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oa Kunnen moslims denken?
De onzichtbaarheid van de islamitische filosofische traditie
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, Volume 109, Issue 1, Jan 2017, p. 85 - 103
Abstract
Can Muslims Think? The Invisibility of the Islamic Philosophical Tradition
This paper discusses some authors and genres of the classcial Islamic tradition not generally recognized as philosophical, but relevant both for the understanding of today’s confrontation between the Islamic world and the liberal West, and for academic philosophical discussions of Islam. I focus on the theologian Ibn Taymiyya, who has been hijacked by modern salafi-jihadi activists, but who gives a critique of Aristotelian syllogistic that is philosophically serious and substantial, and on the classical Persian poetic tradition, which turns out to embody an ethical tradition of practical humanist wisdom. An awareness of the very existence of such traditions can help to combat the reductionist and ahistorical views of the Islamic world that pervade the contemporary public debate.