Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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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
Resetting the Relationship Between Revelation and Tradition in Islam: Restoring the Balance

Resetting the Relationship Between Revelation and Tradition in Islam: Restoring the Balance

Terebessy, Leslie

Paperback

IslamGeneral Education

ISBN13: 9798373141871
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jan 9 2023
Pages: 262
Weight: 0.71
Height: 0.65 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The umma is in trauma. For it turned from the Book of Allah to wordily traditions. The turn to tradition is reflected in the recording of traditions. Hawkish rulers endeavoured to enlarge the empire using wars of aggression. But the Book of Allah prohibits aggression. However, rather than follow revelation, they engaged jurists to reinterpret revelation to endorse their territorial aspirations. In response, Islamist jurists reinvented revelation as a teaching of war. They did this by turning to tradition and the teaching of abrogation. They asserted that revelation features unclear verses, that it is insufficiently detailed, and that it is characterized by contradictions. Accordingly, they asserted that revelation requires clarification and detailing from tradition. Any contradictions in revelation would be reconciled y recourse to the teaching of abrogation. The practice of explaining and detailing revelation by recourse to tradition is expressed in the perception that tradition judges revelation. But to subordinate Allah's furqan is to reverse the relationship between the Book of Allah and traditions. The justification of aggression was buttressed by recourse to traditions which allege that the prophet was sent by the sword as a mercy to the worlds, that the blood of the kafir is halal for the believers, and that the prophet was sent to fight people until they all say that there is no god but Allah. But to treat traditions as revelation is to treat their transmitters as prophets. Endorsing the teaching of abrogation requires rejecting all verses allegedly abrogated by the verse of the sword. The rejection of a verse or verses in revelation is an expression of kufr. The turn from revelation to tradition alienated the umma from revelation and the tradition of the prophet. For the tradition of the messenger was to recite and adhere to the Book of Allah. The umma would be receiving different messages: a message of reconciliation from revelation, and a message of war from tradition. Reinterpreting revelation as a teaching of war entailed tampering with the teaching of revelation. The reinterpretation of Islam as a religion of war permitted what Allah prohibited. Jurists even treated jihad al-talab as a sixth pillar of Islam. The ulama rendered wars of aggression into a pillar of Islam through recourse to the teaching of abrogation and by treating tradition as revelation from God. Treating tradition as divine revelation, equal to the Book of Allah is referred to as the teaching of duality revelation. But the teaching of dual revelation embedded the teaching of dual legislation in the epistemology of revelation. But the duality of divinity, which provides the foundation for the teaching of dual revelation, is rarely acknowledged by traditionalists. The perception that tradition, too, is revelation or wahy was used as a justification for the turn from revelation to tradition. But jurists treat traditions even as tanzil. For they treat tradition as a root of legislation, too. But this is tantamount to treating the transmitters of traditions as lawgivers. But Allah is the exclusive Lawgiver in Islam. Traditions are not tanzil or revelation from Allah. They are treated as wahy from Allah. But even evil spirits convey wahy (6:112). To take laws from traditions is to treat traditions as tanzil. To take legislation from traditions is to judge by what Allah did not send down (anzala). And those who fail to judge by what Allah sent down (anzala) are referred to as unbelievers, wrongdoers and rebels (Quran, 5: 44, 45 and 47). The ambition to establish a world caliphate is a secular ambition, as it endeavours to establish a paradise in the shape of a caliphate in this world. But paradise is promised in the hereafter. The turn from revelation to tradition was a paradigm shift of epic proportions. It replaced the revelation-centric paradigm with a tradition-centric paradigm.

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