Renovating Islam (
part I.)
The Prophet (ﷺ) said: Allah will raise for this community at the end of every hundred years the one who will renovate its religion for it.” Sunan Abi Dawud
حَدَّثَنَا سُلَيْمَانُ بْنُ دَاوُدَ الْمَهْرِيُّ، أَخْبَرَنَا ابْنُ وَهْبٍ، أَخْبَرَنِي سَعِيدُ بْنُ أَبِي أَيُّوبَ، عَنْ شَرَاحِيلَ بْنِ يَزِيدَ الْمَعَافِرِيِّ، عَنْ أَبِي عَلْقَمَةَ، عَنْ أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ، فِيمَا أَعْلَمُ عَنْ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ “ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَبْعَثُ لِهَذِهِ الأُمَّةِ عَلَى رَأْسِ كُلِّ مِائَةِ سَنَةٍ مَنْ يُجَدِّدُ لَهَا دِينَهَا ” .
How man thinks today is totally unlike how he did during ancient times. Things like mysticism; the supernatural; magic; metaphysics; etc- all this made sense back then, as opposed to now, where people openly ridicule you for believing in such concepts (this thread is replete with examples).
This started to change after the Age of Enlightenment. The general paradigm of human attitude in Europe was shifting to one where science formed the undergird of understanding universal realities. The expansionist polices of the West, in tandem with its superior technology, had major implications for the “ancient way of thinking” for the rest of the world.
Indeed, Christianity failed to survive in this type of setting, but to be fair, it’s mostly been relegated to the lower rungs of society (which of course caused the West to fall into moral and nihilistic decline). Modern Christians lack spirituality, and those who tend to be the “religious type” often gravitate towards evangelist organizations (which by the way are often comprised of people who have major issues with self-love). But these type of religious Christians always give out these creepy and weird “Jesus loves me vibes.” It think that demonstrates the failure of Christianity to make sense to a modern audience...so its adherents have to go overboard mentally to compensate for the irrationalities.
And then we get to the Muslim world. It has been in scientific and intellectual stagnation for centuries. This is a far cry to where it was during the Islamic Golden Age, when Islamic Spain had more textbooks than all of Europe combined.
But that was because the ancient peoples of the Islamic world understood Islam and the Qur'an from an exclusively
ancient perspective. The West however dumped that idea and went
full-blown Reason, hence the former’s superiority over the latter’s lackluster state.
(End of part I.)