ISLAM

We might begin with the existence of God and the proofs offered by Muslim philosophers or theologians in the demonstration of his existence and the way in which he can be characterized as Creator and Lord. The overwhelming impression the Qur’a¯n leaves on its reader is that of God’s utter uniqueness, his omnipotence, and his omniscience. Thus, in the opening chapter (Fatihah), God is described as the ‘Lord of the Worlds . . . Master of the Day of Judgment’ (Q. 1: 24), and in the near- nal chapter (sura), he is said to be ‘the only one, the everlasting, who did not beget and is not begotten. None is his equal.’ (Q. 112: 1-4). Elsewhere, he is described in these words: ‘nothing is like unto him’ (Q. 42: 11). All the major Muslim philosophical and theological sects have dwelt on the existence of God, which, to the Su s, was intuitively certain, God being known directly through the mystical experience of which the Su s claimed to partake. The arguments given by their rivals may be divided into three categories: (1) The argument from temporal creation (huduth), known in Latin as the argument a novitate mundi; (2) the argument from contingency or possibility (imkan); and (3) the argument from design or the teleological argument. The ontological argument, which does not appear to have had many expositors, will be mentioned brie y below. The theologians or mutakallimun, whether Mu’tazilite or Ash’arite, believed the world to consist of atoms and accidents, which do not endure for two instants of time but are continually created and recreated by God. It followed, according to them,

that the world was by de nition temporal (muhdath) or created in time by its Creator (muhdith) or Maker, who will also bring it to an end. This argument was rst developed by the philosopher al-Kindi, who was committed to the total agreement of philosophy and religion and diverged radically from his Neoplatonic successors who rejected the concept of creation being ex nihilo and in time as philosophically untenable. Some of the philosophers, led by the great Neoplatonist Ibn Sina, or Avicenna (d. 1037), opted for an argument which had certain similarities to the above-mentioned argument but stemmed from the more rare ed notion of contingency or possibility. According to the exponents of this argument, which is essentially cosmological, the world, which consists of a series of contingent or possible entities, depends ultimately upon a Being who is necessary or non-contingent, labeled by Ibn Sina the Necessary Being. For him and the other exponents of this argument, the world is an eternal emanation from the Necessary Being, rather than a creation ex nihilo and in time as their predecessors among the theologians had argued. For them, in other words, the concept of the temporal creation was to be replaced by that of eternal emanation or over owing (sudur fayd) from the Necessary Being, which they sometimes described in Aristotelian fashion as thought thinking itself. Al-Farabi (d. 950), Ibn Sina’s predecessor and founder of Islamic Neoplatonism, accepted the notion of the contingency of the world, and drew from it the same conclusion that Ibn Sina was to draw. In a little-known treatise, he argues that the series of possible or contingent entities necessarily terminates in a Being who is necessary or uncaused, but appears to have inclined to the more subtle ontological argument, which had few supporters in Islam. Thus in one of his major works, Ihsa’ al-’Ulum (Classi cation of the sciences), al-Farabi gives an account of the Aristotelian subdivision of existing entities into material and immaterial substance; he proceeds to argue that ‘despite their multiplicity, [the immaterial substances] rise from the lowest to the higher and then the highest, until they terminate in a perfect being, nothing more perfect than whom can exist; nor can anything be of equal rank in point of being with Him’ (al-Farabi 1949: 89). Ibn Rushd (Averroes; d. 1198), the great Aristotelian philosopher and commentator, favored the teleological argument, or as he calls it the argument from providence. That argument he believed to be the most accordant with the Qur’a¯n. It rests on the premise that the world and everything in it is necessarily ordered in accordance with the dictates of divine wisdom, so as to subserve the existence and well-being of humankind. He supports these claims by quoting Qur’a¯nic verses 80: 24-32: ‘Let humankind consider its nourishment. We have caused the water to ow abundantly; then split the earth wide open; then caused the grain to grow therein; together with vines and green vegetation . . . for your enjoyment and that of your cattle’ (Ibd Rushd/ Averroes 1964: 152). Ibd Rushd is emphatic that the Qur’a¯n is full of exhortations to the faithful to ponder the wonders of creation, which exhibit God’s sovereignty and power, and reproaches those who have failed to do so. As Qur’a¯n 7: 185 puts it, ‘Have they not considered the kingdoms of heaven and earth as well as all the things God has created, and how their appointed term may have drawn near,’ which is an explicit af rmation of the argument for providence, Ibd Rushd asserts.