Re: Civilisation, how did it all happen? By David Neiman
I think analysis about islam and quran cannot be as effective as it could be unless it is clarified on basis of some solid foundation. Muslim community as a whole is in a terrible confusion regarding what islam is really based upon.
All muslims think is that islam is based upon quran and hadith and that is it. This is the cause of confusion. The reason is they discount the individual and his brain or the active agent. So long as people do not take human ability to reason as basis for thought process, confusion will remain.
Let me try and explain the fundamental basis for any argument in relation to brain and information. Brain is nothing without information to process. You cannot argue against that if you do you not only lack education but thinking ability also, in fact your ignorance is worst than animals because having brain and not realising even this much of the reality throws one out of fold of humanity.
The information is useless unless it is processed by a processing agent. Again one cannot argue with that unless one is brain dead.
So this establishes relationship between a human and the information a human comes across to process. Again no argument is possible against this reality.
The brain is all about having information, reasoning it out and then storing it back in to its memory for recalling it when prompted as and when the need be.
The brain learns how to work on any information it gets throughout its life time. The information normally comes to brain through senses and senses get information from within the environment one finds oneself in through interaction with other existing things within the environment.
This builds human confidence in one's own abilities and helps one find out what one can or cannot be or what one can or cannot do.
Only a stupid person would deny life experiences and take on make beliefs that have no basis whatsoever. This is why nothing should be believed that contradicts reasonable realities. Anyone who believes anything against verifiable realities is as good as brainless.
It is important to distinguish between realities and ideas that contradict them and the ideas that are obviously not known realities themselves but they do not contradict the accepted realities either. In short such ideas may be realities but we can neither verify them nor deny them.
To understand this explanation is necessary for proper understanding of islam that depends upon proper understanding of the quran and the hadith which in turn depend upon rules of wisdom or judgement. It shows very clearly that basis for human reasoning is brain and the quran and the realities it talks about need to be understood in the context explained.
The reason is, if we knew everything all by ourselves then we needed no guidance of any sort of anyone including our parents and teachers or trainers and even God. It is because if you already are born fully aware of all things then why would you need anyone to guide you? This is very important point to realise.
The other point is, if we were born ignorant and incapable of learning then again the question is, why would we need any guidance of anyone when we could not make any use of it at all due to being incapable of doing that?
The way the world exists and the way we humans exist, it shows the whole thing works together ie we are placed in an environment to interact within it with whatever we find in there. This much should be clear to anyone who has ever thought about things.
This means there are things for which we need guidance and there are things we can find out for ourselves. However all is put together in such a way that one thing is useless without the other. This is why each thing that exists has a role to play in this world like actors in a movie play different characters. Here God has a role and man has a role and other things have their roles to fulfil in order to make the whole thing work as a one complete unit. In other words things complement each other for a set purpose.
We therefore cannot put each and everything to do in role of God and sit tight ourselves absolved of all responsibilities whatsoever. This is why unless we read the quran and understand various roles properly we will remain confused and dangerous. Stupidity only leads to painful suffering and that is where we are ie in a lot of pain and suffering as a nation. I wonder when we are going to educate ourselves to be proper human beings the quran wants us to be.
This very basic explanation should make clear to us we have our roles to play and the quran and hadith also have their roles and we need to be sensible enough to take advantage of that.
The quran can never be understood without knowing the rules of wisdom and realities of real life in the real world. So people should make effort to try and learn the quran properly so that they could benefit from that learning otherwise stupid people are destined for painful suffering and no one can save them from that not even God himself. It is because God has assigned them a role to play so there is no escape. We cry all we like to God this is not going to help. When a mother potty trains a child if she was not basing it upon discipline then child will never learn how to use toilet. Just thinking crying will save us from trouble is utterly stupid instead we should be learning ways to get out of the troubles we get ourselves in or stay away from them in the first place is the lesson of the quran.
Unless people realise what is proof and what is proving and how it all works, they can argue all they like but can never reach any satisfactory conclusion.
The very idea that my claims are true because I can back them up from the quranic and the hadith texts is seriously flawed because it does not work. Had it been sufficient then we would not have had so many sects in muslim ummah. This means mere names of the quran and hadith are not guaranty of correct quranic interpretation rather something is needed to based the quran and hadith upon that makes sense because it works. So what is that basis?
Anyone who argues to prove a claim yet knows not what proof and proving is or how a claim is proven can keep on arguing and nothing will be established at the end of the day.
This is where our mullahs and professors fail us very badly. It is time we stopped being silly and went for things that really matter and not for things that waste time.
The issue discussed here becomes very simple once anyone can answer the question of proof and proving. It is because deciding the basis for argument is vital not the detail. You cannot build a building without any solid basis. The truth is only true because it can be proven true and not because of our make beliefs.
The very foundation upon which is based the quran is unknown to us muslims and that is why we are in the situation that we are.
The real problem is understanding the role of the quran, the hadith and the fiqh in islam. We need to ask ourselves what is the purpose of the quran, what is the purpose of the hadith and what is the purpose of the fiqh or jurisprudence?
The question that helps understand things in their proper context is, what is islam? Once we realise what islam is then we can clearly see the role for each of the said things. Islam is goal set by Allah for the mankind through his message in form of the quran via his final messenger. The quran is the divine manifesto or program from Allah for the mankind to learn and teach each other and if people like the program then they come together and form a good human society basing it on the quran as its constitution.
The quran is constitution because it is word of the sole sovereign of this universe. Allah alone is king therefore only and only his word is law and not of any other person be one a prophet of Allah. This should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that quran has a unique place in islam for muslims ie people who are committed to live peacefully themselves and are duty bound to spread the very same message worldwide to rest of humanity.
People make a huge mistake when they attach hadith or fiqh with the quran in a wrong way. Hadith is mainly not word of Allah but a report about word or deed of the prophet or his companions. The report simply tells its reader about what the prophet said or did or what his companions said or did. It is like a newspaper telling on day to day things that happened at the time in that society or among those people. In these reports we find how prophet understood the divine message and implemented it by using the quran as basis for his society at the time under his circumstances and situations. Therefore the importance of hadith is that it tells us the way the divine messenger did things and not what he did in his time unless it is relevant to later times. Why? Because we live in a world that changes with time therefore circumstances change and situations change so not everything the prophet said or did remains relevant for all times. Only those things that remain relevant for all times and apply to situations and circumstances that still keep occurring that remain relevant other than that all things are time bound, circumstance bound or situation bound so trying to fit everything everywhere or trying to apply everything everywhere is utterly stupid thing to do and this is especially terrible if a muslim does that because he is supposed to be a learned man ie man of wisdom. If a man is educated by God who is wise acts ignorantly and worse than animals, how will that reflect on his educator God? So anyone who claims to be a muslim and yet acts stupid must think many times over as to what one is uttering or doing.
This helps to know what was told by Allah in the quran and how people including the prophet accomplished what they were told. From this muslims can derive some helpful ideas or clues as to how to use quran for their own circumstances and situations just like the prophet and his companion used it for their time.
Fiqh is also important in a similar way that we can learn how muslims throughout times acted according to their understanding of the quran and the hadith.
Just as prophet and his companions had to improvise things so did later muslims and so there is need for present muslims to follow the quran and the hadith the same way.
This is proper context of the whole thing, which shows clear relationship between all important sources of islam. One can clearly see that the quran sets clear limits as to how to form laws with a set purpose in mind ie to accomplish and maintain freedom, justice, fairness, compassion, brotherhood, peace, progress and prosperity within the muslim society. In islam the purpose of law is not to control people but to regulate the society for the set purpose of peace=islam. So any laws that oppress, suppress, cause injustice, unfairness, cruelty, animosity, regression, poverty and therefore trouble in muslim society are unislamic laws.
In time of prophet, the prophet himself and his companions used to solve their facing problem through mutual consultation in light of given quranic guidelines and so did later muslims and so should muslims of today. This must always be remembered by members of this ummah otherwise we will be shooting ourselves in the foot. Unfortunately that is what we have been doing so far and the result of doing that is in front of our own eyes that we have no respect in the world and we have no respect for each other. Time for us to change all that. Wake up and look at real world stop living in the imaginary world of your own.
Times change things change therefore situations change and circumstances change therefore to form new laws becomes a necessity all the time. This is why the divine constitution is given with values and formulae to give us ability to form laws as we need them rather than giving us list of laws. Start learning the quran and hadith properly showing that you have the brains the quran and hadith need for their proper understanding.
Taking hadith or fiqh laws as permanent is therefore right in some sense but wrong in another sense. All laws are permanent in the sense of their existence once they are formed but their application or use depends on situations and circumstances. No law is applicable at all the times under all the circumstances and in all situations.
Once people understand this basic context all differences between people will disappear that are based on misunderstadning of role of sources of islam.
The other differences are due to true and false information. It is accepted by all sects of muslims that not all so called ahadith are actually ahadith because many of them are false and many have other defects that do not allow them to reach set standards for their authenticity. Much more of that nature is true in case of fiqh books. All this came about due to sudden expansion of islam and lack of coping with it by muslims at the time. This resulted in people with ulterior motives join muislim ranks for their own agendas and therefore such information made its way in to islamic sources as was in fact anti islam eg jews who turned to islam were not all smart nor sincere so they spread their nonsense in guise of islam ie their ideas and traditions. The christians who accepted islam did the same and so did parsees and hindus or pagans etc etc. All brought their own baggages with them and slowly turned muslims like themselves instead understanding islam properly and spreading it, accomplishing it and maintaining it. This is why islamic empire that was build by the prophet did not last for long because later muslims did not work as hard to keep it alive as the prophet himself did.
This is why if people sorted out things properly then we will have pure islam that prophet himself implemented with help of his companions at the time.
As all islamic laws were and are made for a set purpose in mind due to certain situations and circumstances that face people at any given time under a set of circumstances therefore no law applies to anyone or anything unless those very situations and circumstances are present.
In context of the above explanation people can decide whether anything they fight over today is relevant or not or if it is then how much of it is relevant and how much should be left alone. The quran does not tell us any list of laws but just values and rules for formation of laws which muslims must make themselves with consultation looking at what is going on around the world and within muslim society. It is utterly stupid to make willy nilly laws then try to live by them which make a mess of the whole thing called islam and make muslims as awhole the laughing stock for the world.
Most translations of the quran are wrong and they are wrong because people who translated the quran failed to understand concepts the quran teaches. So the understandings of the quranic text that are based upon misconceptions are not going to be helpful to begin with. This problem can only be removed by producing a proper contextualised and conceptualised translation that is more of an explanation rather than word for word translation. It is because words do not have exact equivalents in other languages so they need to be explained rather than being replaced by another word that makes no sense. Not only that but is also a matter reading the mind of God and at best we can only try this is why no matter what no translation or interpretation is word of God but all are human works and so they should be treated as such. In other words don't put your own words in mouth of God or in other words don't be stupid be wise.
Ummah must take this major step in trying to understand the quran properly if it is ready to unite all its members. Otherwise there is no chance for peace even within muslim unmmah so world has to wait till we sort out our self created problems.