The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam pdf

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ISLAM – Book Sample

CONTENTS – THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ISLAM

• Preface
• Knowledge and Religious Experience
• The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience
• The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer
• The Human Ego – His Freedom and Immortality
• The Spirit of Muslim Culture
• The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam
• Is Religion Possible?

Book’s PREFACE

The Qur‘an is a book that emphasizes ‘deed‘ rather than ‘idea‘. There are, however, men to whom it is not possible organically to assimilate an alien universe by re-living, as a vital process, that special type of inner experience on which religious faith ultimately rests.

Moreover, the modern man, by developing habits of concrete thought – habits which Islam itself fostered at least in the earlier stages of its cultural career – has rendered himself less capable of that experience which he further suspects because of its liability to illusion.

The more genuine schools of Sufism have, no doubt, done good work in shaping and directing the evolution of religious experience in Islam; but their latter-day representatives, owing to their ignorance of the modern mind, have become absolutely incapable of receiving any fresh inspiration from modern thought and experience.

They are perpetuating methods that were created for generations possessing a cultural outlook differing, in important respects, from our own. ‘Your creation and resurrection,‘ says the Qur‘an, ‘are like the creation and resurrection of a single soul.‘ A living experience of the kind of biological unity, embodied in this verse, requires today a method physiologically less violent and psychologically more suitable to a concrete type of mind. In the absence of such a method, the demand for a scientific form of religious knowledge is only natural.

 In these Lectures, which were undertaken at the request of the Madras Muslim Association and delivered at Madras, Hyderabad, and Aligarh, I have tried to meet, even though partially, this urgent demand by attempting to reconstruct Muslim religious philosophy with due regard to the philosophical traditions of Islam and the more recent developments in the various domains of human knowledge. And the present moment is quite favorable for such an undertaking.

Classical Physics has learned to criticize its own foundations. As a result of this criticism the kind of materialism, that it originally necessitated, is rapidly disappearing; and the day is not far off when

 Religion and Science may discover hitherto unsuspected mutual harmonies. It must, however, be remembered that there is no such thing as finality in philosophical thinking. As knowledge advances and fresh avenues of thought are opened, other views, and probably sounder views than those set forth in these Lectures, are possible.

Our duty is carefully to watch the progress of human thought and to maintain an independent critical attitude towards it.

Knowledge and Religious Experience – THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ISLAM

What is the character and general structure of the universe in which we live? Is there a permanent element in the constitution of this universe? How are we related to it? What place do we occupy in it, and what is the kind of conduct that befits the place we occupy?

These questions are common to religion, philosophy, and higher poetry. But the kind of knowledge that poetic inspiration brings is essentially individual in its character; it is figurative, vague, and indefinite. Religion, in its more advanced forms, rises higher than poetry.

 It moves from individual to society. In its attitude towards the Ultimate Reality it is opposed to the limitations of man; it enlarges his claims and holds out the prospect of nothing less than a direct vision of Reality. Is it then possible to apply the purely rational method of philosophy to religion? The spirit of philosophy is one of free inquiry.

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