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The intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th century that became known as the Enlightenment helped a new class to come to power in Europe. Neil Davidson asks why the more advanced civilisations of the Islamic world did not develop a similar movement of their own.

In the current Western controversy over Islam, one theme recurs with increasing predictability. Many writers are prepared to acknowledge Muslim cultural and scientific achievements, but always with the caveat that Islamic civilisation never experienced an equivalent to the Enlightenment. "Islam never had to go through a prolonged period of critically examining the validity of its spiritual vision, as the West did during the 18th century," writes the historian Louis Dupre. "Islamic culture has, of course, known its own crisis... yet it was never forced to question its traditional worldview."


The same view has also been expressed by individuals who were originally from Muslim backgrounds but have subsequently abandoned their religious beliefs. Salman Rushdie has recently argued that Islam requires "not so much a reformation... as an Enlightenment".


Muslims have responded in different ways to the claim that their religion has never produced an Enlightenment. Ziauddin Sardar has criticised it in the New Statesman on two grounds. On the one hand, "It assumes that 'Islam' and 'Enlightenment' have nothing to do with each other - as if the European Enlightenment emerged out of nothing, without appropriating Islamic thought and learning." On the other, "It betrays an ignorance of postmodern critique that has exposed Enlightenment thought as Eurocentric hot air." So Islamic thought was responsible for the Enlightenment but the Enlightenment was intellectually worthless. This is not, perhaps, the most effective way of highlighting the positive qualities of Islamic thought. Sardar's incoherence is possibly the result of his own critical attitude towards Islamism. More mainstream Muslim thinkers generally take one of two more positions.


The first is that Islam did not require the Enlightenment, because unlike Christianity its tenets do not involve the same conflict between religion and science. As the Egyptian scholar AO Altwaijri has written, "Western enlightenment was completely opposed to religion and it still adopts the same attitude. Islamic enlightenment, on the contrary, combines belief and science, religion and reason, in a reasonable equilibrium between these components." Islam is certainly less dependent than Christianity on miracles or what Tom Paine called "improbable happenings", but ultimately, because it counterposes reason to revelation, Enlightenment thought casts doubt on all religions - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism alike.


The second position is that, although the Enlightenment represented progress for the West, it was a means of oppressing the Muslim world. A Hussain asks, "Given that our people have been victims of these developments, then why should we appreciate them?" It is also true that both the Islamic world and Muslims in the West have suffered and continue to suffer from imperialism and racism. But this is not the fault of the Enlightenment as such. Rather, it is an outcome of the failure of Enlightenment ideals to find their realisation in socialism, and the way they have been harnessed instead to the needs of capitalist expansion. In the hands of a resurgent movement of the working class and the oppressed, these ideas can be turned against the warmongers and Islamophobes who falsely claim them as their own.


The history of the Islamic world shows that it also raised many of the themes which later became associated with the Enlightenment, and did so earlier in time. The issue is therefore why the Enlightenment became dominant in the West and not in the Islamic world - or indeed in those other parts of the world, like China, which had previously been materially more advanced than the West.


The comparative basis for the critique of Islam is the Enlightenment that occurred in Europe and North America between the mid-17th and early 19th centuries, but the terms of the argument are changed in relation to Islam. No one refers to a "Christian Enlightenment". If the Enlightenment is given any specificity at all, it is in relation to individual nations. Why then is territoriality the basis for discussion of the Enlightenment for the West, but religion for the East?


A Christian Enlightenment?

The assumption is that the Enlightenment, like the Renaissance and Reformation before it, emerged out of what is usually called the "Judeo-Christian tradition". In other words, Christianity was intellectually open and tolerant enough to allow critical thought to emerge, with the result that religion could gradually be superseded, and the separation of church and state brought about. The implication of course is that Islam has been incapable of allowing the same process to take place. The fate of Bruno (who was burned at the stake by the Holy Inquisition) or Galileo (who was threatened with the same fate) for daring to question the doctrines of the Catholic church casts some doubt on the claim that Christianity is intrinsically open to scientific rationality.


At this point the argument usually shifts from Christianity in general to the role of Protestantism in particular or, more narrowly still, that of Calvinism. But this is no more convincing. Writers as politically different as Antonio Gramsci and Hugh Trevor-Roper have explained that Protestant thought was in many respects a retreat from the intellectual sophistication of late medieval Catholic thought, as characterised by, for example, Erasmus. Certainly 16th century Geneva and 17th century Edinburgh were not places in which rational speculation was encouraged. The intellectually progressive role of Protestantism lies in the way in which some versions of the faith encouraged congregations to seek the truth in their individual reading of the Bible, rather than from received authority - an approach which could be carried over into other areas of life. But the teachings themselves did not point in this direction. Justification by faith is an enormously powerful doctrine but not a rational one, since it rests on the claim that the ways of god are unknowable to man. Edinburgh did later become the centre of perhaps the greatest of all national Enlightenments, but in order to do so it had first to abandon the "theocratic fantasies" of the Church of Scotland. And this was true across Europe and in North America. Whatever the specific religious beliefs of individual Enlightenment thinkers, and however coded some of their arguments, the movement as a whole was at war with the Judeo-Christian tradition. It represents not the continuity of Western culture but a profound break within it. Far from being the apotheosis of Western values, the Enlightenment rejected the values which had previously been dominant.


Enlightenment thinkers also took a far more complex attitude to Islam than their present day admirers would have us believe. As Jonathan Israel recounts in his important history, Radical Enlightenment, "On the one hand, Islam is viewed positively, even enthusiastically, as a purified form of revealed religion, stripped of the many imperfections of Judaism and Christianity, and hence reassuringly akin to deism. On the other, Islam is more often regarded with hostility and contempt as a primitive, grossly superstitious religion like Judaism and Christianity, and one no less, or still more, adapted to promoting despotism." Edward Gibbon wrote in a remarkably balanced way about Mohammed and the foundation of Islam in The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, particularly given his generally critical attitude to Christianity. In general, then, the Enlightenment did not regard Islam as being any better or any worse than Christianity.


Perhaps we should therefore consider the possibility that the decisive factor in both the emergence of Enlightenment in the West and its failure to do so in the East may not be religion as such, but the kind of societies in which their respective religions took root, and which these religions helped to preserve. We will in any case have to qualify the claim that Islam knew no form of scientific rationality. After all, it was Muslim scholars who translated and preserved the philosophy and science of Greece and Persia, which would otherwise have been lost. It was they who transmitted it to their equivalents in Europe, who came to be educated by Muslim hands in Spain and Sicily.


But Muslim achievements in scientific thought were not simply archival. The 13th century Syrian scholar and physician Ibn al-Nafis was first to discover the pulmonary circulation of the blood. In doing so he had to reject the views of one of his predecessors, Avicenna - himself an important medical thinker who, among other things, identified that disease could be spread by drinking water. Ibn al-Nafis died in his bed at an advanced age (he is thought to have been around 80). Compare his fate to that of the second person to propose the theory of circulation, the Spaniard Michael Servetus. In 1553 he was arrested by the Protestant authorities of Geneva on charges of blasphemy, and was burned for heresy at the insistence of Calvin after refusing to recant.


The Islamic world did not only produce scientific theory, but its philosophers also considered the social role of religion. According to the Marxist historian Maxine Rodinson, the Persian philosopher and physician, Rhazes, held the view "that religion was the cause of wars and was hostile to philosophy and science. He believed in the progress of science, and he considered Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates much greater than the holy books." No comparable figure in, say, 10th century Normandy in the same era could have openly expounded these views and expected to live. In some Muslim states comparable positions were even held at the highest level of the state. In India the Mughul Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) emphasised "the path of reason" rather than "reliance on tradition", and devoted much consideration to the basis of religious identity and non-denominational rule in India. His conclusions were published in Agra in 1591-2, shortly before Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome. Akbar's minister and spokesman, Abu'l Fazl, included several exasperated passages in his book A'in-i Akbari bemoaning the constraints imposed on scientific endeavour by religious obscurantism: "From time immemorial, the exercise of inquiry has been restricted, and questioning and investigation have been regarded as precursors of infidelity. Whatever has been received from father, kindred and teacher is considered as a deposit under divine sanction, and a malcontent is reproached with impiety or irreligion. Although a few among the intelligent of their generation admit the imbecility of this procedure in others, yet they will not stir one step in this direction themselves."


Clearly, then, there is nothing intrinsic to Islamic society which prevented Muslims from rational or scientific thought. Yet these intimations of Enlightenment, which occurred at an earlier historical stage than in the West, never emerged into a similar full-blown movement capable of contributing to the transformation of society. Ibn al-Nafis was untroubled by authority, but his ideas had no influence on medicine in the Islamic world. In the West, where similar ideas were initially punished by death, they were rediscovered and within 150 years were part of mainstream medical thought. Ideas, however brilliant, are by themselves incapable of changing the world - they must first find embodiment in some material social force. But what was this social force in the West, and why was this missing in Islamic and other countries?


The nature of Islamic society

Clearly there were great transformations in Islamic society between the death of the Prophet in 632 and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but some underlying characteristics remained throughout. The Islamic world rested on a series of wealthy cities ranging from Baghdad in modern Iraq, through Cairo in modern Egypt, to Cordoba in modern Spain. Connecting these urban centres was a system of highly developed desert and sea trade routes, along which caravans and ships brought luxury goods like spices and manufactured goods like pottery. The richness and the opulence of this civilisation stood in stark contrast to impoverished, backward Europe.


But what was the basis of the underlying economy - the "mode of production"? Feudalism, the mode which dominated in Western Europe and Japan, was of minor importance in the states of the Muslim world, with the major exception of Persia (modern day Iran) and parts of India. Instead, the dominant mode was what some Marxists, including the present writer, call the tributary mode. In Europe the feudal estate monarchies presided over weak, decentralised states. Power was devolved to local lords based in the countryside, and it was here, in their local jurisdictions, that exploitation was carried out through the extraction of rent and labour services. But precisely because of this fragmented structure it was possible for capitalist production to begin between these different areas of parcellised sovereignty. The towns varied in size and power, but some at least were free from lordly or monarchical domination, and provided spaces where new approaches to production could develop.


Attempts have been made to present the Enlightenment as a pure expression of scientific rationality which coincidentally appeared in the epoch of the transition from feudalism and the bourgeois revolutions. But it must rather be understood as the theoretical accompaniment of these economic and political processes - though in many complex and mediated ways.


The conditions which allowed capitalist development, and hence the Enlightenment, did not exist to the same extent in the Muslim world. In the Ottoman Empire, which lay at its heart, there was no private property in land, no local lordship, and therefore little space for new approaches to production and exploitation to arise. The state was the main exploiter and its officials displayed a quite conscious hostility to potential alternative sources of power, hence the bias it displayed towards small-scale commerce and the hostility it displayed towards large mercantile capital. Consequently, merchants tended to be from external "nations" - Jews, Greeks or Armenians - not from the native Arab or Turkish populations. There is nothing inherently stagnant about Islamic societies, but they stand as the best example of how ruling classes are consciously able to use state power, the "superstructure", to prevent new and threatening classes from forming, with all that implies about the thwarting of intellectual developments. "Asking why the scientific revolution did not occur in Islam", writes Pervez Hoobdhoy, exaggerating only slightly, "is practically equivalent to asking why Islam did not produce a powerful bourgeois class."


This lack of the development of a new, more advanced economic class meant that Islamic theorists had no material examples to look to. Take the Tunisian writer Ibn el Khaldun (1332-1402), author of the Kitab Al-Ilbar or Book of Examples (usually referred to in English as The Muqaddimah or Introduction to History). His sociological insights identified the continuing struggle between civilisations based, on the one hand, on towns and traders (hadarah) and, on the other, on tribes and holy men (badawah), the two endlessly alternating as the dominant forces within the Muslim world. Adam Smith and his colleagues in the Historical School of the Scottish Enlightenment could develop a theory that saw societies develop and progress upwards from one "mode of subsistence" to another because they had seen this movement in England, and wished to see it reproduced in Scotland. Ibn el Khaldun saw only cyclical repetition in the history of Islamic society, and could not envisage any way to break the cycle. His work could not transcend the society it sought to theorise.


In the face of this, the doctrines and organisation of Islam are difficult to separate. In Christian Europe, church and state were allied in defence of the existing order. In the Islamic world they were fused - there was no separate church organisation. There were of course differences between branches of Islam - Shias favoured rule by charismatic imams, Sunnis a consensus among believers - but in neither was there an overarching church organisation comparable to that of Christianity. Instead a federal structure arose which adapted to the individual states. It is difficult, therefore, to dissociate reasons of state from reasons of religion. A belief in predestination implied that it was impious or even impossible to attempt to predict future events. A belief in utilitarianism focused intellectual investigation or borrowing only on what was immediately useful. Finally, as the boundaries of the Islamic world began to run up against the expanding European powers from the 16th century on, the idea of drawing on their methods and discoveries became all the more painful to contemplate for ruling elites accustomed to their own sense of superiority. As the Western threat grew, the control over what was taught became even more extreme.


Partial reform


The example of China also tends to support the view that the key issue is not religion but the nature of the economy and the "corresponding form of the state". Like Islamic societies, China encompassed a great civilisation with important scientific and technical accomplishments, surpassing those of Europe. But here too there was a bureaucratic tributary state acting to suppress emergent class forces and their dangerous ideas. Reading the work of one leading intellectual in 17th century China, Wang Fu-Chih (1619-92), it is difficult not to see him as a predecessor to Adam Smith in Scotland or the Abb� Sieyes in France, but unlike them his thoughts led to no immediate results. In China, as in the House of Islam, the state acted to control the spread of dangerous thoughts. But China was not an Islamic country - the similarities lie not in religion, but in economy and state, and it was these that led them to a common fate.


So was it possible that Enlightenment ideas could be forced onto these societies from without? The temporary conquest of the Ottoman province of Egypt by French revolutionary armies in 1798 led to an attempt, first in Egypt and Turkey, to adapt at least some of the technical, scientific and military aspects of scientific rational thought. Many of the aspects of Islam which are ignorantly supposed to be "medieval" traditions are products of this period of partial reform. As one historian notes, "The burqa was actually a modern dress that allowed women to come out of the seclusion of their homes and participate to a limited degree in public and commercial affairs". Another points out, "The office of ayatollah is a creation of the 19th century, the rule of Khomeini and of his successor as 'supreme Jurist' an innovation of the 20th." The imperial division and occupation of the Middle East after the First World War froze, and in some cases even reversed, the process. It should not be forgotten, in the endless babble about Western superiority, that feudal social relationships - against which the Enlightenment had raged - were introduced into Iraq by the British occupiers after 1920 to provide a social basis for the regime.


The subsequent history has been told in remorseless detail by Robert Fisk in The Great War For Civilisation and cannot even be attempted here. The question is, after over 100 years of imperialist intervention, does the Islamic world today have to reproduce the experience of the West, from Renaissance to Reformation to Enlightenment? In 1959 one Afghan intellectual, Najim oud-Din Bammat wrote, "Islam today has to go through a number of revolutions at once: a religious revolution like the Reformation; an intellectual and moral revolution like the 18th century Enlightenment; an economic and social revolution like the European industrial revolution of the 19th century." History, however, does not do repeats. Leon Trotsky's theories of uneven and combined development and permanent revolution argue that these revolutions do not have to follow each other, but can interlock and be compressed in time. Christian Europe, after all, was incomparably less developed than Arab or Persian civilisation in the 10th or 11th centuries. But its very backwardness allowed it to incubate a far higher form of class society - capitalism - and hence to "catch up and overtake" its former superiors and in the process fragment, occupy and destroy them.


When the Enlightenment ideas came to the masses of the Islamic world, they came not as a recapitulation of the European experience of the 17th and 18th centuries, but in the form of Marxism - the radical inheritor of that experience. Unfortunately the theoretical and organisational forms in which Marxism made its impact were Stalinist and consequently carried within them the seeds of disaster - most spectacularly in Iraq during the 1950s and in Iran during the 1970s, but more insidiously almost everywhere else. It is because of the catastrophic record of Stalinism, and more broadly of secular nationalism, that people who would once have been drawn to socialism see Islamism as an alternative path to liberation today.


What future, then, for Islam and the Enlightenment? We should remember the experience of the West. Our Enlightenment occurred when Christianity was older than Islam is now and did not occur all at once. People did not simply become "rational" and abandon their previous views because they heard the wise words of Spinoza or Voltaire. It happened over time, and because the experience of social change and struggle made people more open to new ideas that began to explain the world in a way that religion no longer did.


Socialists in the West today have to begin with the actual context of institutional racism and military intervention with which Muslims are faced every day. The absolute obligation on socialists is first to defend Muslims, both in the West and in the developing world, and to develop the historic alliance at the heart of the anti-war movement. To say to that they, or people of any faith, must abandon their beliefs before we will deign to speak to them is not only arrogant but displays all the worst aspects of the Enlightenment - "Here is the Truth, bow down before it!" Why should Muslims listen to people whose self-importance is so great they make agreement with them a precondition of even having a conversation? Enlightenment cannot be imposed by legal fiat or at the point of a gun. The real precondition of debate is unity in action, where discussion can take place secure in the knowledge that participants with different beliefs nevertheless share goals as a common starting point. It is, I suspect, more than a coincidence that those who are most insistent on the need for Islamic Enlightenment are the voices crying loudest for war. The original Enlightenment will never recur. However, we may be seeing the first signs of a New Enlightenment, not in these voices but in the actions of those - Muslim and non-Muslim alike - who have taken to the streets to oppose them.

Introduction :

The imprecision of the word ‘enlightenment’ in term of linguistic and cultural meanings resulted in a confusion that has gone beyond cultural and intellectual contexts and has become a political issue. Enlightenment has therefore been used as an excuse to achieve certain goals that have nothing to do with culture.

This confusion, which was deliberately created by some people, has lead to great errors. It is worth mentioning that the propagation of the term enlightenment has coincided with the failure of material and atheist currents in modern societies, including the Arab and Islamic ones, and that the insistence on using this term coincides with the domination of globalization over cultural and cultural particularities of peoples.

Enlightenment also coincided with the intellectual currents that appeared in the Arabo-Islamic world in the last decades of the 20th century with more intensity than in the previous decades, although it was presented in different terms such as ‘intellectual freedom’, ‘free thought’, ‘the renaissance’. Enlightenment, as a contemporary term, is in part related to neocolonialism.

It is used to mislead the public opinion and create cultural instability and conflicts. This requires rectification and adjustments.

Terminology :
It would be more appropriate to elucidate the issue of enlightenment before we tackle it from an Islamic point of view.

I- Enlightenment as a linguistic term :

In Lissan El Arab (Arab Tongue) of Ibn Mandour, enlightenment means dawn. “Dawn has enlightened” means that the light of day has come. It is also said: “one has prayed at enlightenment time”, that is near dawn.

In Mouaajam Al-Wassit, ‘to enlighten’ means to shed light. People have been enlightened’ means that they have become more cultivated. “God has enlightened one’s heart” means that God has given him/her guidance(1). Enlightenment also means guidance, as in “God guides the believers from darkness to light”. “We resurrect the dead and guide them to light” and “God is the light of the earth and the sky”.

In El Kaffoui’s book Al Koulyate, we read: “Light is the enlightening core. It is the opposite of obscurity”. Guidance, whether it means belief or religion, is one entity. Belief is apparent and religion is a set of rules. As for misguiding, it comes in several ways because of the great number of wrong beliefs(2). This corresponds to Al Kafoui’s idea that light is one unity and obscurity comes in several representations.

In the lexicon of the terms used in the Quran, light is described as: knowledge, truths and proofs that dispel doubt and assert belief in religion(3). Light is not illusions. It is proven truths.

II- Enlightenment as a philosophical term :
The term ‘enlightenment’ appeared in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries to express liberal and bourgeois trends that were characterized by humanist, logical, scientific and empirical reasoning. These trends favored materialism at the expense of religion and used nature and reason instead of theology and mythology to explain natural phenomena and set the rules of the universe(4).

Enlightenment, as a cultural trend, dominated Europe in the 18th century. European intellectuals such as Voltaire, Diderot, Condorset, Holbagh and Picariah promoted it. These intellectuals were influenced by rational philosophers such as Descartes, Spinosa, Leipniz and Lock, who dominated the cultural trends of the 17th and 18th centuries and gave birth to the ‘Age of Reason’.

The Idea of enlightenment can be divided into three categories (reason, nature, progress)(5). These constitute natural philosophy and virtues based on science. The idea of enlightenment appeared in an atheist European environment. It was the enemy of the church, the state, superstition, ignorance and poverty.

Enlightenment philosophers called for a return to nature. In European philosophy, enlightenment meant abandoning old teachings that constituted an authority and a reproduction of life on a rational basis(1).

European enlightenment endeavored to liberate civilization of the church’s dominance and of superstitious beliefs. It sought to achieve the progress of humanity through scientific research(2).

The German philosopher Kant was the first to use the term ‘enlightenment’ to refer to the rationalist movement that started in Europe in the 17th century and flourished in the 18th century, influencing European and non-European civilizations(3).

Enlightenment as a cultural term was therefore born in Europe, bearing European meanings and references. It was also the guideline of a cultural current that dominated Europe at a certain period of its history that was called ‘the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ and was characterized by the emergence of the enlightenment philosophers(4).

The historical context of enlightenment :
We can say that enlightenment is a purely European issue that appeared as a reaction to the church’s dominance over the cultural life in Europe. It was therefore logical that European enlightenment should fight against religion, given the superstition that the church represented. Europe then lived in the age of darkness whereas the Arabo-Islamic world enjoyed cultural prosperity.

As a European concept, enlightenment enlightened Europe after the age of darkness. It is worth mentioning here that only Europe and the West were concerned with the term ‘Mediaeval Ages of Darkness’ after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Muslims, on the contrary, have brought light to humanity since the advent of Islam in the 6th century. They brought light back to the East and the West(5).

In Europe, enlightenment was a reaction to the church’s despotism and repression of reason. The Islamic civilization has never experienced such a situation(1).

Logic and rational thinking represented an emancipation of the church and the clergy. Enlightenment rejected the hegemony of religion and feudalism. It adopted the slogan ‘There is no master over the mind but reason’(2). The church’s despotism and repression of intellectual freedom was the driving force behind enlightenment, which makes it a purely European issue that should be studied as such.

This issue was clear in Europe: Church against reason. The church, with its spiritual, financial, political and scientific despotism, stood against political and social reform. ‘Free intellectuals’ were right in opposing the church and its system, but they were wrong in fighting religion and calling for the use of reason instead. God has blessed mankind with mind so that they can know Him, not in order to negate Him(3). Therefore, it is not logical nor scientific to impose the European concept of enlightenment on Arabo-Islamic societies and to resort to pressure –to the point of intellectual terrorism- to impose this concept that does not belong to our Islamic culture and civilization. We will detail this point when we examine enlightenment as referred to in the Quran to explain the Islamic concept of enlightenment.

Enlightenment in the Holy Quran :
The term ‘enlightenment’ was not mentioned in the Quran, but the stem ‘light’ was mentioned 43 times, as in these verses :

-“Allah is the protector of those who have faith: from the depths of darkness He will lead them forth into light. Of those who reject faith, the patrons are the Evil Ones: from light they will lead them forth into the depths of darkness. They will be Companions of the Fire, to dwell therein (forever)”.(4)

-“Wherewith Allah guideth all who seek His good pleasure to ways of peace and safety, and leadeth them out of darkness, by His Will, unto the light, guideth them to a Path that is Straight”(5).

-“O People of the Book! there hath come to you Our Messenger, revealing to you much that ye used to hide in the Book, and passing over much (that is now unnecessary): There hath come to you from Allah a (new) light and a perspicuous Book”(1).

These verses show that bringing mankind out of obscurities (not only one obscurity) to light (not lights) cannot be achieved without God’s guidance to man. An enlightened man is one whom God saves of the darkness of ignorance, non-belief and superstition and brings out to the light of belief, science and true knowledge. In this sense, enlightenment is God’s guidance to man. The Quran, the Bible and the Torah were a light and guidance from God, as in “It was We who revealed the Law (to Moses): therein was guidance and light. By its standard have been judged the Jews, by the Prophets who bowed (as in Islam) to Allah's Will, by the Rabbis and the Doctors of Law: “for to them was entrusted the protection of Allah's Book, and they were witnesses thereto: therefore fear not men, but fear Me, and sell not My Signs for a miserable price. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what Allah hath revealed, they are (no better than) Unbelievers”(2).

“And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him: We sent him the Gospel: therein was guidance and light, and confirmation of the Law that had come before him: a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah”.(3)

“Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a Lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass; the glass as it were a brilliant star: lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the East nor of the West, whose Oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! Allah doth guide whom He will to His Light: Allah doth set forth Parables for men: and Allah doth know all things”(4).

The holy scriptures were messages from God to His prophets to bring mankind out of darkness to light.

In this way, God’s guidance is closely linked to light(5), that is a guidance to Mankind. “Or (the Unbelievers' state) is like the depths of darkness in a vast deep ocean, overwhelmed with billow topped by billow, topped by (dark) clouds: depths of darkness, one above another: if a man stretches out his hand, he can hardly see it! For any to whom Allah giveth not light, there is no light!”(1). We notice here that light is mentioned in the Quran as a singular noun, whereas obscurities are mentioned as plural. This is a very exact description because God is the source of every light. Therefore, light must be singular, unlike obscurities. A man whom God guides to light lives in permanent enlightenment. God’s light is like no other light(2). “Whatever beings there are in the heavens and the earth do prostrate themselves to Allah (acknowledging subjection) - with good-will or in spite of themselves - so do their shadows in the mornings and evenings”(3). In this analogy, God compares non-belief to obscurities and belief to light. In his book entitled ‘The Synthesis of Eloquence’, Essabouni says: “this is one of the best analogies because non-belief is like the obscurity where the confused is lost, and belief is like light, where the confused is guided. Belief is rewarded with paradise and non-belief is punished with hell”. The meanings of the Quran are the best illustration of the Islamic concept of enlightenment.

Enlightenment as an Islamic concept :
The Islamic concept of enlightenment is based on a solid foundation of belief and science. It is a Quranic concept that sheds light on the reality of enlightenment that combines the enlightenment of mind and that of the heart through belief in God and in science. A mind is useless if the light of Islam does not guide it in thought and behavior. Sheikh Mohamed Abdou says: “Islam liberated the mind of its shackles and of slavery. It enabled it to submit to none but God and His teachings”(4). Islamic enlightenment is based on free will and independent intellect. Mohamed Abdou also said: “Mankind have achieved their freedom through free will, opinion and logic. These complete their humanity and help them reach the happiness that God offers them”(5).

The high stature of reason in Islam has made it possible for intellect to play its role in the scientific and cultural spheres in Islamic societies. In this way, the reasons that allowed one institution to dominate in the name of religion have been omitted and the excuses that were used to oppress the freedom of mind have been outdone(1).

For these reasons, the conflicts between science and religion that Europe underwent in the dark mediaeval ages did not take place in Islam. In Europe, these conflicts led to the emergence of the idea of enlightenment. This was a war that free intellectuals, the tenors of the movement of enlightenment, waged against the clergy.

The conflict between science and religion is a Western issue that is proper to the Europeans and their attitude towards the church and religion. This issue was erroneously raised in the Muslim context. There has never been a conflict between Islam and science. Western scientists discovered contradictions between their holy books and scientific facts. Therefore, they opposed their religion. The Quran, on the contrary, does not state facts that are contradictory with science. Many scientific concepts are rather stated in Islam’s holy Book(2).

The issue of European enlightenment, which discredits religion and adopts science and nature to understand the secrets of life and organize society, was erroneously raised in Islamic societies. Western enlightenment was completely opposed to religion and it still adopts the same attitude. Islamic enlightenment, on the contrary, combines belief and science, religion and reason, in a reasonable equilibrium between these components.

Used alone, reason did not enable those who used it to discover the truth. Likewise, those who ignored reason and sought intuition and spiritual knowledge were misled. The Islamic theory of knowledge combines the mind and the heart, the spiritual and the material(3).

Unlike Europe and the West, Islam has never imposed restrictions on reason. Therefore, the European experience cannot apply outside its context(4). Those who seek to apply European enlightenment to an Islamic context only try to mislead people because European enlightenment completely ignores religion. European enlightenment is contradictory with the Islamic one and does not express the Islamic perspective. The reasons behind the decline of the Islamic nation were different from those that led to Europe’s decline during the Dark Ages. The church imposed restrictions on reason and adopted the slogan “believe and do not discuss”. This attitude resulted from an erroneous interpretation of religion of which the clergy claimed to preserve the secrets. Anyone who would discuss the clergy was considered as hallucinating and was “deprived of God’s mercy”, if not killed. This oppression, not religion, propagated obscurity over European thought in the mediaeval ages.

In Islam, all mankind worship one God without intermediaries or tutors. This religion calls for good deeds and for meditation in the universe and the creatures with reason to achieve happiness in life and heaven. It criticizes those who do not use reason.

Islamic enlightenment enlightens with the light of Islam. It promotes the use of reason to understand religion. European enlightenment, on the contrary, rejects religion.

Ignorance is darkness. In Islam, the quest for knowledge liberates man “Forbidden to you (for food) are: dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which hath been invoked the name of other than Allah; that which hath been killed by strangling, or by a violent blow, or by a headlong fall, or by being gored to death; that which hath been (partly) eaten by a wild animal; unless ye are able to slaughter it (in due form); that which is sacrificed on stone (altars); (forbidden) also is the division (of meat) by raffling with arrows: that is impiety. This day have those who reject Faith given up all hope of your religion: yet fear them not but fear Me. This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion. But if any is forced by hunger, with no inclination to transgression, Allah is indeed Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful”(2).

This is the ultimate degree of Islamic enlightenment.

Islamic enlightenment and contemporary reality :
Islamic enlightenment is not a theory. It is a reality in the life of Muslims. It is a revival movement that aims at achieving the finalities of Islam in the lives of Muslims. It is a renewal of the concept and functions of religion and a bond that unites all Muslims.

An enlightened person cannot deny the urgent need to reform and change Muslim societies through Islamic action and a right understanding of religion. In facing the current reality of the Islamic world, Islamic enlightenment has to tread the right path in order to fulfill its mission. It is not a mere intellectual and cultural activity. It is a rectifying movement that aims to change erroneous ideas about religion and to promote tolerance, love, cooperation, and solidarity in Islamic societies. It encourages the quest for knowledge in order to achieve the real renaissance.

The Islamic world is now at the crossroads, and Muslims should combine their efforts to achieve their renaissance through the respect of the principles of their religion. Many obstacles impede these efforts, but they can be removed through firm will. Official and public institutions, universities in particular, should join these efforts. Islamic enlightenment is not limited to religious and human science. It covers the intellectual, scientific and cultural areas of Muslim societies. Mastering science and technology is the core of Islamic enlightenment because it sets the mind to work and uses the skills that God has bestowed on mankind. Muslim intellectuals should use these abilities to achieve progress, in an enlightened endeavor.

Our enlightened understanding of the issues and problems of society is the fruit of firm belief. The Islamic approach to Muslim reality should be elaborated on this basis.

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(1) Mouaajam Al-Wassit of the Arabic Language, Cairo, vol. 2, p. 962.

(2) Al Koulyate Dictionary of Linguistic Terminology, Abou El Bakaa El Kafoui, p. 909, Arrissala editions. Beirut.

(3) The lexicon of the terms used in the Quran, vol. 6, p. 172.

(4) The Encyclopedia of General Islamic Concepts, vol. 2000, p. 169.

(5) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and philosophers, Dr. Abdelmouniim Hanafi, vol. 1, p. 405, Madbouli Library, Cairo.

(1) Ibid., p. 405.

(2) Religion, Philosophy and Enlightenment, Dr. Mahmoud Hamdi Zakzouk, p. 79, Dar El-Maarif, Cairo 1996.

(3) Ibid., p. 79.

(4) Ibid., p. 80.

(5) The Battle of Terminology between the West and Islam, Dr. Mohamed Omara, p. 54, Cairo 1997.

(1) Maalamat Al-Islam, Dr. Anouar Al-Joundi, p. 61, Beirut 1982.

(2) Ibid., p. 54.

(3) ‘The Issue of Enlightenment In the Islamic World’, Mohamed Qotb,

p. 72, 1999.

(4) Al-Baqarah, verse 257.

(5) Al-Maeda, verse 16.

(1) Al-Maeda, verse 15.

(2) Al-Maeda, verse 46.

(3) Al-Maeda, verse 44.

(4) Al-Maeda, verse 44.

(5) Nour, verse 35.

(1) Al Koulyate, p. 909.

(2) Nour, verse 40.

(3) Erraad, verse 16.

(4) The Synthesis of Eloquence, vol. 1 p. 146.

(5) The complete works of Sheikh Mohamed Abdou, vol. 3, p. 455.

(1) Ibid., p. 455 – 456.

(2) Maalamat Al-Islam, Anouar Al Joundi, vol. 2, p. 15.

(3) Ibid., Book 2. p. 20.

(4) Ibid., Book 3. p. 117.

(1) Al-Maeda, verse 3.

(2) Question of ethics : Contribution to ethical criticism of Western modernism by Dr. Taha Abdurrahman, p. 172, Arab Cultural Center, Casablanca, 2000.