Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This book is an attempt to find why Muslims are in conflict with themselves, and why Muslims have been living in an intellectual isolation and intellectual vacuum. This book is an attempt to find why Islam, as embodied in the Mushaf, calls for a sharply different norms than those adopted by the majority of Muslims. To search for answers, the book uses, as much as possible, two sources: the first is critical reasoning, and the second is the Mushaf. In sharp contrast to the vast majority of books on Islam, this book does not base the validity of any argument on the stature of past or present Muslim personalities and scholars irrespective of their high status and reverence amongst the majority of Muslims.
The book takes a methodical approach to analysing the techniques that evolved throughout the ages to marginalize the Muslims mind and to project reason as the archenemy of Islam. The book analyses alleged prophetic narratives (Hadith) and interpretations of the Mushaf (tafsir) by prominent jurists to confirm that rationalism and reason were both, and largely, disconnected from Muslims intellectual discourse, at least in the overwhelmingly dominant religious material that has reached us.
This book analyses fundamental contradictions in the way the vast majority of Muslims perceive Islam, and how the conceived and practiced Muslim or "Islamic" doctrines lack foundation in the Mushaf. The book goes behind the scene, so to speak, to analyse reasons behind such a vast disconnect. The book provides a context to the severe intellectual underdevelopment amongst most Muslims vis- -vis their understanding of their religion. It looks at canonized practices and doctrines that emerged throughout the ages through dubious scholarship to maintain a docile, hopeless, aimless, and subservient Muslim umma. It brings to the forefront stark contradictions between the canonized Muslim doctrines and the Mushaf, contradictions that many Muslims choose to ignore.
The book challenges the use of Hadith as a source of Islamic legislation. It takes an unconventional perspective of the Mushaf's exegesis and reaches conclusions that are based on reason and the Mushaf's direct text, yet contradictory to conventional Muslims doctrines.
The book looks at the culture of violence championed by the historically triumphant Muslim scholars, jurisprudents and clergy, whose "scholarship" triumphed and morphed that of other scholars who put the Mushaf first and everything else as secondary. It questions whether such culture inspired past and contemporary violent movements. The book revisits fundamental doctrines and canonized laws and looks carefully at their evolution and their connection to the Mushaf. Two chapters in the book address the two most important sources of Islamic Law: Hadith and the Mushaf. The analyses in these two chapters leads to unconventional conclusions, thus establishing a new perspective that stems purely from the Mushaf and critical reasoning. The conclusions in these two chapters put Hadith in a perspective and context completely non-convergent with prevailing Muslims doctrines. The conclusions would also have direct implications on what is typically perceived as Islamic law and the controversial doctrine of Sharia.