Another incident that you can only dig up from our history books and no one wants to dig from our own history to try to learn from our own experiences. There is a religious group of people in what is today India. In Islamic books of history it's called As Simniya. Now your humble brother here did not have the time to see whether that has some type of other name in the English/Latin/Orientalist literature. So this, (whatever), sect/religious persuasion it was in India at the time and this was during the third Islamic century. We go from the first Islamic century to the third during the Abbasid time when the King of the Muslims was Harun Ar Rashid. We know that some people get offended because we're conditioned to use certain words. Let's be brave and say the truth. So there was one of these scholars/intellectuals in this religious persuasion in India who told his ruler "these Muslims can only rule by the sword/ brute force. They have no intellectual content to them. They don't think." He said/advised his ruler "if you want to ascertain the truth of what I am telling you correspond with their King Harun Ar Rashid in Baghdad and have the Muslims and we sit together and discuss/debate the issues/differences." So this ruler liked the idea and he sent to the ruler of the Muslims at that time requesting an encounter between the intellectuals of both societies. The ruler in Baghdad sent to this land in what is called Bilad As Sind the High Judge of Baghdad to debate/discuss the issues. So here comes the Simni scholar and sits down with what is supposed to be the intellectual of the Muslims of that time. There's two sides. There are some individuals/thinkers on this side and others on that side. So the Simni asks a question: "is the deity that you conform to/worship able to create another deity like Him." This scholar/Qadhi Qudhat Baghdadi said "your question borders on what we call ilm al kalaam." During that time there was a phrase called a couple of words ilm ul kalaam which in today's language means philosophy. So the Muslim judge's response to this Indian, (whatever his religion was), was "your question is a philosophical question and this type of philosophy we consider to be bid'ah- what is called a negative innovation." He said "and who of your scholars have defined this type of conversation/question as a negative innovation?" He said "Abu Hanifa and two of his students." It ended there. The Muslim scholar could not answer a simple question like that and this reverberates. The Muslim scholars return to Baghdad and the King hears about this and he says "don't we, the Muslims, have any people who can address these types of intellectuals? Where have the Muslim intellectuals gone, (in other words)?" He is told by his advisors/consultants and these types who are around him "but we do have those types of people but they are in prison." That reminds us of today's world- intellectuals in prison! People who want to think they are guilty of thought crimes. Throw them in prison. At that time they may have been in the hundreds now we have them in the hundreds of thousands who are behind bars because they want to think about what Allah and His Prophet are saying to us. So he says "OK- bring me one of them." So they release some of these Mu'tazila. They are called in Islamic history Al Mu'tazila/the rational school of thought in Islam. They present the same question to them. He says "what if someone asks you: you say Allah is Almighty, Allah can do everything etc. Can he create another God/divinity like Him?" One of these bright individuals said
"the question in itself carries a contradiction because Allah is infinite. He is before time and He is after time. He is not time and place limited and when you speak about creating you are speaking about bringing something into existence within the dimensions of time and place and Allah, a deity, does not exist in the dimensions of time and space. So it cannot happen."A person who was locked up in prison had an answer for other people who were outside the Islamic realm who have questions. Muslims, brothers and sisters: we live in a world that thinks. It is a natural thing that comes to all human beings and we cannot go on practising our rituals/Islam in the absence of our mind/intellect/thinking capabilities/endowment.
No comments:
Post a Comment