Islam & Higher-Order Thinking: An Overview by Mohd Zaidi Ismail

Capitalising on the understanding of thinking as “the mental act of putting into meaningful order what one has already known in order to attain what one is still ignorant of,” a formulation which is well-established in the religious, intellectual, and scientific tradition of Islam, this small monograph is aimed at a balanced and holistic exposition of thinking. Apart from scrutinising and explaining the relation of thinking to knowledge, the monograph also demonstrates that, should one subscribe to such a formulation, one would then not have to prefer thinking to the exclusion of memorisation, on the one hand, and similarly, one would not then have to face the dilemma of siding with creative thinking at the cost of marginalising the critical one, on the other hand. In short, just as memorising is an indispensable, necessary condition in thinking, so is logic related to creativity as modes (or aspects) of thinking. The monograph also seeks to show that in both mental acts— memorisation as well as thinking, whether critical or creative— imagination plays a great, instrumental role.