Minute with a Muslim #293 – The Diversity Conversation Continued

We're talking about acceptable diversity within Islam. We're not just talking about ethnicity and language and you know, culture. We're also talking about, basically the diversity of the companions. That's what it boils down to. Because the companions were the first generation, they were praised by last puntata. They were they're asking questions of the Prophet alayhi salatu salam. And despite that, they still occasionally had differences, and how to interpret, right, like differences of opinion, and diversity within the Islamic legal tradition, all happen because of interpretation. So when it comes to, a lot of people ask, okay, well, you talk about diversity, well, what level of

diversity are we talking about here? It's pretty much that level of diversity that existed among the companions, right, they were interpreting things as best they could, they had a ton of points upon which they agreed. And then they had some points upon which they had a difference of opinion. And a lot of the differences of opinion that existed between the Companions actually went on and informed the differences of opinion that came about between the schools of law, the meth lab, so that sort of needs to be usually a live and let live thing. We can't treat those sorts of differences of opinion, like the sorts of things that have to do with the fundamentals of our religion, like believing in

the Hadith, or believing in the Prophet alayhi salatu. Salam was the final messenger, those things are a category where it puts you in a slam, or it puts you, let's say, in hot water, but other things like that, okay, we're talking about where to hold the hands in prayer, or whether to put your knees down, first of all your hands down, or, you know, the the issue of exactly the degree that needs to be covered of your body, both for male and female, there's, how many times do we wipe this part of the body during will do, etc. There's a lot of different things where the companions have different interpretations. And so, when it comes to, especially if communities such as ours,

the temptation is to oversimplify Islam, because when you make something very black and white, it can be very

motivating, it can be very kind of forceful, and you can have some sort of rallying point. And I think the psychological concern, why people are kind of afraid of the diversity that's in the tradition, is because they're afraid that it's going to muddy the waters, and they they're afraid that it's going to get watered down, or that people are not going to, or the big fear is that people are always just going to follow whatever is easiest for them.

But at the end of the day, it is what it is. And we find this diversity in our scholarly tradition. And everybody it's true that everybody does need a mechanism to make sure that they're not just going with convenience, but at the same time, that doesn't mean that we get to just wipe out the diversity in our tradition and imagine or pretend that Islam is more narrow than it actually is.