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My friend, the educated scholar, called me and said: I agree with what you stated in your article last Wednesday about enlightenment and its definition.
I said: I am interested in your participation in the dialogue, and in adding a mature opinion with experience to my conversations with them. And here, one of the youth asked me a question that only comes from conscious youth, after repeated attempts to link every scientific discovery with what came in the Noble Qur’an, saying:
Is the Holy Qur’an a religious book or a scientific book? I said to him: Whoever tries to prove that the Qur’an is from God in the sense that it is a book of knowledge, after every scientific discovery or new knowledge of the universe, is taking a wrong path from my point of view because, neither God Almighty nor His Holy Book needs proof from scientific discoveries that may be true today and may be proven wrong tomorrow..nor do we as believers need this proof as well. What do you think?
My educated friend told me:
This question is frequently asked by some advocates of enlightenment, Dr. Hossam, and the enlightenment movement itself, as you mentioned in your previous article, is a cultural intellectual movement that came to light in Europe as a movement against the domination of the church and the authority of the clergy over freedom of thought and belief. Using the scientific method of thinking, that the function of religion and the role of the church is to regulate the relationship of human beings with their Lord only to obtain the prize in eternal life, without them having any involvement in managing the affairs of worldly life and the civil state with its natural sciences and legal legislation.
And if this was a European concept for centuries because of the pervasiveness of the authority of the Church and the clergy over people’s lives, and because of the merging of the authority of government and the authority of the Catholic Church, it is not understood at all in the context of the Islamic religion, whose texts we have never known about the exercise of such authority or the infringement of the laws of civil life On the contrary, all the Qur’anic and authentic texts from the Sunnah encourage the realization of the mind in all matters of our world. Rather, the Holy Prophet said to us, “You know best about your worldly affairs,” or as he said, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, and therefore there is no priesthood in Islam and the Islamic religion does not allow domination. Or the exercise of worldly authority in the name of religion, even in the era of the caliphate. It is true that there are old and new attempts by some extremists or opportunists to politicize religion and use it for political gain, but it remains a minority of Muslims amid an overwhelming majority of those who reject this.
I said: I may disagree with you, for religion has been used and many hadiths attributed to the Prophet have been repeated to serve political rule through the ages, but: Come back to the question: Is the Holy Qur’an a book of religion or a book of religion and science?
He said: The truth is that before we answer the question, let us agree on some essential points: First, that God is the creator of the universe, and he is the one who set his laws for him in all his wonderful system, and he is the one who revealed the Qur’an to all human beings at all times, and we must not limit its meanings according to the area of knowledge of the ancients. Just.
Second: that the Qur’an contains scientific, biological, and cosmic gestures, illumination, and signs.. If God is the Exalted in His power, the Creator of everything, its direction, and the author of its laws, then according to belief in Him, He will not be unable to include some of His infinite knowledge in some verses of the Qur’an for people to contemplate over time.
And it is not strange at all that some facts of science in some verses correspond to the discoveries of modern science.. because the whole story is that our understanding of what came in the Qur’an is deficient in its translation and interpretation.. And when we have the tools to probe the depths of the verses and measure them with the scale of science, even if its interpretation collides with science in Any time, it is the result of misinterpretation, misunderstanding and translation, and not an error or deficiency of the text itself.
Thus, the Qur’anic text remains free from all shortcomings.. It remains the most expressive of meanings and purposes.. As for our understanding of it and our interpretation of its meanings, it is different, because understanding, interpretation and interpretation are human actions that are subject to human law, right and wrong.
I said: Some clergymen still fear the use of reason regarding the existence of God and the unseen, that it may lead the weak of minds to atheism and the general people to chaos, as the philosopher Espinoza said. Therefore, it is better for those who are not firmly rooted in science, faith and obedience, and there is no need to introduce scientific thinking into theology, which is something that the pioneers of the Enlightenment in the dark ages rejected, and before them Ibn Rushd and after them in the modern era, many were accused of blasphemy or atheism.
One of the young people who followed the dialogue replied: Doesn’t development sometimes mean change, and does human life now have any resemblance to human life during the days of the revelation of the Qur’an?
His colleague said: I do not understand, Doctor, our desire to develop the religious discourse advocated by the country’s leadership, without including religious understanding and changing concepts that have settled in minds and have become an obstacle to progress.. That is, religious dialogue will not develop except by deviating from many of the beliefs he thinks. It is religious and it is acquired from human beings like us and not from its origins.
I said: I do not claim what I have no knowledge of, but from the method of thinking and observation, even the Companions who lived with our master Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, and those who came after them, were not literally bound by much of what was happening in his life or his biography or his commandments. And if the matter was otherwise, they would not have collected the Qur’an at all, and would not have arranged it in this order, and would not have written it down in one Mushaf, and they would not have put fixed names for the surahs, and they would not have differentiated between the surahs with basmalah, and they would not have added pointing and tanween, and they would not have confirmed the date with the lunar Hijri calendar, and they would not have moved the capital From Medina to Damascus and then Baghdad, and when they collected the hadiths of the Messenger and wrote them down in the Sahih, and the Messenger himself said, “Do not write on my behalf other than the Qur’an, and whoever wrote on my behalf other than the Qur’an, let him erase it” (Sahih Muslim). In summary, if the companions and followers had adhered to the Sunnah of the Messenger, his biography and his commandments, there would not be much of what we are arguing about now, and there would be no such thing as the caliphate as a basis, a system of government that some companions adopted according to their knowledge and Muawiyah replaced it with a royal system in which the rule is inherited within the same family.
I think that the most thing that threatens Islam today is the fear of dialogue and the use of reason as if it is a religion that must be protected from specialists only, and it is the one that God Almighty protects.
As we understand.
The confused young man said: I mean, what are we doing?! We listen and obey, so we are accused of being like a herd, and some of us are recruited through the obedience methodology and turned into strangers from society, rather terrorists, according to some.
I said: Religion is in the place of man himself, my son, and his relationship with his personal and spiritual Lord, and its beauty in what it gives us of happiness, self-satisfaction, contentment and love of life in all its forms.
As for the conduct of people’s lives, positive law is the basis, and it is derived from values over which no religion differs.
In governing the country politically, in citizenship and in the rights of non-Muslim citizens, the constitution is the basis.
No one has the right to impose his religion on others.
No one has the right to punish another citizen for what he thinks is a departure from his faith and belief.
Punishment and civil reward in its place is the judiciary, not the Dar Al Iftaa.
Of course, my respect for myself, my religion, and my belief calls me to respect the beliefs of others.
My mind is the wisest in what I read and hear and what is truer of hadiths.
And if I have doubts, then I search and search and search and ask, and go back to references and return to myself, which I know is the same together.
I invite everyone to reach a rule that enables us to coexist with reason, thinking and faith together without contradiction, which is what we should strive for. We called it enlightenment, reform, scientific method, or development, it doesn’t matter, what matters is the meaning we agree on.
