Abstract:
The emergence of the secret society of Ikhwan al-Safa is one of the important intellectual and cultural events of the fourth century AH, which holds a special position in the history of Islamic philosophy. This occurred under the political, social, and intellectual conditions of the fourth century AH, where on one hand, creativity emerged due to political-religious weakness—resulting from the inability of the Caliphate institution to respond to the intellectual challenges of the Islamic community—and on the other hand, the emergence of early sciences and Greek culture stood in opposition to Islamic thoughts, confronting the thinkers of the Islamic community with multiple challenges. This led to the emergence of informal groups that sought to respond to the intellectual conditions of that day's society. Ikhwan al-Safa is among these groups that, by proposing the idea of tolerance and forbearance, sought to bring Islamic Sharia closer to Greek culture and Iranian, Manichaean, and Gnostic thought. Because this group, in Iraq—which was the intersectional border of the aforementioned thoughts—chose the title Ikhwan al-Safa for their society, they spoke of ethics and worked towards spreading the thought of religious Islamic tolerance. This writing poses the question: what was the reason for the Ikhwan al-Safa's approach to the thought of tolerance? It proposes the hypothesis that the thought of al-Safa's tolerance emerged from the intellectual and political conditions of the fourth century AH, a subject we aim to examine based on a descriptive-historical analytical method.
Machine summary:
This article, by posing the question of what the reasons for Ikhwan al-Safa's approach to the idea of tolerance were, proposes the hypothesis that the thought of tolerance and the rapprochement of Greek philosophy and Iranian, Manichaean, and Gnostic thought with Islamic Sharia, in the belief of Ikhwan al-Safa, emerged from the intellectual and political conditions of their era, through which they sought to bring the thoughts of the Islamic community closer together in the turbulent intellectual atmosphere of the fourth century AH.
Some have placed the beliefs of this group based on the Kalam of the Mu'tazila, some based on the beliefs of the Isma'ilis, Qarmatians, and Fatimids, and others based on the beliefs of Peripatetic philosophers and contemporary researchers, mostly based on the thoughts of Plotinus, the Illuminationist sage, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Neoplatonists; however, according to Ali Asghar Halabi, although each of these beliefs is correct to some extent and a source or location can be found for each of them in the brothers' works, none of them is consistent with reality, and he believes that the only sect whose beliefs in many general issues, regardless of mathematics and natural sciences, which is pure science and is very close to them and identical to them in many contents, is the Sufis and Islamic mystics, especially in Iran (Selected Epistles of Ikhwan al-Safa, pp.
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