Hakikat Kitabevi Publications No: 10 answer to an enemy of islam

“zindîqs.” Zindîqs can
deceive and corrupt Muslims, but they cannot corrupt Islam;
Allâhu ta’âlâ promises that He will protect Islam.
26– Through the religion reformer, Rashîd Ridâ, says:
“I do not deny the virtue and knowledge possessed by
the imâms who were mujtahids. Their virtue and
knowledge were beyond praise and glorification. Yet,
before the mujtahids, every Muslim used to ask for
documentary evidence. Those who came later ignored the
documentary evidence and exalted the mujtahid imâms to
the grade of prophets. They even preferred the mujtahid’s
word to a hadîth. They said that the hadîth could be
mansûkh (said by the Prophet at his early age, but changed
by himself later) or there could be another hadîth in their
imâm’s view. The mujtahids did not find it right to act in
accordance with the words of the persons who could
possibly go wrong or who could not know the matter and
who were not safe from errors, and to lay aside the hadîth
of the Prophet, who was free from error. The muqallids
dissented from the Qur’ân, too, which is the evident guide
and the absolute document. They said that it was not
permissible to learn the religion from the Qur’ân and that
only mujtahids could understand the meaning of the
Qur’ân. They claimed that it was not permissible to ignore
the mujtahid’s word and to act in accordance with the
Qur’ân. They said that it was not permissible to say, ‘Allah
says so,’ or ‘Rasûlullah says so,’ and that we should say,
‘The fiqh scholar has understood it as such.’ There is not a
branch of knowledge which might exceed, with all its
subjects, the capacity of most people and which can be
understood only by certain people of certain times. It is a
requirement of the Divine Law that the later scholars
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should be more advanced than the earlier ones, for, the
starting point of the later ones is where the earlier ones
have left off. The Qur’ân and the Hadîth are more
understandable than the books of fiqh. A person who has
learned Arabic well understands them more easily. Isn’t
Allâhu ta’âlâ able to explain His religion more explicitly
than the men of fiqh? Rasûlullah understood what Allah
meant better than anybody else, and he explained it clearly
and communicated everything.
“If most people had been incapable of deriving rules
from the Book and the Sunna, all the people would not be
held liable for these rules. One should know what one
believes together with its proofs. Allah disapproves of the
taqlîd and muqallids. He declares that they will not be
forgiven by imitating their fathers and grandfathers. To
understand that part of the religion concerning fiqh from its
documents is easier than understanding the part concerning
îmân. Allâhu ta’âlâ holds us liable for the difficult one. Is it
ever possible that He will not hold us liable for the easy
one?
“Prophets did not err, but mujtahids might have made
errors. Mujtahids expanded the religion and made it
several times as much as it was. They drove Muslims into
trouble. There cannot be employed any qiyâs in the field of
’ibâdât; nor can one add anything to ’ibâdât. [However],
qiyâs and istihsân (approval of facility) can be employed in
judicial decisions. The mujtahids, too, prohibited men from
taqlîd.”
In his sophisms, the religion reformer contradicts himself time
and again. Employing logic in any branch of knowledge requires
having some knowledge of that branch. The intrigues played with
a bare reasoning by those who do not understand the basic
knowledge of Islam do not give any result but rather bring disgrace
upon themselves. It is true that those Muslims preceding the
mujtahids, that is, as-Sahâbat al-kirâm, asked for documents; they
did not follow one another. But they were all mujtahids. They
were the people of the first century praised and lauded by
Rasûlullah (sall-allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam). All as-Sahâbat al-kirâm
and many of the Tâbi’ûn were mujtahids. It was necessary for a
mujtahid to act in accordance with what he understood, and it was
not permissible for him to follow another mujtahid. A Muslim
simply does not say, “Those who came later exalted the mujtahids
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to the grade of prophets,” nor does he claim that they even held
them superior. For this statement stigmatizes billions of Muslims
who have belonged to the four madhhabs as disbelievers. He who
says or writes that a certain Muslim is a disbeliever becomes a
disbeliver himself. It is even a greater slander to accuse muqallids
of dissenting from the Qur’ân al-kerîm. The religion reformers
should know very well that a madhhab means the way of the Book
and the Sunna. He who follows an imâm al-madhhab believes that
he follows the Qur’ân al-kerîm and Rasûlullah (sall-Allâhu ’alaihi
wa sallam). No Muslim says, “It is not permissible to ignore the
mujtahid’s word and to act in accordance with the Qur’ân,” nor
has any Muslim ever said so. This is one of the abominable
slanders made by religion reformers, freemasons and zindîqs
against pure Muslims. Every Muslim says, “I want to adapt myself
to the Qur’ân al-kerîm and the Hadîth ash-sherîf, but I myself
cannot draw conclusions from them. I cannot depend on or follow
the rules which I understand. I depend on and follow what the
imâm al-madhhab understood, for, he was more learned than I am.
He knew the eight main branches of knowledge and the twelve
subsidiary branches better than I do. He feared Allâhu ta’âlâ more
than I do. He did not draw conclusions from the Qur’ân al-kerîm
out of his own understanding but learned from as-Sahâbat al-
kirâm the meanings which had been given by Rasûlullah (’alaihi ’s-
salâm). I fear much on account of the hadîth ash-sherîf,