Monday, August 10, 2020

Blind-following Scholars...

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Blindly following Scholars is prohibited, and it is not allowed for anyone to accept the speech of anyone else without proof. Allah says:
"Follow what has been sent down to you from your Lord and do not follow any other awliya besides Him. Little do you remember of admonition." [al-A’raf:3]
"And when they are asked to follow what Allah has revealed they say: but we follow the ways of our fathers, even though their fathers were void of wisdom and guidance." [al-Baqarah:170]

Allah praised people who did not follow blindly by saying:
"So announce the good news to My servants – those who listen to the Word and follow the best of it; those are the ones whom Allah has guided and those are the ones endued with understanding." [az-Zumar:17-18]

Let not any person take for granted the blessing of Allah in that He may have guided him, and that as a given he is endued with understanding. Allah also says:
"And if you disagree about anything, refer it back to Allah and the Messenger, if you do believe in Allah and the Last Day." [an-Nisaa:59]
So Allah did not allow disagreement to be returned to anything other than the Qur’aan and the Sunnah of His Prophet (saws). It is also agreed upon by consensus of all of the Companions, from the first to the last, and consensus of all the second generation of Muslimeen from the first to the last, that it is not allowed to accept every single thing a person from them or after them says.

Know, then, that whoever accepts every single statement of Abu Hanifah, or Malik, or ash-Shafi’i or Ahmad Ibn Hanbal even if they are capable of inspecting and delving into matters, without leaving any of it off, has went against the consensus of the entire Muslim world, and followed other than the path of Allah. We seek refuge with Him from this station. Additionally, these great men prohibited people from blindly following them and other than them, so whoever blindly follows them has went against them. Also, what exactly is it which has made them better than the Ameer al-Mu’mineen ‘Umar Ibnul-Khattab, or ‘Ali Ibn Abi Talib, or Ibn ‘Abbas, or ‘Aishah, the mother of the believers? Were blindly following Scholars allowed, the latter group would take precedence over Abu Hanifah, Malik, ash-Shafi’i or Ahmad. Whoever attributes himself to these men yet claims that he is not blindly following them is the first person to know his own lie, followed by everyone who hears him. This is because we see him support every statement which he knows from the chosen Scholars, even if he never heard the statement before that moment. This is the textbook definition of blindly following the Scholar.

Each individual must exercise his own independent reasoning to the best of his ability. The proof of that is what we mentioned earlier from the Texts regarding that, and Allah did not differentiate between the Scholar and the layman in that:
"And your Lord is not forgetful." [Maryam:64]
If they quote the Words of Allah:
"Ask the people of knowledge." [al-Anbiya:7]
Then we say to them: The people of knowledge is not a single person. Lying upon Allah is not permissible, and we only ask the people of knowledge to inform us based on what they know of the commandments of Allah which have come upon the tongue of His Messenger (saws), not upon something those people laid down for us. Additionally, we say to the one who allows blind following for the layman: Inform us, who do you blindly follow? If he says a Scholar from Egypt, we say: If there were two Scholars in Egypt, then what happens? Does the layman accept the opinion of whichever one he wishes? This is a new religion, and that there be two different rulings in one issue – say, permitted and prohibited at the same time – is not something ordained by Allah.

What is even more astonishing is that the layman of Andalusia is obligated to blindly follow the views of Malik, and in Yemen those of ash-Shafi’i, and in Khorosan those of Abu Hanifah yet all of their opinions are conflicting. Is this the Deen of Allah? He never commanded this; rather, the Deen is one and the Judgment of Allah has been clarified to us;
"Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found therein many contradictions." [an-Nisaa:82]

But the layman or the faraway man from Ghana and those like them who have reverted to Islam know exactly what the Islam to which they reverted is, and that it is to choose Allah as the only object of worship, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah (saws), and that he has reverted to the Deen with which Muhammad the Messenger of Allah (saws) came and this is not hidden from any person who has entered Islam even just now. How, then, can it be lost upon someone who has a measure of knowledge? There is no doubt in this, so the questioner asks about what Allah has ordered in the Deen which the questioner entered, and so Allah has obligated the Scholar to say when asked: Is this what Allah and His Messenger (saws) have ordained? If the Scholar said yes then the answer must be accepted, and if the scholar said no, or stayed silent, or hesitates, or quotes the speech of a human being other than the Prophet (saws), then the asker’s knowledge has increased as has his ability to independently reason. The layman must then ask: Is this authentically reported from the Prophet (saws) or not? If his knowledge has increased then he should ask if the chain of narration is sound or broken, whether it contains trustworthy reporters or not. And if his knowledge has increased beyond that, then he should ask about the statements and proofs associated with them, and this leads to a gradual increase in knowledge. We ask that Allah makes us from those people.

All that Allah has prescribed for us is to follow His Messenger Muhammad (saws), so whoever follows him faithfully with his heart and his speech has been guided, and he is a true believer whether this faith is from reason and introspection or not. Allah did not burden mankind with such an obligation, and did not order us to pray for more than that nor did the Khulafa and the righteous pray for that. Whoever narrates a false statement attributed to the Prophet (saws) and he does not know that the statement is false then he is rewarded one time due to his statement: “When the ruler passes a judgment and errs, he is rewarded one time. If he passes a judgment and is correct, he is rewarded twice.” This is as he (saws) said, and every person who  enters into an issue has essentially made a ruling on it by accepting it, and exercised independent judgment; this is the person who exercises independent judgment and not other than this. This is because such judgment is the exercise of effort in requesting the ruling on some matter within the Deen through the Qur’aan, the Prophetic Sunnah and Ijma’; Allah ordered the rulings of His Deen to be taken from these sources and nowhere else. Whoever arrives to the correct ruling in that is rewarded twice, and whoever arrives to an incorrect ruling through that process is still rewarded once and has not earned a bad deed.

As for someone who blindly follows any person other than the Prophet (saws) and that person’s ruling just so happens to concur with the Prophet’s (saws) ruling, then the follower would still be a sinner in front of Allah due to his blind following and would not be rewarded for his action just so happening to concur with the truth. How can this be, one might ask? This is because the follower did not intend to follow the truth, and if he also follows an erroneous judgment then he earns two bad deeds – for his blind following and for his opposition to the truth, and he will not ever be rewarded in the matter. We seek refuge with Allah from such a lowly station.

[An-Nubadh - By al-Imaam Abu Muhammad ‘Ali Ibn Hazm al-Andulusi (rahimahUllah)]

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