MUST READ: ISLAMIC ENLIGHTENMENT

Islamic Enlightenment
by Ibn Warraq

What we need, of course, is not a Reformation in Islam but an Enlightenment. For me Reformation implies dishonest, piece-meal tinkering with this or that aspect of Islam which really leaves the whole unsavory edifice essentially intact. But we are not going to be able to do away with or extirpate the religion of one billion people, nor is it necessary. We need to bring about the secularization of the habits, attitudes and thoughts of Muslim people whether in the Islamic world or the West. We need to separate the mosque from the state but we need to achieve this formidable feat in the minds of Muslims, and not just politically. This secularization was accomplished slowly in Western civilization but the entire process was, perhaps, put into motion during the Greek Ionian Enlightenment during the fifth century Before Christ, but finally gathered crucial momentum during the early Enlightenment, that is the late 17th century, though we usually associate the Age of Reason, or L' Age des Lumières, Aufklarung, De Verlichting, with the Eighteenth Century. It would be entirely appropriate to mention and pay a tribute to the Dutch contribution to the European Enlightenment, a contribution often neglected but which has now been magnificently vindicated by Jonathan Israel in his truly great historical work Radical Enlightenment.[1] The latter work reassesses not only the equally neglected importance of Spinoza, the Dutch Jewish philosopher and Biblical Critic, to whom I shall return later, but also Van den Enden [1602-74], the Dutch radical thinker, and the Dutch Spinozists like Adriaen Koerbagh [1632-69], and his brother Johannes Koerbagh [d.1672], and Pieter Balling [d.1669], Petrus van Balen [1643-90], Balthasar Bekker [1634-98], Adriaen Beverland [1650-1716], Anthonie van Dale [1638- 1708]. Arnold Geulincx [1624-69], Willem Goeree [1635-1711], Frederik van Leenhof [1647-1713], and Lodewijk Meyer [1629-81], to name some of the most important thinkers. Then there is of course the role played by the free presses and bookshops of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other Dutch cities, which, furthermore, gave shelter to such pre-Enlightenment figures as Pierre Bayle, known as the Philosopher of Rotterdam. There was even a group of French-speaking revolutionary thinkers, inspired by Spinoza, particularly his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, based here, known as the Hague Coterie. As I said earlier, I shall return in a minute, to the significance of Spinoza's work for us today. Perhaps we can call the present group of speakers gathered here for the next three days as the New Hague Coterie.

How can we bring about an Enlightenment among Muslims? I shall now set forth a series of concrete, uncompromising proposals if we wish to bring about the hoped for Enlightenment. Wittgenstein once said that we cannot hope to solve any problems of philosophy unless we solve all of them. I think what he meant was that all these problems are interconnected, and we cannot solve them in isolation, one after and another; we must address them globally, comprehensively.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Islamic Enlightenment