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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