Islamology The Basic Design for a School of Thought and Action

by: Dr. Ali Shariati

I present a geometrical figure of a school of thought and an ide- ology which every Islamologist and aware Muslim should have of Islam, not only as explanation of their religious belief but as a logo of a school of thought and ideology. Gaston Bachelard, one of the greatest thinkers of ourage, com- parable to Descartes and Plato, who, unfortunately died a few years ago being quite unknown, believed that when an idea can be conceptualized in a geometric form, it has found its proper language in which to express and explain itself. That is, when an idea finds geometrical expression, this idea has found thebest language of its expression.

Any idea which can be conceptualized and then expressed through a geometric form, is itself proof of its being both valid and sound. The most exact scientific concepts in the world are mathematical ones. If we are able to express our philosophical or ideological ideas in mathematical or geometrical language, we have both found the best language to express our concepts as well as the best proof of the fact that intellectual ideas are logical as opposed to
philosophies and religions which have to engage in discussion, argumentation, sophistry, debates and comparisons to prove their logic.There, one will have chosen the weakest language of expression from the view of reasoning and logic. If, instead, one could make use of mathematics as the language of expression for an intellectual, philosophical or religious school or even literary or artistic school, it is then that a school of thought will have succeeded in finding expression through logical reason- ing, proving itself to be both logical and scientific.

I wanted to add just one point. A school shows whether or not it is a natural form, whether or not its curve is normal or abnormal, whether or not its form is heterogeneous or homogeneous through the geometric form in which it is expressed. That is, one can understand the natural qualities of a school from its geometric expression....

Scholars and Scholars
There is a great difference between knowledge which has been understood and knowledge which has just been learned. You may know people who are very knowledgeable about a famous person, book or school but not understand the person, book or school. What is the difference between these two? If I succeed in expressing the difference between these two, I will, then, have succeeded in explaining the difference between a real Islamic scholar and a person who has simply learned about Islam but does not understand it.

There are some Islamic scholars who understand Islam and there are some Islamic scholars - many, as a matter of fact - who have only learned about Islam. On the other hand, there are some who understand Islam well but are not considered to be Islamic scholars.

The same difference exists in literature, in the case of some professors who know, for instance, how many manuscripts of the poems of Hafiz exist in the world, where each one is, what the
weight or dimension of the volumes are, how many poems or which different ones are included in each edition and who know the names and attributes of all those who were praised by Hafiz,
what effect they had upon him, what their position was in relation to him, etc. They know how many Persian or Arabic words exist in Hafiz's poems or they know all of the allusions and historical references made by Hafiz, but they in no way understand Hafiz.