Key To Successful Reform

I have something to say to those who see themselves as revivalists in Islam today, and others call them fundamentalists. The problem with fundamentalists is when they argue about a very literal, extreme fundamentalist type of Islam, it becomes a cult-like mindset.

And typically, when you look at these extreme groups, they have one leader that they look up to as the only person they are going to listen to. They put on blinkers and their narrative and truth will only come from this person. "Whatever he tells us to do, we will only listen to him. We will not listen to anyone else unless he tells us to listen to him."

And so when you take the idea of only one man as your group leader, whether you are Shi'a or Sunni, it becomes dangerous. I spoke last night of Sheikh Ahmad Ahsa'i. Sheikh Ahmad Ahsa'i was not just a Syed or a Shaikh, he was a Mujtahid, but he misled an entire group of people, thousands, right? So you look at the Wahhabi movement, it rests on Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab. If we are not careful, and if you as a Shi'a or a Sunni find yourself in this position where you follow a small group that insulates from society and follows and listens to just one individual, and he is your only source of truth, then you have taken an extreme view and become a fundamentalist even if it is not violent, and that will not lead to any good.

When you look at the history of such groups, what you will see is that one individual who is the charismatic leader will eventually either leave or die. When he dies, he will be succeeded by another leader who will not be as charismatic. He will be 50% to 60% as charismatic. And when he dies, then the following one will be even less. And eventually the group will be rift with scandals, with misappropriation of wealth, with all sorts of problems, and it will be a misguided group.

So these sort of things have not come from the Ahl ul-Bayt, 'alayhum as-salam. Particularly for Shi'as, there is absolutely no room for this sort of an extreme mindset. The Ahl ul-Bayt, 'alayhum as-salam, are the only ones that we would follow with that level of subservience, but not following an ordinary human being with that sort of an idea, that only his opinion and he is our leader.

Now, I want to say something to the modernists who see themselves as reformists. The Qur'an praises 'Aql and it says in the Qur'an in many places that we are relating these signs for uli 'l-albab, for those who have intellect, many, many, many verses. It invites people to reflect and ponder on its verses. But the problem with relying on your intellect alone is that the mind is prone to providing multiple perspectives and it can fall prey to analogies, even if it is reading and even when it reads and tries to understand divine scripture.

Now, to avoid man's intellect taking the wrong path, the Qur'an tries to explain the same concept multiple times in different places. So one of the ways you can resolve whether your mind is interpreting the Qur'an right is by taking a holistic understanding of the Qur'an and seeing whether there is any contradiction in your understanding of a particular verse. But man's intellect is only a guide. The scripture must continue to mentor the intellect of man, to make sure he is thinking aright, and to avoid any diversions and pitfalls.

If we say the power of intellect has to stay subservient to Scripture, to Qur'an, it is only because it is the Qur'an which will anchor the 'Aql towards Allah. Man can sail to new heights of spiritual realizations through the ship of the intellect, and can avoid the danger of drifting away from the right path to where Allah is to be found. But it must always be anchored and harnessed by the Qur'an and the authentic ahadith. Now, these ahadith of course must concur with what the true guides have taught.

So what we are saying here is that your 'Aql can be your ship, but your compass has to be the Qur'an. It must guide and be the yardstick that guides us in deciding what is right and being wrong.

A lot of times what we are seeing in our community is that this idea of a reformer is that I will listen to all the different opinions I can get from people in my community and then I will decide and pick and choose what makes sense to me, right? That is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. What we first need to do is understand what is the original teaching of Islam. What is it that the Qur'an and Hadith actually says and not simply arrogantly assume that just because I do not understand Arabic, there is nothing in the 14 centuries of knowledge that has been passed down in my faith, that is worth a second look.

So we can not just use our 'Aql and look at the Qur'an high level and read an English translation, and then come up with theories of how the community needs to reform and move forward. There is no room for this sort of free thinking. And as we said yesterday, there are labels from other belief systems that are thrown at us like justice, human rights, and you are put on the defensive to defend these things. Are Muslims just? Do Muslims give women their rights? And you are now trying to defend this in a free thinking manner, using your own understanding and just what you can read in English of the Qur'an, and a few books of your choice.

Now look at the reformers before you. We mentioned some before. Why have past reformers failed and why have some succeeded? If you look at reformers who succeeded, like Ayatullah Khomeni for example, and you look at reformers who failed, what is the difference? You will see that the reformers who failed, where they went wrong is they were trying to ask for reform in a vacuum. They were using their own thinking and a few books they have read, and then proposing change. The whole Shi'a argument is that whatever you propose as reform an original orthodox Islam, it must prove itself as to how it connects to Allah, and Rasul, and Qur'an and the Imams. If you cannot show us that connectivity, then it does not give us that conviction that your reform has any validity in Islam.

And so, when we emphasize the need to follow the 'Ulama, the traditional 'Ulama, the Maraji', it is because they have that connection, they have devoted their lives to studying the teachings of the Imams, and through them then we have an understanding of what the Imams taught and what the Prophet taught and what Allah Subhan wa Ta'ala.

It is not this idea that we have this sort of pseudo intellectualism, and we just now love to talk about spirituality and philosophy, and Shari'ah is not important to us, we downplay the Shari'ahm and now we are big in talking about how we need to change as a community and how Islam needs to improve.

Think about this for a moment. Why did I take the trouble over these twelve nights to talk about the early khilafa and talk about the Sahaba and talk about Bukhari and Muslim? I could have just gone and talked about present Muslims.

The reason I did this is because before I can suggest any changes to our Sunni brothers and sisters, I first had to convince them that the condition that the Muslim community is in now, how does it come about and how does it relate to what was originally taught by Allah and His Messenger? It is only when I was able to show that connectivity, that relevance to history and how it evolved, that now some of them might look back and realize and say, well, that makes sense. So that history and that hierarchy and connection is very very important.

Reform is not a problem in itself. In fact, reform cannot be rejected. If we reject reform only because we are afraid it will dilute our faith, then we will stagnate as a community, and we will become fundamentalists. The solution, however, lies - the problem, however, is not in what we say should reform, but how we go about the reform process. How do we ensure that the reforms we are proposing in our community will not lead to deviation, to isolation and to serious consequences?

And this is only possible when we are able to push reform while staying faithful to the original teachings of our faith, to what the Imams taught us, to what these custodians and 'Ulama are giving us as the teachings of the Imam and the Ahl ul-Bayt, 'alayhum as-salam. Unless we are firmly rooted in that, we will not be able to propose any meaningful changes as reforms.