Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought

"In recent years, there has been a considerable increase of interest in the thought and writings of Leo Strauss, now recognized as one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of his generation. A rising awareness of the importance of Strauss's commentaries on a variety of authors can be observed: his contributions to the study of the history of ancient and modern political thought, as well as Jewish figures, are generally recognized worthy of discussion and are debated even by those who have serious reservations about Strauss's claims and general perspective. Strauss's studies on medieval Islamic political philosophy, however, have received a rather limited response from scholars of Islamic political thought: many studies on Islamic thought are written in complete disregard of Strauss's scholarship on the subject. Those few writings which discuss Strauss's ideas, on the other hand, range from brief and very dismissive comments, to a few critical but interesting discussions, a few sympathetic short but valuable essays, and detailed studies which are intellectually very rich and informative but which focus on aspects of Strauss's intellectual production other than Islamic political thought proper. This limited reception of Strauss's contribution to the study of Muslim philosophers is not consonant with the unique position medieval Islamic political thought occupies in Strauss's intellectual biography. It was because of the discoveries Strauss made while studying medieval Islamic philosophy that he was guided toward classical Greek philosophy: his studies on Maimonides pointed him back toward Alfarabi, and through Alfarabi Strauss was guided back toward Plato, as well as to a new understanding of Jewish thinkers. It is therefore not surprising that Strauss once called "Arabic political philosophy" his "specialty.""--