Mohammad Ali Sheikh
Professor M. A. Sheikh is currently a Member of the Iranian Parliament. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and Islamic Logic. Currently, he is the Director of Faculty of Letters and Humanities at the University of Shaheed Beheshti, Iran. He is the author of five books and numerous papers.
One of the greatest "dialogues of civilization" occurred in the wake of the cultural and intellectual revolution of the Prophet Muhammad (s). As Islam made its rapid spread through the world, it absorbed the intellectual heritage of newly conquered lands, making it apart of the newborn civilization. The entrance of Greek philosophy into Islamic theological debates was one such example. Stimulated by what it found in other civilizations, a renaissance began in the Islamic world. This renaissance in turn gave birth to new ideas and thought within Europe, and other parts of the world. The development of philosophy in the Middle Ages was directly linked to the philosophical debates and explorations occurring within the Islamic world. Parts of the reason for the intellectual vitality of Islamic civilization were conflicts that existed within Islam itself. It was the clash of ideas and ideologies, between different sects, schools of thoughts, and theological doctrines, that gave birth to the scholarly achievements that characterized the Islamic civilization. In this paper, I hope to explore the dynamics of Islam's internal and external conflicts, and how they gave rise to the deep and complex tradition of Islamic theology.