critical thinking and criticising those who came before

What do you mean, why not?

Forget about religion for a moment, how can a commandment by subject to logic? What exactly do you mean? From there, we can progress.

If you are going to make up laws based on what you feel is best, there will be no unformity, since the judgements will be subjective, and besides, what will the point of religion be?

 

Are you advocating that we disbelieve that Adam was directly created by Allah? What, in your estimation, are the limits that we can change the Islamic belief on this matter? Please be clear about this.

And no, many aspecta are not provable facts, no where near.

 

I know and i accept from a religious POV but i can still ask why not? therein lies a limit to our thought/criticism in islam which leads to a closed system of thought.

 

I think the British government is benevolent to its public in many ways. But the education system is NOT one of the best in the world. It may be more recognised but not better.

I have relatives of a young age who have done maths in Pakistan and their syllabus is superb. Those who learn English in Pakistan learn it better than us in the UK.

Throughout primary school all you learn is colouring in, and how to play with plasticine.

A child of the same age from a madrassa will have memorised the Quran, learn Urdu and Farsi, all his morphology Arabic tables and Arabic grammar.

The maths in the Dars e Nizami is superb. They have very good practical maths books. And they apply much of that which they learn.
The books on Philosophy are not much different. Believe me. If you read Bertrand Russell and then read Mulla Sadra or Shams Baazigha the philosophy is only different in language and presentation. Even the recent works of Stephen Hawking have nothing new in terms of theory.

The Method applied to History is better in the Muslim world in substantiating facts. That is a long subject in itself.

As for Muslim countries being under developed, that is definitely NOT down to religion. The whole of the African continent, the whole of South America, Eatern Europe, large masses of India and China are under developed as well.

 

that is because it is considered by most scientists as a provable fact now not a theory sidi. i think it is time for us to reinterpret doctrine to include this fact...

i would say that one of the holy cows though is democracy and also the holocaust...

 

I think your values are misplaces, somewhat. So what if countries are less-developed? 'Development' is dependant on Western bank loans and the IMF, and will not make you any happier -- in fact, studies show the opposite.

I think we need a fundamental paradign shift -- it is the akhirah that matters.

wa man araad al-akhirah, wa sa'a laha sa'yaha. . . sadaq Allah al-'Adhim, it is this which makes you a 'murid', and on the path to wilayah.

 

Somethings are held sacred -- even when not fully established, like aspects of the theory of evolution. If only you paid more attention to Abu Hasan's post.

 

Sidi NJ, I am from North America. I have looked at the British State Education System deeply for months. I am honestly telling you, truthfully, and Allah ta'ala Knows Best, I found the Education System to be utterly disgusting.

I am not making this up. Canada is LEAGUES AHEAD than england. I was dumbfounded looking at the system. Its a disgrace for all that Cambridge and Oxford stands for. A-Levels, and O-Levels are good. But the system is bad.

Even the universities, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Southampton, Manchester, even departments among the top london ones, like KCL, UCL, ICL, QML, are bad! [the science ones]

USA is leagues ahead in post-secondary. Have you been to Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, Carnegie, Cornell, Pennsylvania?

UK sucks!

 

Brother, the prohibition of alchohol is a hukm shar'i, and not subject to logic.

We avoid it because Allah and his messenger salla Llahu 'alayhi wa alihi wa sallam have commanded us to do so. This is different from matters of belief, sayyidi. Please understand the difference.

My last post was with regards to beliefs. Please review that post. As for ahkaam, these are commandments -- their relation to logic will be subjective at best. Do you understand where I'm coming from? They are commandments, they are not claims which can be proven.

It is precisely these differences between al-Hukm ash-Shar'i, al-Hukm al-'Aqli and al-Hukm al-'Aadi that will help you to systematize your thoughts, and which are taught in basic 'aqidah mutun.

By the way, Shaykh al-Islam Mustafa Sabri's work (Mawqif al-'Aql) is amazing, and this is admitted to by both friend and foe alike.

I think many of our tallents are wasted -- people like NJ should have been enrolled in a Dari i Nizami cause as opposed to being educated conventionally. I totally agree with you brothers as to the intellectual brilliance of the system, though -- I hear -- it is being watered down these days.

 

NJ that is why Cambridge Muslim College and http://www.tabahfoundation.org/en/research/activities/essays/ has been set up.

 

Sidi NJ, we are discouraged to read our prime texts on our own. But we are encouraged to read them with qualified Sunni teachers. You can ask your Sunni teachers good, well thought questions. Ofcourse our Deen is strong enough to answer logically everything.

I suggest the questions go through this effective thinking screening process, essential as Leadership skills.

1) Think of your beliefs first, establish them.
2) Think of your philosophy around those beliefs, establish it.
3) Then think of principles you want to have, establish those.
4) Then think of concepts, strategies, actions, audits, and evaluations.

 

No he does not.

Yes the U'lama do dis encourage reading the primary sources for the lay man, that is true. But there are a number of factors for that.

But in the same way it is FORBIDDEN to blind follow in the daruriyat (things known by necessity in the religion). This discussion is going to need a bit of time and thought.

I'll get back to you on this when I have time inshaAllah.

 

KS, the British State Education system is still one of the best in the world. I think the training of our ulama--especially those in the West-- needs to be radically altered to include mandatory study of mathematics, science, modern philosophy, history.

all of us on sunniport are products of either a western education or an education based on a western system in india or pakistan.

why is it that the only muslim country which is developed to some extent [turkey] is a secular democratic one? [oil-rich arab gulf countries don't count since they have lots of oil wealth and tiny populations. without oil they'd be as under-developed as the others if not more so.]

haven't you ever asked yourself these questions?

 

Sidi nj has a valid point in the context he is describing in post #15

 

wadood sahib to say that the British education system deliberately targets Sunni Muslims is a conspiracy theory too far! I would agree that it is anti-religion but not by design but as a result of it supporting the idea of religion as a private matter only and giving equal amounts of tiny time to all religions equally. It is also anti-religion in that it teaches to question everything and everyone and nothing is sacred...

 

ok i thank all those who answered but almost all of you -- except GG -- turned my question around and asked, "see, most western people also don't criticise the dominant paradigm in their civilisation". that doesn't really address the issue and is a separate question we can address later.

let me rephrase my question, or try to, in the most succint--possibly controversial manner: we are generally discouraged to read our source
texts --i.e. koran sharif and hadith sharif, and secondarily the books of our salaf based on these source-texts --with a critical eye through the prism of our intellect, not to deliberately try to find faults (naudhubillah) but even to question things for fear of being labelled as a deviant/heretic etc.

if there are any scholars out there who do not fear their students questioning the basic presumptions (in order to satisfy their intellectual curiosity) i'd like to meet one!

as for shaykh beddiuzaman said nursi-- he was a wali of Allah--and i have almost all his books--a brother from turkey gifted me the entire set in the mid 1990s--and i respect him for his efforts and his wilayat but a lot of the "logical" proofs he gives are based on false analogies and assumptions.

i could say the same for a lot of other scholars whom we respect.

the cynic in me says that one reason we are told not to question is that it would expose the reality of our maulanas in the same way the catholic church was exposed during the Enlightenment.
I don't know if I am making sense.

---
why should only the "elite" study logic and philosophy?

surely our deen is strong enough to withstand the most severe critical examination? if so, why do so many of the orthodoxy [i.e. we ahle sunnah]
discommunicate others who go outside our accepted historical articles of faith? (I am as guilty as any in doing this).
--
if you read al-munqidh of imam ghazali he also describes a similar stage of scepticism but sadly i do not have a millionth of the imam's pespicacity nor, more importantly, a trillionth of his spiritual rank.

--
for example i believe that drinking alcohol is haram because it is in the koran but i cannot understand the logic behind the ruling that drinking even a tiny amount is haram (i don't drink but am using this as an example!); i can understand why getting drunk would be made haram but if one could drink in small amounts without getting drunk then logically it doesn't make sense to me to forbid it altogether!

the one time i tried to have a discussion like this with a maulana sahib--a barelwi like me!--he complained to my father about it afterwards saying i was asking too many questions!

--
is it coincidence that the west is so more advanced in every material sense than the muslim world and the muslim world hasn't made a meaningful contribution to science or technology since umar khayyam, ibn sina etc. [ and most of those people are considered heretix anyway].

you could argue that we are spiritually more advanced and that is true and the continued existence of awliya even today is the main proof of the truth of
islam.

sorry for the rant but i wanted it off my chest.

 

I am also talking about those Muslims in England, who certainly are rich, living in mansions and double garaged houses in the countryside, and can afford to send their children to elite schools, or are awarded the chance to enter their children to elite schools.

 

Shah Jee have you given any critical thought to kattar's questions on Ijma on this thread?

http://www.sunniport.com/masabih/showthread.php?t=9669&page=3

 

What kattarsunni is saying is that if it were not for the Majestic Dars e Nizami, we Sunni Muslims in the UK would have lost even those of our milk and honey, who had the potential and intelligence to study grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

How many cries are out there in England shouted out in pain from youngsters rotting in jails and chip-shops of their parents thinking of only a chance or a different circumstance in their lives, that could have helped them study.

How many promise themselves to study, but end up back on the street. Its psychological warfare.

What kattarsunni is saying is that the elitist system in England is such that it targets Sunni Muslims so that the bulk of their potential is lost. Its the created environment. Those Muslims who manage to break out are the die-hards, and are awarded platforms as deenport.com where they are lost again.

Only lucky are those who break out completely, and then go on back to study in the desi lands of India, and study Dars e Nizami. And it is these that the shayateen as those on deenport.com are there to counter and suppress.

 

@naqshbandi jamaati: Critical thinking and logic are only taught to the elite. Only the rich class can afford this type of education.

The overwhelming majority are not taught logic, grammar and rhetoric.

Even then the books of logic taught in the upper class schools compare nothing to the Dars e Nizami books of logic.

I think naqshbandijamaati needs to go and visit some of the major seminaries of Islamic learning, or be exposed to some intellectual giants like Bediuzzaman Saeed Nursi, Mustapha Sabri and Fadl alHaqq Khayrabaadi etc etc