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
Revisiting the Analytical Paradigm of Islam: Redressing Anomalies in Religious Knowledge

Revisiting the Analytical Paradigm of Islam: Redressing Anomalies in Religious Knowledge

Terebessy, Leslie

Paperback

IslamGeneral Education

ISBN13: 9798373722872
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jan 14 2023
Pages: 236
Weight: 0.64
Height: 0.59 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Islam is an Abrahamic faith, followed by millions. Nevertheless, there are wars. There is poverty, deprivation, and repression. Migrants are experiencing difficulties. They find it difficult to integrate. In parts of their host nations they congregate in ghettos. Why is that? They are casualties of xenophobic education that thrives on resentment, perceives reality in binary terms, fails to differentiate between integration and assimilation and demonizes persons of different persuasions. The universalism of the Book of Allah is alien to them, replaced by parochialism and trapped in lurid anti-Western narratives. There is an ethos of paranoia that perceives a traitor in every corner. Islam used to be preeminent. But that is history. What went wrong? The Book of Allah says that Allah never changes the condition of a person until he or she change what is in himself or herself. The umma disconnected from the Book of Allah by exchanging the Book of Allah for traditions. It drifted from the Book of Allah and follows the predecessors. The umma is adrift. The umma tried different isms. It tried Marxism and failed. It tried Islamism and it is failing. The umma is experiencing trauma because it drifted from the Book of Allah. Muslims recite the Book of Allah without understanding it. Why? Traditionalists advise Muslims to refrain from using reason to understand revelation. They treat using reason to understand the Book of Allah as kufr. As a result, Muslim read revelation without comprehension. But the Book of Allah exhorts us to use reason, to be rational. But traditionalists assert that reason is an enemy of revelation as well as tradition. Prohibiting the umma from using reason in religion prevents the umma from understanding revelation. But Islam requires following the Book of Allah. Following the Book of Allah requires understanding it. A person cannot follow what he or she cannot understand; it is impossible to understand anything without the use of reason. To ask Muslims to refrain from using their reason is to ask them to become irrational. This is hazardous. It could make a person to act without regard for the effects of his or her actions. The prohibition of using reason triggered a paralysis of Muslim thought, plunging the umma into confusion, where it gropes in the dark. The turn from revelation to tradition, triggered by politics, required the repression of reason. Where do traditionalists get the erroneous perception that reason is an enemy of revelation? They inherited it from persons with scant use for reason, whose anti-rationalism prepared the road for the disintegration of the umma. The intellectual suicide of the Muslim umma prepared the way for political suicide, as we witness in the wars in different parts of the world. The acts of persons bereft of reason are neither rational nor Islamic. Prominent within these activities are efforts to establish a paradise known as the Islamic caliphate. This is the aspiration of political Islam, mesmerized by the teachings of an Islamic revolution. Political Islam is rooted in tradition. Rulers wanted to enlarge the empire through wars of aggression. These wars would be undertaken under the auspices of Islam. But revelation prohibits aggression. Thus, they required a religious justification for the perpetration of aggression. Accordingly, they engaged ulama to reinterpret Islam as a religion of war. The jurists did this through the politicization of revelation. This required a weaponization of exegesis and jurisprudence, expedited by recourse to the teaching of abrogation and hawkish traditions. Regrettably, the reinterpretation of revelation as a teaching of war entailed the debasement of exegesis and jurisprudence to political propaganda. Exegesis was engaged to endorse the warlike agendas of rulers bent on territorial expansion. The recording of the traditions transpired in defiance of the prohibition of the fabrication of revelation in the Quran (69:44-46).

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