Rescuing Islam from Islamism: Responding to the Betrayal of Islam by Militant Jurists

It is no secret that Muslims recite the Book of Allah with little comprehension. Perfunctory reading betrays a measure indifference to its teaching. Reading focuses on form rather than substance, reducing recitation to ritual. Formalism trumps ethics. The unthinking recitation of the Book of Allah is a result of a bias against reason in Muslim tradition. Reason is perceived as an ＂enemy＂ of faith. This is due to the perception, prevailing in tradition, that there is a tension between comprehension and revelation. But this is a misconception. Far from being an adversary of revelation, reason is required to understand and follow revelation. Acquiring God-consciousness requires the engagement of reason. The person who refuses to reason is ＂worse than cattle＂ (8:22). Allah will place ＂confusion on those that do not use reason＂ (10:100). The bias against reason is rooted in the clashes about the appropriate way to approach revelation: is it through reason or tradition? Traditionists argue that the right way to understand revelation is through tradition. The predecessors possessed superior knowledge of revelation than the successors. Rationalists argue that the right way to understand revelation is through reason, without resorting to tradition. The bias against reason alienated the umma from the Book of Allah. It did it by hindering the umma from comprehending revelation. ＂Intellectual suicide＂ reflected in the shutdown of reasoning, triggered ＂political suicide.＂ This transpired when rulers embarked on expansionary wars of aggression, prohibited in revelation. The wars triggered retaliation. The umma was defeated by Charles Martel in 732, by Genghis Khan in 1258, and at Vienna in 1529 and 1683. The rejection of reason plunged the umma into backwardness, where it remains until today. As long as the bias against reason persists, the umma will remain where it is, and at the mercy of its enemies due to its backwardness. The reluctance to engage reasoning to understand revelation hampered understanding the Book of Allah. This undermined people’s ability to follow its guidance. A person that does not understand the Book is not in a position to ＂follow＂ it. Rather than follow the Book of Allah, as the prophet did, the umma turned to the traditions of the predecessors. This hastened the disintegration of the umma. For Allah says He never changes the condition of people until they change what is in themselves. The umma exchanged the Book of Allah for books of manmade traditions. Are persons able to provide better guidance than Allah? Imperfect knowledge of the Book of Allah remain a problem in the umma. The bias against reason is rooted in the past, in the struggles between the ahl al-hadith and the ahl al-ra’y regarding the role of reason and tradition in understanding revelation. The repression of reason enabled unscrupulous persons to distort the teaching of Islam to endorse the political aspirations of hawkish rulers. The repression of reason enabled politicized jurists to refashion the teaching of Islam, the religion of peace, as Islamism or a teaching of war. The refashioning transpired the politicization of the epistemology of revelation. This required the weaponization of exegesis and jurisprudence. The weaponization of exegesis and jurisprudence was expedited by recourse to enabling presupposition. Regrettably, these presuppositions represent a defiance of the teaching of revelation. The presupposition encompass without being restricted to the treatment of tradition as revelation and recourse to the teaching of abrogation. The presuppositions enabling the reinterpretation of Islam as Islamism encompass the rejection of the characterizations of revelation as ＂clear,＂ ＂fully detailed,＂ and ＂contradictory.＂ This requires a return to revelation through the rehabilitation and re-engagement of reason. It also requires the desacralization of tradition and dispensing with the teaching of abrogation.