Islamization of Aesthetics

(A Critical Study of The Prevailing Perception of Islamic ‎Aesthetics)

Abstract

This study examines the debate about Islamic Aesthetics, the concept of Islamic ‎aesthetics, the possibility of the existence of so-called Islamic aesthetics. Moreover, a review ‎of Arab and Islamic visions, the first is the adoption of the presence of Islamic aesthetics, and ‎the second is the denial of its existence, through a critical methodology that attempts to ‎reveal the philosophical and logical confusion that affected some Writings in Islamic Art and ‎Aesthetics. The study tries to answer some of its questions about the history of the ‎emergence of the term Islamic Aesthetics and the concept of Islamic aesthetics from the two ‎visions supporting its existence and depriving it, and what is the possibility of there being ‎Islamic aesthetics?‎

‎The results of this study showed that the term Islamic Aesthetic or the term Islamic ‎Beauty is not found in old Arabic Islamic writings that appeared before the twentieth century. ‎Also, the term (Islamic aesthetics) did not appear clearly except through the cultural ‎movement carried out by the International Institute of Islamic Thought in the eighties of the ‎twentieth century. The study also showed that the vision supporting the existence of Islamic ‎aesthetics adopts two locations. The first position is to demonstrate Arab aesthetics, ‎mentioned in the writings of early Arab thinkers such as al-Tawhidi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Hazm, al-‎Ghazali, and Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya. The second position adopts the idea that Islamic ‎aesthetics is a modern science but has its roots and backgrounds in the concept of beauty in ‎the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. As for the vision that denies the existence of ‎Islamic aesthetics, it believes that what came in the Arabic and Islamic writings that claim to ‎be Islamic aesthetics is ambiguity and fallacies between studying Islamic beauty and ‎Aesthetics. Also, the results of the research showed confusion between research in Islamic ‎Beauty, and research in Aesthetics that produced the term (Islamic Aesthetics), and this ‎confusion arose from reasons including intolerance to the Islamization of knowledge, and any ‎attempt to approach philosophy. For beauty between the intellectual trends of Islam and ‎expressive art forms that reflect those intellectual trends and an attempt to consolidate the ‎theory of Islamic art based on Islamic beauty.‎