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Quran and Islamic Jurisprudence - Part 1
By Dr. Maher Hathout
The Quran describes the team as a group from amongst the nation that will be specialised to have broad -based knowledge.
Essentiality of having a team, Why do we need to have a team?
• organised and sustained work cannot be done individually
• to compliment each other; not everyone is good at everything, the task needs huge amount of goodness that we need to compliment each other, if one is deficient in a particular subject the other can fill-in and vice versa
• to synergize; synergy means 2 + 2 does not equal 4 but equals 7 or 8, i.e. when we add each other the output becomes greater than the input
• to remind each other; to motivate each other, when you are falling down the rest of the team will lift you up
• to strategize; the collective thinking can enable you to build such attitude
Let us see what Quran says about the team.
Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity. (Quran 3:104)
There are four Arabic keywords in this verse that need to be reflected upon:
minkum - from amongst you; part of the total; a portion of the ummah
ummatun - a group
yad’una - to call loudly; to invite; persuasion
al-muflihoon - coming from the root word al-falah, which means more than just attaining happy state; it means success, maintenance and salvation
From this Muslim ummah,, a group will emerge and will take on the task in a specialized way. It will call, urge and persuade people to do what is good, they will enjoy what is right, and forbid what is wrong and they will attain salvation.
How do we identify this minkum?
Al-Qortabi, an Islamic scholar who lived until 671 A.H wrote a tafsir in Quran. He is of the opinion that minkum, the team Quran is referring to is al-ulema, which is interesting, but I don’t want to argue with it much.
Who are the ulemas? Are the graduates of Al-Azhar or King Abdul Aziz school or what? What makes the ulema, a ulema?
Al-Qortabi himself is an example. Al-Qortabi was a linguist, a grammarist and a historian, he was a scholar in geography, he was well versed in astronomy, he was a poet and he was a muffasir of the Quran. He wrote six important books in his life. Those are the ones that reached us. And remember every time we talk about the books those are the leftovers after the burning of the libraries of the Islamic Civilization. So God knows how many books were lost.
Imam Al-Fakr Razi (544-606 A.H.) also wrote a tafsir in Quran. He was an authority in philosophy and logic; he studied the works of Plato and Socrates. He was well versed in logic, literature and history, he became a chemistry freak, he spent his money for knowledge that fascinated him in chemistry. He was an authority in jurisprudence and one of the best writers about different sects in Islam like Fiqh-ul-Shia, Fiqh-ul-Sunni etc., he had the best debate with people of the book i.e. Christians and Jews.
Ulema at that time simply meant people who were well cultured, very knowledgeable about their concerns of their age, might excel in things that fascinated them and at the same time decided to study religion well and some of them specialised in tafsir (interpretation) or fiqh (the science of Islamic Jurisprudence) and so on and so forth.
If we assume that minkum as ulema, it should mean a group of intellectuals who are having a broad base of knowledge, who are very much leading their time and age and may be specialised in one or two disciplines of their choice, whether the disciplines are “scientific science” or “religious science”.
So when we go back to the way the Quran describes the team and the way the commentators of the Quran explained it, it is giving us a full picture of a group from amongst the nation that will be specialized to have broad based knowledge and may excel in a certain branch and definitely they should know how to do yad’una and how to appreciate al-muflihoon.
(This series is designed for those who are students and those who are involved in activism). Editor
The writer is Sr. Advisor, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
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