MAT PAPERS.
There are few topics that generate as much controversy today in Islam as what is sunna and what is bida
or reprehensible innovation, perhaps because of the times Muslims live
in today and the challenges they face. Without a doubt, one of the
greatest events in impact upon Muslims in the last thousand years is the
end of the Islamic caliphate at the first of this century, an event
that marked not only the passing of temporal, political authority, but
in many respects the passing of the consensus of orthodox Sunni Islam as
well. No one familiar with the classical literature in any of the
Islamic legal sciences, whether Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir), hadith, or jurisprudence (fiqh), can fail to be struck by the fact that questions are asked today about basic fundamentals of Islamic Sacred Law (Sharia)
and its ancillary disciplines that would not have been asked in the
Islamic period not because Islamic scholars were not brilliant enough to
produce the questions, but because they already knew the answers.
My talk tonight will aim to clarify some possible misunderstandings of the concept of innovation (bida) in Islam, in light of the prophetic hadith,
"Beware
of matters newly begun, for every matter newly begun is innovation,
every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in hell."
The sources I use are traditional Islamic sources, and my discussion will centre on three points:
The
first point is that scholars say that the above hadith does not refer
to all new things without restriction, but only to those which nothing
in Sacred Law attests to the validity of. The use of the word "every" in
the hadith does not indicate an absolute generalization, for there are
many examples of similar generalizations in the Qur'an and sunna that
are not applicable without restriction, but rather are qualified by
restrictions found in other primary textual evidence.
The second
point is that the sunna and way of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace) was to accept new acts initiated in Islam that were of the
good and did not conflict with established principles of Sacred Law, and
to reject things that were otherwise.
And our third and last
point is that new matters in Islam may not be rejected merely because
they did not exist in the first century, but must be evaluated and
judged according to the comprehensive methodology of Sacred Law, by
virtue of which it is and remains the final and universal moral code for
all peoples until the end of time.
