Meanings of philosophy

Professor Dr. Ahmed Fouad Al-Ahwani wrote the following more than seventy years ago: "I saw people in Egypt and the Arab East with an unprecedented interest in reading philosophy books and learning about the ideas of their authors. This was not the norm recently. Rather, philosophy was a symbol of strangeness, complexity, and ambiguity (...) and people''s interest in philosophy bears evidence of their awakening." The people, and shaking off the dust of laziness and stagnation from their minds, philosophy accompanied Islamic civilization at its peak, to the point that Abu Ya''qub al-Kindi, the Arab philosopher, described it in his letter to the Caliph al-Mu''tasim Billah in The First Philosophy, saying: The highest status of human industries, and the most honorable of their rank, is the industry of philosophy. ...) Whatever the case may be, today''s Eastern peoples are turning to philosophy, just as they are turning to science, so I thought it would be good to pave the way for students of knowledge and wisdom with this book and open for them the doors of this industry, so that the path will be straightened and the thorns that used to add to philosophy will be removed. It is shrouded in mystery and ambiguity.In this book, I am inspired by the spirit of our late professor, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mosque, Mustafa Abdel Razek. From him I learned clarity of thought, precision in expression, and the pursuit of truth, and they made him the true philosopher."