Islamic political philosophy: Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes Part 1

Islam is based on the Koran (a revelation from God to the prophet Muhammad) supplemented by the sunnah (a set of traditions about Muhammad's words and deeds). Muslims recognise Judaism and Christianity as revelations from God (just as Christianity recognises Judaism), but hold that the revelation made to Muhammad completes and supersedes earlier revelations. Muslims reject the Christian doctrines that Jesus was God and that God is in three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit); they believe that Jesus was a prophet and that God is one.

Islam spread rapidly from its birthplace in Arabia. In part its spread was due to jihad ('holy war' - see Encyclopaedia of Islam (ref/DS37.E523), vol. 2, pp. 538-40, art. 'Djihad'); non-Muslims defeated in battle were offered the choice of conversion or death. An exception was made for Jews and Christians, who were allowed to continue their religious observances provided they acknowledged Muslim political authority and paid a tax. In this way there came to be in Muslim lands many communities of Christians and Jews, who sometimes acted as intermediaries in cultural exchange between Muslims and the Greeks and the Latins. Thus Arab Christians were among the translators who (about A.D. 800) translated the works of Plato and Aristotle into Arabic, and Arabic-speaking Jews were among the translators who (in the 12th century) translated Greek and Arabic works of science and philosophy from Arabic into Latin. The bulk of Aristotle's works became known in Europe first in translations of Arabic translations from Greek (though translations were soon made direct into Latin from Greek) and were accompanied by translations of the Arabic writings of Muslim philosophers. Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi, Abu 'Ali al-Husayn Ibn Sina and Abu al-Walid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd were well known in the universities of medieval Europe under the Latinised forms of their names, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes.

The works on politics written by the Islamic philosophers were based especially on Plato, with influence also from Aristotle's Ethics; Aristotle's Politics was not well-known, though Aristotle's other works were. Greek Neo-Platonists (Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and others) had tried to combine the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle; they held that these philosophies were fundamentally in harmony. This view was passed on to the Islamic philosophers, who expounded a more or less Platonized Aristotelianism.