On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 11:49:53 -0800 (PST), John Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gilberto: > Ok. Then if all that was vouchsafed to Bahaullah was already mentioned > to Muhammad, I just think it makes alot more sense for me to look to > those great Muslim interpreters, scholars, and saints to unpack the > meaning of the Quran and the sunnah. And nothing would be lost or > missing by doing so.
> John: > But by only looking at the Qur'an, its interpreters, its scholars, its > saints, etc., you will **not** know which of the verses/teachings to > consider with the **appropriate** level of "degree, emphasis and candor.", to > quote yourself. John: > In other words, Allah has directly intervened through the revelation of > Baha'u'llah to clarify those questions, those areas of uncertainty. Gilberto: IF you believe that God did that through Bahaullah and that he had that role, sure, that would end the debate. But that's a big if. Gilberto: But as a Muslim I can also look let myself be guided by the interpretations of Abu Hanifa, Imam Shafi, Al-Ghazzali, Rumi, Ibn al-Arabi, Shah Waliullah, Maturidi, etc. and one advantage is that it is much more clear and obvious that they are part of a common shared Islamic tradition. It's not the case that all of their followers are uniformly condemned as being outside the pale of Islam. John: > Let me setup an analogy to explain this another way. > > (Setup 1) Lets say the Qur'an is the English alphabet A-Z. > OK. > (Setup 2) Lets also say that since there are different Muslim > interpretations, from different Muslim scholars, saints, etc., that there > are different ways to Understand the Holy Qur'an. Gilberto: I suspect you might have an exagerated sense of the extent to which this is problematic. There is a broad consensus about important matters. And the areas where scholars disagree generally aren't going to be worth fighting over. For example, just among sunnis (Ahl al sunnah wal jamaat) there are four different interpretations of the laws, four different rites (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi, Hanbali) named after the founders. There may have been aberant periods of history where these differences were more contentious, but the norm is that followers of one school respect the rulings of the followers of the other school as valid. They can pray together, they can pray behind one another, they accept one another as sunni Muslims. Some of the differences are due to slight differences in the interpretive principles they apply to the Quran but those differences are not worth fighting over. This attitude even extended to theology. For sunnis there are two main schools. Ashari and Maturidi. Different ways of understanding God, morality, free-will, etc. Both both are considered valid. When the scholars disagreed they didn't say "I'm the only Muslim and you are an unbeliever". There was politeness and adab. They said "I believe I'm right with the possibility of being wrong. I believe you are wrong with the possibility of being right." John: So, the "degree" and > "emphasis" that the various Qur'anic verses need to be understood are not > all that clear. ----- To fit the analogy, lets symbolize this as the Qur'an > being little wooden blocks of the English alphabet A-Z all thrown into a > box. No one knows the order they are supposed to be in. One may ask, is Z, > B, Q, F.... the correct order? Then the situation in Islam might be that all the scholars actually agree about the order of the letters from A to W, and some people think it should go X, Y, Z. But then another group thinks it should go Z, X, Y. But the two groups agree that they are not going to fight about it because they can still read one another's books, and they still agree about how all the words are spelled, and they only have minimal trouble using one another's dictionaries. But then the Bahai faith comes along and starts saying that the alphabet is supposed to go A, Z, X, Q, R, B, V, T, and then throws in some cyrillic characters in, etc.. The earlier groups had minor disagreements among themselves, but they all can agree that this new group is actually wrong. Peace Gilberto "My people are hydroponic" __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:archive@mail-archive.com To unsubscribe, send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, use subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:bahai-st@list.jccc.edu Web - http://list.jccc.edu/read/?forum=bahai-st News - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Public - http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
