EDITORIAL

Abstract

Our first paper, by Abdul Khaliq, discusses the Islamic view of faith and
morality. The author shows how one’s faith in God, from the Qur’anic perspective,
is a commitment, as it implies both a whole metaphysics and an
entire philosophy of life. In our personal lives, we need a healthy metaphysics
for our moral behavior. Similarly, the sciences also need a metaphysical
outlook, for this will provide significant pointers as to the direction in which
scientific progress should advance. Abdul Khaliq further argues for a close
relationship between the physical sciences and metaphysics. He assures us
that this intimacy will not jeopardize the positive sciences’ autonomy and
their freedom of inquiry. His paper ends with the assertions that the cause of
moral degeneration is to be sought in the loss of digious faith and that a
rejuvenation of religious faith can automatically reinstate morality.
The Department of History of Science at the University of Oklahoma,
Norman, OK, organized a conference on “Tradition, Transmission, Transformation:
An Ancient Mechanics in Islamic and Occidental Culture,” held on
6-7 March 1992. It was here that J. L. Berggren made an outstanding
presentation entitled “Islamic Acquisition of the Foreign Sciences: A Cultural
Perspective.“ We are publishing a revised version of this paper here. Berggren
illustrates how cultural factots may have affected the Islamic world’s
reception and acquisition of foreign sciences. The process of Islamizing the
mathematical sciences inherited from the classical Greeks is instructive, for
by studying it we realize that Muslim scientists were tesponding to the needs,
concerns, and criticisms of a civilization profoundly different from that of
classical Greece. Berggren shows how Islamic mathematics was not just good
Greek mathematics done by people who happened to write in Arabic. He also
suggests that it is important for us to understand the terms on which Islamic
culture of that time approached classical Greek culture. In fact, to spell out
these terms of Islamization is even more crucial for us today, as we seek to
facilitate the adoption of modern sciences into an Islamic worldview.
In his keynote address to the International Seminar on Malik Bennabi,
Anwar Ibmhim complained that “it is an indictment of our parochialism that
Bennabi has been neglected because he wrote in French. It is an even greater
indictment that he is neglected because he was an individual thinker and not
the idealogue of a movement. Neither is sufficient teason for original thought
to be marginalized.” We need to correct this situation and make an extra effort
to ensure that Bennabi’s ideas accessible to researchers and also to
encourage more translations, discussions, and writings of this very important ...