Modernizing The Islamic Message
Albert Einstein said
that the speed of light was the only absolute quantity in the universe. He
received a Nobel and became the most celebrated physicist in modern time. His
peers were working on a different theory, which dealt with the minutia of
matter, whereas Einstein’s theory addressed the “majora” in the universe.
Einstein was not convinced that his peers were correct, and doubted the results
of their work.
Recent discoveries by the protégés
of Einstein and Bohr, have cast light on
both theories; General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and have shown that,
while both works had valid laws governing physics and the universe, none could
be farther away from the cosmic absolute.
In theology, much
like in Physics, the three monotheist religions; Judaism, Christianity and
Islam, hold the idea that only the divine is absolute with an iron fist.
Muslims
take this notion further and define the omnipotence of an absolute creating
power in terms that leave no doubt in the minds of theologians and seculars alike, that the supreme divine being, unlike the universe, had no beginning for
he is the beginning, and has no end for he is the end.
Islamic tenet projects a
vociferous message that the Supreme Divine Being is the only Truth in the
universe, therefore, his immutable message to humanity; the Quran, is also a
Truth since he, the Truth, is the author.
When asked by a
non-Muslim about the bearer of the message; Muhammad; the prophet of God, a
Muslim does not mince words in asserting God’s dictate that since the Quran is
an absolute truth, the bearer was endowed with everything needed to deliver the
message intact as authored by God.
The prophet of Islam
said; “I was given the Quran and an equal of revelation along with it.” This is
interpreted to mean he was given a tradition by revelation which complement and
explain the divine text. This very notion, Muslims believe with absolute
conviction, places the tradition of the prophet second only to the Quran in
terms of truth, necessitating the extension of the umbrella of divine
protection upon it to safeguard it from the fading effect of time and literary mutilation.
The Quran was reduced
to writing during the lifetime of the prophet and was guarded dearer than life
by those who had received it to the point that hundreds of thousands of the
early Muslims committed it to memory; a tradition that was passed from
generation to the next. The result was that after 1500 years, the Quran is held
as the oldest and only surviving immutable document in human history.
The tradition of the
prophet, on the other hand, was not collected and reduced to writing during his
lifetime, but was held in the highest esteem by his companions, contemporaries and
three generations that followed, each generation collecting and reducing it to
a written form, while a number of scholars dedicated
their lives to gathering, collecting, sorting and editing the duplicate
documents over the period of an entire century.
A supreme effort that had spanned the duration of more than five generations,
and which culminated in preserving the tradition in the encyclopedic form that
we now have. We call it “The Hadith” or Oral Tradition.
Reading the various
editions of the prophet’s encyclopedia of tradition, a modern observer notices
the literary aroma of time. Language, archival system, classifications as well
as literary presentation are all out of date, and are hindrances to scholastic
research, not to mention difficult if not outright repelling to the casual lay
reader. the stark truth absent from the minds of many is: since they are not absolute,
they can be modernized.
Many scholars have
called upon the major Islamic academic institutions to take initiative and
attempt to modernize the archival system of the tradition and reinterpret its
text in a language commensurate with both modern time and a far superior
receiving intellect. Many if not all those calls have gone unheeded, sometimes
outright ignored. This must never go on
unaddressed.
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