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
Repression of Reason and the Fall of the Muslim Empire: Rescuing Islam from Backwardness

Repression of Reason and the Fall of the Muslim Empire: Rescuing Islam from Backwardness

Terebessy, Leslie

Paperback

IslamGeneral Education

ISBN13: 9798364577313
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 19 2022
Pages: 198
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.42 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Traditional ulama assert that being a Muslim requires refraining from using reason to understand revelation. We are expected to follow blindly. Reason is treated with apprehension. Using reason to understand revelation is treated as an expression of kufr. The disdain for reason is a residue of the persecutions of the rationalists. This is bizarre because the Book of Allah encourages the use reason. It says that persons who do not use their reason are worse than animals (Quran 25:44). Thus, traditional Muslims refrain from using reason in religion. They equate using reason with following desires. The scorn for reason is an expression of fanaticism. The contempt for reason inaugurated a tradition of intellectual retardation. The shutdown of Muslim thought was intellectual suicide. It brought grief to the umma. To use colloquial parlance, the shutdown of Muslim thought dumbed down an empire. It prevented the umma from understanding and following its way of life. It also plunged the umma into technological backwardness. This rendered the umma vulnerable to attacks by foreign powers that brandished superior weaponry. The prohibition of using reason to understand revelation prevents a person from comprehending and following the Book of Allah. The reticence to think rationally rendered them confused. It prevents Muslims from practicing Islam. The reluctance to use reason entices a person from his or her way of life. The prohibition of using reason to understand and follow revelation detaches the umma from the Book of Allah. Muslims read the Book without understanding it. Muslims embraced the perception that there is an adversarial rather than a symbiotic relationship between reason and revelation. The perception that using reason in religion leads to kufr stems from a faulty perception of the relation between revelation and reason. The perception that reason and revelation are adversaries is rejected in revelation. Allah places much emphasis on using reason. The rejection of reasoning produced troubling effects on the umma. It resulted in a misunderstanding of revelation, reflected in the characterization of revelation as unclear, incomplete, and even contradictory. These misrepresentations of the Book of Allah defy its teaching. They treat the Book of Allah as a product of a person. Furthermore, the rejection of reason enabled the repression of reason by tradition. It rendered possible the treatment of tradition as wahy, equal to revelation. It also enabled the subordination of revelation to tradition and to the rulings of jurists. The rejection of reason enabled the emergence of traditional Islam, embracing traditions and the teaching predestination. For the teaching of predestination rests upon the rejection of causation. The rejection of reasoning prepared the way the emergence of Islamism, the greatest threat to humanity since Nazism. The abrogation of the verses of reconciliation by the verses of the sword politicized revelation by transforming Islam into Islamism. Islamism reinterpreted fighting in self-defense as jihad al-talab or a war of aggression. Islamists re-invented Islam as a teaching of war. The teaching of aggressive jihad rests reflects a binary perspective, the perception that all persons belong either to dar al-Islam or to dar al-harb. The umma went to war to enlarge the empire. In the longer term, the umma was defeated, and is protected by non-Muslims. The tables were turned. How did this happen? The aversion to reasoning resulted in aberrations in exegesis and jurisprudence. Thus, traditional exegesis and jurisprudence require re-construction, this time on firm, revealed foundations. This requires the rehabilitation and re-engagement of reason, the restoration of revelation to its preeminence in relation to tradition, rejection of false presuppositions regarding revelation, and dispensing with the teachings of abrogation, fatalism and aggressive jihad.

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