Jonathan A.C. Brown's Blog, page 3

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...

by Merrit Kennedy

December 14, 2013 8:00 AM ET

Note: this lecture begins with Georgetown University’s President Jack DeGioia speaking and then Dr. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen giving an excellent talk on the Christian tradition.

The thirteenth Building Bridges Seminar, chaired by Professor Daniel A. Madigan, S.J., was held April 27-30, 2014 at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and the Airlie Center in Warrenton, Virginia. This year’s theme was “Sin, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation: Christian and Muslim Perspectives.” On the first afternoon, public lectures by Jonathan Brown and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen provided an overview. On the second and third days of the seminar, seminar participants heard pairs of lectures that set the stage for detailed discussion in private sessions, focusing on relevant scriptural texts. Thus lectures on “sin” were given by Christoph Schwöbel and Ayman Shabana; on “forgiveness” by Susan Eastman (read in her absence by Joel Marcus) and Mohammad Khalil; and on “reconciliation” by Philip Sheldrake and Asma Afsaruddin. The proceedings of the seminar will be published in due course.

 

In an effort to avoid the subjectivity of individual reason, Sunni Islam elaborated a

method of ḥadīth criticism that subordinated evaluating the meaning of a report to

an examination of its chain of transmission. With the fourth/tenth-century epistemological

compromise of Ashʿarism, however, Sunni ḥadīth scholars adopted rationalist

criteria of content criticism that included explicit rules for rejecting ḥadīths because

of their meaning. is resulted in a strong internal tension within Sunni ḥadīth

criticism from the fifth/eleventh century onwards, with one and the same scholar

upholding rigid rules of content criticism but not employing them or even rejecting

them in application. e inherent subjectivity of content criticism resulted in different

Muslim scholars either rejecting or affirming the same ḥadīths. Some scholars were

much more inclined to reject a ḥadīth out of hand because of its meaning, while

others were willing to extend a ḥadīth more interpretive charity. e tension created

by the subjectivity of content criticism emerged in unprecedented relief in the modern

period, when ‘science’ and modern social norms presented an unmatched challenge

to the interpretive awe in which pre-modern (and Traditionalist scholars today) held

attributions to the Prophet.

The Rules of Matn Criticism – There are No Rules – Islamic Law and Society

Faithful Dissenters – Sunni Skepticism about the Miracles of Saints

Belief in the miracles of saints (karāmāt al-awliyāʾ) is a requirement in Sunni Islam. Challenges

to this position are generally seen as limited to Islamic modernists effected by Western historical

criticism. This article demonstrates that there have actually been leading Sunni Muslim scholars

from the fourth/tenth century until the modern period who held positions regarding the miracles

of saints that were much more skeptical than the mainstream Sunni stance. These ‘faithful dissenters’

were motivated by both theological and social concerns, and the methodologies they

presented for sifting true from false miracle claims were based entirely on indigenous Islamic

epistemological and textual criticism.

 

The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy

 

Misquoting Muhammad takes the reader back in time through Islamic civilization and traces how and why such controversies developed, offering an inside view into how key and controversial aspects of Islam took shape. From the protests of the Arab Spring to Istanbul at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and from the ochre red walls of Delhi’s great mosques to the trade routes of Islam’s Indian Ocean world, Misquoting Muhammad lays out how Muslim intellectuals have sought to balance reason and revelation, weigh science and religion, and negotiate the eternal truths of scripture amid shifting values.

 

See the review by The Independent and the Times of London.

 

Order here

Summary:

 

In Sunni Islam, the canonical ‘Six Books’ of hadith derive their authority as doctrinal

references from scholarly consensus on their reliability as representations of the Prophet’s Sunna.

One of the Six Boooks, the Sunan of Ibn Majah, however, presents a bizarre exception. Although

it has been considered part of the Six Book collection since the late eleventh century, it has been

consistently and severely criticized by Sunni scholars for the large number of unreliable hadiths it

contains. Explaining the canonical status of Ibn Majah’s Sunan despite these criticisms requires

recognizing that the hadith canon was based not only on authenticity but also on utility. The Six

Books served to delimit the countless numbers of hadith in circulation into a manageable form, and

Ibn Majah’s Sunan added to this canonical body a useful number of hadiths not found in the other

Six Books. Sunni scholars themselves acknowledged that, in the case of Ibn Majah’s Sunan, utility

trumped authenticity in the Sunni hadith canon.

Download Full PDF

Summary:

The comprehensiveness of Islamic law has been questioned seriously in

the modern period by Muslim reformists like Rashīd Riḍā . Such reformists

have used as evidence Qur’anic verses and Prophetic reports that

seem to state clearly that the strictures of Islamic law are few and

limited and that Muslims should not extend them to all areas of life. How

could the Shariah have developed as a holistic and exhaustive body of

law in light of such evidence? Looking back at earlier Muslim scholars

from the ninth to the eighteenth centuries, however, we see that these

Qur’anic verses and Prophetic edicts were never understood in this way.

They were either diffused with various hermeneutic strategies or understood

as applying to debates unrelated to the comprehensiveness or

minimalism of the Shariah.

 

Download Full Article PDF

Jonathan Brown and Abdur-Rahman Abou Almajd in dialog about how should the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) be introduced to the west?

 

Q: Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction, it is excellent introduction to the life of Muhammad, well balanced between elements of faith and rational discussions, 144 pages, it’s very Short Introduction, What do you want to add?

Dr. Brown: I wish I could have added more about Qawwali music. I would have liked to have been able to convey to the reader a sense of the intoxicating effect of listening to it and the way in which it can communicate and elevate religious devotion. I would have liked to talk about Ibn Sina’s Mirajname, a book in which he examines the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) ascension to heaven from a philosophical perspective. I wish I had mentioned how the Prophet sent food and allowed food to be sent to Mecca during a famine in the later years of the conflict between Medina and Mecca – even during a time of war and conflict he was a humanitarian figure. I wish I had been able to discuss the Sira al-Halabiyya, a very influential late medieval Siraof the Prophet. There are so many things I would have liked to add, but I think that I forgot most of them as a psychological device for suppressing my regret.

Q: The furor surrounding the Satanic Verses and the Danish cartoon crisis reminded the world of the tremendous importance of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, How should the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) be introduced to the west?

Dr. Brown: This is a very good question to which I think there is no one answers. The West is not a monolith. Some non-Muslims in the US and Europe relate better to a ‘Protestant’ vision of the Prophet: a mere vehicle of revelation and an admirable leader. For these people, reading a sira like the Life of the Prophet by Muhammad Husayn Haykal is probably the best introduction. Others in the West are affected deeply by the Prophet as a holy man, as a locus of Baraka, as a miracle worker, as a focus of devotion. For these people, the Burda poem or the Kitab al-Shifa or even some Mawlid manuals might be a good way to communicate to them about the Prophet. Others really want to feel like they’re learning about him as a historical figure, in which case something like Karen Armstrong’s book on Muhammad or other such books might be the best way.

Q: The West’s Approach to Prophet Muhammad differs from Prophet Muhammad according to Islamic Tradition, how can we near Prophet Muhammad according to Islamic Tradition to them?

Dr. Brown: I think that often people have to have direct experience with devotion to the Prophet. Attending a Mawlid celebration, a Sufi Dhikr or even seeing how the Prophet is mentioned during a Jum`ah Khutbah would be useful.

Q: The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith, Could you elaborate on that?

Dr. Brown: This book was a result of my dissertation at the University of Chicago. For years I had wondered how the Sahihayn became ‘the Sahihayn‘. I was interested in how and why these two books attained their station, and what their various roles have been in Islamic civilization. I was also interested in debates over whether or not the books had been or could be criticized.

Q: Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World is a great introduction into the science of Hadith, and focuses on Hadiths, their collection and their criticism, early Hadith scholars focused on the Isnad , the Isnad’s quality, the quality of the Matn,

what do you say about Hadith great scholars?

Dr. Brown: I would say that I’m in awe of their work and that I was greatly humbled by my studies of Hadith. Whether or not a person believes that the Sunni Hadith tradition has managed to capture the true teachings of the Prophet, it is an intellectual edifice that deserves to be studied and held in awe by scholars from my point of view.

Q: The Weak Hadith, Weak narrations are not necessarily lies, you rarely mentioned “weak” as one of the classifications of Hadith, why?

Dr. Brown: I think that I mentioned weak Hadiths a lot in my Hadith book. I’m not sure why you think I didn’t. There is a whole chart illustrating the various types of flaws from which a Hadith could suffer, and that makes it very clear that an outright forgery is only the farthest end of the spectrum of weak Hadiths. I also recently wrote an article in the journal Islamic Law and Society entitled “Even if it’s Not True it’s True: the Use of Unreliable Hadiths in Sunni Islam“, which also makes it clear that Sunni Muslim scholars would never defend using a Hadith that they knew was a forgery.

Q: What do you say about “the genocidal Hadith” that mentioned by Robert Spencer to Fitzgerald?

Dr. Brown: I assume you’re asking about the Hadith about the End of Time when (satuqatilun al-yahud…) and even the rock saying that there is a Jew behind me? This Hadith is interesting; it’s in the Sahihayn, but in general in chapters on Malahim(Apocalyptic events and signs) chapters or by the same Isnad in a jihad chapter. From the perspective of Sunni Hadith criticism, the Hadith is Sahih. But it is also possible that, since Muslim scholars from the time of `Abdul-Rahman bin Mahdi (d. 197) onward treated Hadiths dealing with Malahim with much less critical rigor than Hadiths on law, that this Hadith might still be unreliable but was approved by Sunni critics because they did not see it as having any great import. To look at things from that perspective, you would have to step outside the science of Sunni Hadith criticism as it has generally been understood and take the position that all evaluations made by classical critics on Hadiths dealing with Adab,Malahim, and Tafsir should be treated as a separate tier of Hadiths. This degree of reevaluation would not be acceptable to many Sunni Hadith scholars today.

Q: You present Abdullah Al-Sa’d as a fellow “Traditional Salafi” of Al-Albani, what else would you like to present?

Dr. Brown: I would also add Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wadi’I, Abu Ishaq al-Huwayni, as well asHatim al-Awni.

Q: Is the demonization of political Islamism in Western Europe an overstatement?

Dr. Brown: I think the demonization of political Islam anywhere is an overstatement. One can disagree with a political stance or vision without considering at existential threat.Also, demonization blinds people to understanding the forces that motivate people to believe in a certain ideology and to try and achieve some degree of reconciliation.

Q:Islam is a religion of peace, yet many in the West remain suspicious that Islam is not at all a peaceful faith. Resolving this crisis of authority will take several generations , Could you elaborate on that?

Dr. Brown: People in the West need to realize that the Muslims who are engaged in acts of violence are a tiny, tiny fraction of Muslims worldwide… maybe .03%. The rest of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims lead normal lives as parents, children, friends, employees, people trying to get food to eat or make a living.

These people are all Muslims, and they are not violent. So clearly Islam does not cause violence. I would read Robert Pape’s latest book on the roots of suicide bombing on this.

Abdur-Rahman: Thank you, Jazakal-Lahu Khairan.