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Forums Forums Sources of Islam What Exactly Is A Superstition?

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  • What Exactly Is A Superstition?

    Posted by Mohammad Ali Soomro on March 25, 2023 at 8:58 pm

    hello there!

    my question is that what exactly is a superstition in Islam? is it when someone stays or believes in a wrong concept about what causes a specific thing, whether this result is induced by an observation/experiment or not?

    OR is it when someone believes in a concept of cause of something without any basis on experiment/observation?

    example of first case would be for example a doctor who acquires the knowledge of what causes cell division from a medical book, that book was written by someone else, who heard it from someone else… continuing and this chain ends onto a scientist which observed closely through microscopes and perform experiment to deduce this concept. now the doctor studying this concept through the book, knows very well that since this concept of cell division cause, was observed and transmitted by humans so there’s still a great probability that either the observation might be wrong due to mistake of observing scientist or it got a little changed by transmission error of people in the middle of chain. while knowing this fully and also that there’s great chance that the knowledge which the doctor is receiving from that book may be wrong, but still he doesn’t go into more details and doesn’t go into more experiments and observation himself to confirm it but rather accepts what he sees in the medical book and believes it to be probably true and apply that knowledge further. so if suppose in reality that knowledge turns out to be actually wrong, will the doctor be considered to be believing in superstitions? (as he knew that he might be believing in some wrong concept but still went on believing in that what was written in book)? will this be superstition? or it would merely just be a little laziness if doctor to not verify it further and ending up thinking and believing a wrong concept, and nothing else

    Dr. Irfan Shahzad replied 1 year, 8 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply
  • What Exactly Is A Superstition?

  • Dr. Irfan Shahzad

    Scholar March 26, 2023 at 4:09 am

    Shirk does not occur in such physical matters. Here the mistake or lie is not to make something rival to God, but one physical explanation to another.

    Shirk occurs when a metaphysical cause is invented in relation to God, making it a rival to God.

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