Monday, 7 March 2011

Seeking religious knowledge though debates, allowed?


Al 'Iteqadaat (Shaikh Sadooq)

وقال أمير المؤمنين ـ عليه السلام ـ :من طلب الدين بالجدل تزندق

And said Amirul momineen(as): Whoever seeks the religion with debate/argument is a heretic.

4 comments:

  1. What are you trying to say?

    That debates are haram?

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  2. @Sadiq M: Salam,

    Actually I'm not saying anything, I just posted the hadith. But anyhow, even the hadith is not at all saying that debates are haram(there are further ahadith wich define how to conduct debates), what it's saying is that seeking religion(religious knowledge) through them should be avoided.

    The issue is that you can not build your faith by just watching/partaking in debates with non muslims, sunnis etc and build your faith on the basis of arguments against other faiths. In our(shia school of thought) it's very clear that faith should be built by studying our own sources and our sources(ahadith of infallibles) are proofs in themselves, we don't need confirmation/validation from non shia sources. The issue is, if someone has built up their faith totally upon arguments against other faiths, then it's very shaky grounds because at the end of the day no matter how good an argument is it can have a good counter argument as well.

    I believe brother Macisaac from shiachat has explained this very well in his article. You can find it here:
    http://www.vyev.com/4/post/2010/09/three-stages-of-shiism.html

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  3. "Jadal" =/= "Monazare"

    There are hadeeths, which clearly indicate that the Imams (as) did not have a problem with "Monazare"

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  4. i think you have not read EHTIJAAJ TABARSI...
    in which many debates of rasoul and imams are quoted...

    ReplyDelete