Islam on Trial: What Went Wrong?

By Leslie Terebessy

Muslims perceive threats as external. But there are threats from within the umma, too, for example extremism. The umma embraced a parochial perspective. Muslims recall external aggression while remaining unaware of jihad al-talab waged by Muslims. They remain unaware that the justification of wars of aggression entailed a reinterpretation of revelation as a teaching of war. This required tampering with the teaching of revelation. The reinterpretation of revelation entailed a turn from revelation to tradition, the repression of reason, the treatment of tradition as revelation, recourse to hawkish traditions, and the "abrogation" of all verses of reconciliation by the verses of the sword. This reinterpretation of revelation saddled the umma with traditional and political Islam, respectively. The first plunged the umma into backwardness while the second keeps drawing the umma into never-ending wars of aggression. But the umma is in denial. It has erected a romantic vision of the past and refuses to acknowledge crimes perpetrated by its predecessors under the banner of Islam. It dwells on the "we had it first" mantra and points to optometry, algebra, and astronomy as worthy achievements. But the umma also had a mihna (inquisition) a millennium before the Reign of Terror in 1792 in the French Revolution, when sixteen thousand traditionalists were guillotined. Musa al-Hadi killed 5,000 philosophers in 786, in the mihna inaugurated by his father al-Mahdi in 780. This was reported by Suyuti and recalled by Jamaluddin al-Afghani in his debate with Renan. Traditionalists rarely acknowledge that this tragedy ever took place. Muslims disregard the forays of the Umayyads and Ottomans into Europe, the kidnapping of boys to be trained as Janissaries, the brutalities of the Abbasids against the Mongols, and the retaliation against the umma these actions provoked. To this day the strutting and triumphalism of Islamists are raising tension and triggering fights in the Middle East and elsewhere. Extremists fan the flames of war and preach that Allah expects the umma to "propagate" Islam by the sword, a fabrication perpetrated by hawkish jurists, "classical" as well as present-day. Scholars became politicized. "Scholarship" would serve political agendas. But scholarship that is politicized is not scholarship; it is propaganda. The repression of reason or "intellectual suicide" triggered a paralysis of thought and a breakdown of exegesis and jurisprudence. The articulation of jihad al-talab as a sixth pillar of Islam by hawkish jurists was to furnish a justification for waging wars of aggression. This was part of the jihad between the dar-al Islam and the dar al-harb. But the threats to Muslims from within are bigger. The chief challenges are traditionalism and political Islam. They encompass threats to tauhid, the repression of reason, the corruption of knowledge, and hawkish renditions of Islam. For the teaching of jihad al-talab, with its emphasis on the tradition that "the blood of the kafir is halal for the believer," paved the way for the jurisprudence of terror, justifying killings of non-combatants. Traditionalism reflects a turn from the Book of Allah to traditions. Revelation was exchanged for tradition. Islam became traditional. In the hands of Islamists, Islam became political. Neither represents the Islam of revelation. The reorientation from revelation to tradition plunged the umma into trauma and exposed the umma to retaliation. These events require attention. There is a requirement to return to revelation. The West and the Muslims are in crisis. They became alienated from Allah. This transpired through the corruption of the knowledge. As a result, there is confusion. Islam could be of assistance. But before this could happen, the knowledge of Islam requires rehabilitation. This requires the re-engagement of reason, the desacralization of tradition and returning to the teaching of revelation as explained in the Book of Allah.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0DQKDCKJ1
• ISBN13: 9798303774513
• Release Date: December 2024
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"