The Islamic Schools of Thought and Some Observed Facts

The Islamic Schools of Thought and Some Observed Facts

Abdulsalam Ajetunmobi
London (UK)

The Danladi Adamu Mohammed's "Muslim Intellectuals and the Sharia Debate in Nigeria" (Gamji: http://www.gamji.com/NEWS1227.htm) deserves a careful evaluation in view of his observed notion of the revealed truth and also his criticism of the published works of certain commentators, particularly the recent published article of Sanusi Lamido in the Daily Trust newspaper, courtesy of Gamji.

Well, with a direct reference to the accessible facts on the topic above, my evaluation would be relating to the interplay between the revealed truth and the observational truth while bearing in mind that everyone has the right to decide for himself whether he or she would accept as Islamic or not, any philosophical point of view, i.e., after an appropriate study of the Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah (the prophetic practice). Indeed, it is the right of every seeker of truth to form his own conclusions after sincerely attempting to understand the Qur'an and the Sunnah in depth.

I should now begin by saying that although I am not an advanced man of religion, but I candidly believe that no knowledge can be absolute truth at any point in time. A question may be asked, what is knowledge? Well, knowledge has been defined as "a perception of something which is safely stored in the mind as a reliable piece of information." Relating this to the subject matter, it follows then that just as physical exercise improves muscle power, so also are mental, rational and retentive faculties progressively develop and gain strength with mental exercise. This thus points to the fact that the thought processes of the Muslim Scholars in the era that led to the formation of many different schools of Islamic thought are not sacrosanct. This will be true because the same facts fed by these early thinkers to the human brain at different stages of its development have resulted in different conclusions in spite of the fact that the sources where these facts were originally drawn were the same i.e., the Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah.

Moreover, the progressive evolutionary increase in human mental activity at every successive generation means that the mental deductions during the different stages of human development would vary as much as increase from one generation to another. Facts such as this then tell us that much as we ought to give respect to the religious scholars of the past, it is naive to do this from the position of superiority. Therefore it becomes petty-mindedness to say that a particular scholar or an 'intellectual,' who seeks to interrelate his imaginative ideas with the Qur'anic revelations, albeit in accordance with Islamic teachings, is simply doing so "to demolish the integrity of the earlier generation, so as to provide his own 'true' interpretation" of Islamic sources.

At this juncture, let us go a bit further down the memory lane. The Muslim scholars, sages and philosophers in the early period of Islam drew inferences from the Qur'an and the Sunnah and then combined these with Greek philosophy and sciences, as well as studied the classical philosophy of India, Persia and China to revolutionise the concept of knowledge by broadening the horizon of study and investigation to an unsurpassed dimension. But one fact came out, i.e. that these scholars' association with secular branches of knowledge was seldom at the cost of their faith.

However, some narrow-minded scholars akin to the dogmatic ones of today, branded the efforts these respected thinkers as un-Islamic by issuing edicts of Ilhad (innovation) against them. For instance, while in the 11th century, ibn Sina (or Avicenna in the West) strenuously worked to solidify Aristotle's (384-322 B.C.) importance in the Islamic world, Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) sharply criticised him by "insisting that salvation is beyond demonstrative knowledge, and can be gained only in the "immediate experience" of mysticism." Notwithstanding, Ibn Rushd, or Averroes in the West (1126-1196), changed this position and later "worked to restore the independence of philosophy, separating it from religion." It was this phenomenon that made a Christian writer, in an online published article to sarcastically remarked: "The Arabs kept learning from the local scholars until they began to reinterpret the Qur'an. But thank God for a man called Ghazali he squashed the new approach and put Islamic thinking hundred of years back because the new approach contradicted the hadith. If it were not for Imam Ghazali the Muslims not the Americans would have been the technological masters of this planet."

Anyway the vital point to note here is that these great scholars remained essentially Muslim throughout their sojourn on earth in spite their making incursion into what some termed earthen fields. And to the credit of these early Muslim scientists, it is on record that the Islamic nation of Andalusia (formally Spain) outpaced other Islamic countries of the time in most fields of scientific research. Added to that, there was enjoyed a long and seldom broken period of relative peace, safe from the attacks of invaders such as Ghengis Khan and Halaku Khan before being thrown out by the Christian invaders led by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.

Consequent upon the foregoing, the sun of secular enlightenment ignited by these early Muslim thinkers finally set upon Andalusia (Spain), its radiant face then rose from the horizon of France to smile upon what lay of Europe beyond. It lit up the entire Continent from South to North, and from East to West. A glorious day of knowledge broke away from the Muslims and was to dominate Europe for centuries to come. However, the recent events in Afghanistan are a proof of how wrongly (or, is it rightly?) the course is being championed in the World of today.

In driving home my points, it is evidently clear from the above that the interplay of alien philosophies and Islam is quite original and has helped and would probably help to further the course of Islam far better than the blind pursuit of juristic ideas of the ancient schools of thought. Of course, I am not unaware that many of us still believe that the only legitimate religious authority for the development of the theoretical and conceptual structures that could enable us to inferentially deduce judicial decisions properly from the Islamic revelation must always be based only on the works of the four schools of law. Well, the believers in these ideologies are quick to condemn any discursive project that involves "using Kafir philosophers" to exemplify certain viewpoints.

Before I end this piece, I would like to briefly discuss an alarmist view that the "modernists" in our midst allegedly want to enthrone "reason over revelation."

From research, there is no question about the correlation between the revelation and observational truth in Islam. The Holy Qur'Indeed, Professor Abdus Salam, the renowned Nobel Laureate, in one of his articles, observed that the number of verses exhorting Muslims to make the best use of reason, rationality and scientific investigation adds up to 750 and that he could not find a single verse in the entire Qur'an that advocates irrational dogmatic invasion of the world of ideas that seem to be gaining ground in some quarters. (LAI, CH., KIDWAI. A (1989) Ideals and Realities: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam. 3rd ed. World Scientific Publishing Co. London, pp. 343-344),

So any suggestion that the revealed truth by itself is all-sufficient and as such it should be accepted without any rational investigation has no foundation. How can one have faith without satisfying one's sense of inquiry? Is it not a reality that the majority of common people belonging to all religions believe without actually comprehending the meaning of their belief? They just happen to believe and that is all there is to it. For example, the adherents of major religions of the world often believe that their prophets and also many other holy men received revelation from an external source called God as opposed to others who consider such belief to be a mistaken inference and thereby accusing them of wilful fraud. How could the truth or falsehood of the claims of the adherents of different religions be proved or verified if there is no ample external evidence to support it?

So there is indeed interrelationship between faith and reason. The lack of knowledge about things does not necessarily mean that they do not exist. They may exist, but lie hidden behind the veil of the unknown. Later, however, either through the course of human investigation or through the agency of Divine revelation, they emerge from the realm of the unseen to that of the seen. Indeed, revelation and reason work both independently and jointly even though they both aid one another. For instance, revelation can help provide a better understanding of things which are observed through sensory organs by illuminating the human faculties to a much higher and more refined order of perception. It helps the mind decipher the message of sensory organs with such clarity and precision as could not have been possible otherwise. The sensory organs in their turn also help the recipient of revealed truth to understand its message better, with the help of the data stored in its memory banks, without reference to which no meaningful perception is possible anyway. Thus, the unknown is transferred into the known by creating an unquenchable thirst for the quest of knowledge (Qur'an 15:22).

In conclusion, as Islam is a dynamic religion, it is dynamism, in my estimation, that a mechanism must therefore be in place for chronological examination of juridical literature as well as the judicial rulings among various legal schools in Islam with a view to extrapolating the legal decision casuistically by using the explicit text of the Qur'an, the prophetic practice, the consensus of the previous jurists, and analogy founded upon reasoning from data furnished by the Qur'an and the Sunnah.

Islam is a religion of eternal hope which does not relegate communion with God to the past. God's interest in human affairs as a Benign Mentor shall never cease. He is accessible when sought for and responds when prayed to. For Allah is Eternal and none of His attributes will ever die.