Misperceiving the Real; Islamic myopia in the Modern Age

The mind-body dualism of the Enlightenment in Europe has produced many errors in the way we conceive of what we ordinarily understand "the realm of thoughts and ideas" to consist in. The first most important error was the assimilation of the Intellect with the Soul, broadly speaking, or the tacit replacement of the classic ternary of spiritus, animus and corpus, as clarified by the Scholastics, with a vulgarised dualism between the rational faculty and the body. Muslim intellectuals have become a hardened lot in the last few centuries upon more frequent contact with European civilisation. Some have ridiculed it while others have opened their arms to all of its terrestrial productions. Muslim intellectuals, forever torn between impish imitation and fundamentalist self-conceit, have largely failed to elucidate the way in which genuine Islamic firasa (discernment) is learned through the experience of life itself. The sin of "intellectualism" does not therefore consist in the flagrant display of narcissitic self-concerns but in the inability to perceive objects as they stand in relation to the perceiving subject. The Islamic world cannot learn from "muslim intellectuals" and vice versa. The Islamic World is in no need of justification or defence in circumstances where the insight of the one-eyed is given unparalled authority to speak in the name of truth or justice. The visceral identity of home-grown professional Muslims is self-contradictory on account of its myopia.