The Abrahamic Sunnah: Another enquiry into Dr. Khalifa's
historical epistemology
The methodology of the quran only perspective has it’s
limits but may be viable nevertheless in explaining practical knowledge of
islam. We need to take a brief detour before discussing Rashad Khalifa’s theory
more thoroughly. How would an Orthodox muslim answer the question of how we
achieve knowledge related to islam? They may point to the primary sources of Quran,
sunnah, qiyas and ijma. This development
of Islamic thought apparently owes its origins to imam Shafi, who had an
influence on the other madhabs. The
qur’an is the word of God while the sunnah is the actions of the prophet. In a
sense the Qur’an is theory behind islam while the sunnah is the practice of the
Quran as demonstrated by the actions of
the prophet. Qiyas refers to analogical
reasoning done to determine laws that are not clear cut in the 2 main sources
of islam ( although the concept is rejected to certain degrees by other schools
of thought) and ijma represents the consensus of either modern scholars or the early
generations. In practice the sunnah equates with hadith and the latter took
precedent over the Qur’an. The undermining Qur’an, in my view, led to genuine
reformist attempts to place the Qur’an in the center of Islamic thinking but
also led to certain extremist elements that rejected everything but the Qur’an.
So hadith appeared to have upstaged
everything else.
A orthodox traditionalist may argue that the hadith explains
how to implement the Quranic instruction. It is true that the hadith mentions certain supplications
the prophet did at a certain point in the sacramental prayer. It is also true
that the hadith may illustrate certain practices here or there. But where in
the hadith does it actually say how to pray?
The truth is that no one learns to pray by consulting a hadith book. At best hadith can provide some prospective on a
piece of information but it cannot provide general knowledge. Even for an orthodox Muslim the value of
hadith is minimal in practice but exaggerated nevertheless. It would be doubtful
that a person with no knowledge of islam would figure out how to make hajj or
do anything else by only reading the hadith. So even for a person that accepts the validity
of hadith there is still a big gap shared by the Quran-only adherents between
the theory and practice of islam. The
question is how to bridge that gap?
The gap between theory and practice is not just a problem
for religion but any other field as well. Modern philosophers have discussed the problem
of theory and practice and the value that practical knowledge has over the
theoretical one. One example of this problem can be found in the realm of socialist
political , namely Marxism. Certain Marxist thinkers like Gramsci and Lukacs
found that the understanding of socialism become ossified and that much of the
aspects of Marxism become something like a religious doctrine. Gramsci and
other western Marxists thinkers tried to convey Marxism as a practical
knowledge that working class could implement as opposed to an ideology of intellectuals.
This is why some Marxists like Mao Tse Tung
could write, “social practice alone is the criterion of the truth of his
knowledge of the external world.(On Practice) Gramsci, by referring earlier
socialists and Marx himself used the term ‘praxis’ to describe the practical
knowledge which he saw as viable in Marxism. For these socialists the ideas of
their movement was something that was to be mastered in practical way and not
regulated to ivory tower scholarship.
Books are written all the time claiming to help people learn
but how often do we learn anything by just reading books? Try learning an
instrument or surgery for example. We learn the practice of our religion the
same way generations of people did. The companions of the prophet learned how
to pray by watching him pray. The subsequent generations learned in the same
manner every implementation of worship. They did not read books. The Qur’an itself is learned by recitation, a
process which requires students to actively learn and demonstrate their
recitation to a teacher. The mushaf only
serves as a secondary memory aide.
Imam Malik, the founder of the first madhaab, offers a
key to help solve our knowledge gap. Imam
Malik based the main source of knowledge on islam not on the hadith but the “amal”
of the people of Medina. The religious practice of the Medina citizens was
important because they worshipped God based on what they learned since the time
of the Prophet Muhammad. They did not rely on hadiths because they were not a
literary people to begin with. Adherents
of Imam Malik would argue that the amal of the Medina folk would be superior to
any hadith. Why? The people of Median learned to pray by implementing prayer
themselves. If someone in Medina was
praying in a different style from the norm such divergency could be weighed for
veracity in the light of everyone else. In the same sense if a hadith came and
contradicted the practice of the people of Medina then the hadith could be
shown to lack value. Aisha Bewey illustrated how people in Iraq learned islam
at a later time and place with more reliance on hadith that the people of
Medina who were closer in time and space to the Prophet. (Interpreting
“Sunnah”: The Practice of the People of Madinah in View of the Māliki School. https://www.ilmgate.org/interpreting-sunnah-the-practice-of-the-people-of-madinah-in-view-of-the-maliki-school/) The sunnah for Imam Malik was simply the
actions that the prophet took and not the words attributed to him. Of course Imam Malik did not reject the
sayings of the prophet and he even wrote
a compilation of hadiths. But for Malik the actions of the prophet, as carried
down by the people of Medina, had more clout that simple words attributed to
the prophet. “Actions speak louder than words” so the saying goes.
Unfortunately, as pointed out by Malikis themselves,
latter scholars converged the sunnah with the hadith (the actions with the
sayings) of the prophet and made them the same.
This created confusion in understanding religion and made it so even the
words attributed to the prophet would have more weight than actions. But as
Malikis would argue, what makes better sense to take knowledge from? Should we
rely on what an Iraqi person claimed the prophet said in a book or should we
rely on the way we saw and heard the people worshipped God at home? The confusion of hadith with the sunnah led to
the over reliance of hadith and the ossification of Islam by the time the four madhabs were
established. I would argue this effected
the Malikis to just as the opinions of Shafi and co. influenced later
generations of scholars.
Reformers from the Islamic world made attempts to give
proper credence to the Qur’an in modern times. There were Qur’an-only folks at
least since the 19th century. There were also others who sought to
put the Qur’an in it’s primary place. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the
Ahmadiyya movement was one of those who called for a return to the Qur’an. What is interesting is that MGA came to the similar
conclusion that Imam Malik did on the status of the sunnah and hadith. MGA
wrote a book (A Review of the Debate between Batal avi and Chakrhalavi https://www.alislam.org/library/books/ReviewBatalaviChakrhalavi.pdf)
in which he anaylzed a debate between an ultra-hadithst and a hadith
rejector. To be brief, MGA shared Imam
Malik’s view that the practices of the prophet outweigh the words attributed to
him. In fact MGA lays out a chart in the book which has the Quran, sunnah,
hadith and other sources laid out in the order of priority. Nothing is allowed to contradict the Qur’an in
this scheme and a hadith not only had to undergo scrutinization by the Qur’an
but also the sunnah as well.
By using the sunnah (practice of the prophet) in addition
to the Quran we could counter some of the misinformation that plagued islam via
the hadith. To take one example, that of apostacy. The false law against
apostacy by the death penalty is based on sayings attributed to the Prophet.
These sayings can be found in different hadith collections. But where do we see
the Prophet ever carrying out the death penalty for an apostate? The only narrations
that exist for such implementation happen to be with people who actively took
the sword against Muslims. When we weigh
what the prophet supposedly said against what the prophet supposedly did it becomes
easier to deal with such problems that Muslims deal with.
After taking a long detour we can go back to Rashad Khalifa’s
understanding of the practice of islam and his theory of Abrahamic origins for
the religion. Rashad Khalifa tried to solve the gap between theory and practice
(Quran and 5 pillars) or specifically his conception of the two (which is the
Qur’an alone and the religious worship) by putting the patriarch Abraham in the
equation. The Qur’an is clear and “fully
detailed” yet does not contain the apparent
information on how to pray (yet it contains the details according to the mathematical
code.) Rashad Khalifa found no problem with
the idea that Abraham could be a source for that missing information of the
details of prayer and etc.
How did Rashad Khalifa prove that Abraham was the origin
for Islamic praxis? A student of Dr. Khalifa writes that the worship rituals of
Abraham came to us "generation after generation. (Who delivered the rites
of islam? Submission.org) The writer states that the nature of the information
inherited by the generations is called "practices." Dr. Khalifa and his followers never provided an
idea of how these practices came down. But it is obvious to us that people learned
how to pray by watching Abraham and subsequent generations do so. This notion
that we learn our religion by watching other people is implicit in Dr. Khalifa’s
thought and there can be no other explanation. What is important is Dr. Khalifa implicitly
admits that a practical knowledge exists outside the Qu’ran to implement the
Qur’an which he refers to as Abrahamic in origin. There is little difference between Dr. Khalifa’s
conceptual understanding of Islamic practice and that of the amal of the
Medina/or the “sunnah” of the Prophet according to Imam Malik. Both imam Malik, Rashad Khalifa as well as MGA
believed in the inheritance of Islamic practice as having some role to function
in precedence.
Is Dr. Khalifa’s notion that Islamic knowledge was
preserved by praxis infallible in the face of corruption? Not anymore than
Malik’s notion of amal-Medina fool proof against degenerate notions. However Dr. Khalifa’s notion of Abrahamic
praxis was in reality only a justification to save face of his incoherent
ideology to justify his “quran only” supposedly “fully detailed” ideology while
maintain traditional practices. But Dr.
Khalifa was correct in a presupposition that exists in the Abrahamic notion he
developed in that practice of religion has precedent over any other piece of information
such as an idea or written assertion. Only
the Qur’an could have any information according to Dr. Khalifa outside of the practical
information of Abrahamic practice. Many Quran only adherents did not take up
Dr. Khalifa’s Abrahamic theory and they did either of these two things. Some
among them left the gap between Quran and the traditional practices in place.
Others decided to revise Islamic notions in light of reading the Qur’an alone
and that is why, for example, salat is no longer considered a prayer or the pilgrimage
is no longer seen as a religious rite. Qur’an
only adherents claim that the Qur’an is the only source of information. Dr. Khalifa, despite being among the progenitors
of Quran-only ideology, implicitly acknowledged information relayed via practice outside of the Quran via his Abrahamic
theory. Ironically notion of Abrahamic practice as the inherited worship
practices is the essential definition of the prophet “sunnah” a concept which Dr.
Khalifa claimed he rejected. Yet, the facts of what Dr. Khalifa truly believed speak
for themselves.
As we saw
Quran-only ideology is incoherent because it fails to solve the theory/practice
gap, despite good intention among it’s followers. Yet the problem remains that Orthodoxy
has failed to challenge it’s own assumptions in the light of the Qur’an and
even succumbs to intellectual and moral decay I the name of “tradition.” Dr. Khalifa was not able to offer a coherent
alternative via his Abraham theory but his idea created the possibility for a
coherent solution. The acknowledge of practical knowledge in the form of the “sunnah”
or “Abrahamic practice” could be valuable tool to help Islamic minds solve the
problems faced by society and religion just as other thinkers did in the past.
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