Al-Qaradawi and the relationship with power (3)

I explained in an article last week that Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi - may God Almighty have mercy on him - had taken from the ethics of science with great luck;

It brings together 3 main issues:

The previous article discussed the second and third issues, and the first issue is the subject of this article.

I have previously pointed out that the combination of science and movement with science is a path that we rarely knew with previous scholars such as Sheikh Al-Islam Al-Izz bin Abdul Salam (d. 660 AH), and Sheikh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH), although Al-Qaradawi did not reach their level;

With the changes and constraints that affected the movement in science in the public sphere - under the modern state - in which the difference in time and tools must be taken into account.

Among the etiquette of the scholar is to preserve “enjoining good and forbidding evil,” and to be patient “in the face of harm because of that; claiming the truth with the sultans, devoting himself to God, without fearing the blame of the blamer.”

Rather, the best jihad is a word of truth in the presence of an unjust ruler, as stated in the hadith of the Prophet.

In my opinion, Al-Qaradawi represented this meaning in many places.

The Sheikh became involved in the Muslim Brotherhood organization since his youth, and spent part of his life in it and was saturated with his thought, and even looked at it in stages of his life before he left the organization in the seventies of the last century, but he accompanied his ideology and movement, so he married it with scientific formation and production, which is a prominent feature of the Al-Qaradawi made him the most knowledgeable and educated Islamist movement at the present time, and by this he bridged a gap that the Islamic movement had suffered for a long time.

The Sheikh and others admitted, especially that he had taken control of the Brotherhood with scientific and technical disciplines, which is not compatible with the ideology of the Islamic movement and its project, which requires a different training that is not available to the owners of these disciplines, no matter how knowledgeable they may be through their personal efforts.

For example, Al-Qaradawi was very interested in the affairs of Muslims, and he always asked those who visited him about the latest news of his country (that is, the country of the visitor).

And it came in some of the antiquities that “whoever does not care about the Muslims is not one of them,” and this saying - even if it was narrated by Imam al-Hakim (d. 405 AH) and others and made it a hadith that is raised - is not true from the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, but its true meaning is related to the concept of the nation, which is One of the key words for understanding the "Qaradawi phenomenon", which I discussed in my first article in this series.

And both matters - I mean the dynamism of religion and the concept of the nation - are related to a central religious concept that caused an old jurisprudential and rhetorical dispute, which is the principle of enjoining good and forbidding evil, in which the Mu'tazilites emphasized it until they considered it one of the five principles of their sect, and the Kharijites slandered it until they came out - with weapons - against every ruler;

The slightest disagreement.

Imam Badr al-Din bin Jama’ah (733 AH) mentioned that one of the etiquettes of a scholar - in himself - is to preserve “enjoining good and forbidding evil” and to be patient “in the face of harm because of that; claiming the truth with the sultans, sacrificing himself to God, and not fearing blame for him.” blame".

Rather, the best jihad is a word of truth in the presence of an unjust ruler, as stated in the hadith of the Prophet.

In my opinion, Al-Qaradawi represented this meaning in many places during the Arab revolutions in their five countries: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, which caused him a lot of trouble in the era of the so-called "counter-revolution".

Which, in addition to his old age, caused him to retire from the scene, after his support for the revolutions constituted a great popular asset to him.

Even some of those who slander him now followed him in his first stage;

In the hope of obtaining what happened or getting close to it, but they turned against him after the revolution became a debtor, not a spoiled one!

The Sheikh saw that these revolutions fall under the door of enjoining good and forbidding evil.

With the aim of establishing justice and fighting the injustice that the repressive regimes and the counter-revolution and its stooges have turned into violence, terrorism, sedition and civil war;

Until Sheikh Ali Gomaa said, addressing the Egyptian army in a leaked meeting: “Blessed are those who killed them and killed them,” and “Strike in the full,” in an explicit text to legitimize the killing of demonstrators in Egypt, and close to it is the position of Sheikh Muhammad Saeed Ramadan Al-Bouti - may God Almighty have mercy on him - who He wished to be one of the members of the "Syrian Arab Army" that was killing and bombing civilian demonstrators, and forcing some of them to utter what is blasphemy as appeared in some videos. Indeed, al-Bouti described the members of this army as having nothing between them and the companions of the Messenger of God "unless they observe the right of God in Themselves”, which includes support for the regime’s policy and the actions of its soldiers, especially since he did not record any criticism of the regime along the line.

The principle of "enjoining good and forbidding evil" - in its contemporary applications - is related to 3 issues:

• Avoid riot issues

• Detachment from passion

• Should knowledge not be used as a means to fulfill its needs, and I will elaborate on these three issues.

The first issue: "riot issues"

or "the evil of issues" as it was called in our heritage;

Imam Al-Ajri mentioned - in the Attributes of the Scholar - that “if he was asked about a matter, he knew that it was one of the issues of rioting, and that which bequeaths sedition among Muslims, he is excused from it, and the questioner is returned to what is more deserving of it than the mildest thing that is possible.” - That “the worst of the servants of God are a people who love the worst of issues; they blind the servants of God with it.”

And the most evil issues here have two meanings: perversions of science issues that disturb the people of knowledge, and distracting the public by legitimizing unjust policies such as justifying murder and injustice and denying people’s grievances and their rights. The second meaning here includes sedition of people from their religion;

Because scholars are supposed to set an example and report on God.

We have seen in the era of the Arab revolutions types and colors of rioting issues;

Although not all the sheikhs were required to be revolutionaries;

Rather, they should do their duty to deny evil or not praise falsehood, which is the weakest of faith.

Al-Qaradawi was brave in supporting the Arab revolution when others cowardly became cowardly, and this is what made people gather around him in Tahrir Square after Mubarak’s departure. Before that, he had called for a million-dollar demonstration that made Mubarak’s regime mobilize Sheikhs Ahmed Al-Tayeb and Ali Gomaa to respond to him in an attempt to cordon off protests by prohibiting demonstrations at the time. But the two sheikhs soon joined the revolution's passengers after Mubarak left!

The second issue: detachment from passion

Al-Ajri mentioned - in the description of the scholars whose knowledge has become a proof against them - that they seek knowledge from what their whims and desires accelerate, and this applies to Al-Qaradawi’s opponents who fluctuated and contradicted a lot during the Arab revolutions and then during the counter-revolution, from supporting the regimes that were protested against, then joining the gains The revolution after its success, and then back again to support those who defeated and support the military coup against the elected president.

Al-Qaradawi - within the limits of my follow-up to his intellectual path, my knowledge of him and my work with him - only came out of personal conviction and religion, whether he was right or wrong;

His Sufi religion and upbringing prevented him from knowingly seeking his own whims, making him a means or a ladder, or being involved in inciting unlawful killings, and his protest movement inclination prevented him from supporting the regimes in their brutality and reversal with them, and if he was afflicted by mixing with some regimes such as Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad. He did not praise its people as others did within the limits of my knowledge, and I have seen him in some situations praising - cautiously - mentioning the positive aspects in which his opinion intersects with the policy of a regime (such as praising the Syrian regime's support for the resistance, for example), and - in places - providing advice to some leaders, as happened with Gaddafi and Assad before the revolutions stage, and he also directed some criticism, as he did when he criticized the handshake of the Emir of Qatar with Peres, and when he criticized the expansion of the framework of interfaith dialogue to include some Israeli Jews and boycotted its activities later.

The political and personal passions are equal in this, as the approach of the Sheikh who called him “the jurisprudence of facilitation” may sometimes be confused with the jurisprudential concept of “choice by lust,” which was permitted by some of the later jurists;

As long as it is a choice from among the recognized schools of thought, and it is possible - in my opinion - to distinguish here between lust in the sense of personal inclination, and lust in the sense of aligning with a specific ideology.

And if people differ in choosing to deviate from rulings, then there is no doubt that ideological bias falls under the section of ijtihad that is right and errs, and in which I disagree with it, but it remains as a matter of error, not accusation.

Nevertheless, I thought of the sheikh that his jurisprudential facilitation stems from his prioritizing the lawsuit (in which it is tolerated) over the jurisprudence (in which it is strict and discipline), and then his jurisprudential choices may be mixed with religious and kinetic motives, which is a branch of the predominance of politicization of the Islamic movement that is saturated with its thought and consider it as We said.

But it is to his credit that he did not speak of things under which he had no work;

By virtue of his jurisprudential preoccupations and his predominance of the lawsuit, and his kinetic concerns as well.

The role of the caller - in his conception - is assimilation and composition within the framework of the nation, cooperation in what is agreed upon and excuses in what is disputed about it, which is again due to his conception of the concept of the nation as previously.

Based on the foregoing, we can distinguish in the relationship between the world and power between 3 patterns in which the form of the relationship differs, as mere contact with authority is not a vice in itself, but rather its purpose and outcome determines the attitude towards it, and the three patterns can be identified as follows:

functional relationship

In it, the person who is mixed with authority turns into a servant and an employee with her who commands her orders and earns from her, and such a person does not have his decision and does not come from an independent vision that he works for.

An interest relationship in which the one who is mixed with the authority has a vision and a project, but he relates to the authority according to his assessments of what he sees as the general interest of his project and his nation.

This may sometimes be mixed with the interest of the movement or party group, as in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, or some religious groups operating in the public sphere who justify - for example - his support for the Assad regime by safeguarding the interests of his preaching group.

The Sheikh, within the limits of my knowledge, used to give his knowledge in charity;

For example, he did not receive a fee for his appearance on the “Sharia and Life” program, in which he appeared from 1996 until 2013, when the program was suspended. Rather, he donated his wages to some of the parties he named to the channel, and I do not know anything about the rest of his activity.

pragmatic utilitarian relationship

Its focus is personal benefit and the benefits of power, which take various forms. They may be material or moral gains.

For example, Sheikh Al-Bouti was not one of the financial beneficiaries of the Assad regime, but he was one of the favored people who were fascinated by the authority and tempted by its proximity with a political heedlessness similar to that of the righteous. official, while others are restricted.

And there is an important criterion here that can be extended on its integrity, which is freedom from following the people of power along the line, so whoever inspected it and found it only compatible with the authority and against the demands of the people, you should accuse him.

The perfect worker remains the one who frees himself from the temptation to pursue both the authority of the regimes and the authority of the masses.

He may sometimes intersect with this and at other times with that, but his condition does not always correspond to the whims of each.

Some of them may be confused, claiming that he is not keen on the whims of the public, but if you examine him, you will find that he has an eye on those in power, he approaches them and presents himself to them, as one of them did - recently - in a lengthy sermon in which he exposed Al-Qaradawi and defended unjust regimes.

The third issue: Does he not beg for knowledge to make it a tool for his personal ends?

Al-Ajri - may God have mercy on him - mentioned in the morals of the scientist that “he does not seek with his knowledge an honorable position with kings, nor does he carry it to them;

This illustrates the importance of the distinction I have made between the three modes of relationship to authority.

Al-Qaradawi - within the limits of my knowledge of him - only became connected to some rulers;

Because of his reference, fame, and movement in science in a global context, not the other way around, he was helped by his liberation from the dominance of the Qatari state when he left Egypt, and his personal independence, which was polished by his movement and his knowledge.

And even if he did not follow the path of those objecting to entering upon the sultans, which is the path of the best scholars of the Salaf, he was not one of the compliments praising their people as others did, and he was trying to harness his relationships to serve his convictions and his call, and sometimes his group, so he was right and wrong.

The Sheikh - within the limits of my knowledge - used to give his knowledge in charity;

For example, he did not receive a fee for his appearance on the Sharia and Life program that he appeared on from 1996 until 2013 when the program was suspended. Rather, he donated his wages to some of the parties he named to the channel, and I do not know anything about the rest of his activity.

From my follow-up to the sheikhs working in the public sphere over the past two decades, especially during the Arab revolutions, about which I wrote a lengthy study, Al-Qaradawi appears to be more consistent than his opponents (or critics), especially Ahmed Al-Tayeb, Ali Gomaa, Muhammad Saeed Ramadan Al-Bouti, Adnan Ibrahim and others, whose positions fluctuated from Revolutions according to the change in the balance of power, and they fell into several contradictions;

Although there are critical notes on the Sheikh's performance during the revolutions, Ali singled out them in a separate article.

Thus, we have two criteria for political passion:

• lounging

• congruence

With the prevailing positions of power along the line, and the many contradictions that correspond to the change in the balance of power;

Because politics is constantly changing, and if one of them gets involved in legislating for it, he soon falls into contradiction with the first shift in the balance of power and its interests, leaving him in the open while he is blameworthy;

Because he left his primary function, which is expressed in the Almighty’s saying: (Those who convey the messages of God and fear Him, and fear no one but God, the Most High).

It is for this reason that the councils of scholars - rightly - benefited wisdom, and those about whom Al-Ajri said: “Their life is a booty, and their death is a calamity,” and “by them the hearts of the people of truth live, and the hearts of the people of deviation die.” Leaders to be emulated, imams in creation whose tracks are traced and their opinion is reached.”