On Constancy & Change, Op-ed

The tendency of adopt others' approached and perspectives, without applying an abstract reasonable vision may close the door of ijtihad .. This tendency indeed pervades the souls of people, directing them while they do not feel, and that the power of ideas that have gained holiness over time dominates the hearts, thus pushing the minds to put evidence of their goodness and to abandon the other ‘bad’ thoughts.

This, naturally, leads to disagreement and unproductive debates, because people go into debates while holding strictly to their previous givens, without feeling this.. And this is what characterizes the extremist movements, as well as all the armed religious political groups! Imitation , in this regard, leads to fanaticism, and as the sacredness of thoughts felt by the person leads him to ultimately defend them, which, by turn, lead to acute fanaticism, and differences.

And thus, whenever there is an acute difference, there comes to be the disgusting difference that closes the doors of dialogue and places it too far to achieve. 

Some sciences, as is the case of Islamic sciences, rolled towards the poles of tradition, when Muslims were subjected to some moral and material pressures.

When the reality of “Say, my nephew, do not despise yourself” (which was spelled by Omar bin Al-Khattab to Abdullah bin Abbas, who was a boy at that earlier time of Islam), was replaced by a different reality, that is: “Shut up! And silence, may God kill you!”We began to see some scholars claiming ultimate positions and hierarchy as if they exclusively possess facts, which in turn,  reduced the possible chances of criticism.

There is also a dilemma, which existed across our scientific and epistemological history, that is, the issue of constancy and change. When we didn’t exert the effort needed in this issue, and instead, left it for Muslim brilliant scholars to tackle in their books, and when we didn’t correctly decoded the signs that filled Qur’an and Sunnah in this regard, the case remained unclear and a lot of problems happened.

It is also known, as the Moroccan scholar Muhammad Al-Kettani considers, that the issue of constancy and change is an old philosophical problem. Greek philosophers used to pide the phenomena of the universe and the laws that govern them into essences and symptoms.

Essences are fixed, symptoms are changing. Matter or a changed nature are only symptoms of fixed essences. In this regard Aristotle put the law of identity. And identity is constant and does not change, because without us saying its constant, it is impossible to know anything. Because scientific knowledge is only related to what is constant.

Then came the philosophical and scientific revolution in the modern history of Europe. It adopted a different principle, which is the principle of evolution that governs the phenomena of the universe. For them, it is thanks to this principle that man has reached the progress he is today. Rather, evolution has come to explain all biological phenomena, including human life.

Evolution, therefore, is one of the principles of Western culture that contradicts our national cultures, which believe in the constancy of essences and values, and this may be the cause of the stalemate in Islamic and national thought, when it sufficed with imitation, and even closing the door of ijtihad and denial of society's changes. Islamic jurisprudence has been frozen since the fourth century AH.

Despite calls for ijtihad and developing jurisprudence and legislation, these calls almost are in vain. But when we get involved in contemporary history, which is constantly changing, our culture has no option but to open up to the concepts of development, which has come to affect everything in our life, and it was necessary to believe that development is the nature of life.

But some of us still turn our backs on this fact, and insist that retrieving the history of the ancestors and their understanding of religion is the only way to understand Islam. Here, too, the issue of national identity and its constancy is raised.

Yes, if we look at the constants on which this identity is based, we will find that some of them may change in the perceptions of some politicians and thinkers. Therefore, we wonder: Do we agree on these constants? And if these constants do exist, do we agree on defining and interpreting them? Isn't the political difference, in some respects, traced to the difference in understanding these constants?

If it is, then where is the constancy? Consequently, we do not agree over defining the content of the constants, let alone in defining the variables. Rather, it is among us who turn constants into variables, and variables into constants. Thus, the differences do largely exist within the debate over constancy and change.