‘Our backwardness not new’

Other Voices

WBy Ahmad alsarraf

e, in the Arab and Islamic worlds, have a real problem related to our backwardness in every field without exception.

There are many interpretations and conflicting views on this backwardness, or the circumstances that have taken us to the doorstep of this phenomenon and it is our inability to do something to change the tragic reality in which we live.

I humbly believe the issue is mainly due to two reasons – one, we have failed for centuries to make the religious text more flexible and appropriate to go hand in hand with times and the necessities of the current life which are constantly evolving and changing and two, our insistence and reasoning of the religious text.

The Mu’tazila movement founded in Basra and strengthened during the Abbasid era which relied on reason to make the faith strong. They rejected the “Hadith” (Saying of the Prophet PBUH) that are not accepted by the reason and said that God should be known through the reason even if this is not mentioned in religious text and if the text contradicts the reason, the latter should prevail because it is the origin of the text. Good and ugliness must be known through reason.

This revolutionary talk at the time was not welcomed by some Asharites who are intellectually against Mutazilites, which called for the primacy of the text on the ground that is a mere tool to understand the text.

It was only natural that this new ideology would be accepted by the rulers at that time and over time it contributed to the peace between the ruler and his subjects because of the submission of the subjects and their inability to ask the ruler about anything, and as a result the peoples conceded to their reality, even if it was tragic.

As a result, the Ash’ari thought dominated the majority of religious institutions in the Levant and the West since that time. The Al-Zaytoonah

alsarraf

University, the Al-Azhar Foundation and the Muslim Brotherhood Organization are among the most influential of the Ash’arites and the promoters of this thought. The Asharites also had a strong presence in Saudi Arabia, including senior officials and politicians. The Ash’ari movement came as a counter thought to the Mu’tazilites that grew up with the late Umayyad era and flourished in the Abbasid era.

One of the results of the spread of such thought for about a thousand years ago with the adoption of Imam Abu Hamed al-Ghazali ideas of the Asharites, the reason was shelved. Other senior and influential clerics walked in the way of Abu Hamed alGhazali and publicly advocated that the human reason is totally ineligible for criticism and research, and that Muslims should accept the text alone, and jurisprudence must be only in the narrowest limits allowed by the text. We must not think about the cause of illness or cause of disasters for everything has a cause, and Muslims must accept poverty and disease, and not ask a lot of questions.

Renowned thinkers such as Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina and Al-Farabi and contemporary Al-Ghazali, opposed the Asharites, so they were eliminated after accusing them of infidelity. The authorities starting from the Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma’moun until today see that what was promoted by the Asharites to support their rule because they promote the rule that reason is incapable to critical thinking so we must accept and applaud the ruler, or supreme leader.

Accordingly, the Western intelligence found in the ideas of the Asharites a treasure, and retrieved the ideas of the “dead Islamic scholars in their service to control the Arab and Islamic countries, and openly and secretly support the establishment of religious parties (the Muslim Brotherhood example) and support them financially and morally and encourage them to spread these ideas and instill in them to become part of the ArabIslamic personality.

Now, do you want to see the Brotherhood in power?

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