Occasionalism The Muslims were pioneers in almost all branches of learning. The influence of the Muslims could be traced in almost all spheres of life including sciences and arts, commerce and industry, music, painting, and philosophy. A number of books written by Islamic scientists served as standard text books both in the West as well as in the East. The Arabs discarded the speculative method of the Greeks and adopted the experimental method, which lead to the rapid advancement of science during a time where Europe was living in wars, poverty, and ignorance. One of the fields that flourished during the Islamic caliphate is philosophy. The Arabs translated Greek and Hindus Books, which helped to preserve them from being destroyed. The Arabs’ thoughts and works were the seed that afterwards grew into modern European philosophy. Occasionalism is one of the ideas that were adopted by some Islamic philosophers. Nevertheless, this notion was transmitted to the European philosophers, who gave it a new flavor affected by their environment, current events and their own religion. The first Islamic occasionalist philosopher that I will talk about is Al Ashary. Al Ashary was born in Basra in 873. At first he believed in the liberals, head by the Mutazila, until he became 40 years old then he established his own way of thinking. Al Ashary was an occasionalist, which means that God created everything and that God causes everything. If something has fallen down then it is God who made it fall down. He died in 935. The second Islamic philosopher is El Ghazali. Before El Ghazali turned 20 years, he began to doubt everything. He did not know what is true and what is not. As a result, he became sick for two months. He says that he was cured by a light from god; he called it “the divine light.” He was invited to Baghdad by Nizam El Mulk to work as a philosophy teacher at the famous Sunni school there.
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