10. THE DANGER OF RHETORIC THEOLOGY (ILM AL-KALARN) FOR LAYPEOPLE
There is nothing more harmful on laypeople than hearing philosophy.
Laypeople should be warned and discouraged to listen to, or even be involved in it similar to how a child is warned from standing on the bank of a river, fearing he may drown in it.
If a layperson assumes he has the intellectual capacity to comprehend this science, he should know he is mistaken and such an assumption is corrupted because many scholars were corrupted because of it so what do you think will be the case of a layperson?
I have not seen any people more foolish than the storytellers of my time, because when ignorant laypeople come to listen to them, they neither command them against drinking alcohol, fornication or backbiting, nor teach them the pillars of prayer {salah) and acts of worship. Instead they spend all their time talking about interpretation of Allah’s Attributes (Sifat) and Istiwa’, and that the Speech of Allah (kalamAllah) is an indispensable part of the Essence, causing the heart with sound creed (iman) to be harmed and disturbed.
Laypeople should be sufficed in believing in the five fundamentals; Allah, His Angels, His Divine Books, His Messengers, and the Day of Judgment, and suffice with what the righteous predecessors stated, that the speech of Allah (kalamAllah) is uncreated (ghayr makhluq) and that Istiwa is a truthful (haqq) fact and the ‘how and why’ is unknown (majhul).
They should also understand that the Messenger of Allah ($g) did not order the Bedouins with anything except to believe in Allah, and the Companions (radiy Allahu ‘anhum) never spoke about the theory of atoms and accidents.
He who dies upon the path (tariq) of the Messenger and his Companions (radiy Allahu ‘anhum) shall die upon faith, and be saved from innovation (hid’ah).
And he who dares to stand on the shore of the sea without knowing how to swim, will most likely drown.
(Source: al-Hafiz Abu’l-Faraj ibn al-jawzl [d. 597AH] “CAPTURED THOUGHTS being” a translation of his masterpiece ‘Sayd al-K hatir)
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