The Free Muslim - Still On The Wishlist

Salaam

I had been working to finish part two of the "To Question Or Not To Question" topic, however a recent experience has hit me hard and I feel I need to write about it while the emotion is still raw.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to experience a most interesting Khutbah (sermon) at Juma (Friday's congregational prayer). The Imaam is someone I have a lot of respect for, even though I have never personally met him. He always dedicates time to translate his Khutbah to English for the benefit of the vast majority of non-arabs who frequent this mosque, and he was visibly empassioned about this recent topic for his Khutbah. The topic was 'the influence of the Internet on muslims' faith and understanding of Islam'.

His manner suggested he may have recently had to respond to someone's questioning on some topic, with the questioner having resorted to the Internet for all or part of his argument. The Imaam began by acknowledging that the Internet does now provide muslims a medium to read the Quran and Hadith. But he goes on to express his serious concerns with anyone attempting to gain any actual knowledge or understanding through this medium, and does so with more than a bit of contempt. So disgusted was he by this that he openly declared in his Khutbah that such attempts to gain Islamic knowledge over the Internet will most likely "guide you to hell".

As I've said already, I hold this Imaam in high regard due to his principled and unwaivering spirit which are expressed in his Khutbahs, however I was deeply disappointed and very disheartened to meet the reality that scares me the most about our "ummah" and that is the lack of "freedom" for the muslim. Freedom, in it's most essential form, is the freedom of thought or opinion. And this, unfortunately, is sorely lacking in our ummah. The Ulemah's (the Order of islamic scholars) aims to suppress this freedom suppresses the very core of our Islamic concepts of freedom, justice and the universality of Islam.

The Imaam in his explanation offers the figurative which simply goes as "From the bosom of the Alim (scholarly teacher) to the bosom of the student". And goes on to explain that Islamic knowledge and understanding is too complex for lay investigations to be able to yield the wisdom which the famous Islamic Universities and Alims of the world have dedicated centuries to achieve. And then recommends that people seek out distinguished Alims, while using an anecdote of the respected Imaam Malik, to quench their need for knowledge.

One thing which the Imaam did not and could never provide, is Quranic guidance to support his view. Because they all forget that when the Quran was being revealed, there was only the Prophet (peace be upon him), and the muslims, there were no Alims. Here they will say that this was because the Prophet was the greatest Alim, so there was no need for any other Alims at the time. But they forget that with all his knowledge and inspiration, the Prophet never established any order of Alims. In fact, what he did do was insist that the people hold the Quran to their hearts and seek guidance through it themselves, and his most famous "farewell sermon" will attest to this where he asks the people to "hold fast to the Quran and Sunnah (the Prophet's practices) and judge wisely".

This established two very important points that go directly against all of our Ulemah's attempts to monopolize the understanding of the Quran, and these are; firstly this points out that judgement, or the use of intellect and reason, is indispensible in the matters of the Quran and Sunnah, and secondly, that the Prophet expected the people to make their own calls when he addresses his entire ummah and asks them all to "judge wisely". If he did not want people to use their own minds regarding the Quran and Sunnah, he would have rather warned the people to adhere to the Ulemah when he had the opportunity for it.

My Imaam, in his empassioned contempt for individual judgement on Quranic matters, insisted that muslims rely only on Alims for their Islamic knowledge, understanding or judgement. He forgot that by doing this, he put himself on the wrong end of the following Quranic ayat in Surah Yunus (Jonah) 10:99-100:

"And [thus it is] had thy Sustainer so willed, all those who live on earth would surely have attained to faith, all of them: dost thou, then, think that thou couldst compel people to believe, notwithstanding that no human being can ever attain to faith otherwise than by God's leave, and [that] it is He who lays the loathsome evil [of disbelief] upon those who will not use -their reason?"

I understand, and the ummah generally does understand, why the Ulemah have always maintained this stance of authority over religous knowledge. Of course no one really believes that they are after political power over the believers through this authority (even though some may have tried it). I do understand and sympathize with their concern that the Quran is too dynamic to rein the minds of all muslims, and others who have access to Islamic scripture, to prevent conflicting judgements, understanding, and translations about the source of our concept, the Quran. They want to ensure their authority maintains unity regarding knowledge gained from the Quran. Well, I've got news for them, look around and tell me if the past millenium of Ulemah control has been able to provide this unity? We are more divided now then ever, and the trend is growing!

While the Ulemah know very well that they cannot defend their positions as divinely sanctioned, the muslims need to understand that their monopoly over religious knowledge achieves this status anyway and that is why they rely on zeal and not reason to defend their monopoly. And we all know that divine sanction was not even afforded to the Prophets, they all were only allowed what was expressly instructed, and there are numerous examples of these for all the Prophets we know of.

So while I do understand their concerns for the ummah's unity, I will not, and the ummah should not, afford them any excuse for abusing what they now enjoy as "revered authority". Any attempts to tell us that we cannot rely on our intellect to understand the Quran is a lie against the Quran itself where Allah repeatedly exhorts the reader to use his "reason", his intellect. For no alim, no secret, no system can provide a muslim with understanding like the "reason" and clearly understandable "truths" provided by the Quran which appeals to a muslim's own logic and his own understanding.

I hope that one day we rise up from our laziness and take responsibility for our beliefs, or we will all be very good "followers", who do not "believe" anything ourselves. Any calls to blindly follow Islam are full of illogical nonsense, because you then have to ask whose Islam do we follow? The Sunni way, or the Salafi way, the Shia way, the Maliki way or the Hanifi way? Don't they all have their own established Ulemah? I hope you see the problem this system of reliance on the Ulemah will cause and the division that it has already created. For reliance on anything but the Divine exposes us to not only the good that this authority can achieve, but also the bad, which is corruption. And we can never become ignorant of the corruption that has, at certain times in our history, creeped into our political and dawah (ideological) systems. Examples of such corruption calls for its own article, however I will highlight just one, the Yazid/Muawiyah saga. This period led to congregational cursing of Hazrat Ali (may Allah forgive us), as a fixed part of the Khutbah at Juma prayers throughout the Muslim Caliphate (which was a huge part of the civilized world at that time) for 60 years before this caliph sanctioned practice was repealed and Hazrat Ali's honour restored! This is the history of our reliance on men for religious authority, and one of the very first and worst examples of corruption that we suffered.

No doubt we need to maintain our knowledge systems and the infrastructure the Ulemah system has developed over the years, but this should never be confused with any sort of religious authority, for only the Divine can command this level of authority, and the only thing Divine in our possession is our Holy Quran. And I will not relinquish this gift from Allah by passing it on to someone else to read it for me. Imagine the insult for a gift to man from his creator. For they have nothing more than what we all have that is important, which is the Quran and Sunnah, and everything else is mere opinion of "men". However pious and wise these "men" are/were, they are still men. And I hope that we as muslims all still believe that all men are equal.

I would finally like to bring your attention back to my Imaam, and others like him, who are afraid of change and progress. The Internet is just another medium of information, just like Print, so if Print was good enough for the distribution of the Quran, then why the fuss over the Internet? Just because it opens the way for interactive research (as opposed to the uni-directional flow of traditional media), where the audience can dictate this flow of information, does not mean they can change the Quran. We need to have faith in Allah that he did not create a Quran to be defeated by mere men.

However, my friends, we live in an Islam not guided directly by the Quran and Sunnah, but under the authority of our Ulemah, who time and time again have vigorously insisted that under no circumstances are we to rely on our own research, our own understanding, our own intellect... we are not free to do so yet! Not while we still have our Ulemah to dispense intellect for us.