A major task faces philosophical sciences in modern conditions. It is the task of studying the unity of world history not only through the similar and concordant traits of different civilizations (diversity in unity), but also through their distinct forms of developing human characteristics as specific cultural-historical entities (unity in diversity). In this approach, an important challenge is to uncover the paradigm of Islamic civilization and to understand its world wide historical role. This not only reveals, but also determines its socio-cultural affinity to other civilizations in their universal human dimension.

This spiritual paradigm is revealed by analyzing a large variety of diverse cultural and ideological phenomena, and first of all, the historical period during which the paradigm acquired its relatively complete and consistent form. Thus, the philosophical reconstruction and description of Islamic culture presupposes knowledge of what (in the Heideggerean sense) determined its vision of the world and of the human being. Understanding this "being what" presupposes a historical-philosophical consideration of the cultural phenomena and ideological images of the epoch. Consequently, the philosophy of history and culture and the history of philosophy and culture should be considered as two sides of a single cognitive process.

In general in speaking about the values of Islamic culture it is important to treat the general perception of concrete-historical types in relation to the aims and norms of their behavior. These are embodied in the historical experience and meaning of Islamic civilization, as well of humanity in general. This is the spiritual orientations according to which representatives of Islamic civilization, both as individuals and as social groups, correlate their actions and way of life. The values of Islamic culture, as with cultures of any other civilization, are to a large extent determined by the so-called substantial values, which constitute the basis of an overall value consciousness. To a large extent, these were determined by the specifics of the formation and development of the Arabic Caliphate.

Thus the specific features of classical Islamic culture were formed as an essential part of the single Mediterranean culture and civilization. This conceived and enriched the cultural, scientific and philosophical traditions of Antiquity, and evolved the humanistic characteristics of Mediterranean culture (albeit, in different historical conditions).

By classical Islamic culture we mean then the culture connected with the birth and strengthening of the Arabic caliphate which, under the aegis of the new monotheistic religion (Islam) proclaimed by Muhammad in the VIIth century, spread its authority and influence to a vast territory from Gibraltar to the banks of the Indus, and became the new center of interaction and mutual enrichment of diverse cultural traditions. The "Golden Age" developed on the basis of Islamic culture is in the IX - XII centuries, as Islamic culture began to determine the world’s material and spiritual cultures.

One of the major characteristics of classical Islamic culture is the fact that it is not so much science (as in Western European thought), but values and ideological trends which play the role of structural elements in defining the character of cognition, interpretation and epistemology for understanding the world. These trends have a common paradigm, on which was erected the complex of evaluations and perceptions relating to the ultimate basis of human existence in the world and one’s own nature and relation to the Cosmos. Based on the ideals of knowledge in Islam Medieval Islamic thinkers solved every problem—be it questions of culture or politics, ethics or aesthetics, philosophy or law. While not limited to the specific issues of cognition, this determined in an integrated fashion all the major philosophical and socio-political trends of medieval Islamic society, whether of political theory, philosophy, law or ethics.

The specifics of the ideal of knowledge in Islamic culture is defined by the Shari’a. As faith and reason not only do not contradict each other, but are complementary, medieval Islamic culture was oriented upon a united and integral, if somewhat complex, ideal of knowledge. For example, the work of the famous thinker al-Ghazali (1058 -1111), The Revival of the Religious Sciences, can be regarded equally as a philosophical, legal, religious, linguistic and a cultural work—in the modern sense of the term it would be called an interdisciplinary study. Averroes wrote of al-Ghazali that with philosophers he is a philosopher, with sufists he is a Sufi, with the Mutakallims he is a Mutakallim. Many representatives of Kalam wrote their works on issues not only of religion, but also of philosophy and natural science. This reflects not so much a weak differentiation of the sciences, but the specific spiritual atmosphere of the Islamic culture, based on the famous dictum of the Prophet Muhammad: "Go for knowledge, even to China".

In the medieval Arab-Islamic civilization "knowledge" both secular and religious gained an all-embracing importance and status, without equal in other civilizations. Its high status in the system of values of medieval Islamic society, which of itself is a significant indicator, tells us at least that there were many educated people in that society. Even specialists cannot now imagine the actual scale of Arab book publications: the few manuscripts of that immense literature which have reached us more or less safely number above than the hundreds of thousands.

As for the value orientations of the educated part of medieval Islamic society, one can suppose that the behavior of the effect adiba group was imitated to some degree by the majority of those educated. This group embodied traits of both the secular and religious knowledge of educated persons of every culture: philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and model of behavior.

Important factors in understanding the Islamic cultural paradigm are the non-existence of church as an institution, and accordingly the lack of orthodoxy and heresy in the sense understood in Christianity. There was an especially wide-spread religious and legal pluralism within the framework of the uniform Islamic world outlook. In describing this it is important to separate two dominant components: Islam and Hellenism. In its history, this culture has exhibited and exhibits both "Western features", since it contains elements of Judaism, Christianity and Hellenism, and "Eastern features" which departs from these components to reflect a more humanistic character attempting to facilitate the realization of one’s search for fulfillment. This reflects three aspects of humanism in medieval Islamic culture:

- religious humanism, which proclaimed the human being as the highest of all God’s creatures;

- adab humanism, whose ideal formed in the IXth century corresponds to European XVIth century humanitas, i.e. the ideal of developing the physical, moral and mental capacities of everyone in the name of the common good;

- philosophical humanism, more conceptualized, whose essence Abu Haiyan at-Tawhidi briefly and actually expressed in his dictum: "Man has become a problem for man".

Recognizing the universal character of the traits and principles of humanism, it is possible, at the same time, to say that every culture and civilization, at the peak of its vigor works out its own model of humanism. Within the framework of Islamic culture humanism revealed itself in different forms. This phenomenon first appeared in the East during the rule of Khosrov Anushirvan, and was represented by Barzue, Pavel Pers and Salman Pak. This was followed by a humanism which developed under the influence of Hellenistic gnosticism, hermetism and Neoplatonism. This humanistic quest, concentrated on the theme of the "perfect human being," was represented by Ibn Arabi, Abd al-Karim al-Jili, al-Khalliaja and Sukhrawardi. Lastly, there is humanism which emphasized the greatness of human reason (as in the Hadiths, where the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said: "Anybody who cognizes God will cognize me", and "The first thing created by God is reason"). A major representative of this humanism is Muhammad ibn Zakaria ar-Razi, who rejected the Revelation and affirmed the autonomy of human reason in the spirit of the European Enlightenment.

The ambivalence of Islamic culture, based on the principles of Shari’a and the historical Arabic caliphate, assumes as its point of view the correlation of the temporal and sacral, as well as of the exoteric and esoteric character of its "being what". Taking into account the great role of the Shari’a in temporal affairs and the prevalence of earthly purposes in human behavior and thinking, Islamic culture retains a link between the Cosmos and ethics. In its time, this made it possible to consider the science of philosophy, oriented on the Ancient tradition as an inalienable part of Islamic culture; it today allows the door to be kept open for modern European science and culture.

As for the correlation of the exoteric and esoteric in the context of problems of faith and reason, it is necessary to note their complimentarity. A theological analysis of this problem shows that most thinkers belonged to the exoteric tradition which gives priority to reason instead of to faith. This prepared the ground for sufistic esoteric knowledge and its intellectual attempts to harmonize Shari’a and Tariqah. Sufism has not considered the correlation of reason and faith as a separate problem, but has included it in the general system of the prescriptions of faith, Ways and Truth (Shari’a—Tariqah—Hakikat). This system organized the "logical form" of the subject’s quest for an absolute, which promoted the emergence of many variations, one of which is the doctrine of al-Ghazali. As an integral historical phenomenon, the study of Sufism is very important with regard to the archetypes of Islamic culture.

A philosophical analysis of this culture must point out what is stable and what changing in the course of its historical development. This is very important in all efforts towards reforming or modernizing Islam. As a rule, all previous efforts to create Western models of Islamic development have failed due to the fact that the traditional fundamental principles which constitute the spirit of the Islamic culture were taken as historically surmountable and transient. In contrast, the socio-historical and political factors inevitably show that the comprehension of the essence of the traditional and the modern are very closely interconnected with the fundamental principles of political-legal culture of Islam and the dominant ideological-cultural movements within the framework of its development. An analysis of classical theories of the state in Islamic political thought, represented by such famous authors as al-Mawardi, al-Juweyni and al-Ghazali, shows that the Shari’a principles never disturbed the need to take into consideration the historical realities of the Arabic Caliphate, and to a large extent were based on historical precedents. The doctrine that the state is but a conduit of the principles of Shari’a is a permanent constituent of these conceptions, but the question comes down to who holds real political power, in which way that power and authority are understood, and what is the consolidating element and moral-spiritual basis of civil Islamic society. The idea of the unity of religion and state is based not only on the religious feelings of solidarity, but also on the understanding that Islam is expected to establish equality and justice in socio-political and economic relations. The recognition of the fact that Islam is a way of life and a definite type of modern world outlook allows us to understand the essence of the Islamic state. A good example of this, is the analysis undertaken in this study of the state ideology of Saudi Arabia—Wahhabism. This shows how the traditionalistic doctrine of Abd al-Wahhab, based on Islamic traditionalism from Ibn Hanbal to Ibn Taymiyyah, in the spirit of Islamic culture tries to answer the challenges of the XXth century.

It is usually thought that modernity is the completeness of being, but as history shows this is not entirely so. As the state of research of Islamic culture and philosophy shows, our knowledge is not only surface but frequently very distorted. Recently, in research as well as in the consciousness of the masses, mistaken cultural-philosophical and political-ideological stereotypes dominate as regards Islamic civilization, for example, in the wide-spread usage in the mass media of such terms as Islamic fundamentalism, interpreted broadly and arbitrarily as religious extremism, whereas it is necessary to distinguish Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic extremism. In general, stereotypes usually result either from insufficient knowledge and methodology, or from the ideological and socio-cultural purposes of the observer. In this work, European stereotypes of Islamic culture are subjected to critical examination and special attention is paid to the critique of the methodology of European civilizational, Russian historiosophical and the Marxist formation approaches towards Islamic society and its culture. The categories and methodologies of studying Islamic culture are surveyed and new alternative approaches which correct the commonly held stereotypes are proposed.

In examining the general cultural stereotypes, one can note, for example, the attempts to portray Islam and Islamic culture in the concepts and categories of the Christian tradition. As a rule, Islam is studied with a view to finding something analogous to Christian orthodoxy, theology, church ideology, etc. Though these phenomena simply do not exist in Islamic culture, on the basis of such stereotypes in the research tradition a stable Eurocentric vision has been formed regarding Kalam as the dominant orthodox theology in Islamic philosophy and culture. It is inappropriate to discuss and speak abstractly of Islam and Islamic culture without considering the fact that in each historical epochs and country these have their own specific features. Moreover, attempts are undertaken to negate the humanistic character of Islamic culture and, for example, to regard the sufism of Ibn Arabi as the single existing variant of Sufism. In reality, sufism is no less differentiated in its manifestations than is Islam itself. The European civilizational, Russian historiosophical, and Marxist formational approaches to Islamic society and its culture share the so-called missionary approach and attempt to see the Western or Russian mission in relation to the Islamic world as both progressive and emancipatory.

Instead, the specific features of Islamic culture and civilization should be examined not within the context of contrasting the so-called East and the so-called West, the old and new, past and present, heritage and renewal, religious and national, but on the basis of their mutual connections and cooperation.

This study is devoted to an analysis of different points of views about how to compare in the philosophical-value dimension the classical Arab-Islamic culture, which was open to mutual cooperation with other cultures, and the modern Islamic culture, which, if not in confrontation, apparently is not ready or receptive for the modern inter-civilizational dialogue. In the world of Islamic culture, at present, the most single important problem is to define what should be retained regards in the correlation of the permanent Islamic civilizational phenomenon with nationalism within the context of the industrial and post-industrial development of Eastern Islamic society.