Ideas
Critic:-
The Quran contains ideas that are borrowed or stolen from the Old and New Testament. It cannot be a revelation from God.
Comment:-
There are people who reject the Quran because they say that the Quran contradicts the Old and New Testament which they regard as true revelations.
So which of these assertions are true?
The Quran itself claims to contain the same revelation as was given to Moses and Jesus and other previous Prophets. This revelation had to be renewed because people forgot, distorted or misunderstood the previous revelations and fell into sects. The Quran came to confirm what was true, but it restated that truth in a different manner according to the conditions of the times. So we have to distinguish between the form and the spirit or essence of the teaching. The purpose is the same, but the form, the way it is formulated and the practices designed to achieve the goal are different.
We can also learn something about Ideas and their propagation from the Quran:-
Perception of Truth is not the same as Truth and description of the perception is not the same as perception. There is, therefore, a distinction between the Reality, the Perception and the Idea. An idea is true if it corresponds to the perception from which is derives or induces, and the perception is true if it corresponds to the Reality with which it interact.
(1) Truth is of course always truth. But (a) There are various levels from the most superficial to the deepest and most fundamental. (b) There are degrees of truth from the most Universal to the most Particular. (c) There are changes, and, therefore, more permanent and less permanent truths. (d) Though all things are connected in one system, there are multiple truths.
(2) Perception varies. (e) Truths can be discerned by people according to their various capacities. These differ in level and kind. (f) People see only a small number of truths. This depends on what their attention is directed on. This depends on their activities, efforts, and desires and on external stimuli and their environment. (g) People also seek, select, interpret and organise the data of experience according to their habits, motives, and assumptions. (g) Their motives based on fear and desires also provide fantasies, wish-fulfilment, extrapolations, explanations, pattern making and gap-filling. (h) Different people select different sets of truths and organise them differently. (i) The truth of a datum depends on its association with other data and therefore, its context. (j) A datum in one system or context is not the same as it is in another system or context.
(3) Ideas are vessels or vehicles of communication. (k) The idea or description of a percept depends on the language. (l) The number of words is limited compared to the number of different experiences and perceptions. (m) The same set of words in different combinations must be used to describe different experiences. (n) Words have meaning within a system or context of words. This meaning changes when the system or context changes. (o) Words are also experiences and obtain their meaning by association with other experiences. (p) Words are understood differently by different people according to their various sets of experiences - they have different meanings for different people. (q) Words can be used for communication of experiences if they acquire the same meaning owing to the same set of experiences. (r) This means that the same activities, motives and assumptions in similar environment have to be undertaken. (s) These things vary from being identical, to degrees of similarity and overlapping and being mutually exclusive and widely different.
It should not, therefore, be surprising that people can have the same ideas and also different ones. But different system can select different sets of truths according to what is most relevant to the purpose, times and people. Systems of thought can be similar because (a) Ideas in all these systems can have the same source. (b) The various individuals propagating the ideas have the same capacity for perception, motives, or environments. (c) The same things when true, good or useful can be discerned independently by different people. (d) Even if acquired from another source, it requires the perception, selection and organisation by the individual who propagates the idea. The question is: Why did he select that idea and present it in that manner? (e) A system of thought that contains a few elements that are also contained in another system does not make them identical or similar. System "S1" containing elements "a, b, c, d, e" is not the same as System "S2" containing elements "d, e, f, g, h, I". (f) All Truth is the property of God and not that of any man or nation. That being the case it is perfectly legitimate for any man, specially a Muslim interested in Truth, to propagate it. Are people who write textbooks in science accused of pilfering the ideas of past scientists? (g) It is always possible given any true statement presented by one person to find someone else with a similar idea. This would also be true about fictions and fantasies given that all human beings have something in common about their nature and environment.
Islam came when Humanity and its affairs were changing and the scattered peoples were about to come together and influence each other to a greater degree. Indeed, Religion itself causes changes in the world which have to be dealt with. Hebrewism was a religion that was confined to a tribe, though that tribe had a global purpose to spread the influence of its ideas. It emphasised Law and ritual, and had a hereditary priesthood that performed the ceremonies for the people. Christianity came out of Hebrewism, but broke its confines. It spread among non-Jews in the West, but confined itself to a single Messenger, Jesus and had an organised Church that recruited suitable people from the whole community rather than a tribe. It placed its emphasis on motives behind action, on love. Islam took religion a step further by recognising all Messengers sent by God to all mankind. It placed its emphasis on truth and Faith behind motives. Each individual was directly responsible to God for his own salvation, was his own priest. Humanity had reached adulthood no longer requiring the supervision of an organised Church as parent or guardian. In so far as people sought truth and applied it, no further Prophets were necessary and religion was complete.
Critic:-
I'm not sure whether there are many Muslim or otherwise, who recognise that virtually all the conceptual ideas, frequently being espoused by some Muslim commentators, about the "ideal community" are directly borrowed from those elaborated by Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Comment:-
The critic appears to read a lot of Western literature. That is obviously what he is most interested in. And when he reads Islamic literature based on the Quran he interprets it according to what he has read and sees Western ideas in it.
But he does not appear to have considered that:- (a) Ideas could have flowed the other way round from Islam to the West. Or (b) The same things when true, good or useful could be discerned independently by different people. Or (c) even if acquired from another source, it requires the perception, selection and organisation by the individual. (Why did he select that idea and present it in that manner?) Or (d) A system of thought that contains a few elements that are also contained in another system does not make them identical or similar.
Critic:-
Personally, I find this dishonest wholesale borrowing and virtual plagiarism ethically embarrassing from a thinking Muslim perspective. What's probably worse, is that the authors of such 'stolen' ideas really believe, within themselves, that by 'stealing' someone else's intellectual property makes them into expository 'pundits'.
Comment:-
It is noticeable that some Muslims or others are embarrassed by Islamic ideas or ideas based on Islam when they think they are also in Western Philosophy. But it is also noticeable that they are embarrassed by Islamic ideas when they are not in Western Philosophy or contradict it. Are they also embarrassed by the fact that ideas in the Quran can be found in the Old and New Testaments and even in Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh scriptures and many other places?
But some of them also tell us that things that are useful, good or true should be accepted by Muslims no matter where they come from, even from the West! But do they also think that the other way round is not allowed or possible - that Islamic ideas should not or cannot enter the West?
No doubt, had the Islamic commentator expressed a set of different ideas, the critic would have searched and found similar ideas among those of some other Western Philosophers. There are a number of different ones to choose from, including German, French, English and US. And these, no doubt, contain ideas that also found in each other.
Having looked into the ideas of Jacques Rousseau via the Internet links, one finds that there are some superficial resemblances between the Islamic "Ideal Community" and that described by Rousseau, but there are also many differences. In fact the foundations are totally different.
Rousseau speaks of a social contract, whereas Islam speaks about the sovereignty of Allah, human vicegerency, the relationship of the individual with Allah, mutual consultation, and the need for objective knowledge and values, and the purpose of the Islamic social system is striving for spiritual development.
The critic has certainly confused himself owing to a superficial study In his assessment, the poster has made the common misleading error of isolating and concentrating attention (for obscure motives), on the few common elements while ignoring the differences though these are much more important.
----------<O>----------