Kamal al-Din al-Nabhani

Philosophy and Theology

Nabhani in his books 'Thought' and 'System of Islam 2' after his father Taqiuddin al-Nabhani placed heavy emphasis on discussing modes and models of the psychology behind human thought, and concepts. He defined the thought process, and how it reaches the status of conviction or concepts. He discussed the internal working of thoughts, convictions, and concepts in shaping the Nafs or emotions and sentiments. Delving into the internal workings of how people reach conclusions & the psychology behind the process derives itself from Taqiuddin al-Nabhani's roots in non-Ascetic legalistic Sufism from his first teacher and maternal grandfather Ismail al-Nabhani.

Al-Nabhani's definitions of thought have been used in the study of Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, and information processing research discussed in the Addison-Wesley published book "Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine (Systems Programming Series)" and used in London South Bank University's information systems department.

After many philosophical discussions on the nature of thoughts and emotions, Nabhani concludes that the only way to bring about change is via discussion, refutation, and revival of the relevant thoughts and emotions. It is from this philosophical basis that he argued that force does not work to change peoples' ideas. He also argued that a decline in the Muslims' thought, emotions and concepts led to their decline & the eventual destruction of the Khilafah. He believed the first major step towards decline in the Muslims was confusion about, and dealing with new foreign ideas, mainly Greek, Persian & eastern philosophy.

He argued the Islamic World did not know how to tackle & contextualise these ideas because they became insular, and complacent of preserving & keeping relevant their own Islamic thoughts or philosophy to a world in flux. The heavy emphasis on pinpointing, defining and changing peoples thoughts, convictions, or emotions, via stronger thoughts, diagnosis, and refutation of the process an individual uses to reach their particular 'incorrect' view, is the method of Hizb ut-Tahrir's argumentation on almost every issue.

Faith vs. rational belief

Nabhani claimed Islam is founded on rational belief and not blind faith, being very similar to Ghazali's Kalam Argument. However, both Nabhani and Ghazali argued that after belief (Aqeeda) is established, divine laws in the Quran are beyond question due to the 'mind' of God being beyond human comprehension. Nabhani loosely affirmed rationalism (not that of the Mu'tazili) but argued that it can establish belief in a God just like Ghazali and Ghazali's teacher al-Juwayni in his book [4], contrary to the common western notion of rationalism. He tried to outline materialist arguments and axioms to prove that one unlimited creator of the universe, God (Allah) can be proven by rational deduction. He believed that the dependency of, and limited physical nature of every tangible thing within human perception point ultimately to an unlimited creator that is beyond need and dependency, an Absolute Infinite.