Deep Roots of Religious Orthodoxy

#42 by gowardhan1

it is quite some time ago I read iqbal’s reconstruction of religious thought in islam, it’s compilation of lectures he delivered mostly in madras India in 1930’s. basically he was saying muslim legislative assembly should have power to modify and change sharia laws. He admits subcontinent muslims being conservative may not allow it to happen HOW PROPHETIC !

Urstruly...
France Vs Sausi Arabia(/Nepal)

How is the theocratic Saudi Arabia equal to /better than the `militantly` secular France?
Some of the modern liberal ideals of the French state may have their origin in Christinity.
But the state incorporating these better ideals of religion has transcended it ( the religion). Now, surely you wouldn`t say that pre-revolution French society was better!

Isphahani # 40

I didn`t understand a word. Could you or someone else explain in simpler language? With a view to it being adopted, Iqbal must have advanced a clearer principle.

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choices are what we make troughout our lives and choices are what make us in our lives.

teshah

It wasn`t a question of understanding in the first place. It was and still is a question of choice. I showed you the way, you made your choice. It is just as simple.

28 by urstruly

Thank you dear for replying to my post at 24 but I am sorry to say that you have made the confusion about `harram` and `hallal` worse confounded. You mean `harram` has double rather contradictory meanings in Arabic. You say harram means both `forbidden` and `sacred` in Arabic lexicon. Does it make any sense? One can treat pork and wine both forbidden and sacred. You as a human being are `harram`. Should I take you as `sacred` or `forbidden`. I would try to explain this confusion by true a anecdote;-

I have a cousin who is a fouji and an M.A. in Islamiat. He is in the habit of giving Islamic connotatio to all his actions. Once he came to my house and after having a lunch with me took leave to go to his mess. I asked him why going to mess when you have just taken lunch with me. He said, ``I shall go and eat there also as if I don`t eat my lunch there they would throw it to the crows and the crow being a harram bird it will bring `gunnah` on me``. But I said,``Dear brother, but you are yourself a `harram` animal like a crow and pig``. All his Islamc learning failed to find a cogent answer to my observation.

Mr. urstruly it is not that simple a question as you think. Moulana marhoom Amin Ahsan Islahi in his Tafseer `Tadabrulquran` has tried to explain `harram` as a ` thing tabooed` or simply a thing `having a religious significance` as we say in Punjabi `Eh cheez bhaari ae`.

I am sorry you ascribed some ulterior motives to my genuine search for knowledge and truth but I am not a bit wiser what you or the Moulana said.

``Yet religions do change with the passage of time; such changes may not be substantial still they are significant enough to undermine the religious foundation even ever so slightly.``


The Ultimate Truth does not change over time or over space. It manifests itself in different forms. The form is not the Truth.

If a religion speaks to the Truth, it will not be undermined by even the most radical change. If it speaks to a form of the Truth, it will be undermined by even the smallest modification of it.

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God lets us create our own world.

Religion can provide excellent UNIFORM moral foundation if everyone in the country follows same religion. State laws can take over where scope of morals ends. Morals are like an operating system and state laws are various business applications which use the foundational software. Thus, western countries can interoperate very easily because their operating system is Christianity but business and other social laws can differ and no one has any issues. Arab countries can interoperate with each other easily and have different political systems since underlying moral foundation is Islam.
In modern world, this poses challenges for deeply religious people brought up in one religion and need to live in another country for whatever reasons. IMHO (with limited understanding of real Islam), this poses even bigger problems for Muslims since their religion goes beyond good moral foundation to a set of state governance and economic laws. Now, if you are outside Muslim dominated country, how can you be a perfect Muslim and model citizen?
I guess what I am saying is that need for global interconnectivity of ideas and businesses, leaving aside physical migration, is going to force a uniform moral rules upon all those who want to interconnect/interact. People in Saudi Arabia or Sweden may decide when or how to interact with rest of the world, what choices, for example, Indians in USA or Muslims in India have other than to mainstream?

gowardhan
he wrote a book ``reconstruction of islamic thought``, but I havent read it.

hindvi, teshah, amit, urstruly, Isphahani

Iqbal attempted the thesis that Islam was not a static moral ideology. Does anyone know his approach to seeing dynamism in Islam?

#30 by Urstruly

ok with the discipline, great that its helping you, except i am worried about getting killed, and cant convince you by argument (the discipline comes in the way).

Re:urstruly#27

I have associated with Chinese people for a number of years and have seen first hand that they have almost no religious fervour. Most of them consider Confuciansim and Taoism as philosophies rather than full-blown religions. Buddhism is there to some extent and Islam is only in one province. By and large, the chinese are not a very religious people unlike say hindus and muslims in the Indian subcontinent.

In any case, thanks for an interesting debate. Our difference is that you consider religion to be a central aspect of life i.e. without it, we would become degenerate savages. I consider religion to be a useful guide to remind us what we should realize from our common sense and lead a good life. Perhaps it is because I have lived in secular societies all my life where religion is your personal matter whereas you have obviously had a different upbringing.

hindvi

I also used to be repulsed by the idea of going to school when my mother used to wake me up at 5:30 am in the chilling December mornings. Whether I liked it or not, that discipline was beneficial to me. Similarly, being a Muslim, like a benevolent mother, it is incumbent upon us to convince others that a certain discipline and certain decourum is necessary if human race is to progress and achieve salvation. Of course, the message puts many out of their comfort zones, but we have to do our job selflessly and compassionately.

As far as the issues of crimes and punishments, and genesis and evolution of Islamic jurisprudence and law is concerned, we can have a separate discussion on these issues where the format of discussion conforms and falls with in the realm of these sciences and not generalities.

But urstruly the problem is islam is static in its morality, you cant change a word of the Quran, where as humans are evolutionary beings, our morale sense of today is repulsed by punishments such as stoning to death, amputation, or taking of war booty in the form of women or slaves.

teshah

I did not quite understood your point. It looks like that you are angry and frustrated on some other issue which is unrelated to topic under discussion and venting your frustration here. There is a punjabi proverb that describes the situation in these words ``raundi yaaraaN nu lay lay ke naaN bharaawaN da``. Anyway I would like to address some of your points.

Islam as a religion instills a certain discipline in its adherents and demands a certain decourum to show that they are disciplined. For that Islam has put forward certain guidelines that Muslims must follow to show that they obey the demand for this discipline. These guidelines are a set of dos and donts. In religious lexicon they are divided into two braod catagories Halal i.e. allowed and Haram i.e. forbidden. Not only that but Islam also elaborates in detail as to what will be the consequences as a reward if we follow the Halal ways and a punishment if we chose to go astray with the Haram way. Islam is a unique religion that it does not classify actions as good or bad or natural or un-natural. In Islam every action no matter how dispecable, is natural. Islam does not stipulate that man is genetically predisposed to act in a certain way. A man is not born a sinner. On the other hand Islam talks about the choice. Islam shows what is ``allowed`` and what is ``forbidden`` and leaves the choice upon us. We make choices on every step of the way in our lives, everyday, every moment, some willingly, some unknowingly, and some under compulsion. On the Day of Judgment those choices that we made in our lives will be evluated and we will be rewarded or punished accordingly.

The word ``Haram`` in Arabic lexicon has more than one meanings. One meaning as I discussed above is ``forbidden``, the other meaning is ``sacred``. The phrase ``Masjid al Haram`` thus means `the sacred mosque` and not `forbidden mosque`, which is usually referred to as Kaaba in Mecca. The month of Ramadan is also Haram meaning that moth of Ramadan is sacred. On the other hand when we use the word haram in the context of other person`s wife saying that `she is haram for you` means that she is `forbidden for you.

I hope that helps.