The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: “Whoever calls people to the slogans of the age of ignorance, or to blind tribal pride, is among the people of Hell.”
Muhammad Abul Hussain
‘Qawmi’ (قومي) is an Arabic word whose ordinary dictionary meaning is ‘national’, tribal or communal. It comes from the Arabic ‘qawm’ (قوم), meaning a nation, group or community. In Bangladesh and the Indian subcontinent, however, ‘Qawmi’ is used in a particular technical sense that differs somewhat from its general meaning elsewhere:
Private, or traditional to the community: in Bangladesh, a ‘Qawmi madrasa’ means an education system free of government grants or control and run entirely on the support of the public and the Muslim community.
Religious and cultural independence: in this sense ‘Qawmi’ means something that is not under any particular government but was founded by the people to preserve the religious and cultural heritage of the Muslim ‘qawm’, or nation.
Put simply, across the Arabic-speaking world ‘qawmi’ means ‘state’ or ‘national’ (as in al-Shabab al-Qawmi, a national youth organisation), but in our country its working meaning is ‘private, autonomous, or belonging to the qawm (the public)’.
Islam permits a person’s tribe or lineage only as a means of mutual recognition and of keeping ties of kinship. But whenever that identity turns into ‘nationalism’ or ‘blind partisanship’ (asabiyyah), claiming superiority for one’s own group or lineage regardless of right and wrong, Islam treats it as strictly forbidden and as jahiliyyah, the ignorance of the pre-Islamic age.
Harith al-Ash’ari (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: “Whoever calls people to the slogans of the age of ignorance, or to blind tribal pride, is among the people of Hell.”
The companions asked: “O Messenger of Allah! Even if he prays and fasts?”
The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: “Yes, even if he prays, fasts and claims to be a Muslim. So call yourselves by the names Allah has given you, He who named you Muslims, believers and servants of Allah.” (Musnad Ahmad, Tirmidhi)
Imam Ahmad compiled the hadith in his Musnad, and Imam Tirmidhi, who graded it hasan and sahih, in his collection.
It is very sad but true that clerics of the Qawmi tradition have now made themselves into a separate group. They regard themselves as the only ‘rightful and the best’, and clerics outside the Qawmi tradition as misguided and inferior. Because of them, disunity and division among clerics are growing.
In pre-Islamic Arabia (the age of ignorance), people’s basic rule was: “Help your brother (your tribesman) blindly, whether he is the wrongdoer or the wronged.” That is, even when a member of one’s own tribe did wrong, people took his side and attacked other tribes.
Islam came and uprooted this blind nationalism, establishing a universal principle of justice. Islam says that if your own father, child or tribe does wrong, you must stand against the wrong and take the side of truth.
Islam draws a clear line between patriotism (loving one’s homeland and wishing it well) and nationalism (believing oneself superior to others on the basis of lineage or borders, and taking sides blindly):
Permitted love: loving one’s family, tribe or country is a natural human instinct. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) himself loved his birthplace, Mecca, deeply.
Forbidden nationalism: when that love turns blind and people begin to say “I will stand by my nation or country even when it is wrong” or “our lineage is the best and the rest are inferior”, it becomes jahiliyyah, a forbidden nationalism.
In short, pride in lineage or tribe, and factionalism built on it, is plainly forbidden in Islam. A Muslim’s true identity is that he is a Muslim and part of the ummah; lineage or tribe is only a social marker.
Such narrow-mindedness has no place in Islamic terminology or in the golden history of the akabir, the great elders. Where the founders and forebears of the Qawmi tradition held generosity and the unity of the ummah as their core ideal, the narrowness and partisanship now seen in some circles is at heart a modern form of the asabiyyah, the blind group loyalty, discussed above.
In Islam the bounds of Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah, the right path, are very wide. While the fundamentals of faith are kept, differences on matters of jurisprudence and practice (for instance among Hanafis, Shafi’is, Malikis and Hanbalis, or with Salafi and Ahl-e-Hadith brothers) are natural, and have existed since the time of the companions.
Belonging to a particular madrasa, group or spiritual lineage cannot be the only guarantee of salvation.
The scholars of earlier generations never treated their own opinion as the only absolute truth and others’ opinions as void or inferior. They used to say: “My opinion is right but may be wrong; another’s opinion may seem wrong but may be right.”
The Quran and hadith call scholars the guides of the ummah and the heirs of the prophets. But when the guides themselves sling mud, grow arrogant and look down on others, ordinary people develop a kind of aversion to and confusion about the faith. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told us to avoid harshness and narrowness in religious matters, to make things easy and to draw people close.
The hadith discussed above, in which the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) called blind pride based on tribe or lineage jahiliyyah, applies today to more than lineage. If someone today builds blind partisanship around a political party, a pir-murid spiritual lineage or a madrasa tradition, and regards every honest person outside his group as ‘misguided or inferior’, that too is a form of organisational or sectarian asabiyyah, which Islam wholly condemns.
Even in this crisis of the ummah there are many broad-minded, sincere and far-sighted clerics, in the Qawmi tradition and in others, who are working for the unity of the ummah. They respect the learning and practice of clerics from other traditions and keep trying to clear up mutual misunderstanding. So the criticism is aimed at the particular mindset of those who are narrow, not at the whole tradition.
Islam has taught us to judge a person not by his group or tradition but by the measure of his knowledge, his piety and his following of the Quran and Sunnah. Ending the mud-slinging and division among scholars and restoring mutual respect and the wider unity of the ummah is the greatest demand of our time.
Because Islam allows freedom of opinion and scholarly reasoning (ijtihad), differences of opinion are entirely natural. The companions, their successors and the great imams also differed on many matters of the faith. But there was no mud-slinging, envy or malice among them as there is in our time.
The set manners and principles Islamic law lays down for disagreement are called adab al-ikhtilaf (آداب الاختلاف), the etiquette of disagreement. Its main principles are discussed below:
1. Sincerity of intention
In any religious discussion the aim must be to bring the truth to light, not to display one’s ego or defeat the other side. Imam al-Shafi’i used to say:
“Whenever I debated anyone, I prayed to Allah that He would reveal the truth through my opponent’s mouth (so that I could accept it).”
2. Respect for other views and avoiding narrowness
Apart from the fundamentals of Islam (aqidah, creed), there is room for more than one correct view on secondary or jurisprudential matters (such as the method of prayer, or saying amin aloud or quietly).
Choosing one view for oneself does not mean the other view is void or inferior.
In the time of the companions, one group of companions prayed the asr prayer on the way, while another prayed it after reaching Banu Qurayza. The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) rebuked neither group.
3. Giving up the habit of branding others unbelievers, sinners or misguided
Today there is a dreadful tendency to issue rulings calling one another ‘misguided’, ‘void’ or ‘destined for Hell’ over minor differences. Yet a hadith says that if someone calls a Muslim brother an unbeliever and he is not one, the ruling falls back on the one who made it (Sahih Bukhari). So no one may be called misguided without specific evidence from Islamic law.
4. Upholding al-insaf, fairness
Even when you disagree with someone, you must not belittle his good qualities, his sacrifices for the faith or his learning. The Holy Quran says: “Do not let hatred of a people provoke you into abandoning justice.” (Surah al-Ma’idah: 8). That is, the good work of one’s opponents must also be acknowledged.
5. No harshness on recognised matters
A major principle of Islamic jurisprudence is that on matters where scholars have held more than one view since early times (matters of ikhtilaf), it is forbidden to force ordinary people to follow one view or to quarrel over it.
6. Decent language and avoiding backbiting
In Islam it is forbidden to criticise or backbite anyone behind their back. Yet on social media today, people of one tradition do not hesitate to attack the character of clerics from another and give them mocking nicknames. Disagreement must be expressed in gentle, graceful language and with reasoning, not with abuse or ridicule.
Imam al-Shafi’i once disagreed with his favourite student, Yunus ibn Abd al-A’la, on a point of jurisprudence. After the debate the student went home angry. That night Imam al-Shafi’i himself went to the student’s house, took his hand and said: “O Yunus! Just because we could not agree on a single question, must our brotherhood of a hundred years be ruined?”
Only if today’s scholars and ordinary Muslims regain the generosity and manners of the akabir will the unity of the ummah be possible.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report