Apostasie und Toleranz im Islam: Die Entwicklung zu al-Gazalis Urteil gegen die Philosophie und die Reaktionen der Philosophen.

• Author: Madelung, Wilferd
• Position: Book Review

By FRANK GRIFFEL. Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science: Texts and Studies, vol. 40. Leiden: BRILL, 2000. Pp. x + 521. 128 [euro].

The basic concern of this book is with the fate of Peripatetic philosophy in Islam. The author effectively adopts the view predominant in the nineteenth and early twentieth century that Islamic philosophy of the Greek and Hellenistic tradition came to an end after Avicenna (d. 428/1037) in the Muslim East and after Averroes (d. 595/1137) in the Muslim West. This decline of philosophical thought was considered chiefly the result of al-Ghazali's condemnation of Avicenna's philosophy as unbelief (kufr) on three points. Muslim philosophers thereafter were subject to persecution and the death penalty as apostates from Islam. On this basis, the book deals first with the development of the law of apostasy and its relationship with the concept of kufr from the Qur'an to the time of al-Ghazali. It then analyzes al-Ghazali's condemnation of the philosophers and finally discusses the reaction of the philosophers, especially in the Muslim West, until the time of Averroes.

The early impressionistic view that Islamic philosophy came to an end with Avicenna and Averroes was based on the circumstance that, after the great impact of these two philosophers on Western medieval thought, the works of later Muslim philosophers remained entirely unknown in the West. As these works are becoming known in modern Islamic studies, this view has become untenable. The author is not entirely unaware of this, and thus acknowledges the profound impact of the thought of Avicenna on al-Ghazali himself and on later Muslim speculative theology (kalam) (p. 18). No serious kalam theologian could in fact dispense with a solid knowledge of philosophical logic and Avicenna's thought. Yet the author's knowledge of these later developments is inadequate, and at the end of the book he speaks again of the disappearance of Peripatetic philosophy in Islam as an established fact (p. 474). In reality, if Avicenna is recognized as a Peripatetic philosopher, Peripatetic thought has certainly remained alive in Islam until the present.

This does not mean that there was no religious opposition and effort to suppress philosophy, both before and after al-Ghazali. The degree of persecution, toleration, and even public promotion of philosophy varied widely, depending on the inclination of rulers and regional and temporal differences. The author does not properly...