Abrogation, divine law and prophetic history

 

Abrogation, divine law and prophetic history

 

The revolution launched by the Qur’an only movement naturally called into question various aspects of Orthodox Islam. One genre of questions had to do with divine legislation. How did divine law communicate itself to different people over the centuries? How does the dispensation of islam view the previous legislations and scriptures? Dr. Khalifa challenged Orthodoxy by denial  of the principle of abrogation and argued for more credence to the authenticity of the previous scriptures than tradition allowed. At the same time Dr. Khalifa tried to preserve traditional worship practices by attributing them to Abraham and consequently created a unique theology based on Abrahamic practices. We will see that some of Dr. Khalifa’s ideas are unique while others are not.  It will be shown that Dr. Khalifa’s view of history is in incoherent when trying to explain the different revelatory processes taking place.

 

How did Dr. Khalifa’s view of history differ from traditional views?  As a believer in the qur’an Dr. Khalifa shared the notion of prophets and messengers being sent to humanity. Generally Islam teaches that God only taught one religion to humanity, that of submission to God. Dr. Khalifa himself emphasized the point that Islam was “submission” and not “islam” as a doctrine with the trademark of the name Muhammad on it. Islam was the same religion revealed to every prophet throughout human history.  As far as the general idea is concerned there is no difference between Dr. Khalifa and traditional Islamic scholars. But do the prophets always reveal the same laws from God? Traditional islam would answer “not necessarily.” Are the laws and practices of Prophet  Muhamamd the same as that of Jesus and Moses?  Dr. Khalifa’s views however become incoherent on this issue.  Does divine law change according to Dr. Khalifa?

 

To gain clarity on our discussion on divine law on a general scale , that between different religions over time (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) it may be helpful to answer the question if divine law changes during the same prophetic dispensation.  Traditional islam says yes. Medieval Islamic theologians developed the principle of abrogation to explain Islamic history. In their view certain verses of the Quran were abrogated by other verses of the Qur’an. Islamic scholars also developed a view that the hadith and sunnah could abrogate Quranic verses. It seems that some of these ideas were based on perceived contradictions that scholars saw when they read the Qur’an but instead of putting thought into the issue they simply declared the undesired contradiction abrogated.  A full discussion of abrogation may be warranted elsewhere but it is enough hear to point out that scholars differed over the actual number of abrogated verses ranging from 100s to a handful.  It is also unwarranted to place something doubtful such as a hadith over the words of the Qur’an.

 

Dr. Rashad Khalifa correctly denied abrogation as a falsehood. He referred to the concept as a lie and pointed that it had no basis in the Qur’an.  Dr. Khalifa refuted the interpretation that traditional scholars gave to the following verse:  [Quran 16:101] When We substitute one Ayat (revelation) in place of another, and God is fully aware of what He reveals, they say, 'You made this up'. Indeed most of them do not know.”   Orthodoxy held that this verse has God abrogating ayats of the Qur’an for other ayats. This however is a baseless notion. In Dr. Khalifa’s view what God is saying is that the signs of previous revelatory dispensations are abrogated by new ones. In other words, the revelation of the Qur’an makes the revelation of Christianity and Judaism no longer applicable.

 

Dr. Rashad Khalifa’s updated idea of abrogation was not unique. Abrogation was challenged a century before him by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian.  The writers of the Ahamdiyya movement such as Maulana Muhammad Ali devoted a lot of material to the issue. Maualana M Ali pointed out that contrary to popular belief there is not a single narration attributed to the Prophet where abrogation is mentioned. All of the narrations about abrogation are attributed the companions of the Prophet alone.  Dr. Khalifa may or may not have borrowed his views on abrogation from the Ahmadiyya movement but he was certainly familiar with them.

 

Because Dr. Khalifa acknowledged abrogation on a historical scale between revelatory dispensations he acknowledged that divine laws changed between messengers.  Dr. Khalifa believed based on the Qur’an that Jesus changed certain law of the Torah for example. The Qur’an also updated certain laws from previous scriptures.  Dr. Khalifa never came up with a theory of progressive revelation to explain the change in legislative laws but he certainly believe that there were laws that changed.

 

Although he gave some credence to mutable divine legislation Dr. KHalfia still held the bible in a high esteem. There is a difference between a scripture (or verse) being abrogated and being true. Traditional scholars long attacked the bible by claiming it was corrupted. Most of the time these attacks were used to prevent Muslims from studying the text and thereby not have to worry about studying it themselves. Dr. Khalifa did not believe the bible was perfectly preserved although he did not share the view that the bible was “corrupted.” In fact his organization produced a video narrated by Dr. Khalifa entitled “In defense of the bible” which basically argued the Qur’an protects the previous scripture by the mathematical miracle. What is noteworthy is that Dr. Khalifa stated that the Qur’an is a “standard reference” which he apparently had in mind with the Qur’ans relation to the bible. [Quran 5:48] “Then we revealed to you this scripture, truthfully, confirming previous scriptures, and superseding them.” With this verse Dr. Khalifa understood that it would not make sense for the Qur’an to “confirm” scripture if it was corrupted as bad as Muslim traditionally thinking allowed. In any case the Qur’an “superceded” the previous scriptures by serving a  reference to explain what is true and discerning what is false.

 

So far we explained one dimension of Dr. Khalifa’s view on revelation. But Dr. Khalfia had to develop an explanation to show how traditional Islamic practices could be justified when they were not mentioned in the Qur’an. To do this he developed the idea that Abraham was the founder of the Islamic religion and not Muhammad. [Quran 16:123] “Then we inspired you (Muhammad) to follow the religion of Abraham,* the monotheist; he never was an idol worshiper.” It is this notion that requires more elaboration.

 

Dr. Khalifa believed that the five pillars of islam were all from Abraham and did not start with Muhammad.  There was some truth to what Dr. Khalifa said that even traditionalists would acknowledge.  The fact obvious to everyone is that the pilgrimage to Mecca was in existence prior to Muhammad as were other rituals associated with islam.  A secular historian may argue that this is proof that the pagans invented the practices and that is there right to do so. But if Abraham really existed than it would be possible to propose that those practices came from Abraham, albeit in a distorted form.  Of course Islam was not revealed to Abraham first but Adam.

 

Dr. Khalifa had a reason to put emphasis on Abraham and that was to explain the origin of not just general Islamic practice but specific Islamic practices. Dr. Khalifa did not just want to explain the existence of Salat but explain the number of prayer cycles, the number of movements per prayer cycle and  the amount of alms, ect.  Why do we perform 2 rakats of prayer in Fajr and 4 at Zuhr? Tradition answers that the Prophet Muhammad ordered us to keep those numbers and that he learned them via revelation. Dr. Khalifa argued that the specific number of prayers came from Abraham himself.

 

It is a statement of faith that the 5 general practices of islam came from Abraham. We are even willing to concede truth to the notion that a practice can be transmitted over time to some extent.  But it  is beyond conceivable that Abraham’s practices would come 3000 years in history intact without being distorted in the face of idolatry and time.  How and why did Dr. Khalifa make such an argument?

 

"As far as all of our rites, Quran only dealt with whatever got altered since Abraham such as the tone of our prayer (17:110), the basic steps of ablution (5:6), the times of our five daily contact prayers, the command of giving the utmost importance to the Friday Congregational Prayer (62:9), allowing sexual relationship with our spouses during the nights of Ramadan (2:187), whatever is mentioned in regard of Hajj and Umrah, and whatever is mentioned in regard of our Zakat, with the highlight that it is due whenever we collect or receive our income (6:141). Anything in regard of our rituals that is not detailed in Quran has been already preserved by God and passed down correctly and this is basically why it is not detailed in Quran." (The question of not having all details of Salah in Quran. Submission.org)

 

So according to Dr. Khalifa, all of the religious rituals and their specific details were revealed to Abraham.  Anything that got distorted was pointed out by the Qur’an and restored to the original Abrahamic route. We can assume that the Qur’an shared the same role with previous dispensations in relation to earlier dispensations. In this view, prophets only come to fix distorted acts of worship.  But what does Dr. Khalifa mean when he says the Quran “only dealt” with whatver got distorted? Is Dr. Khalifa only referring to religious rituals or to theology in general?  If is is argued that Dr. Khalifa is expressing a general rule than it would not make sense because the Quran talks about many things that the previous scriptures also share.

 

Where does Dr. Khalifa get the idea from that God only fixes rituals that get destroyed?  Why does he believe the commands in the above verses have to do with people of earlier times and not the Muslims themselves? There is no question that the volume of prayer and specifics are important to God but Dr. Khallifa wants to emphasize the importance in a manner that is not intended. Why would God care for example that the fajr rakats is 2 and not four?   The simplest explanation of these verses is that they were commands to the believers to perfect their worship.  Dr. Khalifa argued that traditional muslims are wrong for not reciting Bismilah or the Fatiha outloud and in his view this is supposed to be a great revolution in Islamic thinking. But to anybody else Dr. Khalifa’s claims are nothing but superficial.

 

Traditionally the “religion” of Abraham (milat of Abraham) was understood to mean that Muhammad  was following Abraham in worshipping God alone. But Dr. Khalifa wants us to believe Muhammmad was following specific rituals of islam. Rashad believed all the rituals of islam came from Abraham. But there is no reason to surmise this conclusion. The Qur’an contradicts this claim in fact. [2:151] "(Blessings) such as the sending of a messenger from among you to recite our revelations to you, purify you, teach you the scripture and wisdom, and to teach you what you never knew. " In the previous ayat we see that Muhammad was teaching something “what you never knew.” In other words the people of Arabia did not know something and were never taught it by Abraham.  Moreover, the salat of the people of jahiliyya was different than the one brought by Muhammad. [8:35] Their Contact Prayers (Salat) at the shrine (Ka'bah) were no more than a mockery and a means of repelling the people (by crowding them out). Therefore, suffer the retribution for your disbelief." But here we have a distorted translation as Dr. Khalifa took out “clapping hands” in the original Arabic , a custom which was associated with the type of salat offered. There is no reason to assume that “millat” of Ibrahim implied Muhammad and generations previous followed the exact same rituals.

 

The strange thing about Dr. Khalifa’s theory of Abrahamic rituals is that it contradicts Dr. Khalifa’s general view (shared by traditional islam) that Prophets updated laws and changed them according to God’s command.  If God used the prophets to modify laws time to time then how could God place so much emphasis on something as unimportant a the number of rakats in prayer?  There are thus two different understandings of the revelationary process running through. Dr. Khalifa’s theory of revelation.

 

The Qur’an sets a criteria to evaluate the truth of other religions and this makes the holy writ unique. This enables muslims develop comparative religious studies to a degree to spread Islam and seriously engage people of other faiths. Explaining Islam from a historical perspect in relation to other religious, Judaism and Christianity in particular are necessary towards this effort.  Some religious scholars have developed theological ideas as “progressive revelation” to explain God’s revelatory process over time. Unfortunately Dr. Khlaifa has not offered anything coherent towards that initiative.