Twenty Aberrations in the Knowledge of Islam: Explaining the Fall of Islam

By Leslie Terebessy

The umma is in trauma. The trauma is due to its estrangement from its religion. Alienation was triggered by the turn from revelation to tradition. The turn resulted from political pressure. The turn was assisted by the repression of reason.
The turn to tradition was justified by the treatment of tradition as "revelation from God." Together with the teaching of abrogation, the turn to tradition enabled the emergence of a bellicose rendition of Islam. The repression of reason tainted knowledge. Knowledge was corrupted by exegesis resting on perceptions that defy revelation. These encompass the perceptions that revelation is in parts "unclear," "insufficiently detailed" and even "contradictory." But the Book presents itself as "clear," "fully detailed," and "coherent." These perceptions also encompass the perception that different verses that "contradicted" related verses were "abrogated" by verses revealed subsequently. Misperceptions also include the perception that tradition, too, possesses the power to "abrogate" and "supersede" parts of revelation. The perception that tradition possesses the power to "abrogate" and "replace" parts of revelation defies the pre-eminence of Allah as the exclusive Lawgiver in Islam. Reliable exegesis and jurisprudence require the engagement of reason. Without the use of reason, exegesis and jurisprudence become unpredictable and unreliable. Exegesis and jurisprudence require being extracted from revelation. The umma is experiencing trials and tribulations because it drifted from the even path. Traditionists treat traditions as "revelation from Allah." The teaching of reconciliation was reinvented as an agenda for wars of territorial expansion and the propagation of religion "by the sword," prohibited in revelation. Hawkish ulama reinvented revelation as a "teaching of war" by recourse to the teaching of the "abrogation" of the verses of reconciliation by the verses of the sword. Hawkish ulama treat jihad al-talab - wars of aggression - as the sixth pillar of Islam. They rendered lawful what Allah prohibited; by endorsing wars of aggression to propagate religion "by the sword," the ulema plunged the umma into trauma. For wars of aggression, which required Muslim to become aggressors, triggered retaliation by non-Muslims. The retaliation by the Mongols triggered by the abhorrent treatment of Mongol traders and ambassadors, vanquished the Abbasid caliphate. The peaceful co-existence of the umma within the "global village" requires a reassessment of traditional exegesis and jurisprudence, as well as the resultant perceptions of revelation, to bring them into compliance with the teaching of revelation. Accordingly, it is necessary to reject hawkish renditions of religion and return to the Book of Allah. Thomas Kuhn argued in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions that science evolves through a set of revolutions, where a scientific paradigm is replaced by a paradigm that explains reality better. This takes place when a person discovers an aberration or anomaly in the existing paradigm. The repression of reason exposed exegesis and jurisprudence to corruption by a range of aberrations. The aberrations encompass the treatment of tradition as revelation, recourse to the teaching of abrogation, and the rendition of Islam as a "religion of war." The latter was engineered by recourse to the teaching of the abrogation of the peace verses by the verse of the sword. The turn to tradition and the teaching of abrogation, enabled by the repression of reason, were triggered by expansionary ambitions of hawkish rulers. Reform will require a return to revelation, the desacralization of tradition and the rehabilitation and re-engagement of reason.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0BQY4BZVL
• ISBN13: 9798370892417
• Release Date: December 2022
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 172 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"