Why Muslims like Plato?
As I indicated in my previous essay Western Civilization and Socratic Dialogue, the Socratic spirit has been a hallmark of Western culture at its best for nearly 2500 years. Yet it has never been shared by Muslims; nor by Western totalitarians starting with Plato in Antiquity. Plato (ca. 428-348 BC) in his early career was closely associated with his teacher Socrates (ca. 469-399 BC), who was executed in Athens when Plato was around 29 or 30 years old. Plato’s most positive contribution to Western culture, apart from his support of mathematics, was the fact that he provided us with much of the information we have regarding Socrates’ methods. Yet it is sometimes very difficult to see when he reports opinions that Socrates the truth seeker probably held, and when Plato puts his own, sometimes strikingly different ideas into the mouth of his former teacher. As historian of philosophy John G. Cottingham states:
“Plato was evidently inspired by the ideas of Socrates, whom he makes the chief spokesman in his dialogues; but since Socrates himself wrote nothing, it is impossible to say with certainty how many of the ideas presented come directly from him. The general consensus is that the doctrines developed in the middle and later dialogues (most notably the famous Theory of Forms) represent Plato’s own distinctive philosophical views, while the earlier writings more closely reflect the influence of Socrates. The Socratic project is to shake us out of our comfortable preconceptions, by challenging us to give a rational account, or logos, of the concepts and categories we employ, often unreflectively, in our ordinary lives.”
The excellent French scholar Remi Brague explains in his book The Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea that medieval Christians found inspiration in his personal story and saw in Socrates a pre-Christian precursor persecuted for his monotheism. While he was not the son of God, as Christians believe Jesus of Nazareth was, the parallels between the executions of the “troublemakers” Socrates and Jesus are nevertheless interesting. Page 113:
“Alfarabi and Averroes recall that Socrates preferred to die rather than live in a corrupt regime. The fact remains that the ‘primitive scene’ of medieval religions is different. Christ died on the cross. Muhammad died in his bed, a victor; there are declarations attributed to him that suggest that he was aware of that difference from the prophets who had preceded him. Consequently, and in parallel fashion, Islam understands the martyr as a combatant who falls while killing, not as a victim who accepts being put to death. Defeat is not conceived as concealing a deeper victory, reserved for resurrection. Thus it seems that an authentic philosopher, in the Islamic context, must be in power. Since being at the head of Plato’s ideal city is impossible, he would be the vizier of the actual sovereign. To repeat a lapidary saying: ‘Socrates was judged; Maimonides and Averroes were judges.’ They might even have considered it their duty to condemn those who, in their own times, might have been equivalent to Socrates.”
The image of Socrates as a martyr who died for his beliefs might make sense to Christians, but less so to Muslims. This is because a Muslim shahid, a term often translated as “martyr,” is not a person who dies for his beliefs but rather one who murders others for their beliefs and himself dies in the process, for example by blowing up a bus full of unarmed non-Muslim civilians. According to such an Islamic worldview, Socrates was a weakling and a failure.
Muslims, as did most European scholars, generally considered Aristotle to be a better writer than Plato and held him in high regard as the greatest thinker of Antiquity. One notable exception to this rule was in politics. We have no certain knowledge of any medieval Arabic – or Hebrew – translation of Aristotle’s Politics, which was translated directly from the Greek to Latin by William of Moerbeke. If an Arabic translation of this major work of political theory ever existed at all, which appears unlikely, it was at best treated with indifference, at worst with outright hostility. This blatant rejection of Aristotle’s political philosophy stands in sharp contrast to the enthusiasm for his natural philosophy and requires an explanation.
Brague concludes (page 116) that “Aristotle’s Politics appears to have been unknown in that part of the world. This was an absence that had one important consequence: Islam founded its political philosophy, not on Aristotle, but on Plato, whose political reflections – the only ones available – thus replaced Aristotle’s, to play the role in the East that the latter filled in the Christian West. If there was a deliberate decision not to translate Aristotle’s Politics, it is not impossible that this was because the work was judged less appropriate than Plato’s dialogues on the ideal regime for use in connection with the Muslim community in search of a theory of its own, and therefore that in Muslim lands such theory was deliberately founded on principles that were more Platonic than Aristotelian.”
Despite their love of Aristotelian physics, “Islam had an affinity for Plato.” One historian has compared the Muslim political community with the organization of Plato’s ideal city. The Law of God, page 117:
“One author whom one might not expect to meet in this context – Nietzsche – saw this similarity with an astonishing clarity. For Nietzsche, Muhammad is a Plato who succeeded. If the philosopher, necessarily a critic of the mores of the society in which he lives, does not manage to become the legislator of new mores, he leaves behind him the image of a dangerous dreamer. This was the case with Plato. But in his Syracusan adventure, Nietzsche continues, Plato ‘thought he could do for all the Greeks what Muhammad did later for his Arabs…viz. establishing both minor and more important customs, and especially regulating the daily life of every man. His ideas were quite practicable, just as certainly as those of Muhammad were practicable….A few hazards less and a few hazards more – and the world would have witnessed the Platonization of Southern Europe. The philosophers of Islam seem to have seen in Muhammad the philosopher king that Plato had postulated, and to have seen the Muslim community as the realization of Plato’s city. Did they sincerely believe this? Their practice shows, in any event, that they felt an affinity between Plato’s political works and Islam.”
I have also heard the claim that Muhammad was the Hitler who succeeded. Both statements could be considered true. That’s what Muslims have in common with both international Socialists and national Socialists, or Communists and Nazis: A complete rejection of Western liberty and a passion for Platonic political totalitarianism. This explains why Marxists and radical left-wingers within the Western world often team up with Muslims: They have a mutual enemy and make common cause to stamp out the Socratic spirit of the West.
There are those who view Plato as the real founder of Communism, more than two thousand years before the birth of Karl Marx. In his work Western Philosophy: An Anthology, John G. Cottingham comments on Hegel, whom he regards as a difficult and often contradictory philosopher but concludes that individualism is deemphasized by him in favor of the state and that “Hegel often seems insufficiently concerned with the practical safeguards needed to protect and foster the autonomy and individual freedom which his state is supposed to realize.” It would be fair to put Hegel squarely in the anti-Socratic camp of Western thought, with roots at least back to Plato. Karl Marx himself soon followed in the Hegelian tradition.
Plato talked about the corrupting influences of art and argued for strict censorship of the kinds of music and poetry that should be allowed in his ideal state. He viewed the painter as a kind of trickster who seduces his audience by producing pale imitations of reality. Fortunately for the future evolution of European art and music, Aristotle had “far greater sympathy with the artistic enterprise” than did his teacher. Had Plato’s views on this prevailed, much of the incredible variety of later Western art and music, from the Hellenistic period to the Northern Renaissance, would have been impossible. In this regard, Plato was very clearly an ancient forerunner of modern totalitarian movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
It is instructive here to remember that while the Nazis and the Communists both wanted and practiced strict regulation and censorship of “decadent” art, even they didn’t go as far as to ban all works of pictorial art, European Classical music or ballet per se. Muslims, however, did do so. This means that mainstream Islam was even more totalitarian than the most totalitarian strains of Western thought, but it also means that the Platonic view of art and politics reflected by the Nazis and the Communists was more in line with Islamic thought than with the best and most creative elements of European culture. This again explains why a disproportionate number of Western converts to Islam today are either Marxists or neo-Nazis.
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To Fjordman ;
You say "This again explains why a disproportionate number of Western converts to Islam today are either Marxists or neo-Nazis."
Another Jewish bashing Islam and insulting our intelligence. Could you do us a favour Fjordman and share your statistics with us that Western converts to Islam today are either Marxists or neo-Nazis? We are all waiting your response.
An interesting piece on western thought
No, islamdevotee, we who can read are not "waiting [for] your response." Fjordman wrote "a disproportionate number [among intellectuals]…" The rest of us know the meaning of 'disproportionate'. There is also a disproportionate number of convicted criminals who have converted to Islam, presumably because, in Islam, they find sanctions for continued criminal activities.
islamdevotee, you asked: "Could you do us a favour Fjordman and share your statistics with us that Western converts to Islam today are either Marxists or neo-Nazis?" That is not what he stated. He stated, "“This again explains why a disproportionate number of Western converts to Islam today are either Marxists or neo-Nazis." As for my getting an education, perhaps you'd like to click on my "signature" to determine details, but as for being "stupid": yes, maybe I am – to spend time trying to get you to smarten up.
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Good…
Muslims or terrorists both are correct in acronym are leaving Islam…
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/pakistani-muslim-youth…
To All Muslim haters;
You are so confused and illiterate about Islam. You remind me when I was studying mathematics. Students who did not understand mathematics hated it, cursed it and made fun of it, yet those who understood it appreciated its knowledge. Islam is just like mathematics! One must understand it correctly
Here is what defines a Muslim:
1. Must believe in the Quran and that the Quran is the word of Allah.
2. Must believe that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.
3. Must believe in the authentic hadith.
Now, no verse in the Quran mentions that Muslims must follow the teachings of some so called Islamic scholars. Those Islamic scholars may be wrong on one issue or another. If a fatwa (religious ruling) issued by some so called Muslim scholar does not make sense, then Muslims do not need to follow it.
Let us take some examples where such fatwa if issued can be ignored:
1. Some so called Muslim scholars issued a fatwa that Muslims should grow their beard. That is a personal opinion. It is up to the Muslim individual to follow it or not. Neither the prophet nor the Quran said that Muslims should grow their beard.
2. Some so called Muslims scholars issued a fatwa that women should not go to school and get educated. Again, that is a personal opinion. It is up to the Muslim individual to follow it or not. Neither the prophet nor the Quran said that women should not go to school and educated themselves.
3. Some so called Muslims scholars issued a fatwa that Muslim should not listen to music. Again, that is a personal opinion. It is up to the Muslim individual to follow it or not. Neither the prophet nor the Quran said that Muslims should not listen to Music.
And the list goes on.
On the other hand, Muslims must follow the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad. The teachings of the Prophet Muhammad are called hadith. Muslims have to follow the authentic hadith. A hadith can only be authentic if it is related to some verse in the Quran. Also, all authentic hadith is based on common sense and logic.
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Well, islamdevotee, although you didn't address your message to me (since you addressed it to "all Muslim haters", and I certainly don't hate the poor Muslim people who have been so unfortunate as to have been indoctrinated in Islam by still-another group of con-artist clerics), yet I'll respond, because your fundamental error is so egregious.
You correctly stated "Islam is just like mathematics", but then, you apparently fail to see the consequences. Think about what Einstein said:
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
The critical point (which I made to you before, referencing my chapter entitled "Truth and Knowledge", and which you apparently ignored) is that mathematics is just a closed-system game (like chess, or baseball, and all religions) in which "truth" is whatever is defined to be so, within the rules of the game. But mathematics (and all religions) are just that, games; their "truths" needn't be true in the open system known as reality.
As examples, in the game of mathematics 1 + 1 = 2 (and 1 + 12 = 13, etc.), in the game called Christianity, Jesus is the son of God, and in the game called Islam, Allah communicated his laws to Muhammad via Gabriel. But to determine the "truth" of such claims in reality, we must rely on evidence – which can reveal that they're wrong.
As examples, if you get one hole in your pants and then another hole adjacent to it, then the number of holes in your pants is 1 + 1 = 1, if you merge one piece of silly putty with another, then again, 1 + 1 = 1, and if you burn napthalene (C10H8) in oxygen (O2), C10H8 + 12O2 yields 10CO2 + 4H2O, i.e., for such molecules, 1 + 12 = 14.
Similarly, in the game called Christianity, Jesus is defined to be the son of God, and in the game called Islam, Allah communicated his message to Muhammad via Gabriel. But in reality, the best that we're able to do is to apply the scientific method (relying on evidence) to determine the probability that any claim is true. What evidence supports the claim that Jesus is the son of God? What evidence supports the claim that any god (Jehovah, Allah…) exists? What evidence supports the claim that angels exist? And in contrast, think of all the evidence that supports the claim that you've fallen for another clerical con game!
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[...] Why Muslims like Plato? | Faithfreedom.org [...]
[...] Why Muslims like Plato? | Faithfreedom.org [...]
This Message is for ISLAMDEVOTES SAY: Just want to correct you on your statement regarding beard, where you say that Prophet sw did not order Muslims to grow beards, Here is the Proof from Hadeeth and Quran.
(1) Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) said "I have no connection iwth one who shaves, shouts and tears his clothing eg. in grief or affication."
- Reported by Abu Darda (R.A.) in Muslim, Hadith no. 501
(2) The teachings of Hadhrat Ammar Bin Yaasir, Abdullah Ibn Umar, Sayyidina Umar, Abu Hurairah and Jaabir (R.A.), indicate that ALL used to keep beards that were one fist length or more. Hadhrat Jaabir (R.A.) had said: "We used to grow long beards and only during Hajj and Umrah did we trim them to the required length (i.e. fist length)."
(3) Hadhrat Abdullah Ibn Umar (R.A.) relates that: "He who imitates the kuffar (non-believers) and dies in that state, he will be raised up with them on the Day of Qiyamat (Judgement)."
(4) Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) says: "Trim closely the moustache, and let the beard flow (Grow)."
- Narrated Ibn Umar (R.A.) in Muslim, Hadith no. 498
(5) "Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) ordered us to trim the moustache closely and spare the beard" says Ibn Umar.
- Muslim, Hadith no. 449
(6) Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam)said: "Act against contrary to the polythesists, trim closely the moustache and grow the beard."
- Reported by Ibn Umar (R.A.) in Muslim, Hadith no. 500
(7) Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) said "Trim closely the moustache and grow the beard."
- Reported by Abu Hurairah (R.A.) in Muslim, Hadith no. 501
(8) Rasulullah (Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam) said: "Anyone who shaves has no claim to the mercy of Allah"
- Reported by Ibn Abbas (R.A.) in Tibrabi
(9) Hadhrat Abdullah Ibn Umar (R.A.) used to cut that portion (which exceeds the grip of the hand) of the beard.
- Tirmidhi
QURAN:
Concerning Adherence to the Sunnah in the Holy Qur'an:
"O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you." (Quran 4:59)
"O ye who believe! Obey Allah and His Messenger, and turn not away from him when ye hear (him speak)." (Quran 8:20)
"O ye who believe! give your response to Allah and His Messenger, when He calleth you to that which will give you life; and know that Allah cometh in between a man and his heart, and that it is He to Whom ye shall (all) be gathered."(Quran 8:24)
"Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah an excellent exempler for him who hopes in Allah and the Final Day, and who remembers Allah." (Quran 33:21)
"What Allah has bestowed on His Messenger (and taken away) from the people of the townships,- belongs to Allah,- to His Messenger and to kindred and orphans, the needy and the wayfarer; in order that it may not (merely) make a circuit between the wealthy among you. So take what the Messenger gives you, and refrain from what he prohibits you. And fear Allah: for Allah is strict in Punishment." (Quran 59:7)
very good site with lots of information on what i googles thank you
ann