Mahmoud Dhaouadi: The Concept of the Cognitive Aql-Naql Muslim Mind

Dr Mahmoud Dhaouadi is Professor of sociology at the University of Tunis, Tunisia. His research focuses on cultural symbols, cultural sociology, underdevelopment and linguistic underdevelopment in the Third World, and the thought of Ibn Khaldun. He is the author of more than 10 books in Arabic and English. His most recent book, in Arabic, is The Muaqaddimah in Cultural Sociology from an Arab Islamic Perspective (Beirut, 2009).

Mahmoud Dhaouadi has kindly sent the following note in the answer of the questions of the Newsletter of Iranian Sociological Association about the theme of “Regional Conference on Social Thought and Sociology in the Contemporary Middle East”.

It is clear form autobiographic sketches and the profile of the learning Muslim mind that Ibn Khaldun’s education and learning backgrounds as well as the societies he studied were profoundly Islamic in nature.

On the one hand, he had a wide and high standard of knowledge of the various Islamic sciences and disciplines (the Two Cultures) of his time as shown in the Sixth Part of his Muqaddimah. On the other, Ibn Khaldun had first hand experience knowledge about numerous Arab Muslim societies, tribes, clans and groups he analyzed and wrote about with his Umran mind. In other words, his social theoretical and field work knowledge are strongly Islamically inspired. Thus, IbnKhaldun’s intellectual mind is bound to be heavily a Muslim mind which is the outcome both of the Islamic learned culture and that of the social realities of the Muslim Arab societies. Gibb’s description of Ibn Khaldun leaves no doubt about his Muslim identity as a great thinker “ Ibn Khaldun was not only a Muslim , but as almost every page of the Muqaddimah bears witness , a Muslim jurist and theologian , of the strict Maliki school.For him religion was far and away the most important thing in life.The Sharia is the only true guide “ ( Shaw , Polk , 1962:171). On his part ,the author M.Al-Shaqaa affirms that Ibn Khaldun’s Umran Theory is Islamic from the beginning to the end.( Al-Shaqaa , 1992 :100-130 ).Ibn Khaldun himself appears to be referring to his authentic Islamic and personal thought when he denies the foreign influence on his conceptualization of his New Science “ We became aware of these things with God’s help and without the instruction of Aristotle or the teachings of the Mobedhan “( Dawood ,1974:41 ).

The Islamic features of Ibn Khaldun’s mind are furthermore manifested in what we may call the cognitive Aql-Naql perspective of the Muslim mind.

Historically speaking, Arab Muslim civilization’s earlier scholars and scientists of all disciplines and sciences ( the two cultures ) carried out their work on the basis of the principle of cooperation between the revealed-sacred knowledge (Naql), on the one hand, and the human acquired knowledge based on human reason (Aql), on the other hand. Ibn Khaldun’s well established interdisciplinary social science thought in his Muqaddimah is no exception to the rule of the combination of the Naql and Aql knowledge. That is, he strongly adopted the cognitive dualist ( Aql-Naql ) perspective in writing his entire Umran work including his Muqaddimah . As such, the Khaldunian cognitivemind is well in line with the Quranic inspired major characteristics of the ideal type of the classical intellectualMuslim mind.

This type of extremely curious and motivated mind to learn both from Aql and Naql worlds should help explain the great milestones in many branches of knowledge accomplished by the Arab Muslim civilization before the Middle Ages.Ibn Khaldun’s manifested and articulated mind is his Muqaddimah is a convicing example of the potential high intellectual performance of the Muslim Aql-Naql mind.This has made me consider this type of mind as the dividing line between what I call Khaldunian Eastern Sociology and contemporay Western sociology ( Dhaouadi , 1990:319-335).The Khaldunian Aql-Naql mind is expected , for instance , to be praised by Wallerstein for its epistemological unification of the two cultures in his Muqaddimah. But given Wallerstein’s Western modern training, it is very difficult for him to take seriously the Revealed knowledge part of Ibn Khaldun’s Aql-Naql mind. Since it is against the social norm of the Western modern mind in knowledge acquisition and creation.

From an Islamic epistemological view point, tensions and conflicts between Aql and Naql parts have no room in the Muslim mind. Because the source of the two (Aql and Naql) is one: Allah. Seen that way the Muslim mind could rightly be considered a meeting ground for the secular and the Revealed knowledge.

The famous religious scholar Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328) is the most well known Muslim learned man who had strongly defended the legitimacy of the promotion of the combined Aql and Naql knowledge in the Islamic Culture. His book: the Prevention of Contradictions Between Aql and Naql is a case in point.

References

Al – Shaqaa , M. , ( 1992 ) The Islamic Bases in Ibn Khaldun’s Thought and Theories (in Arabic ) , Cairo , Al-Dar Al-Masriah Al-Lubnaniah.

Dawood , N.J. , editor ( 1974 ) Ibn Khaldun , The Muqaddimah :An Introduction to History (translated from Arabic by Franz Rosenthal , Princeton , Bolling Series , Princeton University Press

Dhaouadi , M. ,(1990 ) Ibn Khaldun: the Founding Father of Eastern Sociology , International Sociology , Vol.5, no.3 .

16-Shaw, S.J. and Polk, W.R. ( 1962) eds, Gibb H.A. Studies on the Civilization of Islam , London , Routledge and Kegan Paul