Elements of Islamic and Jewish Medieval Political Thought 82

However, within the Islamic medieval world itself, philosophy faced difficulties surviving. Philosophy, with its origins in Greek culture, often was viewed as a foreign intrusion into Islamic societies and thus resented by religious leaders in the Muslim world. Many Islamic religious leaders thought that Islamic approaches to discovering truth should be followed on all occasions. Those who held this view argued that Islamic sources could best provide an understanding of the structure of nature as well as how to construct a good society based on interpretations of Islamic law in local circumstances.2