Unconventional Duha Research Unitary

1. The Historical Problem: Why Creativity Was Devalued

Across intellectual traditions — Islamic, Western, and modern — creativity has often been sidelined compared to science and rationality. Several reasons explain this:

a. The Legacy of Rationalism

Greek philosophy (Aristotle, Plato) ranked imagination (phantasia) as a lower faculty of the soul, below reason (logos). Aristotle saw imagination as unreliable, prone to illusion, while reason was the pathway to truth. This hierarchy deeply influenced medieval thought, including parts of Islamic kalām and scholastic philosophy.

b. The Rise of Empiricism

In modernity, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton shifted epistemology toward empirical verification and mathematical rationality. Knowledge became what could be measured, tested, and reproduced. Creativity, being “subjective,” was downgraded as non-scientific.

c. The University Model

Since the 19th century, Western universities structured disciplines into “sciences” (biology, physics, sociology) as “serious knowledge,” while art, poetry, and literature were confined to the humanities, treated as expressive but not truth-producing.

Thus, creativity became seen as ornamental (aesthetic), while science was seen as foundational (epistemic).

2. Qur’ānic Reframing of Creativity

The Qur’an radically disrupts this hierarchy:

Creativity (ibdāʿ) is divine: “Badīʿ al-samāwāt wa’l-arḍ” — “Originator of the heavens and the earth” (2:117).

Imagination (amthāl, parables) is used by Allah Himself: “Allah presents the example of a good word like a good tree” (14:24).

Symbolic discernment (tawassum) is praised: “Indeed, in that are signs for those who discern” (15:75).

Thus, Qur’ān elevates creativity to a mode of truth-disclosure (kashf), not mere decoration.

3. Ghazālī’s Integration: Creativity as Spiritual Pedagogy

Imām al-Ghazālī fought against two extremes:

1. Philosophers who exalted reason but distrusted imagination.

2. Mystics who sometimes abandoned reason for unbounded visions.

His solution: imagination (khayāl) is a necessary ladder to maʿrifah. Qur’anic parables, dreams, and metaphors are bridges between sensory perception and spiritual realities. In the Iḥyāʾ, he interprets hadith and Qur’anic imagery as spiritual medicine — teaching through symbols.

This gave creativity epistemic dignity, not as secondary, but as complementary to science and reason.

4. Modern Academic Bias Against Creativity

In the current academy, creativity still struggles for recognition:

STEM Supremacy: Funding and prestige flow to “hard sciences,” while arts/humanities are cut.

Measurement Bias: What cannot be quantified (e.g., imagination, insight, firāsah) is considered “soft.”

Secularization: Creativity reduced to “self-expression” or “innovation” in consumer markets, stripped of sacred telos.

This bias ignores the fact that all scientific breakthroughs are born in creativity — Einstein’s theory of relativity began as a “thought experiment” (khayāl), not an experiment.

5. Mujaddid Model’s Corrective

The MMI re-centers creativity as coequal with science by situating it within tawḥīd:

Contemplative Intelligence (tafakkur, taʿaqqul): Disciplines the intellect.

Empirical Intelligence (ruʾyah, taḥqīq): Anchors in observation.

Creative Intelligence (naẓar, khayāl, tawassum): Generates originality and symbolic discernment.

Spiritual Intelligence (basīrah, maʿrifah): Integrates them all.

Here, creativity is not secondary but the bridge between reason and revelation, between data and meaning.

6. Practical Implications

Education: Children should not be taught STEM as “real” and art as “extra.” Qur’an-centered creativity — drawing, storytelling, poetry — is epistemic, not decorative.

Parenting: Prophetic stories can be retold in creative forms (art, role-play, dramatization), embedding morals deeper than rote memorization.

Scholarship: Muslim thinkers must reclaim imagination as methodology — e.g., Ibn Khaldūn’s use of iʿtibār (pattern recognition) is creative philosophy, not just history.

Creativity has been marginalized historically because rationalism and empiricism defined “knowledge” too narrowly.

The Qur’an, however, restores imagination as ibdāʿ, a divine reflection and a mode of unveiling truth.

The Mujaddid Model repositions creativity not as inferior to science, but as its essential complement — the spark that transforms observation into insight, data into wisdom, and knowledge into tajdīd.