As you know, or you may not know but you should know, that in Iran today the [Hellenic] philosophical tradition is alive and well. But in a peculiar form that it developed within Islamic civilization in which rationalist and philosophical disciplines were wedded to a deep form of spiritual practice and which I mentioned before is Hekima or [Afei]. People like Ayatollah Khamenei for example studied Aristotle and wrote commentaries on works by Aristotle. He was familiar with western thought. Most well educated Iranian religious figures, Mullahs in the Shiite tradition have a grounding in western philosophical form because they are familiar with the great figures of philosophical Hellenic tradition including [Patinas] and there is figures that bridge the world of late antiquity with early Islamic developments. However Arab Islam seems to have had a vacuum or a blank in this respect. And there was a development after the era of Ibran Haldun 13th century or 14th century until current times, where especially the Sunni world and the Arab Sunni consciousness turned its back on that philosophical and rational tradition and came to identify it with heretical tendencies which were peculiarly Iranian and/or Shiite. Unfortunately this misperception and this antagonism within Islam has been revived recently due to sectarian bloodshed and the pronounced re-appearance of fanatical Sunni jihadist mindset which identifies everything Shiite as being reprehensible and one of the chief features of Shiite intellectual and cultural activity is this obsession and concern with a form of rational spirituality. I call it trans-rational spirituality because it has a room for the [Hellenic] rational and philosophical experience but it puts it in a certain domain where it can be transcendent and it’s not understood to be the end of, or that concussion of the human intellectual and perceiving knowing enterprise. There is something beyond reason. It’s the spiritual perception which is built on a rational and philosophical basis, but which transcends reason. And this is something perhaps that the west has forgotten. Although you can go back to intellectual and rational figures in western tradition where this perception was of course understood and cultivated by Sir Elkhart as a good example. Even people like Aquinas and the scholastics hade an opening to that dimension. Beyond the strictly mentation aspect, there is a sort of knowetic perceiving knowing grasping aspect which is the culmination of what we call [IB] which is a higher form of rational enterprising which is a visionary form and has a spiritual dimension.

[Hazeli] himself was quite open to that and the Islamic tradition it’s a culmination of the Ibn Arabi the great Andalucía Sufi master along with Ibin Sina the great Iranian philosophical genius and people like Mullah Sadra, 17th Century Iranian [IB] sage who combines these trends and this tradition is still alive and cultivated in certain parts of the Iranian speaking world, although it is not necessarily very well known outside of those areas. And as I said before now it’s become to see as problematic by large segments of the non-Iranian and non-Shiite world, which is a problem of intra-Muslim dynamics which must be paid attention to. I always like to tell my friends that Iranian Mullahs would understand more about western thought and culture because they share certain bases, the [Hellenic] philosophical and rational tradition; which is part of their tradition as well. Whereas Sunni jihadists don’t have much in common with Western thought except perhaps their engineering and scientific training which makes them to be actually more modern than we understand or accept and a little bit more of anarchists. So that their jihadist ideology is actually a form of western thought to some extent and is ultimately exercising a very secularizing effect among many Muslims. But this gets into other things that are maybe a little bit too much to drag into the conversation here. I always try to keep the motto and the advice of the prophet Mohammed, may God [realm] him in glory and give him peace who said speak to people according to the measure of their understanding.

Interviewer: You touched upon some of the interactions between various scholars and certain people in positions of political power. I would like in some way if you would wish to re-visit this discussion of the higher the existence of for example in Latin Christendom of a clerical hierarchy that for example one time Aquinas was using the works of [IB] and was commenting on them well, using the works of the commentator and then his use of the philosopher Aristotle. Aquinas was often marginalized in his own even though today the one Way Catholic church and someway follows it to a mistake method, at his own time it was not very accepted. If you look throughout history the very concept of the rule of law that European and Euro-Americans like to put forth as an ideal to which one society should live up, this in itself was formed in response to the abuses found European society of both the monarchy as well as the Ecclesiastical hierarchies in which there were those who were above the law. So now the law is above all in theory. Whereas in Islam if like the constant Sharia which is well worn path to a watering hole in some ways is closer akin to the VERITAS of the gospel, the Latin translation of the gospel in which Jesus is the way the truth and the life. In this sense Sharia and its basic concept, even [Tania] even has this nice saying about how Sharia some people get confused and think Sharia is that which a judge or Kadhi rules. No if the Kadhi can only rule as well his intellect discerns and based on the evidence put before him. So if somebody is bringing evidence to him that is wrong but argues it well the Kadhi might rule in favor of the wrong evidence. However in the end it’s, God is the judge. In a Fatwā today when classically whenever a Fatwā is issued it’s legal opinion. And at the end its [IB] Allah, that the knowledge is with God. So this concept and if you think in the Islamic traditions historically yes you had systems of power and authority but it was up to the individual to go to the scholar he or she trusted in order to get an opinion on how he should live his life. Of course if you disturb the pubic order you can have like external sanctions coming in. The extent to which this development for rationality and its acceptance or non acceptance in different traditions, to what extent might it have to do with the political powers that are in place so just political situations

karim: According to law if you want to look historically at the development of Islamic intellectual disciplines you can find many points relevant to your question. But I don’t have the time to get into it. As you know the [IB] leaves the first major dynasty in Islam after the first successors to the prophet enforced a kind of orthodox which included not questioning obedience. People who exercised too much intellectual questioning were punished, whipped, beaten or killed. They enforced their unquestioning obedience in a harsh way. But the [IB] shift more east Baghdad; Islam wasn’t going to become an eastern Mediterranean culture force. It was going to become an Asian empire, an Asian civilization. That’s a very important shift by they way. Then there was a larger inclusion of non Arab people into the intellectual mix. You’ve seen most of the great intellectuals in the first three or four centuries when non-Arabs the pure Arab scholars were unusual. They would note: he was a pure Arab, wow, one of the few like even [IB] because most of them were not they were Persian, Armenian, Amharic, Syriac, Turkish, Ethiopian. All the different races of the Islamic civilization which found a meritocracy through knowledge, the road to equality was through knowledge and so the build up of an informal class of scholar experts. You know we don’t have in Islam we don’t have an Ecclesiastical hierarchy and even the, trying to point to the Shiite hierarchy and Catholic Churches, there’s a lot of people who make that parallel but it’s not quite the best model. The point being that there is a kind of democracy of knowledge at least historically there was and this was one for the strengths that the Muslim, the social and intellectual system could offer people.