Hossam Badrawi Official Website
Badrawi writes in Al-Masry Al-Youm:
Dialogue about faith with d. Heba and the dreamers
My educated friend said:
Have you read Dr. Murad Wahba’s article about the upcoming religious discourse and his description of faith?
I said:
Dr.. Murad Wahba is a dear friend and a beautiful philosopher who writes his vision for the twenty-first century in a group of enlightening articles worthy of reading and analysis, but I think that his article is above the level of a daily newspaper reader who is searching for quick meaning and news.
She said:
You have the right that the article is not for newspaper readers, but the ratio of its wide area in the newspaper to the total of regular daily articles, columns and chapters almost corresponds to the percentage of the target reader of Dr. Intend.
I said:
Let us read together about the meaning of faith that Dr. Wahba presented in his article in the context of his talk about the philosophy of consensus among our sheikhs throughout history, which prevents thinking and interpretation that depends in its essence on a plurality of meanings and respect for the difference that unanimity refrains from, before entering into the details of the article that leads us in The end for Ibn Rushd.
Dr. says. A gift that faith means that the heart is committed to a belief in a message that it accepts, and with the development the word belief has changed to the word dogma, i.e. belief. Hence belief became a substitute for belief. He points out that, historically, these ideas are formulated by an external authority that said that they are the essence of religion and faith, and the believer must accept them and then justify them mentally if he wants, or it is sufficient to submit to them without questioning, and in both cases the belief is mandatory. It is said of those who formulated it that they are scholars of belief and they mix between faith and reason, but on the condition that the mind is the mind of a specific and specific faith and not the mind of faith in the absolute… That is, the mind and thinking stop at a ceiling they specified by compulsion that does not allow thinking except within its framework.
And I, my friend, have an additional linguistic explanation, which is that belief means believing what has no proof and then acting on it. Therefore, the faith of human beings from a thousand years ago will differ from my faith now, as it became clear with science that much of what people believed without proof, evidences appeared to him through science and the space of faith became different because it was transferred from the heart to the mind. And that the more knowledge of the mind, the less space for traditional faith.
In other words, reason and reason alone is the way to God, and not believing what has no proof, as it was in the past.
She said: Belief in the heart and belief in reason and evidence are to me complementary in one alloy, which reflects on its polished surface the unity of the elegant, harmonious universe and the unity of its Creator.
To me, extremism is breaking this alloy and scattering its fragments to produce hatred, cruelty, grudges and crimes that cost millions over the course of the century. Here, there is no difference between extremism in any religion or political belief, or racial or social discrimination.
I said: I remember the story of the crying of the student of Ibn Rushd (born on April 14, 1126 AD, Cordoba – died December 10, 1198 AD, Marrakesh) while the Arabs were burning his teacher’s books. If you cry burned books, know that thoughts have wings and they fly to their owners.
This means that the conditions of Muslims (in the twelfth century AD, in which Ibn Rushd lived) called for crying over them.
Among the tragedies of eternity, we can repeat Ibn Rushd’s words as if they were said today, even though their owner died hundreds of years ago!, and some babble in our reality and say that our conditions are bad because of others, criminals, and conspirators. And here is Ibn Rushd talking about bad conditions that deserve to be weeped before any colonization and conspiracy.
If, over time, peoples participated in extremism in thought, harshness and violence in imposing their faith and killing their just leaders, as well as in their economic and political backwardness, there must be a common factor that unites them. And I may not be right, but Islam is overlooking at this moment greatly, and Christianity is overlooking me before separating religion from the state with all its tragedies against science and scholars in the dark ages of Europe.
And because I see in people the best of what is in them, and because I see the truth in what I read because I am looking for it, I see in Islam reason, tolerance, love, knowledge, sympathy, forgiveness and forgiveness. And they reflect an aspect of religion that I see sometimes between the lines looking for evil. It represents negative trends, as described in terms of severity, violence, domination of opinion, and the use of religious vocabulary to reach and maintain power. As for me, I choose other aspects that I see above the lines of love, dependence on reason, science, tolerance, passion for the beauty of life and people and their appreciation.
But I go back and say that if all these Islamic nations agree, contrary to what I understood, and they are late and their poverty, ignorance and violence increase, then I sometimes doubt that I am wrong in understanding and appreciation, and my belief in the importance of separating religion from the state and politics increases, history clearly tells us that the extremists of Judaism, Christianity and Islam And the extremists of beliefs in general do not differ from each other, and the peoples who survived are the ones who separated religion, which is a relationship between man and God, from politics, governance and all worldly purposes.
She said: I am with you on that – religion is a belief between man and God, and it has nothing to do with politics or governance.
