ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Globalization of Muslim Environmentalism In Islamic Philosophy From around the tenth century CE Muslim philosophers, familiar with Classical works, appear to have been the ones to coin the Arabic term tabī‘a to represent the Latin and Greek equivalents natura and physis .

(The word tabī‘a does not appear in the Qur’an.) The derivatives tab‘ and matbū‘ may, on the other hand, have been the source of the Latin pairing natura naturans and natura naturata .[^2] In Islamic philosophy the distinction between the Creator and Creation is represented by the terms haqq (lit., “Divine Truth”) and khalq . The laws of the universe exist not in and of themselves but rather as expressions of the Divine will, understood in Aristotelian terms as the First Cause.

There are no “secondary” causes; thus, what appear to be the laws of nature are merely the “habits” of created things, which God could alter if he chose. Miracles, accordingly, are seen simply as instances where God chooses to cause things to happen in other than their familiar, habitual manner.

Yet the relationship of the infinite (the Creator) to the finite (Creation) is neither entirely one of immanence ( tashbīh ) nor one of transcendence ( tanzīh ), since both extremes are incompatible with the ultimate oneness ( tawhīd ) of God. Neither can Creation be divine alongside the Creator, nor can there exist separate realities for each; either case would represent a kind of polytheism ( shirk ) unacceptable in Islam.

The Muslim philosophers largely followed the Greek model of the cosmos, which they understood to be spherical in shape and bounded by the stellar field. The planets, the Sun and the Moon occupy the middle layers, with the Earth constituting the center.

The heavenly world ( al-‘ālam al-ā‘la ), though made up of ether in contrast to the lower world ( al-‘ālam al-asfāl ) which is comprised of the four elements, shares with it the qualities of heat, cold, moistness and dryness and acts upon it accordingly. The earth’s geography was most often understood in terms of the pre-Islamic Iranian divisions of seven concentric climes ( keshvar s), although the fourfold division of the Greeks and the ninefold version of the Indians were also known.

The Islamic philosophers affirm the position of humans near the top within the hierarchy of created beings, below angels but above other animals, plants, and minerals.