The Formidable Barrier of Dogmatic Religion On Critical Thinking

 The Formidable Barrier Of Dogmatic Religion On Critical Thinking 

M. Bakri Musa 

Excerpt #22:  from my Qur’an, Hadith, And Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking

 

September 14, 2025 

Islam as it is being currently taught, practiced, and propagated in many Muslims countries, Malaysia included, is the greatest barrier to critical thinking. That statement is not meant to shock but merely to state the reality. 

 

            Islam today is less a guide on how to lead a life that would please Allah, more rigid dogmas and mindless rituals. Muslims look longingly to our past glorious Golden Age but fail to learn what made it great, or even more important, why it was eclipsed by Western Europe. 

 

            Luminaries during the Golden Age of Islam were noted for their heightened level of critical thinking. They also willingly learned from those who were far more advanced even if they were to be atheists, as those ancient Greeks were. 

 

            Living in the West I am spared the suffocating version of my faith. I am also the beneficiary of the thoughts of modern Muslim scholars who thrive in the freedom they enjoy here. The leading centers for Islamic Studies today are in the West. Then consider Muhammad Asad’s epigraph to his monumental The Message Of The Qur’an, “For People Who Think.” 

 

            The Qur’an is replete with such words as “ponder,” “reflect,” “think,” and “observe.” It is a sad commentary that today our Qur’an has been reduced to an amulet or magic text. Reciting it is akin to uttering “abracadabra.” All your ills would magically be cured, your experiments successful, and you would pass your examinations. 

 

            Our faith has been corrupted and used to coerce and bludgeon its followers. Disrespect your ulama, teachers, and leaders, and Hell awaits you, even if those leaders are corrupt and tyrants, or the ulama in cahoots with them. To use contemporary terminology, Islam has been weaponized to control the ummah.  

 

            People everywhere and throughout history have been swayed more by emotions than reason. In the East there was the mass madness of Mao’s Cultural Revolution; the West, Europe’s fascism in the early 20th Century. That may yet reappear. 

 

            When Islam entered the Malay world centuries ago, it was a transformative event. Our ancestors grasped the evident superiority of this new belief and embraced it with unrestrained enthusiasm. At the practical level Islam brought with it the written word to our hitherto oral-only culture. Anytime that happens, there would be a quantum leap in advancement and an almost limitless expansion of that culture’s intellectual horizon. 

 

            It was with Malays. Our ancestors translated and rendered our own tafsirs (commentaries) on the Holy Book and other ancient texts. As impressive and praiseworthy as their efforts were, nonetheless our forefathers missed something major. They did not translate nor absorb the rich, varied, and voluminous non-theological treatises of early Muslims, as with their scientific and mathematical texts or exotic travelogues and philosophical discourses. Nor did our forefathers emulate earlier Muslims’ trading prowess. Nonetheless once the Malay intellectual gate was opened with the introduction of the written word, there was no turning back. Islam emancipated both Malay civilization and the individual Malay mind. 

 

            That trajectory was rudely interrupted by Western colonialism that humiliated the Malay world as colonialism did everywhere. While the colonials also brought in their trading practices (capitalism) and scientific worldview, neither resonated with Malays. 

 

            That is a general statement. Though our ancestors still viewed colonialism as reprehensible and a frontal assault on our Islamic values, nonetheless there were a few like Munshi Abdullah who saw some good amidst the general evil. There was a thing or two that we could learn from a culture that could make steel float, Abdullah enthused after visiting the British warship SS Sertoris anchored off Singapore.  

 

            With the rise of nationalism and the concomitant decline of colonialism, it was those few well-trained savvy Malays like the country’s first Prime Minister Tengku Abdul Rahman, men who understood the ways of the British, who persuaded them to grant Malaysia her independence. They convinced the British that such an act was in consonance with British ideals and values. 

 

            There are contrarian and less charitable views on those natives who had absorbed the ways of the West, dismissing them as “captive minds” incapable of overcoming Western influence and thus could not think of solutions unique to the East. The irony is that many of those critics themselves had been nurtured in leading Western academic institutions. 

 

            Like others, Malays had little desire to be colonized. The seeds of Malay nationalism were triggered with the arrival of Western colonialism. With the Malay mind opened through Islam, in particular its esteemed egalitarian principles, Malays did not take kindly to being oppressed by others. It was not a surprise nor an accident that those early Malay nationalists came from the ulama class. They, through their sermons, were the first to dream of an independent Malaysia and to ignite the fire of freedom among the masses. 

 

Next:  Excerpt #23:  Current Islamists’ Perversion Of Our Great Faith