Does Opinion & Debate Have a Role in an Intellectual Faith Today? | Ignition Question #1

In our recently published exclusive interview with Dr. Karim H. Karim, he said "This is a very important question.... [Y]ou've seen it in the past, Muslims, Ismailis, various other people engage in debate and discussion ... [Debate and discussion are] very, very important for us within the Ismaili community." This Ignition Question explores this topic asking, for example, should an intellectual faith limit debate and opinion?

About Ignition Questions

Ignition Questions offer forward looking questions, related to our community, for the Jamat to reflect over, first individually and then with a few friends, over coffee, in an effort to find innovative answers which we hope they will share with the community.

Some Ignition Questions may highlight what we feel might be unrecognized challenges or issues and offer our opinions, ideas or alternative perspectives (in a sense, just thought experiments), however, we do not insist on either our opinions over the challenges or our alternative perspectives. Although we merely float them all for everyone's consideration, some may find our opinions helpful. Nevertheless, we hope the new and alternative perspectives will spark others to build upon them.

Ignition Questions are inspired by Mawlana Hazar Imam's 1986 guidance:

 
In dealing with the issues that lie ahead of us, we will look at them straight in the face, we will ask the hard questions. If we cannot find immediate answers, we will go on asking the same questions until In'sh'allah, we are inspired to find the answers, but we will not give up. We will not go back to an obscurantism, to a form of intellectual retreat into something which is neither beneficial for the present and certainly not constructive for the future.... And we must have the courage to ask the questions and to seek the answers.

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Background Context

Although we pose Ignition Questions for individuals to reflect over, we also pose them to Ismaili Ignition interview guests. When we do, as we did with this one, we provide their answers as additional context for you to reflect on when considering your own answers.

"Da'is did not always agree and in fact often debated ideas with one another." ... Not only did Ismaili Da'is have their own opinions or perspectives about the faith, but they also voiced these and their disagreements with other Da'is in public critiques.

In the past, our Da'is, pirs and the Jamat, generally, engaged in public discussions and debates -- not only over the faith, but also over community issues and challenges -- that exposed the community to new perspectives which, upon reflection, helped them better understand the faith as part of their personal search. For example, in The Ruby of Badakshan, Alice Hunsberger writes:

the Fatimid court at Cairo engendered some of the liveliest theological and intellectual debates in the Muslim world. Astronomers, poets, grammarians, physicians, legal experts, theologians and other members of the intelligentsia were brought to the capital and given generous stipends and materials for their creative work.

Similarly, as the Institute of Ismaili Studies notes about one of its manuscripts, Kitab al-Riyad authored by Fatimid Da'i, al-Kirmani:

This important philosophical work is by one of the most influential early Ismaili Da'is and authors. The Hamdani manuscript is the oldest known copy of the work; it was copied in the year 765 AH, or 1364 CE. Da'is did not always agree and in fact often debated ideas with one another. Kitab al-Riyad is Kirmani's critique of an earlier work by al-Sijistani, which was itself a critique of a treatise by Abu Hatim al-Razi, and Razi's work was in its turn a refutation of a still earlier author, probably al-Nakhsh

Most interesting is that not only did Ismaili Da'is have their own opinions or perspectives about the faith, but they also voiced these and their disagreements with other Da'is in public critiques. Furthermore, no matter the Da'is' stature, their opinions or perspectives didn't always gain general acceptance. For example, about al-Kirmani and his Kitab al-Riyad, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, hosted at University of Tennessee at Martin, writes:

Al-Kirmani rose to prominence during the reign of Imam al-Hakim, when the central headquarters of the Fatimid Da'wah in Cairo considered him as the most learned Ismaili theologian of the time.... The honorific title hujjat al-Iraqayn, meaning the hujja or chief Da'i of both Iraqs (al-Iraq al-Arabi and al-Iraq al-Ajami), is often added to al-Kirmani's name.... [Despite his stature] al-Kirmani's cosmology, representing an original synthesis of different philosophical traditions, was not however adopted by the Fatimid Ismailis.

During our recent interview with Dr. Karim H. Karim -- former Co-Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) in London, UK and current Director of the Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam -- we posed the essence of this Ignition Question to him, and asked:

Can one truly have an intellectual faith, without opinion, without debate, in our intellectual landscape? ... [T]his kind of public debate very rare in our community. Why is it that we have few opinions expressed and so little debate within the Ismaili intelligentsia, amongst academics and amongst well-read members of the Jamat?

Dr. Karim replied:

This is a very important question. Well, I still remember as a master's student, when I was in a panel, and I mentioned that pre-Fatimid philosophers disagreed with each other, that they used to debate with each other, and there was a certain scholar -- I guess that's a term that's used lightly sometimes -- [who] literally shouted at me from the audience saying that Ismaili scholars do not disagree with each other, which, of course, is ridiculous. We are human beings and have different perspectives, different understandings and it's very important to discuss and debate issues....

This is a very important question.... [Y]ou've seen it in the past, Muslims, Ismailis, various other people engage in debate and discussion and that's how human knowledge moves forward. It is through debate that we strive to learn about the truth.

[Y]ou've seen it in the past, Muslims, Ismailis, various other people engage in debate and discussion and that's how human knowledge moves forward. It is through debate that we strive to learn about the truth.

In fact, one of the chapters in a book that recently I co-edited (Engaging the Other), written by a scholar who's a nun based in California, compares St. Aquinas and Al-Ghazali in how they developed ideas about debate, the rules for debate, and the importance of listening to the other. This is something that is very, very important for us within the Ismaili community, not only intellectuals but others as well, as long it is done out of the genuine desire to learn and to move knowledge forward.

We can't just dig in our heels and basically say it's my way or the highway, that only my position is true. You have to be able to listen to each other. I'm very willing to have my ideas critiqued. I discuss them with people and I engage in debate. In fact, that's what I tell my students - if they disagree with me, they can challenge me and some of them do.

[Debate and discussion are] very, very important for us within the Ismaili community, not only intellectuals but others as well, as long it is done out of the genuine desire to learn and to move knowledge forward. We can't just dig in our heels and basically say it's my way or the highway, that only my position is true. You have to be able to listen to each other.

It's very important that we learn the proper ways of debate, respectfully, for the purpose of moving forward. So, I certainly hope through my work that I'm encouraging other scholars to move towards that position of discussion and debate. I know some people have been put on the spot saying, "Oh that this person said this and now you're saying this. You have to be right or that person has to be right and one of you is wrong." Well, things are not as simple as that. Ideas are complex, the truth is complex, but we have to show integrity in the way we debate each other and discuss with each other....

[W]e're all, perhaps, brought up in an environment where we are taught to believe, or taught to think that there is only one truth and it is pure, and it is unsullied, and when someone authoritative speaks, whether it is an al-waez, or a knowledgeable person, or a professor, or whoever, that he or she is speaking the absolute truth. I might be exaggerating here but that's the kind of position that some people seem to think exists.

I think this is the kind of knowledge bubble in which we have wrapped ourselves -- into the idea that there's only one unsullied, monolithic truth. Whereas ideas develop, and change, and evolve, and it is through debate and discussion that we do this. So unfortunately, over the last few decades, and perhaps over the last few centuries, there has been this lack of confidence that if we challenge and open up certain areas for discussion everything will breakdown. That we'll be opening ourselves to attack from outside when people publish critiques and ideas that are available to the public.

So unfortunately [within the community] there has been this lack of confidence that if we challenge and open up certain areas for discussion everything will breakdown ... Well this can be very dangerous because it allows a few people who are seen as authoritative to control the debate and the discourses in the community, and basically to have complete control.

Well this can be very dangerous because it allows a few people who are seen as authoritative to control the debate and the discourses in the community, and basically to have complete control. And this can be dangerous. Of course, as long as people are ethical and have integrity, they can show their authority in a proper way. But if they try to control debate and they try to control discussion and understanding of certain issues, this can be very damaging to any community.

In a similar vein, in a 1999 interview, Hazar Imam said:

... I think human society changes all the time. And the moment you get frozen into a mental prison, then, you know, things actually start becoming very damaging.

And in 1997, in Kampala, Hazar Imam said:

the notion of frozen institutions is one of the most dangerous things in society.

Ignition Question(s)

1. What does it say about our faith if the most learned Ismaili Da'is not only each had their own opinions about our faith, but could not agree which opinion represented our faith correctly?

   If they, as the most learned in our faith, were unable agree on definitive, or "final" answers about faith issues, does that suggest that perhaps the very idea of trying attain "definitive" or "final" answers -- as the standard by which faith questions are resolved -- is itself misplaced?

   This is not to say there are no "definitive" or "final" answers, but does their inability to agree suggest a different standard for resolving faith questions is needed? That is, a standard that, simultaneously, accepts the Absolute, accepts the limits of human intellects, and also accepts differences between each of us -- perhaps a standard such as "intellectual satisfaction," explained in Ignition Question 3, here -- that allows each of us (whether we are a Da'i or just a simple person) discuss, debate and resolve faith questions to satisfy ourselves.

2. How important and relevant do you feel such public discussions and debates would be today to help us, in our age and our modern intellectual context, better understand the faith, especially given the faith questions we raise due to our secular education, as Hazar Imam said, in 1957, is inevitable:

   You cannot give a child secular education and then expect him not to ask questions about his religion.

3. Given, as in the past, such public discussions and debates (held for the Jamat) would, in all likelihood, help each of us in our personal searches, why do you feel they are so rare -- not just amongst the scholars, but also in the Jamat generally, if they happen at all?
4. Should an "intellectual faith" provide intellectual spaces which allows for debate and discussion, the freedom to publicly explore, debate, and express opinions, or should it limit debate and opinion?

5. As an intellectual faith, what can be done to offer more regular and sanctioned institutional opportunities for the Jamat to express and discuss various, even critical, opinions -- beyond sporadic small focus groups, book clubs, classroom discussions, "town-halls" etc. -- about our faith or community issues and challenges?

   For example, venues like:

   • oral debates (even formal, Oxford style debates) where topics can be discussed and debated, with civility, person-to-person, in real life and in front of live audiences.
   • written personal, and even critical, opinions via articles published by institutional websites and magazines.
   • written student opinions, perhaps via competitions with the top entries published by institutional websites and magazines.

   Again, not just among scholars but also between scholars and the Jamat, and also the Jamat among themselves. In other words, how can the Jamat and the institutions better create what we might call -- borrowing Hazar Imam's notion -- an "Intellectual Enabling Environment" so we can live up to our ideal of an intellectual faith in its fullest and widest sense?

Interview Guests Asked this Ignition Question

• Dr. Karim H. Karim on IIS, Opinion and Debates, and Echo Chambers | Ignition Interview (link)

Suggested readings

• Prince Karim (Hazar Imam) & Prince Amyn Draw over 2,000 Ismailis to a Community Student Debate on Societal Pressures in 1955 (link)