ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Muhammad in the Mirror of Islam A Possible Criticism and its Answer A number of orientalists have said that Islamic mystical and metaphysical doctrines have been borrowed from those of India, for Islam in itself is no more than a series of extremely concrete and simple beliefs and sterile forms of worship.

The succinct reply to these claims is provided nicely by the words of the poet: "O Sweetheart, the difficulty is that you're no judge of words." We, of course, in our answer to this criticism, do not wish to defend Islam from the point of view of its mystics and engage in proving the validity and originality in the face of Indian mysticism of the various ways which they have traversed on the spiritual path.

In the same way, in our discussion of rational demonstration we were not concerned with analyzing and proving the validity of all the books on philosophy written by Muslims, and in our discussion of the way of the formal aspects of religion we did not declare as correct the way of the generality of Muslims whatever it might be.

Rather, our goal in this article is limited to a general survey of the original and genuine Islamic sources, that is, the Book and the Tradition, without concerning ourselves with agreeing or disagreeing with the activities and conduct of any particular one of the foregoing classes of men. The claim of the above-mentioned orientalists is based upon the principle of evolution, according to which the development and perfection of a natural phenomena is explained in a scientific manner.

This principle has been generalized to include every sort of happening in whatever sphere, even habits, customs and phenomena of a spiritual nature. Thus the root cause of every event is sought in preceding events. According to the same principle it has been said that Islamic laws were borrowed from those of the Romans and Islamic doctrines from the philosophical ideas of the Greeks. These orientalists have been mistaken in their judgement in two respects.

First, they have considered what is called "mystical intuition" to be of the same order as normal thought and hence they have imagined that the knowledge gained by purification of the soul is a system of poetical thoughts, much as if a poet with his overflowing and creative imagination and his eloquent means of expression could voice such concepts better than a mystic knower of the divine secrets.