al-Raghib al-Isfahani #80 – Disputes & Disagreements Among Various Religions & Schools

They're on the same path, it took the same path, but one abandoned it, and one continue to follow it in the correct way. Next that all about so honey has a section about the various types of disputes and disagreements that do exist between various religions and schools. And so this is kind of like a typology that he's going to lay out in front of us. The first type of argument or disagreement that he says is the argument between people of Scripture versus people of manmade religion and wow, subhanAllah what a powerful typology that He's given us. Because today, the assumption of the secular West is that all religion is manmade, that it's all sort of cultural, a cultural phenomenon

like Clifford Geertz, and whatnot, locating religion, with human culture that are all well, so he is telling us here that the most fundamental difference that you can have with somebody is if one person believes in Scripture versus another person believes in a man made religion, what is the subject of their disagreement, their disagreement is about the most important thing is the creation of the universe, who's the Creator Himself, the very concept of Tao heat. And so the type of dispute between these two sides is something that is mutually exclusive, there's no way to bridge this gap, you know, there's very, very, very little Common Ground. If anything, probably there probably isn't

any common ground because you are deriving epistemologically, you're deriving your conclusions and the substance of your faith from revealed religion that's outside of you, where the other person is deriving it from things that people have invented themselves. The second type of dispute that a lot of us for Hani tells us about is the types of disputes that exist between the people of one scripture versus the people of another scripture. And so the subjects of the subject of this type of dispute might have to do with the nature of the prophets might have to do a certain details of the Cydia and these sorts of things. And this type of disagreement is something that is a little bit

less mutually exclusive than the previous type, it is adjacent and to dispute and these sorts of things has to do with guidance and misguidance. Right, Christians say that God is a trinity, a Triune God, and we view this as misguidance. We said that this is completely false, even though if you ask Christians they claim to believe in so hey, they claim to be monotheists. And so on the outside it looks like we believe in the same thing. So this is the second type of religious dispute. The third type of honey draws our attention to is a dispute among people of one religious community. And so an example of this would be something where the foundations upon which charges of heresy may

be waged. Okay, so let's talk about we're talking about Muslims now talking about in house Islam. Do you believe in the Quran, okay. Yes. Great. You believe in the sadhana. Yes. If somebody doubts that that's heresy. You believe in the scholarly tradition. You believe in a GMAT? Somebody doubts that that's heresy, right. So this is the type of thing what type of disagreement is this that all of us are, having said that they're on the same path, they took the same path, but one abandoned it, and one continue to follow it in the correct way. So it might be true that the person who abandoned it took away that might actually reach the same destination, but it's going to be much, much longer,

and it's going to be much, much more dangerous. It's a key distinction. He's not precluding this person's salvation, right? Because the person is a person of the Kenema. They're a person of the shahada, they're a person of the Salah, however, their disagreement might lead them to ruin or they might get to salvation in the end, but it's something that is going to be a lot of unnecessary work and stress and danger. And the final type, the final type of disagreement that are all so honey, tell us about is about the disagreements that take place within one religious community. However, they're not upon the foundations, they're upon the finer points, the photo right, the secondary

matters. This is can be exemplified by the differences between the legal schools how do you hold your finger in Shahada? Do you wag it or not? Do you point up once? Where do you put your hands in prayer? How much of the head do you wipe over during Moodle? Right? These sorts of issues, there are disagreements among the finer points. So how can we understand that these types of disagreements exist? Is it something that should cause any sort of doubts about our faith? No, it was funny says the parable of these types of people are people who took the same path. However, there are different branches to that path, and they all end in the same place, and they are all praiseworthy. That's not

to say that truth is plastic. That's not to say that truth is subjective. No truth is objective in the absolute sense of loss of penalty that knows what it is. However, some things in our religion are stated explicitly and are not open to interpretation. And other things in Islam are stated implicitly, and are open to interpretation. And so these types of differences exist with that latter category, things that are open to interpretation. And even if the correct interpretation of it is one and singular that there are various multiple valid interpretations, that could be true, and we will not know until the day of judgment. And so this is the parable that we could give it another

example of the four directions, right? These are four directions, they're all part of the same compass. And so it's important to understand if you're having a dispute or a disagreement with somebody, what type of religious dispute Are you having here that's going to set you up to properly understand and interpret whether this person is still somebody that you have full brotherhood with whether this person is somebody who's a heretic whether this person is somebody who

is outside of your religion entirely because drawing those distinctions actually does matter and have real world consequences