The Pope, the Christians and the Muslims
Let the Dialogue Begin (Part 3)
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
CA

Christianity came into contact with Greek rationalism twice. The first time it compromised its Semitic roots. The second time it surrendered the world of man and nature to secular thought, retaining only the spiritual domain for itself.
Islam also came into contact with Greek rationalism twice. The first time it absorbed it. The second time it rejected it in favor of Sufism.
In the next two articles we will outline the interaction of historical Islam with Greek thought and briefly touch upon the Christian-Greek dialectic as well.
As the Arab armies overran large portions of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire (640-672 CE), they came into contact with the culture, customs and beliefs of the conquered people. Egypt and Syria held a legacy of ancient civilizations. Alexandria in Egypt, Izmir in Anatolia and Antioch in Syria were centers of Greek learning.
Initially, the Arabs established military cantonments near the large population centers but left the local people alone as long as they paid the jizya. It was much later, thanks to the benevolent policies and ecumenical efforts of Caliph Omar bin Abdel Aziz (d 719), that conversion to Islam picked up momentum. The new arrivals brought with them their old cultures and intellectual pursuits. As former Christians they had already encountered the challenge of Greek rationalism and the debates and schisms this interaction had generated. Now, as Muslims, they faced the same challenge, this time to their new faith. Debates were common and the Muslims felt the need to justify their beliefs in the framework of Greek rationalism.
The term Greek thought is applied loosely to the intellectual methods and processes developed by the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC. This period is referred to as the classical Greek period. Sometimes the term Hellenistic period is also used. The geographical area that the Greek civilization embraced includes the modern nations of Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Egypt and Libya. Under Alexander the Greek, it spread to Persia, Central Asia and Western India (modern Pakistan).
Emphasizing the nobility of man, the Greeks placed reason as the prime interlocutor of man’s relationship to the cosmos. They inherited the wisdom of the Egyptian and Syriac peoples and used it to systematize and perfect the rational techniques. In the process they left a lasting legacy of brilliant contributions in philosophy, logic, geometry, mathematics, art, architecture and medicine. Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Euclid, Herodotus and Hippocrates were some of the intellectual giants of the era whose names are familiar to every educated person in the world.
It is noteworthy that the classical Greeks, despite the perfection they achieved in the realm of reason, remained idol worshippers, worshipping Zeus (the father), Apollo (the son) and a pantheon of lesser gods and goddesses. Hellenistic Greeks society was rife with slavery, wife-stealing and homosexuality.
The classical Greek period dissipated itself in internecine warfare after the death of Alexander the Greek (323 BC). The coupe de grace was administered by the Romans who conquered the Eastern Mediterranean lands in the first century BC.
Christianity appeared as a Semitic religion in this Roman-Greek milieu. Facing a hostile reception in the land of its birth, it quickly migrated westward, into the hills of Cyprus and Greece and farther into Rome where it was more welcome but where it was confronted with a well-established rational intellectual milieu. The hilly terrain provided some protection from the pursuing Romans but the persecutions continued well into the fourth century CE until Constantine embraced the faith and proclaimed Christianity to be the state religion. The hostile environment inculcated in early Christianity a disposition away from the social-political and towards the purely spiritual.
Pope Benedict XVI said in his speech on September 12 that Christianity arose as a convergence of Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry. This convergence was achieved with a degree of Hellenization of Christian beliefs. Christianity emerged from this first encounter with Greek thought incorporating in its theology the concepts of Trinity and Resurrection which became the central pillars of its faith, but which to many non-Muslims, suggested a departure from the strict monotheism of the Abrahamic tradition. Greek rationalism thus became the overarching criterion within which Christianity sought its accommodation. Reason became the driver; historical Christianity the follower. The Pope himself summed it up: “Not to act reasonably, not to act with Logos, is contrary to the nature of God”.
As the Pope pointed out in his speech, this hellenization of Christianity and its departure from its primordial Judaic origin has been the subject of Christian reformers through the centuries. A discussion of these reforms will take us far away from our purpose in these articles, which is to discuss the place of reason in faith and to establish a basis for dialogue between Christianity and Islam. It is important to note here that the Pope, in his speech of September 12, appears to have ruled out the prospects of removing Greek elements in Christian beliefs and taking it back to its primordial Semitic purity.
Historical Islam came upon Greek rationalism in the eighth century. The encounter between reason and faith threw the Islamic world into intellectual upheavals. These upheavals resulted in the emergence of the Mu’tazalites and the birth of the fourth school of Sunnah fiqh, namely, Hanbali. It also gave birth to the classical age of Islamic civilization which combined the empirical and the rational. The implications of what happened and how it was resolved continue to reverberate in the Islamic world even today. Before we embark on a discovery of how it happened, it is necessary to understand the basis of Greek philosophy and its utility as a source of knowledge. Without such an understanding the historical encounter of reason with Christianity and Islam will remain incomprehensible.
We will begin with the assumptions and the limitations of reason in our next article. The subject is deep. But we will simplify it as much as we can so that we may build a solid foundation and carry this dialogue further. (To be continued)

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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