Interviewer: Prof. Adnan Aslan (AA), Dean of Academics of Respect Graduate School
Interviewee: Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (SHN)
Keywords
Islamic philosophy, intellectual impoverishment, modern education, Wahhabism, traditional school, perennial philosophy, re-sacralization of culture, Islamic modernism, Muhammad Iqbal, Sufism, ṭarīqah, ḥaqīqa, Western influence, educational reform, Islamic thought.
1. The only living Muslim philosopher
AA: Dr. Nasr, thank you for accepting our invitation for this interview!
SHN: Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm! Dr. Aslan, you are a very old friend of mine. I am very pleased to be able to see you again and to talk to you for a few minutes.
AA: Thank you! So, my first question is about the intellectual impoverishment of the Muslim world. In the Muslim world, we see many scholars, many intellectuals, even Sufi masters, but not many philosophers. You are the only living Muslim philosopher.
SHN: Astaghfirullāh!
AA: That is true! Dr. Nasr, how do you explain this fact?
SHN: I am not the only philosopher, but yes there are few Muslim philosophers who are rooted in their own tradition. This fact can be explained fairly clearly. First of all, it is not as bad as modern Western and Westernized scholarship usually makes it out to be. Most still say that Islamic philosophy everything ended in the 12th or 13th century with Ibn Rushd (Averroes). After that, they claim, the Muslims had no philosophy. That is not true at all. For over 50 years, I have been writing about later Islamic philosophy. And in your own country, Turkey, there were a number of very interesting philosophers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. We did not have the same situation in the Arab world, though unfortunately, except for Iraq – which was close to Iran – the philosophical tradition declined and practically disappeared, not completely, but practically. So, when modernism came, there was very little truly living Islamic philosophical tradition, except in Iran, to even respond to modernist philosophies philosophically. Most people turned either to a kind of Salafī understanding, reverting to a simplistic interpretation of kalām (Islamic speculative theology), or to Sufism, but not in its intellectual aspect – rather, in its more emotional and practical aspect. This situation created a kind of vacuum, which, however, has been somewhat filled in recent years. I, myself, in my humble way, have trained 30 to 40 people since my exile in America – I trained them in Islamic thought, philosophy, and intellectual Sufism. They are all professors now, and they are changing the scene here. Gradually, things will change, but it will take time. The opposition of Wahhabism to philosophical thinking – yes, opposition to thinking itself! – has been a major obstacle. Thinking philosophically is truly an anathema in much of the Islamic world!
AA: That is true.
SHN: If oil had not been discovered in the deserts of Arabia, there would be a lot more intellectual activity in the Islamic world today.
AA: Why do you see such a correlation?
SHN: Because oil permitted the Saudi government to spread Wahhabism, which is highly anti-philosophical and anti-intellectual.
AA: That is true. Okay, so how about the role of modern education in the Islamic world in this process?
SHN: That is precisely the problem. The people we have running Islamic society today were students 10 or 20 years ago, and now they are engaged in various activities across the Islamic world. The traditional medical system continued in some places, but except for Iran and a few areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan, al-ʿulūm al-ʿaqlīyah (intellectual Islamic sciences) were not taught much in the Islamic world. Al-ʿulūm al-naqlīyah (transmitted sciences) were, however, taught. So, madrasahs produced mullās who knew fiqh (Islamic Law) and, al-ḥamdu li’Llāh, some Ḥadīths (prophetic traditions) and the Qurʾān, but not the intellectual aspect of Islam that was taught in madrasahs 500 years ago. That part was either shortened or forgotten, unfortunately. As a result, these more recent religious schools could not produce people who could actually respond to the challenges that the modern world posed for Islam.
In response, Islamic governments tried to create modern schools to address modern problems. Not all of them had bad intentions; they believed that education was the key. But what kind of education? Instead of continuing and expanding our own traditional educational system while integrating some root Islamic subjects as the basis of the curriculum, they merely copied Western models. Iran copied France; India and Pakistan copied England; your country, Turkey, copied both Germany and France. So, we ended up creating, with our own hands, an educational system that was not an authentic Islamic system but rather a second-rate Western model. This is a disease that has affected almost the entire Muslim world, except countries that were so far away, such as Mauritania, which did not have any universities to begin with. However, all the way from Morocco to Malaysia and every land in between, [there was] the same phenomena.
That said, I must add that there are signs of hope. Besides being a humble scholar, I am also an educator. I have been a dean and a university president in Iran and have held high administrative positions, influencing curricula and trying to reintegrate Islamic subjects into the humanities. This should be done in the natural sciences as well, but that is more difficult. At the very least, it must be done for the humanities. Our students in the humanities, law, and social sciences should learn everything Western as well as Eastern through the lens of their own tradition. At Tehran University, I exerted some influence in this domain. When I became president of Aryamehr University (the Royal University of Iran), the first thing I did was establish a department of philosophy of science – but our philosophy of science, not merely what positivism dictates in London or New York. That initiative has fortunately flourished. Now, they have a PhD program in this field, which originally started as an MA. Al-ḥamdu li’Llāh, this is a good sign.
There is now growing awareness of these issues in Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other places including Turkey, or what we in the Islamic world call Türkiye. However, many bureaucrats and government officials, lazy people who have been accustomed to imitation, resist intellectual creativity. They do not want people to think that they have no creativity, and they drag matters along. In the same way that some strong leader comes in the country and forces the people to build roads and asphalt them such that, within two years, all the roads are asphalted, we need some strong leader who has so much interest in an Islamic educational system that he will press to achieve the goal of creating one. As he would press for the solution of economic problems or for military or social power, he would need to press for that authentic Islamic education as well, trying to put the energy of the country not into “modernizing” education, since the “modern” world has lost its way itself, and could ask what educational philosophy of the West one should adopt. There are all kinds of contending, conflicting education philosophies right here in Washington where we sit, and even in Europe there is not one model that you can follow.
Instead, we must revive our own tradition of taʿlīm (teaching) and tarbiyah (training), which always included the education of the soul and akhlāq (ethics). Today most of our ʿulamāʾ – our turbaned scholars – learn Arabic, fiqh, and ḥadīth, and so on and so forth. However, they do not learn ethics! Ethics is not taught in many madrasahs. There are ethical and good people, al-ḥamdu li’Llāh everywhere, but often their knowledge of Islam is not always deeply integrated with their actions as an ethical sense. This separation should never have occurred and must be overcome.
2. Is Perennialism really successful?
AA: My second question, Dr. Nasr, is about the Traditionalist School or the School of Perennial Philosophy. You are one of its leading figures, and one of its key projects is the re-sacralization of culture, or the rediscovery of tradition as they understood it. However, it seems – at least to me – that this effort has not been entirely successful. Professor Nasr, what would be the reason for that?
SHN: This undertaking was never meant to be a short-term project. If you compare today with 50 or 70 years ago, you will see significant progress in this domain. The deeper understanding of other religions in the West is far more widespread today than it was then.
AA: Is that due to the influence of the Traditionalist School?
SHN: To a large extent. We do not claim all credit, but this school represents the most profound critique of modernism and modern philosophy, which is itself in crisis. The deepest criticisms come from the traditionalist school, and what it has revived are traditional philosophies of various traditions. The fact is that there is more interest in these issues today, even among ordinary philosophies or philosophers, whether they be Muslim, Christian, agnostic, or atheist, and so on. A number of traditional philosophies are engaged in the revival of philosophy in non-Western cultures, because we have the tradition of dealing with traditional philosophy or the perennial philosophical school globally. So, I am not as hopeless as you seem to sound. Yes, there are some problems, but this project is not a short-term one anyway.
AA: However, in academia, it is not received very well.
SHN: Yes and no. It is better received in America than in Europe. Academia in Europe is much more closed intellectually than here. But here, I have had no trouble with a single one of my students who has done an M.A. or a Ph.D. with me in Islamic thought and more specifically in Islamic philosophy and Sufism in finding a university job. They are all professors now.
AA: Excellent!
SHN: You know, I have a former student, a person of Egyptian origin, who was brought up in this country. He is now professor at Xavier University, which is a Catholic university. All the time, he is defending traditional Catholicism against modern deviations. And some professors said, “You are the most Catholic professor amongst us!” But he is the only Muslim in the department, a very good and devout Muslim, but we also play that role, yes, at a time of crisis of Catholicism and Protestantism, both of which are weakening. You see this dilution, this surrendering to transient trends all the time. The fact is that we do not surrender to every error that comes out of the closet or comes into the room. We try to stand up for the defense of truth. It is thus a support for many people who are not, strictly speaking, either Muslims or traditionalists but are influenced by it. I look at the number of traditional books and articles that are coming out – it is really a good sign.
AA:How about the Muslim world, Professor?
SHN: You should know that better than me. But anyway, of course, I have been in exile from Iran for about forty years, though I have traveled very regularly every year for twenty-five years to Egypt, but now that Sissi has come to power, I do not want to go on traveling there. Anyway, I am too old to travel long distances. Of course, I also used to come to your country, Turkey, where I first met you. I continue to go there often. There are certain Islamic countries, including Turkey and Iran, which, in fact, produce the most translations of my works, much more than the Arab world. They are much more active intellectually than many Arab countries. There are many interesting ongoing intellectual trends in these two countries. Of course, there are also some unfortunate things, like what happened to the Gülen movement and its fight against the government, squandering so much of the Turkish people’s energy – intellectually, financially, and so forth.
Yes, those issues exist, but nevertheless, there is an intellectual alertness, an awakening in Turkey and Iran that is stronger than in much of the Arab world, though not totally absent there either. And interest in our perspective grows more and more. In the 1960s, when I was teaching in Beirut for one year, three or four of my books were translated into Arabic. Then they all went out of print for years. But just in the last two or three years, seven of my books have been translated and published in Cairo in Arabic and, of course, many in your country. Also, my works are very widely received in Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent. In every country where these unfortunate episodes are going on, there is also a gradually growing core – people who are devout Muslims, intellectually alert, open to the challenges of the West, and well-acquainted with the West, people whom we need. We need occidentalists, and also orientalists who know the Orient but not from the Western point of view. I have always said that we have dire need for such people. That is now happening to some extent, but there are many impediments, both from the outside – the West does not want that to happen, so the countries under Western influence try to diminish it – as well as from within the Islamic world, where many rulers, in their autocratic ways, fear some of the intellectuals who are independent and authentic in their pursuits. All of these elements are true. Nevertheless, the situation now, compared to fifty years ago, is much better in this regard.
3. On Islamic modernism
AA: My third question is about Islamic modernism. Muḥammad Iqbāl wrote his book The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam in 1934, a long time ago. He and others claimed that through the reconstruction of the Muslim mentality, they would reconstruct and revive the entire Muslim world. But it did not work out that way. Why?
SHN: First of all, because of Iqbāl himself. I respect him as a good poet, especially in the Persian language, but I do not have much respect for his philosophy. There is too much modern Western philosophical influence in it, with no grounding in Islamic philosophy. Although he wrote The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, it was entirely based on Western sources. In it he said nothing about later Islamic philosophy, for example, the great figure of Mullā Ṣadrā. He did not even know about such figures. But anyway, he looked at the situation through the lens of someone trained in Britain, with a British outlook on Islam – besides, of course, being a Muslim, an important Islamic thinker, and trying to gain independence for Muslim India. From the Islamic point of view he did not have the depth of knowledge to engage deeply with some of the philosophical issues involved. When the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies was inaugurated some two decades ago, they asked me to give the inaugural lectures, and I delivered four talks titled The Revival of Islamic Thought, which were in a sense a response to Iqbāl. They are in a drawer in my house. I have not as yet published them.
AA: You need to publish them!
SHN: In shāʾ Allāh! That is a very important issue. There is some disappointment for me in the case of Pakistan. Many people from that country are my good friends, but they put Iqbāl on a pedestal in the same way that Turkey puts Atatürk on a pedestal. As a general Muṣṭafā Kamāl Pāshā was a great figure and did much to save his country. But Turkey cannot be based solely for the next thousand years on what Atatürk said in 1924, obviously. In Pakistan, I said jokingly, “If you look at it, everything imaginable about Iqbāl has been used or written – even Iqbal and How to Make a Good Kabab.” They do not go beyond him. Yes, he is an important historical figure. However, as time passes, we need to face new issues, and Iqbāl, in some matters, lacked sufficient depth of knowledge of certain fields of even his own day.
AA: What about general Islamic modernism? They tried to integrate Islam within the modern project.
SHN: What I have been saying for many years is that since the time of Iqbāl, modernism itself has been dying in the West itself. There was no postmodernism in Iqbāl’s time, and now there is even post-postmodernism. Along the way, we have had figures such as Derrida and the philosophical post-modern enterprise they have introduced. Iqbāl did not have to face them or logical positivism. But we do. So I have said, “We need to continue what Iqbāl suggested about not imitating.” I once gave a lecture to 400 people in Pakistan on Iqbāl’s Day. I said, “If you admire Iqbāl, you should follow his advice and not imitate – even him! You need to have creativity.” What we truly need everywhere in the Islamic world is ijtihād in a deeper sense than is commonly discussed. However, it must not stem from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West, always feeling weaker and merely trying to emulate them. No. Let us be ourselves in an authentic way. We must be strong enough to maintain our own identity. We cannot abandon one of the greatest civilizations the world has produced. Yes, it has weakened, but it has not died out – otherwise, we would not be here discussing it. It has weakened, and we need to strengthen it. We need to apply its own principles to the religious and cultural situations we face.
AA: The renowned scholar Said Nursi from Turkey said that our time is not the time of ṭarīqah (a Sufi order) but that of ḥaqīqah (reality). This seems to be a kind of criticism of taṣawwuf, or Sufism. Do you agree?
SHN: Not at all – absolutely not! There is no way to reach the ḥaqīqah without the ṭarīqah. Remember, in Islam there exists a three-stage hierarchy: the Sharīʿah, the Ṭarīqah, and the Ḥaqīqah. In the Persian, Turkish, and Arabic-speaking worlds – and indeed, throughout the Islamic world – this principle has been and remains of central importance. The Sharīʿah is a prerequisite for following the Ṭarīqah, just as the Ṭarīqah is a necessary step before reaching the Ḥaqīqah in its absolute, spiritual sense. Otherwise, if by ḥaqīqah one means simply for example that water is wet, then of course ḥaqīqah is related neither to the Sharīʿah or the Ṭarīqah. But in the deeper sense, Ḥaqīqah is that the ultimate Truth that belongs to God, for God is al-Ḥaqq. At the level of the Sharīʿah, there is already a reflection of God’s reality. This is why good Muslims who follow Islam are promised paradise. However, the Ṭarīqah is a means of reaching God – hence its very name, meaning “path” to Allah. And God is the Truth, Ḥaqīqah. So, if Said Nursi seeks to reach God without a road, I cannot agree with him.
AA: Yes, that is what he means, actually. In modern times, the Ṭarīqah is regarded as a personal path of spiritual development.
SHN: Not by everyone.
AA: It is a matter of personal spirituality. It does not provide an alternative to common social and intellectual challenges. It does not offer an alternative system to modernity. It is merely an individual path of spiritual refinement. People may develop themselves, but they cannot say something about modernity.
SHN: That is not true. Look at the scholars who have written such significant works concerning the criticism of modernism – figures such as Guénon, Schuon and Lings, who were all Sufis. Consider what they have contributed. René Guénon was a member of the Shādhiliyyah Order and lived his life and died as a Sufi as did Schuon, Lings and Burckhardt. In Iran, there are Sufis who do not engage with the West and therefore do not write about it. But those who do have produced important works on the curse of modernism.
I have been placed in this position – by the hands of destiny – where I have come to know both the Islamic tradition and the West at the highest level. By God’s grace, I have been given the ability to critique the modern West from our perspective, and I am not the only one. There are other significant critics as well. Without a critique of the West, we cannot reestablish the authenticity and strength of Islam in the contemporary world where modernism has spread nearly everywhere.
AA: That is very important. Yes, without a critique of the West… So, what should be the method of such criticism?
SHN: Look at my book Islam and the Plight of Modern Man. The approach must be to accept our own tradition as truth and to view the West from that standpoint – rather than looking at ourselves through the lens of the West, which is what most modern Muslim thinkers do. That is the fundamental problem.
4. Why is not Perennialism popular enough?
AA: Yes, that is the main issue. My last question is again about the traditionalist school of thought. I see the traditionalist school as an alternative – perhaps the only alternative – to modern culture, mentality, and education. It is unique in this regard. Why is it so unique? And secondly, why has this dimension of the traditionalist school not been more widely recognized and applied?
SHN: The first point to note is that the establishment of the traditionalist school is truly a providential event. It has come about by God’s grace. It emerged as an alternative precisely so that people might perceive the errors of the West and turn to the truths that modernism has sought to cast aside and reject. When Guénon wrote The Crisis of the Modern World and East and West they marked an opening to tradition while unveiling the errors of modernism. Reading them was almost like a revelation to me as a young man in college. Through them, I grasped how to perceive the West from the standpoint of tradition. But these works along with his Reign of Quantity were not meant for everyone. They were intended for authentic intellectuals, who would, in turn, influence a larger audience. It is not that the traditionalist school has been ineffective – on the contrary, it has been influential in certain circles. However, it has not been widely popularized. Consider figures such as Huston Smith, for example. He was a traditionalist, a member of a ṭarīqah, and a Muslim. He collaborated with me on several occasions. His book The World’s Religions (formerly The Religions of Man) sold over two million copies – making it one of the best-selling books on religion in the English language. My own writings are widely available online and elsewhere. The works of Frithjof Schuon are, however, rather challenging to read, and thus not meant for everyone, but they are like a mountain spring: not everyone can reach them directly, yet their waters flow down to nourish others.
I believe that the traditionalist school has succeeded far more than you assume. Look at your own country Turkey. I know that many of my books in Turkish have gone through multiple printings and have circulated widely for over 40 years. God knows how many thousands of copies have been published. Many among the Turkish intelligentsia have read them – not only strict traditionalists or devout Muslims. Even some of those who may not actively practice Islam have had their worldview reshaped by them. The modern world is such that, on the one hand, modernism is trying to destroy everything that is not modern, because modernism is absolutist. It accuses religion of being absolutist, yet modernism itself is far more so. It proclaims, “Only modernism, or nothing!” in an absolute sense. On the other hand, because modernism is internally fractured, alternative perspectives continue to emerge. And among these alternative intellectual movements, tradition holds a central place. For instance, one of my prominent students in Indonesia – a prominent writer – gives weekly lectures on perennial philosophy. Hundreds of people attend them, including some other high-ranking government officials.
AA: That is very impressive.
SHN: Yes, exactly. And these kinds of developments continue to unfold. Of course, even within the Islamic world, there are governments that are unhappy with this intellectual movement. Why else would you and I be sitting here rather than elsewhere? But despite all of this, ideas travel even if you and I are just sitting here. You can publish something today, and within minutes, it will spread across Turkey. So, I remain hopeful. I am also very glad that you are here and doing good work. It has been a pleasure to spend this time with you.
AA: Thank you so much professor Nasr!
