore, logically necessary consequences of man's own actions, not a punishment by Allah, who wanted only the best for man. However, once free will has been created the range of human activity becomes greater than the activity of God since he can now obey or disobey, do good and evil or between them in many combinations. It is the obligation of every Muslim in private or public, ruler or ruled, to promote and defend faith and the good, and to oppose evil. Though armed struggles are not excluded, this doctrine led to various kinds of legal, political, economic and social opposition, debates, propaganda, teaching, preaching and missionary work.
(4) In order to explain away some of the logical difficulties that the above doctrines produced they also developed an atomic theory, which applied not only to matter but also space, time, energy, movement, rest and accident. Each atom lasted only an atom of time. The world was, therefore, maintained by Allah by continuous recreation. Causality and order arise directly from Him. However, this could not apply to man's power to choose between good and evil. Later thinkers, however, also accepted that human free will was being continually recreated by Allah, otherwise the unity of the Universe and the omnipotence of Allah could not be maintained.
This emphasis on reason allowed the Mutazilahs to contribute to the development of ethics, law, politics, administration, commentaries on the Quran and Hadith, and to many sciences. They consisted of a class of independent intellectuals who had a wide interest in all kinds of doctrines and sects, and were always ready to dispute and voice unorthodox opinions. They were not, therefore, easily understood by the masses and did not constitute a popular movement. Owing to their independence they also broke up into several sub-groups some of them professing extreme ideas. Ibn ar-Rawandi even went so far as to state, as some modern philosophers do, that prophecy, revelation and divine laws were superfluous and harmful, and that reason alone should reign.
The Mutazilahs did not oppose dynasties as such but did judge each ruler on his merits. They allied themselves with sections that opposed the Umayyads and were instrumental in overthrowing them. This dynasty was replaced with the Abassid Caliphs among whom was al-Mamun who espoused their doctrines and tried to force it on the rest of the population. This caused great agitation and unrest. As the distinction between the two kinds of Attributes presented logical difficulties, Ibn Kullab modified the Mutazilah doctrine by saying that the Attributes of Allah are one with Allah if seen in relation to Allah, but separate if seen in relation to man. For instance, the Quran is the speech of God but when it is read or recited by a person it is clearly not. Allah is Compassionate in His Eternal Nature, but an act of compassion is something which takes place in time and is a creation, though it derives from the former. But he was opposed both by the Mutazilahs and the Hambalis (Traditionalists) who accepted everything in the Quran as true, but avoided all obscurities, difficulties and anthropomorphism by admitting that ordinary human beings could not understand everything about Allah - there were things beyond reason. And also by the Zahiris (Literalists) who rejected all theology as speculation, which they condemned because religious doctrines are a matter of revelation, and these they took literally.
The Murijiahs (Postponers) managed to convert a later Caliph, Harun al-Rashid to support the community (Umma) against the Mutazilahs, and under the next Caliph, al-Mutawakkil, the general population rose up to persecute them and burnt all their books. Under persecution the Mutazilahs split up into several groups, including Zaydis and Imamis. The Zaydis included such qualities as Willing, Friendship, Enmity, Pleasure and Wrath among the Essential and Eternal Attributes of Allah. The Imamis believed that Allah was literally Light (though this was more than visible light), and that, therefore, He has a place, time, movement and change, that He responds to man's actions, that human actions cannot be predetermined if he is to be judged, but also that they cannot be pre-known by Allah. Therefore, they denied that Knowing, Willing etc. are Essential or Eternal Attributes of Allah. He does not know something before He wills it. They also believed in the efficacy of the intercession of the Prophet and Saints, thereby rejecting the idea that punishment and reward were natural consequences of actions.
Comment:- The main criticism that can be made of these system is that reason is not the only human faculty. They ignored (a) observation (b) inspiration as well as the requirement of © exchange of ideas, consultation and consensus. What is more, reason can only function correctly if it was purified so that prejudice, fantasy, self-interest etc. did not introduce errors into it. It yields correct results if all relevant data is admitted without a selective process. It could not be guaranteed that the advocate of the teaching had considered all the facts or, indeed, that he knew them or could even perceive them. The senses and the conceptual powers are limited. Reason only applies to the relationship between things. The ability to see the pattern that multiple things make is accessible only to consciousness, not to reason, which works with words, and not even to the senses which provide separate bits of data. The doctrine of Unity (Tawhid) is correct. But if Allah is unknowable, how do we know that He exists. Obviously, because He reveals Himself. Indeed, the Universe itself must be regarded as a self-revelation of Allah. Reason and experience must be regarded as lower forms of revelation. Another difficulty is that if Allah is completely separate from creation why would He be concerned about His creatures and how could He influence events in the Universe and human societies. The Quran tells us that His spirit is in man.
The insistence on reason led them into the un-islamic belief in free will. There is no justification for this in the Quran and the Prophet denied it. It is true, of course, that if human thought and action were determined by external causes then it cannot be said that they can find the truth or be responsible and be judged. But if man has free will then Allah must be limited and the individual can do anything without causes or reasons. This is neither rational nor in conformity with facts. The controversy about free will is really like that between whether light is corpuscular in nature or wavelike. It is not amenable to arguments based on an either/or logic. When a ball is in a container is it free or not? It can certainly move in a great many different ways but each requires appropriate impulses. There are also many levels of causes. When you lift your arm are there physical, physiological, social, or psychological causes for this? One could act according to lower or higher cause. Some systems are more versatile than others, and are, therefore, freer. The Quran tells us that all power comes from Allah. Human beings have an inherent urge for happiness, adjustment to Reality, self-perfection, and return to Unity, but there are forces that obstruct this. It is necessary to espouse those causal forces that will remove these obstructions.
Human beings have three faculties - for cognition, motivation and action, and these interact. The Mutazilah Philosophy ignores two of them. By ignoring faith, which refers to motives, this doctrine sterilizes religion - reason is a mental activity and is itself driven by motives, and it produces little physical action. Theology became merely an intellectual exercise. Islam requires thought but also faith and action.
Stage 5.
The Shiah believe in hereditary Imamhood, which consists both of spiritual and secular leadership. This appears to be a modification of the Christian belief in Apostolic Succession and kingship, though the Imam is to be a spiritually pure and able person rather than the eldest son. They recognize 12 Imams - Ali, his sons Hasan and Husayn, Ali Zayn al-Abidin, Muhammad al-Baqir, Jafar as-Sadiq, Musa al_Qasim, Ali al-Rada, Muhammad al-Jawad, Ali al-Hadi, Hasan al-Askari, Muhammad al-Mahdi, The last Imam disappeared in 878 AD. and is believed by them to be alive ready to return on the Day of Resurrection and Judgment. The Sunnis divided the religious from the secular, and the word Imam was retained for the former though not in the hereditary sense, while the word Caliph (from Khalifa, Successor or Vicegerent) was used for the later. This division implies that he need not be spiritually upright, and this idea is also a foreign introduction that must be rejected. After the death of Jafar, the 6th Imam recognized by the Shiahs, one section recognize his eldest son, Ismail as the 7th Imam and became known as the Sabiyah (Seveners) or Ismailis while those who recognize the youngest son, Musa, became known as the Imamis or Ithna Ashariyah (Twelvers because they believed in the return of the 12th Imam).
The Ismailis incorporated the Neo-platonism of Plotinus into their Theology. This synthesis is found in the books of Abu Yaqub as-Sijistani. Some elements of the Hebrew mystic system, Kabbalah, and Mithraism also appear to be incorporated. They stressed the dual nature of the Quran, exoteric and esoteric, and made a corresponding distinction between the ordinary and the initiated Muslim. This initiation was only accessible by levels through a hierarchy headed by an Imam. Allah is above knowledge, and above both being and non-being, positive and negative. His first creation is Intelligence, not as an emanation but by His Word (Command or Will). Intelligence knows its creator, contemplates its own being and this causes the emanation of its partner, Universal Soul - they are Adam and Eve. Soul desires Intelligence and receives Forms from it. This causes the emanation of all the individual souls, heaven and earth, matter and all things in nature. Matter and evil are defined as that which is distant or ignorant of Intelligence, and good as that which is close and aware of Intelligence. Intelligence instructs Soul, and gives it the desire to order its life and surroundings in such a way as to escape matter and return to its source, the Universal Soul and to Intelligence. This can only be accomplished by the guidance of Intelligence in human History. Intelligence does this by emanating the Prophets and Imams. The history of the Universe and of the world is seen as ascending cycles, each Great cycle being marked by the advent of 7 Speakers (Messengers of Allah with scriptures), each followed by 7 Silent Speakers (Imams without scriptures), forming 7 Minor Cycles. A Great Cycle contains 7 Major Cycles. The present Major Cycle began with Adam, followed by Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and the 7th, the Qaim or Mahdi, will come on the Day of Resurrection and Judgment. The Ismailis claim that Ismail's son, Muhammad at-Tamm would return at the end of the world as the Mahdi. After this there must be another Great Cycle beginning with another Adam.
Comment:- The Prophet did say that Intelligence was the first creation and that the Quran has inner meanings apart from the outer obvious ones. According to the Quran the Spirit is by the Command of Allah (17:85). The Command or Word of Allah is not a creation. It is Truth, which is an attribute of Allah (6:74, 38:85, 31:30). The Spirit derives from the Word is not a creation either (15:29). The Universal Soul cannot then refer to Spirit, but to the Soul mentioned in the verse:- "O mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord, who created you from one soul, and created therefrom its mate, and scattered from the twain a multitude of men and women." (Quran 4:1). But this verse tells us that Allah created all the souls from it. Nothing is said about Intelligence contemplating itself or emanation of souls. The Quran also tells us:- "And of all things have We created pairs, that you may reflect." (51:49). Intelligence and Universal Soul may, therefore, be regarded as the first pair. They may, perhaps, be regarded as deriving from the pair Word and Spirit - the Word being Truth or order creating vibrations and Spirit being the receptacle or Ground State of existence which when organized by the former forms, in stages, all other things. The Ismaeli doctrine seems to contradict the Quranic teaching that Heaven and Earth were created by Allah with Truth (15:85, 16:3, 29:44).
The doctrine also denies that Muhammad was the Last of the Prophets, which is the orthodox interpretation of "Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the prophets." (33:40). This verse, however, does not say that there will be no further Messengers and the word "Seal" does not necessarily imply that something is closed for ever, and may also refer to the fact that Muhammad (saw) confirms the message of the Prophets. Muhammad (saw) himself forecast the return of Jesus. The idea that humanity is to be abandoned by Allah after Muhammad (saw) does not seem very reasonable, but the times for direct guidance by Prophets as among the Israelites has passed. In so far as Imams are treated by some Shiah as if they were prophets, this must also be regarded as a relic of something which should have become obsolete. Many Ismaeli, however, appear to have replaced Muhammad with Ali and believe that Ali was Allah. In this they are not much different from Christians, who also believe that a man was God. This, however, is said by others to be a misinterpretation, because he, being an Imam, is an emanation of Intelligence - that is, his imamate is a manifestation of Intelligence which reflects the Light of Allah. They quote the Light Verses, 24:35-37, in support of this idea. These verses have a general meaning and refer to any one or any place where true Spirituality can be found. Their doctrine of cycles is compatible with ideas in the Quran, but is not specified. It was later also adopted by Baha-ullah, the founder of the Bahai religion to justify the idea that there could be Prophets after Muhammad.
The Ismaeli attempts to prove that their doctrines derive from the Quran often seem rather strained and obscure. The claim that this only seems so because the esoteric meaning is not understood by all can be made for any doctrine whatever. However, the Ismaeli doctrine can be taken as a different formulation or point of view of the same truths as taught in the Quran - an attempt at systematization and understanding. But there does not seem to be any good reason for making these changes, especially when notions foreign to the Quran are introduced. It produces inconsistencies, and can be regarded as an adulteration of Islam or it creates a different religion. It is just as much open to misunderstanding as the Quranic formulation.
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