Faith Knowledge Not Static

Tuesday April 14, 2009
Faith knowledge not static
IKIM VIEWSBy Dr MOHD SANI BADRON, SENIOR FELLOW/DIRECTOR,CENTRE FOR ECONOMICS and SOCIAL STUDIES,IKIM

The scope and content of knowledge of one’s religious tenets commensurate with the increase in one’s maturity and responsibility in one’s society.
RIGID traditionalists who make ignorance their capital, and excessive rationalists who misuse logic to encroach traditional wisdom always pose harm within the Muslim community: their misleading rhetoric may confuse people in general as far as the true intention of traditions (naql) is concerned.
Indeed, knowledge concerning faith or ‘ilm al-i‘tiqad should be understood as neither static nor limited to its basic preliminaries, such as those taught to Muslims in childhood.
On the contrary, the scope and content of knowledge of religious tenets – which is obligatory with regard to its pursuit – is dynamic, commensurable to the increase in one’s maturity as well as responsibility as an individual Muslim in one’s society, in tandem with the advancement in the capacity of one’s intelligence and reasoning.
A contemporaneous, dynamic understanding of religious doctrines is quite important in order to vanquish one’s epistemological doubt if any, whether due to one’s personal inner agitation, or external influence in the form of surreptitious deviant interpretations whose argumentation is raging in one’s society.
We are referring to subtle, masquerading deviations which seek to undermine the teachings of the Quran, the traditions of the Prophet (hadith), and those of his Companions (athar) – all of which constitute Islamic religious tradition (naql).
Knowledge of i‘tiqad, which is obligatory to pursue, refers to knowledge that is sufficient to eliminate doubt and confusion concerning religious beliefs throughout one’s life.
That is to say, to the extent that one is able to know what true religious doctrines are, as opposed to what are false, until one is able to avoid from believing in falsehood and errant beliefs, or from rejecting true religious tenets.
Knowledge of i‘tiqad is always interconnected with a profound grasp of the total intellectual situation and requirements of the time.
On this religious doctrinal knowledge, some Muslims are content with their sufficient knowledge gleaned from the Quran as well as the hadiths and athars.
In short, content with the traditions (naql) which contain the final evidence of all truths – the hujjah al-balighah, mentioned in al-An‘am, 6: 169.
Together with sound reason (al-‘aql al-salim) and the consensus of the learned in the Muslim community (ijma‘), as history unfolds, these sources constitute the bases of Islamic theology.
Later in history, sound reasoning employed the analytical science of formal logic (kalam) in defence of Islamic theology against the “rationalistic” Mu‘tazilah and peripatetic philosophy, as well as against the traditionists; in particular, concerning the problem of interpretation of verses referring to Allah in the Quran whose meanings are obscure, or whose meaning are not immediately self evident (ayat mutashabihat vis-à-vis ayat muhkamat).
Then, while politically there was an expansion of Islam in the Mediterranean basin, intellectually the theologians applied their knowledge in a most devastating manner against the various emergent heresies; whether dualism, pantheism, monism, atheism, trinitarianism, pseudo-Sufism, reincarnationism, and so on.
While luminaries such as Abu al-Hasan al-Ash‘ari vindicated kalam as a valid science in the service of the theology of Islam, others like ‘Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi formulated the epistemology, and Abu Bakr al-Baqillani refined the anti-Aristotelian metaphysics of atom and accidents, as alternative sciences pertaining to Islam.
Closely following the Quranic way of argumentation, al-Juwayni, al-Ghazzali, Fakhr al-Razi, for example, marshalled logical reasoning formulated in subtle yet succinct and cogent discourse, which was convincing enough for the minds of their contemporaries.
Their service was in meeting the intellectually deviants, on the latter’s own philosophical ground, and only in language and method they could appreciate.
Wisdom found in the Quran was ably translated into contemporary intellectual idioms, extensive proofs on Divine Oneness and prophecy were then argued intensively with the intention of meeting the pressing circumstances.
In chapters Ta Ha and al-Shu‘ara’, the Quran recorded the reasoning of the prophet Moses against the Pharaoh who claimed to be God; while in al-Naml, the reasoning of Solomon against Queen of Sheba is also recorded.
Nevertheless, it has been shown that argumentation of both prophets are similar in substance to proofs cogently demonstrated earlier in history by the prophet Abraham, whose debates are recorded in al-Shu‘ara’ and al-Baqarah.
Indeed, when Nimrod, a tyrant who claimed to be God, disagreed with the prophet Abraham concerning the Lordship of Allah, the latter’s potent arguments confounded the former (al-Baqarah, 2: 258).
And Allah praises Abraham’s refutation which confounded his disbelieving people (al-An‘am, 6: 83).