LAHORE, March 15: Justice Dr Javed Iqbal (retired) has said that lack of philosophical spirit has led to the decline of the Islamic civilization.

He was speaking at the inaugural session of the 35th annual session of the two-day Pakistan Philosophical Congress organized by the philosophy department of the Government College, Lahore, at the college auditorium on Friday.

Dr Javed Iqbal said Jamaluddin Afghani was the first person in modern Islamic world who drew attention of the Muslims towards the importance of philosophy, saying that a philosopher could be a better interpreter of the Holy Quran than a religious scholar.

He said Jamaluddin Afghani retorted a western objection that Islam was a retro-progressive religion. He (Afghani) said the scientific and social progress of the west was just because it had borrowed Islamic research in chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics and algebra and if Muslims were going to adopt these things, it would not mean to take something from the alien culture. Western knowledge was actually a prolongation of Islamic knowledge, he said.

Dr Javed Iqbal said the western countries had made progress through religious reformations and an industrial revolution. He said Allama Iqbal was of the view that Muslims must reconstruct their religious thoughts through Ijtihaad. Unluckily, he said, Iqbal’s book ‘Reconstruction of religious thoughts in Islam’ was badly resented and in a conference held in Ryadh its contents were declared as unIslamic. Actually the book, he said, was aimed to bring in renaissance of the Muslim world through religious reformation. However, he said, irrational fanaticism let the western culture and civilization dominate over the Islamic civilization and traditions.

Dr Javed Iqbal said Europe’s transformation from darkness to enlightenment was on account of philosophical spirit while the Muslims ignored it. The Europeans squeezed their religious barriers and rational sciences began to make advancements there, he said.

He said that not even a single state could be declared as Islamic because, according to the definition given by the Islamic Fiqah, only that state could be declared as Islamic whose all rules and laws were derived from the Quranic teachings. He said that most of the laws in Pakistan were also manmade so it could be called a ‘mixed’ state and not an Islamic state. “Infact, Islamic state exists nowhere and the Muslim Ummat is divided into many independent states,” he said.

Earlier, GC principal Dr Khalid Aftab said modern society had its share of troubles and tribulations through various factors including economics, social and technological. The worst sufferer was an individual as he was a victim of self-estrangement which constituted one of the most severe socially patterned defects, he said.

“In such a situation it is our duty to educate ourselves as well as others as on means to set up a sane society which does not promote hatred and conflict, personal or social,” he said.

Dr Aftab said Pakistani society was currently confronted with dogmatism and violence which were seriously threatening society’s social fabric. He hoped that the philosophical congress would contribute towards the culture of learning, knowledge and wisdom.

Prof Dr Muhammad Maruf delivered a lecture on ‘Metaphysics reinstated’ and said natural sciences and metaphysics were vital to each other. He said philosophy today was again at the crossroads as it was at the hands of Sophists. He said the world seriously needed another Socrates to define the terms and another Aristotle to keep philosophy in its true form.