بِسۡمِ اللّٰہِ الرَّحۡمٰنِ الرَّحِیۡمِ
الصلاة والسلام عليك يا سيدي يا رسول الله
In the Name of Allah, the Rahman, the Merciful
Blessings and salutations of peace be upon you my Master, Apostle of Allah
The extremely misguided reformist and modernist Fazlur Rahman Malik (1919-1988) said: “But orthodoxy (indeed, all medieval thought) lacked the necessary intellectual tools to combine in its formulation of the dogma the otherness and verbal character of the Revelation on the one hand, and its intimate connection with the work and the religious personality of the Prophet on the other, i.e. it lacked the intellectual capacity to say both that the Qur’an is entirely the Word of God and, in an ordinary sense, also entirely the word of Muhammad. The Qur’an obviously holds both, for it insists that it has come to the ‘heart’ of the Prophet, how can it be external to him?” (Islam, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press; p.31) “The Qur’an is thus pure Divine Word, but, of course, it is equally intimately related to the inmost personality of the Prophet Muhammad whose relationship to it cannot be mechanically conceived like that of a record.” (ibid, p.33)
Fazlur Rahman’s denial that the Holy Quran is an entirely external Revelation to the heart of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and that it should be understood as emanating from the Prophet’s mind is undoubtedly heretical. The Ayat he cited establish the exact opposite of his claim that the Quran is a product of the Prophet’s mind. They in fact make clear that it is a Revelation that has come down upon him externally, through the Holy Spirit and the Archangel Gabriel:
فَاِنَّہٗ نَزَّلَہٗ عَلٰی قَلۡبِکَ بِاِذۡنِ اللّٰہِ
For he [Gabriel] it is who sent it down upon your heart by the command of Allah
(Surah 2, Ayah 97)
نَزَلَ بِہِ الرُّوۡحُ الۡاَمِیۡنُ
عَلٰی قَلۡبِکَ لِتَکُوۡنَ مِنَ الۡمُنۡذِرِیۡنَ
The faithful Spirit has descended with it
Upon your heart that you may be of the Warners
(Surah 26, Ayah 193 & 194)
Fazlur Rahman’s heresy naturally incensed the orthodox and traditional Ulama of Pakistan, who correctly perceived it as a challenge to the immutability of the ordinances contained within the Sacred Text. His heresy is perhaps worse than that of the Mu’tazilah who put forward the novel doctrine that the Holy Quran is created and not divine. And like the Mu’tazilah, whose heresy of khalq al-Quran was imposed forcefully upon the Ummah by the Abbasid rulers al-Ma’mun, al-Mu’tasim and al-Wathiq, the ideas of Fazlur Rahman Malik and another heretic, Ghulam Ahmad Parwez, were favored and empowered by the evil dictator Ayyub Khan. The tribulation of a heresy is made much worse when it is favored by a government, which has the coercive power to impose it upon the people. Mahmoud Taha of Sudan had put forward a similar heresy to that of Fazlur Rahman’s in declaring that only the Meccan Verses of the Quran were universal, while the Medinese Verses were restricted to the time and place of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. The aim of both these heretics was to formulate a new conception of Islam devoid of the laws and regulations found in the Medinese Chapters of the Holy Quran. In the case of Fazlur Rahman he sought to impress upon the minds of naive Muslims who might be duped by his fraudulent teachings that the laws and regulations found in the Quran could be modified and amended in a way keeping with the spirit of the Quranic moral principles. The reformists, modernists and so-called “progressives” have never been able to reconcile themselves with the plain laws and regulations found in the Holy Quran. Their inability to accept things like polygamy, veiling, slavery, concubinage, child marriage, stoning to death for the sin of adultery, cutting the hand of the thief, etc., compels them to invent new hermeneutics whereby they may modify many of the divine laws and regulations found in the Holy Quran. If the Holy Quran is the product of the Prophet’s mind, as Fazlur Rahman taught, then it would certainly be more acceptable to amend some of its laws and regulations, thereby making the Religion of Islam a plaything in the hands of anyone who desires to manipulate it for his own interests.
What is deeply problematic with Fazlur Rahman’s heretical theory that the Quran is not entirely an external revelation to the Prophet’s heart but rather something that emanated from his inner self is that it may validate the delusions of some of the False Prophets. An individual may imagine that his inner thoughts are authoritative as the Quran, and that it is not necessary for an Angel to descend upon him from Heaven in order for him to be considered a Prophet.
Fazlur Rahman apparently cited the fabricated incident of the Gharaniq (so-called "Satanic Verses") to as an evidence for his theory that the Quran is a product of the Prophet's mind: "On the other hand, despite Muhammad's reticence, an equally determined will unfailingly comes through, a will that spurns compromises on fundamental issues. One does not need to remind oneself that a man with this mixture of opposing mental traits and conscious of a 'heavy mission,' as the Qur'an says, must be engaged in constant inner dialectic--the ideal moral state for man to be in, according to the Qur'an. The verses in sura 53, where the Prophet had reportedly made concessions to the goddesses of the Meccan pagans that were subsequently 'abrogated,' is, along with other Qur'anic evidence, a direct proof of this phenomenon. The second side of the Prophet, his determination, finally won over his other side." (Islam & Modernity; pp.16-17)
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