Basic Lessons from Islamic Apologetics
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Limitations of Islamic Apologetics
In the previous sessions, we discuss the importance of studying and developing Islamic apologetics. In this session, Dr. Hatem al-Haj describes some of the limitations of apologetics.
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. So we were talking about the concerns and pitfalls of doing apologetics and now we will discuss the limitations of apologetics. Apologetics has many limitations. Most people don't listen with the intent to understand. You have to keep this in mind. How many people do actually convert after a debate? Very few people, particularly if you're debating with them. Because here the ego is actually a huge barrier between them and conversion. Because conversion means the loss of the debate. And are we inclined to accept this as human beings? No. So apologetics is really very limited. People don't convert because you have basically overwhelmed them with your intelligence or your decisive or incisive argument. Because they were not listening in the first place to understand. They were not listening. They were not simply just seeking the truth. Some people may. Most people are not. The second limitation here is that people frequently disguise their emotional discontentment with an intellectual objection.
Most of the people, you know, many people accept a religion based on sort of emotional attachment or social attachment. They were born in the religion, so they continue to subscribe to that religion or continue to believe in that religion. Or they have come to build bondships or bonds of friendship with people of a certain religious background. And that is something that the Quran recognizes. In Surah Al-Ankabut, Ibrahim said, Ibrahim said to his people that you have taken as deities idols for the purpose of bonding among yourselves. To build the bonds among yourselves or for bonding among yourselves. It's basically when you go to church or synagogue or even mosque to meet friends, to socialize, to have a good time, to eat pizza or biryani or whatever it is. And to have a good time with friends and sort of community members.
But then when you are discontented, discontented with that religious community, it is hard for you to actually admit that you are just discontented with the way you're being treated at the masjid. So you will have to find some moral objection or some intellectual objection to justify to yourself and to justify to people why you walked away. Why you left the religion. Because simply to say to people I left the religion because, you know, people were rude to me at the masjid. That is not really intellectually sound. You know, it's not really, it doesn't look nice. It doesn't look sort of thoughtful. So you will have to find the moral objection. So many times people disguise their emotional discontentment with an intellectual objection. So what does that mean? It means like if you're doing apologetics, don't exaggerate the importance of what you're doing. Because the person who is basically working in the masjid's kitchen soup may be doing a greater job in terms of keeping people in their religion than you. And bringing people into their religion, more people into their religion than you are. Just don't over exaggerate. And this is not to undermine or belittle the importance of certainly apologetics at all. But I'm just trying to say understand that it is a lot more complicated than this. It is not about crafting smart arguments only. Religion is a lot more complicated than this.
And you know, staying in their religion and coming into their religion is not simply all about persuasion. And we will come to talk about the different routes to religiosity or religious commitment or faith, association, persuasion and actualization. So at the same time, if apologetics is not your final objective, your final objective is to help people, help invite people to the truth. Help keep people in their religion. Then you will have to diversify your own involvements. I'm doing apologetics, but I'm also helping with, you know, the, what is it? The soup kitchen. I'm also helping with the soup kitchen. I'm also going out to visit the sick. I'm also, you know, reaching out to the homeless and providing help for people here and there and doing everything. And I'm also emphasizing to my community and to my masjid the importance of that social fulfillment that people are looking for. The importance of the masjid being a place where people find comfort and friendship, allegiance, belonging. You know, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one of the basic needs that we, one of the basic needs close to the bottom of the pyramid, not at the bottom of the pyramid, but close to the bottom of the pyramid is that sense of belonging.
Being accepted, being loved, belonging to a group or belonging to a fraternity. So you do need to encourage, even with any, like, even through your, the work of your organization, your output should also point out the importance of these aspects. And it does not mean that our religion does not have, it does not mean that our religion does not have a decisive argument in defense of its doctrine. So we're using those techniques. It is that we are using those techniques so that they do not, so that that emotional discontentment or social discontentment does not divert people from the truth that we believe in, that we're certain of, that we can craft a perfect argument on behalf of. Because that is the difference between using those techniques by, to basically invite people to falsehood and using those techniques so that you keep people comfortable and content socially and emotionally so that they don't leave the truth or they don't walk away from the truth. The second, the third limitation here, and there are certainly more limitations, but the third limitation of apologetics is that apologetics is mainly about defense.
You are on the defensive. But it is not really only about defense. It is about the systematic argument. If you take a piecemeal, retail approach to apologetics where you're just waiting for a misconception to answer that misconception, then this retail approach, piecemeal approach to apologetics is not very constructive. Apologetics is about constructing a systematic argument in defense of the whole doctrine. It's a lot more than just refuting misconceptions, as we said in the beginning. It's much larger in scope, and it's much more sophisticated than simply refuting misconception. You're providing a systematic argument to basically in defense of the Islamic hierarchy of values. It's just not answering, it is not simply refuting misconceptions. You are defending the Islamic hierarchy of values. You are defending the Islamic instructions with regard to sexual morality, for instance. You're constructing a whole intellectual construct or intellectual paradigm, not simply answering misconceptions. But at the end of the day, this is still not a substitute for building certainty. Building certainty.
Because building certainty is not limited to answering misconceptions. It is not limited to being intellectually comfortable or feeling that you are in a good place intellectually. You have some intellectual equilibrium. You're convinced. It's not just simply about intellectual conviction. It's much more than this that we will talk about when we come to it, when we come to the slides on building certainty. Now, a general scheme for doing apologetics in general, even if this is basically a dialogue between you and someone, not necessarily that you're working to construct a paper in defense of Islamic doctrines or practices, but you are sitting with a friend of yours and something comes up. Whatever, you know, like a discussion about anything related to Islam, jihad in Islam, anything, you know, war in Islam, this or that. How you will have to be systematic about your discourse. What is it that you want to impart to this person? What is it that you want to share with this person? What is it that you want to include in your writing or your paper? There are three main elements. Three main elements. And this is my own thing, by the way. I'm not telling you that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said clarification, justification, application. So if someone has like a fourth, please share, you know, and these are all classifications. We have to be very sort of flexible about classifications.
They just are meant to stress certain points or emphasize certain points and so on and organize our thinking processes. So clarification, justification and application means what? Means that you need to clarify the spectrum of Islamic positions concerning this issue. What does Islam say about it? Because to begin with, that people may be misinformed. Because you have misinformation, misinterpretation and misapplication. The people may be misinformed about the spectrum of Islamic positions concerning the issue of military sort of conquest or the use of military force. The use of military force. So here is what Islam says. And when we come to applications, we'll talk about jihad in particular. But I just wanted to talk about the general scheme, you know, the basically the blueprint of any paper. You want to clarify what Islam says. Then you want to justify what Islam said. Right, because that's apologetics. It is systematic argumentative discourse in defense of a doctrine. You want to justify what Islam says. And here is you want basically your knowledge of the culture, knowledge of the background of the person, knowledge of the dominant sort of trends. You want to use all of this in this sort of segment.
Justification. Justification. As we said, when you justify, and we will come back and talk about it more, you're trying to justify mainly what? The spectrum of orthodoxy. Let us say there are positions outside of orthodoxy. You don't need to spend much time justifying those positions. Unless you need to mention them for the reason of your basically apologetics. And we will come back and talk about which positions we can mention. But justification is important. And giving, keep in mind also that you could skew the spectrum of orthodoxy by giving unequal weights to unequal arguments. Or equal weights to unequal positions. This is how you skew the perception of orthodoxy in the minds of the recipients. We may have not said this in the beginning. We probably should have included it in the beginning. The problem with apologetics is that you cannot have basically partitions between apologetics and teaching. People would use, if you do apologetics, people would use your very same papers to teach. To teach even the youth about Islam. About the Islamic position on this or the Islamic position on that.
Had we had perfect partitions, then it would have been easier. But we don't have those perfect partitions. So you will always have to do your apologetics keeping in mind the trickle-down effect on the masses, on the base. Because there are no partitions. Nowadays in particular, everything you write will be readable by everybody once it's published online. Everything you say will be basically accessible to everybody once it is published online. So you can't say I'm just doing this and it is my sort of apologetics work. But it will not have an effect on the spectrum. Then application. Once you have clarified the different positions, Islamic positions on the spectrum. Once you've justified those positions, you have to be careful by how much weight you give to every position. But once you have done this work using your great knowledge, you have to have great knowledge of the trends and the cultural trends and philosophies. Where they are popular, particularly the philosophical background of your particular audience and so on. Then you'll have to move on to step three, application. And they come in this order most of the time. They come in this order most of the time. How do you, they call this antiquity and modernity. How do you cross the bridge between antiquity and modernity? But we do believe that even using these terms could be somewhat detrimental to people's perception of the relevance of the religion to our times.
And the permanency and the continuity. Anyway, we do recognize that there is a difference, huge differences that happened in our world in the last 200 years. That made a huge gap between modernity and antiquity. There is a huge gap in people's lifestyles and people's, just in the global culture. Not a particular culture, but in the global culture. There are huge differences. So how do you basically cross the bridge? For instance, when we talk about slavery, we have clarification, justification and application. If you start your paper by clarification, then justification, then application, you're already doomed. You're done. Because people would have labeled you as a fanatic who is basically preaching Daesh stuff. Because you keep on talking about clarification, justification and people are not. Do you really want to reinstate slavery? You seem to be very sort of like proud of it. Because we talk about how great the Islamic instructions concerning slavery and how slavery in Islam is completely different from slavery that was practiced within other cultures. Or within other paradigms or within other sort of historical sort of circumstances or historical paradigms. And then people keep on reading this, reading this and reading. Where are you taking us?
You seem to be like, you seem to be reminiscing about this. It looks like you want it back. So here you will have to switch the order. You will have to bring application to the top. Before clarification, before justification, you have to tell them, listen, slavery has been abandoned worldwide. And that basically, that abandonment or that condition is something that no religion was eager to achieve more than Islam. No religion had more tashawwuf lil hurriyah, had more eagerness to give people, provide people with their liberty and their freedom than Islam. And Islam tells us as believers, as Allah says, Ya ayyuhal lazeena amanu awfoo bil wuqood wa hallat lakum bihimatul an'am. In the beginning of Surat al-Ma'idah, it tells us as believers, fulfill your covenants. And if we have 57 Muslim countries that are signatories to the UN conventions or all of the conventions concerning POWs and all of the UN conventions and so on and so forth, We have binding covenants. Not only that we are going to respect those covenants because they are binding on us by the international community. And not only that we are going to respect those covenants because we are people who honor our covenants, because that agreement is something desirable by us Muslims. The abandonment of slavery means that whenever there is a war, all the POWs will be exchanged.
No POWs will be taken into slavery. Right. Because that was the only the only left route to slavery in Islam. All other routes were banned, were forbidden by Islam. No one can sail in Europe up until recently. Not recently, but in some places in Europe, people could sell their wives. But in Islam, this was not legal for sure. Also, you can't kidnap people and sell them into slavery. That was not legal for sure. The only route that was left for particular purposes that we will talk about when we come to talk about slavery in some more detail is the prisoners of war. To save their lives by basically, and it was not the only route for the prisoners of war. Islam encouraged us to do man, which is to free without compensation. Fida, which is exchange or to free with compensation. Man comes first, free without compensation. Fida comes second. But then also, Istirqaq, which is to take them as slaves, was one option that was permissible in Islam. So the fact, would any Muslim want, would any Muslim have any problem with the agreements to exchange the POWs? Would you want to keep, you know, would you want to basically keep people's wives and sisters and children and this and that? But again, at the same time, risk that they keep your own as slaves? Certainly not.
No Muslim in his right mind would not favor an agreement to exchange the POWs so you can have your own back. And the enemy after the war would have their own back. So when it comes to the order that we are talking about here, this is the order that we should go by most of the time. But certain times you do need to tweak the order because it would not be suitable to write a paper. And then on page 30 of the paper you mentioned, but keep in mind, we don't want it back. This is something that, you know, it wouldn't work, you know, it wouldn't be a smart thing to do.
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