Complex System
The complex system that Traditional Islam built has authenticated-certainty at its core, resulting in a cult of yaqeen or certitude. It rests upon the shaky foundation of the Dictionary/Grammar Problem, which results in a Translation Problem. It is compounded by the problem of establishing Historical Truth, and which is further aggravated by the Abrogation Hot Mess.
BioIslam resolves the complexity problem through five simple axioms, followed by a simplified sequence of Induction and Illustration. This results in five Inside Pillars, that are rolled up from a set of Latent Principles extracted from the Quran, and which subsequently allow us filter the vast Hadith corpus to deliver Good Hadith. In contrast, the Traditionalist ulama use unreliable Sirah and sahih Hadith books to infer the Quran’s context, a confused and convoluted mode of interleaved deduction. Our simpler solution offers a better alternative to the rule-based rigidity, the mind-boggling complexity, and the spaghetti-like intertextuality of Traditional Islam, as we shall see below.
The Authenticity Assumption
BioIslam axiomatically assumes the infallibility of the Quran. But the big question is, which portions of the post-Quranic documents are truly authentic? In BioIslam, everything beyond the five simple axioms should be subject to vigorous inquiry and debate. This is a provocative point of departure from Traditional Islam which assumes complete or near-complete authenticity of the Sunnah, as documented in the sahih Hadith and Sirah and maghazi books. Those books were constructed and canonized into a cumbersome complex system in the second and third Islamic centuries. In other words, the earliest of the post-Quranic books that are available to us today were written about 150-200 years after the passing of the Prophet ï·ș, during a time of great social and political turmoil. Some went through a validation process, others did not. BioMuslims are deeply skeptical of the Traditionalist accounts of the Prophetâs personal life, such as his marriages, or battles he engaged in â which is not to dismiss all such details as certainly false, but to say we have no reliable way of authenticating them, as we shall see later. As mentioned at the outset, BioIslam deeply respects the aural-Sunnah but deeply distrusts the textual-Sunnah, since the former was transmitted through an oral tradition (comprising memorization and recitation) while the latter relies on fallible post-Quranic books.
Hereafter, to be consistent with mainstream Sunni Islamic scholars, we use the abbreviated term Sunnah to refer to what really is the textual-Sunnah, since the original-Sunnah is judged to be unrecoverable. In other words, BioIslam only assumes infallibility of the holy Quran, whereas Traditional Islam assumes the joint infallibility of both Quran and Sunnah for the mainstream Sunnis (or Quran and Imami views for the Shia).
In BioIslam, the authenticity of all post-Quranic religious knowledge, such as that in the Sirah and Hadith books, should only be revalidated in the light of these axioms and the Quranic Latent Principles, rather than popular methods based on narratives and chains — narratives (riwayah) validated by chains of transmission (isnad). The isnad process is discussed further in Canonization Constructs Authenticity. Specifically, despite the existence of a valid isnad for hadiths, and their consequent inclusion in a sahih Hadith book, we boldly contend a hadith simply cannot be sahih if it is inconsistent with either the explicit edicts or latent principles of the Quran. As an aside, this differs from the historical position of the Mutazilites, since BioIslam accepts many more hadiths than they did, since they only accepted the mutawatir ones. BioIslam accepts all hadiths that illustrate the LPs, if sourced from the sahih Hadith collection, and in some cases those that outside the sahih books.
BioIslam’s approach is fresh but not revolutionary — the authentication of hadith through open content matn criticism was once undertaken by a few reputed scholars centuries ago, as discussed further in Good Hadith. There are numerous hadith that have strong isnad and are therefore included in the sahih collection, yet they are inconsistent with the ethos of the Quran. In Dark Matter, we include a partial list of such problematic sahih Hadith and Sirah claims, and the question of authenticity is detailed further in Historical Truth.
Yaqeen Is Prerequisite
We can not be certain about what exactly happened during the first century of Islam, yet must appreciate the core underlying message of Islam, despite the ambiguity about early Islamic history. When it comes to deciphering the details of the first century of Islam, even the most brilliant Islamic scholars are groping in the dark, or at least in the twilight, since no books survive from that century, except for the aurally-pristine Quran. But Traditional Islam has constructed and canonized a precise picture of the early Muslims, and exhorts its followers to emulate it.
Traditionalists might well have acted with good intentions, but the result is a strange brew of pious fictions and unseemly falsities. On the other hand, the unbiased academic scholars, both Muslim and non-Muslims, are required to advance a nuanced and sophisticated story that their discriminating peers will entertain. This is a lot harder to do than to simply take up the apologist stance of devotional scholars, the ulama. Both camps, the unbiased and the ulama, have one thing in common — they have to work within the severe limitations of first-century sources, uncertain as they might be (also true of other major religions, of course).
This results in a troubling academic-scholar v. Imam gap, or provocatively, the unbiased v. ulama gap. The neighborhood Imams of Traditional Islam, who get their knowledge from the ulama as opposed to academic scholars, must preach a neatly packaged story that their lay audience will credulously accept and cherish. They operate in a cult of authenticity, and commit to project certitude. It is unacceptable for them to state âwe donât fully know what really happened back thenâ. The phrase bila kaifa, or ‘we don’t know how’, was once commonly cited, has gone out of fashion. Nuance and ambiguity are inconsistent with their job description.
Many Imams have been fired for deviating from the cultic consensus. Since preaching is not a portable skill, careerism constrains many. Worse, to the degree they are not careerists, they edit out ambiguity since it creates doubt, debate and dissolution in their communities. This doubling down on certitude is also a reflexive defense mechanism wherever Muslims are a distressed minority, or an oppressed majority under colonial rule, which describes the status of most Muslims in recent centuries.
Why the iktilaf? A common utterance in the unbiased academic study of Islam is fee iktilaf, or ‘we disagree’, a worthy companion to bila kaifa. Uncertainty and disagreement begins with the Dictionary Problem. What do certain words and phrases mean? The rule book of Arabic, the first dictionary-cum-grammar book, was written about 150 years after the Quran. The process of writing it was not as clean and simple as the lay person assumes, and the choices made have forever colored our interpretation of the revelation. While most Muslims frequently hear of early Muslim scholars like Imams Bukhari or Malik or Shafii’i, few have heard of the crucial Persian scholar Sibawayhi. As the author of the first, the definitive and the most comprehensive dictionary-cum-grammar book, his choices may well have had more impact on the various interpretations of the Quran, and as a consequence Islamic history, than the famous Imams who built up their law and theology on his pivotal linguistic foundation.
While many eminent objective scholars of Islam acknowledge the uncertainty that surrounds the early post-Quranic sources, most lay Imams never do, as detailed further in Historical Truth. Why does an attempt at objectivity and intellectual honesty matter? Because the ulama’s choice of clinging to cultic certitude resulted in Tragic Errors and Inconvenient Implications, such as the disappointingly late abolition of slavery in the Muslim world.
The Inverse Error â To avoid the downside of certitude, BioMuslims embrace historical ambiguity, but avoid the inverse error, i.e. they do not throw out the entire bathwater of early Islamic history. That is the myopic approach of the Quran-only reformers. As such, the path of least interpretive error is to adopt a Quran-led induction-illustration sequence, i.e. to extract Latent Principles from the aurally-pristine Quran, and subsequently sift through the vast trove of post-Quranic books, as we shall describe next.
A Guide to Complexity
The Complexity Problem deserves an elaborate discussion before we can appreciate BioIslamâs simple solution. It is presented in the following pages:
Dictionary Problem – Is the meaning of key Quranic words and phrases accurate?
Historical Truth? – Since no post-Quranic books survive from the first Islamic century, not even a dictionary, how can we be sure of what the original Islam really was?
Tragic Errors – Do our Big Five problems stem from the poor interpretive choices of our ulama?
Messy Role Model? – Are the many controversial, if not downright shocking, claims about the Prophetâs personal life true?
Inconvenient Implications – If you believe in Traditional Islam, which other beliefs are you inadvertently endorsing? Or â let’s be honest now â are you cherry-picking the convenient bits that you like, and ignoring the inconvenient bits that you can’t handle?