Ninth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

“Philosophy” as a Greek word carries its own cultural connotation. When this word was transliterated into Arabic language as Falsafah, it became loaded in Islamic culture with additional positive connotations and yet became vulnerable to criticism. In this paper, I discuss how the approach of receiving “philosophy” itself has changed in the Islamic culture from that of an intellectual interaction and coexistence, to a negative pursuing of wisdom that was heavily criticized by many Muslim scholars. This paper discusses how Muslim scholars criticized philosophy in its Greek and Islamic manifestations, especially issues related to Metaphysics (Ilahiyyat) and Logic (Mantiq), in addition to showing how this criticism was presented in the writings of some Muslim scholars such as al-Kindī, al-Ghazālī and Ibn Taymiyya.