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عبد الواحد الصقلي
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In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful
Ancient Greeks were responsible for the birth of philosophy, a thought based on conjecture, presumption and ignorance [of Divine guidance], and scholars such as Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Rušd, Al-Fārābī and Al-Kindī and others were responsible for the spread of this philosophy in the Arab world. "I did not make them witness to the creation of the heavens and the earth or to the creation of themselves, and I would not have taken the misguiders as assistants." (Translation of the meaning of the Qur'ān, 18:51) As far these philosophers have investigated about the causes and the origin of the universe, or about the first appearance of man on earth, their knowledge could only be relative, because it was conceived by their limited human mind, without the light of revelation. This was the reason why Socrates, perhaps the wisest among them, admitted his total ignorance of the truth, and for which the Imām Al-Šafi`ī – may God have mercy on him – about thirteen centuries later affirmed: "The people did not become ignorant and nor differ (with each other) except due to their abandonment of the language of the Arabs and their inclination to the language of Aristotle." (Quoted by Al-Suyūṭi in "Ṣawn al-Manṭiq" p.15)