{"id":1405,"date":"2004-04-16T12:04:38","date_gmt":"2004-04-16T11:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2004\/04\/16\/more_on_sardar"},"modified":"2004-04-16T12:04:38","modified_gmt":"2004-04-16T11:04:38","slug":"more_on_sardar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2004\/04\/16\/more_on_sardar","title":{"rendered":"More on Sardar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.co.uk\/\">New Statesman<\/a> finally got round to printing replies to Ziauddin Sardar&#8217;s &#8220;open the gates of ijtihad&#8221; waffle two issues ago (I blogged on this about a week ago).  They didn&#8217;t print mine, but they did print one from Angela Pinter of east London, who makes a number of accusations against Islam and Muslims:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;In some Islamic countries anybody proclaiming the truth of evolution could be in serious danger of being killed&#8221;:  the fact is that this is not &#8220;truth&#8221; but mere theory.  Western &#8220;science&#8221; has a history of making things &#8220;facts&#8221; when they are not, right up to the recent disasters involving Roy Meadow and his theories on cot death. Nobody believed this nonsense until the late 19th century.  Most people still don&#8217;t believe it.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;In Saudi Arabia, the minister for higher (yes, higher) education stated that the earth was flat&#8221;:  whoever believes this is at variance with Muslim beliefs.  Muslim scholars have never believed that the Earth is anything but round.  Ibn Hazm communicated consensus on this (see Nuh Ha Mim Keller, <i>Port In A Storm<\/i>, Wakeel Books, Amman (Jordan), p.85) and told us that there is a verse in the Qur&#8217;an which in effect states this.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Since [the 11th century] it has been accepted in Islam that the pursuit of knowledge means the pursuit of religious knowledge&#8221;:  which is for most people more important than physical knowledge, because it teaches us how to live our lives and achieve success in the Hereafter.  If your job is selling oranges or driving trucks, you don&#8217;t need to know much else, although it doesn&#8217;t hurt.<\/li>\n<li>The Qur&#8217;an &#8220;describes not science but transcendent knowledge, which is not subject to empirical observation&#8221;:  which is true, but we are not required (as far as I know) to disbelieve anything we see.  In fact, the words of the Qur&#8217;an have the beauty of remaining relevant even when physical facts are shown in a new light by science.  Of course, the &#8220;science fetishist&#8221; believes in nothing but what can be verified by empirical observation, but the belief that the Unseen does not exist is, itself, mere dogma.  We don&#8217;t believe your dogma.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New Statesman finally got round to printing replies to Ziauddin Sardar&#8217;s &#8220;open the gates of ijtihad&#8221; waffle two issues ago (I blogged on this about a week ago). They didn&#8217;t print mine, but&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ziawatch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-mF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}