Sunday, October 25, 2009

Enslavery: Submission or Stupidity?

"It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by God and His Apostle to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys God and His Apostle, he is indeed on a clearly wrong Path." Quraan 33:36

وَمَا كَانَ لِمُؤْمِنٍ وَلا مُؤْمِنَةٍ إِذَا قَضَى اللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُ أَمْرًا أَن يَكُونَ لَهُمُ الْخِيَرَةُ مِنْ أَمْرِهِمْ وَمَن يَعْصِ اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ فَقَدْ ضَلَّ ضَلالا مُّبِينًا
الأحزاب : ٣٦


As (hopefully) most of us know that Islam means submission, to submit your will to Allah, basically to unconditionally follow the instructions of Allah without arguing. For more details regarding this refer to the other posts "What does Islam mean?" and the series of "True Muslims/Submitters".

However, some Muslims can't differentiate between the instructions of Allah and the instructions of religious leaders/religion specialists (Imams, Sheikhs, etc .. ), they naively follow the latter as if it was the former! In other words, they follow those religious leaders/specialists blindly as they think it's what Islam is all about! Unconditional submission! That's wrong! Islam means unconditional submission to the instructions of Allah only which are the instructions delivered by the Prophet Mohammad and which we are certain of, all other things we are liable about if we follow and thus are subject to questioning.

"And do not follow a thing about which you have no knowledge. Surely, the ear, the eye and the heart - each one of them shall be interrogated about (on the Day of Reckoning)." Quraan 17:36

وَلاَ تَقْفُ مَا لَيْسَ لَكَ بِهِ عِلْمٌ إِنَّ السَّمْعَ وَالْبَصَرَ وَالْفُؤَادَ كُلُّ أُوْلَئِكَ كَانَ عَنْهُ مَسْؤُولاً
الإسراء : ٣٦

For instance, the Hajj/Pilgrimage rituals many of it if not most of it doesn't seem to make sense, like circling around a cube (the Kaaba) or stoning the pillars. Yet we do perform happily because we are 100% certain that the Prophet asked us to do so which subsequently means Allah instructed us to do so. However, if a religious leader asked to vote or not to, or to support certain activity or abandon it, ... etc then we should think it over before we do it, we should question them if it's not clear enough for us that it's the right thing to do, just because the instruction came from a religious leader it doesn't render it right by default! No! Religious leaders are something and the Prophet is something else!

This is basically another form of implicit enslavery even though it may not being done systematically or intentionally, this lack of constructive criticism to our leaders and the absence of critical thinking towards things around us certainly are major factors of the Ummah backwardness.