Forgotten Aspects of Islamic Worship, Part 2: Encyclopedia of Islamic Doctrine, Vol. 7 (Encyclopedia of Islamic Doctrine Vol. 7) - Softcover

Muhammad Hisham Kabbani

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9781871031881: Forgotten Aspects of Islamic Worship, Part 2: Encyclopedia of Islamic Doctrine, Vol. 7 (Encyclopedia of Islamic Doctrine Vol. 7)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1871031885 ISBN 13: 9781871031881

Publisher: Kazi Publications, Inc., 1998

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Have you ever wondered: What are the mainstream Islamic rulings on certain aspects of ablution? What is the sunna of carrying a cane? What is the view of mainstream Islam on kissing the hand of a religious scholar or elder? What is the view of mainstream Islam on allegiance to imams? Read the evidence and decide for yourself.

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About the Author:

Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani is a scholar from the Middle East. he graduated with a B. A. in chemistry from the American University College of Beirut and then went to Louvain, Belgium to continue his medical studies. He later received his Islamic Law degree from Damascus.

Review:

Normative Islam has over the centuries included schools of law, both Sunni and Shiite, schools of thought, both theological and philosophical, and Sufism in its multifarious manifestations. All of these schools and their teachings have together constituted Islamic orthodoxy and tradition understood in the universal sense of these terms. There have been differences of interpretation in nearly every domain from the legal to the theological and philosophical, to the esoteric. And there have been even cases of confrontation as between Asharite and Mutazilite kalam, or kalam and falsafah or the view of certain doctors of the law and Sufism. Nevertheless all of these schools are bound to the teachings of the Noble Quran and the Sunnah and Hadith of the Blessed Prophet and the traditions followed by the generations that followed the Companions of God's last Prophet. Islam demonstrated remarkable latitude during most of its history towards differences in the interpretation of aqaid. Where there was social and political conflict of an apparently religious nature, it came usually as a result of social and political forces using different religious interpretations as ways of legitimizing or strengthening their power. In comparison with the West, during the periods when religion was strong in that world, very few people have lost their lives in the Islamic world because of differences of interpretation of the tenets of the religion, although a number have fled or gone into exile from time to time. That is not to say that there were no tragic episodes, as the cases of al-Hallaj and Suhrawardi demonstrate, or religious wars such as between the Ottomans and Safavids where different interpretations within the general orthodoxy of Islam were used as emblems of identity. But the universal orthodoxy of traditional Islam, embracing all the levels mentioned above, always prevailed and both sides of such conflicts usually lived and functioned within the framework of traditional Islam.

It remained for modern times for this universal orthodoxy to be attacked not only from without by the forces of modernism emanating from a secularized West but also from within by so called reform movements which in the name of purifying Islam set out to destroy that universal orthodoxy on the basis of their own narrow interpretation of Islam and as a pretext to return to the purity of the salaf or ancestors. Meanwhile, such movements started an aggressive opposition to Sufism, to kalam and philosophy or the whole of the Islamic intellectual tradition, to Shiism, to nearly all the Islamic arts and sciences and even to whatever in the Sunni tradition did not agree with their views, much of which was a veritable innovation (bidah) in the Islamic sense of the term. This opposition from within did much to weaken the Islamic world both religiously and intellectually, making it a great deal easier for the forces of modernism to dominate much of the Islamic world through the process of divide and conquer.

During the past half century the tide has begun to turn against this kind of divisive thinking among the most notable Islamic scholars both Sunni and Shiite. Nearly fifty years ago the Shaykh al-Azhar Mahmud Shaltut issued a religious edict (fatwa) about the orthodox nature of the Jafari or Twelve-Imam school of law which began to be taught at al-Azhar from that time onward and at the same time Iranian universities began to teach Sunni law especially of the Shafii and Hanbali schools. Furthermore, many younger educated Muslims, including the majority of the most intelligent and devout, have begun to realize that, far from having been an innovation and deviation, authentic Sufism is the heart of the Islamic message, its tariqah, and the inner force that had preserved Islam in the face of the onslaught of various alien ideas upon the Muslim mind and --Anonymous Reviewer

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