Basic Lessons from Islamic Apologetics
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Concerns and Pitfalls of Islamic Apologetics
Dr. Hatem al-Haj describes some of the concerns and pitfalls to engaging in apologetics.
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Bismillah, alhamdulillah, salat, salam, wa rasulullah wa ala aali wa sahbihi wa man wal asr I'm about to proceed. So, we are now talking about the concerns and pitfalls of doing apologetics or engaging foreign discourses, discourses that are foreign to Islam, basically trying to explain Islam within different paradigms and different discourses. And the first thing that we talked about is basically reinforcing the centrality of the human perspective and the referentiality of the human intellect. And every time we want to address one of those concerns or pitfalls, remind me that I should talk about some measures to mitigate most of the harm, not all of the harm, but to mitigate most of the harm that may ensue from doing apologetics. And when it comes to reinforcing the centrality of the human perspective and the referentiality of the human intellect, you do want people to understand, you do want to stress the importance of humbling ourselves, humbling ourselves. You do want to remind people of the limitations of the human intellect. You do want to remind people of the essence of Islam, which means what? Submission. Submission to God is extremely rational because it is only irrational to exaggerate the office of the intellect to a point where you are arguing with God about the details of his instructions. That is pretty irrational. How much do you know?
How much did Einstein know about biology? I know Einstein knew a lot about physics, but did he know everything about physics? Isn't his theory being challenged by physicists nowadays and before? Certainly, he was a genius. He knew a lot about physics, but how much did Einstein know about biology? How much did he know about sociology? How much did he know about many? This is one of the most brightest in terms of intelligence. Very little. Very little about all of these other disciplines. Talk to him about the discipline that is not his, and then people will just be very limited. Even in their area of specialty, they are talking about theories. The ultimate reality is known to God. The ultimate reality is only known to God. How do these things actually work is only known to God. Otherwise, if human beings know everything about physics, they would be able to control the universe. هم هم المسيطرون. Are they in control? We are not in control because we know very little. وما أتيتم من العلم إلا قليلا. You have only been given little knowledge. This is something that we want to remind ourselves of and remind the audience of. Please let us not exaggerate. Let us not undermine the office of reason, but let us also be reasonable about it and not exaggerate the place of reason or the office of reason beyond what is reasonable. Now, let's talk about submission.
Submission, as I said, is very rational because we are not saying to submit to nobody or submit on basically no basis. No, we're saying that we have come to believe that this book that our Prophet ﷺ conveyed to us came from God. How did we come to believe in this? Like I said, you need to build the certainty in the message and the messenger. And that's a different discussion. We can talk a little bit about building certainty, but this is work that you will need to do. Once you have come to that certainty that this book did come from God, it is only rational that you now listen and obey. Listen and obey. And humble yourself, understand the limitations of your intellect, and we will come back to it. But it is an important mention here when we are talking about reinforcing the centrality of the human perspective and referentiality of the human intellect. Whether you're writing or you're speaking, whether you're doing your apologetics and writing a paper or you're speaking, you do want to insert this in the beginning of the discussion, in the middle of the discussion, at the end of the discussion, a reminder of our limitations as human beings. Now the second concern here is causing a left shift in the community. Causing a left shift in the community. What do we mean by this? Left shift in the community. What do we mean by this?
Naturally, if you are trying to speak to people to your left, if you are trying to reach out to people to your left, let us say the liberal culture that we live in, that we are surrounded by, and if you are trying to reach the people to your left, will you use your right hand or left hand? Look, it is the left hand. If I'm trying to reach the people to my left here, how far can this get? So if I am trying to reach to them with the right hand, that is overreaching. But if I try to reach out to them with the left hand, and I'm not talking about the right and the left in the Islamic sense of the right and the left, ahl al-yameen, ahl al-jumal, no I'm just talking about your hands. If you are trying to reach the people to your right, you reach to them with your right hand. What does that mean? It means when we talk about Islamic orthodoxy, even the word orthodoxy when it comes to Islam, it's controversial whether we should use the word or not, but for simplicity we are using those terms. When we talk about Islamic orthodoxy, is Islamic orthodoxy a point or a circle? Is it a spectrum or a point? It's a huge discussion, but it is a spectrum, not a point.
It is a spectrum from our view as human beings, but from the divine perspective, it is a point. Because when it comes to disagreements between the scholars, in the sight of God, at least what I believe in, in the sight of God, if there is a disagreement, and you have two different positions, in the sight of God, one is right, one is wrong. If this is a disagreement of conflict, not a disagreement of variety, if it is a disagreement of conflict, one scholar says halal, one scholar says haram. In the sight of God, it is either halal or haram. From our perspective as human beings, both positions can belong to Islamic orthodoxy. Because both positions can be supported by evidence, upheld by great mujtahids, supported by evidence, and accepted within mainstream Sunni Islam. In this case, these positions, even though they are conflicting, they will both belong to Islamic orthodoxy. So, when you compose a team to do apologetics, let us say you will start your think tank, you will start an institute, you will compose a team to do apologetics. When you compose a team, like within our context, because different contexts vary, but within our context, we live in America, we live in the West, we live in the 21st century,
so the dominant culture, is it to the right or to the left of Islamic orthodoxy? The circle, the spectrum of Islamic orthodoxy. The dominant culture, is it to the right or to the left of Islamic orthodoxy? To the left. Naturally, when you compose a team, to avoid that overreaching, naturally, when you compose a team, you will compose a team of people who are not to the left of Islamic orthodoxy, otherwise you will be out. You will compose a team of people who are on the left of Islamic, not to the left, on the left. On the left, meaning they are still within the circle. But this is, we all know that people can still be within the circle, but some of them to the right of others, and some of them to the left of others. This, if you apply this to certain positions, positions that will give more freedom to human choice, like Mubah versus Haram, for instance, or Mubah versus Wajib. Wajib and Haram are more restrictive, right? You have to do it, you must do it, you must refrain from it, more restrictive. So when there is a controversy, is it Mubah permissible or Wajib mandatory? Is it even preferred, Mustahab, or Wajib mandatory? Which position is more to the left, meaning giving more choice for human beings? The one that says Mubah versus the one that says Wajib.
The one that says Mubah versus the one that says Haram. Okay, so with respect to particular positions, there will be positions to the right and positions to the left. If these positions are still within Islamic orthodoxy, they are supported by evidence, upheld by great mujtahids, and we will come back and talk about this in more detail when it comes to the different types of positions and different degrees of positions, what is within orthodoxy, what is outside of orthodoxy, what is excusable, what is inexcusable, and so on and so forth. But in general, you will compose a team of people who are on the left of the circle, still inside the circle, but on the left of the circle. If the circle has a middle point, the spectrum has a middle point, the people that you will choose for this job to reach out to are the people who are not on the left, to the left. Sometimes they are not just to the left, they are on the cliff. They are about to fall off. They are about to leave the religion. And you want to bring them back, and so if you're trying to bring them back, you will reach out to them with your left hand, not with your right hand. So reach out to them with a team of teachers, scholars, apologists, and so on, that are somewhat on the left. So it is natural that you compose a team of people who are more inclined to be on the left of the circle, not on the right, but not to the left of the circle, not outside the circle, inside the circle. Those people also, being on the left of the circle, they may trespass the boundaries
and become in certain positions to the left of the circle, not just on the left. And if you choose a team of mature researchers, scholars and mature researchers, you cannot police them all the time, because that will be like a principal in elementary school. You will try as much as you can to establish guidelines, you will try as much as you can to have, basically, a culture within your institute, within your organization, within your think tank, a culture that is respectful of orthodoxy as a concept. But again, at the same time, that line, that line between the left of the circle and being outside the circle is in and of itself not a certain, not a very clear line sometimes. Sometimes the line would be vague, and then it would be controversial. Have they crossed this line? Have they not crossed this line? And if you treat mature researchers and scholars like, you know, students, like freshmen in college or even students in high school, that certainly will not work. That just doesn't work. So sometimes you will make mistakes. Sometimes you will make mistakes. So what do you need to do to avoid shifting the community to the left? Because most of the time you will be choosing positions, the positions that you will defend,
the positions that you will defend, the positions that you will present as sort of the most favorable positions or the preferable positions, that preferable position is likely going to be a little bit to the left. And then when people in the community are consuming your output all the time, they will shift to the left. They'll move from the golden mean, which is the virtuous middle, to the left, because they're consuming your output all the time. Is this a favorable outcome? No, it is not. It is not. And you have to be aware of this. So how do we avoid this? There are many ways to avoid it, many ways to avoid it. And we will talk more about, you know, the different sort of positions and how you gauge whether a position is orthodox or not orthodox, excusable, not excusable. We'll talk more about this later. But one of the things that you can do is basically to promote a culture of orthodoxy within your organization. One of the things that you need to do also is to be tolerant of outside criticism, that is, respectful of adab al-ikhtilaf, of the etiquettes of disagreement among Muslims, that is, constructive criticism, that is not motivated by personal interest or personal bias or basically hatred or things of that nature. So you do want, and certainly if it is motivated by the wrong motives,
then you as a subject of this criticism or an object of this criticism, you do want to be forbearing as much as possible. But criticism that is constructive, you should welcome this because it complements your work. Because my work is to reach out to people on the cliff to bring them back. And that includes also, when you bring them back, it includes providing them a safety zone, a safe zone, safe space to allow them to grow spiritually, to grow intellectually, to submit more to Allah and His Messenger. And then they can graduate, leave you and have sort of the full exposure to the full spectrum of Islamic positions and they will have more acceptance, more understanding, more wisdom to digest and absorb the full spectrum of Islamic positions. But as an organization, you also do not want to basically create so much turbulence inside them early on. So most of your output will be on the left of the circle. Because if your output is mixed and sometimes you go to the far right of the circle, sometimes you're to the far left of the circle, I think that the audience will be confused. You do want to provide them an incubation period, incubation period,
to graduate and to be basically able to understand the full spectrum of Islamic discourse on the different issues. What else did I want to say about this particular point? So you will accept criticism from outside, hopefully constructive criticism from outside as complementary to your work. You will promote a culture of orthodoxy within your organization, even though most of the time you will be more on, you will also not attack the positions on the right, the right of the circle. You will not attack them. You may not necessarily feature them or you may not necessarily present them as your favorable positions when you are engaging sort of an audience that is mainly to the left. But you do not want to attack them either because you do not want to distort what orthodoxy is about. Because if you attack the right, then basically the circle is not there anymore. You're moving the circle. You're taking the whole circle and moving it. You're just residing on the left of the circle. You're not attempting to skew the circle itself. You're not attempting to skew the circle. You're not attacking positions on the right. You're residing on the left of the circle. You're trying to reach out to people who are to the left of the circle or on the cliff and to bring them back. The next point that I wanted to speak about is,
and certainly, do I need to give you examples about positions on the left and the right? Okay, well it's just like everything. Like imagine any disagreement on something being mubah or haram. Left is mubah, right is haram. Imagine any disagreement about something being wajib or most of the time it is like this. Most of the time it's like this. Sometimes there are certain wajib or haram positions that may be more suitable within the cultural trends that we are surrounded by. But most of the time, it is to give more freedom to human choice, give you more space. Give you more space. Mubah, right in the middle, take it, leave it. Or even makruh and mustahab, still you have some room to take it or leave it. Okay, I'll come back and give you more examples when we get to more applications and stuff like this. But at this point, let me just proceed to the next point. Damaging people's respect for the tradition and its bearers. Damaging people's respect for the tradition and its bearers. And how do you do this? Like if you're doing apologetics, how are you damaging, how is it possible that you are damaging people's respect for the tradition and its bearers when people think that they have been lied to so often? When you basically give them the shock therapy
and every time there is something established to be part of the tradition, you tell them, no, that's actually not true. In fact, it is such and such. Like let's say, let me give you examples because I guess, so let us say dogs for instance. Well, in our Muslim tradition, people have not been particularly friendly with dogs. people have not been particularly friendly with dogs. Not that we have a position against dogs as creatures of God. Certainly, the prophets, Allah and Salaam, spoke about a prostitute who was forgiven all of her sins because she gave water to the dog, right? So it's not in that sense that we have animosity to the dog as a creature. It is not, it's about being comfortable around dogs within the household, within the household. Because Islamically, we have always been fine with dogs that are guard dogs, that are livestock dogs and that is all fine. And hunting dogs also, all of, you know, so using dogs for those things, we have been fine. And certainly whenever there is a need, whenever there is a necessity, like the guide dogs for blind people, things of that nature, that's fine. But just having dogs within the household, you know, being sort of like comfortable about dogs, not worrying about the dog licking you or licking your garment or things of that nature. So the most permissive madhab in this respect,
or the easiest, I just want to say like respectful, you know, I want to use respectful terminology, particularly with the bearers of our tradition, the easiest madhab in this respect would be the malikis. So if you go to Hanafi, Shafi'is and Hanbalis, which is the majority, obviously, there will be more restrictions. So when someone like really sort of like, and the maliki madhab is one of the established madhabs within the circle of Islamic orthodoxy. But still, when you attack the established positions of the majority that became sort of mainstream culture, mainstream culture, and you attack them so hard, you will cause the people to question the tradition, you will cause the people always to think that we have been lied to. You know, there is actually no problem with dogs whatsoever. Dogs are not maddis guys. Dogs are just fine. Yes, well, yes, dogs are not maddis according to the madakis. And there is some controversy among the madakis about certain rules that when it comes to dogs, and when it comes to like the permissibility of eating dogs or things of that nature, some people say that it is untrue that the madakis, you know, and I heard from some of the greatest madaki authorities that it is untrue that they consider this to be permissible, but when you come, when you basically choose a position that seems to be more towards the left, meaning it is more suitable for the dominant culture, and you attack the position of the majority that has become mainstream, you know, within even the madakis, I don't think that the madakis
are particularly, you know, comfortable about dogs, because when one position, when one madak has a peculiar position, they tend over time to sort of adjust it to be closer to the majority. Like you see in the Hanafi books, for instance, all the time, they would have a position, but they would say that the fatwa is otherwise because of that tendency to agree with the majority. Yes, this is established from our three imams, but the fatwa, or this is established from Imam Hanifa and Imam Muhammad ibn Hassan, for instance, or, you know, Imam Hanifa and Imam Abu Yusuf and so on, yet the fatwa is such and such, and you find that the fatwa is in agreement with the three other imams. The fatwa, which is what we actually recommend to people, is in agreement with the three other imams, and they have done this, you know, throughout the history. In different mazahib, they have adjusted the peculiar positions. When a mazahib chooses, the mazahib, the peculiar positions, they have tried to adjust them to be closer to the majority. So when people think that you have lied, that they have been lied to by their imams, by their sheikhs, you know, and they have been told wrong information, you're not telling them that there is a position that says such and such, but the majority of Muslim scholars said otherwise. In apologetics, in order for you not to basically shake people's face in the tradition and its bearers, you do want to be honest. You do want to be honest. You don't tell them, no, in fact, there is no problem with dogs whatsoever. You know, dogs are fine, this, this, this, and that, and you ignore the fact that the majority of Muslim scholars
have actually had issues with dogs, and dogs licking you, and dogs in the household, and things of that nature. So you have to be balanced in your presentation. Otherwise, you'll shake people's face in the tradition and its bearers. And you will not replace the tradition in the collective consciousness of Muslims. No organization, no institute, no school, no, you know, modern scholar will replace the tradition. Once you, once you sabotage the credibility of the tradition in the collective consciousness of Muslims, you have done permanent damage, because you will not be able to take the place of the tradition. You will not be able to garner the credibility of the tradition, take the place of the tradition. You will have done permanent damage. Then the next point is damaging people's perception of Islam's relevance to our times. The next point is damaging people's perception of Islam's relevance to our times. How do you do, how could you do this in doing apologetics? So by overemphasizing, overstating, overstating the historicalness of fiqh, historicalness of fiqh. All the time, people who are doing apologetics, Muslim apologists, they tend to say, many of them, certainly, you know, and I'm not trying to be critical of Muslim apologists in general. I'm just saying that these are trends that we need to be cognizant of, careful about, watch for, watch for these tendencies,
because we are inclined to make those mistakes. We are inclined, we are all inclined, for doing apologetics, if you're a Muslim apologist, which is not a bad word, if you're a Muslim apologist, you are inclined to making those mistakes. Watch for them. So the historicalness of fiqh, when you talk to them about the circumstantial variables, when you talk to them about the change of fatwa, when you talk to them about, you know, like I said, you know, you go to Al-Qarafiyan, Ibn Al-Qayyim, rahimahum Allah ta'ala, when they talk about how you should customize the fatwa for different people who come from different cultures, because the culture has an impact, when you tell them, layon kar taghayru al-ahkam, b'taghayru al-zamanu wal-makan, you know, the change of fatwa, or the change of rulings, meaning the change of fatwa in this context, should not be denounced, you know, the change of fatwa with the change of times and places should not be denounced, and it's a statement by many of our great scholars, and it is true, it is true. How do you balance the flexibility of the legal framework, how do you balance the flexibility of the legal framework of Islam, with the permanency and the continuity of divine instruction, al-khitaab al-ilahi? This is huge, because if you are too rigid, and you do not understand the circumstantial variables, you will say, for instance, forensic medicine, we don't have anything to do with forensic medicine. DNA testing, we don't have any, what DNA testing are you talking about? When did the scholars ever give consideration to DNA testing? When did the scholars ever give consideration
to forensic medicine? We have established rules, we go by, there is the testimony of two people, there is confession, there is this, there is that, we don't, all of this stuff is, you know, this is just modernist distortion of the law. Well, that is a problem, because the Islamic court system, Islamic judiciary will suffer a great deal if we do not take into consideration these new developments that help the, basically the judiciary establish justice. These are important, you know, and, okay. So, but again, so the circumstantial variables do have an effect, and our, the important thing that we have to keep in mind here is that when we say that our legal framework is flexible, we have to provide reasonable and consistent techniques of actualizing that flexibility, or garnering, harvesting that flexibility. It is not like flexible, it's like a fair game. Everybody could say, well, things have changed, times have changed, you know, and this is, you know, the classical argument by people who are not respectful of the law. Times have changed. So what? So you just like do away with the whole thing, or? But times have changed, then we will have to give the work the important, but again, at the same time, critical work of adjusting the legal framework to the scholars' most grounded in knowledge, called the rasikun fil-ilm.
They're mostly grounded in knowledge. Those are the scholars who, the greatest scholars, the forerunners, the vanguard of scholars, of our, not just simply scholars, rasikun fil-ilm. This will be the job of a rasikun fil-ilm, to basically exercise jihad, so that the legal framework of Islam would be sort of adapting to the changes, the circumstantial variables. And those scholars, there has to be a science. The usul al-fiqh, we will have within our legal theory, we will have to provide how we made that change. It has to be something that we can explain within our legal theory. We have to say that our legal theory provides that flexibility, and we have this qaeda, this principle, that says such and such, and we will use it to make that change and adapt to this new reality. But if you do not provide the method, the mechanism by which you made that change, and you always just fly up there, like in the maqasid area, and maqasid are the objectives of sharia. They have to be, maqasid are important. They have to be part of your, they have to be ingrained in the fiqhi process of every mujtahid. Maqasid, the objectives of sharia are what?
The protection of or preservation of what? Deen, the religion, life, hayya, life, or what else? Intellect, property, lineage and honor, whether you make them five or you make them six, but anyway, lineage some people use like families, but it could be used also. Nasab, family, and honor. So, but again, at the same time, sort of the Christian model, I'm sorry, the model of the French Revolution is quite Islamic also. So equality and fraternity, and hurriyat al-ikhaw al-musawaw, which would be liberty, equality, and fraternity. All Islamic, right? Platonic triad, all Islamic. Haqq, al-khayr, al-jamaal. This is all Islamic, which would be truth and goodness, whether goodness is a different layer, and justice is on the triad. There is the triad, and then there is the good, which is God, and then you have justice, truth, and beauty. The three, all of this is Islamic. You can't, so the issue here is how to realize those objectives. How to realize them. So Islam does not only point to the objectives, Islam gives you a roadmap to them.
And if you just hold on to the objectives and leave the roadmap, you don't need a religion. Nobody needs a religion. Because do any human beings disagree over the Islamic objectives, the five objectives, the preservation of spirituality? You could modify it to make it look or sound a little better than preservation of religion. Preservation of spirituality, life, intellect, property, family, honor. That sounds pretty nice. For everybody, you would agree, right? How do we do this is the question, is what, you know. And certainly, we do say that Islam left a lot of room for the human discernment and the human intellect and the human creativity. And the human this and the human that. We do believe in this, but again, at the same time, Islam put some guidelines to protect us from our own vices and our own biases. So that historicness of fiqh, we will have to mention that our legal framework is flexible, but we have to mention also that we have constant maxims, overarching maxims and principles that are not changeable. That's the continuity and the permanency of divine instruction. And we have to mention that that flexibility can be realized by new Ijtihad done by the greatest scholars of the time. The greatest scholars of the time. So in summary, there are many concerns, there are many pitfalls.
We have to be cognizant of them. We have to be careful about them. Watch very, very closely. Watch very vigilantly for them because you could do a lot of harm trying to do good. But we need to be careful without letting fear paralyze us. And we need to move on. Qul qawliyaa atha astaghfirullahi wa alaikum SubhanakAllahu wa ma'alaikum wa shabbiha Al Fatiha.
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