Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 36
ISLAMIC SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT of discussion had changed. Yet they remained engrossed in the same questions which for centuries had agitated them. . Instead of the serious issues of fundamental practices, their jurisprudence remained occupied by trivialities such as the eating of the flesh of crows. Riots are reported to have erupted on this issue between the supporters of the two opposing views. The polemics which resulted grew progressively more complicated and involved. It is a tribute to their intellect that they could really build mountains out of molehills a tribute which at the same time was reflective of an utter lack of common sense. Senseless intellectualism is the name for what they did!. Some of the other so-called "highly important" questions which kept agitating their minds also stirred their blood to a pitch of high frenzy. Among them was a question as banal as that the case of a dog which may have fallen into a well. How many bucketfuls would have to be drained out before the remaining water became clean for the purpose of ablution, was the all-important question which engaged the attention of great scholars of that time. Let alone a dog, if a Mullah accused of heresy, by the clerics of another school, fell into a well of theirs, the question would acquire far more serious implications. How many buckets would have to be hauled would become a complex mathematical exercise. Many may have preferred that well to be filled with earth, having turned into the burial pit of the same Mullah. Such was the time and such were the tales built on the realities of their mad intolerance. . Bizarre as they may appear, seldom were they altogether false. The jurisprudence of that period must have gone beserk! They were involved in such meaningless debates as made as mockery of the holiest of the Muslim religious practices such as “Salāt” — the formal prayer. 36