ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 2, Book 8 Conclusion It is hazardous to foretell the future of peoples, nations, and cultures. This is particularly true in a world torn asunder by ideological conflicts and constantly under the shadow of a total war. As it is, the fate of the whole human race is hanging in the balance and one spark of folly may set the whole world ablaze, thus falsifying all normal conjectures.

However, unless such an all-pervading calamity befalls mankind, one could make a guess about the future of Muslim culture and philosophical thought. The trends we have traced in the life of different Muslim countries in Book Six should give us a fair idea as to what the future may have in store for Muslim thought and culture. During the period of decadence the Muslims had lost their great tradition of original thinking on the one hand and moral stability and rectitude on the other.

Renaissance in various Islamic countries throws into bold relief the need for educational and intellectual progress and the compelling necessity for moral reform on which depends not only the rise but also the very existence of a people’s culture. Luckily, the political and social upheaval in Muslim coun­tries has often been accompanied by a zeal for religious, moral, and educational reform.

The role of the various political and social reformers in different Islamic countries provides an ample proof of this healthy attitude. As the reader of this work must have noticed, after the fall of Baghdad, Muslim thought took a new turn in philosophy and scientific inquiry.

Philo­sophy took either the garb of poetry as in Rumi and Jami or that of theosophy as in the School of Ispahan, Mulla Sadra, and Mulla Hadi Sabziwari, but the scientific study of nature gradually ceased and its place was taken by the study of spiritual experience. While Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Brahe, Bruno, Galileo, Francis Bacon, Kepler, and Newton were engaged in unravel­ling the mysteries of nature, the thinkers of Islam were busy fathoming the depths of the spirit.

In the empirical knowledge of the external world, the Muslims were left far behind the West. Since the beginning of the fourteenth/twentieth century, however, they have directed their attention to it, but they have discovered that they cannot make any headway without becoming the veritable disciples of the West.