Harun Nasution

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Harun Nasution (1919 – 18 September 1998) was an Indonesian scholar whose work was part of a small but significant trend within Islamic thought to champion rationalist and humanist principles.

Biography

Nasution spent much of his youth outside of Indonesia, living in Arabia and Egypt before moving to Europe and eventually Canada.

Mu'tazila teachings.[4]
Nasution completed his PhD in 1969 and then returned to Indonesia, where he took up a position at IAIN in Jakarta.

It was there that he first suggested that the technological and economic decline of the Muslim world was partly due to its embrace of the

Ash'arite school of theology, which he regarded as fatalistic. He was particularly hostile to the occasionalism that became dominant in medieval Muslim thought, holding that its denial of the existence of secondary (created) causes hindered scientific enquiry.[5]
Nasution's solution was to defend a revival of the Mutazila view, which was (and still is) widely regarded by Muslims as a heresy. What Nasution admires in Mutazila thought is its emphasis on human reason in matters religious. In the basic teachings of the Mutazila, he writes,

it is possible to discern a form of rationalism, but not a rationalism that opposes religion or rejects the absolute truth of revelation... It is also possible to discern a form of naturalism, but not an atheistic naturalism that denies the existence and greatness of God... There is also human freedom and dynamism, but not absolute freedom from the design established by God... The doctrines of dynamism, human freedom and accountability, rationalism and naturalism taught by the Mu'tazila contributed significantly to the development of philosophy and the religious and secular sciences during the Classical Period of Islamic civilization.[6]

Nasution's influence on his fellow Indonesia thinkers is significant. His fellow Indonesian thinker

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd
.

References

  1. ^ Fauzan Saleh, Modern Trends in Islamic Theological Discourse in 20th Century Indonesia: A Critical Study (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), p.231 n.71
  2. OCLC 37923050
    , p.160
  3. ^ Martin et al, Defenders of Reason in Islam, p.161
  4. ^ Martin et al, Defenders of Reason in Islam, p.164
  5. ^ Saleh, Modern Trends in Islamic Theological Discourse in 20th Century Indonesia p.198-200
  6. ^ Harun Nasution, "The Mu'tazila and Rational Philosophy' translated in Defenders of Reason in Islam by Martin et al, pp.191-92.
  7. ^ Saleh, Modern Trends in Islamic Theological Discourse in 20th Century Indonesia pp.230,233
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