MUSLIMS & THE STRAIGHT PATH: Part - 1-I - Getting Out of Dogma-Bound Minds

Muslims & The Straight Path  [Published 2010]

Part - 1-I

GETTING OUT OF DOGMA-BOUND MINDS

It is very difficult for Muslims to accept new ideas and concepts in the rigid structure of their dogma-bound minds, especially if such ideas are unorthodox and heretical. The nadir to which the society has reached, including their so-called clergy who is far aloof from modern and scientific thinking, can be seen from the fatwa regarding a couple’s sleeping on a double bed. The maulvi, unmindful of the fact that he was using modern vehicles of transportation for traveling and not horses and camels, he slept under an electric fan and not under open sky and read from modern day printed books and not scrolls written on tablets or sheep-skin, gave a fatwa that it was unIslamic to sleep on double-bed as there were no double-beds in Prophet’s time.

Such pathetic mindset exists despite the fact that Islam has tried to make the Muslims as progressive as possible. It was due to its enlightened Islamic teachings alone that the Muslim world became the torch-bearers of learning and modern sciences for the first 200 years after Prophet. The entire world learnt from the heights to which various sciences were taken by the Muslims. This was possible through heightened spirituality and true understanding of Islam. The Prophet even commanded the Muslims to go to China, if required, in pursuit of higher learning. China, at no point in history, was capable of providing religious Islamic knowledge to the pursuers. If the Last Prophet of Islam asked the Muslims to pursue all type of world knowledge, this can be contrasted with the present day Indian Muslims who are so dogma-bound and engrossed in traditions that they are averse to learn anything else other than religious scriptures; those too, we will show later in this compilation, they have been unable to understand till date.

Within a span of 23 years during which the Quran was revealed, a need was felt to abrogate some verses of Quran and new verses were revealed. This shows that change has to be a constant process and if need for change can be felt by the Prophet and by the God (as Quran is considered to be a divine revelation), then why are the Muslims not ready for change any further.

Writes Baig: “It would seem logical to assume that if Mohammad were alive he would have wished that those entirely secular, administrative, and social injunctions which are no longer valid be suitably changed. Moreover, the Quran itself pragmatically modified and amended many of its own injunctions as the Muslim understanding matured and the community grew stronger. Mohammad during his lifetime gave many examples of pragmatism and if Muslims would follow such “traditions” and not only those which are rigid, Indian Islam and the way of life of Muslim Indians can be brought into conformity with contemporary Indian conditions.”

Baig says this because he too has been unable understand the real teachings of Islam. Quran completed the teachings of Islam and they were to remain valid till the Day of Judgment. However, if God felt the need to modify or amend certain of His own injunctions during the 23 years in which Quran was revealed, it was supposed to be a message to the Muslims that during all times there will crop up issues which cannot be solved by merely past precedents. Islam wanted to make Muslims as enlightened, reasonable and forward-looking as possible. The worse part is that those considered the guardians of faith – the ulemas - are the most orthodox of all and least willing to accept change. Expecting from these guardians of orthodoxy to make the life of modern-day Muslims less orthodox would be to expect the impossible. So this is how Muslims are in a blind alley. And they will remain there, forsaken and forgotten, until they realize that the way out exists, if only they look for it.

MRA Baig writes: “But even if the present generation of Muslim Indians refuses to face reality and to change their attitudes towards the past, present and future, the compulsion of events will force the next generation to do so. Among them dogma of any kind has lost its hold and is associated with unreality and delusion; rites and rituals now invite revulsion, and conformism provokes derision. Even those with faith find it increasingly difficult to reconcile science with religion or to justify time-honoured customs. The more the elders keep unchanging and inadaptable and cling to exploded beliefs or outworn customs, the greater is their alienation from the young and, consequently, the lesser is the speed of our progress and the chances of saving what was good in the past.”

In order to keep pace with time and the consequent changes that ceaselessly moving wheel of time brings, Prophet Mohammad had asked the Muslims to follow the path of his truthful and righteous successors of learning – the Ahlul-bayt. A system of ijtihad was developed to allow the Muslims to keep pace with time. Despite this, the Muslims still find themselves in a blind alley. Have we lost some vital links during the progress of time after the Prophet so that Islam got transformed into what Muslims of today present it to be? Shortly you will see that this is factually correct!