DR. AJI HOESODO
THE MEANING OF RELIGION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH REVELATION
Religion (din) is an all-round movement in the light of faith in Allah and a sense of responsibility for the formation of thought and belief, for the promotion of high principles of human morality for the establishment of good relations among members of the society and the elimination of every sort of undue discrimination.
Religion. There is no doubt that each member of the human race is naturally drawn to his fellow-men and that in his life in society he acts in ways which are interrelated and interconnected. One cannot perform just any act in any place or after any other act. There is an order which must be observed.
There is, therefore, an order which governs the actions man performs in the journey of this life, an order against which his actions cannot rebel. In reality, these acts all originate from a distinct source. That source is man’s desire to possess a felicitous life, a life in which he can reach to the greatest extent possible the objects of his desire, and be gratified. Or, one could say that man wishes to provide in a more complete way for his needs in order to continue his existence.
This is why man continually conforms his actions to rules and laws either devised by himself or accepted from others, and why he selects a particular way of life for himself among all the other existing possibilities. He works in order to provide for his means of livelihood and expects his activities to be guided by laws and regulations that must be followed. In order to satisfy his sense of taste and overcome hunger and thirst, he eats and drinks, for he considers eating and drinking necessary for the continuation of his own happy existence. This rule could be multiplied by many other instances.
The totality of these fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of man and the Universe, and regulations in conformity with them which are applied to human life, is called religion (din). If there are divergences in these fundamental beliefs and regulations, they are called schools such as the Sunni and Shi’ite schools in Islam and the Nestorian in Christianity. We can therefore say that man, even if he does not believe in the Deity, can never be without religion if we recognize religion as a program for life based on firm belief. Religion can never be separated from life and is not simply a matter of ceremonial acts.
Divine revelation plays a very important role in the Muslim faith. While religious books of most faiths acknowledge their human author’s contribution to the divine text, the Qur’an claims to have been revealed word by word and letter by letter. The Qur’an is therefore, no doubt, a milestone in the development of revelation literature, and its authenticity is not seriously questioned Islam knows different forms and degrees of divine revelation. See for example.
Muslims believe that God revealed his final message to humanity through Muhammad ibn Abdullah (c. 570 – July 6, 632) via the angel Gabriel. Muhammad is considered to have been God’s final prophet, the “Seal of the Prophets“. The revelations Muhammad preached form the holy book of Islam, the Qur’an. The Qur’an is believed to be the flawless final revelation of God to humanity, valid until the day of the Resurrection.
Muslims hold that the message of Islam – submission to the will of the one God – is the same as the message preached by all the messengers sent by God to humanity since Adam. From an Islamic point of view, Islam is the oldest of the monotheistic religions because it represents both the original and the final revelation of God to Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Members of all sects of Islam believe that the Qur’an codifies the direct words of God.
According to Islamic traditions, Muhammad began receiving revelations from God (Arabic: ألله Allah) from the age of 40, delivered through the angel Gabriel over the last 23 years of his life. The content of these revelations, known as the Qur’an, was memorized and recorded by his followers and compiled into a single volume shortly after his death. The Qur’an, along with the details of Muhammad’s life as recounted by his biographers and his contemporaries, forms the basis of Islami. Muslims do not regard him as the founder of a new religion but as the restorer of the original monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham and other prophets whose messages had become misinterpreted or corrupted over time (only misinterpreted according to some).
the rationality or rationalization of religion
Men have long argued over the authority that human intellect has in relation to the Divine.
The Greek philosophers are known to have impressed upon man’s ability to use logic and thus, make rational decisions. These philosophers endeavoured to induce men to not only use his intellect regarding affairs pertaining to the material world but also to the metaphysical one. A lot of social sciences built up their premises over man’s rationality alone. Essentially, this idea gradually crept into and influenced the understanding of many a Muslim scholar. Some of them, however, rejected the very idea of rationalism; they discovered an ingenious and supernatural source for making sense of the ‘reality’—Ilham (inspiration). Still another group, however, adopted a reasonable approach by not over-estimating their fragile intellect, as concerns its understanding of the workings of the Divine and thus, they effectively confined themselves to rely on the Divine Scriptures to comprehend how the Divine partakes in human life.
Imam Ghazali’s Point of View
According to Imam Ghazali, the rationality that abounds and obsesses many intellectuals is acceptable, but only as relative to the senses. These are, in turn, subject to the necessary truths, provided by the Divine inspirations – a presentation of ‘rationality’ which restrains man’s intellect with the manacles of inspirations. He is reported to have written in his autobiography, ‘Deliverance from Error’:
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, on the other hand, completely rejected this dependence of scientific proof and rationality on intuition. He questioned how two contradicting reports of mystic experiences could be accepted altogether. One had to be right, and for that, no intuition would help as it was intuition itself that bore the responsibility of the paradox. In his opinion, thus, the contradiction of the reports of mystic experience is proverbial. What criterion is there by which we can determine which of them are true and which false? Naturally, we have nothing else but reason to decide the matter’.
If I were to act in an absolutely rational manner, without consciously taking into consideration any Divine source, I would ironically be inclined to accept that both reason and innate inclinations (the God-given a priori considerations, which one cannot seem to part with) would help me make the right decision in matters of faith, rituals and life in general. Alternately, if I were to make reason subordinate to something, I would choose God’s Scripture and His guidance therein, as that ‘something’, again, ironically, without any Ilham (inspiration), as suggested by Ghazali, to be a decisive authority. Both such approaches would be subject to criticism by different scholars of Islam. However, all would agree, and very rightly so, that the Qur’an and Sunnah alone can help us establish a view most authentic in terms of its acceptability by God Almighty.
As far as the help of mystical experiences is concerned in acquiring both worldly and religious guidance, the Sunnah of the Prophet (sws) provides us with no leeway to that end. Furthermore, we look at the lives of the Companions (rta) of the Prophet (sws). They were the best of believers and they faltered like Adam (sws) faltered in the beginning, they observed like Abraham (sws) observed the stars. But as they recited from the Qur’an, they submitted to the Divine Truth; they surrendered the supreme reasoning faculty before the Divine Word and professed faith in Allah and the Hereafter without actually having seen them. Reason, they did exercise, but as regards the matters beyond the scope of Divine Guidance – an exercise in which they also observed the norms of innate guidance. In summary, reason, in conjunction with innate guidance, does have authority over the senses but Divine Guidance reigns supreme as regards the matters which it has specifically addressed.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REASON AND FAITH
The Our’an is believed by Muslims to be the Book revealed by Allah to the unschooled Prophet Muhammad as well as kept preserved in its original form for all times to come. Obviously, faith is an important element of the religion of Islam. Initially, it insists on a few basic articles of faith such as Unity of Allah, Prophethood of Muhammad, divine origin of the Qur’an, life after death, accountability of the individual for his deeds, etc. Beyond faith, it leaves the mind of Muslims free to observe, contemplate, assimilate and draw inferences. Moreover, the faith the Our’an builds in men is not at all blind or arbitrary. It is rather sought to be substantiated by the dictates of reason and intellect.
The concept of reason that doesn’t deny God, on the other hand, is intrinsically connected with faith. In the Qur’an, reason is presented as the only valid foundation for faith as well as action. The Our’anic worldview is basically rational; irrational thinking and irrational behaviour are condemned and tantamount to disbelief.
The question of faith and reason is present in Islamic theology where the Mu’tazilites very early stated that the only avenue to knowing God is through ‘reason’ and the only avenue to understanding God’s revelation, the Qur’an, is by interpreting divine action as rational; rationality is the law according to which God acts and according to which humans should act and judge.
From this particular point of view the Our’an itself is a unique blend of faith and reason, religion and philosophy. In summing up it may fairly be said that in Islam both reason and faith or rationalism and traditionalism are interlinked and interdependent. They are also found to be supportive of each other. None of the two can be separated from the other without causing untold suffering to humanity. It was mainly because of this balanced combination that Islam as an educational force not only inspired Muslims to cultivate knowledge and learning, but also infused in them the spirit of scientific enquiry which is the very life and soul, of modern sciences.
Ilm Al-kalam and interpretation of religion
ILM al-KALAM, one of the ‘religious sciences’ of Islam. The term is usually translated, as an approximate rendering, ‘theology’.
The doctors of kalam (mutakallimun) were to take a view: this is one of many well-known definitions: ‘kalam is the science which is concerned with firmly establishing religious beliefs by adducing proofs and with banishing doubts’ (from the Mawaqif of al-_dhi, 8th/14th cent.).
‘Ilm al-kalam is the discipline which brings to the service of religious beliefs (‘aqa’id) discursive arguments; which thus provides a place for reflexion and meditation, and hence for reason, in the elucidation and defence of the content of the faith. It takes its stand firstly against ‘doubters and deniers’, and its function as defensive ‘apologia’ cannot be over-stressed. A fairly common synonymous term is ‘ilm al-tawhid, the ’science of the Unity (of God)’, understood as concerned not merely with the divine unity but with all the bases of the Muslim faith, especially prophecy (e.g., al-Dhurdhani, Sharh al-Mawaqif, ed. Cairo 13t5, i, t6).
Another interpretation sometimes suggested explains ‘ilm al-kalam as ’science of the Word of God’. The attribute of the Word and the nature of the qur’an were indeed among the first themes treated, and discussions on this subject continued throughout the centuries. But this was by no means the first question undertaken (see below, a II) nor that later treated at most length. It seems much more likely that kalam referred at first to discursive arguments, and the mutakallimun (‘loquentes’) were ‘reasoners’. This was the case as early as the time of Ma’bad al-Dhuhani (d. 80/699-700). Kalam became a regular discipline when these arguments and discussions dealt with the content of the faith. It is this character of discursive and reasoned apologia which was to attract the attacks both of the traditionists and of the falasifa.
Are religious interpretations religion itself
Interpretations of religion or “religious hermeneutics” is another branch of religious research. The followers of this school believe in the validity and effectiveness of all the presuppositions of every interpreter of religion when he attempts to understand a sacred text. In the various modern interpretations of religion there are numerous perspectives, the most important of which are held by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Religious interpretations we mean that form of interpretations which is concerned with any of the problems of a religious nature within a particular religion. Needless to say religious interpretations, like other forms of interpretations, must have reliable sources from which the raw material of its interpretations originates and upon which it depends.
The single source upon which the divinely revealed religion of Islam depends and upon which it is based, in as much as it is based on a revelation of celestial origin, is none other than the Holy Qur’an. It is the Qur’an which is the definitive testament of the universal and ever-living prophet hood of the Prophet and it is the content of the Qur’an that bears the substance of the Islamic call. Of course the fact that the Qur’an is alone the source of Islamic religious thought does not eliminate other sources and origins of correct thinking.
It has become clear from what has been said thus far that the Holy Qur’an, which is the principal source of religious thought in Islam has given full authority to the external meanings of its words for those who give ear to its message. The same external meaning of the Qur’anic verses has made the sayings of the Prophet complementary to the words of the Qur’an and has declared them to be authoritative like the Qur’an.
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