| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Should religious intolerance be allowed? | |
| Posted by: | Fraser Pearce | |
| Date/Time: | 16/05/14 18:02:00 |
| Thanks Colin. Putting it simply (perhaps too simply) the early Islamic conquests exposed the faith to Hellenic philosophy and reason (Plato, Aristotle, etc).* This led to a new spirit of intellectual enquiry that found its apex in Córdoba. After a couple of centuries however, philosophy, volition, reason and natural laws fell out of favour - and were picked up by what we now call the West. In mainstream Islamic thinking, philosophy and reason were replaced by fatalism, determinism and dogma – with moral and intellectual truths refracted solely through the lens of religious revelation. In effect, the Mu’tazilite accent on reason lost out to the Ash’arite emphasis on revelation. Reason and unreason were eclipsed by halal and haram, right and wrong dictated purely by divine will and religious revelation rather than human hearts and minds. This is how Islamists justify their actions today. *The last Pope alluded to this in his Regensburg address, for which he received the customary death threats and kneejerk offence. Churches were bombed and burned, a nun working at a children’s hospital in Mogadishu was murdered after being shot in the back. |