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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Reason in Islam: Rejection of Reason and the Fall of the Empire

Reason in Islam: Rejection of Reason and the Fall of the Empire

Terebessy, Leslie

Paperback

General Education

ISBN13: 9798746295903
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Apr 29 2021
Pages: 30
Weight: 0.12
Height: 0.06 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
This work explores the role of reason in Islam. Specifically, it explores the way the rejection of rationality triggered the collapse of the Muslim empire. The prohibition of reasoning undermined the knowledge of revelation and enabled tradition to take a pre-eminent role in exegesis and education. Knowledge was corrupted. The rehabilitation of knowledge requires the desacralization of tradition, the rehabilitation of reason and the affirmation of the preeminence of revelation in relation to all tradition. Reason in Islam was repressed in the struggles between the ahl al-ra'y (rationalists) and the ahl al-hadith (traditionists). The traditionists assumed an adversarial relationship between reason and revelation. But using reason is indispensable in understanding revelation. The repression of reason heralded the emergence of Islamism. The struggles between the rationalists and the traditionists resulted in the mass murder of 5,000 philosophers during the mihna or Inquisition (launched by al-Mahdi in 780) as reported by Suyuti and al-Afghani (Modernist Islam, Edited by Charles Kurzman, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 110). Unlike the death of a single philosopher in Athens a millennium earlier, whose death sparked international uproar across centuries, the extermination of fife thousand philosophers by Musa al-Hadi barely caused a whimper. An event akin to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution (1792) a millennium afterwards was met with a deafening silence. The deafening silence speaks volumes about how traditionists valued reason. The denigration of rationality was reinforced by al-Ghazali by his assault on philosophy and rationality. The brutal persecution of the rationalists resumed under al-Mutawakkil in 852. The prohibition of using reason in religion had devastating effects. Refraining from reasoning withdrew the umma from the ranks of legally responsible persons, in possession of their rational faculty. Refraining from reasoning prevented the umma from understanding and following revelation. A person cannot follow what he or she does not understand. The prohibition of using reason in religion detached the umma from its religion. Refraining from using reason in religion also facilitated the acceptance of the teaching of the abrogation of the verses of reconciliation by the verse of the sword. The re-articulation of Islam as a religion of war was expedited by recourse to politicized exegesis. The repression of reason enabled the politicization of exegesis and jurisprudence. This was reflected in the treatment of tradition as revelation and in the subordination of revelation to tradition. The latter is expressed in the dictum that the sunna judges the Quran. To subordinate the rulings of Allah to the judgement of persons is shirk. The prohibition of recourse to reasoning in religion was further endorsed by recourse to a tradition in which the prophet allegedly referred to the use of reason to understand revelation as unbelief or kufr. The repression of reason was further reflected in the prohibition of ijtihad, at the turn of the millennium. The prohibition of reasoning paralysed the umma, resulting in what Fazlur Rahman referred to as intellectual suicide. This paralysis paved the way for a culture of intellectual retardation. As a result of the repression of reason, including the rejection of causality, Muslims fell behind in empirical sciences and technology, thus exposing themselves to the risk of assault by adversaries with better weapons. The repression of reason resulted in multiple losses on a spate of battlefields. The prohibition of reasoning in religion separated the umma from its religion and forced it to follow tradition. The repression of reason assisted in turning the umma from revelation to tradition. The turn was due to the desire of hawkish rulers to bypass prohibitions on wars of aggression in the Book of Allah. The turn to militancy was furthered by recourse to militant traditions.

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