Saturday 20 May 2017

SURAH AL-BAQARAH 275: Part 3

In the third sentence Allah Ta'alah has replied to the argument by the non-believers that trading is like Riba, by saying that these people say that trading and Riba are the same while Allah has declared trading to be Halal and has declared Riba to be Hara'am. It must be noted that while the non-believers' argument was based on reason, Allah Ta'alah has said the He is the absolute sovereign Master of all and He alone knows the harm and benefit, the good and bad of everything most comprehensively. When he declares something to be Halal, and something else to be Hara'm, you should immediately realise that there must be some harm or evil in that which has been declared Hara'am.

People make two kind of mistakes about how much of a role Reason has in Deen (religion). Some people are at one extreme who believe that Reason has absolutely no role in Deen. Whatever they have heard from their forefathers or the traditions that have been running in their family are total absolutes,  and it is going against religion to question those traditions. They believe that asking a question about religion is blasphemy. On the other extreme there are people that their own intellect and reason is the ultimate filter for Deen, they will only accept those injunctions that makes sense to them, and if they cannot understand an injunction they will not accept it. For these people the ultimate gold standard in religion is not Quran and Hadith, but their own intellect.

Wise elders have said that everybody's Iman (faith) is different. For a person who has shepherded sheep all his life, who has never read a book, and has never tried to gain any knowledge besides what he needs to know about herding sheep, it is best to accept Iman at face value. If he tries to delve deeper into theological issues he may get confused because he may not have the background pre-requisite knowledge required for understanding these issues. However, for an intelligent person who is well read and has received formal education it is preferable to try to read and learn as much about religion as he can before he accepts the faith. Otherwise if he just accepts religion at face value he will always remain in doubt whether he would have reached a different conclusion if he had thoroughly researched it.

But once this second person has reached peace within himself and has embraced Iman then he too has to accept the whole framework of Deen. He then can't say about every individual item that first someone needs to explain the reasoning behind this injunction to me, and only then I will accept it, for example, why are there 2 Rika'at in Fajr Salah, 3 in Maghrib and 4 in Isha? A suitable analogy would be someone joining a new employment. He may make all sorts of enquiries before they join, but once he does join then he can't ask the reasoning behind every single rule at work and insist that he will follow only those rules that will make sense to him.

Similarly, it is entirely up to a person to make all sorts of enquiries and do all sorts of research before they embrace faith. But once they genuinely start believing that Allah Ta'alah is the Creator of this entire universe and all the creations in it, that Allah Ta'alah knows best what is good or bad for all His creations, how can they then ask Allah Ta'alah to explain the reasoning behind each and every single one of His injunctions before the person will accept them? Either we believe that Allah Ta'alah has created us and He knows all while our knowledge is imperfect, or we don't. 

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