 So, however, they were all scholars of a specific discipline, in an orderly or a scholar of many disciplines. So, please cultivate their friendship, please get to know them, and have a little small groups of like-minded people who similarly would get to know, want to know something about these great people in the past. Let's get formally started. In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Is a self-luminescent word. It was sent as the final guidance to humankind. And the Prophet built a civilization that for a thousand years was the beacon of light to the entire world. Not only did the civilization transform Arabia and converted what was in backwaters of history. The Arabs were not known for anything except Jahlia before Islam. Converted this backwaters of history into the shining light for all civilizations. And for a long time, those who followed the Prophet's law of Islam carried forward his message imbibe and inculcated the Quran in its true, galactic way, open way, and built the civilization. Then things began to happen. Something happened. Some things began to happen. Last week in our introduction, I gave you some idea of the inventions that the Muslims made in the classical times and in the recent times. All the way from rocket science in the 18th century and its connection to the star-spangled matter, the American National Anthem, to robotics and coffee. The one invention that our discovery that we all love. Now, what I'm going to do today by way of a summary of what we were talking about. We left last week with the revolution of the Mu'tazilites, the philosophers. And I'll try to bring down the discussion so that in the recording and those young people who listen to it are able to understand it and ask themselves and perhaps make contributions to the evolution of thought in Islam and understand why it was that science and civilization shrank. So what we'll do is to start with the Mu'tazilite revolution and then go on to the next intellectual step and then we'll take a look at the social and political landscape because as I submitted last week, if you wish to understand history, it is all there in the Quran. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Wa ala asf, innalli insana la fi khusf. illa alladhi na'a manu wa ala saliha wa tawasaw bil haqq, wa tawasaw bil saqq. So as you listen to the presentation, the submission today, I ask you to just focus on two of those words, wa tawasaw bil haqq. Tawasaw meaning working together. Haqq, very big word, very comprehensive word. Insha'Allah on Friday the whole Bible will be about the word haqq, which means truth, justice, rights and responsibilities. All of them are in the word of haqq and meant much more. So let's ask ourselves, how did the Muslims work together to discover the truth? One of the definitions of science is that it is the discovery of the truth. How did the Muslims work together to establish justice? Or did they not even work together? Why did they come apart? It is important to know that because unless you have peace, unless people work together, it is not possible to have science. How can a man who is worried about, or how can a lady who is worried about the safety of the family think about science? If you are worried about where the next meal is going to come from, if you are worried about a roof on your head, obviously it's not possible for you to think about science, about the higher things of life. How did the Muslims work together, or did they not work together at all? That's what we should be looking for. The first anti-Mutazzala movement. See, Mutazzala is for philosophers. And for the young people, I'll tell you what philosophy is and what the limits of philosophy are. Because this is not a high level discussion. This is a discussion for everyone. Philosophy is a method of discovering the truth. It is in a sense the basis of science and civilization. However, it's also predicated upon certain assumptions. Depends upon whose philosophy we are talking about. The thing to do with the study in a science, any philosophy, is to ask ourselves, what are the assumptions upon which this science is based? If you don't know the assumptions, you'll make mistakes. You'll make errors. For instance, last week we talked very briefly about the theory of evolution. A very powerful theory. So powerful that it has caught the imagination of the world. But the question is, what are the assumptions that underlie the theory of evolution? If you know the assumptions, you'll know its limits. Secondly, let me use the word science. Please don't always associate that with natural science. The study of Qur'an is also a science, the Qur'anic sciences. Science is an approach, a methodology, a process leading to a certain conclusion. There is a certain methodology to study the Qur'an. There is a certain methodology to study the hadith. There are methodologies for each one of the disciplines. And when we engage in a discussion with other civilizations or amongst ourselves, we must prepare ourselves by understanding the assumptions, the limits of what it is that we are talking about. So when we say science somehow did not flourish in the Islamic world, we must always be cognizant of the meaning of what was said. Meaning, they are saying that natural sciences somehow did not flourish in the Islamic world. The Mutanzalites were Muslims. They were good Muslims. They were bell-meaning Muslims. As the works of the Greeks and the Indians and the Chinese and the Persians, they were translated in Baghdad. The Muslims, as did the Christians in the previous centuries, were faced with the challenge of explaining their beliefs rationally. There are people even to this day who think that reason can understand anything. Not asking themselves what are the limits of reason. Just about 15 years ago, one of the Popes made this statement that Islam did not value reason. I responded to it and it was published in some of the magazines. We need to understand what reason is and what are the limits of reason. Just to sort of illustrate my observation, what is the reason to love? Is there a reason to love? Has anyone come up with a rational explanation for love? What is the reason to believe? What do you mean? What is the reason to climb the Himalaya mountains? It is there, poor mountains, making its own business. Why do the human beings climb the Himalaya mountains? Reason has its limits. It is a very noble faculty. Because the mind next to the heart is the most noble creation of Allah SWT. It is so noble that it reach and encompasses all of the creative world. It is a very noble faculty. But it also has limits. It is limited by understanding of time. And I pointed that out the last time. One of the tripping points in philosophy relates to what time is. Does anyone know time? No. Not a philosopher, not a scientist, not even the prophets understood what time is. When the people of Makkah used to ask for Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, when is the day of judgment, the Prophet always said, the knowledge of that is only with Allah SWT. I do not have that knowledge. Time is a mystery within a riddle, within an enigma. It is a gift from Allah SWT. It is a gift so that through it, with it, the will of Allah SWT finds its fulfillment. It is given to us as His Khalifa on earth, so that the sharia of Allah SWT finds its fulfillment. So that we can discharge our destiny. That is a philosophical statement. So these Mu'tazilites were good Muslims. And they were asked to explain their beliefs in rational terms. And they were very enthusiastic about it. Because they had, for the first time, come into contact with rational thought. The philosophy of the Hindus and the Zoroastrians and the Chinese, they were easier. But the challenge of the rational thought was much more profound. So the disbelievers who did not believe in Islam used to taunt the Muslims. They said, how do you explain the nature of God, for instance? How do you explain the Quran? How does God somehow arrange for the affairs of men? And then, at the same time, you believe in predestination and the free will of man. How does free will make sense if you believe in predestination? These were the kinds of questions that the disbelievers used to pose before them. So these are legitimate questions. So the Mu'tazilites, they took up the challenge. They said, we have a technique now. We know Aristotle, we know Plato, we know the Greeks. We are going to apply a reason to religious thought. To make the long story short, they overextended themselves. Since they did not understand the limitations of reason, since they didn't understand the meaning of before and after, the linearity of time, they said, if we were to apply this technique, the rational technique, to everything, then perhaps we can understand the Quran, perhaps we can understand the work of Allah, but in the process, they fell flat on the face because of the very questions they were asking. Very often, the answer to a question is in the question itself. You ask the right question, the answer is inherent in it. The ability to ask the right question is not easy. Anybody can ask a question. But a wise man will ask a wise question. Any grown man will ask a question. Anybody can ask a question. Now, the Mutazilites, they were pious Muslims. They believed that Allah's essence cannot be compromised. Khulhu Allah, Wahd Allah. Allah's essence cannot be compromised. And then they said, if that is so, see the trap. I'll walk you through the trap. Step by step. If that is so, then, where do we place the Quran? See the question? To preserve the wahdaniyat of the essence of Allah, there is none like unto him. They said, well, we cannot put the Quran in the same space as Allah swt because if we did, we'll be compromising on wahdaniyat. So they said the Quran was created in time. See the trap is inherent in the question. The so-called createdness of the Quran. We don't know time. They didn't know that. We know today through our studies of science a little more about time than we did 1500 years ago. That's the reason we have to study science. One of the reasons. They felt flat on the face. And obviously there was an uproar in the Islamic community. People said, this is unacceptable to say that the Quran was created in time. It's unacceptable. And the ulama, these are called the Kalam school. Kalam is theology. Although theology really did not catch up in Islam, unlike in Christianity. Because we have always held the Quran as transcendent. We'll go back to it. So the Kalam school led the charge against the matazalites. And Imam Humbili was the leader of it. This is happening now in the time period 760 to 846. Approximately 125 to 180 years after the Prophet ﷺ. So you must remember this. And I'll also give you, Jack Stappos for you. Some of the other intellectual things that were happening in the world of Islam at that time. So that you can better comprehend the beauty of it. The difficulties that these great scholars were facing. So Imam Humbili, Imam Ahmed led the charge against the matazalites. And ultimately, the matazalites were discredited. In the process, they made a lot of mess. The matazalites applied the whip to the people who did not agree with them. Imam Humbili was imprisoned many times and was whipped many times. In public and in private. And so were the other olama. And then in 846, when the matazalites were removed from favor from the courts of Baghdad. The anti-matazalites, they put the whip on the matazalites. They whipped them, they got rid of the books. Unfortunately, this is the intellectual history of Islam. We must be honest about it. This has happened more than once in Islamic history. So the anti-matazalites carried the blame. They fortunate or unfortunate. Or the thing that happened in history was that the charge against the philosophers should have come from the scientists. But it came from the olama. The olama on the day. The questions raised by the philosophers were always there. How do you reconcile predestination with the freedom of man? These are legitimate questions. So that there was that undercurrent of philosophy. And a current of science that existed side by side in the Kalam school. In the classical period of Islam. Which is from the time of Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq till 1258, the father of Baghdad to the Mongols. That is called the classical period, the golden age of Islam. In this period you find the Kalam school, the matazalites were discredited. Then the anti-matazalites and the scientists working side by side. The scientists are the empiricists. There is a difference between philosophy and science. Science starts with observation. We go out, for instance. And we look at a leaf. Find out something about its structure. Find out something about its biology. Find out something about the tree. Document it. After we document it we look for patterns. As Allah SWT teaches in the Quran. Allah creates and He repeats the creation. Meaning the structures are repeated. Not the individual atoms. Because no two atoms are the same ever in universe. The structures are repeated. So we look for the structures. And we build theories. And we extrapolate from the theories. And we form certain observations and certain deductions from it. That is science. Empirical science. Bottoms up. Science is bottoms up. Philosophy is top down. Which always starts with the premise. If this is so, then something else will happen. It falls into traps there. Science is bottoms up. Science flourished in Islam. We had great scientists who discovered the nature of light. Who made contributions to biology, medicine, philosophy, physics, history, geography. Great for these people. However, the issues raised by the philosophers continue to nab at the Islamic rule. You cannot get away from them. And the response, the further development in intellectual terms, the response came from Al-Ashari. People don't know this. But most Muslims today, more so than the four schools of Fiqhaha. Now we all know about the schools of Fiqhaha. For instance, I follow the Hanafi school of Fiqh. Because my family followed the Hanafi school in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the eastern part of the Islamic world. The Hanafi school is prevalent. People know about the schools of Fiqh. But not many people know about Al-Ashari. Al-Ashari's ideas were like the rainfall in the desert. They came down and they got submerged into the Islamic landscape. They got absorbed. So that every one of us are willing to say is to a certain extent an Al-Ashari. Those ideas. Imam Al-Wazali was an Al-Ashari. Al-Lama'i Al-Bab was an Al-Ashari. So these ideas got submerged in the Islamic intellectual landscape. What did Al-Ashari say? Al-Ashari, great scholar he was. So those days the training of the Islamic scholars always started with the memorization of the Qur'an. These were not ordinary people. Most of them were Khufas, Hafiz al-Khoran. Then they studied the Seerah of the Prophet, Sunnah of the Prophet, and the Hadith of the Prophet, Sunnah of the Prophet. They were great scholars of all of this. Then they were introduced to mathematics and astronomy and physics and grammar and al-Fusion and medicine and the other subjects which make up what we call science. These were great scholars. Al-Ashari divided time into atoms. See he said, what happens with time is that at every moment, which is like an atom of time, at every moment the will of Allah swt intervenes and decides the outcome of events. That is called the atomistic theory or occasionalism. What he was trying to do was to overcome the objections of the before and after cause and effect. So people could somehow understand the particularity and the generality of God's will. In other words, as long as God's will intervenes at every single atomistic moment, we preserve the omniscience of Allah swt. Because Allah makes the decision. That's what he was trying to preserve. And people said, that's a good idea. They adopted it. The atomistic theory of time was adopted. Philosophers incorporated that the Muslim philosophers into the way of thinking. That was a landscape. Then we come to the time of Al-Razali, a giant. Very important for us to know Al-Razali. And before I talk about the philosophy of Al-Razali, what I want to do is to take a detour of the political landscape, the social landscape of the Islamic world. Because without understanding the social and the political landscape in which Imam Al-Razali lived, it is not possible for us to understand the contributions and the difficulties that he raised. In the 9th century, the Turks started to come into the fold of Islam around the year 850. They started much earlier than that. The Turks were nomadic people. Just so you know, there are three terms that people use interchangeably which is not correct. The Turks, the Tartars and the Mongols. These are different terms. The Turks were Central Asians in the area between Samar Khan Bahara and the Mongolian area. There were no men. The Mongols were the people of Mongolia, out of Mongolia. The Tartars were cousins of the Mongols, from whom came the Mughal dynasty of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Asia. These are different terms. The Turks started to come into the fold of Islam. The Turks were very resilient people, full of energy. And as the Arabs settled down into the cities, they, as happens in human history, lost some of the virility, some of the virtues that characterized the desert people. The people of the desert, the villagers are honest. They are forthright. They absorb things in an organic manner. That is the foundation for, what we said earlier, Tawasa Bilha, working together. They support each other. The word is good. The city dwellers, on the other hand, they have been exposed to all the voices of city, and you know what happens in a city. One is two, two is one, one plus one is eleven, or sometimes it can be one over two. This is what happens. So some of the Arabs had succumbed to the lack of fortune of city life, because Islamic civilization was primarily city-based. So if you study the history of the cities, whether it be the East or the West, you know much of the history of Islam. So the Turks started to assert themselves. They became soldiers in the Abbasid Khilafat, and after a while they rose up in the ranks. From the soldiers they became generals, and from generals they became viziers, and after that they became sultans. So the Khilafa, and I will say a few words about the development of the Khilafa also, in a few minutes, the Khilafa was changed from its original character into a sultanate. There was a sultan and there was the Khilafa. The Turks became the king-makers, which takes his gradually to the 10th and 11th century. The Turks themselves produced many dynasties. One of the most powerful ones was that of the Seljuks. The Seljuk. Seljuks. Powerful. And I have seen the remnants of some of the works in Anatolia, but I was there. The Seljuks established themselves around the year 1050. They were the ones, for instance, who displaced the Ghaznavids. The Ghaznavids were based in Afghanistan. Mahmud of Ghazna, around the year 1000, was based in Ghazna. The Turks displaced the Ghaznavids and established themselves in the Seljuk Empire, which extended, one time, all the way from Amudaria, which is in Samarhan, Bahara, in Central Asia, to the Al-Skirts of Daghdad and beyond. So the Khilafa made them, gave them titles, and called them the defenders of the faith. Why? I'll come to that also, because these things are not happening in vacuums. It's important to know this, because the intellectual upheavals in the Islamic world did not happen in vacuums. It's just all of a sudden things happen. No, things don't happen like that. There are movements, broad movements, broad currents, that bring to the fore giants and at the same time great ideas, and at the same time kill great ideas too. The Seljuk Empire became the dominant force in Central Asia and the Middle East. As they expanded westwards, they were opposed by the Byzantines, based in Constantinople, today's Istanbul. And in 1072, there was a major battle, the Battle of Manzikert, you must know this. One of the decisive battles of history, Battle of Manzikert, in which the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines and then opened the door to the further advancement of the Turks into Anatolia. So the Turks advanced into Anatolia, and this brought them in conflict with some of the Christians. What used to happen was, the Christian pilgrims, when they came from Europe, would go from what is today Istanbul through Anatolia to what people call Holy Land, Palestine. And the Turks were newcomers to this game, and the Middle Eastern politics is full of imponderables. So there was some friction, and this friction led to the onset of the Crusades. And I'll talk about that a little bit later too, because for that, I need to also talk about the Molybdenum. In the meantime, in North Africa and in Spain, here is what was happening. So we have covered a little bit about the development in the eastern part of the Islamic world, the rise of the Turks. Now let's take a look at Spain and the Molybdenum. Very important. Because if you're studying science and civilization in Islam, you'll find that many of the contributions, if not most of the contributions, were made by the people of what we call the Farsi-speaking parts of the Islamic world, east of the Euphrates River, all the way to Borda, and Spain. And yes, Damascus and Cairo are also important centers, but most of the city-states were in the eastern part, or in North Africa and Spain. Let's take a brief look at the developments in the Molybdenum. Very important. In the year 751, when the Abbasid Revolution took place, the Abbasis eliminated the Umayyads. Eliminated them. All of the princes, Umayyad princes, were summarily executed, except one, Abdul Rahman I. He managed the escape, swam across the Euphrates River, and somehow incognito found his way to Spain, where there were some followers, there were some well-wishers of the Umayyads, and he founded the Umayyad dynasty in Spain. The Umayyad dynasty was for a long time, this is an oversimplification, but I'm trying to lead you step by step into the parallel developments so that we can come back to the intellectual history of Islam. The Umayyad dynasty was semi-independent, except in the 10th century, when Abdul Rahman III declared himself to be a Khalifa. And why was that so? It was so, because in North Africa, in the 9th century, the early part of the 10th century, the Fatimids rose up. The Fatimids are a branch of Shia Islam. The belief in 6 Imams, rather than the 12 Imams, is believed by the Ismashari. These are important ideas. If we wish to understand the world of Islam, we must know the various streams that have gone in there so that we can pull them all together. In the early part of the 10th century, the Fatimids gradually all ran most of North Africa, and in the year 957 occupied Cairo, Al-Mu'izm, and made it the capital of the Fatimid Empire. At one time, in the 10th century, the early part of the 11th century, the Fatimids controlled more than half of the Islamic world, all the way from Morocco to Egypt, and then into Syria. They also controlled the Ajaz, Akka and Medina, and even in parts of Pakistan, Multan, and in parts of Khorasan, north of Samarkhand and Dukhara, there were these Fatimid rulers. They controlled more than half of the Islamic world. Just a passing comment. People want to know why it was that Mahmouda Ghazna invaded India, raided so many of the temples. It had nothing to do with the temples. It had nothing to do with the religious conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims. Around the year 1000, most of the Islamic world was controlled by the Fatimids, and the Abbasids in Baghdad were isolated. Having lost Egypt, all of the trade from Europe to the Far East was controlled by the Fatimids, so that the Fatimids grew rich, and the Abbasids in Baghdad were isolated. So much so, for a while, the Bayouds, who were also Shia dynasty, controlled Baghdad also. Around the year 850, 68, 60, that's why it brought the Turks into the loop, and the Turks expelled the Bayouds, and that's why the Turks got into the good favors of the Khalifa of Baghdad. In any case, it's important for us to know the establishment of the Fatimids in Egypt because they were the ones who founded the Al-Azhar University in the year 959. The Fatimids tried to convert the world of Islam to their madhab. They were not successful. Nonetheless, in the beginning, Al-Azhar was a center of propaganda. They used this to train the Da'ish, to send them into the Sunni world and to try to convert the Muslims to their way of thinking. What happens is that as the Turks now managed to contain the Fatimids, the Abbasids in Baghdad also want to establish universities. And hence the Seljuks established the Nizamiya College in Baghdad. The Nizamiya College was established in the year 1087, approximately 120 years after the establishment of Al-Azhar University. That's a very important date. Established by Nizamo Mok, who was the vizier of the Seljuk king, Seljuk Sultan, who was the controlling power in the Islamic brawl. And it was in this college that Al-Azhar was teaching. He became a professor in the Nizamiya College. Why is the Nizamiya College so important? Because to a large extent, the syllabus of the Madrasas of the world today are still dictated with the Nizamiya syllabus. That's a different subject. I'll talk about it some other time. Except that the Nizamiya syllabus was all encompassing. It embraced the Quran, the Sunnah of the Prophet, astronomy, physics, mathematics, science. All of these disciplines were included. Whereas the syllabus of the Madrasas today includes only two subjects, the Quran and the Hadiths. So the syllabus that used to be this broad became this broad. Nizamiya College, this is to Al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali, one of the jibes of Islam, one of the major influencers of the flow of Islamic history. If you wish to understand Islamic history, you must think of it as a screen, a river, as I submitted to you last time. Think of it as a river that's flowing around and then it takes a bend. There are major bends. You capture the major bends, whether it be a war or an idea or an occupation or destruction. You have a fairly good idea of what is happening to history. Al-Ghazali, Imam Al-Ghazali, no doubt was one of the major influencers so that he bent the flow of Islamic history in a certain direction. He was, very briefly, a great scholar, studied the Qur'an, half is the Qur'an, studied the Sunnah of the Prophet, studied Hadith, studied the Shafa-i-Fiqh, if I remember correctly. He was a scholar of Shafa-i-Fiqh so that the Nizam, the minister, chief minister, professor at Nizamiya College. And he lectured there until the year 1097. And then he went through an internal examination. He asked himself, why is it that I pray so much and I follow all of the Dighats of the Sharia and still I feel so unsatisfied? Why is it that these philosophers continue to ask these questions and so many people still follow them? Why is it that the world of Islam has lost the ethical high plateau that you used to occupy at one time? Because you can see the beginnings of the dissolution of assimilization. Well, I say, Ibn al-Insan al-Afiqh, Ibn al-Ladhi al-Ahmad, if you don't have the Amir al-Salehah, a civilization falls down. You must have faith, Amir al-Salehah. Faith and you must have good deeds. You must have both. Otherwise, a civilization comes unraveled. It was beginning to get unraveled and Ibn al-Salehah said, why is it this happening? And he said, I'm unsatisfied. So he went through an internal examination and he gave up his professorship and he said he was going to go for Hajj. So he traveled to Iraq and Arabia and Syria, all to Makkah and Madinah, spent many years there and held discourses with the leading scholars of Iraq and they came back and he wrote the Haqqus al-Fasifah and he wrote Ihiya al-Alumum, one of the greatest companions of philosophical thought. The importance of his writing to us from a point of view of science and civilization is the following. Imam al-Saleh had two challenges as he pursued it. One was the challenge of the philosophers. The other was the challenge of the Fatimids. And he took them on both. If you read his writings, the polemics that he is engaged in is both against the Shia Sixers as well as the philosophers. We are not going to go into the internal dialectic with respect to the Fatimids, but we will say a few words about his thoughts about philosophy. Imam al-Azani was a product of his times. He knew the words of the scientists up until that time as also he was familiar with the words of the Greeks and the atomistic philosophy of al-Azani. He, in refuting the philosophers, came up with the premise that there was no such thing as cause and effect. Cause and effect follows. For instance, see, when I'm driving a car and getting into an accident, usually the question that is asked what caused it? Was I sleeping? Was somebody else somehow cut me off? Was the pole in the wrong place? The people look for causes. It's a natural question. Cause and effect are natural questions in the philosophy. It's very positive to the position that there was no such thing as cause and effect. That everything happens because Allah swt arranges things in a certain way. He was looking for structures. He was not looking for the movement of structures. Allah swt arranges everything in certain structures so that what we think as cause and effect is really not cause and effect is only a reflection of Allah swt what He has arranged. For example, one of the examples that He offers is the burning of cotton. He says if you take cotton, you light the cotton, it burns. It forms ashes. Allah swt said the fire did not cause the cotton to burn. He says it's in the nature of cotton that at a certain temperature it is what it is and then when you ignite it when you raise its temperature it changes its state and it becomes ashes. It's a clear example that you gave. Now He was looking at it from the point of view of philosophy. To be fair to Imam Allah swt He did not hold His views against mathematics or logic. Indeed, He saw the usefulness of mathematics and logic. But if it came to natural science the impact of His thinking was a major blow. I won't call it a disaster because Islamic science continued to flourish even after the time of Imam Allah swt had a lesser intensity. But His position that there was no such thing as cause and effect that philosophy does not lead us to the truth because the ultimate objective of science is to find the truth. Allah swt Allah swt He saw the truth. He said philosophy does not lead us to the truth. And instead He posited the intuitive approach to Islam. Up until that point next week, inshallah, I'll cover the development of Tasawwuf in Islam because it's very important for all the young people to know how these streams of thoughts developed in parallel that came together sometimes like so and sometimes in unison. Imam Allah swt placed Tasawwuf squarely within the paradigm the framework of Sunni Islam. Up until that time the philosophers even though they were practitioners of Tasawwuf they did not have a coherent way of integrating Tasawwuf with philosophy. So Imam Allah swt left two legacies. One He brought the Tasawwuf within the fold of Sunni Islam. Two He repudiated philosophy and this repudiation was the thing that hurt Islamic sciences to a large degree in the years to come. Very important benchmark. In my opinion he was misunderstood because you see it's not something that you talk to ordinary people they don't know philosophy. For instance one of the questions that was asked the last time by a young person was how do you prove the existence of God? You come across questions like this now to answer a question like that you have to go through about seven years of training how do you who is you what is proof what are the principles of proof existence what does it mean to exist et cetera all of these things have to be understood philosophy is not something that you want to talk to ordinary people because Hazrat Imam Ali said when you speak to people speak at their own level if not it increases takes people away from Imam. So Imam Al-Azali was somewhat misunderstood because he was taking on the philosophers and he was also taking on the Ismailis the Sixers he was not taking on the future civilizations it was applied in that fashion because of reasons that are very briefly outlined and then we'll stop and go through a discussion so here is Imam Al-Azali and about the same time about a generation later the philosophers especially Ibn Rush of Spain he took on the thinking of Al-Azali Imam Al-Azali wrote the Ahfuz al-Filosopher Repudiation of philosophy where philosophy is not correct Ibn Rush said Repudiation of the Repudiated the Ahfuz of the Ahfuz in other words they're confused basically saying that Ibn Rush was perhaps the greatest philosopher produced by the world after Aristotle some people call him the disciple of Aristotle but in some ways he discovered philosophical thought that had not even been conceived of by Aristotle and Ibn Rush took on the thinking of Al-Azali and he tried to put philosophy and belief on a collinear plane namely he tried to reconcile philosophy with belief however the world of Islam did not adopt the thinking of Ibn Rush the Latin West adopted the thinking of Ibn Rush I was going back to the battle of Manzikar after the battle of Manzikar the Pope the second call for a crusade and very briefly I will go over it because it will bring us back to what happened by the same time the crusade there are many complex reasons for the crusades but with the tension between the Seljuks and the Christian Pudrims that were passing through Anatolia at the time to make the long story short the crusades although their focus was Palestine and Jerusalem most of the battles took place in Spain and North Africa this is something that people do not understand in year 1086 the crusades captured the city of Toledo in central Spain Toledo was a major learning center Muslim center and when it fell into the hand of the conquistators the reconquest people they did not destroy the libraries of Toledo but instead they established a school of translation Alfonso VI they embarked on translating the works of Arabic into Latin and these works gradually found a way into the rest of Europe and now we see the re-awakening of Europe until that point Europe was in darkness it was asleep the passage of Arabic learning Islamic learning from Spain to Europe through the re-conquest starting with Toledo and later of the other cities that Europe awakened from Islam for instance it was in the year 12 1150 1150 that the University of Paris was established took this in just a position it was in 1167 that the University of Oxford was established it was in year 1200 that Cambridge University was established so Europe is now awakening very briefly touch upon what happened in the West the same questions that the Muslims had to face 500 years earlier that were faced by the Christians namely how do you justify your belief in rational terms the Christian belief is in the Trinity so the rational thought challenged that belief and one of the greats Saint Thomas Aquinas he took on the challenge just as Alawazali had done it approximately 100 years earlier but they reached at a different conclusion whereas the Muslims tried to somehow reconcile faith with rationalism, faith and philosophy the Christians came to an impasse and they said what belongs to Caesar belongs to Caesar what belongs to the church belongs to the church the two are not compatible therefore the left they created a world as secular and the belief untouched by philosophy they were unable to explain their beliefs in rational terms therefore it was a divorce between philosophy and science that's the origin of secular science these days people say science is secular where does it come from not from the Islamic world it came from the divorce that took place in the 12th century between philosophy and religion Saint Thomas Aquinas and later you find other greats too like Roger Bacon teaching at Oxford University Europe went on his way so in 1096 Pope Pius he announced the crusades against the Muslims and in 1099 Jerusalem fell so did most of the cities of Palestine and much of what is today northern Syria and parts of Iraq were also occupied by the crusaders some are so within a span of about 20 years or so much of western Mediterranean was occupied by the crusaders that was not as disastrous because ultimately as we will see in Salahuddin was able to expel the crusaders and recapture Jerusalem but in the west the Muslims now recovered in 1086 the city of Toledo fell in 1212 at the battle of last now was the Tavosis the Muslims the Al-Mawad Empire lost in a big way in 1236 the city of the Khilafat which is Khaldurah fell 1248 Seville fell except for Granada all of Spain was occupied within a span of 30 to 40 years so now the crusaders have occupied Spain they occupied western Mediterranean Palestine Syria and parts of Anatolia now comes the big blow and this is the last portion of our presentation today the big blow from the east which is Genghis Khan Genghis Khan was successful in consolidating among wolves under his banner starting in the year 1206 and led his campaigns first eastwards captured northern China and from China he learned the use of gunpowder and silk why silk? silk was used as armor it protects the body when you shoot an arrow against a silk armor it gives and does not penetrate as it does when you have other materials and gunpowder which the Mongols used mostly for their communications learned the use of gunpowder and the Shah of Khwarazan at the time, Muhammad Shah he somehow got into trouble with Genghis Khan what happened was Genghis Khan there are different stories about it some chronicles say that the Khalifa himself was plotting against Shah Muhammad some chronicles say now it was a couple of merchants who were coming from the Mongols which unfortunately the local governor he killed them and back and forth and hence Genghis Khan invaded the Islamic world in the year 1219 from 1219 to 1258 the Mongols destroyed most of the eastern Islamic world Turkistan Uzbekistan Afghanistan most of Pakistan up to the river Indus Iraq eastern Anatolia and in 1258 Baghdad itself fell you may say what is the significance of it the Mongols decimated the population 90% of the people were killed now why I always wonder as a student of history how is it possible for anything later to kill 90% of the people until I went to New Mexico see in a desert situation most people live in a city and then when there is a threat what happens is that the Hamlets the people from the Hamlets converge onto the city into a citadel so that everyone is in the citadel and the citadel as the city falls everybody is butchered so Samarhan Bahara Rasnah Kabul Esfahan ultimately Baghdad itself and they were stopped only in the outskirts of Jerusalem at the battle of Angelo in the year 1262 so put these two events in juxtaposition the devastation of the Mongols and the occupation of the crusades at the same time more than 65% of the Islamic world was occupied and destroyed in a minute only the Mamluks of Delhi the Mamluks of Egypt and the African kingdoms that is in Mali these were the only three that escaped the devastation India was just beginning to establish itself because Delhi had been conquered only in the year 1192 the Mali Empire was still in the process of consolidation only the Mamluks of Egypt and the Sultan Babers that managed to escape except for that the entire Islamic world was destroyed dams were obliterated libraries were burned scholars completely eliminated so you can imagine the end of a civilization somehow think that the writings of Olazali were responsible for the arrest of Islamic sciences there is some truth to that however a greater reason was the total destruction of the Islamic world within a span of 20 generations between the years 1212 and 1258 65% of the Islamic world was eliminated not destroyed eliminated people today facing the difficulties that we face in this day and age say, gosh we are in such difficult times but this was nothing the 13th century went through under the simultaneous blows of the Crusaders from the west and the Mongols from the east so that was the curtain of the classical Islamic civilization the classical Islamic civilization died in the middle of the 13th century physically intelligently it was coming to pressure but physically it died and what came later was an Islam that was driven by the Samuf an Islam that was driven by the spiritual energy of the great sheikhs there were the ones who were successful in converting the Mongols to Islam there were the ones who were successful in taking the light of Islam to India, sub-Saharan Africa Indonesia, Malaysia why not we do it out not that I'm putting the soul in just a position with philosophy but that we need to understand how it is that the river the great stream of Islamic civilization took its turns the way it did the point is that when you go to the eastern part of the Islamic world you speak mostly in spiritual terms I'm speaking in historical terms whereas much of the Arab world that escaped the destruction of the Mongols except for Iraq did not go through the devastations of the Mongols and for the Arab world the Sharia or the observation of Allah's commands remained to be more important so even to this day when you bring the Muslims together from different parts of the world you'll find this internal tension because of our historical legacy we have invited we have products of our history that's in what happened 12th, 13th century I'll stop in here for today this is a good time for discussion because a great deal has been said I have touched briefly upon Imam Al-Razadi I pointed out how the atomistic theory was tried to explain the in philosophical terms the injection of the will of Allah into all of the creative world I have briefly touched on the emergence of the Fatimids and the tussles between the Fatimids and the Turks I have briefly touched upon the introduction of Islam into the western part of the Islamic world the importance of Spain and Harassan ending with Crusades and the Mongol devastations all at the same time this is not I emphasize most Muslims do not grasp this they do not know the extent to which the Islamic world almost came to non-existence were it not for the time of the battle of Angelut in the year 1262 Islam might well have disappeared from history will of Allah most people do not understand the extent of devastations in a very short time when I say extent which countries if you take the Islamic world not the ones that came into hold of Islam later at that time more than two thirds of it will of Allah and let's have some discussion and I'll learn from you now