A cliche and tired argument about the usage of our own individual reasoning and rationality as well as the so-called incapacity of non-experts to interpret the Quran and Sunnah goes like this: Who are we to go against those who have dedicated their whole life towards learning the Quran and Sunnah? If we want to know about medicine or the laws, we would go to the doctors and lawyers respectively, not to any Tom Dick and Harry. So, in relation to religion, we should only go to those who are in-the-know. First of all, doctors and lawyers are not idolised by their followers as somebodys whose opinions are to be regarded as Gods words. In fact, doctors and lawyers do not have followers. Opinions of doctors and lawyers are openly questioned, dissected, opposed and trashed about without their dissenters being ridiculed, dragged to the town square and accused of blasphemy and sometime even killed. Those who question doctors and lawyers are not called kafir, murtad, liberal or moderate and subjected to abuse. Secondly, and more importantly is this. Opinions on medicine or laws do not concern faith or what we choose to BELIEVE in. They are questions of facts. If someone murders someone else, what is the punishment under the law of the state? If your left ball shrinks and your right one keeps growing, what disease do you have? The lawyers and doctors respectively would be rendering you an opinion or advice based on facts or their knowledge of that fact. It is not a matter of your faith or belief at all. If you need experts to tell you what to believe, then what does that speak of your belief? As Abu Muhammad Ali ibn Hazm, in his seminal Al-Muhalla (as quoted by Muhammad Asad in This Law of Ours said: In Shariah matters, it is not lawful (la yuhillu) for anyone to follow blindly the opinions of anybody else, living or dead, seeing that everyone is obliged to resort to independent reasoning in accordance with his ability to do so; for he who inquires about problems pertaining to his problems wants but to obtain an insight into what God Almighty enjoins upon him in the context of his religion. Abu Muhammad Ali then postulates that only if a person is the most ignorant of creatures, then that person should ask an opinion from a learned person and when an opinion is given to him, he should ask whether that opinion is what the Quran or Sunnah says. If the answer is an unequivocal yes, then he should follow such opinion. If however, the answer is no or that it is my personal opinion (ray-i), or this is by analogy (qiyas) or this is the verdict of so and so or if the person giving the opinion kept quiet or rebuked the questioner, then it would be unlawful for that person to accept that opinion. He should then seek another opinion. Islam means submission. The question is, do we submit to God or to fellow human beings?
Posted on: Fri, 02 May 2014 03:20:21 +0000
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