Dr. Hossam Badrawi Official Website
Contempt of religion
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Throughout the ages, the area of knowledge has changed, and science has deepened and expanded, so that the young child knows more than the mature man knew hundreds of years ago.. This child has more inputs and uses for the human mind than his parents and grandparents. The world has become different from the world, and unfortunately we are still in the midst of battles that were logical in the past centuries, and definitely not in the twenty-first century.
Many people diagnose the dispute away from the opinion on the subject, and I mention here a saying by Professor Al-Akkad in which he says: “When we link ideas to people, we deprive ourselves of the good idea when it comes from the opposite, and we get involved in the absurd idea as long as it comes from a lover or friend.”
History says that the owner of a new idea may be considered a criminal in a puritanical cultural framework until his idea succeeds.
Ibn Rushd says that ideas have wings and their spread cannot be curbed even if we burn the books that contained them or kill the person who invented them.
Contempt is one of the terms that people fight about and end up punishing those who say a different opinion or an unfamiliar interpretation, so I searched for the meaning of the word before talking to some young “dreamers of tomorrow” about this topic.
Contempt in the dictionary is a contemptuous term, an insult, a disrespectful term, it is a word or grammatical formula that expresses a negative connotation or an opinion that degrades the value of a person or thing, and indicates a lack of respect for a person or thing.
The educated young man said: Why is anyone who says an opinion contrary to what people like him believe in a fight, rather he is accused and imprisoned, in a country whose constitution says that it is a modern civil state?
I said: It is a battle waged by some against the enlightenment of reason. Enlightenment is a term that expresses an intellectual, cultural and philosophical movement that defends rationality and logic. Without the Enlightenment, there would be no human renaissance, and people would remain imprisoned in the ideas and beliefs of their ancestors.
The future Egypt is a modern civil homeland, not a religious caliphate. Perhaps the battle between renewal and the use of reason and logic and the avoidance of interpretations said by seniors with what science made available to them in their time – still threatens the authority of some extremists, Salafists and Wahhabis that invaded Egypt, and is still pushing the country away from the modern civil state.
Enlightenment of thought includes a set of ideas summed up in: the supremacy of reason, as an essential source of knowledge, ideals such as freedom, tolerance and fraternity, constitutional rule, the separation of religious priests from the political administration of the state, tolerance, and following the scientific method of thinking.
The scientific method begins by questioning inherited beliefs without an original reference, a position highlighted by the philosopher (Immanuel Kant), in his wonderful article “Dare to Know”, saying that human protection and education lie in becoming mature, capable of relying on himself, and that He uses his mind to liberate himself from inherited beliefs or those inspired by habits, and this is his only means of modernity and advancement.
A young woman said: Why is this battle between the advocates of enlightenment and modernization and those who claim their right to protect the Islamic religion in particular?
I said: There should be no difference.. The issue was in ages when knowledge was not as available as it is today.
The young man said: What was the effect of the enmity between priests and churchmen in the dark ages in Europe, and the ideas of enlightenment that seem normal to us today, so that we may learn from the experience?
I said: The priests of the Christian religion, with their stance, spoiled the movement of history in their time. They did not win for their religion, nor did they achieve victory over their enemy. Rather, with this stance, they were like the natural door that was wide open for advocates of atheism and revolution against the church and religion together. Where they portrayed the situation as a struggle between religion and science, and not between churchmen and scholars; between reason and superstition, between light and darkness, between progress and backwardness; The concept of enlightenment meant fortification by the logic of science and rationality against this religion and its men who represent ignorance and superstition. It was necessary for science to triumph in the face of ignorance, reason to triumph in the face of superstition, and progress in the face of backwardness.
The smart young man said: But why does something like that pass to us now?!
I said: Unfortunately, the battle with all its circumstances and circumstances has moved to our world, especially in Egypt, and we must not repeat the form of the Inquisition courts in the dark ages in Europe in a new way under the name of contempt for religions or attacking everyone who tries to understand from a different perspective according to his knowledge in the twenty-first century, even if it is fair Everyone themselves made science, knowledge, and openness of mind a religion and an obligation; Neither time is time, nor is the scope of knowledge what it was.
The educated young woman said: How is someone who rejects opinions and texts that are not mentioned in the Holy Qur’an and are included in human heritage texts prosecuted?
I said: like what?
She said: A lot, including the husband’s lack of responsibility for his sick wife, the ruling on having sex with the dead wife, the permissibility of intercourse with the young in the cradle and seizing her, and allowing the prisoners to be eaten if food is not available to the armies, and to breastfeed the old, and the captivity of women when winning a war battle, or who confirms that pregnancy is when Women up to five years, and that the sun at sunset recedes under the throne of the Most Gracious, as if the earth is not spherical and that the sunset here is not a sunrise there, or that God has a hand like human hands and other opinions that my mind does not accept, Doctor.
Is there anything in refusing that that insults the Islamic religion, for God’s sake, and puts me under the law of contempt?
I said: I listen to you, so say whatever you want.. This is your right and this is my approach.
She said: Where is the modern civil state in all of this?
I said: I remind you that the law of contempt of religion was intended to prevent sectarian strife between extremist Muslims and Christians, but all issues after it were between Muslims and each other.
One of the young people following the dialogue responded by saying: Religious dialogue will only develop as a result of deviating from many beliefs that are thought to be religious, and they are acquired from people like us and not from their origins.
I said: From the method of thinking and observation; Even the Companions who lived with the Messenger, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, and those who came after them, were not bound literally by much of what was happening in his life. The surahs have fixed names, and when they separated the surahs with the Basmalah, when they added punctuation and tanween, when they approved the date according to the Hijri calendar, when they moved the capital from Medina to Damascus and then to 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 anything about me other than the Qur’an.” And whoever writes about me other than the Qur’an, let him erase it.” (Sahih Muslim).
I think that the thing that most threatens Islam today is the fear of it from dialogue and the use of reason, as if it is a religion that must be protected by specialists only, and it is what God Almighty protects as we understand.
The confused young man said: I mean, what should we do?! We listen and obey, so we are accused of being like a herd, and through the methodology of obedience, some of us are recruited and turned into strangers from society, or even terrorists, or do we think and change, so we are accused of not having sufficient knowledge or knowledge that allows us to delve into what we do not know?
I said: Religion is replaced by the human being himself, my son, so that he becomes a better human being, and his relationship with his personal and spiritual Lord. This will reflect positively on society as a whole. As for the conduct of people’s lives, positive law is the basis and is derived from values that no religion disagrees with. As well as in governing the country politically and in citizenship and the rights of citizens belonging to different religions; The constitution is the foundation, and no one has the right to impose his religion and conviction on others.
No one has the right to punish another citizen for what he thinks is a departure from his faith and belief, or for the state itself to do so against an opinion that differs in interpretation here or there.
Punishment and civil reward are in the judiciary, not the Fatwa House.
I invite everyone to reach a rule that enables us to coexist with reason, thinking and faith together without contradiction, and this is what we must strive for; We called it enlightenment, reform, scientific method, or development. It doesn’t matter, what matters is the meaning we agree on.
