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layalee 
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Joined: 04 August 2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 157 |
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 Posted: 09 February 2008 at 11:50am |
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No muslim that has taken the shahada and believe, and have a basic understanding of Tawheed will ever deny that only Allah(swt) is 100% infallible.
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Andalus
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Joined: 12 October 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 1187 |
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Posted: 09 February 2008 at 7:00pm |
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Omniscient in the sense that the Prophet's rulings in the seventh century could take into account the circumstances in which we live today. Infallible in the sense that he never made a mistake in his entire life. The Prophet (saw) was a messenger to mankind, with a message from God. His message was from an "omniscient" source, which does not imply that the prophet (saw) was "omniscient". The Prophet (saw) was infallible in regards to his prophethood, and he never made a "mistake" in regards to following what God had ordered.
I replied to rami as follows: "I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the Prophet encouraged large families. That may have made sense fourteen centuries ago because infant mortality was extremely high, the global population was small and resources were plentiful. But now babies almost always live to adulthood, life expectancy has doubled or tripled, the planet has almost reached its capacity and resources are becoming scarce. If the Prophet were alive today, do you think he would still be encouraging large families? Why?" rami's response was (among other things) that the planet is capable of supporting still more people and resources would not be scarce if we conserved them better. I disagree -- I think the planet is already overpopulated -- but even if he's right, it should be obvious that at some point we will have too many people on this planet and it will be necessary to limit family size. Policies that encourage population growth indefinitely are not sustainable. The prophet encouraged married couples to have children, which does not create problems. The problems the are created in the world today come about through the actions of man, not from over population. We will not have to worry about some point from conjecture about "maybe" the world will have too many people. With newly forming diseases, mutating viruses, etc, we will never reach such a point.
Yes, the Quran did say to obey the Prophet, but the Prophet (peace be upon him) is dead. His message lives on. Obeying Allah and His messenger did not have a time stipulation.
To blindly continue following his orders 1400 years later is like nailing the rudder of a ship in its last position after the captain dies. The river continues to twist and turn, the currents run this way and that, but Islam sails on blindly into ever more treacherous waters. It was great to have the Prophet at the helm in the beginning, but now that he is gone we need to find our own way, and the Quran (which is complete and explained in detail) ought to be sufficient guide. 1) Your assertion that we "blind follow" is a red herring. Show me where we are expected to "blind follow". 2) Your analogy is somewhat convoluted. No one has nailed the rudder, and your analogy presents a false dichotomy. There is another choice other than �nailing the rudder�, and that is selecting another captain. In this case, the next in line are the scholars who are able to give us the most confident information that one is able to obtain without going directly to the Prophet (saw). Even the companions went to the Prophet (saw) for explanations and interpretation. Your analogy implies theological anarchy where everyone is the captain, one only need to open the quran to be one. The scholars are heirs to the prophets, and the choice you are declaring is simply convoluted.
As I said, I don't know much about the content of the hadith, but I already know from the Quran that the Prophet is capable of error because the Quran tells us in Sura 80 that he wrongly ignored a blind man who came to him for instruction. The is a strawman. No one has argued that the Prophet (saw) was never corrected. What is argued is that the Prophet (saw) is infallible in terms of following the shariah and what God commanded. This does not invalidate the hadith.
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A feeling of discouragement when you slip up is a sure sign that you put your faith in deeds. -Ibn 'Ata'llah
http://www.sunnipath.com http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/ http://www.pt-go.com/ |
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Andalus
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Joined: 12 October 2005 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 1187 |
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Posted: 09 February 2008 at 7:07pm |
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The problem is that you believe you are throwing daggers, secondary to your ignorance about Islamic Law and requirements for worship, so the reality is that you are lobbing "helium balloons". It is probably hard for you to believe, but Muslim scholars, since before the time Christian Europe was bathing or even writing, were discussing various scenerios concerning "fiqh". So, no, you are not the first to come up with it, and the rules surrounding worship and the requirements to be filled for the worship to be accepted have been wroked out even in Alaska. So, I have yet to find a single point you have raised that has made any of the hadith irrelevant, or to show that the Prophet was wrong.
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A feeling of discouragement when you slip up is a sure sign that you put your faith in deeds. -Ibn 'Ata'llah
http://www.sunnipath.com http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/ http://www.pt-go.com/ |
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rami
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Posted: 09 February 2008 at 7:39pm |
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Bi ismillahi rahmani raheem
rami, if I have shown you that the Prophet (peace be upon him) is even 0.0001% fallible, the term infallible as i used it was qualified, maybe you missed this point of logic in my post. I ascribed infallibility to his prophet hood, secondly your use of the example of the blind man to point out his fallibility would indicate to me that you don't completely understand the term. When a person is called 'infallible', this can mean any of the following:
Do you notice something in all the above examples, they all refer to a persons knowledge which is different from claiming absolute infalibility in all respects, knowledge, actions.....choices, such as should i talk to these group of people first or those, How is that even a mistake by human standards. Infallibility doesn't simply mean he doesn't err in all respects it has to be qualified or you would be claiming divinity for yourself. Edited by rami |
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Rasul Allah (sallah llahu alaihi wa sallam) said: "Whoever knows himself, knows his Lord" and whoever knows his Lord has been given His gnosis and nearness.
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Ron Webb
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Male atheist Joined: 30 January 2008 Location: Ottawa, Canada Status: Offline Points: 2467 |
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Posted: 09 February 2008 at 8:06pm |
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Right. God ordered him to recite the Quran, and no doubt he did that flawlessly.
Given that his message was the Quran (which is timeless), that makes sense too.
That's the part that doesn't make sense to me. You agree that the Prophet is infallible in his recitation of the Quran, but not necessarily in his daily life, right? And yet, his followers compile the details of his daily life, and once compiled these details become infallible law? I'm not trying to prove that any particular hadith is wrong. I'm saying that any of them could be wrong, or could be outdated, or could need to be interpreted in light of new circumstances. I'm saying that they need to be approached with reason and common sense. They may be the words of a great man, instructed by Allah Himself; but they are still the words of a man, not the infallible Word of God. |
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rami
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Posted: 09 February 2008 at 10:29pm |
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Bi ismillahi rahmani raheem
Ron you are not going to understand until you gain insight into the subject matter. visit these websites and read, i am not asking to agree or believe but simply gain an insight becouse as it stands now we dont even agree on what key words mean or how they are intended from a muslim perspective. http://muslim-canada.org/sitedex.htm http://www.islamic-awareness.org/ http://www.muslimheritage.com/ http://www.jannah.org/articles/ |
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Rasul Allah (sallah llahu alaihi wa sallam) said: "Whoever knows himself, knows his Lord" and whoever knows his Lord has been given His gnosis and nearness.
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Ron Webb
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Male atheist Joined: 30 January 2008 Location: Ottawa, Canada Status: Offline Points: 2467 |
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Posted: 10 February 2008 at 12:21pm |
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Well, you've certainly convinced me of one thing: Wikipedia is not infallible. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that the Prophet was infallible only in matters of doctrine. Okay, how do we know when something is a matter of doctrine, and when it is not? If the Prophet talks about family, or about war, or about beards, or whatever, how do we know that this is timeless doctrine and not simply recommendations to his contemporaries in the seventh century? I'm sure that Islamic scholars have given their rulings on these questions, but are they infallible? It's not my religion, of course, so I suppose I shouldn't really care; but for what it's worth, to me the obvious answer is that the statements the Prophet told his followers to write down (i.e., the Quran) were clearly intended to be timeless doctrine; but whatever else he said, the statements he specifically commanded his followers not to write, i.e. the hadith, were not intended to be recorded for all time. |
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Angel
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Joined: 03 July 2001 Status: Offline Points: 6641 |
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Posted: 10 February 2008 at 10:44pm |
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What makes you think that Muhammed did not command/ask his companions to write down the hadiths? The hadiths are a collection of Muhammed's actions in what to do in religious matters/life. A guide to know what to do. The hadiths and the qu'ran go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other, this is what I've learnt over the years. |
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 ~ Our feet are earthbound, but our hearts and our minds have wings ~
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Ron Webb wrote:
The second definition is what I mean, and I think what most people mean by the word (see