The concept of causation and the relationship of causes to their causes is still one of the concepts that have occupied Islamic thought since the early Islamic ages.
This debate has sparked controversy spanning centuries, and as a result, many philosophical and verbal currents were formed.
In his latest book, Islam, Causality, and Freedom From the Medieval to the Modern Era, published by the prestigious Cambridge House for the year 2020, Ozgur Koga, Professor of Islamic Studies and Philosophy at the Claremont Manifest School Islamic graduate studies in California, and engaged in Islamic philosophy, theology, and mysticism, an analysis of the views of the major Muslim speakers and philosophers on causation and its effects on the relationship of God to humans and nature from the middle of the eighth century to the middle of the twentieth century.
The book reviewed the opinions of speakers such as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d .: 505 AH / 1111 CE), al-Fakhr al-Razi (d .: 606 AH / 1210 CE) and Sharif al-Jarjani (T: 816 AH / 1413 CE) and Sufis such as Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi al-Ishraqi author of the philosophy of al-Anwar (Q: 587 AH / 1191 CE) and Ibn Arabi (Sheikh al-Akbar, who died in 638 AH) and Saeed al-Nursi (died 1380 AH / 1960 CE) - although he denies that he is a Sufis - and others, and this dialogue will seek to deconstruct the ideas and issues of the book.
In your book of values you focused on causality, freedom and its relationship to Islam, why did you choose this topic and what is the value of freedom in the Islamic system?
I have always been interested in issues in which religion, science and philosophy intersect, and since my Ph.D. years I have realized that the topic of “causality” is very important, given its preference in discussing many controversial issues in this area in a constructive way. Therefore, I decided to focus on this question and examine the interpretations. The various introductions of causality and freedom formulated by Muslim speakers, philosophers, and mystics, it took me over 5 years to complete this project.
Now, it can be considered that the way one understands the causal relationships existing in the natural world has direct implications for any religion. This understanding teaches one’s perception of his relationship with God and the universe which in turn shapes his perception of God’s relationship with the individual. Our convictions regarding whether causal relationships are necessary An occasional mother that shapes our thinking about human agency, consciousness, logic, theodicy (the theory of divine justice), and ethics.
The issue of causation also greatly influences discussions about religion and science. One of the challenges that belong to this field is the existence of theories of causation that maintain the rigor of the scientific method that add to the feeling of divine presence in the world. Building such theories requires a deep understanding of causation, which is deeply rooted in nature.
The question of how freedom is anchored in the divine order and its relationship to creation is also fundamentally important for any religion to establish human autonomy, moral agency, and responsibility.
Understanding freedom through my studies, as the intonation of being and its ability to be a cause that is not a reason for itself, and if the issue of freedom is described in this way, it is closely related to the issue of causation, so reconciling the freedom of creation with God’s knowledge, absolute power, absolute existence and predestination is one of the main scientific issues. Which has been strongly attracted by the parties to the dispute and debate between scholars of theology, philosophers and Muslim mystics for centuries, which constitutes one of the basic pillars of theological and philosophical thinking;
Without freedom, concepts such as accountability, judgment, revelation, divine commands and prohibitions collapses, as well as the question of justice.
One can also trace the implications of perceptions related to causation and freedom in various fields such as politics and economics, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that conscious or unconscious assumptions related to causation and freedom constitute a strong background to existence and influence one's answers to these and similar questions in all areas.
Koga's book entitled "Islam, Causation and Freedom from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era" published by Cambridge 2020 (Al-Jazeera)
How did causality shape the main mystical trends found in the Islamic world?
Sufi trends are usually characterized by their highlighting of the essential divine presence in the world, this presence in turn, based on a special concept of causation linked to seeing God at every moment within the world process. This is why the proposition based on the idea of a distant deity present at the root of a long series of causes and causes is rejected. Usually by Muslim mystics.
Also, since our perception of causation shapes our understanding of the relationship between God and the individual, it also affects the individual’s spiritual state and its connection to religious rituals, such as their performance of prayer, which is fundamentally important in the Islamic Sufi order.
In your book, we find that you have paid attention to the proposition of Al-Ghazali, Al-Jarjani, Al-Fakhr Al-Razi, Al-Nawrsi, Al-Suhrawardi and others, so what is the reason behind your choosing these scholars, speakers and philosophers in your valuable book?
These scholars can be considered to be the best personifications of the major philosophical, theological and Sufi schools and currents in the Islamic world, for example, Al-Ghazali, Al-Jarjani, Al-Fakhr Al-Razi and Al-Norse can be included as embodiments of the category of the speakers, while Avicenna and Ibn Rushd can be considered as major representatives of Islamic philosophy, while Al-Suhrawardi (Shihab al-Din) and Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi can be considered belonging to the Ashraqi current, while Ibn Arabi, Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi and al-Qaysari are among the most prominent representatives of philosophical Sufism. Therefore, studying their thinking will contribute to our understanding of how the main schools belonging to the Islamic heritage deal with the theme of "causality and freedom." .
It also sought to show the extent of the continuity and development of the discussions related to causation and freedom over the centuries extending - from the early and middle period of the history of Islamic thought to the modern era thereof - so scholars from the early, middle and modern eras were chosen.
You said that the efforts of Al-Fakhr Al-Razi contributed to the emergence of an occasional scientific philosophy characterized by a pragmatic and skeptical attitude towards the prevailing scientific models, can you explain this idea?
The awareness of Al-Razi's pride in the possibility of using Euclidean geometry (relative to the Greek mathematician Euclid) to defend two contradictory representations of the physical nature of the world, embodied in a discrete atomic understanding as well as heliomorphism (an Aristotelian philosophical theory that explains the formation of bodies by the hierarchy - the origin of matter - and the image) led him to question the ability of Scientific theories on telling us the reality of the world in a holistic way.
The reality of the world is so complex that it cannot be encapsulated in its entirety by the scientific models prevailing in his time, which were at the time embodied in Euclidean geometry, Ptolemaic astronomy, and Aristotelian physics. That is why he wrote that “these theories in the end are estimates and assumptions.”
This is the reason why I described his philosophy of science as a "skeptical" philosophy, and this suspicion also means that these theories are not strong enough to define our doctrinal obligations, and despite that, they have the practical nature of what a Muslim needs, because despite the presence of deficiencies within them, they are what Despite its inability to comprehensively describe the world, Al-Razi recommends using Euclidean geometry to determine the proper position of the qiblah for prayer.
The writings of Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi provide an assessment of causation through the use of a metaphor for the idea of light, and indicate that causation can be likened to the emission of divine light on the jewels and that secondary causation is effective due to the participation of those essences in the divine light, while the episodic elements belong within the larger context of metaphysics.
What effect does this have on his perception of freedom?
As your important observation indicates, Al-Suhrawardi advocates a participatory interpretation of causation. For him, when entities share a divine light or existence as a result of the bestowal of divine existence upon them, they also share divine attributes, including consciousness and freedom, thus, divine existence becomes the emitter of the principle Creation freedom, in other words, we are free because we have taken a share of divine freedom.
Is it the speakers' perception of causation that rendered the concept of freedom incapable of keeping pace with the concept of freedom, which belongs to the system of modernity?
In the book I discussed that Muslim philosophers, theologians, and Sufis have developed a set of theories about causation, however, there are two main trends: accidental explanations, and the second interpretation is what I call, participatory interpretations of causation;
So I think we must first define the perception of causation that we are talking about.
I claim in the book that the symptom of the Ash'ari - despite its ability to adapt - it contains complex obstacles that prevent the free will of a Muslim, despite the efforts made by Ash'ari scholars today to bridge this gap.
On the other hand, I also argue that participatory explanations of causation that revolve around the issue of "existence" offer a more promising path compared to its occasional counterpart, for establishing a coherent system around freedom, as well as reconciling religious and scientific patterns to explain the world.
Academic Ahmed Kuru believes that despite the importance of the book, it does not provide a sufficient historical context for analyzing the history of Islamic theology, which is more than a thousand years old. About the scientific and philosophical decline and the effect of causation on this path, can you explain to us your point of view on this issue?
I think that there are two main reasons for this. First, as I mentioned in the question, the book examines the ideas of a group of philosophers, mystics and speakers who lived between the 8th and 20th centuries AD, which exceeds a thousand years, and it is also worth noting that providing an appropriate historical background for ideas that extend to a thousand years are A very difficult task, and in the end I am not a historian.
Secondly, my focus was mainly devoted to a purely philosophical and verbal debate to support my project, and I believe that I presented something about the nature of discussions related to human freedom and causation that transcend the historical dimension, and are to a large extent independent of historical possibilities.
The topic of scientific and philosophical decline in the Islamic world is an important question, but it was not the subject of this book, because the question of renaissance and decline needs specialized studies to address it.
Nevertheless, my book includes something that can be included in this discussion, which is that I tried to show in my book the continuation of philosophical, verbal and mystical discussions about causality and freedom in the Islamic world over the centuries, as we witness the emergence of new and innovative ideas or new practices of old ideas that were generated on Centuries have passed, and in this sense, Islamic studies remain vibrant due to their interaction with these philosophical questions, which could be a cognitive and systematic problem for the masters of the theory of Islamic backwardness.
You studied the relationship between Al-Arduat Al-Ash'ari and the natural sciences of Al-Razi, Al-Jarjani, and Al-Nouri, but why did you not include your treatment of the practical effects of Islamic scientific production?
In fact, I discussed some of the implications of the different interpretations of causation in the Islamic tradition related to the discussion of religion and modern science in Chapter 11 entitled “Islamic Theories of Causality in the Modern Context: The Dialectic of Science and Religion.” In this chapter, I discussed an issue related to how divine causation can be understood according to the method. Scientific.
I also explored whether studied Islamic theories of causation are viable options for contemplating divine causation without undermining the rigor of modern scientific method.