puzzle on philosophy

[abudurrah]

for those who know so much about greek phiosophy and how to refute it:

After the muslims started adopting greek logic and philosophy, a lot of very knowledgable muslims started to also follow the opinion that the world was co- eternal with Allah i dont know if this was from aristotole or plato or one of the others.

Basically many muslims also started to believe that the world(matter) was eternam and was not created


my question is what how did the muslims fall for this, which famous scholar refuted, and what was the refutation

[Umm Ahmed]

I dont know the answer , but today I was listening to a talk by bilal phillips (which I haven't finnished yet ) on religion and science and he touches on these topics.

I'm sure the brothers know the answer.

[Abuz Zubair]

The Muslims fell for it because they saw the Chrisitans (Church Fathers) harmonising their faith with reason, which was essentially Greek Philosophy. Some Muslim intellectuals looked at the Quran and Hadeeth as just another religious text devoid of rational arguments, so in order to compete with the Christians and to debate them at their level, they, too, attempted to harmonise Islamic theology with Greek Philosophy, and hence, the rise of Ja'd b. Dirham, Jahm b. Safwan, Abul-Hudhayl al-'Allaf, Wasil b. 'Ata, etc.

During the time of Imam Ahmad, some of the Sunnis fell for the same trap and thought that the Sunnis must challenge the Mu'tazila intellectually, and thus, they became known as mutakallimo Ahl al-Sunnah, or the Sunni rationalists. These were people like Ibn Kullab, al-Muhasibi, and later al-Ash'ari.

However, they too, were rejected by the traditionalist movement, headed by Imam Ahmad, for using 'ilm al-kalam to defend Sunni views.

Then there was a group of 'Muslim' philosophers who were truly philosophers, unlike the people of kalam. Whilst the latter would practise kalam to defend what they consider to be Islamic belief, the 'Muslim' philosophers tried to be more objective and freed themselves and their thinking of all religious restrictions.

These were the philosophers who not only revived Aristotelian thought, but actually championed it over well-established Islamic theology.

Amongst other things, they believed that the creation has been existence with God since eternity, since God has eternally been the creator.

Amongst the scholars who refuted such philosophers was al-Ghazzali, but the one who refuted them correctly, without being affected or influenced by them at all, was Ibn Taymiyya.