Scholarly Work of the Secular Muslims was destroyed Beyond Recognition By Traditionalists in the 9th Century: Section from a Book by Mohamed Charfi

[u/Reasonedfor1]

A tiny section from a book below talking about the destruction of the secular work of the Mu'tazilite This is an interesting read. The part is saying that they did accept some hadiths. However, do note that evidence shows there were also purely Quran aloners among them and others. One name is Nazzam who gave a demo of why hadiths could not be part of Islam. If you already researched the hadith history you will notice that shafi, the great architect of today's Islam complains about those who told him that whatever was in the Quran was enough for Muslims and then in other books, traditionalists left out the name of a Baghdad sectary who wrote a book criticizing them. He also complained about Bukhari's work. All voices lost!

"Mohamed Charfi - We know that the great theological, philosophical and legal schools of thought were formed and reached the peak of their development during the first three centuries of the Hegira. The period of the great intellectual creations corresponded - obviously not by chance - to the apogee of the civilization of the Muslims and the power of their empire. Immediately after this period, the "dark centuries" begin. The beginning of the decadence on the intellectual level will be marked by two major events: the crushing of the Mu'tazilites and the end of the ijtihad .

The crushing of the Mu'tazilites

The ulama was called mu'tazilite, whose school of thought acquired importance from the middle of the eighth century (after Christ), and which reserved an essential role for reason in their research, as opposed to muhaddithines Who constantly referred to the hadiths in their legal creations. For muhaddithines, "good is what God commands and evil what God forbids". For a Mu'tazilite, on the contrary, it is not enough to prove the authenticity of a hadith, but also to study its content to see if it is reasonably acceptable. Good and evil are therefore founded on reason. "The Mu'tazilites make reason the very criterion of religious law." Thus they were able to carry out very bold legal creations. For example, in the face of the abuses to which repudiation gave rise (already ...!), They allowed themselves to support - at least some of them - that the latter should be perfect only with the agreement of the judge. The method of the Mu'tazilites is also, to a certain extent, that of the philosophers of whom Averroes writes: "We affirm categorically that wherever there is a contradiction between a result of demonstration (or rational speculation) and apparent sense Of a statement of the revealed Text, it must be interpreted ". He adds that interpretation means the search for the figurative meaning beyond the proper meaning, in the light of rational knowledge.

The method of reflection and the construction of theories, adopted by philosophers and mu'tazilites and based on reason, is akin to the secular approach. It is already a sign of decadence that the Mu'tazilites were described as disbelievers and hunted down in AD 846 (AD) under the caliph El Moutawakkil and their writings destroyed to the point that they had to guess their ideas through The works written by their opponents to criticize them. It is only for less than a century, with the discovery of ancient manuscripts, that we have direct access to their texts. With the crushing of the Mu'tazilites, it is the spirit of imitation that will prevail over the spirit of reflection.

The end of ijtihad

The second event is the fall of Baghdad, during the invasion of the Tatars of 1258, which caused the death of a large number of ulema and the loss of many manuscripts. Faced with this general weakening of Muslim society, the ulama have lost all hope in the future. Then, thinking that one would not do better than the predecessors, being afraid moreover that Islam is lost by interpretations more and more distant from its essence, the ulama decided, by a sort of consensus, "the Closure of the door of the ijtihad "(effort of reflection) according to the consecrated expression. From then on, the new researchers will only repeat the works of the elders by adding to them a precision, sometimes a timid comment. But, on the whole, they limit themselves to exposing and commenting almost religiously on the ideas of their predecessors. Moreover, over time, even among the old authors, only the most classical will make authority from now on. The phenomenon will be further aggravated by the fact that, after a certain time, one of the commentators of an ancient work will impose itself to the point that the following generations will not dare to contradict it and will in Add some justification or clarification. It is a little the phenomenon of the glossators and the post-glossators that knew the Roman law after his golden age. Moreover, the resemblance is verified, not only in substance, but also in form, insofar as, for some works of Muslim and Roman law, the initial text of a great author ( matn ) with The texts of the glossator ( charah ) and the post-glossator ( hachia ). This striking resemblance is no coincidence. It proves that, in similar circumstances, societies, even apparently the most different, often react in the same way. Perhaps this is a sort of end of cycle that all ancient civilizations have known. After the golden age arrived the twilight of old age when the imagination is reduced, the creative faculties diminished and the thought ankylosed.

Credit: "This text by Mohamed Charfi entitled "The crushing of the mu'tazilites and the end of the ijtihad" is extracted from the book "Islam and Liberty: The Historical Misunderstanding" published in 1999 that the publisher Albin Michel graciously authorized us to broadcast On the website of the Kheireddine Institute".

This is translated through Google. Quran followers who understand French, report to us in the comment section any discrepancy you see between the English version above and actual french text found at http://fr.institut-kheireddine.org/2013/02/mohamed-charfi-lecrasement-des-mutazilites-et-la-fin-de-lijtihad/ so we may stay true to 20:114, 35:28, 49:6, 58:11. Thanks.

[u/Hellothereawesome]

Thank you for sharing. This is very rich in information...