But he said it is something many Muslims are not prepared to embrace.
“To them, if the chain is authentic then the hadith should not be refuted even if it’s illogical,” Farouk told a forum titled “What is wrong with Islam now?” organised by his outfit Islamic Renaissance Front today.
He said the majority of Muslims do not think rationally when it comes to religious matters.
Part of this attitude is due to the fear of going against the hadith (sayings and teachings of Prophet Muhammad), one of the major sources of Islamic knowledge besides the Quran.
Farouk gave an example of a hadith in which Prophet Muhammad was quoted as saying that if there is a fly in a drink, one should dip the fly as one of its wings contained the poison while the other contained the cure.
“Even in the remote possibility that this is true, then what about the legs of the fly?
“Typhoid is transmitted though the fly’s legs,” said Farouk, who is a medical lecturer.
Farouk said the Mu’tazila, a group in the early period of Islam which promoted rationalism, was soon replaced by those who rejected reason, also called the Ash’arites.
He said the Asharites, whose scholars include 12-century jurist Imam al-Ghazali, believed in “occasionalism”, which believes that everything happens through the direct influence of God.
“Al-Ghazali said that if you put cotton next to fire, then it burns not because of the fire but because Allah wanted it to burn,” Farouk said.
Farouk’s view was challenged by another speaker at today’s forum, Islamic and Strategic Studies Institute (ISSI) chief executive Amran Muhammad, who said it was unfair to label Ash’arites as irrational.
He said Muslim scientists who emerged in the years after Al-Ghazali, such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), were also very analytical people.
Meanwhile, sociologist Syed Farid Alatas said the core concepts regarding “occasionalism” was similar to some of the concepts in quantum physics and therefore was not irrational or going against science.
But he welcomed such a discourse, saying it was something lacking in the country.
“These are discussions that are happening all around the world and the type of discussions that we need to have more of in Malaysia.”