The Reasons of Scientific and Cultural Decadence in Islamic Civilization according to Two Ottoman Intellectual, Namik Kemal and Ahmet Mithat


Tasdelen V.

BEYTULHIKME-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, vol.9, no.2, pp.553-572, 2019 (ESCI) identifier

Abstract

One of the most important debates of the last two centuries has taken place in the issue of religion and science relations, and two main opinions arise in regards to the subject. One of them is positivist doctrine having an ideological meaning about science, the other is the spiritual approaches trying to produce a discourse against this doctrine. There are so many works have been written in the frame of positivist doctrine, dealing with the thesis on conflict and incompatibility between religion and science. Two of them are Islam and Science (L'islam et la science) having been written by the Ernest Renan, and History of the Conflict Between Religion and Sciences written John. W. Draper. Two intellectuals of Ottoman, Namik Kemal writing Renan Mudafaanamesi, and Ahmet Mithat writing Niza-i Ilm u Din, criticized that positivist opinions. According to them, Islam is not opposite wisdom (alhikma), science, philosophy, and education; on the contrary, supported them highly, and motivated the believer about education and science. In this work will be researching the two Ottoman intellectuals, Namik Kemal and Ahmet Mithat's opinion to deal with reasons for the crisis in Islamic culture.