Diversity of Islamic Thought: Coming to Terms by Pervaiz Asghar ISBN 9781729110362, 1729110363 instant download

Diversity of Islamic Thought: Coming to Terms by Pervaiz Asghar ISBN 9781729110362, 1729110363 instant download

The one issue that intrigued me during my formative years was not so much the tendency to inherit one's religious beliefs, but the vigour with which one tended to defend one's own turf, while belittling the similarly inherited beliefs of others. It seemed to me that if there was but one standard answer as to the correctness of a specific belief system, all thinking minds should have gravitated towards this obvious solution. The religion of Islam, which stands for 'submission to the will of God' and for 'peace' is unfortunately in the spotlight for quite some time for all the wrong reasons. The volatile mix of religion, which is moralistic in character, and politics, which is opportunistic in nature, is precisely what has been afflicting Islam since the times of the early Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties. In the way that it is practised, Islam is by no means a monolithic faith, nor is it simplistically divided into the Sunni and Shia belief systems, as commonly perceived. Apart from politically inspired causes, differences primarily stem from interpretation, which spill over from the Quranic domain to the field of Prophetic traditions (Hadiths). The centrality of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) to the religion of Islam cannot be ignored, as the Quran not only extols him as a 'perfect exemplar' and as a 'mercy to all mankind', but repeatedly exhorts the believers to 'obey Allah' and 'obey His Prophet' in the same breath. The authenticity of the Prophets' traditions is however exclusively based, as per the Sunni Muslim perspective, on the chain of transmission, rather than its subject matter. Considering that there were literally tens of thousands of fabricated traditions floating around by the time concerted efforts for their collection were initiated, it seems surprising that many, if not most, Islamic scholars have used 'hadiths' to supplant rather than supplement the word of God. The diversity in Islamic thought over the ages is on display in this book. The first seven cha