Uloom al-Taareekh

KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY

22:46. Do they not travel/Through the land, so that/Their hearts (and minds)
May thus learn wisdom/And their ears may/Thus learn to hear?
Truly it is not their eyes/That are blind, but their/Hearts which are
In their breasts.

47. Yet they ask thee/To hasten on the Punishment!
But God will not fail/In His promise. Verily
A Day in the sight of thy Lord/Is like a thousand years
Of your reckoning.

48. And to how many populations/Did I give respite, which
Were given to wrong-doing?/In the end I punished them.
To Me is the destination (of all).  (Surah Hajj)

We live in a moment, the horizon between the future and the past.  So ephemeral, this moment is.  Were is it?  At what second does the future become the past?  How long is this present moment?  What is its duration?  The ever-moving present is a singularity of no duration.

We could say that the future is all potentiality and no actuality, while the past is all actuality and no potentiality.  But is this true?  Yes, the future is characterized by potentiality, but is the past actual?  The present is actual; in fact, it is potential becoming actual.  But is the past actual?  It was…, but what is it now?  Does it actually exit?

Certainly, the past does not potentially exist.  It either exists or does not exist.  Unlike the future, it has no potential any more.  Its potential has been exhausted, and now it has … retired.  It has ceased to exist.  It is dead. 

However, something happened and its repercussions are still with us, like ripples in a pond of water or echoes of voices in the canyons of time.  Something happened in the present which has left imprints and effects in the present, the ever-moving present, the event horizon of the space-time continuum. 

Some have looked at time as linear, going one way.  Some have posited that at any given moment there are infinite possible futures, but only one past.  The line only goes one way.  Some have posited that even the past has infinite expressions.  Each moment leads forward to infinite futures, AND to infinite pasts. 

The Universe is what is, extended in space, in three dimensions; and in time, duration.  Allahu Samad, He is the self-sufficient upon which all depends.  He is One, Ahad, He is singular.  And He is Asr, time.  Asr also means middle – the Asr or middle prayers of the day are an example of this usage.  He has no beginning or end.  What does this mean?  It means He is All Middle.  All time and all space, but not with extent or duration, like Creation.  He encompasses time and space in one, unique Singularity.  And there is nothing like unto Him.

112:1 Say: He is Allah, the One!

2 Allah, the eternally Besought of all!

3 He begetteth not nor was begotten.

4 And there is none comparable unto Him.

With the Big Bang, the Creation spewed out into extent and duration.  And History began.

So how do we know what happened in the past?  Allah tells us to study the natural phenomenon around us and the evidence of peoples who came before us.

In his book, Iqtisadina, Sayed Muhammad Baqir al Sadr attacks the philosophy of history posited by the Communists.  In doing so, he marks out a view on history as something objective.  Something occurred in the past and it can objectively be known in the present. 

Scientifically-based study of past peoples is called Archeology.  Other natural sciences study the pasts of animals, plants, the planet Earth itself.  Astronomy studies the past of universe.  The stars we see shine as the result of past emissions of light.

So how is this knowledge of the past, objective?  Yes, something happened, …. I assume it did because there is present evidence of something happening, of continuity, of duration.  But, if conditions like Autism have taught us anything, it is that we filter out a lot of what is happening around us.  Allah knows all of these happening, but can we?  We filter out what is happening in the present, otherwise we would be overwhelmed by stimuli, so do we have objective knowledge of the present?  If we do not, how can we have objective knowledge of the past?

In this case, what is objective?  Perhaps it is being able to produce evidence for a position, for a statement or tasdiq about the present or past.  However, in one sense, all experience is subjective. It depends on our view point, our assumptions, our cultural beliefs and values.  As the Hiesenburg Uncertainty Principle points out, the observer is also part of the thing observed and will always affect the observation. 

Sayed al Sadr noted this in his updates to his work, Filasfana.  However, his main reason for writing this text was to refute Communist Dialectic Materialism.  Oddly enough, materialism actually precludes objectivity. I would refer you to this excellent book to discover why.  Dialectic Materialism leaves us in a shaky oscillating universe, where nothing is certain and everything is relative. 

So what about relativity?  Are there no absolutes, no certainties?  And if there are none in the universe in general, how can there be such things in history?  To understand how we can “know” history, we have to first understand how we “know” at all.

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

What does it mean to know something?  Is it merely a matter of data storage on the hard drive of our brains, which we call memory?  Or does it imply having some deeper relationship with that data?  Does it imply understanding?  Does it imply internalizing this data in such a way as to behave in a manner consistent with this data?  Is it “khabr”, “ilm” or “hikmah?”

Some of what we claim to know is based on our perceptions and our experiences.  We call this aposteriori knowledge or knowledge that is acquired – khabr.  Some of what we claim to know is based on intuition – ilm.  It does not arise from experience, but arises from relationships discovered by the mind.  We often call this apriori knowledge, knowledge that is not dependant upon experience, knowledge that is innate. 

However, there is another form of knowledge that we as humans require.  Because we have free will, and must make choices that have consequences, we require another form of knowledge to aid us in making these choices, the knowledge of what is morale.

Can we obtain this knowledge from experience?  Consider the lioness’ killing a gazelle. Is this morale, does it have a morale value?  From the lioness’ point of view, it is good.  Killing a gazelle feeds the lioness’ and their family, as well as a host of other creatures, like jackels, hyenas, vultures, even worms and flies.  From the gazelle’s point of view, well…, it is certainly not a pleasant experience becoming such a conscious part of the circle of life.  But again, is there really a morale value in these events?  Or are we just putting ourselves in the gazelle’s hooves because we, ourselves, have been hunted at one time?

Can we obtain this knowledge innately?  Innate knowledge consists of instinct,  as well as the principles upon which we analyze the information we obtain from experience.  From innate instinct and learned experience, we derive knowledge of the forms or tasawwir (concepts – either actual or potential), and relationships discovered between them, (tasdiq – either true or false).  We can state, “Killing is evil.” However, what is evil?  Killing someone who is about to kill your child is good for you and the child, isn’t it?  And to make matters more difficult, humans are able to look forward and predict consequences of present events, into the future. 

A lioness hunting for her family may be offered a choice, challenge a cheetah for a kill close by, or go and stalk and hunt a weakened buffalo in the distance.  Which choice will she make?  Most likely the easiest one, even if the other choice would provide more meat.  So she chases off the cheetah. 

Humans, on the other hand, can look forward and weigh degree of difficulty versus degree of reward.  We make more refined choices, including some that appear negative at first, but on reflection, turn out wonderfully.  We endure years of difficulty and strain to obtain the rewards of a well-built house, a lucrative education, a rewarding career, a fine herd of cattle, a wealthy family.

Other animals seem to be able to do some of this higher level thinking as well.  Dolphins, chimpanzees, bonobos, octopus and cuttlefish all have been shown to make higher level decisions.  But studies on language in gorillas and chimps have produced some interesting results.

Koko is a famous “talking” gorilla.  At one time, she had a consort named Michael.    Michael was captured wild in the jungle.  His mother was hacked to death in front of his eyes.  He remembered this event all of his life, and would draw pictures of green with patches of deep red.  There is photograph of Michael sitting in a window.  There is no way to describe his demeanor other than pensive.  What was he thinking about? Did he ever consider these humans he was interacting with?  How could they hack to death his mother, and yet produce kind and intelligent researchers such as Penny, the researcher who taught him to use sign language?  Michael has now left this world, but in that photo, we see a soul who is struggling with morality, yet he does not have the free will that humans have, and so he stands on the edge but cannot make that leap. 

We made that leap.  We ate the apple of knowledge of good and evil.  We took on the amana, the trust that even the heavens and the earth felt they could not bear.  We took on free will, and to have free will, we need to be able to distinguish between good and evil. 

To aid us in this exercise of free will, Allah gave us a qalb.  That thing with oscillates, oscillates between good and evil, between turning toward Allah and away from Him. The qalb is our “morale compass.”  And to aid us in always pointing toward “true north,”  Allah gave us “aql” or reason.  This is the innate component, the part that “perceives” not just concepts, tasawwur, but tasdiq, assents – statements that are either true or false.  We call this kind of perception, intuition.  It is the hikmah or “wisdom” that enables us to analyze a situation and make a decision based on distant consequences, the natural ability we have to recognize morality and make basic morale decisions.

The qalb is the compass, and the aql is the needle.  The aql helps us process information.  By using the innate apriori truths Allah gave us as part of our fitrah, we are able to analyze our experiences and guide our moral compass to better consequences based on those experiences, as well as on the experiences of others in the past.  

The aql is rational.  It uses rational processes generate truth or reveal falsity.

Deduction is the first rational process used by the aql..  If our assumptions or premises are true, the statements or tasdiq we derive from them are necessarily true.  Through deductive reasoning, we can gain knowledge of abstract constructs like math and geometry.  But deduction can also be based on experience, not just intuitive assumptions or apriori tasdiq.  However, the conclusions derived from these premises stem from the definitions of the tasawwur involved.  

A classic deductive argument follows:

1.  All bachelors are unmarried men
2. Tom is a bachelor

Therefore:  Tom is unmarried.

This argument takes the form of:

1. A = B
2. C = A

Therefore:  C = B

The truth table for this syllogism is:

T	T	F	F	F
T	F	T	F	F
T	F	T	T	F

The aql also uses inductive processes, based on scientific principles and observation.  Here, we observe as many cases or events of a similar kind as possible and then derive probabilities that the next case we see, or the next event we observe will follow the same pattern.  

We observe 100,000 swans and all are white, so we postulate that “All swans are white.”  While there is a good probability that the next swan that comes along will be white, it is not impossible that a black swan will appear, or even a pink one, for that matter.  

The form of this argument is:

A1 = B

A2 = B

…

A 100,000 = B

Therefore:  All As = B

The truth table for this syllogism will always produce the possibility that the conclusion is false even if all the premises are true.  Induction produces probabilities, not necessity.  The probability depends on the size of the sample.

So what about moral knowledge?  Is it based on deduction or induction?  Or is it based on both?  Is morality binary?  In Islam, every action has a value.  The hukm wadi’i value acts based on their comparison with ideal patterns of behavior.  Thus, an act can be sahih, fasid or batil; correct, voidable, and void or invalid.  Fasid acts are capable of being corrected, while batil acts cannot be corrected, and are invalid abnitio

Clearly the Islamic value of acts is “moral” in nature.  But what is the source of these values?  Clearly, the source is Allah.  So is any aspect of morality innate, part of our fitrah?

All people have a concept of morality.  Every society has declared murder, physical harm, and even social harm like slander to be evil.   We seem to have an innate sense of right and wrong.  Some things seemly clearly evil, and all people feel shock when hearing about massacres and horrible tortures of humans.

Michael, the gorilla also understood that killing his mother was painful to him, so how are we humans different?  Michael struggled on the brink of morality, but he could not make the leap to a sense of general morality, versus personal impact; moral acts versus a personally emotional act.  Was his mother’s death an evil act?  The poachers who butchered her to death with machetes went home and fed their kids.  How is that different from the lioness?  From the gorilla eating a trees fruit, the future children of that tree? 

The Prophet said,

عن أمير المؤمنين أبي حفصٍ عمر بن الخطاب رضي الله عنه قال : سمعت رسول الله عليه وسلم يقول : سمعت رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم قال : ( إنما الأعمال بالنيات ، وإنما لكل امرئ ما نوى ، فمن كانت هجرته إلى الله ورسوله فهجرته إلى الله ورسوله ، ومن كانت هجرته لدنيا يصيبها أو امرأة ينكحها فهجرته إلى ما هاجر إليه ) .

رواه إماما المحدثين أبو عبد الله محمد بن إسماعيل بن إبراهيم بن المغيرة بن بردزبه البخاري وأبو الحسين مسلم بن الحجاج بن مسلم القشيري النيسابوري في صحيحيهما اللذين هما من أصح الكتب المصنفة .

From the Commander of the Faithful Abi Hafs ‘Umar Ibn Al Khattab, who said : I heard the Prophet of Allah (Allah bless him and grant him peace) say :
“Actions are but by intentions and every man shall have but that which he intended. Thus he whose migration was for Allah and His messenger, his migration was for Allah and His messenger, and he whose migration was to achieve some worldly benefit or to take some woman in marriage, his migration was for that for which he migrated.”
Related by Al-Bukhaari and Muslim.

(http://alchishti.wordpress.com/2006/02/20/actions-are-judged-by-intentions-imam-nawawis-arbain-1/)

Upon our creation, the malaaikah asked if Allah SWT would place upon this earth one who would create mischief and shed blood.  We intentionally kill, we intentionally do evil.  We do things that are not simply to feed the family.  We do not kill Michael’s mother to eat her, we kill her to sell her hands and feet, her head, her son.  We are capable of going beyond survival or even relative contentment to greed, avarice, and limitless selfishness.  We hoard things, not just so we will have supplies in the future, but prevent anyone else from having them, ever…

In Islam, acts are also valued as fard, mustahabb, mubah, makruh or haram.  These are the hukm shari’I of obligatory, preferred, permissible, disliked and forbidden.   Morality is not simply binary.  It can be complex.  Things are not just good and evil.  Things are gray.  

The qalb has three potential positions on an act.  We call these the nafs amr bi al suu, the nafs lawammah, and the nafs al mutmainah; the soul that commands to evil, the soul that blames and the soul at peace.  Some things are clearly evil and some are clearly good.  Our innate fitrah tells us which is which.  Our souls, then either command us to do evil or are at peace with the good.  Notice that it takes a command, an intention to do evil, but to do good is the natural state, the peaceful state.  The nafs al lawammah is the soul that blames, this is the state of the qalb that is dealing with less clear acts.  It is trying to analyze the consequences and determine if the ultimate consequences are evil or good.

2:216 But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not. (al-Baqara).

WAHY: THE NECESSITY OF WORDS OF INSPIRATION

2: 37. Then learnt Adam from his Lord

Words of inspiration, and his Lord
Turned towards him; for He
Is Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.

38. We said: "Get ye down all from here;
And if, as is sure, there comes to you
Guidance from Me, whosoever
Follows My guidance, on them
Shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.

After Adam AS disobeys the command of Allah SWT to not eat of the tree, Adam responds by repenting, seeking tawbah.  Unlike Iblis, who also disobeys Allah by not making sujud to Adam, Adam repents.  Iblis responds to his disobedience by becoming even more egotistical and obstinate.  He is then given respite by Allah until the Day of Judgment, but in the end, he will be punished.  He receives no solace or guidance.

Adam, however, repents and is then rewarded with “words” from his Lord.  These kalimaat are words of inspiration, words of wahy – revealed words.  In other places in the Qur’an, revelation is called “al-Kitab” because it was written, like the Saheefa Ibrahim, and the Torah and Injeel, and Qur’an.  But there was no writing or script in the time of Adam, AS, so he is given oral “kalimaat.” These words were revealed by Allah and part of this message was that Allah would send guidance from time to time to man.  This guidance would provide a furqan or criteria for moral judgments.

Innate knowledge is not enough to guide moral decisions because morality is not based on perception or intuition, but upon a deeper sense of “wisdom” or hikmah. Although we have an innate sense of hikmah from our fitrah, for those questions, acts and issues that are gray, deeper, involve layers of consequences; we need guidance or revealed knowledge to show us the way to make these kind of moral decisions. 

Adam and Hawa had the hikmah of their fitrah to guide them, and they had aql or reason, but they still failed to obey Allah and ate of the tree.  Shaytan convinces them that this act of eating of the tree would be good for them.  How could our basic fitrah show us that eating a fruit would be evil?  Yes, Allah SWT ordered us to not eat, but… why is it evil?  Is it evil to eat a fruit? Or is it evil to disobey?  What are the consequences?  Of eating? Of disobeying?  Seems Adam and Hawa need more information, something beyond just the fitrah.

Allah SWT tells Adam AS, after he disobeys and is ejected from the Garden, that He will send guidance to mankind.  This guidance is imperative because the innate “fitrah” and  “aql” were not enough to prevent man from falling into sin, into disobedience.

In Surah al Baqara, Allah SWT tells how He taught Adam the names of things.  He taught mankind the forms, the tasawwir. 

2:231. And He taught Adam the names
Of all things; then He placed them
Before the angels, and said: "Tell Me
The nature of these if ye are right."

When he asks the angels, those beings created by Allah SWT out of pure ruh, who have no free will, to name things, they answer they are not able to do anything like that.  They have only acquired knowledge provided to them by Allah.  They know nothing else.  They have no innate knowledge. 

2:232. They said: "Glory to Thee: of knowledge
We have none, save what Thou
Hast taught us: in truth it is Thou
Who art perfect in knowledge and wisdom.

Here, the malaika make an important statement; only Allah SWT has knowledge and wisdom.  Allah is the actual source of knowledge and wisdom.  And it is Allah that provides us with any form of knowledge and with the inate ability to process it, understand it and derive wisdom from it.  He created us with the ability to perceive with the senses and the mind, and with the aql to analyze this data.  He is the real source of both acquired and intuitive knowledge.

Allah is also the only source of revealed knowledge, what we call “wahy,” revelation. It is this form of obtaining knowledge that provides us with guidance.

So we have three ways of obtaining knowledge, through perception, through intuition and through revelation.  Hence, there are three types of knowledge, acquired, innate, and revealed.

Allah SWT tested man and jinn.  Iblis failed.  When he disobeys he remains arrogant and disobedient, while man repented and returned to obedience.  We were reward with words from Allah SWT to guide us as to how to make these more complex moral decisions, how to go from nafs al lawammah to nafs al mutmainah.  

This guidance is contained in the Kitab – The Tawrah, Injeel and Qur’an.  So we have the hikmah of aql and the furqan of revealed wahy in the kitab.  

DURATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

Considering the nature of human knowledge, what can we say about durational knowledge.  There are three branches of this knowledge – knowledge of the future, knowledge of the past and knowledge of the present – nur al ‘aan. 

We will perhaps discuss the knowledge of the future and present on another occasion, if Allah SWT gives us life.  For now we are focused on taariikh, knowledge of the past.

We asked before is objective knowledge of the past is possible.  We have personal understanding of subjective knowledge.  We call it memory.  As humans, we have individual memory, family memory, tribal memory, national memory.  Subjective in nature, these visions of the past reflect at best a tiny snap shot of the entire universe at that moment.  Not only is the view myopic, but our assumptions, values and other social and cultural factors color the scene.  The Romans hated the Carthaginians, so our “memory” of them is viewed behind Roman-colored glasses.  

Sometimes history tells us more about ourselves than the people and events of the past.  It reveals our prejudices, vices, and good points.  The Scarlet Letter, a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, reflects the moral values of the Puritans and early religious settlers of the Americas.  It also reflects the author’s thoughts about the hypocrisy of self-righteous people, and about the double standard in moral behavior for men and women.  Nearly two decades ago, Demi Moore starred in a movie based on this same story, which reflected modern, liberation-centered notions of the role of women and morality.  The same thing could be said of evidence-based views of the past.

Shaheed al Sadr held that history was objective.  Based on his conception of causation and his argument that causation is actual, and not only actual but an apriori first principle; Shaheed al Sadr reasoned that history was not relative, but objectively knowable.

How can we objectively know history?  Certainly, we can look for evidence in the earth, as Allah SWT suggests.  We can observe ruins, and the remains of clothes, foodstuffs, trash, even human remains.  Based on inductive reasoning, we can make reasonable theories and assumptions about the lives of the people of the past.  This physical evidence can confirm verbal or written reports and well as prove how skewed they are.  Hence, physical evidence of past events help us analyze verbal and written reports.

Verbal and written reports also assist us in knowing history.  They reveal what happened, but they also reveal people’s perceptions of what happened.  This can be just as important, because these perceptions shape later events, even present events.  

Therefore, the verbal stories and written accounts, especially first person witness accounts, provide objective evidence, but also important clues as to causation of other events.  Sometimes our perceptions are even more important in shaping events than what actually happened.  Our psychology plays as much a role as physiology. 

Let us take the story of Gilgamesh and the Flood.  Whether it is true or not is not as relevant as the lessons we learn, the values it reveals, the impact on the continuing human drama.  Many people have a flood story. The Mesopotamian cultures, the Greeks, and the Maya, Inca, Ojibwe and Algonquin tribes all have flood myths. There is some physical evidence of such a catastrophic event.  Some have even found wood beams on mountains in Turkey.  But the story of Nuh, AS, and the lessons that story impart have more lasting consequences and are more “historical” value.  Nuh, Gilgamesh, Deucalion, and Nanabozho may have been the same person, but what matters is the result of this flood.  Rampant sin and evil is cleansed from the earth; the earth is renewed and humanity is reestablished from pure, sinless and noble ancestors.  It is a warning of what can happen to any society that strays too far from the moral path, who crosses the line and goes so far as to deserve to be wiped clean from the face of the earth.  In history, people are punished, but their ruins remain as a reminded.  Here, with the flood, not even the ruins remain.  No trace or taint is allowed to remain behind, only a warning…

No doubt, history is important as a teacher.  It provides us with lessons and also with continuity.  We gain understanding of causation; the cause of current events.  This knowledge enables us to learn from our failures and our successes.  We grow as individuals and as societies.  Yes, history has an objective component.  It did happen.  But it is how we remember it, and how we use that memory that is the most important.  Just like our memories help us train our moral compass, so history enables us to train the collective moral compass.  The goal of the din of Islam is not just to save individual souls, but to save all mankind, as mankind.

Allah SWT has fulfilled His promise to us.  He has sent us guidance, the guidance of Islam.