MODERN VS. TRADITIONAL CONCEPTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

MODERN VS. TRADITIONAL CONCEPTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

Danial Haqiqatjou

The modern concept of knowledge is an anomaly. The notion that knowledge is something that can be found on a sheet of paper, in a book, in a hard drive, in the digital cloud, this is not the kind of knowledge that the Islamic tradition is based on.

True knowledge cannot be abstracted away from living, breathing people. For example, Allah sent revelation by way of the angel Jibril to the Messenger SAWS. The Prophet passed on his knowledge through companionship — namely, by teaching his companions, who took instruction not only from his words but also his actions, his behavior, his blessed manners, etc.

Human beings are thus the conduits of knowledge and the Islamic tradition has operationalized that through the concept of isnad, i.e., chain of transmission. To claim to truly know something of `ilm, i.e., what Allah has revealed, one has to know all the persons through which that knowledge has passed over the centuries until it arrived at you by way of your teacher.

Reading from a book or the internet is not a substitute for this. At most, one is merely familiarizing oneself with texts, which, don’t get me wrong, has its own benefits if done correctly. But to be an `alim, to speak authoritatively about a religious issue of contention often requires isnad. This is how Allah has preserved the deen.

And this is why the Prophet said,
“Verily, Allah does not take away knowledge by snatching it from the people but rather he takes away knowledge with the death of the scholars until he leaves no scholar behind and the people turn to the ignorant as their leaders. They are asked to give religious judgments without knowledge, thus they are led astray and lead others astray.” (Muslim)

We can contrast this with the modern conception of knowledge, which usually has no moral component and can be abstracted as separate from people. Go to a university physics class and see if the professor mentions any history, where those formulas have come from, who taught them to whom, and so on. Perhaps that disconnect with history is fine for the sciences, but not for one’s religion. The source of all deeni knowledge is in the past, so to cut ourselves off from the past is to cut ourselves off from that knowledge. Muslims have to be careful not to conflate the modern, scientific understanding of knowledge with true religious knowledge.

Tackling false interpretation of the Deen:

“This sacred knowledge of the religion is going to be taken and carried from every preceding generation by a group of the subsequent generation. They will expel from it the alteration made by those going beyond bounds, false claims of the liars and the false interpretations of the ignorant ones” (Bayhaqi).

From every preceding generation, a group will take knowledge and they will purify from it any misrepresentation of the religion. For example, someone may have come with a new claim about religion and corrupted a number of people; after all, ideas are prone to exaggeration. The whole reason that communism came about is because the core need of man was to have economic stability. In Russia, there was a massive gap between those who had and those who did not, and that is why one need among the many needs of humanity—of economic stability—was promoted as the main need of that time. Eventually that particular need became the dominant aspect around which everything else began to revolve and they formed an entire system around it.

Similarly, let us say there is a time when we need to promote politics in Islam, which is just one of its many aspects. If somebody takes that and makes it the entire crux and spirit of Islam, and begins to say that even your salat (prayer) is part of your Islamic politics and it is a type of training in obedience to the leader, and starts to reinterpret all other acts of worship around a political vision, he will corrupt the entire religion. He has taken one aspect of religion, and made it the core of religion. Therefore, Allah sends people to deal with the consequences of such corruption and innovation. They undertake the work of revival.

-Taken from Mufti Dr. Abdur Rahman Yusuf's article on revival of the Deen.