Daily Archives: February 2, 2020

Were living in an age where public trust in the media is at an all-time low. Just 21% of Americans say they have a lot of trust in the information from national news organizations.

In my community, its probably much lower. Routinely, Orthodox and haredi Jews are forced to read news reports about us that have very little correlation to reality. A perfect example of this happened this past Tuesday, when Attorney General William P. Barr visited Borough Park for a meeting with Orthodox Jewish community leaders. It was a small meeting, just a minyan sitting around a table in a tiny room, discussing the issues. It was just Attorney General Barr, the Orthodox stakeholders, a handful of DOJ staff and several members of the media (the Forward was not among them).

I was there too. So I can tell you that the story I read about in the media was not the one that transpired in that room.

If you read most of the reporting about the event, you would think what took place was a politics-driven conversation dominated by New Yorks recent bail reform law and the Orthodox Jews and Trump Administration representatives devoted to crushing it. Part of this is about the fact that Barrs office has announced it will be bringing federal charges against Tiffany Harris, a woman who was arrested for targeting and slapping multiple Orthodox women, who was released without bail thanks to the new law. But mostly, its about the fact that when it comes to the Orthodox, we just cant get a fair hearing in the media.

Take The New York Times story, which was a perfect example of this misreporting: The Times framed the entire visit through the lens of bail reform, with a headline proclaiming Barr was inserting himself into the bail reform fray.

And yet, in their very own story which was entirely about bail reform even they had to concede that Mr. Barr did not specifically mention bail reform during the meeting.

That was certainly true. Not a single person in the room even brought up bail reform, and for good reason: The federal charges against Harris were not about that. They were, to quote Barr, about lowering the level of tolerance for violence against the Jewish community by using the federal government to plant its flag and show zero tolerance.

The Times, however, was not alone. Over at JTA, Ben Sales, who was in the room during the meeting, filed a brief with an opening paragraph representing Barr as blaming the rise of anti-Semitism on what he called mutant progressivism. Of course, Barr never said that. The actual words which Sales ended up correcting after being called out on Twitter were words anyone with any familiarity with the subject matter would have recognized, were militant progressivism.

Barrs point, which was well taken, was that militant progressivism embodies a drive to reorganize society based on rationalism and animated with a passion you usually expect among religious people, casting those who oppose them as not just wrong but evil. That, Barr said, is part of the cause of the hatreds and the antipathy toward traditional communities such as the Orthodox. It has seeped into our politics, and is a cause of toxic tribalism as well as the anti-Semitism some communities are now struggling with.

It was an intelligent reading of a situation we are struggling desperately to understand and contain. How ironic that it was mutated by the words of the liberal media.

But that was not the only misrepresentation in that exchange alone. If you read the news reports, Barr reportedly attempted to push back on the idea that President Donald Trump bore any of the blame for the national rise in anti-Semitism, a notion raised by one of the participants.

This, too, did not happen. What one participant, while bemoaning the extra difficulties he sees in our polarized moment when attempting to engage in inter-community relations, did say was that he sees so many people [who] are eager to blame, frankly, the president on the change of tone in the country but I think that those people have to look into themselves to see, what am I doing to tone down the conversation?

Hardly the same thing.

The distressing thing here is that I only know all of this because I was in the room when all of this occurred. If I had not been there, I would likely have also trusted the false narrative which was being concocted by the media.

Am I really to believe things are different when Im not in the room?

So why does this keep happening to my community? People tend to lean back on things they recognize, on things that are familiar to them, and reporters are no different. Especially when reporting about Hasidic Jews, reporters are prone to misrepresent, build connections where none exists, hear things which never happened, and make incorrect assumptions all because of what fits the frame for the story they recognize and are most comfortable telling.

Even if it isnt the story that happened.

But the job of the media is to tell the story that happened even if it isnt easy for them to tell it. And the reason so many people distrust them now is that theyve been failing miserably at doing this.

Eli Steinberg lives in New Jersey with his wife and five children. They are not responsible for his opinions, which he has been putting into words over the last decade, and which have been published across Jewish and general media. You can tweet the hottest of your takes at him @HaMeturgeman.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

Go here to see the original:

How can we trust the media when they lie about our community? - Forward

Abu Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali in one of his famous works Al-Iqtisad Fil Ittiqad elucidated at length the role of systematic theology in Islamic scholasticism. He maintained that theologians were responsible for responding to religious innovations, combatting the insidious heresies, and presenting the creedal formulations of Islam in a philosophic idiom. To this end, Ghazali himself contributed his masterpiece Tahafa-tul-Falasafa. An expert of Ghazali, Frank Griffel in his book Ghazalis Philosophical Theology held that the Tahafat of Ghazali was a work of systematic theology couched in a philosophical idiom with an aim to defend the creedal formulation(s) of Islam.

Three centurieslater, Ibn-e-Khaldun in his famous Muqaddimah argued that theology as an independent stream of thought had outlived its utility. He held that philosophical reasoning and illuminative epistemologyhad replaced the role of theology in developing rational Islamic discourse. In agreement with the assessment of Ibn-e-Khaldun, Halverson in his book Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam proceeded further and held that theology as a creative discipline had already died by 12th century and was replaced by a series of doctrinaire creedal formulations. Did Islamic speculative theology cease to continue as a thriving intellectual force by 12th century?

The answer to this intriguing question lies in the origins of theology as an independent strand of rigorous scholarship. Muslim scholars after their encounter with the Hellenic philosophical literature, Judeo-Christian religious corpus, and the Iranian gnostic illumination felt the urge to explain their religious rituals, norms, and doctrines in a scholarly language in line with the contemporary systems of epistemology. Their attempt at elucidating the religious doctrinal system of Islam in an idiom of contemporary epistemologies led to a wide range of disagreements and paved the way for the crystallization of guilds. These guilds came into being and transformed into different independent schools by late 9th century. The emergence of theology as a stream of organized scholarly tradition can be attributed to the intellectually vibrant environment of intellectual exchange between Islam and other civilizations.

These schools or guilds of theology based their argumentative reasoning on different epistemologies. On the far right were the Hanbalites. They held that the only source of Truth was the repository of the scriptural text and the Prophetic normative practice. Closer to them were the Asharites and the Maturidites. They maintained that reason could also be invoked in the formulation of religious discourse. Even though the Quran and normative practice of the Prophet were the main sources for the guidance, the exercise of reason could only be granted as an accessory toolkit. Reason was always subservient to the tradition, according to them. On the far left were the Mutazilites. Contrary to the Hanbalites, Asharites, and Maturidites, Mutazilites postulated that the sole exercise of reason was enough for the systemization of religious doctrinal system. They held that only reason as an epistemological tool could be used in order to ascertain the validity of the Truth.

The Mutazilites laid down the foundations of rationalism in Islam, according to Abdul Karem Soroush. Central to their intellectual outlook was the exercise of reason. They maintained that tradition should be interpreted against the yardstick of rational tools. The Mutazilites eclectically summoned into use the Greek syllogism, Alexandrian sapiential disciplines, and Syriac noetic rationalism to demonstrate that a fortified Islamic edifice of rational sciences could be erected on the foundations of rationalism. The school of Mutazilites was rooted firmly in the rational grounds and was committed to the cause of rational interpretation of Islam. Islam was a rational religion with its own sense of philosophy and world-view, according to the school of Mutazilites.

Unfortunately, the school of Mutazilites lost its constituency and ceased to exist by 11th century. Even worse, the Asharites and Maturidites lost their earlier rigor and absorbed the illuminative gnosticism. Philosophy as a creative strand of intellectual inquiry soon after Ibn-e-Tufayl and Ibn-e-Rushd had already died out. Islamic theology after 12th century expressed itself either in traditionalist idiom by producing formulaic tracts on creed or in theosophic treatises geared towards spiritual illumination, Dr Fazlur Rehman reflected in his work Islam and Modernity.

In sum, Islamic theology was a rigorous exercise of reason and intellect for three centuries in the writings of Mutazilites. This particular form of theology rooted firmly in reason and sapiential systems of knowledge was characterized as speculative theology for it explored new intellectual horizons. On the contrary, the theology that came into being after the 12th century was called dialectical theology for it was nothing but a regurgitation of creeds, doctrines, and theosophic disclosures articulated in unoriginal tracts either for the defense of religion or for spiritual illumination.

This dialectical theology dominated the intellectual landscape of Islamic scholasticism for more than five centuries. Even scholars as eminent as Ibn-e- Taymiyah, Ibn-e-Qayyim, Shatibi, and Ibn-e-Khaldun were the exponents of dialectical theology. The great Iranian scholars like Mir Fendereski, Mulla Sadra, and Baqir al-Majlisi were also of the same opinion. The first scholar to have revived reason in Islamic theology was Shah Wali-ullah in the 18th century. His magnum opus The Conclusive Argument from God was the first liberal attempt at erecting the edifice of Islamic theology on rationalist grounds, Charles Kurzman argued in Liberal Islam. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan continued in the footsteps of Shah Wali-ullah and granted more room for the exercise of reason.

But it was the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam by Allama Muhammad Iqbal that gave a definitive shape to Modern Islamic Speculative Theology. Iqbal in this classic work employed the epistemology of reason to elucidate the rationale of Islamic principles. Like the Mutazilites of medieval times, Iqbal used the modern philosophical reasoning of the West to construct a modernist interpretation of Islam. The intuitive theosophy, normative traditionalism, and gnostic illumination were subservient to reason, according to Iqbalian interpretive system of thought.

Bringing into use his innovative model(s) of reasoning, Iqbal reinterpreted the classic concepts of Ijtihad, Ijma, ahya, and Islah with an aim to invest them with modern notions of progression, continuity, and authenticity. This analytic framework, reminiscent of Mutazilite school, established a firm foundation for the school of rationalism as an epistemological source to revive and thrive. Reason, in this reconceptualization of theology and formulation of scholasticism, is not only a source, but the main source of exploratory endeavours. Hence, Iqbal in his quest for the rediscovery of innovative models of reasoning transformed the dialectical theology bereft of any creative impulse into speculative theology that was once the telltale feature of classic Islamic theology in its heydays.

In philosophical parlance, this speculative theology is a modern manifestation of medieval Mutazilism. Is Iqbal the founder of Neo-mutazilism in Islam? On perusing the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, one gets convinced that the emergence of Neo-Mutazilism is attributable to the intellectual oeuvre of Allama Muhammad Iqbal.

*Rehan Khan is a prospective candidate for the Ph.D. program at NYU.

Please Donate Today Did you enjoy this article? Then please consider donating today to ensure that Eurasia Review can continue to be able to provide similar content.

Excerpt from:

Islamic Speculative Theology: From Classic To Modern OpEd - Eurasia Review

Exegesis, the critical interpretation of scripture, is not an Islamic tradition, and for Orthodox Muslims like Shaheen, the Quran is the uncreated, eternal, inviolate word of God. Nasr, meanwhile, was the author of books titled Critique of Islamic Discourse and Rationalism in Exegesis: A Study of the Problem of Metaphor in the Writing of the Mutazilah.

The socially timid, bespectacled scholar was a freethinker who challenged the orthodox tradition in Islam and argued that the Quran had to be understood both metaphorically and in its historical context. He was a man of his time, eager to help his fellow Muslims apply the teachings of the Quran to the modern world. To do that, he believed that the human dimension of the Quran needs to be reconsidered. So although the Quran was indeed the word of God, Nasrs argument was that it had been revealed to the prophet Muhammad through the use of a language, a local dialect even, rooted in a specific context: the Arabic language of the Arabian Peninsula of the seventh century. If the word of God had not been embodied in human language, how could anyone understand it?

Nasr was not starting from scratch: he was building on a great inheritance that went back to the eighth century. His masters thesis had been about the Mutazilah, the rationalist Islamic movement drawing on Greek philosophy that had first stirred a big debate between reason and dogma barely two hundred years after the founding of Islam.

The Mutazilah first emerged in the eighth century, in Basra, in todays southern Iraq. They believed that while Gods speech was uncreated and revealed to the prophet, the writing of the Quran was an earthly phenomenon: words, ink, paper. Furthermore, the writing had happened well after the revelation and the death of the prophet. The Mutazilah applied reason to the study of the holy book and believed in free will. Their movement reflected the times they were living in the Abbasid era was the golden age of Islam, the time of science and philosophy, of Abu Nuwass libertine poetry about love and wine, the thousand and one days and nights of Scheherazade, and the Abbasid caliph Haroun al Rashid. Baghdads famed library, the House of Wisdom, became the repository of world knowledge, overflowing with original and translated works. At the same time in Baghdad, also under the Abbasid caliphate, was Ahmad ibn Hanbal, founder of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence: resolutely orthodox, literalist, and opposed to the Mutazilah doctrine, which had become state doctrine. His opposition landed him in jail, and his following surged. Hanbalis believed Muslims had lost their way, and as the Abbasid caliphate weakened, the followers of Ibn Hanbal became more organized, leading the fight against rationalism and anything that could distract from the purest form of the original faith, including music. They set up in fact a kind of Sunni inquisition.

[ Return to the review of Black Wave. ]

As the four major schools of jurisprudence slowly crystallized, orthodoxy also settled in. Some Sunni religious leaders believed most major religious matters had been settled and began to restrict the gates of ijtihad, independent reasoning, to give precedence to emulation. Reading, understanding, and explaining the Quran would have to rely on the body of knowledge accumulated up until thenthe Mutazilah period was over. Hanbalism would later soar and spread to Persia and the area around Palestine, where Ibn Taymiyyah was one of its stars, before declining again during the Ottoman era, under the weight of its own rigidity and intolerance. Its geographical influence would slowly be reduced to the austere interior of the Arabian Peninsula, the arid plateau of Najd, home of the first Saudi kingdomwhere Muhammad ibn Abdelwahhab took it to another level.

See the article here:

Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East, by Kim Ghattas:...

The United Kingdoms departure from the European Union is like a boat setting out to sea.

First, the rope is slung off the mooring. Next, the vessel manoeuvres through the harbour, its progress delayed by engine failure, a mutinous crew, and other boats getting in the way. The sky darkens. Is sailing still wise? The captain says yes and after a final tack, the boat rounds the breakwater, leaving safety behind and confronting the open ocean.

Why use a nautical metaphor for Brexit? Because the UK is an island, and sometimes geography can help explain politics.

The UK has always thought itself to be apart from Europe, despite its formal union over the past fifty years and its shared history for the last thousand. Its sense of difference of solipsism, even is wittily expressed in an apocryphal old newspaper headline: Fog in Channel: Continent cut off.

But why does the UK feel separate?

The limitations of any island are set by the sea, but the sea also presents possibilities. It washes through national mythology and, more prosaically, defines its economy. Britain is a trading nation, in which mercantile interests have often subordinated manufacturing. The French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville linked the sea to economic liberalism. After all, island nations have an interest in free exchange and open markets. (Abu Dhabi, the island emirate, has long been a trading hub too, with a character molded as much by saltwater as by sand). It is logical that free trade theory was first developed in Britain. Risk is the raison detre of the City of London.

The sea has also bred a peculiarly liberal political tradition in Britain. For much of history, Britain has had a bigger navy than army. Water, not land, underwrote its security. Britain hasnt been ransacked by a foreign force since the Norman conquest of 1066. Britains kings and queens have rarely kept large standing armies capable of imposing absolute domestic control. A state with these characteristics is usually likely to be less centralised and more plural than one whose troops menace its streets.

Economic and political liberalism are not uniquely British. But they are entrenched sensibilities, and they derive at least in part from the curious psychology of living on a small rock in a big ocean.

That same psychology translates into an intellectual tradition predicated on doubt. Unlike much of the earths landmass, the sea is contingent, fickle, unknowable. If you depend on the sea then, to a certain extent, you forfeit power and comprehension. The people on its shores must take the world with a pinch of salt.

Consider the "empiricism" of David Hume, Britains most luminous philosopher. Hume argued that we know for certain only that which we can ourselves see, hear or touch. Until the sun rises tomorrow, I cannot be sure that it will. If someone claims something that you cannot experience yourself, then you shouldnt necessarily believe them.

The general effect of this skeptical thinking is to weaken the basis for absolute authority. If nothing can be known for sure, and if knowledge is ultimately a matter of common sense or guesswork, then anyone asserting an absolutist vision whether of destiny, revolution, or progress is suspect.

For example, the French Revolution provoked revulsion in Britain. Edmund Burke, the Anglo-Irish polemicist and arch-critic of the revolution, wrote that the destruction of the "ancien regime" by fire and sword was dangerous not just because of its output in blood, but because it reflected an unjustified faith in universal principles.

Burkes view - that it is better to trust the independent thought of ordinary people than the fever-dreams of visionaries - was influential. Subsequent British thinkers, from John Stuart Mill to Isaiah Berlin, and from George Orwell to JG Ballard, have preached the perils of totalitarianism. Britain arguably has a heightened immunity to ideology and demagogues.

So how might this explain Brexit?

The European Union was conceived to establish permanent peace in Europe. It has a providential narrative and reflects a spirit of planning and design of grand, lasting solutions which on some level challenges Britains more piecemeal approach to social organisation. And it has been driven, among others, by France and Germany.

Unlike Britains sceptics and empiricists, the greatest French and German thinkers believe that reason can illuminate timeless truths. The rationalism of Descartes holds that logic alone can supply a full understanding of the universe. Germanys most outstanding figures Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche also, in different ways, sought perfect certainty: in metaphysics, history, law or morality. These thinkers offered systematic accounts of who man really is, deep down, and what he must do to become himself.

To some in Britain, the EU resembles this sort of enterprise and that is what makes it so troubling. The EUs pursuit of harmony is its original sin. On this analysis, Britain has a freewheeling personality, while the EU yearns after order. Britain cherishes open markets and minimal government, while the EU erects "dirigiste" institutions. Britain views man as fallible, the EU sees him as perfectible.

This perceived dichotomy is, of course, false.

First, for all its regulations, the chief purpose and effect of the EU is to enable trade. The EU is the worlds biggest single market and its precepts of free movement in people, goods and services are cosmopolitan by any standard.

Second, if the EU is supposed to represent a steady march towards utopia, then it is doing badly. Most steps towards greater integration are resisted or even reversed, and many members (including the UK) benefit from significant opt-outs. EU rules sometimes seem to be honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

Finally, Britain is not as much of a breezy outlier as it thinks. Other European states (notably the Netherlands and Denmark) have similar liberal traditions, while Britains own commitment to the doctrine of laissez-faire has never been entirely pure. Moreover, the discourse behind Brexit has sometimes displayed the very dogmatism which its votaries purport to oppose. The "us vs them" narrative is flawed.

But it is nonetheless unsurprising that the first country to decisively reject the EU is the UK, the rain-swept island off its north-west coast. Britains sense of difference, inspired by its specific place in the world, has led, eventually, to its departure from the European harbour.

The country must now embrace the future alone, charting its own course on the open ocean. How well it does remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: to succeed, Britain will need to catch a fair wind and reach deep into its seafaring soul.

Sam Williams is a writer in Abu Dhabi

Updated: January 30, 2020 07:05 PM

Read the original:

Brexit: Britain slips its moorings - The National