8: Patriarchal-glorification-and-infallibility

One frequently comes in your writings across an exhortation to break free from "patriarchal-glorification-and-infallibility";

you justify that attitude of yours by asserting that patriarchal idolization precludes any fresh vision. Does this mean that you support breaking away with the Islamic heritage? Is not any growth without roots an illusion?

Thank your, Mr. Rifa'ee, for a good question calls for a good answer. Whether or not my answer will be satisfactory, your question will remain a challenge. I am sure that the questions will go on improving and becoming more poignant and urgent and defined; and so will the answers, until people get over their anxiety and pain, both physical and spiritual.

I daresay I have given some sort of answer to this question in the folds of my previous answers, but the topic you are raising is both important and critical in relation to impeding or reinforcing our progress. Therefore, such topic must be discussed again and again. It has also been handled by others, but they haven't said, and they will not say, the last word concerning this topic.

I don't advocate rejecting the heritage, not even the heritage of pre-historical ages, before the invention of writing. It is in prehistory that man domesticated animals and discovered agriculture. Such achievements may not be ignored, for if we ignore them, we must return to life prior to agriculture and the domestication of animals. Obviously, an age that has passed must not be repeated – mankind will not ignore the discovery of agriculture and return to the pre-agriculture age. But agriculture does not stay as it is: people do new grafting on trees, and they can find out more of the laws by which the trees produce their fruit, which will in the future enable men to manufacture the fruits artificially by emulating the trees. Once man has mastered this skill, fruits and vegetables will be manufactured at cheap prices and with infinite quantities. We would be within God's law, expressed in the Qur'anic verse: "And He creates things of which you have no knowledge, (16, 8)." In the same way as men went beyond the age of horses, mules and donkeys for transport and carrying weights, and discovered means which would not have occurred to the minds of those before us, those who come after us will discover things that do not occur to us. The law of 'And He creates things of which you have no knowledge,' will remain open indefinitely; it will be so since God has chosen not to set any limit on it – God's bounty has no limit, as we read in another verse of the Qur'an: "If the ocean were ink wherewith to write out the words of my Lord, sooner would the ocean be exhausted than would the words of my Lord, (18, 109)."

In so many areas, to stop where the past generations left us is now suicide.

To transfer authority with killing and treachery used to be acceptable, and people received it gladly – it was so when people's comprehension of God's law was confined to this, and that is how they would take verses of the Qur'an like: "O Allah! Lord of Power and Rule, You give Power to whom You please, and You strip off Power from whom You please, (3, 26)." But you see now how God enables certain people, by God's laws, to themselves give power to whom they please, and strip off power from whom they please.

So we need to realize the limits of our forefathers: they did not have the ability to perceive such facts, and so they regressed to killing and treachery and dishonesty and lying; they shed blood and broke the bones of their adversaries. Well, there you are. I have not the words to answer your question, my intellectual capacity falls short, and therefore I remain incoherent. I do not bring out the truth as the Qur'an puts it, with the manifest expression (the word for manifest expression in all its derivatives is used scores of time in this sense in the Qur'an.) More capable men and women are being formed at this moment everywhere, and they will produce the right expressions which will lead people out of darkness and into the light. It is again God's law in the world, that the scum will disappear like froth cast out; while that which is for the good of mankind [all mankind] remains on the earth (reference to the Qur'an, 13, 17.) It may take long or short, but people will come to understand.

God's law dictates that we accept from the ancestors, and also from the past generations of others, the best of their deeds and pass by their ill deeds (reference to the Qur'an, 46, 16)." We have to be sure that history does not come to a stop, that God's creation has not come to a stop with our ancestors or the ancestors of other nations. The ancestors of all of mankind lived at one time in caves, naked, and were devoured by animals – the Qur'an tells us how Jacob said to his sons about Joseph: "I fear lest the wolf should devour him while you do not attend to him, (12, 13)," for his fear was logical at that time, and it is not so far off.

We need to put right our attitude towards the ancestors, and the Almighty tells us in the Qur'an that to imitate the forefathers is a barrier. It is so because when you love, you are blind and deaf. Exceeding admiration strips one of the power of seeing and understanding, in a literal sense in certain cases. That is why the Qur'an says about following the fathers: "What! Even though their fathers were void of wisdom and guidance? (2, 170)" Once, the Messenger, peace be upon him, wondered: "And how can you be just in dealing with the dear and near?" It is for such aspects that testifying in favour of, or against, relatives is rejected: it is so because favouring the family, the father, one's group, one's fellow in religion or compatriots is widespread. To see the truth and falsehood concerning the fathers and forefathers is so hard – all those who opposed the prophets cited their fathers as the authority. And yet, no matter how vehemently the Qur'an condemns following the fathers, Muslims think that they are exempt from the rules concerning the glorification of ancestors, as if we were not human like other humans. The problem of abay'iyyah 'glorification of ancestors' is a stumbling block where the eyes go wild and the minds are misty and the truth is confused with falsehood. That is why, no matter how solemnly God commands us: "O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin (4, 135)," we seem to turn deaf ears to this. We really need to bring our fathers under the law of history, for history accepts no indulgence of anybody, and if we are scum we shall disappear. It is for the good of progeny to let the scum disappear, and to allow that which is good for everybody to settle in the earth.

I have come under the influence of fathers, and we all do in various degrees; what is agreeable to the past generations is held up by the next generations. But with the passage of time, the glorification of ancestors is becoming less pronounced. Indeed, Muslims have gone farther than any sensible limit in aggrandizing and extolling their ancestors, even when it became evident that they, the forefathers, did not have the best solutions: it is our ancestors who fought amongst themselves, let down the truth and hailed falsehood; it is they who resurrected the pre-Islamic ways. To this day, we seem incapable of finding an outlet from the drawbacks and shortcomings of their comprehension; those who we count as unbelievers have rid themselves of that complex, and they can think creatively of ingenious solutions to problems. The European Union, the egalitarian, peaceful, and scientific union which is being shaped with extreme care is more in line with what God and His Messenger teach, and more sensible than our disparity and strife and hatred, things that block our way to understanding – and we seem not to find the way to get over them. It must be said, however, that the exceeding pain some of us have inflicted on others are beginning to ameliorate our excesses, and we begin to open our ears and eyes; our mouths, too, begin to utter some words – it is not taboo, as Iqbal said, to discuss our culture and analyze it in every way. The Muslim World is almost the only part of the world where the ancestors remain an impediment to progress; Muslims still challenge the world and history with their claim that God has not, and will not, create their likes.

But how will those who come after us read these words, and how will they judge us; history's sentences are hard and painful, as the Qur'an says: "Such is the chastisement of your Lord when He chastises communities in the midst of their wrong: grievous, indeed, and severe is His chastisement, (11, 102)."

But we pray to God that He makes us learn the lessons, to change our attitudes. Enough humiliation and suffering we have undergone to learn the significance of history's events!