Repression of Reason and the Fall of the Muslim Empire: Rescuing Islam from Backwardness

Muslims are taught by tradition to refrain from using reason in religion. This is based on the perception that the use of reason in Islam is kufr. This is known as al-fiqr kufr. Refraining from reasoning, however, defies the teaching of revelation. Moreover, the failure to use reason could result in extremism. Extremists are unreasonable. Refraining from the use of reason makes it difficult to understand revelation, or anything else for that matter. From a sharia perspective, refraining from the use of reason takes us from the ranks of the mukallafun, or accountable persons. Is the work ulema that refrain from reasoning reliable? Muslims reminisce about the achievements of the past. Much research emphasizes the past successes, "what Muslims had first." Few ask what went wrong, preferring to entrust the responsibility for this research to non-Muslims. But non-Muslims are not necessarily unbiased about the past. Due to the insufficient use of reason on the relationship between reason and revelation, Muslims embraced the perception that there is an adversarial rather than a symbiotic relationship between reason and revelation. Anti-rationalism and the repression of reason were justified by recourse to a tradition in which the messenger allegedly referred to reason-based tafsir as kufr. The rejection of reason enabled the emergence of traditional Islam, embracing traditions and the teaching predestination. For the belief in predestination rests on the rejection of causation. The aversion to reasoning resulted in aberrations in exegesis and jurisprudence. The reticence to use reason in exegesis and jurisprudence stems from the perception that reason as a tool for gaining knowledge of revelation is unreliable. Thus, traditional exegesis and jurisprudence require re-construction, this time on firm foundations. This requires the rehabilitation and re-engagement of reason, the restoration of revelation to its preeminence in relation to tradition, rejection of false presuppositions regarding revelation, and dispensing with the teachings of abrogation, fatalism and aggressive jihad. Taqlid resulted from the shutting of the gates to ijtihad. Anti-rationalism produced two strands of Islam: traditional and political Islam. Both stem from the rejection of reason and the unquestioning following of tradition. Traditional Islam was evolved to keep the peace by sedating people with the teaching of predestination. Political Islam was invented to provide religious justification for waging wars of expansion in the garb of spreading Islam by the sword. Anti-rationalism is based on a misunderstanding of the relationship between reason and revelation. It is based on the assumption that an irreconcilable tension exits between reason and revelation. The rejection of reason resulted in a corruption of the methodology of understanding revelation. The religious sciences, including exegesis and jurisprudence, became irrational. For that reason they could not generate reliable results. The emergence of traditional Islam was enabled by the replacement of revelation by tradition, while the emergence of political Islam was enabled by the abrogation of revelation by revelation, particularly by the abrogation of the peace verses by the verse of the sword. The transformation of Islam into its traditional and political variants was enabled by recourse to the rejection of the verses which teach peace by the verse of the sword, entailed by the teaching of abrogation. It was also buttressed by the perception, alien to revelation, that the world is separated into two areas, the realm of peace (dar al-Islam) and the realm of war (dar al-harb). It is necessary to rehabilitate and reconstruct knowledge, which was corrupted by the rejection of reasoning, and ensure that all religious pursuits rest on reliable foundations.