Friday, July 3

Islamic Reasoning

I think something currently lacking in most of us is the ability to reason. I'm not talking about deep philosophical (and sometimes largely irrelevant) topics about morals or life and death but more about how we're unable to take even a few minutes to see if something makes sense to us, and then going on to trust that personal judgement.

Essentially it's about striking the right balance between figuring things out for yourself and having to ask someone else to do it for you. Technically coming to a conclusion requires both - you ask questions of others in order to arm yourself with inputs to your own honed reasoning process. With respect to Islam this is ever important - something as large and vibrant as this way of life will never be successfully transmitted by rote or facsimile but rather by the transmission of its underlying principles and ideas, each implemented at the individual level.

Of course I could be grossly overestimating our ability to reason: for some of us it's obviously clear what to in even some of the more esoteric situations, while the rest of us struggle with basics. While this could be just down to a lack of knowledge, I suspect it's more to do with laziness (at worst) or a lack of self confidence and self belief that your internal Islamic compass is pointing you in the right direction (at best).

But in these days of the Internet a fatwa is only a Google away and ignorance is no longer an excuse. This is a mixed blessing though as some choose to follow askimam.com verbatim instead of treating it as another input to their decision making process. I've witnessed many discussions where "evidence" is given in the form of a URL; although I guess this is easier to do than actually using common sense. However in my opinion a well thought out and dissenting opinion is better than one agreed upon via Wikipedia.

So it's about equipping ourselves with some kind of personal responsibility to be able to figure things out for ourselves instead of relying on others to do this for us. We should be taking advice from our imams and scholars, not commandments, and have the guts and will power to ensure we actually assess, question and eventually believe in what we're doing. Islam is the truth and I think we'd automatically get there ourselves if we tried.

Essentially it's about asking for stuff; not for conclusions, rulings and fatwas but why and how these had come about. For example, we should be looking at the Seerah of the Prohpet and seeing how and why he came to the conclusions he did (here's a clue: he reasoned and meditated in isolation after taking cue from the Quran) instead of blindly following these conclusions - after all, apart from those from the Quran many of the rulings of his time came from his own (albeit inspired) head. We need to see where opinion differs from fact, where interpretation differs from the literals, and then take them all to make our own. And don't worry: this process of asking "why?" and questioning things doesn't make your faith weaker; if anything it reinforces it.

In theory it should be possible to reach the correct conclusion without imams or scholars - the extreme indication of this being how the Muslim world doesn't have a single head of religion. The sacred texts and sources should and are enough for us, we just have to buck up and read them instead of solely relying on others to do the job for us. Of course I'm not by any means discounting the job of scholars but merely our current use of them; in my opinion they are here to arm us with facts as well as opinions while all the time allowing us to pick the ones which we think are right.

At the end of the day it will be us paying for the actions we take (I don't think we'll be able to send God a link to something we read on the Internet) so some kind of personal responsibility needs to be taken. With the right intent I'm not even sure you can go wrong no matter where you happen to end up.

IANAS.

Originally drafted 12th September 2007

4 comments:

  1. Mansoor16:21

    Interesting... while i agree with you on people clicking away for fatwas, i struggled to understand your points about the "conclusion" that you say the Prophet (Peace be upon him) came to. "His (Prophet's) Head" was not like any other head and i think it's not as simple as you have pointed out.

    Again i agree that we need to know the differences of opinion. This is to show the variety of thought and rich ness of deen not conclude our own rulings.
    "We need to see where opinion differs from fact, where interpretation differs from the literals, and then take them all to make our own." I agree, If you mean, we can draw a social understanding from these but not for legal ruling.

    If you are talking about day to day stuff on a social level, i can see where you coming from but if you are seriously talking about the law than i'm not too sure. I think you need to draw a clear distinction between the two.

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  2. Mansoor,

    Thanks for your comments.

    >"His (Prophet's) Head" was not like any other head and i think it's not as simple as you have pointed out.

    I think the biggest quality we can take from the Prophet was that he was human. As a perfect example, he showed us our potential and whatever he was able to achieve I believe that we are all able to as well. Anything else would be an obstacle of us being able to aspire to be like him.

    That said, I do recognise that he was uniquely blessed and placed in a unique position. I don't expect any of us to have to communicate with Angels or go on a Night Journey/Ascension, but we do have access to the same Quran that he did. It's also worth noting that the Prophet was in deep thought and contemplation about God, life society and morality etc way before the first revelation.

    In short I didn't mean to undermine or disrespect the Prophet, and I don't. My point was to stress the importance of rational thought processes over simply magically being told the answer. In my opinion the Prophet did more of the former than the latter, and we should follow suit.

    >This is to show the variety of thought and rich ness of deen not conclude our own rulings.

    I don't think our own conclusions have to necessarily be new or original ones. They just have to be affirmed by us as individuals rather than just because XXX said they were. So for example I think we can (and should) use all four Imams as sources for what we each think is correct practise and not just pick one exclusively to learn from. In this way each of our practices could be very different in the detail but equally correct via process.

    >If you are talking about day to day stuff on a social level, i can see where you coming from but if you are seriously talking about the law than i'm not too sure. I think you need to draw a clear distinction between the two.

    I'm not sure what the difference is to be honest. Could you give me an example of each, and further, how you decided which category they each fell into?

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  3. Mansoor17:10

    I didn't think you were undermining the Prophet (pbuh), but just thought you were simply stating something which is not that simple.
    "I don't expect any of us to have to communicate with Angels or go on a Night Journey/Ascension, but we do have access to the same Quran that he did. It's also worth noting that the Prophet was in deep thought and contemplation about God, life society and morality etc way before the first revelation." I completely agree. However to understand the Quran i'm sure you need to have tools. No one gave you a book of Biology in school and said take this and grab yourself a dictionary and return for an exam after year or so? However i'm not saying we shouldn't contemplate on each single letter of the Quran. It's amazing how Quran forces us contemplate over and over again.

    But again, i'm not sure what you trying to say "I think we can (and should) use all four Imams as sources for what we each think is correct practise and not just pick one exclusively to learn from. In this way each of our practices could be very different in the detail but equally correct via process."
    Its very simple for me. Infact i've never seen this to be undermining my own ability to think or rationalise but instead it blows me on the genius of these Imams and helps to have a better understanding. By reducing to follow one Imam all i'm doing is following a centuries old tradition which has worked for millions and millions before us and still is working.

    Please see the following
    http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/ahm/newmadhh.htm

    All i mean by social level is; how we are as individuals and different situation arise for different individuals. But as far as the law is concerned, it's law. What else can i say?
    All in all, i don't want to comment on anything related to the law and rulings/fatwas. That, alongside much more, i don't know about.

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  4. When I re-read Mohammed assad's 'The Road to Mecca' last year, one part which stood out for me was him lamenting the lack of applied reasoning at that time.
    I agree that we should search for different viewpoints instead of regarding one as an absolute truth.

    And yes, asking 'Why?' reinforces and reaffirms our faith.
    But unfortunately, too few see it this way. Instead they blindly follow, choosing to shut off their intellect.

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