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Bismillah Ar-Rahmaan Ar-Raheem.
Alhumdulillah. Peace and blessings on Muhammad (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam), his Noble Companions and Family.
Brothers and sisters…
Assalaamualaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh
Audio on http://www.islamiccenterdc.com/apps/videos/videos/show/18760786-leadership-legitimacy-power-authority-in-islam-by-imam-muhammad-al-asi-with-q-a-11-18-2007-toronto (11-18-2007)
LEADERSHIP, LEGITIMACY, POWER AND AUTHORITY IN ISLAM
Sometimes a person when speaking to an audience runs into a difficulty when he has a mixed audience. Some in the audience are Muslim, some are not Muslim, some are educated Muslims some are not, etc. etc. We think today there's more or less a homogenous type of audience. All of us are Muslims. We don't know if anyone here is not a Muslim? So we'll be addressing ourselves to a particular range of thought processes that doesn't involve the non-Muslims and we're going to take a lot for granted in doing that, meaning we're going to assume on your behalf (that) you have enough information to fill in the blanks of what we're going to try to express. In the case that I fail and I assume too much then I'm as humble as to be approached after the presentation with what you have on your mind and hopefully after this presentation you'll have more than what you can deal with on your mind.
The title, as has been mentioned by the introduction, has to do with leadership and then from leadership we have the few issues of legitimacy, authority and power. The issue of leadership is unfortunately an issue that some of us, Muslims, have placed so much attention on that we have lost some of the details that go into it. That may sound contradictory but looking at the practical condition that we are in that's where we are and some of us Muslims have almost sidelined the issue of leadership to such a degree that it really does not figure any longer into our Islamic personality. To break that down a little further I would say that not many of us want to speak about the issue of leadership in the public venues that we have. From time to time you have a conference, you have a program, you have a congregational event, you have a khutbah, you have a lecture or a sermon but in all of these how many of us know how to approach this issue with a balanced mind that is practical and that takes into consideration the brotherhood of all of us, Muslims, from whichever background we may come from?
إِنَّمَا الْمُؤْمِنُونَ إِخْوَةٌ
Of a certainty, committed Muslims are brothers of each other… (Surah Al Hujurat verse 10)
We think that is a granted proposition in the public Muslim mind. So why are we amiss when it comes to this issue? One of the problems is that we, ourselves, have not elevated our thinking processes to the degree that we can sort out this issue of who's going to be the leader of the Muslims- whether that leader be in a local area or whether that leader be in a larger, (let's say), transnational or international area. We're almost blank when it comes to this even though the ayaat in the Qur'an are plenty and the instructions of the Prophet are abundant. First we would like to say that Alhamdulillah most of you here are in the prime of life where ambition is part of your psychology. Some of us, Muslims, who have reached a latter part of our life can be characterized by a lack of ambition, not to say broken spirits; (but) you in the first stages of life should have enough ambition so as to take on the issues that have to be understood. Our minds have to be at work when we take on these issues. Now, I just made that as a general introduction. Now let us try to get down to the nitty-gritty of this subject matter.
We know that we have somewhat of an irreconcilable definition of who the Muslim leader is. That's not because the Qur'an and the Sunnah are not clear on the issue. That is because we, ourselves, are not clear on the issue. Let's understand this very well. We hope we are as mature as to say if we do have any discrepancies or any misunderstandings pertaining to an issue we refer it to Allah and to His Apostle.
فَإِن تَنَازَعْتُمْ فِي شَيْءٍ فَرُدُّوهُ إِلَى اللَّهِ وَالرَّسُولِ
… and if you differ, refer to Allah and His Messenger. (Surah An Nisa' verse 59)
Is that clear? That's clear! Ok- so if we do have an issue that we have to refer- this issue is the issue of leadership, legitimacy, authority and power. We have an issue here that we can only refer to Allah and to His Rasul. OK- so what do we have on this issue? How do we begin to just think? Let's get our minds thinking about this matter instead of staying the political orphans that we are in the world today. Let's get our minds to think about this issue. It's about time! Do we have to sacrifice (and) do we have to suffer more than what we are going through to begin to think about (it)? How long is it going to take us to begin to think about an essential and a pertinent issue (such as) how to consolidate an Islamic leadership? We know some of you are not very familiar with the language of the Qur'an (and) it's going to take a little translation to bridge the meaning but this is how it has to be done. For those of you who are familiar with the language of the Qur'an, the ayah says
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنكُمْ ۖ فَإِن تَنَازَعْتُمْ فِي شَيْءٍ فَرُدُّوهُ إِلَى اللَّهِ وَالرَّسُولِ
O you who are securely committed to Allah, obey Allah and obey the Apostle and those who are entrusted with authority from among you… (Surah An Nisa' verse 59)
Now, if we just think- this is what's required, a little thought. If we take this ayah, remember, there are many other ayaat in the Qur'an that have the word ta'a or its derivatives in them. So when we take this ayah we realize that Allah is saying (or) addressing Alladhina Aamanu and here, it is not necessarily Al Muslimin; it's a quality above just an average civil Muslim. This is another distinction that is not very clear in the public mind that we all share. Sometimes or rather most of the times we just equalize Al Muslimin with Alladhina Aamanu. If these were equivalents then we would have the contexts of the Qur'an making them equivalents but we have a specific delineation between the two. In an ayah in the Qur'an
قَالَتِ الْأَعْرَابُ آمَنَّا ۖ قُل لَّمْ تُؤْمِنُوا وَلَٰكِن قُولُوا أَسْلَمْنَا
The A'rab came and said that we are committed Muslims too; say to them: you haven't committed yourselves to Allah but say that you are Muslims … (Surah Al Hujurat verse 14)
So we do have a difference between these two groups of people. Be that as it may require our thoughts, Allah here is saying
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنكُمْ
O you who are securely committed to Allah, obey Allah and obey the Apostle meaning obey Allah and obey Muhammad… (Surah An Nisa' verse 59)
So our obedience is due to Allah and to His final Messenger. Now, (in) what follows Allah doesn't use the word obey. He says
وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنكُم
… and those who are entrusted with authority from among you… (Surah An Nisa' verse 59)
He didn't say Wa ati'u Ulil Amri minkum. Which means what to us? It means that our obedience is due to Allah and to His Messenger and by leaving the word obey out from the third category in this ayah (i.e.) Ulil Amr it is by inference that we obey those who are in charge of authority from among us meaning as long as those who have authority among us are obedient to Allah and His Prophet then we are subject to their authority and their power. So legitimacy in its original state belongs to Allah and His Prophet and then by extension authority and power are relegated to those who are entrusted to authority among us. Now here's where we have our lack of thought. Here's where we encounter in the Muslim mind as lack of thinking and here's where we're going to help you out. So far we haven't used the word… Because we as Muslims basically in this world unfortunately have defined ourselves by traditions and we have inherited basically two bags of traditions or two packages of traditions. One of them is called Sunni and the other is called Shi'i. None of these we will encounter in the encyclopedic information to be found in the Qur'an and in the Sunnah- there's no such thing. We do have the word Sunnah and we do have the word Shi'ah in the Qur'an but we don't have the traditional understanding that we have today that defines these two words. The word Sunnah in the Qur'an basically means a social law and the word Shi'ah in the Qur'an basically means partisan.
قَدْ خَلَتْ مِن قَبْلِكُمْ سُنَنٌ
Before you, you had an experience of social laws … (Surah Aal Imran verse 137)
هَٰذَا مِن شِيعَتِهِ وَهَٰذَا مِنْ عَدُوِّهِ
… this person being from his partisans and this person being from his enemy … (Surah Al Qasas verse 15)
So if we can understand that our affiliation with Allah and His Prophet require us to extricate ourselves from our traditional understanding of Allah and His Prophet we can begin the right course. We can take the first step in the right direction. So we go back to the ayah
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنكُمْ
O you who are securely committed to Allah, obey Allah and obey the Apostle and those who are entrusted with authority from among you… (Surah An Nisa' verse 59)
Of course, here, if you know the linguistic construct of this ayah it's going to help you understand what Allah is saying. It says
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنكُم
O you who are securely committed to Allah, obey Allah and obey the Apostle and those who are entrusted with authority from among you… (Surah An Nisa' verse 59)
The ayah doesn't say Ulil Amri Alaykum and the ayah doesn't say Ulil Amri fikum. If you understand what a traditional Sunni is, (we're using this with a grain of salt), and if you understand who a traditional Shi'i is, (and we're also saying this with a grain of salt), then you will understand that we are not understanding what Allah is saying, (we can be frank with ourselves- it's no problem), because the way history has worked itself out we have a crowd of people who will obey those who have power because they grabbed it and the way they are interpreting this ayah- they don't come out and say this obviously; there's nothing you're going to find in the books and the references of a particular group of Muslims. It's not written there, it's practiced! So whoever is in power for those who subscribe to the traditional Sunni understanding of the way power is launched or practiced they will obey those who have power and those who have power may have grabbed power, seized it by force or did whatever they did in what are considered to be "non-constitutional" ways but they end up having power therefore we end up obeying them. There's no legitimacy for that from the Qur'an or from the Sunnah because Allah doesn't say Ulil Amri Alaykum. He doesn't say that! So there is no legitimacy for those who have acquired power in our days for those who have acquired power most of the times by the military. The military grabbed power therefore we going to have to obey them. That's not what the Qur'an and Allah is saying. So that addresses one segment of the Muslims.
The other segment of the Muslims say that there is a type of inherited power. Once again, you're not going to see this written in their books. You will not find this located in their references but the way the practice has become through these traditions is that through a matter of one generation after the other there is something which appears to be like an automatic leader that the Muslims have. The way they've "read" this ayah- all of us read it the way it is in the Qur'an, (i.e.) Ulil Amri minkum but the way it's practiced is Ulil Amri fikum. The ayah is not saying that. So neither are the traditional Sunnis right nor are the traditional Shi'is right. Now we've managed to make everyone here upset! We're sorry. We're not doing this of our own choice. What we're doing is taking an ayah from the Qur'an which has the rest of the whole Qur'an as a support system to it and understanding it and inviting you also to understand it along with us.
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنكُم
O you who are securely committed to Allah, obey Allah and obey the Apostle and those who are entrusted with authority from among you… (Surah An Nisa' verse 59)
So when we say minkum, here we have a type of interplay between Alladhina Aamanu which is at the beginning of the ayah, at ta'a which permeates the ayah and then minkum which becomes a reference back to Alladhina Aamanu. So Alladhina Aamanu are a crucial part of understanding what leadership means as per Allah and His Prophet. Now, if we can understand this- this is not difficult! We're not here trying to explain some rigid or very challenging philosophical concept.
وَلَقَدْ يَسَّرْنَا الْقُرْآنَ لِلذِّكْرِ فَهَلْ مِن مُّدَّكِرٍ
We've facilitated this Qur'an for the process of you being able to conscientize it. (Surah Al Qamar verse 17)
Now if we take this accessible meaning and we take a look at our first generation of Muslims- this is also an area in which when we begin to speak about it we're pigeon-holed; someone almost automatically is going to try to categorize where the speaker is coming from. Right now you are on traditional alert because what we said is we are going to go back to that first generation of Muslims and here's where your traditions are going to begin to kick in. "What is he going to say here?" If you can just put your traditions aside and take an objective and selfless look at ourselves. The Prophet passed away and these ayaat and these instructions from His Prophet are available to us. OK- Arabia with the undisputed leadership of Allah's Emissary and Apostle are we speaking about the end of the enemies of Islam? The enemies of Islam were there. They were there in Arabia and they were outside of Arabia . There were many areas of hostility to Islam. As a given among us who have survived our traditions, meaning even though we are traditional Muslims we know that the major powers of that time were opposed to Islam. There's not going to come along any common sense Muslim and say "the Persian empire or the Byzantine empire were friends of Muslims." That's a given. So we know that outside of the Islamic territory of that time there were, (in today's words), superpowers that were opposed to this Islamic leadership and therefore this Islamic legitimacy, authority and power. The problem we have though is inside of our Islamic beginnings (and) our Islamic genesis in Arabia this House of Islam that during the last few years of the Prophet's lifetime took on an exponential growth so we have in Arabia those who said we are Muslims but in reality they harbored pre-Islamic tendencies. They wanted to go back to their own ways and their own ways formed the first asabiyah. (We're going to take for granted that you know what the word asabiyah means.) There was an asabiyah within this Islamic order that wanted to claim this Islam within its own asabiyah. So when the decision had to made, (i.e.) who's going to lead the Muslims it was not made with an ignorance of this asabiyah. For those who are having difficulties with two negatives in one sentence- the decision to choose the first leader of the Muslims was done knowing that there is a force of asabiyah that is just beneath the Islamic surface. So did it have a rationalization of choosing a lesser qualified person for the leadership of the Muslims to take into account what that asabiyah could do if the most qualified Muslim were to take charge and then we were going to have an outbreak of internal civil strife from the first day that the Prophet passed away. This is what we are going to have to think out- was it a wise choice for the Muslims to do what the Muslims did? Or they did what was a second priority and not a first priority. O help you along these lines (and) to break it down further for you- the Muslims chose from the pool of Alladhina Aamanu the first one to lead the Muslims. The first one to lead the Muslims was Abu Bakr (radi Allahu anhu). Whether you agree with it or don't agree with it, that's a historical fact. That's what happened. The question is: was it wise to do it that way or was it not wise to do it that way? OK- let's assume for a moment that the Muslims were not going to choose Aba Bakr, (i.e.) they chose not to have him as the leader of the Muslims and they chose to go for the most qualified person to lead after the Prophet and that was Imam Ali (radi Allahu anhu). What would the impact of that choice have been on the asabiyah that was kicking just beneath the Islamic civil surface of things? What would have happened? We say to you, (and this is a matter of our thoughts common thoughts that we can deliberate on in a friendly and brotherly manner without tensions and without recriminations), that this would have sent a message to the nominal Muslims at the time who in the last years of Islam in the tens of thousands became Muslims- the majority of Muslims we had at this time were those who saw in the last years of the Prophet that Islam now is the wave of the future (so) let's jump on this Islamic bandwagon. They became the nominal Muslims that they became. So now you have, from these nominal Muslims point of view, the Prophet's cousin as the leader of the Muslims (or) the Prophet's son in law as the leader of the Muslims (or) the person who was brought up in the Prophet's household the leader of the Muslims- how would that impact this asabiyah that we are going to see more of in the years to come? How would that have impacted the Muslim public opinion if that was the choice of the Muslims at that time? We think, (I haven't done an exhaustive study of this but believe me I've spent a lot of time in this area), in that day of Saqifa, (i.e.) the day when the Prophet passed away, the day of his burial- when that decision was made Abu Sufyan who is a known character for opposing the Prophet until the very last year of Islam came to Ali and said extend your hand. Let me be the first to pay allegiance to you as the leader of the Muslims. Now we ask you, was that statement done out of sincerity? Was it said out of sincerity? Or was it said so as to feed on this asabiyah that was going to eventually cause trouble for the Muslims later on, as much as they tried to bring it under control in those first 40 years after the Prophet? We don't know how you're going to read history and we don't know how you're going to respond to this but it is definitely an area that we're going to have to come to terms with. We don't know how much you know of what happened as Islamic history unfolded after this but we do know that, generally speaking, the Muslim mind has taken extremist positions on looking at what's supposed to be our common experience. This is supposed to be a part of history that belongs to us and we're not going to be able to benefit from this history if we're going to approach it with preconceived traditions. It doesn't need that. Let's put these traditions aside and try to explain this history to ourselves in a way that we will learn from it, not in a way that's going to turn us off and not in a way that's going to freeze our positions. We don't need ice in this area. We need to thaw this ice and bring some understanding to it because those of you who know a little more about this coming history are going to see how this asabiyah was going to regroup and how it was going to burst out and make a comeback and the Islamic leadership that we had that was not tainted by this asabiyah was going to wither away and was going to be replaced by what today some of us call nationalism or others may call ethnicism and then the offshoot of this which is sectarianism. All of these were going to have their way of coming back. We're human beings and the people that we're speaking about in that time frame were also human beings; so if we have an Islamic movement or if we were going to have an Islamic authority are we not going to have a matter of asabiyah again? Did it go away? We've had 1,400 years of trying to shrink this asabiyah. This asabiyah's like a cancer to the Muslim body politic (or) to the Muslim body in general but have we had enough diagnosis of it so that it doesn't re-present itself in our day? You may come from some country in Asia or some country in Africa . This is mostly where the Muslims are. You may consider yourself very close to an Islamic movement or an Islamic organization or an Islamic authority- in and around whichever club of Islamic momentum you identify with, there's no asabiyah? You tell us today- you don't encounter this asabiyah? We've had 1,400 years to defeat it but we chose not to think about it. If you don't think about something, of course it's going to stay alive. It's going to live off of our ignorance, our inability and unwillingness to bring it within the range of our thoughts. So why don't we do it? What's wrong? Those of us who attempt to do it come out with a vocabulary that is offensive to other Muslims. Why? Because that vocabulary draws not on the Qur'an and the Sunnah, it draws on the traditions that have nested within our society. We don't need that. Come on! We can't have a fresh start at this? So you tell us after we've taken a lot for granted (and) we've tried to believe that within you, you have enough information to understand what we are saying- so today when we speak about Islamic movements- we haven't even mentioned any particular organization of committed Muslims- we're talking about, once again, the pool of Alladhina Aamanu, we're not just speaking about the Muslim Joe Blow out there, (so to speak), or the person who is uneducated or not initiated- we're speaking about the cream of the crop of today's Muslims who are in the Islamic movement in the world- whichever degree of success it is at or whichever level of failure it is dealing with; we're speaking about these types and they don't have an asabiyah?! You show us an Islamic breakthrough that doesn't have this asabiyah within it. If you can point to it and show us where that exists we're willing to reconsider everything we've said to you from the beginning of the ayah
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَأُولِي الْأَمْرِ مِنكُم
O you who are securely committed to Allah, obey Allah and obey the Apostle and those who are entrusted with authority from among you… (Surah An Nisa' verse 59)
up until this very day. The fact of the matter is we've had this asabiyah during the Prophet's time, we've had it after he passed away, we still have it today even though it should have almost been eliminated if we just had the objective mind to bring it within our common thoughts and deal with it as we are supposed to deal with it. In the interim there's a lot of details. We can speak about the first 30 years after the Prophet or the 40 years of Islamic governance beginning with Al Madinah and then we can speak about what happened after that and how this asabiyah made a comeback and usurped Islamic authority.
Let us just wind down, (we know we've taken our time share here), by saying that the Prophet's struggle began as an issue of legitimacy. When we speak about legitimacy, authority and power we've taken the Islamic discourse of the seerah to another degree because the conventional way of speaking about it is "the Prophet was involved in da'wah and in tabligh." OK-
وَبِالْحَقِّ أَنزَلْنَاهُ وَبِالْحَقِّ نَزَلَ
It is by the truth and the fact that we have brought this Qur'an and it is by the truth and haqq and fact that it did descend. (Surah Al Isra' verse 105)
The translation that we have is truth. Al haqq is the truth and indeed the word al haqq when it occurs in some ayaat of the Qur'an it means truth but in addition to that the fine tuning of the word al haqq could also mean legitimacy because when they were looking at the character of this person in Makkah they were asking themselves is he legitimate? Does what he is saying have the attraction of authority to it? Because legitimacy is pre-authority. Does it have that to it? Then there were his distracters who said no, no, no. Just dismiss this man. So at one time he is accused of being a sorcerer, at another time he's accused of being a person who's coming and using this religious language and an ecclesiastical type of character and at another time he's just mad. These types of social accusations against him were to put a barrier between him and the legitimacy which he had. What follows legitimacy is authority. The word authority in the Qur'an has to be looked at a little more carefully. We have the word wilayah, we have the word amr- a lot of us use al amr bi al ma'ruf and an nahy an al munkar; that's a familiar sentence to all Muslims. Al Amr needs authority. After you have this popular legitimacy- you have legitimacy from Allah. There's no doubt about that! The comes (on) whether that legitimacy is going to be acknowledged by the people around. This explains the history of Prophets and Apostles. Were people recognizing this legitimacy or were they not recognizing this legitimacy? And therefore were they going to accept the next step which was the authority, al amr and an nahy. They needed that authority. There was a breakthrough and the Prophet gained this mass acceptance by the people at al bay'ah al Aqabah al ula and at al bay'ah al Aqaba hath thani. From there on the Muslims had a power base. That power base was represented by what was Yathrib that now became Madinah Ar Rasul or Al Madinah. So the history of Prophets was not a theoretical history. We're speaking about a struggle. If it wasn't for the issue of authority and power why have a struggle? There's no need for it! So people are involved in this at one level of things unlike today's world. In today's world you have generals, military men or you have these people who are born into royalty who have power automatically just because they have a tank or they have a gene. They have power and then power itself imposes authority and once you have power and imposed authority you have a propagandistic legitimacy. You see, it went in the opposite direction- power in today's world in areas that are supposed to be Islamic areas in the world the way it is, (is) you grab power then after you grab that power you gain that authority and after you have both power and authority you begin to propagandize your legitimacy. In the time of Allah's Prophet this legitimacy which was the issue of the masses, (i.e.), are you going to recognize and acknowledge and affirm this legitimacy? Once you do that then the Prophet who Allah has given authority- but (remember) if Allah has given him authority but the people are opposed to it (then) this authority is not going to be institutionalized. How are you going to make it work on people who are resistant to it? Once they acknowledge his legitimacy they accepted his authority and that formed the basis of power that became the Islamic state that we all think about and we all anticipate to become part of our social lives. So now it's done in the opposite direction to the way it was done through the struggle of Allah's Prophet.
We're sorry if we've taken a little more time to explain this issue. We hope that we have caused some of you to think and we hope also that we can out-think the traditional component of you so that we can get on with the serious struggle that awaits us to transform this world into the social image that comes to us from Allah and His Apostle.
Wa Salaamualaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakaatuh
This presentation was presented by Imam Muhammad Asi at a Seerah Conference in Toronto on 18 November 2007. The Imam previously led the daily and Jum'ah prayers inside the Masjid. His speeches were revolutionary and thought provoking, and eventually irritated and threatened the Middle-East Ambassadors who control the Masjid. Finally, the Imam, his family and other Muslims faithful to the course of Islam were forced out, into the streets. This khutbah originates from the sidewalk across the street from the Islamic Center currently under seige.
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