The Methodology of Muhammad Shahrur’s Theory of Rationality

Seeking the roots and reasons of undevelopment of Islamic world has created a kind of literature among the Arab thinkers and intellectuals known as “Rationality Theory”. Dr. Muhammad Shahrur ,a contemporary Syrian thinker,is out of these thinkers who has worked in this field. The present paper is to study the “ Rationality Theory” of Dr. Muhammad Shahrur through analyzing and evaluating his works with regard to the epistemical and non-epistemical factors. Although Shahrur has tried to introduce the “dictatorship” as a governing epistemical structure in whole Islamic world and to present a new explanation of the rationality crisis in Islamic world but the authors believe what he has done is no more than what Ahmad Al-Jaberi had done before , that is, Shahrur is suffering from a kind imitation and repetition .Moreover many claims of Shahrur in terms of prohibition of narrating and writing Hadith by the holy prophet (p.b.u.h) don’t have historical proofs and in terms of his refusal of ignoring the prophetic tradition on the one hand and his belief in practicing the tradition of Caliphs on the other hand a big conflict can be seen