Enlightenment and its impact on Muslim thought
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Date
2013
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Publisher
University of Management and Technology
Abstract
The Enlightenment, an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th century made the
Christian Europe go through a prolonged period of critical examination of the validity of its
superstitious beliefs and spiritual vision. Challenging the blind following of both the
monarchs and church's power and authority it promoted independent thinking and made
science and reason the basis of the human society. Introduced into the Islamic world as a
movement of tolerance, and free will after Napoleon's expedition to Egypt (1798) it
succeeded in making the Muslims skeptical about their religion, civilization and thought. In
fact Islam, a very progressive religion of peace and broadmindedness has an extremely
sophisticated inbuilt system of keeping abreast with the evolutionary changes and urges
every Muslim to use his intellectual powers, free thinking contemplation and reflection
within the prescribed limits. Unlike Christianity there is absolutely no conflict between
religion, science and research in the tenets of Islam and its traditional worldview. According
to the divine teachings of Islam, education, the enlightenment and attainment of spiritual
knowledge or insight is compulsory which frees man from a closed mind and all kinds of
dogmas, doctrines and ideologies. This study looks for the Islamic roots of the Enlightenment
in addition to tracing its effects on the Muslim thought. The findings of the study indicate
that the colonizers of the Enlightenment harnessed Muslims and their resources for their self
interests and capitalist expansion and imposed a colonist mindset among the intellectuals and
scholars of the era. Despotism, fanaticism, economic poverty, under-development, political
social and economic suppression are the by-products of the Enlightenment in the Islamic
countries.
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Keywords
M.Phil Thesis, Islamic Thought, Spiritual Vision