19th September 2006
One must accept that all religions have dogmatic sides. There is no way to explain everything in a religion by reason and saying that our religion is rational. Because religions are dogmatic, people use the word “faith” or “belief” when they want to express their involvement with that religion. Following words are from Pope’s last controversial speech:
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.
Pope tries to say that violence is against the rules of reasoning and God should not command his subjects to fight in his name. According to his quotation, in Islam, reason is far beyond the faith. Muslims are supposed to believe that “A is good because Allah says so” rather than “Allah says A is good because A is itself good” Pope again gives the idea of one person and ignores the others. One can say that this is a speech and he does not have to mention all the sects in Islam during his speech. I can agree with this if only Pope says there are other sects in Islam and these sects think in different ways. And the example he gave is a very extreme example which is even not accepted by most of the Muslims around the world. God may not be bound by his own word because He is the word himself. It is impossible in Islam to separate Allah and His Kelam.
If we look at the Kelam schools in Islam we can see three main ideologies in the sense of free will and rationalism. They are Mutazili, Ash’ari and Maturidi. Their differences are wide to see easily and they represent different worldviews as well as different philosophies.
Mutazili is considered as a rational approach to Islam. It was definitely affected by Greek rationalism and it gave a lot to Western world. They celebrated the power of reason and human intellectuality. Although their rivals blamed them for being so rational and ignoring the importance of revelation, they actually tried to find a midpoint between reason and revelation. According to Mutazili, human reason is not sufficiently powerful to know everything and for this reason humans need revelation in order to reach conclusions concerning what is good and what is bad for them. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu) Basically, reason and revelation are not against each other and they behave in cooperation to approve the existence of God and his will. According to Mutazili, one can know what is good and what is bad without revelation. In summary, reason and revelation complement each other and can not dispense with one another.
Ash’ari is the most common kelam school in today’s sunni Muslim world. In contrast to Mutazilite school, the Asharite denied the priority of reasoning. According to them, God is beyond human’s capabilities and He is above everything, including human intellect. This means one can not know the good and bad without the help of God’s revelation. The man has free will but this free will can do nothing unless God’s will allow him to do a thing. One of the most influential figures in Ash’ari school is Imam Ghazali. He wrote the book against the philosophy and philosophers (mainly against rational philosophers like Ibn-i Rusdh, Ibn-i Sina and Farabi). Many modern scholar thinks that Ash’ari put an end to philosophy in Muslim world. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash)
Maturidi can be considered as a slight deviation from Ash’ari towards Mutazili. According to Maturidi, an unadided human mind is able to find out some of major sins without the revelation. Because of this, everyone in this world is responsible from finding God even though the message of God had not reached him. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturidi)
As a conclusion, Islam has the colors of diversity in itself. Today’s muslims, although Maturidi and Ash’ari are majority, believe that God created human’s reasoning and everything in this universe to be understood. Then, if there is anything which seems contradictory to God’s words, a devoted muslim probably would say that God knows the best. This might be considered as an ultimate submission but doesn’t the word “submission” mean “Islam”in Arabic? It is dogmatic and it gives very little space for reason to make the right decision. I really wonder how it works in Christian religion. Can we really say that Christianity is based on rational assumptions? Can a devoted Christian do the good things just because his reasoning tells him to do so? Isn’t it similar to Islam? Christianity tried to use reasoning methods to prove the existence of God for long time but as I know, they all come to a dead point after the sharp answers from philosophers or even from Christian scholars. Today’s Christians believe in God just because this belief makes them happy –rather than they feel rationally obliged to believe-. I guess it is the same thing in Islam. Here is a nice article which can be a good answer to the so-called rationalism in Christianity. It is written by Russell and still considered as one of the shortest and sharpest answer to Christian rationalist. Enjoy it... http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm
One must accept that all religions have dogmatic sides. There is no way to explain everything in a religion by reason and saying that our religion is rational. Because religions are dogmatic, people use the word “faith” or “belief” when they want to express their involvement with that religion. Following words are from Pope’s last controversial speech:
The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.
Pope tries to say that violence is against the rules of reasoning and God should not command his subjects to fight in his name. According to his quotation, in Islam, reason is far beyond the faith. Muslims are supposed to believe that “A is good because Allah says so” rather than “Allah says A is good because A is itself good” Pope again gives the idea of one person and ignores the others. One can say that this is a speech and he does not have to mention all the sects in Islam during his speech. I can agree with this if only Pope says there are other sects in Islam and these sects think in different ways. And the example he gave is a very extreme example which is even not accepted by most of the Muslims around the world. God may not be bound by his own word because He is the word himself. It is impossible in Islam to separate Allah and His Kelam.
If we look at the Kelam schools in Islam we can see three main ideologies in the sense of free will and rationalism. They are Mutazili, Ash’ari and Maturidi. Their differences are wide to see easily and they represent different worldviews as well as different philosophies.
Mutazili is considered as a rational approach to Islam. It was definitely affected by Greek rationalism and it gave a lot to Western world. They celebrated the power of reason and human intellectuality. Although their rivals blamed them for being so rational and ignoring the importance of revelation, they actually tried to find a midpoint between reason and revelation. According to Mutazili, human reason is not sufficiently powerful to know everything and for this reason humans need revelation in order to reach conclusions concerning what is good and what is bad for them. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu) Basically, reason and revelation are not against each other and they behave in cooperation to approve the existence of God and his will. According to Mutazili, one can know what is good and what is bad without revelation. In summary, reason and revelation complement each other and can not dispense with one another.
Ash’ari is the most common kelam school in today’s sunni Muslim world. In contrast to Mutazilite school, the Asharite denied the priority of reasoning. According to them, God is beyond human’s capabilities and He is above everything, including human intellect. This means one can not know the good and bad without the help of God’s revelation. The man has free will but this free will can do nothing unless God’s will allow him to do a thing. One of the most influential figures in Ash’ari school is Imam Ghazali. He wrote the book against the philosophy and philosophers (mainly against rational philosophers like Ibn-i Rusdh, Ibn-i Sina and Farabi). Many modern scholar thinks that Ash’ari put an end to philosophy in Muslim world. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash)
Maturidi can be considered as a slight deviation from Ash’ari towards Mutazili. According to Maturidi, an unadided human mind is able to find out some of major sins without the revelation. Because of this, everyone in this world is responsible from finding God even though the message of God had not reached him. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturidi)
As a conclusion, Islam has the colors of diversity in itself. Today’s muslims, although Maturidi and Ash’ari are majority, believe that God created human’s reasoning and everything in this universe to be understood. Then, if there is anything which seems contradictory to God’s words, a devoted muslim probably would say that God knows the best. This might be considered as an ultimate submission but doesn’t the word “submission” mean “Islam”in Arabic? It is dogmatic and it gives very little space for reason to make the right decision. I really wonder how it works in Christian religion. Can we really say that Christianity is based on rational assumptions? Can a devoted Christian do the good things just because his reasoning tells him to do so? Isn’t it similar to Islam? Christianity tried to use reasoning methods to prove the existence of God for long time but as I know, they all come to a dead point after the sharp answers from philosophers or even from Christian scholars. Today’s Christians believe in God just because this belief makes them happy –rather than they feel rationally obliged to believe-. I guess it is the same thing in Islam. Here is a nice article which can be a good answer to the so-called rationalism in Christianity. It is written by Russell and still considered as one of the shortest and sharpest answer to Christian rationalist. Enjoy it... http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm
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