Living Islam With Purpose I. Introduction II. Operational Principles 1. Trusting Reason 2. Respecting Dissent 3.

Stressing Societal Obligation 4. Setting Priorities 5. Embracing Maxims III. Conclusion

Introduction

Muslims in the west : lack a deeper understanding of Islam in order to achieve excellence not because they are lazy but because they lack an operational framework to facilitate the acquisition of deeper understanding and put it to use.

The paper aims to remedy on that and provide such a framework based on five operational principles: Trusting reason Respecting Dissent Stressing societal obligations Setting Priorities Embracing Maxims

They are based on Quran, Sunna, consensus of traditional Islamic scholarship.

They engender balance and moderation By emphasizing universal principles, they constitute a bridge between Islam and the ideals and values of other cultures and religions

Muslims who understand the mcan speak coherently about their faith in any setting and through them they will be bale to lay the foundations of a vibrant indigenous Muslim presence wherevere they may be.

However, they are in no way substitute to the study of Islamic theology, Law, and Spirituality!

They fit in what we can call operational knowledge, i.e knowledge wich provides Muslims with a necessaty skill set to utilize other forms of knowledge effectively.

The most important lesson to be taken from this is this: Islam must make sense, but, to make sense, it requires intelligent followers with sound understanding.

They are the foundations of any bright future: cf. hikam: the beginnings are the manifestations of the end

The five objectives of Islamic Law: religion self reason children wealth

The core maxims are: o Matters will be judged by their purposes o Certainty will not be overturned by doubt o Harm must be removed o Hardship must be alleviated o Custom has the weight of law

The five core maxims are the primary focus of this paper: they are not

merely useful guidelines; they embody the spirit of everything Islam represents. To understand the five core maxims is to understand the essence of Islam in five short sentences. The author chose these five operational principles among many others who are equally valid or even better.

operational principal one trusting reason

The place of reason in Islam

Reason stands at the heart of Islams worldview: God endowed human beings with dignity, and the capacity to reason is one of the principal distinction among other beings. The rational order of the universe makes it accessible to human reason and transforms it from a world of random phenoma into a marvelous sign of God and an object of speculation and scientific investigation

The protection fo reason

the protection, cultivation, and preservation of the power to reason count among the major objectives of Islamic Law: Moral responsibility (takliif) is the first prerequisite for obligatory Islamic practice and never has legal validity in the absence of the faculty to reason. The Quranic verses referring to excellence of reason as a principal source of guidance.

 Prophetic traditions on reason: Ghazali on the lofty status of reason in Islam as a consensus. Islamic ethics designates reason as the first necessary element of moral character.: without it good character is inconceivable The authority of reason forms the foundation of Islamic theology and law. Cnclfict between reason and science was virtually unknown in Islamic intellectual history. The harmony of these two is epitomized in Ibn Hayyaans life and works. Islam produced an array of religious scholars who also excelled in the rational and empirical sciences: Ibn Rushd and commentaries on Aristotle impact on European intellectual history; Fakhr ad-din Al-Razi; etc Islamic legal thought divides the rulings of the revealed law into two categories according to their connection with reason: o immutably fixed (tawqiifii):
its rulings are accessible to intellectual contemplation, but they are not contingent on discernible rationales and conditional purposes and therefore cannot be changed. Immutably fixed rulings must be observed just as they were originally revealed and are not open to legal interpretation. ex: designation of Ramadan as the month of fasting is immutably fixed.

o rationale-based (muallal).
Its ruligns have rationales (ilal) and tangible pruposes (maqaaSid), which make the maccessible to reas on and the subject of ongoing legal interpretation (ijtihAd). ex: marriage and most of the las relating to it are rationale-based.

The immutably fixed rulings of Islamic law (tawqiifii) pertain mostly to the details of religious rites. Comapred to rationale-based rulings (muallal),

they constitute an essential but relatively small part of the law. Therefore the primacy and predominance of rationale-based rulings in the law give it flexibility and relevance in changing times and diverse places.

Because rationale-based rulings constitute the overwhelming majority of Islamic jurisprudence, every ruling in the law is presumed to be rationalebased until the contrary is proven.

Certain aspects of ritual prayers provide an illustration of immutably fixed and rationale-based rulings occurring in combination: Islamic Prayers are divided into audible and inaudible.

The designation fo which prayers are silent and which are recited aloud is immutably fixed and is not contingent on a rationale. But there is a rationale behind the prayer leaders lifting his voice in audible prayers: it is preferable that those praying behind him be able to hear the recitation. In keeping with this rationale, it is legitimate to amplify the prayer lea ders voice in different ways so that greater numbers of worshippers can hear the recitation. In the past Muslims designed acoustically innovative arcitectura lstructures for this purpose; today they use microphones.

The intrinsic rationality of the Prophetic law shows that God made the law for human beings and that human beings were not made for the law.

Since most Islamic legal rulings have discernable rationales, they require ongoing scrutiny and legal interpretation to ensure that their application remains consistent with their rationales: each text has a context, and the religious scholar must understand both; the law cannot be applied mechanically or by rote.

Muslims take pride that Islam is a religion of reason yet today they are torn between what they instinctively know to be right and between competing

authoritarian claims made in Islams name that do not make sense and may even conflict with basic human values. ccl: Islam must make good sense. As the Prophet said, a Muslims competence in Islam cannot be trusted before testing his or her reason. the same applies to Muslim communities and the ideas and outlook they teach. Any approach t oIslam that does not cultivate and respect the free and candid use of reason is inadequate and cannot lay the foundations for a viable future.

operational principal two respecting dissent

Islam only speaks with a monolithic voice on foundational beliefs and practices. In other matters, it speaks with multiple voices and recognizes the legitimacy of dissent and competing interpretations.

Acknowledgement of divergent opinions is aa central part of Islamic heritage

Muslims scholars were trained in the protocol of dissent, adab al-ikhtilAf which enabled the mto benefit from the opposing points of view and live civilly.

The illustration of this respect for divergent opinions is found in the manner in which Muslim scholarship approached scriptural interpretation: Scholars agreed that religious texts have different degreed of conclusiveness and often convey multiple meeanings.

Islamic scholarship divided religious texts into two categories: o those which are categorically authoritative (qati) o those which are presumptively authoritative (Zannii)

To be categorically authoritavie, a religious text must pass two tests. The first pertains to authenticity of transmission; the second pertains to the number of meanings it conveys. In Islamic scholarship, the entirety of the Quran is categorically authentic (qati al-

thubuut). Hadith on the other hand, have different levels of verifiable authenticity. Thus, the issue of textual authenticity applies in reality only to hadith. Those hadith that meet the highest standards of versification (al-ahadith alsahiha) are categorically authentic from the standpoint of transmission, although they are not necessarily caterocially authoritavice from the standpoint of meaning.