Al Kindi was witness to the turbulence caused in the Islamic world by the introduction of Greek philosophy and its ultimate rejection in favor of empirical science. This phase of Islamic history needs to be clarified because it is often stated that the decay of science in Islamic civilization was due to the rejection of Greek rational thought. This was not the case. Science and civilization thrived in Muslim lands well after the rejection of Greek rationalism. Islamic civilization came in contact with Greek rationalism, found it wanting, and adopted the inductive method inherent in its own genius, as opposed to the deductive method of the Greeks.

It is appropriate in this paper to refer to the Mu’tazilite School of thought, and its counterpoint, the Asharite School. As the Muslims captured Syria, Egypt and North Africa, they became custodians of not just the people of those countries, but their ideas as well. Most of those lands had been under Eastern Roman or Byzantine control where Greek thought was dominant. Historically, the term “Greek thought” is applied to the collective wisdom and classical thinking of the people of the eastern Mediterranean, which includes a broad geographical arc extending from Athens in Greece through Anatolia, Syria, Egypt and Libya. Greek civilization extolled the nobility of man and placed human reason at the apex of creation. Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Euclid and Archimedes are some of the household names from the galaxy of thinkers produced by this civilization. The enduring achievement of Greek thought is that it perfected the rational process and left its lasting legacy for humankind.

The early Muslims not only adopted the rational approach but set out with enthusiasm to explain their own beliefs in rational terms. Questions relating to the nature of man, his relationship to creation, his obligations and responsibilities, as also the nature of Divine attributes were tackled. No Muslim scholar would embark on an intellectual effort unless his approach had a basis in the Qur’an. The rationalists saw a justification for their approach in Qur’anic verses (eg.:“Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth,…There are indeed signs for a people who have wisdom”, Qur’an: 2,164) and in the Sunnah of the Prophet.

Indeed, the Qur’an invites human reason to witness the majesty of creation and reflect on its meaning and understand the transcendence that suffuses it. The philosophical sciences that evolved as a result of this effort are referred to as Kalam (discourse, usually a religious discourse). Sometimes, Kalam is vaguely translated as theology, but theology as a science never caught on in Islamic learning as it did in Christianity, because the Muslims strove and succeeded in preserving the transcendence of God. Christianity adopted the position that God is knowable in person and is hence accessible to human perception. The Muslims, despite the philosophical challenges of the Greeks, succeeded in maintaining the position that God is knowable by His names, attributes and through the majesty of His creation, whereas His transcendence is hidden by His light.

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