Voices of Islam (239 page)

5. Ibid., 267–68.

1. Refer to my ‘‘The Sublime Visions of Philosophy: Fundamental Ontology and the Imaginal World’’
   Microcosm and Macrocosm,
   ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, forthcoming).
   

2. Hadot,
   Philosophy as a Way of Life
   , 107.
   

3. I am indebted to Julia Annas’s ‘‘Ancient Ethics and Modern Morality,’’ in
   Philosophical Perspectives
   2 (1992): 119–136, for the distinction between agent- centered and act-centered perspectives.
   

4. Hadot,
   Philosophy as a Way of Life,
   269.
   

5. Richard Walzer,
   Greek into Arabic
   (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962), 213.
   

6. Oliver Leaman, ‘‘Orientalism and Islamic Philosophy,’’ in
   Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
   vol. 7 (London, U.K.: Routledge, 1998), 159.
   

12. Ibid., 158.

1. Another scholar of Islamic philosophy committed to this form of Orientalism is T. J. DeBoer. See his
   The History of Philosophy in Islam,
   trans. Edward R. Jones (New York: Dover, 1967), 28–30.
   

2. Leaman,
   Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
   158.
   

3. Leo Strauss,
   Persecution and the Art of Writing
   (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 19.
   

   Is ‘‘Islamic’’ Philosophy Islamic?
   39
   

4. Oliver Leaman, ‘‘Orientalism and Islamic Philosophy,’’ in
   History of Islamic Philosophy,
   Part II, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (London, U.K.: Routledge, 1996), 1145.
   

5. Strauss,
   Persecution and the Art of Writing
   , 19.
   

6. Hadot,
   Philosophy as a Way of Life
   , 107–108.
   

7. Muhammed Abed al-Jabri,
   Arab-Islamic Philosophy
   , trans. Aziz Abbassi (Austin, Texas: The Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 1999), 48.
   

20. Ibid., 49.

1. Oliver Leaman,
   An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy
   (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 16.
   

2. Leaman,
   Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
   1145.
   

3. This position echoes the approach that some Indian and Pakistani scholars of Islamic philosophy have adopted. They refer to their subject matter as ‘‘Muslim philosophy’’ since they claim it is cultivated by Muslims and is not Islamic; that is, it is not derived from Islamic sources. An example is M. M. Shariff’s
   A History of Muslim Philosophy
   (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1963–1966).
   

4. Oliver Leaman, ‘‘Concept of Philosophy in Islam,’’ in
   Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
   vol. 5 (London, U.K.: Routledge, 1998), 6.
   

5. Ibid., 7.
   

6. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ‘‘The Meaning and Concept of Philosophy in Islam,’’ in
   History of Islamic Philosophy,
   Part I, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (London, U.K.: Routledge, 1996), 24–25.
   

27. Ibid., 23.

1. Ibid.
   

2. Ibid., 22. Nasr admits that before Avicenna, the Ismaili philosophers had gone beyond the Peripatetics in combining philosophical theory and the practice of a virtuous life, see ibid., 23.
   

3. Quoted by Mehdi Aminrazavi, ‘‘The Logic of Orientals: Whose Logic and Which Orient?’’ in the
   Beacon of Knowledge,
   ed. Mohammad H. Faghfoory (Louisville, Kentucky: Fons Vitae, 2003), 48.
   

4. Dimitri Gutas
   Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition
   (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1988), 286–296, is perhaps a good antidote to Nasr’s postulate of a radical divide between Avicenna the Peripatetic and Avicenna the Oriental.
   

5. See for instance his alignment of ethics with the act-centered divine- command principles of the
   Shari‘a
   in ‘‘Islamic Philosophy—Reorientation or Re-understanding,’’ in
   Islamic Life and Thought
   (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1981), 155.
   

6. Prophetology assumes a central place in the discussion of Islamic philosophy through the efforts of Henry Corbin [see
   History of Islamic Philosophy,
   trans. Liadain Sherrard (London, U.K.: Kegan Paul, 1993), 21; see also Nasr’s ‘‘The Qur’an and Hadith as Source and Inspiration of Islamic Philosophy,’’ in
   History of Islamic Philosophy,
   Part I, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman (London, U.K.: Routledge, 1996), 28 and 38 ftn. 3].
   

   40
   Voices of Change
   

7. Aristotle, ‘‘De Anima,’’ in
   The Complete Works of Aristotle,
   ed. Jonathan Barnes, trans. W. D. Ross (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984), 430a 14–17.
   

35. Ibid., 430a 25.

1. Pierre Hadot,
   What is Ancient Philosophy?
   trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002), 79.
   

2. Herbert Davidson,
   Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averro¨es, on Intellect
   (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford university Press, 1992), 13–14.
   

3. Aristotle, ‘‘De Anima,’’ 427–429.
   

4. Mehdi Ha‘eri Yazdi,
   The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy
   

   (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1992), 9.
   

5. Plato, ‘‘Timaeus,’’ in
   The Collected Dialogues of Plato,
   ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962), 29e–30c.
   

6. Abu Nasr al-Farabi,
   On the Perfect State,
   trans. Richard Walzer (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1985), 406.
   

42. Ibid., 406.

1. Abu Nasr al-Farabi, ‘‘The Attainment of Happiness,’’ in
   Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook
   , eds. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1961), 80.
   

2. Al-Farabi,
   On the Perfect State,
   225. 45. Ibid., 247.
   

1. Avicenna, ‘‘
   Healing
   : Metaphysics X,’’ in
   Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook,
   110.
   

2. Ibid.
   

3. Avicenna, ‘‘On the Proof of Prophecies and the Interpretation of the Proph- ets’ Symbols and Metaphors,’’ in
   Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook,
   115.
   

4. Parviz Morewedge, ‘‘The Logic of Emanationism and Sufi in the Philosophy of Ibn Sina (Avicenna),’’
   Journal of the American Oriental Society
   92, no. 1 (1972): 7–8.
   

5. Ibid., 8.
   

6. Aristotle, ‘‘Nicomachean Ethics,’’ in
   The Complete Works of Aristotle,
   ed. Jonathan Barnes, trans. W. D. Ross (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984) 1140a25–28, 1143b21–25.
   

7. See especially his
   History of Islamic Philosophy
   .
   

8. Averroe¨s,
   Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory
   , trans. and ed. Charles E. Butterworth (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2001), 13.
   

54. Ibid., 16.

55. Ibid., 46.

56. Ibid., 20–21.

57. Ibid., 19.

58. Ibid., 26.

1. Ibid., 43–44 [The translation is modified at places in keeping with Averroe¨s,
   Tahafut al-Tahafut,
   trans. and ed. Simon Van Den Bergh (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1954), 539].
   

   Is ‘‘Islamic’’ Philosophy Islamic?
   41
   

2. S. H. Barani, trans. ‘‘Ibn Sina and Alberuni,’’ in
   Avicenna Commemoration Volume
   (Calcutta, Iran Society, 1956), 8 (with certain modifi by S. H. Nasr; refer to his ‘‘The Qur’an and
   Hadith
   as Source and Inspiration of Islamic Philosophy,’’ 38 ftn. 2). Mehdi Aminrazavi, in ‘‘The Logic of Orientals: Whose Logic and Which Orient?’’ 48–49, argues against the significance of asceticism in Avicenna’s personal life. I disagree with his analysis and refer the reader to Dimitri Gutas’ discussion of Avicenna’s practices in
   Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition,
   157–194.
   

3
‌

I
SLAM FOR THE
P
EOPLE
: M
USLIM
M
EN
’
S
V
OICES ON
R
ACE AND
E
THNICITY IN THE
A
MERICAN
U
MMA

•

Jamillah A. Karim

American Muslims inherit an Islamic cultural legacy colored by a vast array of ethnic groups. In Marshall G.S. Hodgson’s study of the Islamic cultural tra- dition, he writes that Islam ‘‘is unique among the religious traditions for the diversity of the peoples that have embraced it.’’
1
Similarly, Bernard Lewis writes, ‘‘Islam for the first time created a truly universal civilization, extend- ing from Southern Europe to Central Africa, from the Atlantic Ocean to India and China.’’ Within ‘‘a common religious culture,’’ Islam brought ‘‘peoples as diverse as the Chinese, the Indians, the people of the Middle East and North Africa, black Africans, and white Europeans.’’
2
Umar Faruq Abd-Allah likens the Islamic cultural legacy to ‘‘a brilliant peacock’s tail of unity in diversity,’’ extending ‘‘from the heart of China to the shores of the Atlantic.’’
3

As Islam expanded from shore to shore, every ethnic group added another layer to Islam’s vast cultural display, each playing its part in the making of a global Muslim community, or
Umma.
Ideally, the Umma represents an international community of Muslims united across race and ethnicity. New to the international Umma, the American Muslim community marks new possibilities within Islam’s 1,400-year-old legacy. Already, its most outstanding feature is its striking ethnic spectrum. The American Muslim population refl ts a multiethnic mosaic of African American, Anglo, and Latino converts alongside Arab, Asian, African, and European Muslim immi- grants. This distinctive display of ‘‘unity in diversity’’ within the American context makes it an
American Umma.
In this chapter, I present voices of Islam in America, the voices of American Muslims as they struggle to create an American Umma, standing as a model of racial harmony, in a racialized society.

44
Voices of Change

SYMBOLS OF UNITY: MALCOLM X AND THE HAJJ

How can we conceive of unity within Islam’s vast ethnic diversity? Scholars of Islam point to the Hajj as the most striking model. During the Hajj, Muslims from around the world arrive at a common destination, Mecca, orienting their hearts and prayers to a common house of worship, the Ka‘ba, also known as God’s house. In a remarkable way, Mecca, a city isolated between two valleys in an otherwise remote desert, is transformed into a microcosm of the world during the Hajj season. ‘‘The pilgrimage,’’ Lewis writes, brings about ‘‘a great meeting and mixing of peoples from Asia, Europe, and Africa.’’
4
Similarly, when Hodgson describes Muslims as a group ‘‘moved by a sense of universal Muslim solidarity,’’ he refers to ‘‘the great common pilgrimage to Mecca where all nations may meet.’’
5