Lessons from Nahjul Balagha [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Sermons
Sermon
18

Amir al-mu'minin said in
disparagement of the differences of view among the
theologians.

When (1)
a problem is put before anyone of them he passes judgement on it
from his imagination. When exactly the same problem is placed
before another of them he passes an opposite verdict. Then these
judges go to the chief who had appointed them and he confirms all
the verdicts, although their Allah is One (and the same), their
Prophet is one (and the same), their Book (the Qur'an) is one (and
the same).

Is it that Allah
ordered them to differ and they obeyed Him? Or He prohibited them
from it but they disobeyed Him? Or (is it that) Allah sent an
incomplete Faith and sought their help to complete it? Or they are
His partners in the affairs, so that it is their share of duty to
pronounce and He has to agree? Or is it that Allah the Glorified
sent a perfect faith but the Prophet fell short of conveying it
and handing it over (to the people)? The fact is that Allah the
Glorified says:
. . . We have not
neglected anything in the Book (Qur'an) . . . (Qur'an, 6:38)

And says that one part
of the Qur'an verifies another part and that there is no
divergence in it as He says:
. . . And if it had
been from any other than Allah, they would surely have found in
it much discrepancy. (Qur'an, 4 :82)

Certainly the outside
of the Qur'an is wonderful and its inside is deep (in meaning).
Its wonders will never disappear, its amazements will never pass
away and its intricacies cannot be cleared except through itself.

(1).
It is a disputed problem that where there is no clear argument
about a matter in the religious law, whether there does in reality
exist an order about it or not. The view adopted by Abu'l-Hasan
al-Ashari and his master Abu Ali al-Jubba'i is that in such a
case Allah has not ordained any particular course of action but He
assigned the task of finding it out and passing a verdict to the
jurists so that whatever they hold as prohibited would be deemed
prohibited and whatever they regard permissible would be deemed
permissible. And if one has one view and the other another then as
many verdicts will exist as there are views and each of them would
represent the final order. For example, if one scholar holds that
barley malt is prohibited and another jurist's view is that it is
permissible then it would really be both prohibited and
permissible. That is, for one who holds it prohibited, its use
would be prohibited while for the other its use would be
permissible. About this (theory of) correctness Muhammad ibn
Abdi'l-Karim ash-Shahrastani writes:

A group of theorists
hold that in matters where ijtihad (research) is applied there
is no settled view about permissibility or otherwise and
lawfulness and prohibition thereof, but whatever the mujtahid
(the researcher scholar) holds is the order of Allah, because
the ascertainment of the view of Allah depends upon the verdict
of the mujtahid. If it is not so there will be no verdict at
all. And according to this view every mujtahid would be correct
in his opinion. (al-Milal wa'l-nihal, p.98)

In this case, the
mujtahid is taken to be above mistake because a mistake can be
deemed to occur where a step is taken against reality, but where
there is no reality of verdict, mistake has no sense. Besides
this, the mujtahid can be considered to be above mistake if it is
held that Allah, being aware of all the views that were likely to
be adopted has ordained as many final orders as a result of which
every view corresponds to some such order, or that Allah has
assured that the views adopted by the mujtahids should not go
beyond what He has ordained, or that by chance the view of every
one of them would, after all, correspond to some ordained order or
other.

The Imamiyyah sect,
however, has different theory, namely that Allah has neither
assigned to anyone the right to legislate nor subjected any matter
to the view of the mujtahid, nor in case of difference of views
has He ordained numerous real orders. Of course, if the mujtahid
cannot arrive at a real order then whatever view he takes after
research and probe, it is enough for him and his followers to act
by it. Such an order is the apparent order which is a substitute
for the real order. In this case, he is excused for missing the
real order, because he did his best for diving in the deep ocean
and to explore its bottom, but it is a pity that instead of pearls
he got only the sea-shell. He does not say that observers should
except it as a pearl or it should sell as such. It is a different
matter that Allah who watches the endeavours may price it at half
so that the endeavour does not go waste, nor his passion
discouraged.

If the theory of
correctness is adopted then every verdict on law and every opinion
shall have to be accepted as correct as Maybudhi has written in
Fawatih:
In this matter the view
adopted by al-Ashari is right. It follows that differing
opinions should all be right. Beware, do not bear a bad idea
about jurists and do not open your tongue to abuse them.

When contrary theories
and divergent views are accepted as correct it is strange why the
action of some conspicuous individuals are explained as mistakes
of decision, since mistake of decision by the mujtahid cannot be
imagined at all. If the theory of correctness is right the action
of Muawiyah and A'ishah should be deemed right; but if their
actions can be deemed to be wrong then we should agree that
ijtihad can also go wrong, and that the theory of correctness is
wrong. It will then remain to be decided in its own context
whether feminism did not impede the decision of A'ishah or
whether it was a (wrong) finding of Muawiyah or something else.
However, this theory of correctness was propounded in order to
cover mistakes and to give them the garb of Allah's orders so that
there should be no impediment in achieving objectives nor should
anyone be able to speak against any misdeeds.

In this sermon Amir
al-mu'minin has referred to those people who deviate from the path
of Allah and, closing their eyes to light, grope in the darkness
of imagination, make Faith the victim of their views and opinions,
pronounce new findings, pass orders by their own imagination and
produce divergent results. Then on the basis of the theory of
correctness they regard all these divergent and contrary orders as
from Allah, as though each of their order represents divine
Revelation so that no order of theirs can be wrong nor can they
stumble on any occasion. Thus, Amir al-mu'minin says in disproving
this view that:
1) When Allah is One,
Book (Qur'an) is one, and Prophet is one then the religion (that
is followed) should also be one. And when the religion is one
how can there be divergent orders about any matter, because
there can be divergence in an order only in case he who passed
the order has forgotten it, or is oblivious, or senselessness
overtakes him, or he wilfully desires entanglement in these
labyrinths, while Allah and the Prophet are above these things.
These divergences cannot therefore be attributed to them. These
divergences are rather the outcome of the thinkings and opinions
of people who are bent on twisting the delineations of religion
by their own imaginative performances.

2) Allah must have
either forbidden these divergences or ordered creating them. If
He has ordered in their favour, where is that order and at what
place? As for forbidding, the Qur'an says:
. . .Say thou! 'Hath
Allah permitted you or ye forge a lie against Allah ?' (10:59)

That is, everything
that is not in accordance with the Divine orders is a
concoction, and concoction is forbidden and prohibited. For
concocters, in the next world, there is neither success or
achievement nor prosperity and good. Thus, Allah says:

And utter ye not
whatever lie describe your tongues (saying): This is lawful and
this is forbidden, to forge a lie against Allah; verily, those
who forge a lie against Allah succeed not. (Qur'an, 16:116)

3) If Allah has left
religion incomplete and the reason for leaving it halfway

was that He desired
that the people should assist Him in completing the religious
code and share with Him in the task of legislating, then this
belief is obviously polytheism. If He sent down the religion in
complete form the Prophet must have failed in conveying it so
that room was left for others to apply imagination and opinion.
This, Allah forbid, would mean a weakness of the Prophet and a
bad slur on the selection of Allah.

4) Allah has said in
the Qur'an that He has not left out anything in the Book and has
clarified each and every matter. Now, if an order is carved out
in conflict with the Qur'an it would be outside the religious
code and its basis would not be on knowledge and perception, or
Qur'an and sunnah, but it would be personal opinion and one's
personal judgement which cannot be deemed to have accord with
religion and faith.

5) Qur'an is the basis
and source of religion and the fountain head of the laws of
shariah. If the laws of shariah were divergent there should
have been divergence in it also, and if there were divergences
in it, it could not be regarded as Divine word. When it is
Divine word the laws of shariah cannot be divergent, so as to
accept all divergent and contrary views as correct and
imaginative verdicts taken as Qur'anic dictates.