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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 10 Jun 2010, 16:35 
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Linguistic wrote:
Pragmatic wrote:
8. Why did God include verses that are susceptible to abrogation claims:

I agree with both points you mentioned and would like to add this,

  • Fitna: As in test of faith. Will Muslims be intimidated by the charge of the Jews? How will they react? Will that cause them to advocate abrogation as defense, or would they refute the charge of the Jews in its essence?

I was watching an educational TV program last night. The instructor, John Doyle, was enumerating the various methods of pseudo-reasoning, i.e., reasoning that poses itself as legitimate when in fact it's bogus. One of the tools of pseudo-reasoning, Doyle explained, is false dilemma. This is a technique where the person making the false premise offers as argument only two choices, when in fact there are more choices available. As an example to this is something often heard, "you're either part of the problem, or part of the solution!"

Indeed, the charge of the Jews against the Quran, used a number of pseudo-reasoning techniques:
  1. Naskh means abrogation, i.e., annulment with or without a replacement. That is called a red herring or a smoke screen. That is, the premise is changed without proof. Naskh has many meanings and one of them is indeed annulment but it is not limited to it. Limiting it to it is therefore a smoke screen aimed at distracting the listener away from the true premise.
  2. Abrogation is caused by new information not previously known or anticipated. That is a false dilemma because naskh may be caused by any number of causes, such as gradual teaching of a principle. This charge is also an example of appeal to belief; God is obviously sanctified from change of mind or not knowing events ahead of time.

Muslim scholars unfortunately fell for it. They all rushed to disprove the second charge, but in doing so, they accepted the first one! Only a few scholars, such as An-Nahhaas, have pointed out that naskh does not necessarily mean abrogation. It was only in recent times, that Muslim scholars got wise to the first charge and started to refute it too.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 11 Jun 2010, 00:24 
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Linguistic wrote:
the various methods of pseudo-reasoning, i.e., reasoning that poses itself as legitimate when in fact it's bogus. One of the tools of pseudo-reasoning, Doyle explained, is false dilemma. This is a technique where the person making the false premise offers as argument only two choices, when in fact there are more choices available. As an example to this is something often heard, "you're either part of the problem, or part of the solution!"

Indeed, the charge of the Jews against the Quran, used a number of pseudo-reasoning techniques:
  1. Naskh means abrogation, i.e., annulment with or without a replacement. That is called a red herring or a smoke screen. That is, the premise is changed without proof. Naskh has many meanings and one of them is indeed annulment but it is not limited to it. Limiting it to it is therefore a smoke screen aimed at distracting the listener away from the true premise.
  2. Abrogation is caused by new information not previously known or anticipated. That is a false dilemma because naskh may be caused by any number of causes, such as gradual teaching of a principle. This charge is also an example of appeal to belief; God is obviously sanctified from change of mind or not knowing events ahead of time.

Muslim scholars unfortunately fell for it. They all rushed to disprove the second charge, but in doing so, they accepted the first one

I think this is an excellent point to make in the high-level part of the write-up (the part that discusses the burden of proof for example). I agree with what you are saying and I believe it is important for the case we are making. The only point of difference is that I believe that naskh (in 2:106) means abrogation, just that naskh did not occur in the Quran. We have already agreed to disagree on that point.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 14 Jun 2010, 08:24 
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Pragmatic wrote:
The story of هلكت وأهلكت

The story involving this Arabic sentence (which means "you are doomed and you doomed others")

Al-Zalmi addresses this story on page 20 of his book, citing only the narration that attributes the story to Aly, may God be pleased with him. His only argument is that the word نسخ as used by the Sahaba, including Aly, did not mean abrogation but included exception, etc., and that's what he sees Aly meant when he asked the man in the story. Al-Zalmi spent the previous 3 pages citing major scholars who affirm that نسخ was used to mean things other than abrogation by the early Muslims.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 15 Jun 2010, 02:31 
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Al-Ghazaali, in his book نظرات في القرآن, page 202, had a clever reply for those who use

as evidence of abrogation relying on its circumstances of revelation. The reports say that those circumstances were that the polytheists were mocking the Prophet (PBUH) and accusing him of forbidding what he once allowed and vice versa. Al-Ghazaali says that the entire Chapter was revealed in Mecca, before any verses claimed abrogating were revealed, so what did the polytheists have as evidence?

Al-Ghazaali's interpretation of the verse is that the polytheists wanted a material miracle and were not convinced the Quran was one.

I think that interpretation is far fetched, but his argument about the circumstances of revelation is convincing. IMHO, the verse talks about replacing the sign of the Torah with the sign of the Quran. The words "in place of" may mean the place of prominence, i.e., it is the Quran now, and no longer the Torah, that all must commit to. God knows best.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 15 Jun 2010, 03:36 
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Linguistic wrote:
I think that interpretation is far fetched, but his argument about the circumstances of revelation is convincing. IMHO, the verse talks about replacing the sign of the Torah with the sign of the Quran. The words "in place of" may mean the place of prominence, i.e., it is the Quran now, and no longer the Torah, that all must commit to. God knows best.

I totally agree with you. I also see the distinct possibility that 16:101 is talking about the Quran replacing previous revelations. This makes the first mention of آية in the verse, but not the second, a reference to the Quran, and that still fits the rest of 16:101 and 16:102. I guess the reason we didn't pursue such interpretation earlier was that the other interpretation that both mentions of آية refer to verses in the Quran did not impact the abrogation doctrine that we are trying to refute.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 18 Jun 2010, 05:11 
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Linguistic wrote:
He brings up two more verses that have been argued as proof of abrogation,


Al-Zalmi discusses the interpretation of this verse on pages 45-46 of his book. IMHO, he did a poor job. He didn't take into consideration the previous verse


which sheds significant light on the interpretation of 13:39 as Zaid pointed out. Al-Zalmi's interpretation comes across as unfocused and weak.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 18 Jun 2010, 05:33 
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Pragmatic wrote:
the substitution verse:

In 16:101, God talks about replacing one verse by putting another in its place, which means that the original verse is gone from the Quranic text.

Al-Zalmi discusses the interpretation of 16:101 on pages 46-47 of his book. He analyzes the use of the verb بدل in conjunction with مكان in the Quran, giving two examples


and

(he refers to the latter in the footnote as 4:90, which is a typo). The two verses support that substituting something in place of another means that the original is gone, hence 16:101 cannot possibly apply to "abrogation of the ruling but not the recitation." Same argument we used, but with more evidence. He goes on to interpret 16:101 as talking about verses in the Quran substituting verses of previous books of revelation, an interpretation that is growing on me.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 21 Jun 2010, 04:22 
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Evidence from Sahaba narrations

Al-Zalmi addresses the evidence pro-abrogation scholars use based on narrations from Sahaba and early Muslims. On page 48 of his book, he summarily dismisses the evidence based on the discrepancy between the meaning that the word نسخ was used for by early Muslims, and the technical meaning of annulment that the pro-abrogation scholars use.

Nothing new here, but the brief and pointed style of his writeup made it clear to me that this is the way to go in addressing Sahaba narrations. No need to go into authenticity or authority. We should only talk about the meaning of نسخ as they used it, with concrete examples ad nauseum to drive the point home.

The other arguments, based on authenticity or authority, are more vulnerable to debate, and given the huge number of Sahaba narrations about abrogation, the simple compelling argument about mismatched meanings was a good choice by Al-Zalmi to refute this entire category of evidence. We should mention that we are not getting into the authenticity or authority issues and justify that by the fact that they are not needed given the linguistic angle, but we should mention that pro-abrogation scholars have also dismissed many of these narrations (with concrete examples) to put the reader at ease in this delicate territory.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 22 Jun 2010, 19:52 
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Pragmatic wrote:
Evidence from Sahaba narrations
...
Nothing new here, but the brief and pointed style of his writeup made it clear to me that this is the way to go in addressing Sahaba narrations. No need to go into authenticity or authority. We should only talk about the meaning of نسخ as they used it, with concrete examples ad nauseum to drive the point home.

The other arguments, based on authenticity or authority, are more vulnerable to debate, and given the huge number of Sahaba narrations about abrogation, the simple compelling argument about mismatched meanings was a good choice by Al-Zalmi to refute this entire category of evidence. We should mention that we are not getting into the authenticity or authority issues and justify that by the fact that they are not needed given the linguistic angle, but we should mention that pro-abrogation scholars have also dismissed many of these narrations (with concrete examples) to put the reader at ease in this delicate territory.

I agree, especially with your last statement. I don't think that one argument alone will work. I agree totally that the word naskh means much more than abrogation and its most common use is "to copy or edit", but the fact that the majority of scholars, beginning with the fellows of Ibn Mas`ood (RA), have restricted its meaning to abrogation and built hundreds of cases and wrote scores of books on that basis cannot be ignored. That has to be countered by how they knocked down each other's arguments. This is why I think that the posts titled "Who said what" in each of the cases we discussed is so important. In every case, there is a sizable number of credible scholars who rejected the claim. That's a powerful argument by itself. Because if there is no consensus, it is better to err on the side of caution, i.e., accept that there is no abrogation because the other side means to suspend or reverse a ruling of God!

As for authentication of narrations which stated that naskh has occurred, I think that, in addition to highlighting that their use of the word meant other than abrogation, we can also propound what the scholars of authentication have said about those narrations. This, of course, is a huge undertaking, so I suggest that we focus on authenticating the narrations which asserted the "big three" abrogation cases for starters. These are 8:66/8:65, 58:13/58:12 and 73:20/73:1-4. Let's do that in the topic discussing each case separately.

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 Post subject: Re: Origins of the abrogation doctrine
PostPosted: 10 Jul 2010, 19:18 
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This post has another example of Quranic evidence against abrogation.

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