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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 Tradition and Revelation in Islam: Is Tradition a "Judge" of Revelation?

Resetting the Relationship Between Tradition and Revelation in Islam: Is Tradition a "Judge" of Revelation?

Terebessy, Leslie

Paperback

General Education

ISBN13: 9798872127017
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Dec 17 2023
Pages: 140
Weight: 0.43
Height: 0.30 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Islam is an Abrahamic faith. It reiterates the former revelations. It also rectifies misapprehensions that emerged regarding them. Islam is monotheistic. However, the treatment of tradition as revelation, a partner and a judge of revelation, tainted knowledge. The treatment of tradition as revelation from God tainted the knowledge of revelation with shirk. For it reversed the relationship between revelation and tradition, subordinating the former to the latter. Allah alone is Lawgiver in religious matters. Persons are free to legislate in non-religious matters, for example regarding traffic laws. It is important to return from Islamism to Islam. It is necessary to restore the meaning of military jihad as a fight in self-defence. It is equally urgent to discard the teaching of jihad al talab as a sixth pillar of Islam, or the propagation of Islam by the sword. For the Book of Allah proscribes compulsion in religion. It is also necessary to cast aside the teachings of predestination and abrogation. Apart from the grief they perpetrate, followers of hawkish traditions and militant Islam expose Muslims to retaliation by aggrieved parties for aggression perpetrated by extremists. The past is strewn with clashes. These were fratricidal wars. The participants in these clashes differed on range of issues. A few wanted to understand revelation with the assistance of reasoning. A different faction followed tradition, assuming that revelation should be understood through tradition rather than reason. The two sects were the rationalists and the traditionists. Traditionists accorded greater weight to the predecessors, recorded in the prophetic traditions. The two groups encompassed the Mutazilites or the rationalists on the one hand, and the traditionists or the ahl al-hadith on the other. Traditionists became enchanted with the ways of the predecessors, while the rationalists focused on the Book of Allah and relied on reason to understand revelation. The encounters between the two groups reached a political expression in the mihna, launched by al-Mahdi in 780. Five thousand philosophers were killed by Musa al-Hadi, the son of al-Mahdi, in 786. After a brief reign of the rationalists from 809 to 849, Mutawakkil resumed the persecution of the rationalists. But the trauma of the umma is due misunderstanding of the teaching of revelation as well as the real tradition of the prophet. The re-orientation from revelation to tradition was triggered by politics. Hawkish rulers required a reinterpretation of revelation to justify waging unlawful wars for the purpose of territorial enlargement. Mercenary ulama rose to the challenge and justified wars of aggression by recourse to the teaching of the abrogation of the verses of reconciliation by the verses of the sword. They also justified the turn to tradition by the assertion that tradition, too, is revelation. The proliferation of these perceptions was abetted by the repression of reason. The inauguration of the teaching of a supplementary revelation, resulting from the veneration of tradition, represented a break from revelation. The sacralization of tradition was not entirely unlike the Council of Nicaea, which entailed ascribing divinity to Isa. The difference was that in Christianity, divinity is ascribed to a prophet, while in Islam divinity is ascribed to the traditions ascribed to the prophet. Following the traditions of the prophet required following Bukhari. But the tradition of the prophet was to follow the Book of Allah, not books of traditions. By turning from the Book of Allah to the books of traditions, the umma drifted from the Book of Allah. This transpired under the misapprehension that the umma would get nearer to Allah through traditions. This was a tragedy. It explains the state of the umma and highlights the urgency to return to the path of Allah. For the Book says that Allah never changes the state of a people unless they first change what is inside them.

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