The Baby and the Bath-Water

ASK any young mother about her maternal experiences while bathing their young in a tub and they will tell you it is somewhat less gratifying than suckling their newborn by the breast. Ask them about the bath-water and they will tell you they threw it “down the drain”, as there is no special need to keep it.

The title of this column is simply a metaphor, as no mother has ever thought of preserving bath-water. The metaphor only pertains to the vehicle through which any young child maintains its cleanliness on a daily basis.

I have clung to this metaphor ever since completing a course in the history of psychology at the City College of the City University of New York some ten years ago; at the time I had begun to think seriously about a career in professional psychology. The professor who taught the course is chairman of the philosophy department. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy at Oxford University and is an expert in the philosophy of science. Because I was an avid reader in psychology and philosophy at the time I enjoyed the course because, finally, here was a course that situated the science of psychology in a historical context. But I relished the course for another important reason.

The professor, a moderately-built white man with a boyish look who was dressed in jeans, a white shirt and a thin black tie, gave his students at the outset a lengthy syllabus with the names of persons who launched psychology onto the scientific landscape. At the beginning of the syllabus read Western personalities who contributed to the science of psychology: Hobbes, Hume, La-Mettrie, Bacon, Locke, Humboldt, Wundt, James, and Dewey, to name a few. At the bottom of the syllabus, however, there were other personalities I had never encountered in print: Ibn-Sina, Ibn-Rushd, Ibn Hazm, Al-Kindi, Al-Biruni and Al-Razi, to name a few. At the outset he told us that he was only “privileged” to lecture on the personalities at the beginning of the syllabus. I relished the course because I wanted to know more about the personalities at the bottom of the syllabus.

I found out, through my limited researches at that time, that these obscure personalities at the bottom of the syllabus were Muslim philosophers. Their pursuit of knowledge during the Medieval West (in this case, psychological knowledge), influenced the persons at the beginning of the syllabus some six centuries later.

I also remember walking past a room one afternoon with no chairs or desks when I caught a glimpse of a group of young men praying in unison and bowing their heads to the ground. I was curious about all this and, after they had finished what they were doing, I asked one of them to what religion they prescribed. During that time I became increasingly disenchanted with my Christian upbringing as its ideals of asceticism and monasticism (i.e., a “turning away from worldly pursuits to contemplate on the Divine) clashed with my new-found knowledge of philosophy and psychology, of “being-in-the-world”.

A young man, a student with a carefully manicured beard, told me they were Muslims. He told me that the religion they subscribed to is Islam and that it exhorts its adherents to “seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave” while simultaneously providing a complete way of life. As I walked away I thought that here was a religion whose adherents did not shy away from worldly knowledge and at the same time afforded them to lead pious lives.

I go back to the “baby” and the “bath-water” metaphor. The “baby” signifies “scientific knowledge” and the “bath-water” signifies “Islamic civilization”.

What is civilization? Roger Osborne, author of Civilization: A New History of the Western World, tells us that Western civilization is not simply a collection of virtuous concepts, but the historical effects that they have generated (italics mine). The Romans, for example, are true exemplars of Western civilization because they catalogued a great body of jurisprudence and introduced a reverence for the rule of law whose historical effects remains strong. The rule of law remains viable throughout the centuries and has proven valuable for social cohesion within the Western world; it has preserved and sustained Western civilization and culture. Thus the concepts “culture” and “civilization” are used interchangeably, describing the spiritual, intellectual, social and artistic pulse of any society. Christianity is very much a central aspect of Western civilization today because of the scholarly contributions of St. Augustine, St. Anselm, and St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, has written beautiful treatises that links Roman jurisprudence (man’s law) with God’s Law (as evidenced in the Christian Bible). His writings set the stage for what is today called Natural Law, or the Law of God that dictates man’s political and social state.

What is Islamic civilization? Islamic civilization is based on the Qu’ran. Its philosophers studied nature based on what is contained in the Qu’ran, the very word of Allah (SWT). The Qu’ran depicted the relationship between nature and man:

“We created not the heavens, the earth, and all between them, merely in (idle) sport. We created them not except for just ends: But most of them do not understand (Surah Al-Baqara 44:38-39, [Pickthall, 1977]).

The Qur’an exhorted Muslim philosophers to study natural phenomena in order to understand Allah (SWT). The Qu’ran became the sole source for scientific pursuits.

I use the “baby” and the “bath-water” metaphor to underscore that these Western personalities to which I allude (and here I speak only of psychology) could not have developed science in a historical vacuum.

Rachida El-Dirvani, professor of Comparative Literature at Alexandria University in Alexandria, Egypt and a Fulbright visiting scholar at Lake Superior State University in Minnesota, gave an interesting lecture in late 2005 entitled “Islamic Contribution to the West”. In it she introduced two concepts whose interaction she believes is responsible for the antagonistic relationship between Islam and the West: Islamicization and Islamization. Islamicization is a term describing the “diffusion and assimilation of Islamic culture in the West”, while Islamization refers to a “conscious acceptance of Islamic cultural patterns by non-Muslims and Muslims”.

“Islamicization” is akin to “Westernization”, a historical process driven by a culture rife with spiritual (i.e., Christian) intellectual, social and artistic impulses. This historical process of “Islamicization” occurred in the West during three significant historical epochs: first, the middle of the 11^th century before a serious project of translating Arabic into Latin began; second, the Catholic-Protestant Reformation of the 14^th to 16^th centuries; and third, during the age of Arabic translations coinciding with the Renaissance of the 12^th to 17^th centuries.

This diffusion of Islamic civilization on Western soil, or Islamicization, exposed Westerners to a different way of living and thinking much superior to that one existing in Europe. Europeans were becoming increasing conversant with Islamic culture. Alvaro, a Cordovian bishop of the 9^th century, described the Islamicization of intellectual culture in Spain in this way:

“the Christians love to read the poems and romances of the Arabs: theologians and philosophers. Alas! All talented young Christians read and study with enthusiasm the Arab books; they gather immense libraries at great expense; they despise the Christian literature as unworthy of attention. They have forgotten their language. For everyone who can write a letter in Latin to a friend, there are a thousand who can express themselves in Arabic with elegance, and write better poems in this language than the Arabs themselves”.

The historical process of Islamization, on the other hand, declined due to a concerted effort on the part of Christian zealots to halt the process because of fear of the unknown. As a result, Christian zealots orchestrated a plan to demonize the last prophet of mankind, Muhammad (May the peace and blessings of Allah [SWT] be upon him and his progeny) and to portray Islam as antithetical to social progress. Christian ecclesiastical authorities were not pleased with the presence and influence of Islamic culture on Western soil and sought to militarize Christianity (i.e., the Crusades). Thus Western society became imbued with false accusations about Islam. The effects are still with us today. The subject of the hijab is a glaring example. The vast majority of Western society is convinced that wearing the hijab is a form of oppression.

Professor El-Dirvani offers us an interesting strategy on the part of Christian zealots for minimizing the influence of Islamic culture on the Western mind. It will be remembered that Muslim philosophers introduced the writings of Aristotle, then the main personality of European classical rationalism, to Europe at a time when European access to scientific knowledge was severely limited (historians refer to this period as the “Dark Ages”). By exaggerating its dependence on its Roman and Greek heritage, Christian zealots could finally dismiss an Islamic culture that revived Aristotle’s philosophy to the Western mind by elevating Aristotle himself to the throne of philosophy. Christian scholars can then find a rationale for “turning away” from Islamic cultural influences. Thus Europe’s great thinkers could appeal to Europe’s classical past.

Not all Christian scholars divested themselves from Islamic culture, and even exhorted the Christian West to embrace it and thereby enhance Western civilization. Martin Luther (d. 1546), the father of Christian Lutheranism who accused Roman Christian ecclesiastical authorities of hypocrisy and authoritarianism, claimed that there can be no solution to the “problem of Islam” until Christian reformation was complete. Without explicitly saying so, Martin Luther admired Islamic culture and strove to divest Christianity of asceticism, monasticism, celibacy, the cult of saints and holy days. He even admitted polygamy as lawful. Martin Luther emphasized an ethic of worldly success. He stressed individual reasoning and conscience before God. In turn, Luther’s opponents accused him of imitating Islamic tenets. St. Francis of Assisi disdained the Crusades and advocated peaceful communication with the Muslims.

The discipline of psychology achieved a scientific platform along with the physical sciences due to the scientific method. The Islamicization of the West bestowed upon the Western mind a reverence for the systematic method of observation and experiment. Ibn Hazm, in his studies of logic emphasized sense-perception as a source of knowledge (an idea taken up by the British philosopher David Hume some centuries later). The scientific method led Al-Biruni to the discovery of reaction time (as popularized in psycho-physics). The scientific method led Al-Kindi to the formula that sensation is a response of an organism proportionate to a stimulus. Ibn Al Haitham made exceptional findings in the field of optics. Ibn Sina, known to the Latin West as Avicennia, pioneered the field of human cognition.

Muslim philosophers gained access to the Greek medical knowledge of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, and Galen through translations in the 7^th and 8^th centuries. The ancient world was pre-scientific. Greek knowledge was entirely theoretical and general in scope, but these Muslim philosophers adopted patient ways of investigation through minute methods, thereby accumulating positive (now called empirical) knowledge. The Greek temperament never allowed for experimental enquiry.

Muslim philosophers achieved tremendous results in the field of mental abnormality, now called psychopathology, long before Freud and a long pantheon of psychoanalysts many centuries later. Al-Razi employed the scientific method by making painstaking observations of mental diseases while he was a practicing doctor. Al-Razi introduced groundbreaking ideas concerning human behavior. His extensive efforts in the field of psychopathology allowed the Western mind to discard long-held theories of demons and witchcraft associated with mental diseases then prevalent in the Christian world-view. Al-Razi established separate wards in hospitals for the mentally ill, thereby creating a vehicle for clinical observations of mental diseases.

Professor El-Dirvani stressed that such researches linking Islamic culture with the scientific method have not be incorporated into the Western educational system, a critical means of fostering a proper appreciation for Islamic culture today. Instead, the West strive for Westernization of the Muslim world because they believe that Muslim behavioral patterns are barbarian and backward. The consequences of the denial of these historical facts are detrimental: the identification of Islam and its culture with “backwardness”.

I believe that government authorities who fashion our educational system have kept the “baby” and have thrown away the “bath-water”. Most of us have been deluded into thinking that these Western personalities that we study in our colleges and universities have done the same. Government authorities have branded science as a “Western concept” and have thrown away an Islamic culture that revived science for all to appreciate. These historical facts - of medieval Islamicization of the West - need to be fully incorporated into teaching materials for public schools situated in America and Europe.

The writer is a recent revert to Islam and can be contacted at: drummondhugh@verizon.net