Posted on 01/17/2015 5:06:13 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
A few years ago, Robert Reilly wrote a book that may offer the key to understanding the advance of Islamic terror against the West: The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis.
At the heart of Reilly’s book is his argument that the “denigration of dialogue is due to the demotion of reason that took place in the ninth-century struggle between the rationalist theologians, the Mu’tazilites and their anti-rationalist theologians, the Ash’arites. Unfortunately, for those who prefer dialogue, the Ash’arites won.”
“The Ash’arites’ position was that reason is so infected by men’s self-interest that it cannot be relied upon to know things objectively. What is more, there is really nothing to be known, because all created things have no nature or order intrinsic to themselves, but are only the momentary manifestations of God’s direct will. Since God acts without reason, the products of his will are not intelligible to men. Therefore, a double disparagement: reason cannot know, and there is nothing to be known.”
[snip]
The Closing of the Muslim Mind also draws on British author Hilaire Belloc, who wrote in his 1938 book The Great Heresies, “[Islamic] culture happens to have fallen back in material applications ... whereas, in faith, we have fallen inferior to it.”
[snip]
Reilly’s analysis is that “the restoration of the status of reason is the only antidote to the spiritual pathology behind this remark."
However, Reilly doubts that this restoration is possible. Could it be, however, that the question of faith is even more important than that of reason? Unquestionably, there are millions of adherents of Islam willing to die for their faith. In what is left of the once-Christian West, are there as many Christians willing to be martyred? I have my doubts.
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
This recalls to mind the Islamic reaction when Pope Benedict XVI said at the University of Regensburg that violence in the service of evangelization is unreasonable and therefore against God, and that a conception of God without reason leads to that very violence.
He was actually making a plea that Islamic scholars and theologians affirm reason as a basis for relating to people of other cultures and religious convictions.
The result was, as I remember it, rioting on three continents and 19 dead, including a 65-year-old Italian nun / pediatric nurse shot four times in the back as she entered the Mogadishu Children's Hospital.
Yet Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi just said the same thing:
In Al-Sisi’s own words (Link) “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (multinational community of Muslim believers) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible! … That thinking — I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’ — that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world!"
Can Sisi's view get any traction?
I pray.
Al-Sisi, the guy the whitehouse hates...
He’s got the right enemies.
There’s 4 (surviving) schools of Sunni Jurisprudence (schools of thought), 4 Shiite.
All of them affirm “abrogation”.
“Abrogation” is the key to understanding Islamic theology.
Abrogation means that when there are conflicting passages in the Koran, the chronologically later one always wins.
The passages affirming peace and tolerance are the chronologically earlier ones, which by the principle of Abrogation no longer apply...
So someone can point at those passages as claims that Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion, without realizing that none of the major branches view those passages as having any weight today.
It’s interesting the way socialists approach theological concepts but when it comes to Islam they are not the only ones who refuse to approach the issue. That even includes leading Christian clergy including Pope Francis.
Followers of Mohammed not only claim, but truly believe that God has authorized them to kill those who refuse to submit to their version of God’s will. That is a basic tenet of that religion. A claim which goes unchallanged. While it’s understandable for atheists which most socialists are, not to approach that claim on a theological basis. It’s bewildering why any Christian clergy refuse to admit it even exists and is a basic part of Islam creed and worse yet are unable to condem it.
The Koran and its enforcement of sharia law is a pseudo religious concoction using monotheistic selected texts taken and misconstrued from the new and old testaments. Both of which cite the Almighty has granted free will to accept or obey his laws and is the final judge not man. Sodom and Gahmora is a glaring example.
Yet followers of Mohammed under the severest of penalties are forbidden to read either which would refute that assertion in a creed which institutionalizes disgusting arab tribal views, observances,and customs. Claiming adhearants are authorized by our Creator to demand submission to it or suffer an ignominious death administered by followers of Islam.
http://www.theusmat.com/islamandfreewill.htm
So Muslims, like democrats, are 50 IQ apes. I get that.
two thing s everyone must know.
abrogation, as you say.
the other is “al-taqiyaa”.
Good post. Thank you.
The Muslim mind has always been closed, and as Islam tightened its grip on conquered cultures, it stamped out all of their creativity, art and intellect. No Islamic culture has ever produced anything after the initial period of about a generation before it crushed the minds of the conquered people.
If you reject reason, which Islam does, you’re not going to be able to go very far.
I thought I should read this after hearing this guy on John Batchelor a few years ago but you know what? I don't give a rat's backside about what these people believe and I'm to busy trying to lead a genuine Catholic life without learning all about heresies.
The big problem with Islam is this: they don’t have someone who said “love your enemies” and then died and rose again to seal his credibility.
Actually, they had some pretty competent philosophers up until 1100 AD or so. Some imams got together and put a fatwa out on anyone caught reading or teaching philosophy, and that pretty much put the kibosh on any sort of meaningful dialogue with outsiders.
That’s one of their problems. The other is that they follow a false “prophet” who gave them some bizarre blend of Jewish law, Christian figures, and pagan practices, which were all things circulating in the Middle East at the time this camel-train-raiding “prophet” emerged. It’s irrational and idiotic, and therefore reason is actually the best challenge to Islam.
Preaching love to them is essential, but they have also got to be called to defend themselves rationally, which is something they cannot do. And this is why they are so angry at Christianity, because the Son was the Logos, the Word, and the Holy Spirit was Sophia, meaning Wisdom, and without these, they cannot understand God the Father.
According to Jewish and Christian tradition, God is omnipotent, but He can be trusted. When he makes a promise, he keeps it.
Regarding the Mu'tazilites and Ash'arites: One of the prominent Ash'arites was al Ghazali who was influential in turning Islam against Aristotle and Plato, and ending the Islamic golden age.
I heard the author in an interview yesterday. He was very straightforward in his discussion and seemed pretty reliable.
Knowing a bit about demonic possession is the key to understanding Mohammed and Islam.
Interesting. I didn’t know that abrogation was the means through which Islam resolved its apparent contradictions.
I’ve watched several debates, and read some Muslim “apologetics.”
In every case, their arguments are purely circular, and they don’t seem to have ANY awareness of it.
The Quran is true because it is miraculous, because the text is perfect, and the proof that it is perfect is that the text we now have is EXACTLY THE TEXT WE NOW HAVE.
Or: No one can possibly write an imitation of a chapter, or even a line, of the Quran which is as perfect and beautiful as a line or chapter from the Quran. All imitations of the Quran are, of course, pronounced not-perfect and not-beautiful.
There are some debates with Robert Spencer and assorted Imams in which the Imams offer absolutely nothing but circular arguments. And the Imams don’t seem to anticipate ANY of Spencer’s rebuttals. It is obvious that rational argumentation is as foreign to them as the surface of Neptune. They sound like four-year-olds.
That’s the sanitized version.
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