Islamic Scientific Schools

In the Name of Allah---the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. The Argument Against Pakistan Reconsidered: Why Partition May Have Strengthened Rather Than Weakened Muslim Political Power The most persistent argument against the creation of Pakistan is that Partition weakened the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent by dividing them geographically . According to this view, Muslims constituted roughly a quarter of the population of undivided India, and if they had remained together, they would have possessed a much larger demographic and political weight. Partition, by creating a Muslim-majority Pakistan, allegedly sacrificed the political influence of Muslims in India in exchange for a geographically divided state. At first sight, this argument appears compelling. But it rests on an important assumption: that a large minority dispersed throughout a Hindu-majority democratic state would necessarily possess greater long-term political power than a smaller population concentrated in a Muslim...

In the Name of Allah---the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. Islamic Social Structure in the Modern Era Introduction The Islamic social structure is neither radical individualism nor oppressive collectivism. It is a hierarchy of morally connected relationships in which individual rights and responsibilities extend outward from the individual to the family, community, society, Ummah and humanity, while ultimate accountability remains before Allah. Modern civilization has achieved extraordinary advances in science, technology, medicine, communication, and material production. Human beings possess unprecedented power to manipulate their physical environment and communicate across continents within seconds. Yet technological progress has not automatically produced psychological peace, stable families, social cohesion or a shared sense of meaning. Modern societies increasingly confront questions that cannot be solved merely through technological advancement: Why are loneliness and social ...

In the Name of Allah---the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. The Dynamic Cosmos and Moral Purpose: Unpacking Ibn Taymiyyah’s Causal Realism and Moral Rationalism The intellectual history of classical Islam is often framed around the dramatic clash between the Hellenistic philosophers ( Falasifa )—such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Farabi—and the speculative theologians ( Mutakallimun ) of the Ash'arite and Mu'tazilite schools. While the Falasifa posited a cosmos governed by deterministic, necessary natural laws that constrained divine intervention, late Ash'arite theologians, exemplified by Imam al-Ghazali, responded by adopting radical occasionalism . In their effort to protect divine omnipotence ( Qudrah ), the Ash'arites stripped created things of all inherent efficacy, asserting that God directly creates every atom, motion, and event out of nothing in each micro-moment. In the 14th century, the Syrian polymath Imam Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH / 1328 CE) mounted a p...