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| "Full sails ahead"* By Nadia Yassine |
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| When the Prophet (grace and peace be upon him) died, he left behind a community established on the principles of social justice and intense spirituality, a responsible and educated community in complete support of the communitarian values of participation and freedom. He crowned his support for the principle of shûra (consultation) by his ultimate silence as to his successor, leaving the community free to choose its rulers. |
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| The sacred text of the Qur’an and particularly the sunna, which includes all the deeds and gestures of God’s Envoy (grace and peace be upon him), are a source of directives from which general principles are drawn. The first principle is indisputably that of taking into consideration the Last Life and the connection that is always to be established between our actions, whether they pertain to the intimate, private, social or political domain, and our post mortem future. Social justice becomes not a political or humanitarian conviction, but a sacred duty and a spiritual ascent. |
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| Another principle to be derived from the reading of original islam is that social and political responsibility is on no account the matter of one individual. According to the sense of our Islamic teaching, power is always a matter of the entire community. It is with a sorrow unto death that we witness throughout our history how the usurpers of power have manipulated the meaning of Qur’anic verses in order to prove what cannot be proved and to legitimize the indefensible. |
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| All Muslims, for instance, learn by heart, having heard it often in the key speeches at Friday prayer, that obedience to the imam is emphasized in the Qur’an. But the verse they always invoke should give them second thoughts, for in it God orders us thus: You who believe ! Obey God, and obey the Apostle, and those charged with authority among you. |
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| The verse orders us to obey “those” (plural) who hold power “among” you; on no account doest it instruct us to obey “the one” who holds power “over” you. The despots of all stripes who have successively subjugated us prefer to read the verse vertically. According to the school of deceptive despotism, the verse alludes to the group of individuals who have held absolute power throughout history. |
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| Lwazir further defends the idea that the umma, sure of its right to reflection recommended by the Qur’an and the practice of the Messenger, chose Abu Bar as “Caliph” but preferred to see Omar as amîr al muminîn (Commander of the Faithful). These different and varied titles are not empty words for the Arab people, who consider the use of words as perilous and effective as that of swords. They are tangible evidence of the vivacity of a nation and of malleability inherited from the teaching of the Messenger. |
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| None of the four Companions, who respected to the very end the principle of shûra, applied it in the same manner. Abu Bakr proposed Omar as a candidate. The latter was chosen not for that reason, but because he was a very good candidate. Abu Bakr (God bless him) presented Omar just as a Muslim giving counsel to his community would do. Omar was praised for his strong character and his exemplary probity. Accepting him as amîr al muminîn, the umma was not mistaken. Omar’s uprightness remains inimitable in the entire history of humankind. |
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| He was a paragon not only of virtue but also of intelligence and uprightness. When he was stabbed, he had time before he died to propose another model of election by nominating six candidates. |
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| This variety of models proves that these leaders are justly called Enlightened Caliphs since they knew that the truth is to be sought in reflection and in adapting political realities to the spirit of fairness that is intimately linked to contractual practice. If the latter is undertaken within the context of faith and is endorsed by the community, it must advance the spirit of the Message. |
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| The school that trained the caliphs also taught them to grant others (as they had to themselves) the right to be mistaken. They did not imprison the community in a legal straightjacket; instead they set an example of the attitude we are to have towards an ever-changing world. In this regard, the attitude of Ali (God bless him), the fourth and last Caliph, was perhaps the most instructive. After the assassination of Othman, the previous Caliph, Ali was approached as his successor. But when he was told that he would have to swear an oath to follow to the letter the principles taught by the Prophet and his two successors, he refused, saying that he could undertake to respect only what the Messenger had taught, not what Abu Bakr and Omar had recommended. It was not out of self-centeredness, individualism or contempt for the opinions of his predecessors and brothers in God that Ali did this. Ali was far-sighted; he was right; he understood. Ali was par excellence the pupil of the school of shûra and ijtihad. |
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| *Full Sails Ahead (avaible online at www.jspublishing.net) |
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