Rescuing Muslims from Militants: Rethinking Jihad al-Talab

The allegation of an irreconcilable tension between reason and revelation sets up a mutually exclusive relationship between reason and revelation, utterly alien to revelation. According to this perception, a person cannot be a thinker and a person of faith. We have to choose between the two. This "choice" requires a person to sacrifice his or her intellect if he or she were to be a person of faith. This "choice" forces us to choose between thinking and being faithful. This false dichotomy was propagated by luminaries such as al-Ghazali. He rejected reason as a faculty for the attainment of the knowledge of revelation. He experienced a breakdown of reason. The Muslims umma that followed in his footsteps also rejected reason and experienced an atrophy of reason. This cerebral dysfunctionality was depicted as a "crisis in the Muslims mind" by AbdulHamid AbuSulayman. It was referred to as "intellectual suicide" by Fazlur Rahman. The breakdown of reason triggered a range of troubling effects. These encompass a paralysis of the Muslims mind, prohibition of reasoning, misunderstanding of revelation, rise of militant misinterpretations of revelation, a reorientation from revelation to tradition, a corruption of exegesis, jurisprudence and law, transformation of Islam as a way of reconciliation into a religion of war, rejection of causation, retardation of the arts and sciences, teaching of predestination, recourse to abrogation, turn to aggressive jihad, and wars of aggression that ensured the defeat of the Muslims. Rather than relying on reason, traditionists embraced the traditions of the predecessors, who teach that reason is unsuitable for attaining knowledge of religion. The rejection of reason paved the way anti-rationalism if not fanaticism. It also resulted in a misunderstanding of revelation and misguidance. For no reliable exegesis is possible without the engagement of reason. The rejection of reason is a result of corrupt reasoning, and the failure to realize that reason and revelation are in agreement, as long as reason is used responsibly. Reason was repressed in different ways. It was alleged that the use of reason to understand revelation was kufr or unbelief. It was also alleged that reasoning is subordinate to tradition. This was problematic, in so far as reason was used to construct the method of the authentication and evaluation of traditions in the first place. The association of reasoning in matters of religion as kufr was tantamount to asking Muslims to refrain from reasoning in religion. This amounts to asking us to abandon our reason, in effect to become persons bereft of rationality, fit for confinement in an asylum for the insane. In fact, in so far as the larger part of the corpus of traditional exegesis and jurisprudence rests on the assumption that it is better not to use reason in matters of religion, we could conclude that this body of knowledge was produced by persons without recourse to reason. A cynical person could be tempted to remark that the results speak for themselves. For traditional exegesis and jurisprudence are riddled with incoherence and contradictions that reveal a breakdown of reason and the ability to generate rational inferences. An example or two would suffice at present. It was highlighted by traditional ulema themselves that traditional ulema fell intro inconsistency when they maintained that tradition is both subordinate and equal to revelation. For in exegesis tradition is treated as a "judge" of revelation while in jurisprudence it is treated as second to revelation as a root of the law. A further example of problems in traditional jurisprudence are encountered in prescribing capital punishments for acts for which revelation refrains from prescribing the death penalty. These include the punishments for apostasy, blasphemy and adultery. This is a result of a careless reading of revelation by persons reluctant to use reason.