Continuation of my Contentions Series.

Link to Shaykh Abd al Hakim Murad’s Contentions part 1.

41. The liberal theory of religion is homeopathic. (The more you water it down, the stronger it will become.)

Interpretation:

I first viewed this contention differently than I do now. First it made me think that the Shaykh was saying something to the extent of “reacting to liberalism is making Islam stronger”, but I have since changed my mind and below is my reasoning why.

First we must understand what is meant by “the liberal theory of religion”.

In terms of religion liberalism is defined as: the movement away from traditional orthodoxy often in an attempt to harmonize biblical teachings with science, humanism, or other secular fields. Liberal forms of religion are often viewed as “watered down”, similar to what the Shaykh is saying up above.

Next, I somewhat understood homeopathy as a “natural” healing form of medicine, but to my surprise I found that is not the case:

“Contemporary Western homeopathic medicine, based on the work of the German physician and chemist Samuel Hahnemann some 200 years ago, aims to stimulate the individual’s innate healing processes through the administration of minute “homeopathic” dilutions of specific remedies. Derived from the Greek homeo, meaning same, and pathos, meaning suffering, homeopathy essentially treats “like with like”. The patient describes his or her symptoms in detail, with equal emphasis placed on both physical and psychological symptoms. The practitioner then prescribes very small, nontoxic doses of a selected substance that, at higher doses, would produce the same symptoms in a healthy person. - www.camreports.hs.columbia.edu/diseases.html“

So here we find that homeopathic medicine is based off the idea of using small amounts of a substance to make it a strong cure for the illness (second part of contention).

The next thing to establish is how homeopathy is generally viewed. Well, most people I know would not consider the above to be true medicine at all.

We can now put together the pieces of this contention. With the “watered down” aspect of the contention, the Shaykh is asserting that liberalism is a watered down version of Islam.

In summary, the Shaykh is indicating that the liberals in religion are following the homeopathic principle which is to believe that the more you water it down, the stronger it is as a cure.

As a final conclusion, one could consider that homeopathy, although it may have had a fevered adherence for some time, was not a very successful form of medicine in the long run. So the relationship may be drawn here to the failure of homeopathy and eventual failure of liberalism in religion.