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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
Redressing the Paralysis of Muslim Thought: Anti-rationalism and the Breakdown of Exegesis and Jurisprudence in Islam

Redressing the Paralysis of Muslim Thought: Anti-rationalism and the Breakdown of Exegesis and Jurisprudence in Islam

Terebessy, Leslie

Paperback

IslamGeneral EducationGeneral Political Science

ISBN13: 9798267619714
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 29 2025
Pages: 244
Weight: 0.73
Height: 0.51 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The umma drifted from the Book of Allah. It also drifted from the tradition of Muhammad. For he followed the Book of Allah. The umma turned from revelation to tradition under the influence of politics. Rulers required a justification for wars of aggression. As they could not find it in revelation, they enlisted the services of hawkish ulama. To provide the justification for wars of aggression, the ulama turned to tradition. To justify the turn from revelation to tradition, they alleged that traditions, too, are revelations from Allah. But the treatment of tradition as revelation from God corrupted the knowledge of revelation. This resulted from embedding the teaching of dual revelation within the epistemology of revelation. For traditions are not the utterings of Allah. They are not even the utterings of Muhammad. Traditions were transmitted in paraphrase, not verbatim. Accordingly, how could they be revelations from Allah? If the traditions are not the words of Allah, to treat them as revelation is tantamount to treating the transmitters as possessing the power to enact legislation. But the right to legislate is the exclusive prerogative of Allah. Thus, traditional tafsir problematic. The reorientation from revelation to tradition resulted in disorientation. The reorientation plunged the umma into trauma. For tradition does not guide as well as revelation. The turn from revelation to tradition was accelerated by the repression of reason. The repression of reason was justified by treating the use of reason to understand revelation as kufr. The repression of reason was reinforced by persecution of the rationalists. The repression of reason hampered the umma in understanding revelation. Because of the reluctance to engage reason in understanding revelation, parts of the Book of Allah began to strike exegetes as unclear, insufficiently detailed and contradictory. Accordingly, exegetes asserted that revelation requires clarification and detailing, to be furnished by tradition. But revelation teaches that it is clear and fully detailed. The repression of reason alienated the umma from its religion. The repression of reason resulted in the corruption of knowledge, too. The corruption of knowledge was accelerated by recourse to a way of reading which treats tradition as a judge of revelation. It was asserted that revelation requires tradition to more than tradition requires revelation, a truly blasphemous proposition. The subordination of revelation to tradition reversed the relationship of revelation to tradition. It also reversed the relationship between Allah and His creation. The abrogation of revelation by tradition resulted in the embedding of capital punishments for adultery and apostasy in the sharia. But the book of Allah does not prescribe the death penalty for either of these transgressions. Allowing tradition to abrogate and replace revealed rulings was a manifestation of juristic shirk. Wayward scholars even justify terror as martyrdom operations. This exposes the extent to which Islamic jurisprudence degenerated. The justification of wars of aggression required a reinterpretation of revelation as a teaching of war. The justification of wars of aggression was expedited by treating tradition as revelation and by recourse to the teaching of abrogation. Hawkish ulama reinvented Islam as Islamism. Embarking on a warpath was buttressed by the perception of the clash between the dar al-Islam and the dar al-harb. Wars of aggression were referred to as jihad al-talab, a sixth pillar of Islam. This required waging wars of aggression against non-Muslims once a year every year as a religious requirement, even if non-Muslims were not attacking the Muslims. The teaching is based on the alleged abrogation of the peace verses by the verse of the sword. Accordingly, the treatment of tradition as revelation as well as recourse to the teaching of abrogation require attention.

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