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10 Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul
mind learned unconsciously in grammar and high school and then confirmed and solidified by university and professional training. Such people may pray and fast like Muslims, but they think like doctors, engineers, sociologists, and political scientists. It is naive to imagine that one can learn how to think Islamically simply by attending lectures once a week or by reading a few books written by contemporary Muslim leaders, or by studying the Qur’an, or by saying one’s prayers and having “firm faith.” In the premodern Islamic world, the Islamic ethos was everywhere, but great thinkers and intellectuals still spent their whole lives searching for deeper knowledge of God, the cosmos, and the soul. As far as they were concerned, the search for understanding was a neverending task. The heritage left by those intellectuals is extraordinarily rich. They wrote many thousands of books, even if most of the important books have never been printed, much less translated. And, those that have been published are rarely read by modern-day Muslims. I do not mean to imply that it would be necessary to read all the great books of the intellectual tradition in their original languages in order to think Islamically. If modern-day Muslims could read one of the important books, even in translation, and understand it, their thinking would be deeply affected. However, the only way to understand such books is to prepare oneself for understanding, and that demands study and training. This cannot be done on the basis of a modern university education, unless, perhaps, one has devoted it to the Islamic tradition (I say “perhaps” because many Muslims and non-Muslims with Ph.D.’s in Islamic Studies cannot read and understand the great books of the intellectual heritage). Given that modern schooling is rooted in topics and modes of thought that are not harmonious with traditional Islamic learning, it is profoundly difficult for any thinking and practicing Muslim to harmonize the domain of thought and theory with the realm of