A very good article, well worth a read. Scholars and the Muslim Community: What’s going wrong? We are caught in a warped paradigm, where on one hand we continue as if there aren’t any seriously qualified personnel but then on the other accede to the reality where YouTube validates everyone’s scholarship; a Qur’an reciter with a nice voice is somehow a theologian, an impassioned evangelist suddenly becomes a legal specialist. It is this superficial approach to determining our authorities that brings about the demise of proper expertise where glorified laymen, Google, and random web articles substitute insightful teachers and scholars of the faith.........The inferiority complex is astounding; we happily ascribe ‘shaikhdom’ to someone with a foreign accent who does little more than rant and offer nothing constructive by way of revelation, law and faith, yet demote those who display a substantial level of sagacity and religious insight.Nevertheless, the problem doesn’t only lie with laymen; we find that most sloganeers have abandoned all moral and intellectual integrity. They abuse the scholastic method almost as a matter of routine and where they cannot overcome a well-structured idea with equal sagacity they smear or exaggerate. Scholars do not debate sloganeers who substitute a simple cherry-picked verse or hadith framed as a some profound scholastic reference for ‘the haq’ (truth). It should be worrying that one case be rooted in practicality, wide reading, observed phenomenon, and reasoned scriptural evidence – and the other a complete reversal of the truth. Often speakers attempt to make engagements personal, offering examples from a bunch of moral stories in a bid to make their narrative likeable and seem reasonable. With the audience enamoured they invoke “the dalil”. The reason this works is because such people are either YouTube personalities or ‘speakers’ at events organised by vaguely well-known organisations who use this prestige to give the impression of authority. Even when their illiteracy is exposed they still emerge with their reputations intact because most people would rather trust arbitrary credentials than go to the trouble of investigating the veracity of religious statements. islamicate.co.uk/scholars-and-the-muslim-community-whats-going-wrong/
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 11:43:57 +0000
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