Sample Essay
Chittick observes that Muslims of today tend to confuse intellectual progress with anti-Islamic modernization. He realizes a need for Muslims to re-start their cognitive wheels and start thinking again. According to him, they have stopped thinking altogether, a notion he realizes would most likely invite criticism. He specifies that the thinking he is referring to is not the casual thinking of individuals but is actually in reference to the intellectual knowledge of religion, which as mentioned earlier, the Quran prompts every Muslim to undergo.
This intellectual learning is described by him as an individual’s heightened personal self-awareness, a mechanism with which he elevates his knowledge in a way surpassing all idiosyncrasies inhibiting it, thereby reaching a greater level of understanding. “Another characteristic of the intellectual tradition that places it in stark contrast with modern learning is the intensely personal nature of the quest. Tahqiq aims at the discovery of the haqq within the seeker’s own intelligence. That intelligence was understood, and, indeed, experienced, as the supra-individual, transpersonal, universal breath of awareness” (Chittick, 2007).
This intellectual knowledge is the center piece of the Islamic puzzle, without which its teachings are incomplete. Chittick reinvigorates Quran’s particulars about thinking and reflecting upon the teachings of transmitted knowledge, thereby honing the mind to reach a greater level of comprehension of the religion. The modern philosophers seem to be undergoing a sense of fearful cognition with respect to harmonizing religion with practice, and thus retreat to believing what they think is convenient for them instead of what is right. In such a situation, according to him, the mind is pitched against the heart in an endless scuffle that is resolved only after succumbing to convenient solutions such as believing in many gods as opposed to the one true God or believing in one type of god over another and thus worshipping him. “A god is what gives meaning and orientation to life, and the modern world derives meaning from many, many gods. Through an ever-intensifying process of takthar, the gods have been multiplied beyond count, and people worship whatever gods appeal to them” (Chittick, 2007).
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