Recordings › The Role Of Reason In Religion - Mufti Abu Layth · 9 Apr 2018 › Segment 10 of 19
Why did Muslims become hostile to reason?
aqidah aqeedah aqida creed aqeeda aqaid hadeeth ahadith ahaadeeth hadis hadees ahaadith muftis kufr kuffar kaafir kufar kaafirun disbelief kalam ilm al-kalam kalaam mutazilite mu'tazilah jahannam jahanam jahannum koran quraan al-quran ulama ulema ulamaaWhere the aversion to reason began: the sectarian cold war with the Mu'tazila
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This segment49:33 to 56:08 · 6 min 35 sGeneral teaching
What this part covers
machinesummary, machine-writtenMufti Abu Layth traces Muslim hostility to reason to the centuries-long sectarian conflict with the Mu'tazila, in which the mainstream answered the Mu'tazila's use of reason by disparaging reason itself and defending absurd narrations.
In more detail
Mufti Abu Layth asks why Muslims are averse to reason when the Quran constantly says to use the intellect and the Prophet encouraged it, yet in Muslim culture and scholarship calling someone rational is a slur. From his reading of Islamic history he traces the culture to several causes, the first being sectarianism, a cold war like that between the USA and USSR, above all between the Mu'tazila and the main body of Muslims. He objects to translating Mu'tazila as rationalists: they were an extremist sect, influenced by the earlier Khawarij, whom he likens to ISIS, and they split from the Muslims by holding that a person who commits a major sin is neither Muslim nor kafir but in a limbo state, al-manzila bayn al-manzilatayn, from which their name, those who went off in isolation, derives. Because they were not hadith scholars like the mainstream, they argued through reason, which all Muslims were doing, but the mainstream reaction was to mock them for resorting to reason rather than to out-reason them, and this became the normal Muslim reaction. He believes this reinforced a narrative that there are things in Islam unsupported by reason and, as a method of control, re-engineered a whole genre of irrationality: when the Mu'tazila pointed to absurd narrations, the mainstream scholars, instead of conceding the problem, accused them of trying to rationalise everything, and because the conflict lasted centuries all this was written into the books. He then introduces the second cause, the Golden Age of Islam under Harun al-Rashid and the house of wisdom.
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth holds that the Muslim aversion to reason grew out of the sectarian cold war with the Mu'tazila, when the mainstream reacted to the Mu'tazila's use of reason by disparaging reason itself and defending absurd narrations as a method of control.
“as a method of control for these people a whole genre of irrationality was recreated and re-engineered to kind of keep these people at bay”
Category: historical claim
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine49:33 to 56:08 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
trying to teach you an exhaustive scientific lesson he was giving you a general understanding of life that generally things come in pairs generally creatures come in pairs but love speaking generally to you he wasn't trying to say by the way take a pad and this is scientific lesson biology going down this is taxonomy and by the way you know you're never gonna find any species unless it fits under this binary you know gender that's not what Allah said so if you're gonna look at it like that you've got a problem so yes so this is the kind of this is the hue these are
the issues why are Muslims ourselves why are we averse to this why do we have a problem with reason where did this begin because if you look at the Quran the Quran is all about go out use your uncle use your uncle use your uncle the Prophet was never against these things using you actually encourage people reason how would you think how would you do these things so but this does exist in Muslim culture in Muslim books in scholarship that they discourage and it's almost like a stain to say oh this
person uses that's like it's a slur oh my god this guy tries to he tries to be rational huh like what do you mean that were my supposed to be irrational like that's how that's it's better with you that I'm irrational and dumb like as opposed to using my Allah so we did this culture begin the what the a theology the kind of birth of this problem I by looking into Islamic history Islamic law or Islamic stuff my understanding is that there's a few
things that led to this culture that we do have today one of them was sectarianism sectarian warfare massively damaged Islam in such a way that we today are still suffering there has been certain Cold War's that existed you know like the the u.s. USSR type of cold war so there was a massive cold war sectarian cold war in Islam especially between the Mozilla and the main body of
Muslims now first of all the martyrs Allah just those of you that don't know anybody not not heard of the martyrs Allah you heard of the matter anybody who's heard of the martyrs Allah oh just trying to spot if there's any martyrs it easier right the mortars Allah first of all I just want to say one of the worst diss services we've done oh my god this service upon this service we translate martyrs as rationalists why the hell are you translating matters less rationalists right okay people start translating put that aside
mutters Allah were an extremist sect that began in early Islam and the main reason they split from the body of Muslims is they believe that if you commit a major sin you no longer are a Muslim but there was a before them they kind of prototype in the huar age who are a bit like you could say that modern-day Isis kind of thing they were like total nutters and they were just like brutal and they believed if you commit us in your kaffir and if you're careful you deserve death and all this kind of stuff so they were just exactly like what you'd get modern-day
Isis the Mozilla were kind of they were and influenced by that but they didn't want nut cases in fact rather on the opposite so they say if you committed a sin you weren't Muslim but then they thought about it and said but you're not a kafir either so but you're not a Muslim so they created a limbo state which they called mandala banal manzil attained this state between the two states of Eman and Khufu and they said everybody who commits a sin is in that so they no longer Muslim
but we're not gonna call them care fate but they're not Muslim this extremist belief of them led them to become isolated and this that they kind of and this is what the word art is all martyrs Allah means to become isolated to go off so one of the things with the generations that developed off Martha Zeeland and then other debates came in as well and they became popular for other debates too now these people they didn't unlike the main body of Muslims who relied on generally like they were a lot of hadith scholars and stuff like this all of these people weren't necessarily a lot of hadith scholars so how did they argue
with the regular Muslim so they started to resort to reason which really all Muslims were doing but as a reaction to them instead of the other Muslims out reasoning them they started to say like hahaha you're resorting to reason and so this started to become the normal Muslim reaction to them that old don't resort to reason so what they started to do was to cuss them and to put them down they started to what I would believe reinforce a narrative that there are
things within Islam that are not supported by reason see him you guys are now going against Islam so as a method of control for these people a whole genre of irrationality was recreated and re-engineered to kind of keep these people at bay and these people would then mock even more like absurd narrations or also you guys wait a minute so you guys believe this there we found a hadith saying this do you believe this they did believe in hadith martyrs danai hadith but they would find an absurd one and instead of regular scholars kind of saying well that does
sound problematic they would then just diss them back for saying oh but you're trying to rationalize everything or reasoning this was a key thing that led to I think the this culture of hating reason because this mata Zilla walla lasted for a few centuries but all this stuff got put into books the other thing is you guys have probably all heard of the Golden Age of Islam with the whole philosophy and haroon rasheed and after him in baghdad the darl hikmah that gets set up you guys probably all have heard of heard of this kind of stuff muslims kind of got all of this you know there's
Paragraphs overlapping 49:33 to 56:08. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2018-04-09-S10, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/uuldzklvxvo/s/10/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2018, April 9). Why did Muslims become hostile to reason? [Video, segment 2018-04-09-S10, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/uuldzklvxvo/s/10/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2018. "Why did Muslims become hostile to reason?" Video, segment 2018-04-09-S10, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded April 9, 2018. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/uuldzklvxvo/s/10/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2018-04-09-S10, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Why did Muslims become hostile to reason?}}, year = {2018}, month = {4}, date = {2018-04-09}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/uuldzklvxvo/s/10/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/uuldzklvxvo/s/10/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2018-04-09-S10, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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