The Basis Of Imamat In The Qur’an II

My dear brother, if we want to lower our expectations of the book that is supposed to be Mizaan and Furqan (measure and separator for truth) to this level, then we can find basis of almost any sectarian belief in the Qur’an. This is exactly what all the sects of Islam and also those who claimed prophethood after Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) are and were doing. They first decide what their faith is, then they try to find a verse of the Qur’an that can be interpreted as such. This is not the way that we are supposed to learn from the Qur’an. We are supposed to be led by the Qur’an not to lead the Qur’an towards our opinions.

At this point let us make any conclusions such as “.us wanting to lower expectation of the book”, since it is too early to say whether we are lowering the expectations of the Book or may be probing further deep in to the ayas of the Book.

After having received your reply, I feel very encouraged and assured to exchange my views with you. But first I want to have a clarification: this and the subsequent replies are directly from Ghamidi Sahib or someone else?

Now, I come back to the question about Imamah and Sura Nisa Aya 59 (004.059). I am not discussing shiaism. I consider myself a student of Islam and thus consider any explanation and teachings from any source and/or interpretation of Islam (may it be sunnism, shiaism, wahabism, or even Ahmidiyat etc). It is just that during my own independent study of Islamic texts, I stumbled upon the concept of Imamat. When I checked this concept in Qur’an and the parallel Islamic texts of Sunnis it did seem that Imamat found its support (however small or large it may be). After all Al-Azhar university did pass a fatwa validating Shiaism as the fifth option for Sunnis.

(http://sunnah.org/history/fatwa_ashar_shia.htm).

When I checked Ghamidi Sahib’s take on Imamat, I found he had rejected it on the reason that it did not find any basis in Qur’an, hence all the reported Ahadith (even by authentic sunni sources) are wrong and not trust-worthy. Well, Ghamidi Sahib’s logic is a strong one, indeed: Qur’an must provide the basis for every Ahadith. Now, applying this same principle of Ghamidi Sahib’s, what could be a justification of 5 prayers whereas the Qur’an (to my knowledge) does not mention the total number of the daily salahs. In one of the ayas of Salah (sorry I do not have the aya no.), Qur’an only mentions three time slots, without mentioning the number of salahs. So, by the same principle of Ghamidi Sahib’s, all the ahadith etc. mandating 5 daily salahs should be rejected and instead only 3 daily salahs should be performed.

Talking specifically about Sura Nisa Aya 59 (004.059), I again say that although it does not prove for certain Imamat, but it also does not say the Ulil Amr cannot be the Shia Imams. On the other hand, if all the ahadith about the Shia Imams (Sunni/shia sources) are taken into consideration then those imams can be said to be the best of Ulil Amr. In other words, Imamat in this sense does not seem to really an un-Qur’anic concept. Now how Shias understand Imamat is a different issue, but I think before challenge the Shia’s current concept of Imamat, we need to prove that the concept of Imams has no place in Qur’an. From what I have seen from your and Ghamidi’s arguments, it cannot be said with certainty that Imamat is an un-Islamic concept.

May God guide all of us (Shia and Sunni) to understand our religion from the Qur’an and then to evaluate our beliefs accordingly, rather than the other way round.

Please let me start with the last line in your post. You wrote:

“May God guide all of us (Shia and Sunni) to understand our religion from the Qur’an”

I would like to make it clear that I am not a Shia or a Sunni, I am only trying my best to be a Muslim.

I would like to comment on your writings in a number of bullet points as there are a number of points that you raised in your response. I am not doing this in the same order as in your post, I would like to start with some fundamental points that you raised near the end of your post:

1. You wrote: ” if all the ahadith about the Shia Imams (Sunni/shia sources) are taken into consideration then those imaams can be said to be the best of Ulil Amr.” I am not sure what Ahadith you are referring to but in any case if this is what you mean by Imamah then I have absolutely no problem with this concept and do not expect this to be in the Qur’an. This will not be a religious subject any more, but will be a historical one, and hugely subjective to the matter of opinion and personal preferences. The only concept of Imamah that I expect to be in the Qur’an is the one that has some sort of divine feature in it (infallibility, appointed by God, obligation to follow only them, etc.).

2. You wrote: “Now how Shias understand Imamat is a different issue, but I think before challenge the Shia’s current concept of Imamat, we need to prove that the concept of Imams has no place in Qur’an.”

I am sorry but I fail to understand the above statement. My understanding is that we are discussing the concept of Imamah, as presented by our Imami Shia brothers (i.e. a God appointed infallible person from generation of the prophet – pbuh – who we as Muslims are obliged to follow). If this is not the concept that we are discussing then there can only be two possibilities:

– We are discussing Imamah in its general meaning of ‘leader’. In this case I have absolutely no disagreement with you. In fact in this meaning I do not even expect the Qur’an to give us any directives. It is a common sense to have leader when such a leader is available.

– We are discussing Imamah in a meaning that you have understood and is more specific than the above general meaning but is also different from the meaning that it has for our Imami Shia brothers. In this case I would like you to please clearly what its meaning is.

I think we first need to settle the above points and then there might not be any need for further discussion. However for the benefit of those who might be interested, I move on to comment on the other points you raised in your post:

3. You wrote: ” it is too early to say whether we are lowering the expectations of the Book or may be probing further deep in to the ayas of the Book”. This is exactly where I see the problem. Every other matter of faith is clearly and repeatedly not only mentioned in the Qur’an, but is in fact established in the Qur’an. Verses 2:285 and 4:136 are telling us what our obligatory beliefs are and then if you open any page of the Qur’an, you will most probably find at least one of these beliefs being referred to. How come when it comes to the concept of Imamah suddenly we are in need of probing further deep into verses of the Book? How come the style of the Book is changed when it comes to this concept? Either the concept is not an important one or the Qur’an is not consistent in its guidance and does not provide clear guidance as it says!

4. You wrote that you found the support of Imamah in the Qur’an. You also wrote that you agree that the verse 59 in Sura of Nisaa does not prove Imamah. I have a few questions:

– Please let me know what verse of the Qur’an does prove Imamah.

– If you find that no verse of the Qur’an clearly proves Imamah then please let me know what does that tell us? What does this mean to you?

– If you believe that while there are no proof of Imamah in the Qur’an there are evidences of it in the Book then please let me know where these evidences are.

– If you are referring to the same verse in Sura of Nisaa (59) as evidence then I request you to kindly address the comments I made in my first post where I tried to explain for you why to me the verse is not only NOT about the concept of Imamah, but is in fact opposed to it.

5. It is not very accurate to say al-Azhar issued fatwa validating Shia’ism as the fifth option for Sunnies. Firstly it was the personal opinion of the head of al-Azhar at the time. Second if you read the fatwa itself you will see that he is not referring to the beliefs of Shia, he is only referring to the Shia as a Feqhi (Jurisprudence) school of thought, this is why he refers to Jafari school of thought. He writes at the end of his letter: ” it is permissible to the non-Mujtahid to follow them and to accord with their teaching whether in worship (Ibadaat) or transactions (Mu’amilaat)”. I have absolutely no problem with the Jafari school of thought as a Feqhi school, in fact I like and at times prefer some of the aspects of this Feqhi school of thought. I do not consider Imam Jafar al-Sadiq as a person who believed in the theory of Imamah or a person who considered himself as a God appointed infallible Imam.

6. To compare prayers with Imamah is like comparing apples with oranges. Prayer is a practice, Imamah is a matter of belief. When it comes to practice we have another source that is Sunnah (note, I am not saying Hadith, by Sunnah I mean the religious practices mostly originated from Nuh (pbuh) and Ibrahim (pbuh), that the prophet (pbuh) established among the Muslims of his time). Having said that, I am thankful to you for raising this example. In fact it is very helpful if we compare the two in the Qur’an. Prayer is only a matter of practice and a concept that people knew even before the prophet (pbuh), yet look how much the Qur’an has invested on it. There are more than 80 verses in the Qur’an where the importance of prayer and some of its conditions are clearly and with no need for too much analysis are given. Naturally after seeing all these, a Muslim will ask, what is this prayer that the Qur’an has put so much emphasis on and then he will seek the Sunnah of the prophet (pbuh) to see exactly how prayer can be performed. Is it not strange that when it comes to Imamah that is supposed to be an important part of our faith (without which, according to those who believe in it, our faith is not complete) there is not even one (let alone 80) clear verse in the Qur’an?

7. You wrote: ” In one of the ayas of Salah ( sorry I donot have the aya no.) ,Qur’an only mentions three time slots, without mentioning the number of salahs. So, by the same principle of Ghamdi Sahib’s, all the ahadith etc mandating 5 daily salahs should be rejected and instead only 3 daily salahs should be performed”.

You are referring to verse 17:78. The verse is not counting the number of prayers, but is mentioning the time periods during which the five daily prayers need to be read. All the learned Shia and Sunni scholars agree with this in principle. Also please note that the primary source of understanding the number of prayers is not Hadith, but is Sunnah.

8. You wrote: “Talking specifically about Sura Nisa Aya 59 (004.059), I again say that although it does not prove for certain Imamat, but it also does not say the Ulil Amr cannot be the Shia Imams.”

I think it does, unless we consider Shia Imams to be ordinary human beings who can make mistakes and errors and who are not appointed by God and who do not have access to hidden knowledge and who may or may not be followed depending on the majority vote, then I fully agree with you.

However if by Shia Imams you mean the same that Shia Muslims mean, that is, God appointed Imams who are infallible, who have occasional access to the hidden knowledge and who are to be followed by Muslims as an obligation then for the reasons that I explained in my earlier post and the ones I explained above, the verse in fact does rule out such meaning for the term Ulil Amr.

9. From reading your post, I got an impression that you have noted many Ahadith in authentic sources that prove the theory of Imamah. I am not aware of any of these and appreciate it if you please quote a few. It seems like my persistence to bring evidence from the Qur’an has created a misunderstanding that I appreciate there are evidences in the authentic Hadith. I can assure you this is not the case.