Quranic Philosophy

“I have seen some people deny religions in the modern age in the name of Materialism. Thus, they borrowed every characteristic and necessity from religion’s characteristics and necessities, and never spared the religions’ elements of faith and belief that have no basis but mere believing and emotion. Then they stripped religion from its strength that it spreads into the depths of the soul because they indeed made it up and did not attribute it to its original source.
Believers in this Materialism ask their adherents to disbelieve in everything but matter, and to believe that universes are created from that matter in sequential courses where each course is broken up at its end and then recommences in a new course infinitely time after time. They also ask their adherents to wait for the everlasting bliss on this earth whenever their predictions about disappearance of social classes come true. There is no religion that places on its followers a burden of a belief weirder than such belief, nor does any religion place a burden of submission more complete than such submission”.

By these words at the end of the introduction of Quranic Philosophy, al-Akkad indicated his target behind this work, which is one of his feats and exploits. As he go interviewing philosophers about their views on some social and life issues on which Islam introduced perceptions that have always been the focus of Materialism criticism to prove through his interviews that religion does not smash intellect, crash mind, oppose, contradict, hostile or stand an adversarial position against them.

Quranic Philosophy is a small book with a tremendous value on the spiritual and social philosophy of some of the topics stated in the Noble Quran. Although its title and topics seem to be far from jurisprudence justification, yet the truth is that dealing with the topics stated therein falls directly and explicitly under the umbrella of justification. Al-Akkad discussed some issues like judgments concerning women, marriage, inheritance, captivity, punishments, acts of worship and other issues, where he discussed their reasons and logical wisdom. Yet, al-Akkad moved further from topics of jurisprudence justification to discussing the philosophy of Quranic discourse in terms of science, morals and creed. Nevertheless, his discussion on such issues has been concise with no connection to branches just as his discussion on the Sharia rules stated in the Noble Quran.

Arkan Centre for studies, research and publishing preferred taking care of this invaluable book to broaden its impact scope by translating it to English for the first time. The aim is not to defend Islam or deny the charges, yet to signify the momentum of thinking and enhancing minds, root for knowledge and speech culture and encourage ripe intercultural operations between Arabic language and the rest of world languages.