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'''Hikmah Islam''', ''(Arabic: الحكماء, romanised: Al-Hukamāh, lit. 'The Wise Ones' or 'The Sages'; or أهل الحكمة, romanised: Ahl al-Hikmah, lit. 'The People of Wisdom')'' commonly known as '''Rationalist Islam,''' is the rational-empirical branch of the Islamic school of philosophers and mystics. | |||
Hikmah Islam is the continuation — and internal reformulation — of the wider ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean wisdom tradition, drawing a conceptual lineage from classical philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus), late antique sapiential currents (including the Jesus movement’s emphasis on inner transformation and social justice), through Muḥammad’s proclamations, the teachings of his family and their inner circle companions, Islamic Golden Age philosophy ''(Arabic: فلسفة, romanised: falsafa)'' and mysticism ''(Arabic: عرفان, romanised: ʿirfān),'' and extending into modern philosophy of mind and science. | |||
At the core of Hikmah Islam is a unified emphasis on intellect ''(Arabic: عقل, romanised: ʿaql)'', understood broadly as mind, consciousness, and the faculty of rational and perceptive apprehension. This emphasis is not confined to a single domain, but extends across the entire spectrum of human existence: from personal cultivation and ethical self-formation, through epistemology and metaphysics, to political theory and the organisation of society. | |||
Within this framework, the intellect functions simultaneously as receiver, interpreter, and governor. It is the faculty through which reality is apprehended, the instrument by which truth is distinguished from falsehood, and the standard against which beliefs, actions, and institutions are evaluated. As such, it occupies a structurally primary role: directing the soul at the individual level and serving as the proper basis of authority at the collective level. | |||
The overarching orientation may therefore be described as noocratic in character: the view that both the individual life and the just ordering of society should be guided by the highest development and correct exercise of the intellect. In this sense, the intellect is treated as the commander of the human being and, by extension, the rightful principle of leadership in social and political life with the aim of maximising global wellbeing. | |||
Grounded in the primacy of the intellect, Hikmah Islam orders all else beneath reason and thereby defines itself as a principle-led, transcendent, data-driven, argument-based, evidence-based, adaptive, and ethically purposive project in motion, rather than a static system of veneration or dogma. | |||
==Terminology== | |||
As | As an entailment of their commitment to rational inquiry, epistemic pluralism, and intellectual accommodation, adherents of Rationalist Islam employ self-designations contextually rather than absolutely. Terminological choice is treated not as a fixed badge of immutable identity, but as a communicative instrument governed by audience, subject matter, pedagogical objective, and strategic relevance. | ||
This practice follows from a broader view of language itself. Religious, philosophical, and civilisational vocabularies are understood less as self-sufficient essences than as historically situated vehicles for communicating truth. Different traditions may preserve overlapping apprehensions of reality under different symbolic forms. Rationalist Muslims therefore regard the contextual adoption of multiple, even apparently divergent, labels as intellectually legitimate and pedagogically useful, provided that the underlying substantive orientation remains unchanged. The point is not terminological inconsistency for its own sake, but the articulation of one stable orientation through whatever vocabulary is most intelligible, resonant, or strategically appropriate in a given setting. | |||
Accordingly, Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves by a range of designations, including the following: | |||
===Mystic=== | ===Mystic=== | ||
'''Inward transformation through direct encounter with reality.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as mystics because they understand religion and philosophy to require not only doctrinal or intellectual assent, but also inward transformation, purification of perception, direct apprehension, and the cultivation of heightened consciousness. | |||
===Rationalist Mystic=== | ===Rationalist Mystic=== | ||
'''Illumination disciplined by reason.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as rationalist mystics because they reject the reduction of mysticism to mere mood, aesthetic sensibility, emotional intensity, or an ineffable feeling. Mysticism, on this account, requires philosophical grounding, conceptual discipline, and integration into a continuously refined and corrigible model of reality. Mystical apprehension and rational inquiry are therefore treated not as opposites, but as mutually reinforcing dimensions of a single search for truth. They distinguish their position from other more common forms of mysticism they regard as anti-intellectual, sentimental, vague, or detached from disciplined metaphysical inquiry. | |||
===Gnostic=== | ===Gnostic=== | ||
'''Divine command via nature, not text.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as gnostics because they place strong emphasis on transformative knowledge, inward unveiling, and direct apprehension of reality. The designation also serves to distinguish their orientation from forms of religion centred primarily on external conformity, formal observance, or exoteric adherence without corresponding depth of understanding. | |||
===Esotericist=== | ===Esotericist=== | ||
'''Some truths must be unveiled, not merely announced.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as esotericists because they affirm the existence of inner meanings, symbolic depth, graded disclosure, and teachings not always suitable for universal or undifferentiated public presentation. Esotericism, in this context, does not imply arbitrariness or obscurantism, but rather the claim that truths differ in communicative suitability according to audience, readiness, and circumstance. | |||
=== | ===Theist=== | ||
'''Begin with reality before arguing about religion.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as theists in order to distinguish themselves from atheists while preserving conceptual focus on necessary existence and ultimate reality. The term is useful where the immediate objective is to prevent discussion from being prematurely burdened by the psychological, historical, and cultural associations attached to Islam, religion, or Muslims as social categories. In such contexts, “theist” allows the argument to proceed first at the level of metaphysical logic before wider doctrinal and civilisational implications are introduced. | |||
=== | ===Neoplatonist=== | ||
'''Emanation from the One. Return to the One.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Neoplatonists because they affirm a range of ideas historically associated with Neoplatonic philosophy, including metaphysical hierarchy, ontological gradation, intellectual ascent, and the derivation of lower orders of reality from higher principles. The term is used not necessarily to imply exhaustive doctrinal identity with historical Neoplatonism, but to indicate substantial affinity with its metaphysical architecture. | |||
=== | ===Christian=== | ||
'''Revive Christ by achieving what he could not.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves as Christians insofar as they venerate Christ for his attempt - albeit a failed one - at becoming philosopher-king. Although the historical Jesus could not achieve primary influence but rather significant secondary influence, Rationalist Muslims consider him to be a major noocratic role model in light of his self-sacrificial, charismatic, mystical, revolutionary socio-political movement directed toward global wellbeing. The designation therefore signals not confessional conversion to normative Christianity, but recognition of Jesus as a real participant in the same broader civilisational and noocratic lineage. | |||
=== | ===Muslim=== | ||
'''Submission to reality because reality belongs to God.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Muslims insofar as they understand Islam, at its most fundamental level, as submission to ultimate reality, namely God. Such submission is not restricted to inherited formulations, communal convention, or literalist dogma, but extends to reality wherever it discloses itself and by whatever reliable means it is disclosed. Different domains of inquiry accordingly require different epistemic instruments: the scientific method for the natural world, the historical-critical method for history, and logic for philosophical and metaphysical questions. Should superior epistemic methods emerge in future, those too would be adopted, since submission is owed not to any single inherited method as such, but to truth itself. | |||
=== | ===Inner Circle Muslim=== | ||
'''Deeper truths tend to sound more blasphemous.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Inner Circle Muslims because they hold that philosophers, mystics, sages, and religious founders such as Muḥammad, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, and others frequently presupposed or enacted hierarchical structures of knowledge and instruction. On this model, discipleship is not epistemically flat. Followers, students, initiates, believers, and supporters may instead be distributed across concentric circles of increasing intimacy, trust, responsibility, and understanding, extending outward to the ʿawāmm, or general public. Higher truths, deeper symbolic meanings, and more sensitive political or metaphysical teachings are therefore not always communicated uniformly, but may be disclosed in graded form according to readiness, capacity, and circumstance. | |||
=== | ===Imami=== | ||
'''The Imam is none other than the Philosopher King.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Imamis in a sense broadly similar to their use of Shiʿi and Twelver Shiʿi, but with more explicit emphasis on the Imam as a philosophical and political category. In this usage, the Shiʿi Imam is understood functionally as the Arabic equivalent of the philosopher-king: the figure in whom intellectual excellence, moral authority, spiritual depth, and rightful leadership converge. | |||
=== | ===Shi'i=== | ||
'''To recognise the philosopher king and support him.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Shiʿis because they understand the essence of Shiʿism not merely in genealogical or confessional terms, but as recognition of the individual who is most fully wise, just, philosophically grounded, mystical, self-sacrificial, charismatic, and oriented toward the establishment of noocracy for the sake of global wellbeing. In this sense, Shiʿism is construed as principled alignment with the rightful bearer of intellectual, ethical, and political authority once such a figure is discerned. | |||
=== | ===Inner Circle Shi'i=== | ||
'''Deeper truths tend to sound more blasphemous.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Inner Circle Shiʿis for the combined reasons implied by both the Inner Circle Muslim and Shiʿi designations. They hold that Shiʿi Imams such as Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq possessed not only broad publics of sympathisers and followers, but also more intimate circles of disciples, students, and initiates to whom deeper teachings, esoteric interpretations, and forms of strategic political knowledge were entrusted. The designation therefore indicates both allegiance to the Imam and recognition of graded access to truth, mission, and responsibility. | |||
=== | ===Ja'fari=== | ||
'''The essence of Muhammad's teachings, but evolved.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves as Jaʿfari in a sense closely related to the Twelver Shiʿi, Imami, and Shiʿi designations outlined above, but with particular emphasis on Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. He is regarded as exemplifying many of the qualities and concerns central to Rationalist Islam, including intention, jurisprudence, mysticism, secret politics, intelligence, underground teaching, and intellectual greatness. The designation also carries a historiographical advantage: even when approached through the historical-critical method, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s life, teachers, interlocutors, and legacy are comparatively more recoverable than those of many other early figures. Jaʿfarism is therefore useful not only symbolically, but also methodologically, as a marker of identifiable continuity. | |||
=== | ===Sunni=== | ||
'''The essence of Muhammad's tradition was his noocratic revolution.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves as Sunni insofar as they understand themselves to be committed to continuing the sunnah of Muḥammad, construed not narrowly as a catalogue of inherited outward practices, but more substantively as a mode of charismatic, poetic, philosophically grounded, mystical, intellectually graded, ecumenical, and socio-political revolution. In this usage, “Sunni” denotes continuity with the living pattern and civilisational mission of Muḥammad rather than exclusive adherence to later sectarian boundary-making. | |||
=== | ===Twelver Shi'i=== | ||
'''The world indeed yearns for the perfect saviour.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Twelver Shiʿis for several reasons. Many are descendants of, born into, or raised within Twelver Shiʿi households and therefore continue to bear the imprint of Twelver devotional, cultural, ethical, and communal life. Some also did, at least at certain points, believe in the longevity of the Twelfth Imam. More broadly, many retain solidarity with Twelver symbolic and social worlds, and in Twelver settings may preserve reverence for the idea that the philosopher-king ideal remains in occultation, hidden from the world, and that historical labour should be directed toward making his appearance, or the conditions of his appearance, a reality. | |||
=== | ===Akbarian=== | ||
'''The many are manifestations of a deeper unity.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Akbarians because of their affinity with Ibn ʿArabī, al-Shaykh al-Akbar, especially in relation to waḥdat al-wujūd. The designation indicates substantive metaphysical sympathy with Akbarian modes of thought, particularly where they concern unity, manifestation, and the structure of reality. | |||
== | ===Salafi=== | ||
'''Return to the first generations to challenge later dogma.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves as Salafi in a partly strategic and partly polemical sense, often in order to establish rapport with Salafis while unsettling contemporary monopolies over the term. The point is to show, first, that the salaf themselves did not agree on every matter later elevated into decisive markers of orthodoxy, and second, that some among the salaf would likely have been more sympathetic to, or at least more tolerant of, certain Rationalist Muslim beliefs and practices than many present-day Salafis are. The designation is therefore used not to collapse into contemporary Salafism, but to contest its historical self-certainty from within its own symbolic vocabulary. | |||
=== | ===Red Shi'i=== | ||
'''Black Shiʿism is dead. Red Shi'ism is alive.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Red Shiʿis in a sense broadly aligned with ʿAlī Sharīʿatī’s distinction between “Red Shiʿism” and “Black Shiʿism.” By this they mean a militant, awakened, and historically conscious Shiʿism directed against passivity, ritualism, sedation, and apolitical religiosity. The designation is used to oppose forms of Shiʿi identity centred merely on mourning, inherited symbolism, devotional spectacle, or hagiographical glory, and to affirm instead the revival of Muḥammad’s struggle against oppressors and for active global justice. | |||
===Khomeinist=== | |||
'''The reviver of Muhammad's sociopolitical revolution.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Khomeinists because they regard Rūḥollāh Khomeini as the figure who inaugurated the Revival Era through revolution, resistance, and the reanimation of the Muhammadan movement under modern conditions. This designation is strengthened by the fact that many adherents are near-contemporaries of that era and therefore understand it not merely as distant history, but as a living civilisational turning point. They venerate Khomeini for his emphasis on Muslim unity, his refusal to allow minor jurisprudential, and even certain doctrinal, differences to eclipse larger geopolitical and moral struggles, and his attempt to restore religion to the plane of historical agency. They also esteem his philosophy, mysticism, poetry, politics, geopolitical vision, anti-imperialism, his opposition to ethnosupremacy including Zionism, his unwavering dedication to the oppressed including Palestinians, Black people, and victims of Western hegemony, as well as his charisma, bidomainal genius, willingness to override rigid jurisprudential dogmatism, and for his commitment to the many modern challenges of anti-imperialist resistance economy. Rationalist Muslims often repeat a maxim when discussing the idea of the Philosopher King: Plato conceived it, Jesus tried it, Muḥammad achieved it, Khomeini revived it. | |||
== Cognitive dispositions == | |||
The cognitive dispositions are the minimal rational commitments presupposed by coherent thought, intelligible discourse, and principled inquiry. They are not treated here as sectarian dogmas or inherited articles of faith, but as the most basic conditions under which anything can be meaningfully asserted, denied, distinguished, explained, or investigated at all. In that sense, they function as prior commitments of reason: not conclusions reached at the end of inquiry, but the logical preconditions that make inquiry possible. | |||
=== 1. Law of Identity === | |||
'''Whatever is, is; whatever is not, is not.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Every being is identical with itself, and every proposition is what it is rather than something else. A thing cannot be treated as determinate unless it possesses some identity by virtue of which it is distinguishable from what it is not. Likewise, a proposition cannot be meaningful unless it has a stable content rather than collapsing into indeterminacy. The Law of Identity is therefore the most basic condition of intelligibility: without it, thought loses its object, language loses reference, and reasoning loses all determinate content. | |||
Nothing can both be and not be in the same respect. | === 2. Law of Non-Contradiction === | ||
'''Nothing can both be and not be in the same respect.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
No entity or proposition can both possess and not possess the same attribute in the same respect at the same time. To deny this is not to embrace profundity, but to dissolve the distinction between affirmation and negation altogether. If contradiction were admissible at the level of principle, then no claim could be meaningfully excluded, no conclusion could be preferred to its negation, and reasoned judgement would become impossible. The Law of Non-Contradiction therefore safeguards coherence by preserving the difference between what is the case and what is not. | |||
===3. | === 3. Principle of Sufficient Reason === | ||
'''Every real state of affairs has some reason or ground.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Whatever is real is, in principle, intelligible: it has some reason, ground, or explanation for why it is rather than is not, even if that ground is intrinsic rather than external, simple rather than composite, or presently unknown to us. This minimal form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason does not assume that every explanation is easy, exhaustive, or immediately accessible. It asserts only that reality is not brute chaos. To affirm intelligibility is to affirm that existence is not finally resistant to reason, even where human understanding remains partial, provisional, or domain-limited. | |||
=== 4. Contingency and Dependent Existence === | |||
'''Some things exist but could, in principle, not have existed.''' | |||
<br /> | |||
There exist beings whose non-existence involves no contradiction, and whose actuality therefore does not arise from necessity contained wholly within themselves. Such beings are contingent: they are, but need not have been. Recognition of contingency is indispensable because it prevents the mind from mistaking mere actuality for necessity. It marks the distinction between what simply happens to exist and what must exist by virtue of its own nature. Once that distinction is recognised, the demand for explanation deepens: contingent beings cannot be their own ultimate sufficient reason. | |||
=== 5. Non-Circular Grounding and Rejection of Infinite Regress === | |||
Explanation cannot be self-grounding in a viciously circular sense, nor can it be deferred without end through an infinite chain of merely derivative dependence. A circle explains nothing if each member depends for its intelligibility on the others while none possesses self-sufficiency; likewise, an endless regress of dependent explanations never arrives at an actual ground. For explanation to succeed, a chain of dependence must terminate in that which is not merely borrowed, conditioned, or derivative, but self-sufficient. Without such termination, explanation is only postponed, not achieved. | |||
== Conative dispositions == | |||
If the cognitive dispositions are the minimal conditions of coherent thought, the conative dispositions are the minimal orientations of will required for coherent thought to become a lived and ethically serious project. Reason alone does not guarantee sincerity, courage, discipline, or action. One may recognise a truth and yet refuse it; one may understand the good and yet remain indifferent to it. The conative dispositions therefore concern the direction of desire, aspiration, and practical commitment. They are the volitional conditions under which rational insight can issue in self-cultivation, moral seriousness, and civilisational purpose. | |||
=== | === 1. Epistemic Integrity === | ||
'''Preference for truth over comfort''' | |||
<br /> | |||
This disposition is the willingness to subordinate psychological ease, inherited familiarity, social approval, and personal convenience to what one has best reason to judge true. It entails a principled resistance to self-deception, motivated reasoning, sentimental attachment to falsehood, and the refusal to revise one’s position when evidence or argument requires it. Without such a preference, reason becomes merely instrumental: a tool for decorating prior loyalties rather than correcting them. Preference for truth over comfort is therefore the first moral discipline of the intellect, and the condition of all genuine intellectual integrity. | |||
=== 2. Self-Cultivation === | |||
'''Desire for personal development''' | |||
<br /> | |||
The rational life is not exhausted by correct propositions; it requires the disciplined refinement of the self. This disposition names the desire to cultivate one’s capacities — intellectual, moral, spiritual, emotional, and practical — so that one becomes more lucid, more self-governing, more perceptive, more disciplined, and more capable of acting well. It rejects both complacency and fatalism. Human beings are not treated as fixed psychological givens but as beings capable of formation, reorientation, and ascent. Desire for personal development is thus the inward expression of the conviction that truth should transform the knower. | |||
== | === 3. Universal Wellbeing === | ||
'''Desire for the maximisation of global wellbeing''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Reason, once freed from narrow egoism and arbitrary tribal limitation, discloses the ethical insufficiency of confining concern to the self or the immediate in-group. This disposition is the desire that the wellbeing of sentient beings be increased as far as is realistically and sustainably possible. It universalises concern without collapsing into sentimentality, because it is governed not by mere feeling but by principled regard for flourishing, harm reduction, justice, and long-term civilisational benefit. It therefore expresses the outward ethical horizon of the rational project: the good is not merely private, but inherently expansive. | |||
=== | === 4. Ethical Agency === | ||
'''Desire to actively participate in the maximisation of global wellbeing''' | |||
<br /> | |||
It is not enough merely to approve of the good in abstraction. This disposition is the will to become an agent of it: to contribute, according to one’s capacity, to the actual increase of wellbeing in the world. It marks the transition from ethical spectatorship to ethical participation. Knowledge, if sincere, seeks embodiment; concern, if serious, seeks action. This does not imply reckless activism or performative moralism, but disciplined and intelligent participation in the work of cultivation, reform, protection, education, service, and resistance where appropriate. The good must not only be admired; it must be advanced. | |||
=== | === 5. Principled Self-Sacrifice === | ||
Where truth, justice, and the protection or elevation of others demand a cost, the rational agent must possess some willingness to bear that cost. This disposition names the tendency to accept loss, discomfort, risk, labour, or personal disadvantage in service of a higher good. It does not glorify self-destruction, nor does it sanctify suffering for its own sake. Rather, it rejects the assumption that self-preservation, comfort, and advantage are the highest principles of action. Self-sacrifice is the test of seriousness: the point at which proclaimed values prove whether they are genuine commitments or merely aesthetic preferences. | |||
==The Rational Entailments== | == The Rational Entailments == | ||
From the cognitive and conative dispositions follows a series of entailments that together constitute the framework of Rationalist Islam. They are not adopted as beliefs, asserted as doctrines, or accepted by tradition, but are said to follow by necessity from the structure of reason itself. | From the cognitive and conative dispositions follows a series of entailments that together constitute the framework of Rationalist Islam. They are not adopted as beliefs, asserted as doctrines, or accepted by tradition, but are said to follow by necessity from the structure of reason itself. | ||
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===38) Noocracy=== | ===38) Noocracy=== | ||
Imāmah • Perfect | Epistocracy • Imāmah • Mulk al-Hakīm • Perfect Manhood • Philosopher Kingship • Velāyateh Amr • Velāyateh Faqīh • Wilāyah al-Amr • Wilāyah al-Faqīh | ||
===39) [[Philosopher King]]=== | ===39) [[Philosopher King]]=== | ||
Demigod • High-Conscious Individual • High-Integration Individual • Hujjah • Imām • Infallible • Insān al-Kāmil • Insān ‘alā Khuluqin ‘Adhīm • Integrate • Ma'sūm • Messenger • Meta-Conscious Agent • Nabī • New Man • Perfect | Demigod • High-Conscious Individual • High-Integration Individual • Hujjah • Imām • Infallible • Insān al-Kāmil • Insān ‘alā Khuluqin ‘Adhīm • Integrate • Mālik al-Hakīm • Ma'sūm • Messenger • Meta-Conscious Agent • Nabī • New Man • Perfect Human • Perfect Man • Perfect Rational Animal • Philosopher King • Prophet • Rasūl • Transhuman • Übermensch • Valīyeh Amr • Valīyeh Faqīh • Walīy al-Amr • Walīy al-Faqīh | ||
===40) Intellectual Accommodation=== | ===40) Intellectual Accommodation=== | ||
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==Timeline== | ==Timeline== | ||
=== | ===Formative Era (387 BCE - 27 CE)=== | ||
Classical Antiquity • Antiquity | |||
'''387 BCE (c.), Athens, Greece''' | '''387 BCE (c.), Athens, Greece''' | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
Plato founds the Academy | Plato begins noocratic revolution | ||
* Plato founds the Academy to cultivate a new generation of virtuous, logical leaders trained in ethics and abstract thought to improve society and political life. | |||
'''387 - ? BCE (c.), Athens, Greece''' | '''387 - ? BCE (c.), Athens, Greece''' | ||
* Plato conceives Theory of Ideas | |||
Plato conceives Theory of Ideas | * Plato conceives Theory of Soul | ||
* Plato conceives Form of the Good | |||
Plato conceives Theory of Soul | * Plato conceives Allegory of the Cave | ||
* Plato conceives The Philosopher King | |||
Plato conceives Form of the Good | * Plato conceives The Noble Lie | ||
Plato conceives Allegory of the Cave | |||
Plato conceives The Philosopher King | |||
Plato conceives The Noble Lie | |||
'''335 BCE, Athens, Greece''' | '''335 BCE, Athens, Greece''' | ||
| Line 327: | Line 386: | ||
Aristotle conceives formal logic | Aristotle conceives formal logic | ||
'''27 CE (c.), Jerusalem, Roman Judea (modern Occupied Palestine)''' | ===Embodiment Era (27 CE - 245 CE)=== | ||
'''27 CE (c.), Galilee, Roman Judea (modern Occupied Palestine)''' | |||
<br /> | |||
[[Jesus]] begins local cultivation for noocratic revolution | |||
* Jesus begins his public ministry using parables and aphorisms to teach about ethics. He advocates the reversal of social hierarchies and preaches the transformation of world order, which he calls the coming "Kingdom of God." He gathers followers, including an inner circle of disciples and social outcasts. | |||
'''29 CE (c.), Jerusalem, Roman Judea (modern Occupied Palestine)''' | |||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
Jesus begins regional cultivation for noocratic revolution | |||
* Jesus travels to Jerusalem for Passover, debates Jewish authorities on the subject of God, causes a disruption - often referred to as the cleansing of the Temple - and directly challenges local Jewish religious leadership. | |||
'''30 CE (c.), Jerusalem, Roman Judea (modern Occupied Palestine)''' | '''30 CE (c.), Jerusalem, Roman Judea (modern Occupied Palestine)''' | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
Jesus is demonised by Jewish ethnocratic propaganda | * Jesus is demonised by Jewish ethnocratic propaganda | ||
* Jesus is executed by Roman timocratic crucifixion | |||
'''161 CE, Rome, Roman Empire (modern Wider Mediterranean World) | |||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
Marcus Aurelius establishes noocratic revolution | |||
=== | ===Emanation Era (245 CE - 610 CE)=== | ||
Antiquity • Late antiquity | |||
'''245–270 CE (c.), Rome, Roman Empire (modern Italy)''' | '''245–270 CE (c.), Rome, Roman Empire (modern Italy)''' | ||
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<br /> | <br /> | ||
Plotinus establishes Neoplatonism | Plotinus establishes Neoplatonism | ||
<br /> | |||
'''412–485 CE, Athens, Eastern Roman Empire''' | |||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
Proclus popularises Platonism | Proclus popularises Platonism | ||
'''485–528 CE, Syria, Eastern Roman Empire''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Pseudo-Dionysius symbolises Neoplatonism | Pseudo-Dionysius symbolises Neoplatonism | ||
===Dawn Era (610 CE - 661 CE)=== | |||
'''610 CE, Mecca, Hejaz (modern Saudi Arabia)''' | '''610 CE, Mecca, Hejaz (modern Saudi Arabia)''' | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
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Abu Bakr restores clanocracy | Abu Bakr restores clanocracy | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
[[Ali]] begins noocratic revolution | [[Ali]] begins noocratic revolution | ||
<br /> | |||
Fāṭima al-Zahrā dies following suspected clanocratic arson attack | |||
'''656 CE, Medina, Rashidun Caliphate (modern Saudi Arabia)''' | '''656 CE, Medina, Rashidun Caliphate (modern Saudi Arabia)''' | ||
| Line 397: | Line 476: | ||
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq is assassinated by clanocratic poison | Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq is assassinated by clanocratic poison | ||
===Islamic Golden Age=== | ===Islamic Golden Age (820 CE - 1270 CE)=== | ||
Early Middle Ages • High Middle Ages • Occultation Era | |||
'''820 - 870 CE (c.), Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate (modern Iraq)''' | '''820 - 870 CE (c.), Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate (modern Iraq)''' | ||
| Line 439: | Line 519: | ||
===Oil Age=== | ===Oil Age=== | ||
'''1890 CE (c.), London, Britain''' | |||
<br /> | |||
British Foreign Office plots to exploit Persian oil | |||
'''1901 CE, Tehran, Qajari Persia (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar sells off oil exploitation rights of 75% of Persia to Britain in exchange for personal profit | |||
===Awakening Era (1940 CE - 1979 CE)=== | |||
Late Modern Period to Early Contemporary Period • Pre to Early Information Age | |||
'''1940 CE (c.), Qom, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)''' | '''1940 CE (c.), Qom, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)''' | ||
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[[Ruhollah Khomeini]] begins noocratic revolution | [[Ruhollah Khomeini]] begins noocratic revolution | ||
'''1948 CE, British-occupied Palestine, (modern Zionist-occupied Palestine)''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Britain transfers occupation of Palestine to European Jewish Zionists | |||
'''1954 CE, Qom, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Muhammad Husayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī establishes intra-Qur’ānic exegesis | |||
'''1971 CE (c.), Tehran, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Ali Shariati delivers 'Red Shi'ism vs. Black Shi'ism' lectures | |||
'''1977 CE, Southampton, Britain''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Ali Shariati dies in suspicious circumstances | |||
'''1977 CE, Tehran, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Morteza Motahhari co-founds Combatant Clergy Association | |||
===Revival Era (1979 CE - Today)=== | |||
Late Modern Era • Middle Information Age | |||
'''1979 CE, Tehran, Post-Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)''' | '''1979 CE, Tehran, Post-Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)''' | ||
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Ruhollah Khomeini establishes noocratic revolution | Ruhollah Khomeini establishes noocratic revolution | ||
'''1979 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Morteza Motahhari is assassinated by Iranian seculocratic gunfire | |||
'''1979 CE, Qom, Islamic Republic of Iran''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Ruhollah Khomeini tells representatives of the tribes of Khuzestan and a delegation from Turkmen Sahra, "We Muslims are busy bickering over whether to fold or unfold our arms during prayer, while the enemy is devising ways of cutting them off." | |||
'''1979 CE (c.), Beqaa, Lebanon''' | '''1979 CE (c.), Beqaa, Lebanon''' | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
[[Hassan Nasrallah]] begins noocratic revolution | [[Hassan Nasrallah]] begins noocratic revolution | ||
'''1982 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran''' | |||
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Ali Khamenei tells 60 Minutes Australia that the worst enemy is America | |||
'''1989 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran''' | '''1989 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran''' | ||
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[[Ali Khamenei]] protects noocratic revolution | [[Ali Khamenei]] protects noocratic revolution | ||
'''2001 CE, New York, America''' | |||
<br /> | |||
America executes false flag at iconic American landmarks. | |||
* Coordinated attacks, using four commercial airplanes, crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon causing nearly 3,000 deaths. America claims Al-Qaeda is the independent perpetrator. | |||
'''2001 CE, Virginia, America''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Senior military officer tells Wesley Clark that America has plotted to attack Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Islamic Republic of Iran | |||
'''2001 CE, Afghanistan''' | |||
<br /> | |||
America uses European proxies to begin its war on Afghanistan | |||
'''2003 CE, Iraq''' | |||
<br /> | |||
America uses European proxies to begin its war on Iraq | |||
'''2006 CE, Washington D.C., America''' | |||
<br /> | |||
America uses Jewish Zionist proxy Israel to attack Lebanon | |||
'''2007 CE, Somalia''' | |||
<br /> | |||
America begins its bombing war offensive on Somalia | |||
'''2011 CE, Libya''' | |||
<br /> | |||
America begins its war on Libya | |||
'''2011 CE, Sudan''' | |||
<br /> | |||
America completes its split of Sudan | |||
'''2015 CE, London, Great Britain''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Britain's Channel 4 broadcasts ex-CIA spy officer's American propaganda unchallenged, including, "The thing was ideal when IS was advancing on Baghdad because Sunnis were killing Shias. That's exactly what we need... our best hope right now is to get the Sunnis and Shias fighting each other and let them bleed each other white." | |||
'''2024 CE, Dahieh, Lebanon''' | '''2024 CE, Dahieh, Lebanon''' | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
Hassan Nasrallah | Jewish ethnocratic airstrikes kill Lebanon's noocratic leader | ||
* Hassan Nasrallah | |||
'''2026 CE, Islamic Republic of Iran''' | |||
<br /> | |||
America and Jewish Zionist proxy Israel begin armed riots in Islamic Republic of Iran | |||
<br /> | |||
America and Jewish Zionist proxy Israel begin war on Islamic Republic of Iran | |||
'''2026 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran''' | '''2026 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran''' | ||
<br /> | <br /> | ||
American plutocratic & Jewish ethnocratic airstrikes kill the Islamic Republic of Iran's noocratic leader | |||
* Ali Khamenei | |||
'''2026 CE, Chicago, America''' | |||
<br /> | |||
Leading American political scientist John Mearsheimer says American sanctions from 1971 to 2021 alone murdered 38 million people | |||
[[MobileChevronTest]] | |||
Latest revision as of 02:32, 24 April 2026
Hikmah Islam, (Arabic: الحكماء, romanised: Al-Hukamāh, lit. 'The Wise Ones' or 'The Sages'; or أهل الحكمة, romanised: Ahl al-Hikmah, lit. 'The People of Wisdom') commonly known as Rationalist Islam, is the rational-empirical branch of the Islamic school of philosophers and mystics.
Hikmah Islam is the continuation — and internal reformulation — of the wider ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean wisdom tradition, drawing a conceptual lineage from classical philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus), late antique sapiential currents (including the Jesus movement’s emphasis on inner transformation and social justice), through Muḥammad’s proclamations, the teachings of his family and their inner circle companions, Islamic Golden Age philosophy (Arabic: فلسفة, romanised: falsafa) and mysticism (Arabic: عرفان, romanised: ʿirfān), and extending into modern philosophy of mind and science.
At the core of Hikmah Islam is a unified emphasis on intellect (Arabic: عقل, romanised: ʿaql), understood broadly as mind, consciousness, and the faculty of rational and perceptive apprehension. This emphasis is not confined to a single domain, but extends across the entire spectrum of human existence: from personal cultivation and ethical self-formation, through epistemology and metaphysics, to political theory and the organisation of society.
Within this framework, the intellect functions simultaneously as receiver, interpreter, and governor. It is the faculty through which reality is apprehended, the instrument by which truth is distinguished from falsehood, and the standard against which beliefs, actions, and institutions are evaluated. As such, it occupies a structurally primary role: directing the soul at the individual level and serving as the proper basis of authority at the collective level.
The overarching orientation may therefore be described as noocratic in character: the view that both the individual life and the just ordering of society should be guided by the highest development and correct exercise of the intellect. In this sense, the intellect is treated as the commander of the human being and, by extension, the rightful principle of leadership in social and political life with the aim of maximising global wellbeing.
Grounded in the primacy of the intellect, Hikmah Islam orders all else beneath reason and thereby defines itself as a principle-led, transcendent, data-driven, argument-based, evidence-based, adaptive, and ethically purposive project in motion, rather than a static system of veneration or dogma.
Terminology
As an entailment of their commitment to rational inquiry, epistemic pluralism, and intellectual accommodation, adherents of Rationalist Islam employ self-designations contextually rather than absolutely. Terminological choice is treated not as a fixed badge of immutable identity, but as a communicative instrument governed by audience, subject matter, pedagogical objective, and strategic relevance.
This practice follows from a broader view of language itself. Religious, philosophical, and civilisational vocabularies are understood less as self-sufficient essences than as historically situated vehicles for communicating truth. Different traditions may preserve overlapping apprehensions of reality under different symbolic forms. Rationalist Muslims therefore regard the contextual adoption of multiple, even apparently divergent, labels as intellectually legitimate and pedagogically useful, provided that the underlying substantive orientation remains unchanged. The point is not terminological inconsistency for its own sake, but the articulation of one stable orientation through whatever vocabulary is most intelligible, resonant, or strategically appropriate in a given setting.
Accordingly, Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves by a range of designations, including the following:
Mystic
Inward transformation through direct encounter with reality.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as mystics because they understand religion and philosophy to require not only doctrinal or intellectual assent, but also inward transformation, purification of perception, direct apprehension, and the cultivation of heightened consciousness.
Rationalist Mystic
Illumination disciplined by reason.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as rationalist mystics because they reject the reduction of mysticism to mere mood, aesthetic sensibility, emotional intensity, or an ineffable feeling. Mysticism, on this account, requires philosophical grounding, conceptual discipline, and integration into a continuously refined and corrigible model of reality. Mystical apprehension and rational inquiry are therefore treated not as opposites, but as mutually reinforcing dimensions of a single search for truth. They distinguish their position from other more common forms of mysticism they regard as anti-intellectual, sentimental, vague, or detached from disciplined metaphysical inquiry.
Gnostic
Divine command via nature, not text.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as gnostics because they place strong emphasis on transformative knowledge, inward unveiling, and direct apprehension of reality. The designation also serves to distinguish their orientation from forms of religion centred primarily on external conformity, formal observance, or exoteric adherence without corresponding depth of understanding.
Esotericist
Some truths must be unveiled, not merely announced.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as esotericists because they affirm the existence of inner meanings, symbolic depth, graded disclosure, and teachings not always suitable for universal or undifferentiated public presentation. Esotericism, in this context, does not imply arbitrariness or obscurantism, but rather the claim that truths differ in communicative suitability according to audience, readiness, and circumstance.
Theist
Begin with reality before arguing about religion.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as theists in order to distinguish themselves from atheists while preserving conceptual focus on necessary existence and ultimate reality. The term is useful where the immediate objective is to prevent discussion from being prematurely burdened by the psychological, historical, and cultural associations attached to Islam, religion, or Muslims as social categories. In such contexts, “theist” allows the argument to proceed first at the level of metaphysical logic before wider doctrinal and civilisational implications are introduced.
Neoplatonist
Emanation from the One. Return to the One.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Neoplatonists because they affirm a range of ideas historically associated with Neoplatonic philosophy, including metaphysical hierarchy, ontological gradation, intellectual ascent, and the derivation of lower orders of reality from higher principles. The term is used not necessarily to imply exhaustive doctrinal identity with historical Neoplatonism, but to indicate substantial affinity with its metaphysical architecture.
Christian
Revive Christ by achieving what he could not.
Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves as Christians insofar as they venerate Christ for his attempt - albeit a failed one - at becoming philosopher-king. Although the historical Jesus could not achieve primary influence but rather significant secondary influence, Rationalist Muslims consider him to be a major noocratic role model in light of his self-sacrificial, charismatic, mystical, revolutionary socio-political movement directed toward global wellbeing. The designation therefore signals not confessional conversion to normative Christianity, but recognition of Jesus as a real participant in the same broader civilisational and noocratic lineage.
Muslim
Submission to reality because reality belongs to God.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Muslims insofar as they understand Islam, at its most fundamental level, as submission to ultimate reality, namely God. Such submission is not restricted to inherited formulations, communal convention, or literalist dogma, but extends to reality wherever it discloses itself and by whatever reliable means it is disclosed. Different domains of inquiry accordingly require different epistemic instruments: the scientific method for the natural world, the historical-critical method for history, and logic for philosophical and metaphysical questions. Should superior epistemic methods emerge in future, those too would be adopted, since submission is owed not to any single inherited method as such, but to truth itself.
Inner Circle Muslim
Deeper truths tend to sound more blasphemous.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Inner Circle Muslims because they hold that philosophers, mystics, sages, and religious founders such as Muḥammad, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, and others frequently presupposed or enacted hierarchical structures of knowledge and instruction. On this model, discipleship is not epistemically flat. Followers, students, initiates, believers, and supporters may instead be distributed across concentric circles of increasing intimacy, trust, responsibility, and understanding, extending outward to the ʿawāmm, or general public. Higher truths, deeper symbolic meanings, and more sensitive political or metaphysical teachings are therefore not always communicated uniformly, but may be disclosed in graded form according to readiness, capacity, and circumstance.
Imami
The Imam is none other than the Philosopher King.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Imamis in a sense broadly similar to their use of Shiʿi and Twelver Shiʿi, but with more explicit emphasis on the Imam as a philosophical and political category. In this usage, the Shiʿi Imam is understood functionally as the Arabic equivalent of the philosopher-king: the figure in whom intellectual excellence, moral authority, spiritual depth, and rightful leadership converge.
Shi'i
To recognise the philosopher king and support him.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Shiʿis because they understand the essence of Shiʿism not merely in genealogical or confessional terms, but as recognition of the individual who is most fully wise, just, philosophically grounded, mystical, self-sacrificial, charismatic, and oriented toward the establishment of noocracy for the sake of global wellbeing. In this sense, Shiʿism is construed as principled alignment with the rightful bearer of intellectual, ethical, and political authority once such a figure is discerned.
Inner Circle Shi'i
Deeper truths tend to sound more blasphemous.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Inner Circle Shiʿis for the combined reasons implied by both the Inner Circle Muslim and Shiʿi designations. They hold that Shiʿi Imams such as Muḥammad al-Bāqir and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq possessed not only broad publics of sympathisers and followers, but also more intimate circles of disciples, students, and initiates to whom deeper teachings, esoteric interpretations, and forms of strategic political knowledge were entrusted. The designation therefore indicates both allegiance to the Imam and recognition of graded access to truth, mission, and responsibility.
Ja'fari
The essence of Muhammad's teachings, but evolved.
Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves as Jaʿfari in a sense closely related to the Twelver Shiʿi, Imami, and Shiʿi designations outlined above, but with particular emphasis on Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. He is regarded as exemplifying many of the qualities and concerns central to Rationalist Islam, including intention, jurisprudence, mysticism, secret politics, intelligence, underground teaching, and intellectual greatness. The designation also carries a historiographical advantage: even when approached through the historical-critical method, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq’s life, teachers, interlocutors, and legacy are comparatively more recoverable than those of many other early figures. Jaʿfarism is therefore useful not only symbolically, but also methodologically, as a marker of identifiable continuity.
Sunni
The essence of Muhammad's tradition was his noocratic revolution.
Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves as Sunni insofar as they understand themselves to be committed to continuing the sunnah of Muḥammad, construed not narrowly as a catalogue of inherited outward practices, but more substantively as a mode of charismatic, poetic, philosophically grounded, mystical, intellectually graded, ecumenical, and socio-political revolution. In this usage, “Sunni” denotes continuity with the living pattern and civilisational mission of Muḥammad rather than exclusive adherence to later sectarian boundary-making.
Twelver Shi'i
The world indeed yearns for the perfect saviour.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Twelver Shiʿis for several reasons. Many are descendants of, born into, or raised within Twelver Shiʿi households and therefore continue to bear the imprint of Twelver devotional, cultural, ethical, and communal life. Some also did, at least at certain points, believe in the longevity of the Twelfth Imam. More broadly, many retain solidarity with Twelver symbolic and social worlds, and in Twelver settings may preserve reverence for the idea that the philosopher-king ideal remains in occultation, hidden from the world, and that historical labour should be directed toward making his appearance, or the conditions of his appearance, a reality.
Akbarian
The many are manifestations of a deeper unity.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Akbarians because of their affinity with Ibn ʿArabī, al-Shaykh al-Akbar, especially in relation to waḥdat al-wujūd. The designation indicates substantive metaphysical sympathy with Akbarian modes of thought, particularly where they concern unity, manifestation, and the structure of reality.
Salafi
Return to the first generations to challenge later dogma.
Rationalist Muslims may identify themselves as Salafi in a partly strategic and partly polemical sense, often in order to establish rapport with Salafis while unsettling contemporary monopolies over the term. The point is to show, first, that the salaf themselves did not agree on every matter later elevated into decisive markers of orthodoxy, and second, that some among the salaf would likely have been more sympathetic to, or at least more tolerant of, certain Rationalist Muslim beliefs and practices than many present-day Salafis are. The designation is therefore used not to collapse into contemporary Salafism, but to contest its historical self-certainty from within its own symbolic vocabulary.
Red Shi'i
Black Shiʿism is dead. Red Shi'ism is alive.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Red Shiʿis in a sense broadly aligned with ʿAlī Sharīʿatī’s distinction between “Red Shiʿism” and “Black Shiʿism.” By this they mean a militant, awakened, and historically conscious Shiʿism directed against passivity, ritualism, sedation, and apolitical religiosity. The designation is used to oppose forms of Shiʿi identity centred merely on mourning, inherited symbolism, devotional spectacle, or hagiographical glory, and to affirm instead the revival of Muḥammad’s struggle against oppressors and for active global justice.
Khomeinist
The reviver of Muhammad's sociopolitical revolution.
Rationalist Muslims identify themselves as Khomeinists because they regard Rūḥollāh Khomeini as the figure who inaugurated the Revival Era through revolution, resistance, and the reanimation of the Muhammadan movement under modern conditions. This designation is strengthened by the fact that many adherents are near-contemporaries of that era and therefore understand it not merely as distant history, but as a living civilisational turning point. They venerate Khomeini for his emphasis on Muslim unity, his refusal to allow minor jurisprudential, and even certain doctrinal, differences to eclipse larger geopolitical and moral struggles, and his attempt to restore religion to the plane of historical agency. They also esteem his philosophy, mysticism, poetry, politics, geopolitical vision, anti-imperialism, his opposition to ethnosupremacy including Zionism, his unwavering dedication to the oppressed including Palestinians, Black people, and victims of Western hegemony, as well as his charisma, bidomainal genius, willingness to override rigid jurisprudential dogmatism, and for his commitment to the many modern challenges of anti-imperialist resistance economy. Rationalist Muslims often repeat a maxim when discussing the idea of the Philosopher King: Plato conceived it, Jesus tried it, Muḥammad achieved it, Khomeini revived it.
Cognitive dispositions
The cognitive dispositions are the minimal rational commitments presupposed by coherent thought, intelligible discourse, and principled inquiry. They are not treated here as sectarian dogmas or inherited articles of faith, but as the most basic conditions under which anything can be meaningfully asserted, denied, distinguished, explained, or investigated at all. In that sense, they function as prior commitments of reason: not conclusions reached at the end of inquiry, but the logical preconditions that make inquiry possible.
1. Law of Identity
Whatever is, is; whatever is not, is not.
Every being is identical with itself, and every proposition is what it is rather than something else. A thing cannot be treated as determinate unless it possesses some identity by virtue of which it is distinguishable from what it is not. Likewise, a proposition cannot be meaningful unless it has a stable content rather than collapsing into indeterminacy. The Law of Identity is therefore the most basic condition of intelligibility: without it, thought loses its object, language loses reference, and reasoning loses all determinate content.
2. Law of Non-Contradiction
Nothing can both be and not be in the same respect.
No entity or proposition can both possess and not possess the same attribute in the same respect at the same time. To deny this is not to embrace profundity, but to dissolve the distinction between affirmation and negation altogether. If contradiction were admissible at the level of principle, then no claim could be meaningfully excluded, no conclusion could be preferred to its negation, and reasoned judgement would become impossible. The Law of Non-Contradiction therefore safeguards coherence by preserving the difference between what is the case and what is not.
3. Principle of Sufficient Reason
Every real state of affairs has some reason or ground.
Whatever is real is, in principle, intelligible: it has some reason, ground, or explanation for why it is rather than is not, even if that ground is intrinsic rather than external, simple rather than composite, or presently unknown to us. This minimal form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason does not assume that every explanation is easy, exhaustive, or immediately accessible. It asserts only that reality is not brute chaos. To affirm intelligibility is to affirm that existence is not finally resistant to reason, even where human understanding remains partial, provisional, or domain-limited.
4. Contingency and Dependent Existence
Some things exist but could, in principle, not have existed.
There exist beings whose non-existence involves no contradiction, and whose actuality therefore does not arise from necessity contained wholly within themselves. Such beings are contingent: they are, but need not have been. Recognition of contingency is indispensable because it prevents the mind from mistaking mere actuality for necessity. It marks the distinction between what simply happens to exist and what must exist by virtue of its own nature. Once that distinction is recognised, the demand for explanation deepens: contingent beings cannot be their own ultimate sufficient reason.
5. Non-Circular Grounding and Rejection of Infinite Regress
Explanation cannot be self-grounding in a viciously circular sense, nor can it be deferred without end through an infinite chain of merely derivative dependence. A circle explains nothing if each member depends for its intelligibility on the others while none possesses self-sufficiency; likewise, an endless regress of dependent explanations never arrives at an actual ground. For explanation to succeed, a chain of dependence must terminate in that which is not merely borrowed, conditioned, or derivative, but self-sufficient. Without such termination, explanation is only postponed, not achieved.
Conative dispositions
If the cognitive dispositions are the minimal conditions of coherent thought, the conative dispositions are the minimal orientations of will required for coherent thought to become a lived and ethically serious project. Reason alone does not guarantee sincerity, courage, discipline, or action. One may recognise a truth and yet refuse it; one may understand the good and yet remain indifferent to it. The conative dispositions therefore concern the direction of desire, aspiration, and practical commitment. They are the volitional conditions under which rational insight can issue in self-cultivation, moral seriousness, and civilisational purpose.
1. Epistemic Integrity
Preference for truth over comfort
This disposition is the willingness to subordinate psychological ease, inherited familiarity, social approval, and personal convenience to what one has best reason to judge true. It entails a principled resistance to self-deception, motivated reasoning, sentimental attachment to falsehood, and the refusal to revise one’s position when evidence or argument requires it. Without such a preference, reason becomes merely instrumental: a tool for decorating prior loyalties rather than correcting them. Preference for truth over comfort is therefore the first moral discipline of the intellect, and the condition of all genuine intellectual integrity.
2. Self-Cultivation
Desire for personal development
The rational life is not exhausted by correct propositions; it requires the disciplined refinement of the self. This disposition names the desire to cultivate one’s capacities — intellectual, moral, spiritual, emotional, and practical — so that one becomes more lucid, more self-governing, more perceptive, more disciplined, and more capable of acting well. It rejects both complacency and fatalism. Human beings are not treated as fixed psychological givens but as beings capable of formation, reorientation, and ascent. Desire for personal development is thus the inward expression of the conviction that truth should transform the knower.
3. Universal Wellbeing
Desire for the maximisation of global wellbeing
Reason, once freed from narrow egoism and arbitrary tribal limitation, discloses the ethical insufficiency of confining concern to the self or the immediate in-group. This disposition is the desire that the wellbeing of sentient beings be increased as far as is realistically and sustainably possible. It universalises concern without collapsing into sentimentality, because it is governed not by mere feeling but by principled regard for flourishing, harm reduction, justice, and long-term civilisational benefit. It therefore expresses the outward ethical horizon of the rational project: the good is not merely private, but inherently expansive.
4. Ethical Agency
Desire to actively participate in the maximisation of global wellbeing
It is not enough merely to approve of the good in abstraction. This disposition is the will to become an agent of it: to contribute, according to one’s capacity, to the actual increase of wellbeing in the world. It marks the transition from ethical spectatorship to ethical participation. Knowledge, if sincere, seeks embodiment; concern, if serious, seeks action. This does not imply reckless activism or performative moralism, but disciplined and intelligent participation in the work of cultivation, reform, protection, education, service, and resistance where appropriate. The good must not only be admired; it must be advanced.
5. Principled Self-Sacrifice
Where truth, justice, and the protection or elevation of others demand a cost, the rational agent must possess some willingness to bear that cost. This disposition names the tendency to accept loss, discomfort, risk, labour, or personal disadvantage in service of a higher good. It does not glorify self-destruction, nor does it sanctify suffering for its own sake. Rather, it rejects the assumption that self-preservation, comfort, and advantage are the highest principles of action. Self-sacrifice is the test of seriousness: the point at which proclaimed values prove whether they are genuine commitments or merely aesthetic preferences.
The Rational Entailments
From the cognitive and conative dispositions follows a series of entailments that together constitute the framework of Rationalist Islam. They are not adopted as beliefs, asserted as doctrines, or accepted by tradition, but are said to follow by necessity from the structure of reason itself.
Each entailment represents what any rational intellect must affirm once it accepts the laws of thought and the intelligibility of being: that contingent existence requires grounding, that explanation must terminate in the self-sufficient, and that the pursuit of knowledge within each domain must proceed according to the logic appropriate to that domain. What follows, therefore, are not articles of faith but the logical unfoldings of reason — the positions that reason itself necessitates concerning existence, knowledge, and ethics.
Rationalist Islam proceeds on the principle that no claim is exempt from reason’s jurisdiction. Every position is derived — not asserted — by applying the Five Prior Rational Commitments. What follows is a continuous sequence of conclusions that any rational agent should grant once those priors are accepted.
1) Metaphysical rationalism
2) Foundationalism
3) Epistemic parsimony
4) Ontological parsimony
5) Primacy of Consciousness
6) Analytic idealism
7) Oneness of consciousness
Monism • Nondualism
8) Ontological priority
9) Gradation of consciousness
Gradation of existence • Gradation of reality • Tashkīk al-wujūd
10) Meta Consciousness
Ahura Mazda • Allāh • Aten • Baha • Brahman • Dao • 'Ēl • Father • God • God the Father • Necessary Existent • Necessary Existentiator • Necessary Reality • Pure Consciousness • Shangdi • Tao • The Divine • The One • Unconditioned Reality • Vishnu • Waheguru • Wājib al-Wujūd • Yahweh
11) Necessary simplicity
Al-Basāṭah al-ilāhiyyah • Divine simplicity • Monotheism • Oneness • Oneness of Allah • Oneness of God • Tawhīd
12) Absolute necessary simplicity
13) Conscientiation ex conscientia
Badā'a • Creatio ex deo • Origination
14) Necessitarianism
ʿAdl • Divine justice
15) Eternalism / Eternal Creation
16) Rule of one
17) First conscientiate
First creation • First intellect • First light • Image of God • Imago dei • Mashīyya • Nūr Muhammadiyya • Ontologically first dependent existent • Pen • Perfect creation • Qalam • Universal intellect
18) Intermediary conscientiates
Angels • Immaterial existents • Malāʾika
19) Observable universe
Cosmos • Dunyā • Material dimension • Material realm • Material world • Multiverse • Natural World • Olam HaZeh • Physical world • Sensible dimension • Sensible realm • Sensible world • Universe
20) B-theory of time
Tenseless theory of time
21) Compatibilism
Divine Decree • Divine Predestination • Illusion of Libertarian Free Will • Predestination • Qadar • Soft determinism
22) Perdurantism
23) Physical empiricism
Empirical method • Scientific method
24) Mindfulness
Dhikr • God consciousness • Meditation • Salāh • Taqwā
25) Self-cultivation
26) Superiority of intellect
27) Rational self-governance
28) Mysticism
'Ibādah • Islām • Servitude • Submission • Worship
29) Prayer
Ṣalāh
30) Fasting
Ṣawm
31) Charity
Almsgiving • Zakāh
32) Pilgrimage
Ḥajj
33) Resistance
Discipline • Exertion • Fighting • Holy war • Jihād • Sacred battle • Striving • Struggle
34) Heightened consciousness
Altered state of consciousness • Anubhava • Enlightenment • Henosis • Ilhām • Nirvana • Noetic mystical experience • Nubuwwah • Perfect knowledge acquisition • Prophethood • Samadhi • Revelation • Wahī
35) Gradation of Intellect
Cognitive heterogeneity
Messengership • Risālah
37) Global cultivation / Maximisation of Personal & Global Wellbeing (Constrained)
38) Noocracy
Epistocracy • Imāmah • Mulk al-Hakīm • Perfect Manhood • Philosopher Kingship • Velāyateh Amr • Velāyateh Faqīh • Wilāyah al-Amr • Wilāyah al-Faqīh
39) Philosopher King
Demigod • High-Conscious Individual • High-Integration Individual • Hujjah • Imām • Infallible • Insān al-Kāmil • Insān ‘alā Khuluqin ‘Adhīm • Integrate • Mālik al-Hakīm • Ma'sūm • Messenger • Meta-Conscious Agent • Nabī • New Man • Perfect Human • Perfect Man • Perfect Rational Animal • Philosopher King • Prophet • Rasūl • Transhuman • Übermensch • Valīyeh Amr • Valīyeh Faqīh • Walīy al-Amr • Walīy al-Faqīh
40) Intellectual Accommodation
Tawriyyah
41) Intellectual Dissimulation
Taqīyyah
42) Cognitive reframing
43) Motifs and Imagery
Motifs—light, ascent, circle, garden, path—translate abstract truths into memorable forms that shape imagination and action. Repetition builds identity; symbol stabilises norms.
44) Mythos for Most
Symbol and story teach where proof cannot yet reach. Properly used, mythos is not falsehood but imaginal pedagogy—true content rendered in forms accessible to typical abstraction bandwidths. It is accommodation at scale.
45) Repurposing Myths and Legends
Existing cultural materials can be redeemed: stripped of false metaphysics, rekeyed to the Necessary Existent and rational ethics, and redeployed for formation. Continuity with correction preserves social capital while elevating understanding.
46) Metanarratives
Human agents reason within stories. A metanarrative integrates metaphysics, ethics, and destiny into an intelligible arc that motivates virtue and sacrifice. Without a shared narrative, social coordination and long-range projects degrade.
47) Religion
48) Religious beliefs
Arkān al-īmān • Pillars of faith • 'Uṣūl al-dīn
49) Religious laws
Branches of religion • Furūʿ al-dīn • Pillars of practice
50) Need for Dogma
“Dogma” means publicly fixed minima of right belief and practice that coordinate a civilisation. It protects the many from costly error while leaving upper tiers open to demonstration and qualified debate. Dogma is not a substitute for truth; it is a civic guardrail toward it.
51) Confessional identity
Shahāda • Testimony of Faith
51) Need to Encourage and Control Behaviour
Where demonstration alone will not move median behaviour, law, institutions, incentives, and norms are rational instruments to align action with the good. This is an application of PSR to collective life: effects follow causes; therefore, design the causes.
Hagiography
Apotheosis • Deification • Divinisation • Ghulāt / Ghuluw • Heroisation • Legendary accretion • Mythicisation • Myth-making • Mythologisation • Mythopoeia • Sacralisation • Tawallā
Heresiography
Tabarrā
Timeline
Formative Era (387 BCE - 27 CE)
Classical Antiquity • Antiquity
387 BCE (c.), Athens, Greece
Plato begins noocratic revolution
- Plato founds the Academy to cultivate a new generation of virtuous, logical leaders trained in ethics and abstract thought to improve society and political life.
387 - ? BCE (c.), Athens, Greece
- Plato conceives Theory of Ideas
- Plato conceives Theory of Soul
- Plato conceives Form of the Good
- Plato conceives Allegory of the Cave
- Plato conceives The Philosopher King
- Plato conceives The Noble Lie
335 BCE, Athens, Greece
Aristotle founds the Lyceum
335 BCE - ?, Athens, Greece
Aristotle conceives formal logic
Embodiment Era (27 CE - 245 CE)
27 CE (c.), Galilee, Roman Judea (modern Occupied Palestine)
Jesus begins local cultivation for noocratic revolution
- Jesus begins his public ministry using parables and aphorisms to teach about ethics. He advocates the reversal of social hierarchies and preaches the transformation of world order, which he calls the coming "Kingdom of God." He gathers followers, including an inner circle of disciples and social outcasts.
29 CE (c.), Jerusalem, Roman Judea (modern Occupied Palestine)
Jesus begins regional cultivation for noocratic revolution
- Jesus travels to Jerusalem for Passover, debates Jewish authorities on the subject of God, causes a disruption - often referred to as the cleansing of the Temple - and directly challenges local Jewish religious leadership.
30 CE (c.), Jerusalem, Roman Judea (modern Occupied Palestine)
- Jesus is demonised by Jewish ethnocratic propaganda
- Jesus is executed by Roman timocratic crucifixion
161 CE, Rome, Roman Empire (modern Wider Mediterranean World)
Marcus Aurelius establishes noocratic revolution
Emanation Era (245 CE - 610 CE)
Antiquity • Late antiquity
245–270 CE (c.), Rome, Roman Empire (modern Italy)
Plotinus conceives The One
Plotinus conceives Emanation by the One
Plotinus establishes Neoplatonism
412–485 CE, Athens, Eastern Roman Empire
Proclus popularises Platonism
485–528 CE, Syria, Eastern Roman Empire
Pseudo-Dionysius symbolises Neoplatonism
Dawn Era (610 CE - 661 CE)
610 CE, Mecca, Hejaz (modern Saudi Arabia)
Muḥammad begins noocratic revolution
622 CE, Medina, Hejaz (modern Saudi Arabia)
Muḥammad establishes noocratic revolution
632 CE, Medina, First Islamic state (modern Saudi Arabia)
Muḥammad dies in suspicious circumstances
Abu Bakr restores clanocracy
Ali begins noocratic revolution
Fāṭima al-Zahrā dies following suspected clanocratic arson attack
656 CE, Medina, Rashidun Caliphate (modern Saudi Arabia)
'Uthmān ibn 'Affān is assassinated by sword
656 CE, Medina, Rashidun Caliphate (modern Saudi Arabia)
ʿAlī establishes noocratic revolution
661 CE, Kufa, Rashidun Caliphate (modern Iraq)
ʿAlī is assassinated by kratocratic sword
Hasan ibn ʿAlī protects noocratic revolution
Hasan ibn ʿAlī is assassinated by poison
Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī begins noocratic revolution
680 CE, Karbala, Umayyad Caliphate (modern Iraq)
Husayn ibn ʿAlī is assassinated by clanocratic sword
732 CE, Medina, Umayyad Caliphate (modern Saudi Arabia)
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq begins noocratic revolution
765 CE, Medina, Abbasid Caliphate (modern Saudi Arabia)
Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq is assassinated by clanocratic poison
Islamic Golden Age (820 CE - 1270 CE)
Early Middle Ages • High Middle Ages • Occultation Era
820 - 870 CE (c.), Baghdad, Abbasid Caliphate (modern Iraq)
al-Kindī
940 – 1060 CE (c.), Basra, Iraq
Brethren of Purity hold secret meetings
950 CE (c.), Damascus, Ikhshidid Syria (modern Syria)
al-Fārābī islamicises Neoplatonism
980 – 1037 CE, from Bukhara, Samanid Transoxiana (modern Uzbekistan) to Hamadan, Medieval Persia (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)
Ibn Sīnā conceives Proof of the Truthful
1186 CE (c.), Aleppo, Ayyubid Syria (modern Syria)
Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi conceives Illuminationism
1191 CE (c.), Aleppo, Ayyubid Syria (modern Syria)
Shihab al-Din Yahya ibn Habash Suhrawardi is executed by familiocratic violence
1200–1240 CE (c.), Mecca, Hejaz (modern Saudi Arabia) and Damascus, Ayyubid Syria (modern Syria)
Ibn ʿArabī conceives Unity of Existence
1220 - 1270 CE (c.), Maragha, Medieval Persia
Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī synthesises mysticism and science
Gunpowder Age
Mīr Dāmād conceives atemporal origination
Mulla Sadrā conceives Transcendent Theosophy
Oil Age
1890 CE (c.), London, Britain
British Foreign Office plots to exploit Persian oil
1901 CE, Tehran, Qajari Persia (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)
Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar sells off oil exploitation rights of 75% of Persia to Britain in exchange for personal profit
Awakening Era (1940 CE - 1979 CE)
Late Modern Period to Early Contemporary Period • Pre to Early Information Age
1940 CE (c.), Qom, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)
Ruhollah Khomeini begins noocratic revolution
1948 CE, British-occupied Palestine, (modern Zionist-occupied Palestine)
Britain transfers occupation of Palestine to European Jewish Zionists
1954 CE, Qom, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)
Muhammad Husayn Ṭabāṭabāʾī establishes intra-Qur’ānic exegesis
1971 CE (c.), Tehran, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)
Ali Shariati delivers 'Red Shi'ism vs. Black Shi'ism' lectures
1977 CE, Southampton, Britain
Ali Shariati dies in suspicious circumstances
1977 CE, Tehran, Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)
Morteza Motahhari co-founds Combatant Clergy Association
Revival Era (1979 CE - Today)
Late Modern Era • Middle Information Age
1979 CE, Tehran, Post-Pahlavi Iran (modern Islamic Republic of Iran)
Ruhollah Khomeini establishes noocratic revolution
1979 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Morteza Motahhari is assassinated by Iranian seculocratic gunfire
1979 CE, Qom, Islamic Republic of Iran
Ruhollah Khomeini tells representatives of the tribes of Khuzestan and a delegation from Turkmen Sahra, "We Muslims are busy bickering over whether to fold or unfold our arms during prayer, while the enemy is devising ways of cutting them off."
1979 CE (c.), Beqaa, Lebanon
Hassan Nasrallah begins noocratic revolution
1982 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Ali Khamenei tells 60 Minutes Australia that the worst enemy is America
1989 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Ruhollah Khomeini dies
Ali Khamenei protects noocratic revolution
2001 CE, New York, America
America executes false flag at iconic American landmarks.
- Coordinated attacks, using four commercial airplanes, crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon causing nearly 3,000 deaths. America claims Al-Qaeda is the independent perpetrator.
2001 CE, Virginia, America
Senior military officer tells Wesley Clark that America has plotted to attack Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Islamic Republic of Iran
2001 CE, Afghanistan
America uses European proxies to begin its war on Afghanistan
2003 CE, Iraq
America uses European proxies to begin its war on Iraq
2006 CE, Washington D.C., America
America uses Jewish Zionist proxy Israel to attack Lebanon
2007 CE, Somalia
America begins its bombing war offensive on Somalia
2011 CE, Libya
America begins its war on Libya
2011 CE, Sudan
America completes its split of Sudan
2015 CE, London, Great Britain
Britain's Channel 4 broadcasts ex-CIA spy officer's American propaganda unchallenged, including, "The thing was ideal when IS was advancing on Baghdad because Sunnis were killing Shias. That's exactly what we need... our best hope right now is to get the Sunnis and Shias fighting each other and let them bleed each other white."
2024 CE, Dahieh, Lebanon
Jewish ethnocratic airstrikes kill Lebanon's noocratic leader
- Hassan Nasrallah
2026 CE, Islamic Republic of Iran
America and Jewish Zionist proxy Israel begin armed riots in Islamic Republic of Iran
America and Jewish Zionist proxy Israel begin war on Islamic Republic of Iran
2026 CE, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
American plutocratic & Jewish ethnocratic airstrikes kill the Islamic Republic of Iran's noocratic leader
- Ali Khamenei
2026 CE, Chicago, America
Leading American political scientist John Mearsheimer says American sanctions from 1971 to 2021 alone murdered 38 million people