Joe Rogan is one of my favorite people in the world of entertainment. He’s a really down to earth smart guy who has a variety of interests and he also happens to be hilarious.

Nowhere can this be seen more than on his Podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience”. Rogan brings in a rich and diverse group of guests, from MMA fighters, to comedians, historians, political commentators, scientists and even the occasional conspiracy theorists.

He’s come a long way from watching people eat donkey penis on live TV for cash when he hosted NBC’s Fear Factor.

The way in which Joe Rogan uses his own personal curiosity to explore topics with the guests on his podcast has made it the success that it is today, but like most Americans he fell into the same trap of the blind leading the blind when he quoted author Michael Shermer regarding Islam on his podcast.

Here’s the clip.

As always even when those that I like and admire very much say something incorrect, like my rebuttal to Scott Adams, true to form I will write a rebuttal.

And away we go…

Michael Shermer is the author of “The Moral Arc” a book in which he talks about how morality as a whole has progressed over time through logic, reasoning, and scientific thought; beginning with the enlightenment and leading us to the most morally conscious time period in human history to date.

It’s a well thought out and compelling book, and I would have to agree with most of what he says EXCEPT the part that Joe Rogan says regarding Islam.

Joe Rogan is quoting specifically Shermer’s article

“Why Islam? Of the three great monotheistic religions only one did not go through the Enlightenment”

It’s an interesting read with some Pew statistics, a chart showing the rise in terrorist attacks related to Islam (that just so happens to coincide and match western intervention and destabilization of the middle east), but overall a very milquetoast explanation for the title of his article.

In the article he mentions how Christians and Jews don’t carry out terror attacks and, because of the Enlightenment, this is the reason that they don’t do it, and Islam does because they never went through it.

He never actually explains why Islam didn’t go through the Enlightenment as he claims, and he also has quite a selective memory.

This is not Syria, Iraq, but Manchester England in 1996 after Irish Catholics of the IRA detonated a bomb injuring 212 people.

This is the King David hotel in Jerusalem. It was bombed not by Palestinians, but by Jewish terrorists of the Irgun killing 91 people of various nationalities including British citizens, and injuring 46 others.

Both of these incidents are in the last 60 years, and none of them have anything to do with Islam, and both come from religious societies that Shermer claims don’t do terrorism because of the Enlightenment.

Once could argue that they weren’t doing this in the NAME of the religion like some Islamic terrorist groups claim to do, but still all three have religions attributed to the identity of the perpetrators through a social connection with political motivations. The Enlightenment didn’t stop it from happening.

Still Shermer never quite explains his claim of “Why Islam” didn’t go through the Enlightenment, but the truth is something that I think Michael Shermer, Joe Rogan, and many other people would find quite enlightening themselves.

A Man Named Pococke.

Edward Pococke

In the mid part of the 17th century a man by the name of Edward Pococke had returned to England from where he was studying in Aleppo Syria.

He would return to England with a lot of manuscripts and would go on to become the Canon at Christ Church College at Oxford teaching both Hebrew and Arabic studies.

Christ Church at Oxford has quite the legacy alumni including Lewis Caroll (Alice in Wonderland), William Penn (founder of Pennsylvania) etc and many many other well known contributors to the world of science, mathematics, literature etc.

Edward Pococke had a son(also named Edward) that didn’t quite achieve the high positions of professorship like his father, but he did translate one particular manuscript from Arabic to Latin (the most common academic language of the time)

That manuscript was a short philosophical piece of literature entitled “Philosophicus Addictus” — (What Pococke decided to name it)

Its real name in Arabic is Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. Alive, Son of Awake.

The story was written by an Islamic scholar named ibn Tufayl, and what many people in the western world don’t know, is that it is one of the most important and influential pieces of literature ever written.

Alone on an Island.

Ibn Tufayl like most Islamic scholars of his day in the 1100’s was a doctor, an astronomer, a mathematician, etc. His work Philosophicus Autodidactus was a response to fellow Islamic scholar al-Ghazali’s brutal intellectual dismissal of Aristotelian Philosophy of Avicenna (ibn Sina) in the previous century.

Ghazali was heralded at the time for his work in dismissing philosophy and rationalism with his keystone work “The Incoherence of the Philosophers”, and Tufayl felt it needed a clear rebuttal to show that through logic and reason one could come to the same natural conclusions in scripture, but he needed a way to express the inquisitive nature of the mind.

How Tufayl decided to go about this was to create an allegorical tale with commentary of a boy growing up in solitude on an island, and how through natural inquiry alone, could be close to divinity and come to the same conclusions of spirituality. To do this he would see beyond the physical world towards an understanding of the metaphysical just through logic and reason alone.

This is an important link in the chain of understanding Aristotelian philosophy in Islam. It first began with Al-Kindi translating Aristotle’s work into Arabic, and then Al-Farabi making sense of it and metaphysics, and finally Avicenna (ibn Sina) who took it to another level debating existence, active intellect etc., but Al Ghazali came along dismissing it all as it couldn’t rationally and logically answer questions regarding faith.

Ibn Tufayl wanted to show that the search for spiritual truth, and the search for truth through logic and reason were essentially harmonious, and could come to the same conclusions, and that the individual has the power through logic and reason to do so. That there was more than just literal truths, but truths that can be deduced naturally through observation and the pursuit of inquiry.

Unfortunately because ibn Tufayl was based in Andalusia (Morocco/Spain), and far from the center of the Islamic world in the middle east, his work didn’t get the same attention as Al-Ghazali’s complete dismissal of philosophic thought. Al Ghazali unfortunately became the standard, but Tufayl’s work did find its way into the hands of Edward Pococke’s son at Christ Church in Oxford England some 500 years later.

To give you an idea of the time between ibn Tufayl’s life and that of Pococke’s translation in 1671, It is the same amount of time between Henry the VIII and today, or about from the present day to the founding of the first American colony in Jamestown…plus 70 years.

Just like Islam today is missing the key continuation of commentary by Tufayl in response to Ghazali, the western world has very little idea of an important missing fact that I myself intentionally omitted when I first mentioned Edward Pococke.

Edward Pococke (the son) who did the first ever translation of Philosophicus Autodidactus in Latin had a tutor, who also was being mentored by his father while studying at Christ Church.

That man was John Locke.

The Locke & Key to the Enlightenment.

John Locke needs no introduction to most of the western world. His influence in Two Treasties of Government were the foundations of modern secular government philosophy today and was the basis for Thomas Jefferson, Madison and others in drafting the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but very few people know who influenced John Locke. Including Michael Shermer apparently. (You’d think a scientist would do more research)

When John Locke talked about natural laws, and truths that one self can deduce through reason and logic like life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, he was directly taking it from ibn Tufayl’s Philosophicus Autodidactus in the main characters search for natural truths.

You might say that through logic and reason one can discover natural laws and truths that the individual can determine to be self evident.

And someone else might say that they…

…hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happines..

Somebody should totally make a country out of that.

No single work influenced Locke more than ibn Tufayl’s Philosophicus Autodidactus, it’s absolutely clear when you read the work and the nature of its contents that Locke drew heavily from the allegorical story, but he wasn’t the only one influenced by the work.

Rudyard Kippling with the story of Mowgli in the Jungle Book, Hobbes, Hume, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe etc. were all influenced by Tufayl.

But Tufayl also had a protege, and his name was Ibn Rushd or Averroes as it is known in the west.

Averroes would take the battle to Ghazali one step further writing “The Incoherence of Incoherence” against Al-Ghazali and providing the western world with one of the most thorough commentaries on Aristotle, inspiring St. Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, Voltaire, Spinoza, and Jewish scholar Maimonides, just to name a few.

It was in an essence the awakening of the mind, and the sprouting of the tree of knowledge itself…

Although ibn Tufayl and ibn Rushd lived 400–500 years before the Enlightenment in Europe they were the two most influential writers to usher it in when it dawned in the 1600s, and their influence is still felt by every single person living in the western world today, even Michael Shermer despite his ignorance.

It apparently even has an influence on youtuber Sargon of Akkad, but just like many in the western world he just doesn’t know it.

Sargon of Akkad enjoys intellectual debate on the internet, and he’s one of the few people I see actually doing research to understand the problem with the radical interpretation of Islam coming from Saudi Arabia.

What is quite interesting is the fact that his namesake Sargon of Akkad has a similar story to that of the main character in Tufayl’s story. The real Sargon also was a child set out alone in the world in his mythos story. It’s no coincidence that this also is similar to that of the story of Moses, and why Tufayl used it as his starting point.

Sargon of Akkad recently was on the Joe Rogan podcast and did an excellent job trying to explain Wahhabism/Salafi movement coming from Saudi Arabia on there. He still has much to learn, but he’s headed in the right direction.

Recently he interviewed Maajid Nawaz to get a better understanding of some of the concerning issues with the spread of radical Islam, and I commend him and Maajid Nawaz for openly talking about the history to get a better understanding of the problem that is being indoctrinated across Europe by Saudi Arabia, and the work Maajid Nawaz is doing to try to deradicalize youth from going down that path.

The greatest ally in their quest to unravel the harsh radical interpretations is ibn Tufayl and ibn Rushd’s work, they both in an essence are the bridges that Islam can follow to meet the western world on the other side, because it was they who were the bridge for the western world to the Enlightenment themselves.

Islam’s major fundamental problem with fundamentalism comes from Ahmed ibn Hanbal, who introduced the idea of no kalam (no discussion) to debating scripture, Al-Ghazali (no philosophical thought). and ibn Taymiyyah (no innovations) that are the foundation for the rigid puritanical ideology that is propagated by Saudi Arabia today. There are indeed others like Sayyid Qutb from Egypt, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya etc., but the first three I mentioned are the biggest enemies of Islam today holding it back.

When you can’t have a discussion about scripture, and you can’t think about the symbolic and metaphysical meaning of scripture, and you can’t innovate and are taught to hate all other innovations and interpretations, well you get Saudi Arabia, and ISIS, and Boko Haram etc. It is nothing but a complete path towards totalitarian control, intolerance of others, and an enslavement and repression of the mind in order to capitulate.

Ibn Tufayl’s Philosophicus Autodidactus is one of the most important pieces of literature that can break these shackles placed on the Sunni community in Islam today, and it most certainly should be taught in school as part of the curriculum in the western world for its role in helping Locke, Hobbes, and others come to the ideas creating the modern secular governments of today. Maybe that way we won’t have people randomly thinking that Islam “didn’t go through the Enlightenment”, when Islam actually influenced and kickstarted the Enlightenment.

In fact, anyone can pick up and read Philosophicus Autodidactus, including Michael Shermer, and I am certain they will be struck by how brilliant it is and the relevance it still has to this day in the views of the modern world. (He even talks about round earth in the 1100s)

It is in a sense the genesis of Theo-Humanism, and it is exactly what John Locke took as inspiration to lay the foundation of his theory and ideas on natural laws for people of all faiths to live under that so many people appreciate to this very day.

Perhaps it would be best to give it the credit it deserves, and return the favor to the Islamic world and remind them of the gift that they had given all of us in the western world so many years prior.

If you would like to learn more about ibn Tufayl, Dr. Paul Heck of Georgetown University does an excellent video explanation of ibn Tufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān in the video linked below.

Although Dr. Paul Heck doesn’t mention Locke and Pococke, He mentions the first English translation of 1708 by Simon Ockley.

Locke had his academic Latin translation by 1660s when he was at Christ Church, long before the English translation was available for the masses.