AL-HUDA
Foundation, NJ U. S. A
the Message Continues ... 8/85
Article 1 - Article 2 - Article 3 - Article 4 - Article 5 - Article 6 - Article 7 - Article 8 - Article 9 - Article 10 - Article 11 - Article 12
"The totalitarian
ideology of separating faith and reason can be
even worse than institutionalizing either one or
both, particularly if such institutionalization
requires either societal acceptance or rejection
of those elements of faith that are beyond
accessibility or proof through human reason.
These elements in Islamic thought are called the
ghraib or what is hidden or other than
humanly knowable. These include the afterlife
and the nature and even existence of God. The
arguments about whether reason trumps faith or
faith trumps reason has been raging within the
Muslim world for untold centuries, but the
mainstream scholars agreed a thousand years
ago that neither the rationalist Mutazillites
nor the literalist Salafis trump the other,
simply because there can be no incompatibility
between faith and reason, and whoever thinks
there is has misunderstood at least one of
them."
-Dr. Robert D. Crane
Pluralism
and Natural Law
by Dr. Robert
D. Crane
Cicero, the great Roman philosopher of two
thousand years ago, said, "Before one begins the
discussion of anything whatsoever, one should
first define terms." Doing so is not splitting
hairs, but is an essential first step in human
thought and communication. Otherwise the misuse
of words can become a tool of mimetic warfare,
which is designed to capture the subconscious of
an opponent in order to disarm independent
thought. The dangers of imprecision are
especially great today during an era of major
changes in space and place, including the
evolution or devolution of language, such as the
current implosion of English into the jibberish
of apes.
Egregious examples of such mimetic warfare
are the terms "socialism," which is a term used
to concentrate ownership in the political elite
of the collective "state" under the pretext of
equality in sharing the economic pie, and
"democratic capitalism," which is a term used to
concentrate ownership in an economic elite under
the pretext of efficiency in building a bigger
pie. Both of these goals require "creative
destruction" of all existing and potential
opposition and are pursued allegedly out of
humanitarian concern for freedom and democracy.
Two of the most contentious or problematic
terms in the drafting of modern constitutions
are "pluralism" and "natural law."
Pluralism, according to Websters Dictionary
has four distinct meanings. These range from
the ontological to the sociological. One
meaning, which fortunately has gone out of style
except among postmodernists, regards pluralism
as a synonym for plurality, which is defined as
"a theory that there are more than one or more
than two kinds of ultimate reality." This, of
course, is just as absurd as saying that one
plus one equals three or that three equals one.
The fourth dictionary meaning is "a state of
society in which members of diverse ethnic,
racial, religious, or social groups maintain an
autonomous participation in and development of
their traditional culture or special interests
within the confines of a common civilization."
This sociological definition is closely related
to and in fact is a direct product of an
additional fifth meaning that increasingly is
now used among interfaith leaders when referring
to religious pluralism.
This fifth meaning, as we might come to
define it is: "A term used to describe the
acceptance of all religious paths as equally
legitimate in the eyes of God not because they
are equally true but because religious diversity
is part of the divine plan for every
person's pursuit of goodness and salvation and
as vehicles for cooperation in applying justice,
which is the opposite of the term
multi-culturalism when used to mean that all
religions and cultures are equally true and that
there is no rational reason to accept or belong
to any of them."
Mike Greaney, the long-time research
director of the Center for Economic and Social
Justice, comments that pluralism: "means every
individual has a civil right to practice
whatever religion he or she wishes, or none at
all, so long as it doesn't harm the individual,
others, or the common good. That is, with
respect to the civil order ("society"), all
religions all equally valid, as long as they do
not undermine or attack the natural law. This
says nothing about purely religious teachings
("revelation"), in matters of which the
different religions vary widely, but that is a
matter for individual conscience, not the rest
of society."
Unfortunately, this distinction might
seem to introduce the modernist idea of
"separation of Church and State." Thomas
Jefferson emphasized throughout his writings the
universal interdependence of faith and reason.
He sharply distinguished this from the de facto
denial of this interdependence in the concepts
of Church and State, which derived from the
clash between the religious totalitarianism and
the secular totalitarianism that gave rise to
the creeping secularism of the European
Renaissance.
The totalitarian ideology of separating
faith and reason can be even worse than
institutionalizing either one or both,
particularly if such institutionalization
requires either societal acceptance or rejection
of those elements of faith that are beyond
accessibility or proof through human reason.
These elements in Islamic thought are called the
ghraib or what is hidden or other than
humanly knowable. These include the afterlife
and the nature and even existence of God. The
arguments about whether reason trumps faith or
faith trumps reason has been raging within the
Muslim world for untold centuries, but the
mainstream scholars agreed a thousand years
ago that neither the rationalist Mutazillites
nor the literalist Salafis trump the other,
simply because there can be no incompatibility
between faith and reason, and whoever thinks
there is has misunderstood at least one of them.
The second problematic term discussed in the
drafting of modern constitutions is "natural
law." This may be used to resolve the issue of
pluralism. The agreed purpose of
the Abraham Federation, which was adopted by
various groups at a constitutional drafting
workshop at a three-day gathering in Saint Louis
earlier this month, resolved this problem by
introducing the term "natural law": "The
Abraham Federation is a coalition of
organizations that hold in common the idea that
access to property ownership is the key to
justice, and justice is the key to peace. We
are a think-tank and catalyst for social change
comprised of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and all
who uphold the principles of natural law. We
advocate limited economic power of the State,
free and open markets, and the full rights of
private property." Perhaps this should
have included expanded access to ownership in
the means of production, i.e., to
private property, and recognized limits to
the rights of private property, but
this distinction was deemed to belong more
properly to documents on legislative intent.
The modern meaning of "natural law" is the
exact opposite of what it has meant
in totalitarian circles, which for some
centuries now has served to eliminate all
reference to truth beyond what man creates. The
revival of natural law has been spearheaded by a
host of Christian and Islamic scholars in the
search for a source of normative law independent
of the kind of democracy that is understood as
the tyranny of the majority, which was anathema
to the traditionalist founders of America and to
the entire heritage of both classical Islam and
classical Christianity.
In my lengthy article, "Taproot to
Terrorism: The Loss of Transcendent Law in
America and the Muslim World," published in
The Muslim World Book Review, Summer 2005,
I discuss the various terms used by Muslims and
Christians as synonyms for what I call
"transcendent law." Muslims call it the
maqasid al shari'ah, or normative
principles of the higher law apparent in divine
revelation, in the scientific study of the
universe, including human nature, and in or
through the use of human reason.
Muslims scholars refer to these three sources,
respectively as haqq al yaqin, 'ain al yaqin,
and 'ilm al yaqin. This concept of
"transcendent law" is discussed in my subsequent
article in the September 2007 issue of this same
journal, entitled "The Higher Justice of Divine
Revelation: The Creativity and Dynamism of
Islamic Jurisprudence," which introduces some of
the holistic methodologies for deriving moral
guidance from the Qur'an and Sunnah and applying
it to contemporary issues of conscience,
especially to economic justice.
For purposes of understanding religious
pluralism, Christians have resuscitated the term
"natural law." On page 13 of the above article
on Taproot to Terrorism, I write:
"Unfortunately, this framework of normative law
has gradually been deconstructed over the past
century and a half in America, and even more so
in Europe, so that the primordially religious
nature of all law in human society has been
reduced to the positivist concept that natural
law is non-existent, or irrelevant, or
synonymous with human reason. This
deconstruction poses a threat to the higher
identity of every person and community and
therefore evokes the fight or flight response of
the animal whose very existence has been
challenged.
The increasingly popular and powerful
Christian response to such existential
anomie has been best articulated by Russell
Hittinger in his book sponsored by the
traditionalist Intercollegiate Studies
Institute, The First Grace: Rediscovering
the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World,
2002, 300 pages. He writes, "The purpose of
natural law theory is to discover or assert the
prior premises of human law. These coalesce
around three foci; order in the Divine mind,
order in nature, and order in the human mind."
Hittinger explains how "the great tradition of
natural law allowed each of these three foci to
have its own salience, depending on the problem
at hand." Through this framework the
"law-makers" are guided by a higher law than
themselves, and through it the justices are able
intelligently to apply the legislative intent.
Muslims are hypersensitive about anything
that smacks of anthropomorphism, so they would
object to the metaphor "the Divine mind," but
this hang-up is similar to Catholic sensitivity
to statues of humans in churches that might
redirect prayer away from God. The risk is
indeed there in both cases, but humans are
created different from angels because we can
both understand and intelligently use symbols,
such as words and metaphors, to express what
otherwise might be inexpressible. Angels know
by infused knowledge, and so do humans, but we
have "dual carburation" in that we can know what
we know and also reject it.
Our unique nature as humans equips us to
be stewards of creation with freedom to
determine our own future and with the power to
recognize the blessings of divine guidance so
that we can benefit from the natural law of
tawhid and appreciate the sacred coherence of
diversity that points to the Oneness of God.
|
|
HOME - NEWSLETTERS - BOOKS - ARTICLES - CONTACT - FEEDBACK
DISCLAIMER:
All material published by Al-Huda.com / And the Message Continues is the sole responsibility of its author's).
The opinions and/or assertions contained therein do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of this site,
nor of Al-Huda and its officers.