V. On Harmonizing the Athenian Democracy with the Societal Islamic Paradigm (SIP)!!!!!!!

V.1 Preliminary Methodological considerations

The central question we address in these essays, is whether Democracy as exemplified by the practice of Athenians in the 5th and fourth centuries BC, is compatible or is at odds with Islamic Shuracracy?

It is worth recalling at the outset, that we are dealing here with two irreducible antinomic religious systems expressing themselves in two antagonistic societal settings, with well defined quasi-exclusive paradigms;

a) the Local Pagan Societal Paradigm of Classical Athens (LPSPCA) and

b) the Universal Monotheistic Societal Islamic Paradigm (UMSIP),

It goes without saying, based on historical precedents, that fickle harmonization, in the sense of amalgamating part of the Islamic political concepts with some of their Greek’s counterparts, should be rejected beforehand as infertile, since similar simulacra have been tried before at the religious/philosophical levels by the Neo-Platonist school, to no avail, save in generating agnostic chimerical sects with multicoloured creeds and beliefs ad infinitum!

It is worth recalling also that, a large number of the syncretising philosophers and mystics who have endeavoured to harmonize antagonistic religious principles, concepts and philosophical systems, or mystical theosophies1, flourished by the beginning of the Christian era onwards.

The most outstanding figures of this era are no doubt;

a) The Hellenized Jewish philosopher; Philo of Alexandria2 (gr. Φίλων ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς) (20 BC - 50 AD), notorious for his use of allegory to fuse and harmonize Greek Stoic3 philosophy with Jewish exegesis.

And although, as expected, his approach didn’t appeal to his Hellenistic philosophizing contemporaries, who shunned mixing antagonizing concepts and paradigms4, it did find favor however with Saint Paul, a Hellenized Jew himself bound on harmonizing Christianity with Stoic Philosophy.

Philo’s platonic concept of the “Logos”5 as “God's Verb”, rational to the supreme degree, and representing the sum of the powers and the divine energies, and the “ideas6” of all things and his interpretation of the “Divine Logos”; as the “Verb” or “God’s Speech”, which is a sort of a second God!; “Image of God", created by God Himself was echoed literally by John the compiler of the fourth Gospel in his introductory verses, far beyond the intellectual grasps of any hypothetical disciple of Jesus Christ (John; 1; 1-3):

•  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

 

 

• The same was in the beginning with God.

 

 

• All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made

And while on one hand, some of the early Pauline Christians saw in Philo a cryptic Pauline Christian!, the Ebionites, on the other hand, the true followers of the Church of Jerusalem headed by Saint James, who opposed on doctrinal ground Saint Paul, saw in Philo no more than a Hellenist gone astray and in Saint Paul himself no more than an apostate of the LAW.

Needless to say that Pauline Christology is the First instance of biblical-hellenized-cultic-mystery harmonisation gone astray in Monotheisme.

Seen from this perspective, it will not do for Christians, save for the Ebionites, to say that the Old Testament represents the only pre-history of Christianity, since from this early harmonization, Egyptian and Greek histories, as well as Platonic and Stoic philosophies, should just as well, if not better, be entitled to figure in this pre-history of Christianity, without which its origins will be irrevocably blurred. 

The second noteworthy harmoniser between Pagan teaching and Judaism was the Greek;

b) Numenius of Apamea (View of Apamea's ruins, Syria), an avowed Neo-Pythagorean and forerunner of the Neo-Platonists, who flourished during the latter half of the second century AD.

He is notorious for Mixing Pythagorean’s Philosophy with Platonism and for calling Plato an "Atticizing Moses", meaning by this; that Plato was the Hellenic Moses.7

According to Proclus8; Numenius held that there was a kind of trinity of gods, the members of whom he designated as;

• "father," the supreme deity or pure intelligence,

 

 

• "maker," the creator of the world and

 

 

• "that which is made," i.e. the world.

His works were highly esteemed by the Neoplatonists, and Plotinus' student Amelius9, is said to have composed nearly two books of commentaries upon them.

But the most prominent figure in Neo-Platonism was no doubt the Egyptian;

c) Plotinus (Greek: Πλωτῖνος) (ca. AD 205–270) of Alexandria, who elaborated a new version of Platonism by a new re - interpretation of its fundamentals in the light of Aristotle's criticisms and the religious context of his age.

His teaching was collected by his pupil; Porphyrius in the “Enneads”10.

The fourth (IV) to the sixth (VI) Enneads were translated into Arabic in Baghdad towards the mid ninth century, and were falsely assigned to Aristotle. These tractates will be known later as; “The Theology of Aristotle!” or quoted as; the "Sayings of an old wise man", which once translated in Latin in Europe, bore the name; Plotiniana Arabica11.

This pseudo “Theology of Aristotle!”12, is considered one of the most important witnesses of Arabic neo-Platonism, completely at odds with Islam! It will have a great influence on the thoughts of the early philosophizing harmonizers in Islam, not so well impregnated with the Islamic Paradigm, such as; Al-Farabi and Avicenna.

Noteworthy among these early harmonizing attempts before the advent of Islam, the well known case of harmonising the two philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, whether implicitly, as in the case of Plotinus, or explicitly, as in the work of his Syrian pagan pupil; Porphyry (Porphyrius) of Tyre (Greek: Πορφύριος, c. A.D. 233–c. 309), noted for his inflammatory diatribe; “Adversus Christianos” (Against the Christians) in fifteen books, which the Roman Emperor converted of late to Christianity; Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus (c. 280] –337 AD), as well as other emperors either banned or burned.

A detailed case of Plotinus re-interpretation of the original thoughts of Plato is given by a thorough analysis of The Second Ennead, First Tractate, entitled; “ON THE KOSMOS” OR “ON THE HEAVENLY SYSTEM” (Enn. II, 1 (40) by Richard Dufour.

This tractate is no doubt of capital importance, not only because of the subject matter in itself, but more so in relation to the philosophical debate it engages with the accepted philosophical Greek tradition of Plato, Aristotle and Heraclitus13.

Plotinus wants to assert himself in the Enneads as the leading exegete of Platonic doctrines, though this essay shows perhaps more than any other the difficult cohabitation between; independence of mind and fidelity to the texts of the Master!.

Indeed, what is presented in this Tractate as an interpretation of “Timaeus”, becomes a de facto “treason” of the original by Plato!

The end result is a neo – platonic’s interpretation which tries to read in Timaeus a theory which is not there!14.

Plotinus had many pupils who influenced other subsequent figures, all espousing the same syncretism as paradigm. Of these suffice to mention;

a) Iamblichus Chalcidensis (born at Chalcis, modern Quinnesrin in Syria), (c. 245-c. 325), (Greek: ᾽Ιάμβλιχος), best known for his Collection of Pythagorean Doctrines, in ten books, containing extracts from several ancient philosophers of which only the first four books, and fragments of the fifth, survive.

He studied first under Anatolius of Laodicea15, and later went on to study under Porphyry, the pupil of Plotinus.

Iamblichus disagreed with Porphyry over the practice of theurgy16, and he responded to his mentor in his attributed “De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum” (On the Egyptian Mysteries).

On returning to Syria around 304 AD he founded his own school at Apameia (near Antioch), a city famous for its Neoplatonic philosophers, whose influence spread over much of the ancient world just before the advent of Islam17.

One of the modifications introduced by lamblichus to neo-Platonism was his idea that;

The soul is embodied in matter, making matter as divine as the rest of the cosmos.

This constituted a fundamental departure from the ideas of his Neo-platonic predecessors, who maintained that matter was a deficient concept.

After the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate in mid second century of Hijra (mid eight century AD), and their encouraging of translations of ancient works by Jews, Christians and Sabians18, much of the Neo-Platonic legacy ended up in the hand of Muslims, who were ill prepared to deal with its intrinsic contradictions, having at this time no tradition of their own concerning these subject matters!

V.1 The Impossible Task of Harmonizing Islam with Philosophy

No doubt Neo-Platonism represented the last of the great schools of Classical pagan philosophy and in order to survive under hostile Christian dominated empire, a synthesis of Platonism, Aristotlism, Stoicism, and Pythagoreanism, was seen as the best approach for conveying an esoteric interpretation of classical Greek Paganism, incorporating in one shell; philosophy, mysticism, theosophy, and theurgy (higher occultism) in a mixed esoteric discourse for the initiated. 

For three centuries since its inception, Neo-Platonism served as the last bastion of Pagan wisdom and Esoteric philosophy.

The end came just one century before the advent of Islam.

Indeed, the Emperor Justinian 19 closed the school of Athens in 529, and Damascius20, his pupil Simplicius21 the famous Aristotlean commentator, and five other Neoplatonists set out for Persia where they pleaded for an asylum at the court of Khosrau I of Persia, hoping they would be able to teach and continue there under the protection of this King.

They found the conditions unbearable, and when the following year Justinian and Khosrau concluded a peace treaty, it was provided that the philosophers should be allowed to return to Athens.

But   Even after Classical Learning was quenched; a Neo-Platonism current remained, undergoing new metamorphoses depending on historical junctures and circumstances, popping up first under the garb of Christian Mysticism, then under other guise in Islam; Philosophy, Ishraqi and Sufi Esotericism, to appear later under the garb of Judaic Kabbalah. 

Muslims inherited thus of a current of Neo-Platonism as an underground counter culture, as it has always been, when its centers of learning in; Alexandria, Syria and Jundishapur came under Muslim rule, along with pre-Islamic Iranian and Indian philosophy.

It was at the outset, very clear, in the mind of all Muslims who have an understanding of both Monotheism and Pagan Greek philosophy, that any attempt to fuse the two is like trying to mix oil and water!

And while Philosophers, in principle, hold that one must accept the possibility of “Truth” with capita “T” from any source and follow the argument wherever it leads, the fact that philosophers within the same philosophical school and working under the same paradigm don’t agree on the same “truths” in plural and not the singular, void this hollow argument from its meat.

On the other hand, Islam, unlike any other religion upholds that, not only the Koran is inimitable, but that all its plain assertions concerning past, actual and future events, as well as any that has bearing on discoveries, scientific facts, should be all put to the acid test of scientific falsification, proving by this continuous verification of its assertions as the program of Creation continue to unfold by popping up our realities of the day, till its cataclysmic stop, that the Koran has no human origin, but comes from God.

Moreover, the Koran fustigates speculative thinking with no proofs to show for their arguments, which is the principal predilection of philosophers in the first place, while pouring praises on scientists as the following two verses show22;

أَلَمْ تَرَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ أَنْزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَخْرَجْنَا بِهِ ثَمَرَاتٍ مُخْتَلِفًا أَلْوَانُهَا وَمِنَ الْجِبَالِ جُدَدٌ بِيضٌ وَحُمْرٌ مُخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهَا وَغَرَابِيبُ سُودٌ

Seest thou not that Allah sends down rain from the sky? With it We then bring out produce of various colours. And in the mountains are tracts white and red, of various shades of colour, and black intense in hue.

وَمِنَ النَّاسِ وَالدَّوَابِّ وَالأنْعَامِ مُخْتَلِفٌ أَلْوَانُهُ كَذَلِكَ إِنَّمَا يَخْشَى اللَّهَ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ الْعُلَمَاءُ إِنَّ اللَّهَ عَزِيزٌ غَفُورٌ

And so amongst men and crawling creatures and cattle, are they of various colours. Those truly fear Allah, among His Servants, who have knowledge23: for Allah is Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving.

And also24;

قُلْ هَلْ عِنْدَكُمْ مِنْ عِلْمٍ فَتُخْرِجُوهُ لَنَا إِنْ تَتَّبِعُونَ إِلا الظَّنَّ وَإِنْ أَنْتُمْ إِلا تَخْرُصُونَ

Say: "Have ye any (certain) knowledge? If so, produce it before us. Ye follow nothing but conjecture: ye do nothing but lie."

And also25;

وَقَالُوا لَنْ يَدْخُلَ الْجَنَّةَ إِلا مَنْ كَانَ هُودًا أَوْ نَصَارَى تِلْكَ أَمَانِيُّهُمْ قُلْ هَاتُوا بُرْهَانَكُمْ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ صَادِقِينَ

And they say: "None shall enter Paradise unless he be a Jew or a Christian." Those are their (vain) desires. Say: "Produce your proof if ye are truthful."

While concerning speculative minds26;

وَإِذَا قِيلَ إِنَّ وَعْدَ اللَّهِ حَقٌّ وَالسَّاعَةُ لا رَيْبَ فِيهَا قُلْتُمْ مَا نَدْرِي مَا السَّاعَةُ إِنْ نَظُنُّ إِلا ظَنًّا وَمَا نَحْنُ بِمُسْتَيْقِنِينَ

"And when it was said that the promise of Allah was true, and that the Hour- there was no doubt about its (coming), ye used to say, 'We know not what is the hour: we only think it is an idea, and we have no firm assurance. "

Or in this verse addressing the Prophet of Islam27;

وَإِنْ تُطِعْ أَكْثَرَ مَنْ فِي الأرْضِ يُضِلُّوكَ عَنْ سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ إِنْ يَتَّبِعُونَ إِلا الظَّنَّ وَإِنْ هُمْ إِلا يَخْرُصُونَ

Wert thou to follow the common run of those on earth, they will lead thee away from the way of Allah. They follow nothing but conjecture: they do nothing but lie.

So given these two divergent Worldviews, one cannot be simultaneously

a) a speculating philosopher in the Greek pagan tradition and at the same time

b) a true scientific adherent of Islam, asking always for proofs and facts, before believing in things.

This shows that Muslims in general and Philosophers among them in particular, were ways behind the requirements of their Islamic Paradigm and still remain up to our days.

No wonder if all attempts at synthesising Islam and/or harmonisation it with speculative thinking will ultimately fail.

The obvious reason for such failures is that speculative freewheeling thinking is contrary to true scientific enquiry held by the Koran, as sole tool fot proving its assertions and consequently its transcendental nature.

Many of the early debates which were concerned with this impossible task of reconciling Islam with Greek philosophy, didn’t discern at the outset this particularity in Islam, which makes havoc of analogies and parallel either with Judaism through Philo, or with Christianity through Saint Paul!

The Jewish as well as the Christians harmonizers following their leads used normally philosophical arguments to prove that one's preset religious principles are true.

This is a common weak technique found in the writings of all harmonizers, who forget that this fictional artifice could not pass the acid test of scientific falsification, since both the Old as well as the New Testaments, failed to pass it when confronted either with historical, geological or scientific proven facts, on account of tempering with the sacred texts as well as having no extent autographic texts, as the Koran is.

The drastic approach for a hypothetical nominal Muslim philosopher, to apply analytical philosophy to his own religion by asking questions such as:

What is the nature of God? Or how do we know that God exists? Have no meaning in Islam and this is why Islam has no use for “Theology” as a discipline for active enquiry nor does Judaism has it or needs either, being both true monotheistic religions.

While the same questions make sense and has meaning in both;

a) The philosophical discourse of the Greeks in their theologies, since having a pantheon of gods perceived in their own images and speculating about their natures, and also in;

b) Christian’s theology, through Pauline Gnostic mystery cult, with endless speculating about the Nature of Christ

God in Islam being transcendent and unlike any of His creatures, cannot be perceived by humans or apprehended, save through what he says Himself about Himself through his attributes.

And these attributes are taken by Muslims at their face value, with no anthropomorphism lurking behind, knowing pertinently that God is unlike any of His creation, and that language can’t convey more than that..

This point made clear, it evident that harmonizers impregnated with Hellenistic Neo-Platonism as a paradigm and a Worldview, while confessing Islam as religion, are the worst representative of Islam as Is, and constitute in fact no more than a continuation of the neo-platonic sub counter culture pervasive in the area before the advent of Islam.

The proof lies in the fact that whenever the Koran contradicts any saying of their Greek masters, they side, to their own loss, with their ignoramus speculating masters on the issue, not with the Koran!

Needless to say, that this type of reasoning is an awful aberration for a Muslim.

Of these neo-Platonists harmonisers living in the Islamic era we can cite;

Avicenna (Abū Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā (Arabic: ابن سينا) ( c. 980 – 1037), the compiler of “The Book of Healing” (كتاب الشفا) among others, who tried to harmonise both; Plato with his reluctant pupil Aristotle, and Islam with Greek philosophy, though to no avail, since he built his conclusions in both attempts on false premises;

a) Concerning Plato and Aristotle he thought of the “pseudo theology of Aristotle” as belonging to the later, while it was in fact of Plotinus,

b) While his attempt at harmonizing Islam with Greek philosophy shows blatantly that he was more of an incontrovertible neo-Platonist than a Muslim.

V.2 The Impossible Task of Harmonizing Islam with Theosophy

We find also these types of Harmonizers in splinter sects and especially in the plethora of Persians’ Isma'ili propagators and missionaries such as;

a) Hamid al–Din Abu’l–Hasan Ahmad b. ‘Abdallah al–Kirmani (996–1021 CE), the compiler of Rahat al-‘aql (Peace of Mind, or Comfort of Reason);

b) Abu Mo’in Hamid ad-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw (spelled Khusrow) al-Qubadiani (1004 - 1088 CE) the compiler of Safarnama (The Book of Travels) and « Kitab Jami' Al-Hikmatain » : " The Book encompassing the two sagesses " (or harmony of Greek Philosophy with the Ismâ’îli théosophie), and

c) Abu Yaqub Sijistani (was alive before 971 CE)28, the compilar of “The Wellsprings of Wisdom” (ينابيع الحكمة) and “Revealing the Concealed” (كشف المحجوب), among others.

Now going back to square one we may ask the pertinent question;

Given that we can’t achieve any fusion or harmonization between Islam and either philosophy or theosophy, can we nonetheless hope to achieve such in Politics, and if possible, how? And in what sense?

End.

To be followed by part VI

1 Theosophy, literally "god-wisdom" (Greek: θεοσοφία theosophia), The term comes from the Alexandrian philosophers, called lovers of truth, Philaletheians, from phil "loving," and aletheia "truth." The name Theosophy dates from the third century of our era, and began with Ammonius Saccas and his disciples, who started the Eclectic Theosophical system.

2 known also as Philo Judaeus, Yedidia, and Philo the Jew,

3 The Stoics revered Socrates for his rational self-control and the simplicity of his material life. The school was founded by Zeno of Cyprus (c. 336-262 B.C.), who began lecturing on the Painted Porch (Stoa Poikile) of a temple in Athens named for the (now lost) paintings of Polygnotus which were there.

4 His doctrine embraces the Platonic doctrine of ideas, the Neo-Pythagorean doctrine of the type as well as some of the Stoic doctrines .

5 See for more details; “Reply to Natalia (part 3) on this link;

{ http://www.alhiwar.org/en/content/view/30/2/}

6 Pervasive in platonic thinking,

7 see Treatise of the Good First book, Practical Questions 13 Plato as a Greek Moses.

8 See his Comment in Timaeum, 93.

9 Amelius, a native of Apamea was a Neoplatonic philosopher and writer of the second half of the 3rd century; he was a pupil of Numenius and secretary of Plotinus.

10 Porphyry edited the writings of Plotinus in fifty-four treatises, in groups of nine (Greek. ennea) or Enneads.

11 . A Latin version of this pseudo Theology appeared in Europe in 1519. (Cf. O'MEARA, An Introduction the Enneads. Oxford: 1995, 111ff.).

12 This volume contains the translation of Plotinus' On the descent of the soul into bodies (IV 8 [6]) and its Arabic paraphrase, with a commentary.

13 Plotin’s view of the world and the sky is to be placed within the context the dominant cosmological theories of his time such as: the Timaeus of Plato, De Caelo of Aristotle, and the stoic vision of the universe.

14 See for details; Richard Dufour; Sur le ciel(Ennéade II, 1 (40)) De Plotinus, Librairie Philosophique. J. Vrin éditeur.

15 Bishop of Laodicea in Syria, one of the foremost scholars of his day in the physical sciences and in Aristotelean philosophy.

16 Theurgy (from Greek: θεουργία) describes the practice of magic rituals performed with the intention of invoking the action of one or more gods, with the avowed aim of uniting with the divine, achieving henosis (ἕνωσις Greek for unite or unity) is the divine work committed to by each individual toward the goal of union with the Monad, Source, or the One, and perfecting oneself.

17 During the revival of interest in his philosophy in the 15th and 16th centuries, his name was often preceded with the epithet "divine" or "most divine".

18Sabians (Arabic: صابئين, Greek: σεβεοι/σεβομενοι, Yiddish: תושבים) are adherents of religions derived from the beliefs of a community which was based in the Harran region of southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria. There are two kinds of Sabians, non-gnostic Sabians (Sābi'ūna Hunafāh) and gnostic Sabians (i.e. the Sābi'ūna Mushrukūn Sabians of Harran and Mandaean Nasaræan Sabeans). They are not to be confused with the Sabaeans of Sheba whose etymology is completely unrelated being spelled with an initial Arabic letter "Sin" instead of the initial letter "Sad" (though the issue was confused because at least one tribe of Sabaeans, the Ansar, are known to have adopted the religion of the Saabi`ah Hunafa`).The Sabian faith is also known as Seboghatullah, meaning "submersion in the divine mystery". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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19 Known as Justinian I or Justinian the Great (Latin: Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus, (482/483 –565) was Eastern Roman Emperor from 527 till his death.

20 Damascius (Δαμάσκιος, born in Damascus ca. AD 458, died after AD 538), known as "the last of the Neoplatonists," was the last scholarch of the School of Athens.

21 Simplicius (Greek: Σιμπλίκιος) of Cilicia, lived c. 490-c. 560 AD, was a disciple of Ammonius and Damascius, and was one of the last of the Neoplatonists.

22 Al-Qur'an, (35; 27-28 (Fatir) (فاطر) [The Angels, Originator]

23 literally scientists from the context

24 Al-Qur'an, (6; 148) (Al-Anaam) (الأنعام) [Cattle, Livestock]

25 Al-Qur'an, (2; 111) (البقرة) (Al-Baqara( [The Cow])

26 Al-Qur'an, (45; 32) (Al-Jathiya) (الجاثية) [Crouching]

27 Al-Qur'an, (6; 116) (Al-Anaam) (الأنعام) [Cattle, Livestock]

28 He was a member of the Ismaili underground mission — (the da‘wa, in Arabic) — that operated in the Iranian province of Khurasan and Sijistan during the tenth century. He had become a supporter of the Fatimids imams, then ruling from their headquarters in Al Qairawan (Tunisia) in North Africa. He was deeply inspired by Neoplanotism. see this link for his biography {http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/sijistan.htm}