IT IS DIFFICULT to speak of the value of creed (‘aqidah) in the modern world. The best argument that people could muster is that this is part of the ‘religious’ and cultural landscape of the Muslims and hence should be preserved as part of their ‘right’ or ‘freedom’ just as they have any right towards anything. Yet the centrality of creed in the Muslim life is hardly as marginal as it is made out to be today. The very word ‘aqidah, which literally means something which has been firmly tied with a knot, implies the gravity of the concept in the religion of Islam. It stems from the word ‘aqada, which means to tie something with a knot. Indeed, salvation depends on having the correct ‘aqidah. The Qur’an emphatically condemns those who forfeit their faith for a trifling price.
Here, one seems to be in more familiar grounds: the age-old debate of ‘reason’ versus ‘revelation’. But actually this juxtaposition is an ill-posed one. To start with, one should not think of in these terms. The Qur’an itself exhorts the believers to think, to ponder and to reflect upon the ‘signs’ of God. The Qur’an is meant “for a people who think”, “for those who know”, and “for those who reflect”. The degree of those who are knowledgeable is raised above the rest: “Are they equal those who know and those who do not know?” When the pagan Arabs of Makkah refused to listen to the Prophet, clinging instead, to the beliefs of their fathers and grandfathers, despite knowing well that these were mistaken, the Qur’an severely castigated them. Thus thinking is not a problem; only when people think incorrectly, when thinking leads to error.
Classical Islamic scholarship likewise makes this abundantly clear. The use of logic, for example, was incorporated into mainstream religious scholarship quite early. When Abu Hassan al-Ash’ari reportedly dreamt about the Prophet, at a time when logic was condemned by many scholars, he was told to maintain this discipline to the service of Islam. As a result, this science saturates Islamic scholarship in all its many branches. Logic (mantiq) became a prerequisite to the study of theology (‘ilm al-kalam). Works of theology typically begin with expositions on logic, such as Sa’d al-Din al-Taftazani’s Tahdhib al-Mantiq wa al-Kalam (The Refinement of Logic and Theology). The illuminationist theosopher, Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi, in his scale of seekers, placed at the peak of the hierarchy those who are able to realize mystic truth and translate this to ordinary experience through the use of reason.
Belief is in fact the foundation of knowledge. The eminent contemporary scholar Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas made this very clear in his commentary on the ‘Aqa’id al-Nasafi (Creed of Nasafi) when he asserts that Islam itself is a religion based on knowledge, and thus to deny the possibility of knowledge or the objectivity of reality is to destroy the very foundations of Islam itself. Nasafi’s ‘Aqa’id, different from many other theological works, begins with a solid affirmation of the possibility of knowledge, controverting the ultra-sceptical sophists—the classical equivalent of modern-day nihilists—of the time.
At a time when knowledge today is confronted with profound crisis, from the clashes of “the two cultures” (CP Snow) to the problem of blinkered specialisation, the metaphysical component offered through the doorways of theology becomes even more urgent and pressing. Pure metaphysics has been revealed throughout history and all religions are not without a fair share of this metaphysical knowledge. But in the Islamic context, metaphysics is not completely severed from the particularly religious viewpoint. Throughout Islamic intellectual history, Muslim scholars term metaphysics as ‘ilm al-ilahiyyat, or literally, the ‘science of the divine’, the ‘divine science’ or ‘science of God’, which is ‘theology’ in its proper etymological sense.
Yet to think that creed is an exclusively post-humous affair is a serious and egregious error. As the foundation of knowledge, these theological formulations are meant to be understood and reflected on, not merely brushed aside as irrelevant. This is especially so since contemporary knowledge and sciences are built upon assumptions that may potentially come into conflict with these values. These assumptions then need to be challenged, not because they were ‘against ‘aqidah’ (this being merely a particularly religious expression of a universal idea), nor because they were ‘un-Islamic’ (this being a recent pejorative term), but because they were, quite simply, wrong and will lead to error.
Gradually the kalam project attracted dissidents and protesters. In a famous letter by the great Sufi Muhy al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi to the great theologian, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, the former asked him to forgo his obsessions with debates and argumentation, and pursue instead the spiritual path of the Sufis to purify himself of worldly abasements. Razi was later to realize this, though towards the end of his life.
But this project was not left to reason alone – along the way, mystical insights, especially those after the great Shaykh al-Akbar, Ibn ‘Arabi, crept into its discourse thus endowing it with rich supra-rational and trans-logical verities, prepared to confront he fallacies of reason, whenever they occur, from higher cognitive grounds. Later in the 18th century, the Indian mystic-philosopher and reformist scholar, Shah Wali Allah of Delhi, propounded what he called the ‘science of the subtle meanings of religion’ (‘ilm asrar al-din), which was meant to supply the truth of Islam with the robe of demonstrative proof.
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