Beyond the Post-Modern Mind

Abstract

What can an accomplished Western theologian and philosopher offer
to modern Islamic thought‘! Is there a need for the contemporary Muslim
intelligentsia to learn from outside sources? And, if "a conscious and intellectual
defence must be made of the Islamic tradition,” does it mean that Muslims
have to live in a state of mental inertia vis-i-vis the impressive Western tradition
in philosophy, theology, and other humanistic and social sciences? Finally,
what are the intellectual dangers of borrowing from a Western heritage which
is diffuse in nature, and which is not free from ideology most of the time?
Would we be accused of eclecticism and a lack of historicism?
Undoubtedly, a major North African philosopher like Abdallah Laroui 
would dismiss the whole theological project of Islam and Christianity, or
even the whole theoretical enterprise of comparative religion, as irrelevant,
ahistorical, anti-intellectual, nxluctionist, and obstructionist. The same attitude
is shared by not a small number of Arab and Muslim social scientists who
consider metaphysics a fading religious pastime that should have been driven
away from the human mental endeavor long before Kant appeared on the
scene. This orientation is sociologically developed by Bassam Tibi in his
recent book entitled The Crisis of Modem Islam: A Reindustrial Culture
in the Scientific-Technological Age, where he argues that the only viable
approach to Islam in the modern wrld is the sociological method. Therefore,
his aim is not to study the spiritual, philosophical, and social manifestations
of Islam in today‘s world, but to understand it, “as it is incorporated into
reality as a fait social-that is, a social fact.”
Metaphysics and the Search for a Method
in Religious Studies
Prokssor Huston Smith, who sees the validity of the argument that religion
is a social fact, argues that the religious question is primarily metaphysical.
Thus he offers a “synthetic construct” of religion: metaphysical and social.
Put differently, Smith maintains that, transcendentally speaking, religion is
a priori and universal; whereas socially spealung, religion is subject to diversity
and particularism. It is when we understand his “synthetic argument” that
we begin to unravel his conceptual concerns: Smith is troubled by the modern
philosophical assertion that truth is made and not found ...