Erroneous Intellectual Presuppositions are Obstacles to Progress
By
Naseer Ahmed, New Age Islam
18 May 2022
Muslims
Idea Of An Omnipotent God Is A Whimsical God Because Whimsicalness Is Proof To
Them Of His Omnipotence Because God Says That He Does Whatever He Wills!
Important
Points:
1. The Quran
also repeatedly insists on go look, see, ponder, wonder, discover, know.
2. The Quran
repeatedly tells us to learn empirical truths from past stories of the prophets
and their people.
3. Muslims have
no idea of what good scholarship means.
------
The history
of human endeavour is replete with examples of how erroneous intellectual
presuppositions have impeded progress. We all know about Einstein’s prolific
and unmatched contribution to theoretical physics. This brilliant physicist
also hit a wall and his pathbreaking contributions ended abruptly. What caused
it? His belief in a deterministic and therefore a predictable world that could
be precisely described mathematically. When nuclear physicists were
increasingly using probabilistic theories to study and describe the behaviour of
subatomic particles, he expressed his discomfort by saying that he does not
believe that God plays dice with the universe. However, every pathbreaking and
major advance in quantum physics before and since is based on probabilistic
models. Deterministic models fail at the quantum level, and we can only
describe things in terms of probabilities. Einstein missed out completely on
these developments because of his intellectual presupposition. He is otherwise
considered the father of quantum physics for describing the photoelectric
effect for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1921. The discovery of the phenomenon
of the photoelectric effect led to the development of quantum mechanics.
The
Pitfalls Of Necessarian Theology
All through
history, people have imagined what God does, what God must necessarily do and
what God cannot do. To the extent that such beliefs were erroneous, progress
was impeded for several centuries until they discarded some of the erroneous
presuppositions. A different set of intellectual presuppositions defined each
of the civilisations which set a limit on their progress. Each of the
civilizations made rapid strides till they reached the limit set by their set
of presuppositions after which they stagnated.
In 1277,
Etienne Tempier, the bishop of Paris, writing with the support of Pope John
XXI, condemned ‘necessarian theology’ and 219 separate theses influenced by
Greek philosophy about what God could or couldn’t do. We continue to have
necessarian theologians in our midst although the revelation of the Quran has
done away with the need for speculative necessarian theology!
Scientific
Revolution
Then in
Europe began the scientific revolution. What caused it? Shedding many of the
erroneous intellectual presuppositions and adoption of the “scientific method”
for a systematic study of natural phenomena to discover what God does or did.
(Disbelievers in God can replace God by Nature in this discussion). To
paraphrase Robert Boyle, “the job of the scientist is, not to decide what God
must have done, but to go and look and to see what He did do”. Go look and see,
go look and see. It becomes an empirical science rather than a deductive or
philosophical approach to studying nature. And that was the great shift in
approach that helped the scientific revolution in Europe.
The Seeds For A Scientific Revolution Were
There In The Quran
The Quran
also repeatedly insists on go look, see, ponder, wonder, discover, and know. It
also asks us to reject false gods from the empirical evidence that they have no
power. The Quran repeatedly tells us to learn empirical truths from past
stories of the prophets and their people. It has verses that speak of knowledge
discovered only recently by people who adopted systematic empiricism and the
scientific method. The Quran repeatedly asks us not to rely on tradition and
the beliefs of men but to question these in the light of empirical evidence. It
tells us repeatedly that Allah never changes His word and His ways which means
that His laws governing the Universe, human behaviour and indeed everything are
unchanging which is an invitation to study these and benefit from them. The
Quran says in a couple of verses (10:19, 11:110) that He may have acted
differently but for the fact that His word had already been sent forth. This
means that Allah binds Himself by His word and can never be whimsical. The Quran speaks of logical consistency and
integrity and therefore the lack of discrepancy in the Book. This is telling us
to strictly follow the rules of logic while making sense of it. It also means
that logically derived inferences from the Quran are as good as if the
inference was part of the text. This is as it should be because logical truths
are apriori truths. So why do the Muslims find themselves at the bottom of the
heap? Not quite because the same religion took them to great heights and
pitchforked them a thousand years ahead of Europe before they hit the ceiling.
For more on the subject, read:
Causes For The
Rise And Fall Of The Muslims
Swings
In Our Fortunes
There was a
great deal of dynamism in the beginning and Islamic civilization flourished and
made great strides in every field and dominated the world. They, therefore, had
virtues that took them to the top but then they stagnated and even regressed.
The first three centuries were of relative freedom from religious orthodoxy and
bigotry and the philosophers, the mathematicians, the astronomers, and the
healers made great strides. The Muslims were avid learners and learned from the
Greeks and every other civilization and took what they learned forward.
The Greek
philosophers were atheists whose influence rubbed off on the Muslim
philosophers and a gulf began to develop between the religious scholars and the
natural philosophers (the common term for philosophers and scientists). The
tussle between science and religion continues to this day although there is no
need for it, as these do not overlap and are complementary. Both sides are
equally to blame. The great strides made by Muslim society may also be
attributed to the fact that the environment was conducive enough to allow the
ascendance of the rationalist’s school of theology or the Muʿtazila. During the period the Muʿtazila enjoyed the patronage of the
Caliph, the traditionalists were imprisoned and persecuted.
There was a
tussle for power between the religious scholars and the natural philosophers
who were leaning towards atheism and Imam Ghazali won the fight for religion with
his treatise “The incoherence of the philosophers” which paved the way for the
return of the traditionalists and driving out of the Muʿtazila and the persecution of the
natural philosophers for their unorthodox views. The momentum of scientific
progress ensured progress for several decades until orthodoxy stifled it and
Islamic civilization began to stagnate.
Europe’s
renaissance owes much to translations of all the Arabic texts of knowledge in
subjects such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine etc. Europe appears to have
made a systematic study of what made the Islamic civilization great and took
everything a step further. They became a great industrial and naval power and
colonized the world. The Muslims became reactive and instead of learning from Europe,
became resistant to the very things that made Europe great. Neither could the
Muslims learn from their own glorious past nor from the present of a rising
Europe.
The
State Of Islamic Scholarship
When I
compare the standard of western scholarship with that of Islamic religious
scholarship, Islamic scholarship appears primitive, disorganized, unscientific
and with little evidence of having mastered even simple logic and mathematics,
because of which the Muftis struggle with the inheritance related calculations
to this day. Lack of logical consistency does not appear to bother them nor
does the fact that their Shariat and theology do not follow from the Quran.
Imam
Ghazali is the greatest Islamic scholar and yet his Mishkat al-Anwar which is a
treatise on the Ayat al-Nur (24:35) on which the scholars go ga ga even today,
is demonstrably a can of trash although of the highest erudition. His
explanation of the verse contradicts the very next verse. How could Imam
Ghazali not know that his explanation of the verse contradicts the very next
verse? It did not seem to have bothered him nor the army of scholars who follow
him to this day. This malaise exemplifies the entire body of Islamic
scholarship. They are suckers for every kind of nonsense if it is packaged well
and has the stamp of authority. We therefore blindly follow the Imams although
their limitations are obvious. Looks like the Muslims have no idea of what a
good scholarship means.
Also
Read: An Exposition of the Verse of Light (Ayat
al-Nur)
If I must
make a list of what impedes progress for the Muslims, it is a long list. The
most important is a lack of intellectual integrity. If contradictions do not
bother them and did not bother even their greatest scholar Imam Ghazali, how
can then they ever be sure that they are on the right path? One Madrassa
product even commented that logic is good but not too much logic!
The Muslims
seem to have got everything wrong. Their idea of an Omnipotent God is a
whimsical God because whimsicalness is proof to them of His omnipotence because
God says that He does whatever He wills! Now, if God is whimsical, there can be
contradictions in the Quran and therefore the contradictions that arise from
their interpretation of the Quran do not bother them one bit. That the Quran
says that you will not find any contradictions in it is brushed aside as just
another proof of God saying whatever He wills and not to be taken seriously!
The fact is that the Quran is not taken seriously at all. It has become a Book
of liturgy and the emphasis is on memorising and pronunciation but not on
understanding it.
The Books
that are followed religiously are the Ahadith although the Ahadith
contradict the Quran on every subject. So, if the Quran is interpreted
considering the Ahadith to be true, you will gain nothing from studying
the Quran and will give up and relegate it to the place it occupies as a Book
only for liturgical purposes.
We will
have a revolution once we keep aside the Ahadith and the commentaries of
past scholars and read the Quran without a single intellectual presupposition.
We will then learn the true nature of Allah and His creation and what leads to
success in this life and the Hereafter. Almost every article of mine brings out
what the Quran says and how our scholars have got it wrong.
Science
Complements Religion
Without
science, our understanding of the Quran would have continued to be as poor as
that of the past scholars. Science is not an enemy of religion but provides
proof to the people of our times of the truth of the Quran. The mutual
antagonism is due to human frailties of insecurity, suspicion, and greed for
power. Why should Islamic scholars fear science if their religion is true? They
should expect religion to be strengthened by the discoveries of science. The
suspicion and antagonism are understandable because many of those who pursue
the sciences lean towards atheism. Subjects in the west such as biology,
physics and anthropology are taught with the explicit assumption that there is
no god, and this attitude rubs off on all who study these subjects. That is
proof that bigotry is not confined to the religions alone but extends to the
sciences as well. It is possible for us to rise above every kind of bigotry and
give proper place to both religion and science in our lives.
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A
frequent contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Naseer Ahmed is an Engineering
graduate from IIT Kanpur and is an independent IT consultant after having
served in both the Public and Private sector in responsible positions for over
three decades. He has spent years studying Quran in-depth and made seminal
contributions to its interpretation.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/intellectual-presuppositions-quran-muslims/d/127033
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