Magazine Article

Thinking Skills

Henzell-Thomas, Jeremy

2006

Overview

Muhammad Asad eloquently reminds us of this in his foreword to The Message of the Qur'an, that the spirit of the Qur'an helped revive the culture of inquiry in Europe: \"Through its insistence on consciousness and knowledge, it engendered among its followers a spirit of intellectual curiosity and independent inquiry, ultimately resulting in that splendid era of learning and scientific research which distinguished the world of Islam at the height of its cultural vigor; and the culture thus fostered by the Qur'an penetrated in countless ways and by ways into the mind of medieval Europe and gave rise to that revival of Western culture which we call the Renaissance, and thus became in the course of time largely responsible for the birth of what is described as the 'age of science.'\" But the process of learning and inquiry engendered by the Qur'an was not restricted to a \"rational\" concept of \"enlightenment,\" which in its most debased form has reduced a rich and multi-layered scientia sacra to the poverty of scientism. [...] without understanding the intellect and an awareness of the moral and spiritual dimensions that animate human excellence, education in thinking skills can rarely go beyond the reductionism that focuses solely on sharpening the lower intellectual functions - the logical reasoning, argument and analysis that have been productive in scientific and technological advancement but cannot encompass the deeper needs of the soul and spirit.

• Publisher: Islamica Magazine
• Subject: Education / Islam / Learning