Figurative Thougts!

[Safoora]

Hey AOA,

I’m posting this thread just to get your idea about whether the way I’m thinking is “islamically” correct or not, does it violate any major portion of Islam?

I have a Jewish mentor, who doesn’t follow Judaism in the strictest manner. I am more islamically inclined so once we were having a discussion and he brought out an interesting point about comparative religions. We are affiliated to a Catholic Private University and thus, aware of the story of Genesis in Bible, and the origin of life in Jewish and Muslim scriptures.

He thinks that the origin of life described is less literal in nature than it is taken in the general population. For example, when Adam (AS) and Hawa (AS) were in Jannat originally, it might have meant Africa, since there was a lot of greenery, fruits and veggies were plentiful and hunting was good. Then they disobeyed Allah SWT (also might be figurative) and were led to a desert type of place, which would not have been as comfortable.

When he said this, I thought either this would be a good thought process, or there may be something seriously wrong with it that I could not place my finger on at that point. We were talking about evolution and origin of life and the dicussion drifted to religion. Also, we are both medical biologists and the religion knowledge is just the general knowledge we both had. I have asked a few people from the Masjid here, and got responses mostly saying that they are not sure. Wondering if someone might help here?

Thank you and JazakAllah,
-Safoora

[psyah]

@Safoora

Hey AOA,

I'm posting this thread just to get your idea about whether the way I'm thinking is "islamically" correct or not, does it violate any major portion of Islam?

I have a Jewish mentor, who doesn't follow Judaism in the strictest manner. I am more islamically inclined so once we were having a discussion and he brought out an interesting point about comparative religions. We are affiliated to a Catholic Private University and thus, aware of the story of Genesis in Bible, and the origin of life in Jewish and Muslim scriptures.

He thinks that the origin of life described is less literal in nature than it is taken in the general population. For example, when Adam (AS) and Hawa (AS) were in Jannat originally, it might have meant Africa, since there was a lot of greenery, fruits and veggies were plentiful and hunting was good. Then they disobeyed Allah SWT (also might be figurative) and were led to a desert type of place, which would not have been as comfortable.

When he said this, I thought either this would be a good thought process, or there may be something seriously wrong with it that I could not place my finger on at that point. We were talking about evolution and origin of life and the dicussion drifted to religion. Also, we are both medical biologists and the religion knowledge is just the general knowledge we both had. I have asked a few people from the Masjid here, and got responses mostly saying that they are not sure. Wondering if someone might help here?

Thank you and JazakAllah, -Safoora

Peace Safoora Wa 'alaikumsalam

Yes ... you are right there is a serious problem in this line of thinking. I call it rational reduction. Scripture details amazing events and there are some people who cannot swallow the concepts. However, they will choose to reason or compromise with such concepts. Without disowning them entirely they create a comfort zone of understanding around themselves and sympathetically apply a rationalisation to concepts from scripture that are beyond their personal spheres of experience.

Jannah is not a place on Earth ... if it were then some people are in Jannah today i.e. Africa or whatever place you choose. We know this not to be the case. As biologists you will learn that there is a global effort to map genetic heritage and find the lineage of peoples. Hopefully the results so far suggest that everyone is related. So it supports the more literal view already anyway you will work it out inshaAllah.

You as a scientist needs to find and gather evidence for such thoughts. Your mentor has postulated a theory now you need to embark on disproving it. It cannot be accepted without evidence so ask him not for rationalisation but for evidence.