الإسلام والغرب: نحو عالم أفضل

@ @ Civilization or Political: The Reality of the Present Tension between the Muslim World and the West

philosophical discourse, on the other hand, diminished the role played by the philosophers in the development of classical Islamic culture and civilization. 9 But only to a certain extent. Philosophy as such was never a pillar of Islamic thought; yet, philosophical and logical notions of Greek origins were integrated into the Islamic legal theory ( usul al-fiqh ), 10 Islamic theology ( kalam ), 11 Islamic Sufism ( tasawwuf ), 12 and even the study of Arabic language. During the eight hundred years after the early Islamic conquests, Muslims and Byzantines continued to confront each other, first in northern Syria and later, after the battle of Manzikert in the eleventh century, in Anatolia itself. But one should always remember that the periods of war between the two sides were much shorter than the periods of truce and peaceful coexistence. In times of peace, and even in some periods of war, Muslim-Byzantine frontiers were regularly crossed for all kinds of purposes and pursuits. The early development of an Islamic fiqh of war and peace is a testimony to the complexity of relations that linked the two sides. 13 Neither the Saljuq entry to Anatolia nor the Ottoman advances across the Bosporus affected this type of relationship, shaped by war, trade, and social and cultural exchange. 14 9 Oliver Leaman, A Brief Introduction to Islamic Philosophy (Oxford: Polity Press, 1999), 110-14; W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962), 147-48. 10 Wael Hallaq, A History of Islamic Legal Theories (Cambridge: Cambridhe University Press, 1997), 39-40. 11 Henry Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy , trans. L. Sherrard (London: Kegan Paul, 1993), 105-24. 12 Alexander Knysh, Islamic Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 169. 13 Khalid Abou El-Fadl, “Islamic Law and Muslim Minorities: The Juristic Discourse on Muslim Minorities from the Second/Eighth to the eleventh/Seventeenth Centuries ,” Islamic Law and Society , 1, 2 (1994): 146; Basheer M. Nafi, “Fatwa and War: On the Allegiance of the American Muslim Soldiers in the Aftermath of September 11,” Islamic Law and Society , 11,1 (2004): 83-84. 14 Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley, La.: University of California Press, 1995), 24, 39, 41, 140.

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