Postmodernism took hold of the intellectual scene during the later half of the twentieth century. It was well before its occupying the centre stage, while Modernity held its sway, that, amidst an erosion of earlier cultural values as well as a blurring of the distinctive characteristics of the world’s traditional civilizations― giving rise to philosophic and moral relativism, multiculturalism, and dangerous fundamentalist reac­tions― many thinkers diagnosed these tendencies and suggested various remedies. Best among these were char­acterized by a foundational critique of the modern world coupled with a call for intellectual reform; a renewed examination of metaphysics, the traditional sciences, and symbolism, with special refer­ence to the ultimate unanimity of all spiritual traditions; and finally, a call to the work of spiritual realization. It was in the wake of Postmodernism that we hear a sage saying the following:

… it should be pointed out that if the West needs the East, the latter also has need of the West― not of the West as such, of course, but of such few thinkers in the West as have managed to integrate their experiences of the modern world in a traditional and spiritual outlook that might, if one likes, be described as “oriental” or “mediaeval”. When in contact with the West, Orientals generally display an astonishing lack of suspicion and this can be explained by the fact that the modern world, while being a “necessary evil”, is not a normal possibility. Now the Western elite to which we are referring is endowed with a “discernment of spirits” and a sense of proportion that often are lacking in Orientals; the latter, however, today stand greatly in need of these particular qualities, not on the still uncontaminated soil of their own civilisation where they understand what they are doing, but outside it in a chaotic world that violates every framework and insinuates itself everywhere.”[1]     

Basit is an Oriental by lineage but living in the West and receiving his entire education in the Western Academic world has given him the opportunity to “integrate his experiences of the modern world in a traditional and spiritual outlook.” The recent outcome, his article “Studying the Western Other, Understanding the Islamic Self: A Qur’anically Reasoned Perspective” has offered me the possibility to reconsider and re-evaluate certain settled convictions about the Enlightenment paradigm and the issue of the Western Other and to revisit the ‘half‑truths’ that used to create obstacles to an appreciation of the point in question. I would have preferred to begin my response on a non personal note but since his article has held a mirror to my thinking and has challenged the mode of interpretation used for studying Modernity, I have been goaded into responding otherwise. It has changed the frontiers of my views on the matter and, in some cases at least, has pulled down the isolating walls that separated one perspective from another. The destruction of such walls may be an evil; but the virtues it helped to promote are indispensable and must be supported by other means. In what follows I have tried to explore these other means. But first let me mention a host of questions that assailed me during reading his article and think loudly about some of the premises which inform Basit’s vision and see if these lead to a few complications, at least from my lights. 

Basit speaks of “the twin tasks of dissension and affirmation from within the reality of the modern world ”[2] (Basit, p. 4) that Islam has to undertake for successfully “squaring of the circle.“ As could be surmised from the general thrust of the argument in the article the reality of the modern world is equated with the Enlightenment paradigm and its social program that was “most consistently and systematically institutionalized in the modern, secular West.”(Basit, p. 9) Can we refer to the reality of the modern world as a monolithic whole or there is a need to differentiate between the conceptual shifts that distinguish Modernity from the Postmodern and “beyond-Postmodern”[3] paradigms? According to my lights a distinction needs to be made on at least two counts; the obsessive concern with society that is a hallmark of Postmodernism as well as its radical departure from “Enlightenment philosophy’s categorically rejects the limited and relational character of the human mind/reason” and “enshrinement of reason” (Basit, p. 5, 21) espoused by the Enlightenment paradigm to a position that could be termed as “the collapse of faith in reason’s power, thus to hold court.”[4] This would entail, for the obvious reason, that we take a different and perhaps more challenging set of “difficulties inherent” into consideration that arise with Postmodernism and its aftermath. I will have the occasion to say something more on this point later.

The same remark holds good for philosophy. “Concern with wisdom, illumination and the Divine” (Basit, p. 4) was shared by pre-modern religious traditions and classical philosophy and “philosophy as a means of “attaining wisdom” was seen as being inseparable from the choice of a particular way of life (Basit, p. 5).[5]  Both the Enlightenment paradigm and its Postmodern and beyond-Postmodern conceptual shifts profoundly differ from this shared vision of the entire pre-Modern world. They are, however, not similar in their disagreement, hence can not be subsumed under a single disclaimer. If the Enlightenment paradigm revolted against the pre-Modern in the name of a Promethean humanism resulting in an “enshrinement of autonomous human reason” and claimed that that there is an objective, universally appli­cable court of appeal that can adjudicate between worldviews, determining their truth or falsity, Postmodernism is relativistic, nihilistic and signifies loss of faith in reason’s power.[6] This remark allows for a digression.

Some where, during the course of its historical development, western thought took a sharp turn in another direction. It branched off as a tangent from the collective heritage of all humanity and claimed the autonomy of reason. It chose to follow that reason alone, unguided by revelation and cut off from the Intellect that was regarded as its transcendent root.^[7] Political and social realms quickly followed suit. Autonomous statecraft and excessive individualism in the social order were the elements that shaped a dominant paradigm that did not prove successful.^[8]  A few centuries of unbridled activity led Western phi­losophy to an impasse.^[9]

Commenting upon the situation, Huston Smith remarked, “the deepest reason for the crisis in philosophy is its realization that autonomous reason― reason without infusions that both power and vector it― is helpless. By itself, reason can deliver nothing apodictic. Working, as it necessarily must, with variables, vari­ables are all it can come up with. The Enlightenment’s “natural light of reason” turns out to have been a myth. Reason is not itself a light. It is more than a conductor, for it does more than transmit. It seems to resemble an adapter which makes useful translations but on condition that it is powered by a generator.”^[10] The nature and direction of these “infusions” is still being debated.^[11]

Clearly aware of reason’s contingency, medieval philosophy attached itself to theology as its handmaiden. Earlier, Plato too had accepted reason’s contingency and grounded his philosophy in intuitions that are discern­ible by the “eye of the soul” but not by reason without it. In the seventeenth century, though, responding to the advent of modern science with the controlled experiment as its new and powerful way of getting at truth, philosophy unplugged from theology. Bacon and Comte were ready to replug it at once, this time into science, but there were frequencies science still couldn’t register, so philosophy took off on its own.

Modern philosophy took off in the seventeenth century by declaring its independence from theology; Descartes set it on its course by dedicating it to the proposition that reason, its instru­ment, can stand on its own. An important reason for thinking that mod­ernity has come to an end is that its faith in autonomous reason has now collapsed. Recent developments in beyond-Postmodern (or reversionary Postmodern) theology indicate that, finding the Modern (read Enlightenment) position untenable, it now claims that its reason should not be called autonomous and therefore Modern, for it insists that it is not autonomous: reason in their view must be supplemented by vision. But this augmented reason still continues to look Modern to my lights in claiming the power to winnow the visions that supplement it, accepting or rejecting them by the standards it imposes.[12]

This brings us to the core issue of the shared ground. If Tradition, Modernity and Postmodernism are so radically apart on the question of reason and human rationality how can we safely speak of a shared ground? “Because of the Enlightenment’s rejection of the traditional religious/philosophical understanding of wisdom, illumination and the Divine human reason/mind[13] are left as the only shared ground [14] on which the dissenting voice and the dominant paradigm can relate to each other. Consequently, if the squaring of the circle is to be done as a dissenting voice from within the modern world then the following conditions will have to be met: a) human mind/reason be the court of appeal for all critique/complaints and b) human mind/reason be the foundation on which all principles are affirmed/stand.” (Basit, p. 7) All religious/wisdom traditions and almost all pre-modern philosophy drew a sharp distinction between ratio and intellectus inasmuch as the lat­ter operates intuitively and directly and were unanimous that reason operated in the restricted region of the mind’s domain. Modernity, Postmodernism   and, to a large extent,[15] beyond-Postmodern theology (or reversionary Postmodern) are at the antipodes of this view. I need not go into the details of the issue here as we are all well aware of the problem. The point I like to register is that it is difficult to see how, in the absence of a shared definition of reason and human rationality and with the collapse of faith in a universally appli­cable court of appeal, critiques/complaints could be addressed meaningfully and how the dissenting voice and the dominant paradigm can relate to each other?

Citing the examples of “squaring the circles in the past” in the case “of numerous non-Arab cultural configurations” (Basit, p. 8) he has mentioned the pre Islamic Arab civilization as well where “….the prophetic witness offers a revelatory affirmation of some of the real but dormant aspirations and potentialities at the very heart of its socio-cultural environment, whose emergence and maturation is being forestalled by neglect and forgetfulness.” (Basit, p. 9) The argument culminates in saying that “there has to be an Islamic affirmation of some of the deepest aspirations that are at the heart of the Enlightenment project.” (Basit, p. 9) According to my lights this seems to be a problematic analogy. No socio-cultural environment in the pre-Modern times had turned its back on Transcendence in the systematic way that characterized Modernity. The Arabs of the times of the Prophet had many dormant virtues and they had principles. Their principles were lacking in height, confined to the horizontal plane, without any consciousness of the relationship between human virtues and the Divine Qualities of which they are the reflections. None the less, human virtues cannot exist without their archetypes, which is another way of saying that in these men the appar­ently missing link was not absent but dormant; and inevitably the degree of dormancy varied from man to man. The prophetic witness triggered its awakening. It derives its legitimacy from the inherent principles and practice of the Islamic Tradition itself. Islamic Tradition, from its vantage point of being the summer-up, incorporated― obviously with alterations, amendments, abrogations and adaptations― the “Judeo-Christian” elements; especially the legal (or Shariite, in the technical sense of the word) aspects of the Mosaic code and the esoteric elements of the Christian message. These elements were brought to perfection in addition to the specifically Islamic aspects of the new faith in the Islamic revelation. This process, as it was accomplished on a purely vertical plane, had the stamp of divine sanction on it which distinguished it from any subsequent attempts that the Islamic community may had envisaged in the same direction. Nevertheless it had the significant role of setting the example for integrating ideas and symbols of pre-Islamic origin into the unitary perspective of Islam and its general framework. This could not be the case of a mindset which is woven out of a rejection of Transcendence. Enlightenment paradigm rejected Transcendence or a certain interpretation of it that denied human reason its legitimate rights and refused to meet its demands. This is a question that defies neat solutions and needs further deliberations to which I would return later.

Let me begin with an important clarification because my observations noted above may have led the readers to believe that I see the Enlightenment paradigm flawed on all counts. That is not the case. I have voiced my reservations about one, albeit a fundamental and very important, aspect of the Enlightenment project. I will rely on Huston Smith to make the point for me.

A worldview is an inclusive outlook, and it is useful to distinguish its social, cosmo­logical, and metaphysical components. The social component of past worldviews included, at times, justifications for slavery and the divine right of kings, while its cosmological components described the physical universe as understood by the science of the day― Ptolemaic astronomy or whatever. The contents of those two components obviously change, so are not perennial. The perennial, unchanging philosophy is metaphysical, or more precisely, ontological. It concerns such matters as the distinction between the Absolute and the relative, and the doctrine of the degrees of reality that is consequent thereon.[16]

Following this threefold criteria I would like say a few words about the Metaphysical, Cosmological and Sociological achievements/shortcomings of Tradition, Modernity and Postmodernism, respectively. In doing so I am responding to Basit’s assertion “it must be the case that the Enlightenment has two sides– one pointing to God and the other pointing away from Him.” (Basit, p. 23) This is a very pertinent question because if the Enlightenment paradigm has its virtues and human virtues cannot exist without their archetypes how did Enlightenment come to possess these virtues without any consciousness of the relationship between human virtues and the Divine Qualities of which they are the reflections? Is that a phenomenon similar to the pre Islamic Arabia? Before we say anything on it let us have a brief overview of the Metaphysical, Cosmological and Sociological achievements/shortcomings of Tradition, Modernity and Postmodernism.[17]

When we align these problems with the three[18] major periods in human history: the traditional period,[19] the Modern period,[20] and Postmodernism,[21] it is obvious that each of these periods poured more of its energies into, and did better by, one of life’s inescapable problems than did the other two. Specifically, Modernity gave us our view of nature,[22] Postmodernism is tackling social injustices more resolutely than people previously did. This leaves worldviews― metaphysics as dis­tinct from cosmology, which restricts itself to the empirical uni­verse― for our ancestors, whose accomplishments on that front have not been improved upon.[23] Let us shuffle the historical sequence of the periods and proceed topically― from nature, through society, to the Big Picture, tying each topic to the period that did best by it. Modernity first, then Postmodernity, leaving the traditional period for last.

Cosmological Achievements of Modernity

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europe stumbled on a new way of knowing that we refer to as the scientific method. It centres in the controlled experiment and has given us modern science[24] which adds proof to generic science by its controlled experiment. True hypotheses can be separated from false ones, and brick by brick an edifice has been erected from those proven truths. We commonly call that edifice the scientific worldview, but scientific cosmology is more precise because of the ambiguity of the word world. The scientific edifice is a worldview only for those who assume that science can in principle take in all that exists. The scientific cosmology is so much a part of the air we breathe that it is hardly necessary to describe it.[25] Taught from primary schools onward, this story is so familiar that further details would only clutter things.

Tradition’s Cosmological Shortcomings

That this scientific cosmology retires traditional ones with their six days of creation and the like goes without saying. Who can possi­bly question that when the scientific cosmology has landed people on the moon?[26] And there is another point. There is a naturalism in Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Islamic Cosmological doctrines and tribal outlooks that in its own way rivals science’s calculative cosmology, but that is the naturalism of the artist, the poet, and the nature lover[27] not that of Galileo and Bacon. For present purposes, aesthetics is irrelevant. Modern cosmology derives from laboratory experiments, not landscape paintings.

Postmodernism’s Cosmological Shortcomings

With traditional cosmology out of the running, the question turns to Postmodernism. Because science is cumulative, it follows as a matter of course that the cosmology we have in the twenty-first century is an improvement over what we had in the middle of the twentieth, which on my timeline is when modernity phased into Postmodernity. But the refinements that postmodern scientists (it is well to say postmodern physics here) have achieved have not affected life to anything like the degree that postmodern social thrusts have, so the social Oscar is the one Postmodernists are most entitled to.[28] Be that as it may, Postmodernism’s discoveries (unlike modern discoveries in physics― the laws of gravity, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, relativity theory, and quantum mechanics, which continue to be used to make space shuttles fly and to help us understand how hot electrons behave in semiconductors) have concerned details and exotica.[29]

Outranking the foregoing reason for not giving the cosmological Oscar to Postmodernism is the fact that the noisiest postmodernists have called into question the very notion of truth by turning claims to truth into little more than power plays.[30] This relativizes science’s assertions radically and rules out even the possibility of its closing in on the nature of nature.[31] As there are no neutral standards by which to judge these paradigms, Kuhn’s thesis (if unnuanced) leads to relativism among paradigms that places Hottentot science on a par with Newton’s. Kuhn himself phrased his thesis carefully enough to parry such relativism, but even taken at its best, it pro­vides no way that science could get to the bottom of things. This demotes the whole enterprise of science as understood by Modernity, and in doing so provides a strong supporting reason for not giving Postmodernism   the cosmological prize. It does better with social issues so now we discuss Postmodernism’s achievements on the social front.

Postmodernism’s Fairness Revolution

The magic word of Postmodernism is society. This is not surprising. With the belief that there is nothing beyond our present world, nature and society are all that remain, and of the two, nature has become the province of specialists.[32] This leaves society as the domain that presses on us directly and the one in which there is some prospect of our making a difference. And changes are occurring.[33] A quick rehearsal of some changes that have occurred in a single lifetime makes it clear that social injustices are being recognized and addressed more earnestly today than they were by our ancestors.[34]

Tradition’s Social Shortcomings

These signs of progress acquire additional life when they are set against the unconcern of earlier times regarding such matters. This is an other way of saying what Basit has put forward in is question: “Why is it that the modern, secular West has succeeded in institutionalizing these ideals with a degree of consistency than traditional Muslim society?“ There is no reason to think that traditional peoples were more cal­lous than we are, but on the whole they saw their obligations as extending no further than to members of their primary communi­ties: Buddhism’s dana (gifts), Jesus’ “cup of water given in my name,” Islam’s “pure due” and their likes. Encountered face-to-face, the hungry were fed, the naked were clothed, and widows and orphans were provided for as means allowed, but there human obligations ended. Injustices that were built into institutions (if such injustices were even recognized) were not human beings’ responsibility.[35]

Modernity changed this attitude. Accelerating travel and trade brought encounters between peoples whose societal structures were very different from one another, and these differences showed that such institutions were not like natural laws after all; they were humanly devised and could therefore be critiqued. The French Revolution put this prospect to a historic test; scrapping the divine right of kings, it set out to create a society built on liberty, equality, and fraternity. The experiment failed and the backlash was immediate, but its premise― that societies are malleable― survived.

Modernity’s Social Shortcomings

Modernity deserves credit for that discovery, and (if we wished) we might excuse it for its poor handling of its discovery on grounds that it was working with a new idea. The record itself, however, is by Postmodern standards, deplorable. Under the pretext of shoul­dering “the white man’s burden” to minister to “lesser breeds without the law,” it ensconced colonialism, which raped Asia and Africa, hit its nadir in the Opium Wars of 1841-42, and ended by subjecting the entire civilized world to Western domination.[36]

Having dealt with nature and society, let us turn now to the third inescapable issue that human beings must face: the Big Picture.

Modernity’s Metaphysical Shortcomings

Modernity was metaphysically sloppy. Ravished by science’s accom­plishments, it elevated the scientific method to “our sacral mode of knowing” (Alex Comfort), and because that mode registers nothing that is without a material component, immaterial realities at first dropped from view and then (as the position hardened) were denied existence. In the distinction registered earlier, this was metaphysics reduced to cosmology.[37] Modernity’s Big Picture is materialism or (in its more plausible version) naturalism, which acknowledges that there are immaterial things― thoughts and feelings, for example― while insisting that those things are totally dependent on matter. Both versions are stunted when compared with the traditional outlook. It is important to understand that neither materialism nor nat­uralism is required by anything science has discovered in the way of actual facts. We have slid into this smallest of metaphysical positions for psychological, not logical, reasons.

Postmodernity’s Metaphysical Shortcomings

As for Postmodernity, it sets itself against the very idea of such a thing as the Big Picture. It got off on the right foot by critiquing the truncated worldview of the Enlightenment, but from that rea­sonable beginning it plunged on to argue unreasonably that worldviews (often derisively referred to as grand narratives) are misguided in principle.[38] Stated in the in-house idiom Postmodernists are fond of, worldviews “total­ize” by “marginalizing” minority viewpoints. They are oppressive in principle and should be resolutely resisted. If hardcore Postmodernism  were accurate in this charge one should stop in one’s tracks, but it has not proved that it is accu­rate― it merely assumes that it is accurate and rests its case on examples of oppression that, of course, are not lacking. What has not been demonstrated is the impossibility of a worldview that builds the rights of minorities into its foundations as an essential building block. There is irony here, for the very Postmodernism that is dismissing the possibility of a comprehensive humane outlook is working toward the creation of such through its fairness revolution― its insistence that everybody be given an equal chance at the goods of life. The deeper fact, however, is that to have or not have a worldview is not an option, for peripheral vision always conditions what we are attending to focally, and in conceptual “seeing” the periphery has no cut off. The only choice we have is to be consciously aware of our worldviews and criticize them where they need criticizing, or let them work on us unnoticed and acquiesce to living unexamined lives.

Tradition’s Metaphysical Excellence

Neither Modernity nor Postmodernism handled the metaphysical problem well. It is, of course, no proof that Tradition handled it better. The traditional worldview is so out of favour today that the only possible way to gain a hearing for it is to ease into it, so to speak, by suggesting plausibilities wherever openings for them appear. Describing the tra­ditional worldview and defending its merits, therefore, comes close to being the object of an entire book.[39] I will not try to compress it into a page or two here. The present audience, I presume, agrees that with regard to the Postmodernism’s reli­gious alternative, we can speak of it in the singular and simply assume that a common metaphysical “spine” underlies the differences in the theologies of the clas­sical languages of the human soul, the world’s great religions. This is coupled with the claims of Tradition that people need worldviews, that reliable ones are possible, and that they already exist.

If mainline and polemical Postmodernism were to recede, the obsession with life’s social dimen­sion that they saddled us with would relax and we would find ourselves able to think ontologically again. An important consequence of this would be that we would then perceive how much religious outlooks have in common. For one thing, they all situate the manifest, visible world within a larger, invisible whole.[40] The further unanimous claim of religious cosmologies, though, finds no echo in science, for (being a value judgment) it is beyond science’s reach. Not only is the invisible real; regions of it are more real and of greater worth than the visible, material world.

The inclusive, presiding paradigm for Tradition is the Great Chain of Being, com­posed of links ranging in hierarchical order from meagre existents up to the ens perfectissimum; and the foremost student of that concept, Arthur Lovejoy, reported that “most educated persons everywhere accepted [it] without question down to late in the eighteenth century.”[41] To that endorsement, Ken Wilber has added that the Great Chain of Being is “so overwhelmingly widespread...that it is either the single greatest intellectual error ever to appear in humankind’s history― an error so colossal­ly widespread as to literally stagger the mind― or it is the single most accurate reflection of reality yet to appear.”[42]

An obvious moral emerges from what has been said. If we run a strainer through our past to lift from each of its three peri­ods the gold it contains and let its dross sink back into the sands of history what do we get? Modernity’s gold i.e. science is certain to figure impor­tantly in the third millennium, and Postmodernity’s focus on jus­tice likewise stands a good chance of continuing. It is the worldview of Tradition that is in jeopardy and must be rehabilitated if it is to survive. Being more specific, the present challenge to the Muslim world is reversed in the sense that it must learn to be tolerant of a world which threatens its very existence without losing its identity and the secularised West must learn the very difficult lesson that its Modern and Postmodern understanding of man and the world is not universal. Moreover, since religion does not acknowledge any principles higher than its own, not even the survival of the human race, if asked to establish peace, it will do so in its own way or not at all.

This brings me back to the initial question of the virtues of Enlightenment paradigm. Basit points out that “The Enlightenment break with traditional religion is as much tied to the affirmation of individualism, universalism and materialism as to the rejection of the notions of wisdom, illumination and the Divine” (Basit, p. 10) and “The Enlightenment affirmation of the dignity of the individual, equality before the law and the value of the material/profane world provides Islam with a unique opportunity to be an affirming witness from outside the modern world” (Basit, p. 11) and “This annual circling (Hajj) of the square is the Islamic affirmation of the irreducible dignity of the individual, the equality of all human beings before the law and the spiritual value of the material world and profane acts” (Basit, p. 11) “there are strong elective affinities between the Qur’anic notion of the human being as an individual, humanity on a universal level and the material/profane worlds and the Enlightenment ideals of individualism, universalism and materialism” (Basit, p. 13). This brings us face to face with certain questions: Did in any epoch ever a worldview (and its translation into practice) achieve these “Enlightenment ideals of individualism, universalism and materialism” without turning its back on wisdom, illumination and the Divine?  If Islam succeeded in achieving these ideals without paying its price of rejecting Transcendence (Hajj being a palpable example) what was the saving grace? Moreover Hajj is an Abrahamic ritual predating Islam and the Jews only stopped visiting the outlying Meccan Tabernacle of God when the corruption of its custodians had brought crude idolatry to the sacred precinct. Is it true that early Muslim society and, before that, other human collectivities, had achieved these Enlightenment ideals without severing their roots? A negative inference also imposes itself. If these ideals could be achieved without the burden of “wisdom, illumination and the Divine” why bother? If human reason is not autonomous and it needs objective data to operate effectively, what provided the Enlightenment project with its “infusions” with its rejection of wisdom, illumination and the Divine?  Iqbal’s “inductive intellect” (Basit, p. 12) is not relevant here as it proceeds in the presence of a revealed knowledge and within the parameters of a wisdom tradition. Do we commit a mistake when we attribute “rejection of the notions of wisdom, illumination and the Divine” to the Enlightenment paradigm? Is it only a reaction to the social side of the issue, the mixed bag of history that Modernity and, more resolutely, Postmodernity has manifested? As religions are worldviews or metanarratives― inclu­sive posits concerning the ultimate nature of things― its custodians cannot accept polemical Postmod­ernism’s contention that on balance they oppress. We have observed that “the magic word of Modernity and of Postmodernity is society.” Our present question bears on it, for it is almost entirely for their social repercus­sions that Postmoderns fault worldviews. In applying that measuring rod both Modernity and Postmodernity simply assume (they do not argue) that religion does more harm than good.[43] Whether this concern with society of Modernity and of Postmodernity is modern or instead modernly conceived, one can not be sure― the Stoics and Proph­ets were fairly good on the subject. But we cannot have enough of the concern itself.[44]

Basit continues: “This means that the circling of the square requires a rejection of the uncritical affirmation of tradition (or a particular school within tradition) just as the squaring of the circle requires a rejection of the blind negation of tradition by the zealots and the liberals” the Qur’anic critique of Islamic tradition for its failure to fully express key Islamic ideals in institutional form.” (Basit, p. 17) This is a task which, according to my lights, is innate to the Islamic tradition, its principle of movement. Do we require a reference to the Enlightenment paradigm to be alerted to its importance? If that is the case and we need awakening calls there is no problem with it.

The section dealing with “the Qur’anic treatment of Judaism and Christianity as informing the rationale underpinning the squaring the circle” (Basit, p. 17 passim) is very illuminating and I can not agree more. I would offer only a few brief comments. Firstly, with reference to what has been said about the “shared ground” earlier it should be pointed out here that the critique/affirmation of Judaism and Christianity is the case of  two sister wisdom traditions which share the common ground of wisdom, illumination and the Divine with Islam. In the case of Enlightenment no such sharing on principles seems to exist. Secondly his reading of the Qur’anic texts would not please a large number of his coreligionists who are prone to making an exclusivist reading of the inclusivist verses of the Qur’an. The danger of excluding those who can only open up to religious Other on the basis of upholding the normativity of one’s own faith was vividly brought to light by the controversy over the book by the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Jonathan Sacks. The manner in which Dr. Sacks was compelled by senior theologians in his own community to retract certain sentences from his latest book, The Dignity of Difference[45] highlights well the intellectual challenge involved in reaching out to the Other without alienating one’s own community. I pray that Basit is spared that fate.

Basit has emphasised the need for “a reasoned/rational critique of the Enlightenment rejection of wisdom, illumination and the Divine” (Basit, p. 17) and accused perennialism and traditionalism of the “most egregious offence” of insinuating that “the Enlightenment is an absolutely unique phenomenon in human history in the sense that it has only one side and that side points away from God” and has emphasized the “most pressing demands of the day to face this paradigm squarely and engage with it constructively.” (Basit, p. 22) My assessment is rather different. It is not because I have deep sympathies or even affinities with some of them. I genuinely believe that the task of facing this paradigm squarely and producing “a reasoned/rational critique of the Enlightenment rejection of wisdom, illumination and the Divine” has been successfully done, to a large extant, by the authors of the same school.[46] Moreover, the “Perennialists” (Universalist is a better denominator!) are not the only ones who criticizes Modernity/ Enlightenment in this vein.[47] This is also the verdict “beyond-Postmodern” or “reversionary Postmodernism” has passed on Modernity/Enlightenment paradigm. I will let David Ray Griffin make the point for me. David says, “Modernity paradigm, rather than being regarded as the norm for human society toward which all history has been aiming and into which all societies should be ushered― forcibly if necessary― is instead increasingly seen as an aberration. A new respect for the wisdom of traditional societies is growing as we realize that they have endured for thousands of years and that, by contrast, the existence of modern society for even another century seems doubtful. Likewise, Modernity as a worldview is less and less seen as The Final Truth, in comparison with which all divergent worldviews are automatically regarded as “superstitious.” The modern worldview is increasingly relativized to the status of one among many, useful for some purposes, inadequate for others.[48]                      

With the “Perennialists” and their ‘crime record’ out of the way we can now turn to “The need for “a reasoned/rational critique of the Enlightenment rejection of wisdom, illumination and the Divine” (Basit, p. 17). S. H. Nasr, a prominent Perennialist, has time and again argued for the need emphasizing the rational approach and mode of engagement. “Today in the West, as well as in the Islamic world itself, there is an ever greater need to study both the principles and manifestations of Islam from its own authentic point of view and a manner comprehensible to contemporary man, or at least to one who possesses sufficient intelligence and good intentions. Moreover, this needs to be achieved by using methods of analysis and description which are at once logical and in conformity with the Islamic perspective; for this latter places the highest value upon intelligence (al-‘aql) and logic, which is inseparable from it, although of course the transcendent realities cannot be reduced to logical categories. This type of writing which can ‘translate’ Islamic teachings into a contemporary idiom without betraying it is very important not only for non-Muslims who wish to learn about Islam but most of all for young Muslims, who are now mainly products of modern educational systems.”[49]

Demands of reason should be satisfied― both the Perennialists and the “beyond-Postmodernism” or “reversionary Postmodernism” agree, but where they part company is in defining reason and its role/function in creating “a reasoned/rational critique of the Enlightenment rejection..…” Huston Smith makes the point in the following remarks. “Whitehead’s categories are demanding, but they do in the end fit into our three dimensional reason, from which it follows that to fit God into them is to position her inside our limited understanding. This translates into putting God in a cage. Religion must, to be sure, be intelligible in certain ways, but to try to make it rationally intelligible, fully so, is to sound its death knell. (In keeping with Perennialists generally, I draw a sharp distinction between ratio and intellectus inasmuch as the latter operates intuitively and directly.) It is to squeeze the pneuma― a word usually translated as spirit, but etymologically deriving from breath or air― out of it, leaving us with what someone has called “flat-tire” theology. I realize that my rejection of Whitehead’s “onto-logical principle” here will sound like mystery-mongering to process theologians, but, apart from the pejorative in the word mongering, I welcome the charge. Vis-a-vis most modern and postmodern theology, I side with Sir Thomas Browne, who complained in his Religio Medici that the religion he typically heard preached did not contain sufficient impossibilities, adding that it is “no vulgar part of faith” to believe things not only above but contrary to reason and against the evidence proper to our senses.”[50]

In the present context we are concerned with the preliminary stage of removing obstacles which make it difficult or impossible for the mind to understand. Intelligence has its rights, and these have not always been upheld by the representatives of religion. Agreed. The mental faculties need to be appeased and re‑assured; and to this end religion has no option but to sacrifice certain half truths, not to speak of mere suppositions and conjectures, which in the past were considered as powerful motives for loving God ‘with all thy soul and with all thy strength’ and a lack of which lead the Enlightenment thinkers to the revolt mentioned so often in this paper.[51]

I am also troubled by the thought that if Enlightenment could be considered as “a post-traditional expression of monotheistic ideals” (Basit, p. 11) and “the Enlightenment offered a more rational and comprehensible description of human will, human freedom and human consciousness than was possible prior to it” (Basit, p. 25) What kept Providence waiting so long to actualize its ideals and that only through an instrument which ostensibly rejected “wisdom, illumination and the Divine”? Basit’s assertion, according to my lights, needs a strict qualifier here. I would read it as “the Enlightenment reasserted a more rational and comprehensible description of human will, human freedom and human consciousness than was possible in its milieu.” According to my lights, it would be more accurate to say that Enlightenment was a case similar to that of Islamic science which influenced the West and provided it with foundations for its scientific enterprise but had a different trajectory in the West and resulted in a very different ethos.[52] Deliberation on this aspect of the issue may give us insights about the two faces of the Enlightenment paradigm.

This entails that while correcting Enlightenment on its rejections and claims of autonomous reason and emphasizing the essential requirement of “vectored reason”, legitimate demands of reason should also be upheld. This does not mean― we add by way of a word of caution― that consciousness should be reduced to rationality alone i.e. discursive thought[53] or reason severed from its transcendent noetic roots,[54] since, to borrow the words of Iqbal, “The Total reality.....has other ways of invading our consciousness”[55]; there are “non-rational modes of consciousness”[56]; “there is the possibility of unknown levels of consciousness”[57] and “there are potential types of consciousness[58] lying close to our normal consciousness”.[59]

On the practical level we are dealing with a received body of thought and praxis which, despite the Postmodern critiques of its conceptual foundations, continues to hold its sway in many ways. By head count the West is still Modern. Not only that; Enlightenment, its “rejection of the notions of wisdom, illumination and the Divine” and claims of autonomous reason, have perpetuated, in “reified/dogmatic assertions” (Basit, p. 27). We are dealing, not with Voltaire but, to use John Ralston Saul’s term, with “Voltaire’s bastards” responsible for dissolution of human values and the rejections mentioned above.[60]

Karen Armstrong has a very pertinent remark in her chapter on “Enlightenment” in A History of God. Concerning Voltaire she observed:[61]

The philosophers of the Enlightenment did not reject the idea of God, however. They rejected the cruel God of the orthodox who threatened mankind with eternal fire. They rejected mysterious doctrines about him that were abhorrent to reason. But their belief in a Supreme Being remained intact. Voltaire built a chapel at Femey with the inscription ‘Deo Erexit Voltaire’ inscribed on the lintel and went so far as to suggest that if God had not existed it would have been necessary to invent him. In the Philosophical Dictionary, he had argued that faith in one god was more rational and natural to humanity than belief in numerous deities. Originally people living in isolated hamlets and communities had acknowledged that a single god had control of their destinies: polytheism was a later development. Science and rational philosophy both pointed to the existence of a Supreme Being: ‘What conclusion can we draw from all this?’ he asks at the end of his essay on ‘Atheism’ in the Dictionary. He replies:

That atheism is a monstrous evil in those who govern; and also in learned men even if their lives are innocent, because from their studies they can affect those who hold office; and that, even if it is not as baleful as fanaticism, it is nearly always fatal to virtue. Above all, let me add that there are fewer atheists today than there have ever been, since philosophers have perceived that there is no vegetative being without germ, no germ without design etc.[62]

Voltaire equated atheism with the superstition and fanaticism that the philosophers were so anxious to eradicate. His problem was not God but the doctrines about him which offended against the sacred standard of reason.

The question of reason in the Enlightenment paradigm and its subsequent reification could be read in a different light too. Schuon has remarked:[63]

In speaking of the great theophanies― Beyond-Being, Being and Divine Centre of Existence, or Self, Lord and Logos-Intellect― mention has also been made of the human intellect (this being referable to the Logos), which is ‘neither created nor uncreated’: it is thus possible, if desired, to distinguish a fourth theophany, namely, the Logos reflected in the microcosm; this is the same Divine Logos, but manifesting itself ‘inwardly’ rather than ‘outwardly’. If ‘no man cometh unto the Father but by Me’, this truth or this principle is equally applicable to the pure Intellect in ourselves: in the sapiential order― and it is only in this order that we may speak of Intellect or intellectu­ality without making implacable reservations― it is essential to submit all the powers of the soul to the pure Spirit, which is identified, but in a supra-formal and ontological manner, with the fundamental dogma of the Revelation.

Its degeneration is what is relevant to our present discussion. He says:[64]

When the Ancients saw wisdom and felicity in submission to reason, both human and cosmic, they were referring directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, to the one Intellect. The proof of this lies precisely in the fact that they linked reason to Universal Nature; in practice many committed the error of reducing this Nature to human reason,[65] after having reduced God to Nature. This double reduction is the very definition of Greco-Roman paganism, or of the Greco-Roman spirit in so far_, as it was pagan, and not Platonic; it may be added that only the Man-Logos or Revelation ‘resuscitates’ and gives full importance to reason,[66] and only an exact notion of the Absolutely Real and of its transcendence gives a meaning to Nature.

It is not difficult to see where does Enlightenment stand in this perspective and the way it has to be redeemed! “Beyond-Postmodernism” or “reversionary Postmodernism” would also like to see the Enlightenment paradigm humbled in many ways and it insists on “reason supplemented by vision.”[67] Its vision statement could be summarised in Griffin. David Ray Griffin concludes his statement, in Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology, with a prophetic call for a new, postmodern science that will support rather than oppose theology. It is a bracing summons, but it rides a crucial oversight. To the extent that science moves in the direction Griffin wants it to, it will relax its effort to control and will content itself with trying to describe, because most of the things Griffin wants it to add to its repertoire― the immaterial, qualities, final causes, freedom, downward and divine causation― cannot be manipulated. There is nothing wrong with describing, of course, or anything sacrosanct about control. Quite the contrary; the most valuable aspect of Heidegger’s entire corpus is his analysis of the way Western civilization has drifted toward calculative reason and the disaster portended by that drift. The question is not whether we should correct this drift, as Griffin and Basit are both convinced we should; the question concerns division of labour and what Confucius called “the rectification of names.” I see “reversionary Postmodernism” as still wedded to the modern conviction that science is the privileged mode of knowledge. If this conviction be true, it stands to reason that all knowing should enter its camp. And so “reversionary Postmodernism” would have it: “science . . . means knowledge,” he Griffin us, so “even the modern boundary between science and theology will ... be overcome.”[68] Basit parts company with the “reversionary Postmodernism” at this point as could be surmised from his argument developed in his fine comparative study of Ghazali and Ibn Rushd on the issue of reason and revelation.[69]

***

On the question of “interpretation of the mythic Fall from Eden” (Basit, p. 22) it is difficult to see eye to eye with Basit. I do not see the Fall in the same light as presented here and my interpretation of Iqbal also departs from that of Basit.  A few remarks would suffice at the moment. He says, “Fall…. also made human culture, goodness, and faith possible.” (Basit, p. 23) Goodness is a different affair; but it made human culture and faith possible; faith by way of a compensation not an improvement. Qur’anic narrative is very clear that the Fall was a part of the Divine scheme and outward revelation necessitated in the wake of the Fall was not adequated to a higher state of consciousness, as Basit gives us to understand, but rather an adjustment to the needs of a fallen humanity. When the “vision is face to face”[70] there is no question of faith, naẓve or otherwise. Expressions like “naivetḥ and lack of consciousness”, “instinctive appetite [and we can say naẓve faith]” hardly make any sense in that context. Moreover, Iqbal is not the first to have noted the two sides of the Fall. The “fortunate sin” (flex culpa) “brings with it the possibility of a qualitatively different human affirmation of the Divine” but not a qualitatively better affirmation. Insisting on that would tantamount to denying the state of perfection that all religious traditions have unanimously looked back to and ignoring every thing that is implied in the idea of the Centre and the Origin dominating all pre-Modern civilizations.

The formal world being made up of dualities, the Intellect, once it has been projected by virtue of its ‘fall’ into material and psychic substances, is split into two poles, the one intellectual and the other existen­tial; it is divided into intelligence and existence, into brain and body. In the Intellect, intelligence is existence, and inversely; distinction of aspects does not in itself imply a scission. Scission occurs only in the world of forms.[71]

A comparison of Iqbal’s narrative of the Fall with Milton[72] would yield interesting insights here but that would carry us too far afield. I am pressed to content myself with a quote which comes from a very different kind of book, The Secret of Shakespeare.[73]

Shakespeare, unlike Milton, has no illusions about the scope of reason. He knew that since reason is limited to this world it is powerless to ‘justify the ways of God’. Milton may have known this in theory, but in practice he was very much a son of the Renaissance, very deeply under the spell of humanism. Paradise Lost cannot be called an intellectual poem. Milton portrays the next world by sheer force of human imagina­tion. His God the Father, like Michelangelo’s, is fabricated in the image of man; and the purely logical arguments which he puts into the mouth of God to justify His ways inevitably fail to convince us. Now Shakespeare also seeks to justify the ways of God to man. That is, beyond doubt, the essence of his purpose in writing. But his justification is on an intellectual plane, where alone it is possible; and this brings us back to the theme of his plays, for the intellect is none other than the lost faculty of vision which is symbolized by the Holy Grail and by the Elixir of Life.

Here I would like to quote the leading Iqbal scholar of India, S. R. Farooqi, on the issue.  Farooqi says:[74]

Under no pressure to rationalize, Iqbal is not much preoccupied with the Fall. Even his famous observation in the “Reconstruction” that the fall is “man’s transition from simple consciousness to the first flash of self consciousness, a kind of waking from the dream nature with a throb of causality in one’s own being” leaves Satan entirely out of the reckoning and is borrowed from St. Augustine without much critical examination. Cleanth Brooks quotes from Augustine’s City of God and states that “self consciousness” was the “knowledge conferred by the act of plucking and eating the fated apple”. Iqbal makes use of this argument to further his thesis of self-awareness.

Looking at the issue of the Fall from a Sufi perspective illustrates how Islamic anthropology and psychology are rooted in the divine attributes. A primary goal of the Sufis, after all, is to assume the character traits of God, or to actualize the divine form in which human beings were created. All the discussion of the “stations” that must be traversed on the path to God refer to the character traits that need to be brought out from latency. The models of the perfected divine form are the prophets, and the father of all the prophets is Adam himself. All the perfections, virtuous qualities, and stations that have come to be realized by human beings were already present in Adam. Understanding Adam’s story allows us to see how the mutuality of divine and human love brings about the full flowering of human possibility and actualizes God’s goal in creating the universe.

Since God is infinite, the possible modes in which the knowledge of His names can be realized are also infinite. This means that it is not enough for the first human being to know God’s names. Each of his children must also know the names in his or her own unique way. Only then can every potential of the original human disposition come to be actualized. One implication of this is that hell demands human existence in the world. Hell is nothing but a domain that is ruled almost exclusively by the names of wrath and severity, just as paradise is ruled by the names of mercy and gentleness. The fact that God is both All‑merciful and Wrathful demands that both paradise and hell exist. Hence, Ahmad Sam‘ani (died 1140) tells us, God addressed Adam as follows when He wanted to explain to him why He had to send him down out of paradise:[75]

Within the pot of your existence are shining jewels and jet‑black stones. Hidden within the ocean of your makeup are pearls and potsherds. And as for Us, We have two houses: in one We spread out the dining‑cloth of good‑pleasure, entrusting it to [the angel] Ridwan. In the other We light up the fire of wrath, entrusting it to [the angel] Malik. If We were to let you stay in the Garden, Our attribute of severity would not be satisfied. So, leave this place and go down into the furnace of affliction and the crucible of distance. Then We will bring out into the open the deposits, artifacts, subtleties, and tasks that are concealed in your heart.

***

Basit concludes, “As a final word I’d like to explicitly articulate this logic.  The logic underpinning both of the approaches offered above with respect to the ultimate goal of Islam in its encounter with the modern West is not to critique-condemn-replace but to redeem-reform-embrace.”…… “In the final analysis if there is one unredeemable part of the Enlightenment tradition it is the fact that it allowed its critique of illumination, wisdom and the Divine turns into an outright rejection because of the reification of the critique…..  To adopt the position that the Enlightenment tradition has to be abandoned in its entirety in response to its shortcomings is to exhibit the worst characteristics of that which one is critiquing and rejecting. This basically means that one has adopted the same attitude towards the Enlightenment paradigm that the Enlightenment paradigm had adopted towards traditional religion and classical philosophy. This is not only a modernist move in the most negative sense, but also one that is unlikely to bear fruit. A more sane approach “albeit a more courageous, complex and nuanced one” and one that is built on scripturally (Qur’anically) reasoned grounds is redeem-reform-embrace― an approach that will lead to enhanced understanding on the part of a troubled and alienated self, as a result of it critical but empathetic study of the alien other. (Basit, p. 26-28) While agreeing with him “to redeem-reform-embrace” I would offer the following remarks as my conclusion.

The view advocated by Basit could be termed as a Postmodernism, which in contrast to its deconstructive predecessor,[76] be called constructive or revisionary. It seeks to overcome the Modern worldview not by eliminating the possibility of worldviews as such, but by constructing a Postmodern worldview through a revision of Modern premises and traditional concepts. This constructive or revisionary Postmodernism involves a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such but only that scientism in which the data of the modern natural sciences are alone allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.

The constructive activity of this type of postmodern thought is not limited to a revised worldview; it is equally concerned with a postmodern world that will support and be supported by the new worldview. A postmodern world will involve postmodern persons, with a postmodern spirituality, on the one hand, and a postmodern society, ultimately a postmodern global order, on the other. Going beyond the modern world will involve transcending its individualism, anthropocentrism, patriarchy, mechanization, economism, consumerism, nationalism, and militarism. Constructive postmodern thought provides support for the ecology, peace, feminist, and other emancipatory movements of our time, while stressing that the inclusive emancipation must be from Modernity itself. It however, by contrast with premodern, emphasizes that the modern world has produced unparalleled advances that must not be lost in a general revulsion against its negative features.[77]

This revisionary postmodernism is not only more adequate to our experience but also more genuinely Postmodern. It does not simply carry the premises of Modernity through to their logical conclusions, but criticizes and revises those premises. Through its return to organicism and its acceptance of nonsensory perception, it opens itself to the recovery of truths and values from various forms of Premodern thought and practice that had been dogmatically rejected by Modernity. This constructive, revisionary Postmodernism involves a creative synthesis of Modern and Premodern truths and values.

But to work out such a creative synthesis is a challenging task. I would conclude with three reminders. First, finding Enlightenment thought useful to Islamic thought does not mean following it blindly or swallowing it uncritically. Neither in intention nor in result are they Islamic thinkers. Second, the kind of appropriation Basit is proposing is possible just to the degree that various postmodern critical analyses are conceptually separable from the secular, atheistic contexts in which they are to be found. Finally, I hope that by now it is clear the very thin soup one finds in Postmodernism is not the only piety that one could call “postmodern”. Rather, some postmodern critiques open the door for a kind of Islamic thought that is robustly theistic and quite specifically Islamic. Perhaps one of the most important Islamic uses to which secular Enlightenment/Postmodernism can be put is to help contemporary Islamic thinkers sort the wheat from the tares in our own traditions. The Postmodern can lead back to the Premodern, or, more precisely, a critically appropriated Postmodernism can lead to a critical re-appropriation of Premodern resources.

***

The characteristic features of this epoch very definitely correspond with the indications supplied from time immemorial by the traditional doctrines when describing the cyclic period of which it forms a part; and this will at the same time serve to show that what appears as anomalous and disorderly from a certain point of view is nevertheless a necessary element in a wider order and an inevitable consequence of the laws governing the development of all manifestation. However, let it be said forthwith, this is not a reason for consenting to submit passively to the confusion and obscurity which seem momentarily to be triumphing, for in such a case there would be nothing else to do but to remain silent; on the contrary, it is a reason for striving to the utmost to prepare the way of escape out of this “dark age “, for there are many signs that its end is approaching, if it be not immediately at hand. This eventuality also is in accordance with order, since equilibrium is the result of the simultaneous action of two contrary tendencies; if one or the other could entirely cease to function, equilibrium would never be restored and the world itself would disappear; but such a supposition cannot possibly be realized, for the two terms of an opposition have no meaning apart from one another, and whatever the appearances may be, one can rest assured that all partial and transitory disequilibrium’s will finally contribute towards the realization of the total equilibrium itself.