ISLAM IN PRACTICE

122 ЗОІТОАЯЯ И МАЗЕ

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WHO ARE THE ULEMA?

At the present time, a most vicious campaign of propaganda is being waged against the ulema by a certain group in all Muslim countries. These people fallaciously compare the ulema in the Muslim world with the priesthood in medieval European Christendom. They preach hatred against them by characterizing them as living in luxury, exploiting their followers and dividing the Muslims into mutually hostile sects all engaged in fratricidal strife. They would have us believe that the ulema are responsible for all the evils in the Muslim world throughout our history and the acceptance of their authority as the reason for our backwardness. From these premises, they conclude that the only way we Muslims can achieve our salvation is to reject all interpretations of Islam given to us by “these dogmatic learned men”, get rid of the “Mullahs” and build an entirely new structure for Islam by ourselves.

Who are the ulema? Are they priests? Are they a hereditary ruling caste excluding outsiders?

Certainly not! Any Muslim who acquires the requisite knowledge in the Arabic language, the Quran, Hadith and Islamic jurisprudence can attain the rank of an Alim. But today we are faced with the tragic situation where we find a group of our people with exclusively English-type education, many of whom received their training in Christian missionary schools and colleges, who refuse to acquire 114 any of the Islamic learning for which they have nothing but contempt, insisting upon their right to reinterpret Islam and its law because, they argue, Islam is not the monopoly of any priestly class! If a certain task requires specialized knowledge and training, how can it be properly performed except by those who fulfil the necessary conditions? How then can these people who know nothing about the Shariah, be qualified to exercise Ijtihad?

Far from living in luxury and ease, throughout our history we find the ulema enduring with patience and steadfastness the most intolerable hardships and tortures. Who inflicted this persecution? Not the Christians. Not the Jews! Not the Hindus! None else but our own rulers bearing Muslim names who wanted no part of Islam! Why did Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Shafai, Imam Malik and Imam Ibn Hanbal suffer the most severe persecution for their refusal to endorse the Mutazilite heresy so fashionable among the ruling elite of that time? Why was Ibn Hanbal flogged in a manner too cruel even for elephants and breathe his last chained in a dungeon? For what crime was Allama Ibn Taimiya repeatedly locked behind bars by the rulers of his day and die in prison? Why did Jehangir imprison Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi in the Gwalior Fort because he had refused to prostrate himself before the Emperor?

Who has the power today? Surely not the ulema! Why do we find that in every Muslim country those ulema who have the courage to speak out and denounce the un-Islamic practices of modern life, resist secularism, materialism and atheism and who support movements 115 striving for an Islamic revival, imprisoned and even sometimes condemned to death? For their steadfastness in upholding the faith against innovation and heresy, they are constantly subjected to all kinds of harassment and repressive measures. Where is the theocratic dictatorship of the Mullahs? If the ulema had the power to deny the Muslims the blessings of freedom, enlightenment and progress, why have they been compelled to endure all this persecution?

The respect and devotion of the common Muslims for these ulema is not mere accident nor a product of sheer conservatism or Taqlid. Their authority is maintained not by any material power of which they possess none but rests solely upon their superior knowledge, wisdom, character, piety and their struggle, sacrifice and suffering for the cause of Islam. Their lives and works are a convincing testimony to the Muslim community that they have made every effort to discover the correct meaning of the Shariah and that therefore their interpretation can be relied upon with implicit faith and integrity.

Those who malign the ulema insisting that we reject all interpretations by these “dogmatic learned men” in other words are telling us that “dogmatic learned men” like Ahl-i-Bait, the Sahabah, Bukhari, Muslim, Hanifa, Shafai, Malik, Hanbal, al-Ghazzali, Ibn Taimiya, Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, Shah Waliullah and Sayyid Ahmad Shahid were all wrong in their interpretation of Islam and only today under the domination of Western cultural imperialism have the modernists attained true perspective! What is this plea for a new Islam but to substitute for the Islam of the Quran and the Sunnah a counterfeit version manufactured by the Christian missionaries and Orientalists in London and New York?

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