Islam's Reformers .pdf

toy during the era of ’Abbâsis. Right then the Ottoman Empirewas established.”Poor Ottomans! How unfortunate that it was coincident withtheir birth! If the sources of Islam were so much turbid, on whichbasis would the religious reforms be made today? Reformerskeep almost all hadîths under suspicion. I wonder what theywould say about the Qur’ân. Is this source blurred, too? Wequoted above their idea that religion was necessary to correctmorals. Could the religion do this if its sources were blurred andit were made a toy. Their words do not make any sense. As forthe Russian reformer Baykiyev, he was aggressive againstkalâm and fiqh. He blamed Muslim scholars for having left theirwork aside and busying with Greek philosophy. In those days,however, Greek philosophy was translated into Arabic andintroduced into Muslim countries as an advancement; it blurredthe minds of many people, and the scholars of kalâm examinedthose new ideas and answered them one by one. Thereby theyprotected the Sunnî belief against a shock. Also today it is anhonourable task for our religious men to examine theknowledge, science and new discoveries on the pointsconcerning Islamic beliefs and answer them. Why do religionreformers, while understanding this necessity today, try toblemish the former scholars for having done their duty in theirtime? Then they blindy endeavour, without foundation inknowledge, to humiliate Islamic scholars. They say on the onehand that it is a big guilt today not to adapt religious knowledgeto new discoveries, and on the other hand, they claim that theformer scholars were guilty of mixing the religion withphilosophy and new discoveries of their time; everythingreligious men do is a guilt according to reformers.10 - The reformer says:“Pure Islamic beliefs were dirtied, corrupted by themovement called ’Ilm al-kalâm.”This quotation from the Russian reformer Baykiyev’s book isan obvious evidence of his ignorance of Islam. How ’ilm alkalâmshed light on and served Islam can be understood byonly those who studied it from within. There cannot be any usein attacking such a vast branch of knowledge with suchadventitious argumentation. The bigots of science always attack’ilm al-kalâm in such terms as “theories” and “thoughts thatcannot be experimented”. They do not know that religious- 23 -