Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rawandi, Abu Bakr al-Razi, and their Impact on Islamic Thought.

• Author: DRUART, THERESE-ANNE
• Position: Review

Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Rawandi, Abu Bakr al-Razi, and their Impact on Islamic Thought. By SARAH STROUMSA. Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science, vol. 35 Leiden: BRILL, 1999. Pp. xii + 261. HFI 135, $79.50.

In this well-written book, Dr. Sarah Stroumsa draws our attention to the existence of "freethinking" in Islam and presents it as a peculiarly Islamic phenomenon. This claim may surprise if one does not take into account how she defines "freethinking." By it she means "the belief in the sufficiency of the intellect" and, therefore, "the rejection of prophecy and all religions based on revelation' but not atheism or agnosticism. Such freethinkers do acknowledge the existence of God, the intellect's ability to know some of His attributes, and to infer from them a way of life. As the intellect provides all that human beings need to live a good life, there is no need for prophecy. Though Stroumsa surmises that freethinkers were very few, they had, she thinks, a disproportionate impact on Islamic intellectual life and Kalam in particular, since they were denying a core belief of Islam. In order to substantiate her thesis, Stroumsa focuses her work on Ibn al-Rawandi and Abu Bakr al-Razi who both rejected prophecy a nd considered that intellect alone allows us to know enough about God.

The book first explores the topic of "the signs of prophecy' a touchstone of Muslim prophetology and therefore of Muslim life and belief, and shows that Christians, by contrast, paid little attention to that issue. Muhammed is essentially the "seal of prophecy," whereas, for Christians, Jesus, being the second person of the Triune God, is far more than a prophet. Tackling then Ibn al-Rawandi's "Book of the Emerald' Stroumsa carefully "reconstructs" it in the light and function of all the available evidence before doing the same for al-Rizi's views on prophecy. The task is a difficult one since most of the evidence is indirect. The interpretation is careful and the author is cautious in her affirmations. She then tries to determine what were the religious views of these two...