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Hassan A Mian’s letter:
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
The Divine inspiration of the Sufis, that you have criticised
in your article ‘Tawhīd in Sufism’ (http://www.monthly-renaissance.com/jlaued97.html)
in the monthly Renaissance, is a knowledge gained by experience and should not
be commented on until it has been witnessed by the heart of the critic. Here is
a good piece of advice: leave that which does not concern you. We have been told
by the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace):
From the excellence of one’s Islam is to leave that which
does not concern one. (A sound (hasan) hadīth, transmitted by Tirmidhī and
others)
______________
Asif Iftikhar’s response:
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
The question is not only about the source of the knowledge
but also about the certitude that is ascribed to it. Sufis claim direct
knowledge for themselves through the same Divine source that was the basis of
Divine guidance given to the Messengers of God and His prophets (For example
see, Shah Muhammad Ismā‘īl, ‘Abaqāt, ‘Abaqah 11, al-Ishārah al-ijmāliyyah ila
marātib kamāl al-nafs). In al-Munqad min al-Dalāl, Ghazālī explains the level of
certitude that the Sufi attains (which by no means is less than the certitude in
religion granted to the Prophets of God):
In the next place I recognized that certitude (al-‘ilm al-yaqīnī)
is the clear and complete knowledge of things, such knowledge as leaves no room
for doubt nor possibility of error and conjecture, so that there remains no room
in the mind for error to find an entrance.
In case there is any doubt about the source of such
certitude, consider what he writes in the same treatise:
From the time that they set out on this path, revelations
commence for them. They come to see in the waking state angels and souls of
prophets; they hear their voices and wise counsels. By means of beholding
heavenly forms and images they rise by degrees to heights which human language
cannot reach, which one cannot even indicate without falling into great and
inevitable errors. The degree of proximity to Deity that they attain is regarded
by some as intermixture of being (hulūl)), by others as identification (ittihād),
by others as intimate union (wasl). But all these expressions are wrong, as we
have explained in our work entitled, ‘The Chief Aim’. Those who have reached
that stage should confine themselves to repeating the verse ‘What I experience I
shall not try to say’; Call me happy, but ask me no more. In short, he who does
not arrive at the intuition of these truths by means of ecstasy knows only the
name of inspiration (haqīqat al-nabuwwah). The miracles wrought by the saints
are, in fact, merely the earliest forms of prophetic manifestation (bidāya al-anbiyā’).
Although the Sufis believe that no further directives are
given to them after the Prophet (sws) as far as the content of religion is
concerned, yet the fact that they present their ‘prescriptions’ for the
‘application’ of the principles of the Qur’ān and the Sunnah on the basis of
their ‘direct and certain knowledge’ and therefore with the same degree of
authority that religion itself has is a sufficient cause for concern over
innovation in religion and over denial of the end of wahī with the last
Prophet (sws). What then is the philosophical difference in
their claims and those of Mīrzā Ghulām Ahmad Qādiyānī except that he was
‘audacious’ enough to term the same idea of his ‘certain knowledge’ wahī? Was
his cardinal sin just his error in nomenclature or was his concept too erroneous
per se? If the concept itself was wrong, did it become ‘hallowed’ just by being
christened as ‘kashf’ of the venerated Sufis? Isn’t that argumentum ad hominem
in the first case and argumentm ad vericundiam in the latter one?
____________
Hassan A Mian’s rejoinder:
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
The condition for the acceptance of any spiritual
inspiration or intuition is that it does not contradict the Qur’ān and the
Sunnah. This is agreed upon by the Sufis, who say, ‘any inward that contradicts
the outward is misguidance’. These spiritual inspirations and intuitions occur
to all sincere Muslims.
___________
Asif Iftikhar’s response:
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
All true ‘devotees’ are committed to their respective
religions. But that is not a necessary criterion for the truth of what they
follow (argumentum ad vericundiam). True Salafis, for example, are as committed
to their understanding of Islam as the Sufis are to theirs. Moreover, the
question is not what the conditions are for the acceptance of the verdicts Sufis
give on the basis of their divine inspiration, but whether the basis for that
inspiration itself has any justification in the Qur’ān and the Sunnah.
Therefore, your response, dear brother, proves something that is not the subject
of discussion. To put it simply, let me ask you this question once again: is
there any difference in the value of the epistemological certainty of the divine
inspiration that the Sufis get and the divine inspiration in religion granted to
the Prophet (sws)? If you believe that, unlike the case in the divine
inspiration or wahī of the Prophet (sws), there are possibilities of error in
the divine inspiration of the Sufis, then this is precisely the claim which is
refuted by the assertions of all major Sufis—as is also obvious from the
extracts I cited in my last e-mail. On the other hand, if you do believe, as do
all major Sufis, that the certitude of the Sufis in their divine inspiration is
delivered from all error, then my simple question is: what is the difference
between their kashf and the wahī of the Prophet(sws)—except in name? If your
response is what the Sufis generally give: ‘we do not bring any new sharī‘ah’,
then my question is exactly the one I ask the Ahmadīs: when absolute certainty
is ascribed on the basis of divine inspiration to a ‘prescription’ (tarīqah) for
following the Sharī‘ah more effectively, then why wouldn’t that ‘prescription’,
being a certain command of God given directly to a Sufi/the inspired person, be
God’s word itself? In short, why wouldn’t it be an addition to the Sharī‘ah—but
obviously with a different name?
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Hassan A Mian’s reply:
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
What about the word wahī being used in Sūrah Nahl that your
God sent a wahī to the honey bee and what about Sūrah Maryam when God sent her
(peace and blessings of God on the best woman ever born) His spirit... wasn’t
following him binding on her? Was she a prophetess? There is a difference of
opinion about that amongst scholars!
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Asif Iftikhar’s response:
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
And what would that make the bee: a Sufi perhaps?
There is no doubt about the fact that the word wahī is used
in different senses in Arabic language and indeed in the Qur’ān. Would you for
instance disagree that linguistically the active participle of the word can also
be someone other than Allah, for example a human (Qur’ān, 19:11) or even Satan (Qur’ān,
6:121). It’s not only this word but also almost all the terms in the Qur’ān
which became specific terms because the Qur’ān gave them a specific connotation.
Outside that specific connotation, the word obviously retains its ordinary
meanings and usage. Take words as Rasūl or Jihād for instance. I am sure you
don’t need me to give you examples of their use as specific Qur’ānic terms as
well as words with their usual meanings in the Qur’ān. My question did not
pertain to different meanings of wahī but to the specific sense in which it
applies to the certain religious guidance received by a Prophet from God. You
are therefore, my dear brother, again proving something that is not the subject
of discussion. I shall try to make my question as simple as possible this time:
In your opinion, is the value of epistemological certitude
in religious knowledge gained by a Sufi through his Divine inspiration the same
as the value of epistemological certitude in the Divine inspiration granted to
the Prophet by God to reveal His religion to him? In other words, was the
religious knowledge of Ghazālī et al that they gained through Divine inspiration
delivered from all possibilities of error – just as the religious knowledge of
the Prophet was? This is quite simply a yes or no question. Please remember that
the question is not about whether or not the knowledge of the Sufis contradicts
the Sharī‘ah. The question is about its source and the degree of its certitude.
I hope you won’t have any difficulty in answering it this time.
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Asif Iftikhar further wrote:
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
Regarding your question about Maryam (peace and blessings of
Allah be upon her), the question is not whether she was or was not a prophetess
(although in my understanding she was at least not from amongst the Rusul, the
word Rusul being used here as a specific Qur’ānic term). The question is whether
she received the glad tidings from an angel of God after the last Prophet or
before him. Another important question is whether the certainty we have on the
authority of the Qur’ān that she received glad tidings from God through his
angel is also the certainty we can have regarding the claim of a Sufi that he
too has been blessed with absolute certainty in religion through Divine
inspiration. In the absence of a Qur’ānic nass, what would the basis for your
absolute certainty be that a particular Sufi that you have chosen to believe in
is, despite his apparent sincerity not lying or, even if he is absolutely
sincere, having problems of mental delusion rather than Divine inspiration?
Also, if certitude in religious knowledge could be had in this way, why do you
suppose all the great jurists had to go to such painstaking measures to find
solutions to the problems that confronted them in understanding religion?
Wouldn’t an easier alternative have been to resort to a Sufi, who could then
have simply invoked the Theophany to resolve all the khilāfiyyāt that fill our
fiqh manuals? Of course the Shiites solved this problem by attributing certainty
of religious knowledge and infallible piety to their imams while the Sunni
jurists, after long efforts, were finally able to discover some kind of
rationale for justifying the ijmā’ of their schools to have the same degree of
certainty in the interpretation of the Qur’ān and the Sunnah and in their
derivations from these sources. The kind of certainty in religious
knowledge that the Sufis claim to have – which I don’t know if the majority of
the Sahābah ever claimed for themselves at an individual or collective level –
is the certainty that at least the Sunni jurists could not by any stretch of
imagination hope for themselves at an individual level. It’s quite a surprise
really to note that in the Sunni manuals of usūl, at least during the early
periods, one doesn’t easily find the Divine inspiration of a Sufi as the third
source of certitude in religious knowledge after the Qur’ān and Sunnah and
definitely before the Sunni ijmā'.
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Hassan’s friend’s response [a scholar]:
Someone who follows their mere whims in interpreting the primary texts is not an
upright Muslim, for they are far from the command of Allah, which enjoins us to,
‘Ask the people of understanding when you know not’ (Qur’ān, 16:43). Ibn Abbās
(Allah be pleased with him) related that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him
and give him peace) said: ‘whoever interprets the Qur’ān based on mere opinion
let them prepare their seat in Hell’. [Tirmadhī and Ahmad, in a sound hadīth].
The commentators on Sunnan al-Tirmadhī explain that mere opinion here means
without having the interpretative knowledge to be able to do so, based on the
established principles of Qur’ānic interpretation (which requires deep knowledge
of classical Arabic, the primary texts, and Sharī‘ah sciences). What your friend
has fallen into illustrates why Imam Muhammad Zahid al-Kawthari, one of the
foremost Sunni scholars of the 20th Century, wrote a short treatise entitled,
Non-Madhhabism is the bridge to non-religion.
When one veers away from the well-trodden path of Sunni scholarship, as embodied
in the scholarly output of the inheritors of the Prophet (peace and blessings be
upon him) from the four schools of fiqh, one goes from one absurdity to the
next. One falls far from the Command of Allah, and on a direct route to loss of
religion, faith, and, ultimately, to Hell.
____________
Asif Iftikhar’s response:
My very dear brother
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
May Allah guide us both to his ways and save us from His
wrath.
I have been waiting for your answer to my question for some
time now. I confess I was a bit disappointed (though by no means surprised) to
find out that your response again completely avoids answering my question. The
core question, as you will recall, was:
In your opinion, is the value of epistemological certitude in
religious knowledge gained by a Sufi through his Divine inspiration the same as
the value of epistemological certitude in the Divine inspiration granted to the
Prophet by God to reveal His religion to him? In other words, was the religious
knowledge of Ghazālī et al that they gained through Divine inspiration
delivered from all possibilities of error – just as the religious knowledge of
the Prophet was? This is quite simply a yes or no question. (Please remember
that the question is not about whether or not the knowledge of the Sufis
contradicts the Sharī‘ah. The question is about its source and the degree of its
certitude).
Essentially this is the question I have been asking right
from the beginning of our discussion. I have tried to point out earlier as well
that in none of your responses you attempted to answer this question on the
basis of either your own knowledge or that of your scholars. Whether or not the
assertions made by your friend in this latest response are correct is a separate
question to which I intend to respond soon. But even if I don’t accept the idea
that his cliques are the ultimate ‘know all’, how is it a heresy on my part to
ask them for their opinion? Why don’t they answer my question for you if you
can’t or are reluctant to? I hope the Sunnis too don’t have a policy of hiding
their religion.
With respect, love, and lots of prayers
___________
Asif Iftikhar wrote there to Hassan:
Dear Hassan
Here is the first part of my answers – as promised:
Your friend says: Someone who follows their mere whims in interpreting the
primary texts is not an upright Muslim, for they are far from the command of
Allah, which enjoins us to, Ask the people of understanding when you know not (Qur’ān,
16:43).
My questions are:
1. What meaning is Ibn Abbās reported to have ascribed to the words ahl al-dhikr
in the verse 16:43? (For example see Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr).
2. What is Ibn Kathīr’s objection to ‘Abd al-Rahmān’s view on al-dhikr in the
Qur’ān?
3. According to your own methodology, what is the occasion of revelation of this
verse? If the word originally meant: ‘The People of the Book’ on the occasion of
its revelation, what, according to your one methodology, prevents the meaning
from not continuing?
4. Also what is the denotation of the word al-dhikr? According to your own
methodology, what qarīnah (contextual factor) changes the denotation to the
specific connotation that has been given to it by your clique?
5. A translation of the verse reads (from the Majestic Qur’ān – Nawwawī and Ibn
Khuldūn Foundations): ‘The messengers We sent before you (O Muhammad) were only
men to whom we gave the revelation. Ask the People of the Reminder if you do
not know.’ Is this translation wrong?
6. The footnote to this translation gives the active participle of the verb
‘ask’ as the pagan Arabs and the explanation of ‘The People of the Reminder’ as
the Jews (that is The People of the Book).
What
objections do you have against this explanation?
7. If I were to say that the verse is telling the pagan Arabs that if they think
it strange that the Prophet of Allah is a human, then they should ask The People
of the Book (the Jews) whether the messengers before the Prophet were men or not
– would my assertion be incorrect?
8. Even if your juristic interpretation is taken correct, the verse says:
‘ask …. if you do not know’. What if you do know? Also, in relation to the
given context of the verse, if you know and fully believe that Muhammad (sws)
was the Prophet despite being a human, do you still need to ask? Why? Hasn’t the
condition of the verse been fulfilled? Why not?
9. When you say: ‘when somebody follows his whims’, in relation to the given
context of the verse, you seem to imply that the person follows his desire
rather than conscience and therefore deliberately avoids the truth. God could
obviously imply this about the pagan Arabs mentioned in the verse on the basis
of His Divine knowledge. On what basis do you make such implications about any
person today?
More questions will follow soon, inshā Allah.
____________
Hassan A Mian’s reply:
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
People in our tradition have not been idiots. Inshā Allah
they are in Paradise. They are the scholars of Sunni Islam who have all
concurred that for a person like me and you, we need to follow a Madhab and not
use our ‘Aql to interpret the texts (and not to use the sayings of companions
without knowing theirs Isnād through traditional scholars as proofs to justify
our own whims).
See for example the fatwa of one of the biggest scholars
alive in the world i.e. Sheikh Murabat al-Hajj attached to this email. May Allah
give you and your friends the tawfīq to understand the gravity of what you are
doing in order to harm Islam and Muslims, by sowing seeds of doubt (the work of
Shaytān) in Muslims thereby depriving them of their Īmān. May He guide you or if
He does not wish to guide you, may He liberate us of your Sharr. (and it would
only be time that would prove who is correct and who is wrong as Allah has
promised to preserve this Dīn). What you have created is a clique of
orientalists in the garb of Islam. I am sorry if it hurts and if it defies your
man made logic (defined by people who according to your own testimony are not
upright Muslims), but what I am saying comes from the heart and it is enough for
me as a proof. As for the answers to your questions, I am not a scholar and
consider it bad adab to give my opinion when I am not entitled to. I will insha’
Allah search people of Light to answer your questions. If you are sincere you
yourself should be asking these questions to the scholars that Allah has used to
guide masses to his Oneness because of their sincerity and sound knowledge: you
know who they are and where to find them.
I don’t want you to reply to this e-mail as I am not a
scholar of Islam and do not answer questions on Islam. Rather I follow qualified
scholarship.
(The fatwa has not been included here as
it is on Following One of the Four Accepted Madhāhib rather than to Sufi
epistemology. The fatwa is by Shaykh Murabat al-Hajj and has been translated by
Hamza Yusuf Hanson. It can be seen on various related websites).
______________
Asif Iftikhar’s response:
My Dear Brother
Assālāmu ‘alaykum
Thank you for being candid with me. The anger with which you
speak convinces me that deep down you are sincerely committed to what you
believe in as the truth, and, therefore, contrary to the favour you have so
eloquently and easily bestowed upon me, I do not assume that your intention is
to harm Islam. I am however sorry that I cannot accept your request of not
responding to your message as this discussion started as a public debate and
must end as such for I do not think it is ethical on either your part or mine to
unceremoniously walk out of the discussion for personal reasons. I am therefore
forwarding this e-mail to all those who were willingly or unwillingly part of
this discussion right from the beginning. However, should you choose not to
respond further or to take your time in responding, I shall understand.
As requested by you, I shall not trouble you for now with
requests for answers to more of my questions on religion, but now that you have
told me that you do not wish to answer any of my questions, I do intend to make
a few clarifications in relation to some of the accusations that you made
against me. Before I do that, however, I would like to state that I never said
you couldn’t go and ask your scholars for answers to my questions. I find it
strange that scholars you think I should go to and assume that I know are
scholars you couldn’t approach for a yes or no answer to a simple question.
Is answering a simple question like that one also one of
the secrets of the Sufi Divine revelation which the Sufis, unlike the Prophet (sws)
in relation to his Divine revelation (Qur’ān, 5:67), are not supposed to
disseminate? If that is the case, then at least I can see one difference in the
Sufi Divine revelation and that of the Prophet (sws), though I still can’t
understand that if something is the truth why ‘exposing it,’ in Ghazzālī’s words
becomes an act ‘that amounts to infidelity’ [Ihya ‘Ulumi’l-Din]. Why do we then
blame the Shiite imāms for kitmān? Nevertheless, I still await the answer to my
question, which is just one of the thousand others that I still have. I have
never stopped your scholars from answering them for you. And now I shall try to
give my response to the charges you have levied against me.
Can you show me any place where I have said that the scholars
in our tradition were idiots? Please don’t put words into my mouth that I have
not used. I never said they were idiots. I don’t believe they were idiots. I
have stated this earlier, and, I state it now: I believe they were great
scholars and very pious people. My own father died with a firm faith in Sufism
and the Hanafite tradition. I have never assumed that he will be denied
Paradise for that. In fact, I pray every day that he be in Paradise. Similarly,
I also believe, as you do, that inshā Allah, the scholars of Muslim tradition
will be in Paradise. What I don’t believe however is that they were prophets or
infallible or delivered from all possibilities of error in their judgment. Also,
I agree that, in religious matters, an ordinary person should follow the
verdicts of competent scholars he can trust – unless it is absolutely clear to
him that the opinion of a scholar is incorrect in a certain matter. Therefore,
if the same faculty which enabled him to trust the scholar in the first place
now entails that he look for some other scholar he can trust in that particular
opinion, then he has the right, indeed he has the duty, to do that. If he
doesn’t find any other scholar, then obviously he has no choice but to exert his
own effort to make his decision. What I don’t believe however is that
scholarship in the Muslim world has ended with or is confined just to the four
Sunni schools. Therefore, if your heart feels that you have to trust a modern
scholar belonging to one of these four schools, and that feeling of your heart
is a sufficient proof for you, a similar feeling in my heart should give me an
equal justification to choose another scholar who does not necessarily belong to
these schools. Also, I do not mean to say that the wisdom of the past scholars
is worthless or should be ignored for trivial reasons. However, they should not
be made into another Deity or a prophet with the belief that they can never,
ever be wrong. Furthermore, the following are also my assertions:
1. I give a lot of importance to any consensus of opinion
on a matter of interpretation or on an ijtihād in religion in the four schools.
But I do not believe that there is any concurrent textual evidence from the
original sources of Islam (the Qur’ān and the Sunnah) to suggest that such
consensus is delivered from all possibilities of error and cannot be differed
from by a present scholar.
2. I believe that the only two sources which have the
level of concurrence (tawātur) that takes them to the point of absolute
certitude are the Qur’ān and the Sunnah. These two sources, established by
tawātur and ijmā‘ of the Prophet’s companions, go back to the Prophet (sws)
himself and contain the ‘content’ of religion, which content then has been
interpreted by various Muslims throughout our history. Since these
‘interpretations’ and instances of ijtihād on their basis do not have the
tawātur that goes back to the Prophet (sws) himself, we cannot say that there is
no possibility of error in them.
3. I believe that all isolated reports (akhbār ahād) are
zanni (probable) with varying degrees of probability, but it is legitimate for a
competent scholar to draw legal opinions on the basis of such a report if it is
sound in transmission, and the basis for that legal opinion already exists in
the Qur’ān or the Sunnah or the universal principles of reason, and it does not
contradict any of these bases.
4. I believe that there is only one God and that there is
no one or nothing like Him. Therefore, I reject and denounce – with all my
heart, and all my soul, and all my mind – all assertions on part of any human,
howsoever pious he may seem to you, that suggest ideas as: ‘…in reality the
Creator is but Creation and Creation is but the Creator. All these are from one
reality’ (Ibn ‘Arabi in Fusūs al-Hikm) or ‘ana al- Haqq’. (Hallāj).
5. I also believe that the Prophet (sws) was the last
Rasūl and Nabī and no one, howsoever pious he may seem to you, has any
credibility in his claim that even after the Prophet (sws), he receives Divine
inspiration from the same sources as did the Prophet (sws) and which gives him
the same certitude of religious knowledge as was given to the Prophet (sws).
Therefore, any tashrih (explanation of Sharī‘ah) or Tarīqah (prescription of a
way to follow the Sharī‘ah) on the basis of such a claim amounts to an
intentional or unintentional addition to the Shari‘ah.
As far as most matters of fiqh (understanding of the Shari‘ah
as it is contained in the Qur’ān and the Sunnah) are concerned, I too base my
decisions on the opinions of scholars I have found to be trustworthy in
accordance with the methodology I have spelled out above. But, unlike you, I do
not have your personal certitude or the Kashf of any Sufi Master to claim with
the typical Sufi calm and that another person who professes to be a Muslim has
intentions to harm Islam and the Muslims and that he intends to do the work of
Satan. I seek refuge of Allah from finding out that on the Day of Judgment a
Muslim has the right to hold me by the throat because I was wrong about him in
similar claims of mine against him. Nor do I have the certainty to know who –
whether that person be a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew or someone else – is
denying the truth of God’s message after it has become evident to him, and,
therefore, my scholars and I, unlike you and your scholars, do not make
judgments of Takfīr (in the sense of declaring a person guilty of wilful and
deliberate denial of the true faith) – a judgment we believe is the sole right
of God Almighty Himself. I do hope you and your scholars realize the gravity of
what you do when you declare such a person Kāfir as professes faith in the unity
of God and the finality of Muhammad’s prophethood (sws) and in the unaltered
authenticity of the Qur’ān and the concurrent Sunnah and accepts the pillars of
Islam. Tell me if I’m wrong that some – if not all – of the scholars that you
trust in also believe that kafirs like me – of whom the attached verdict of the
acclaimed ‘best scholar of Islam alive’ would surely have informed you – ought
to be killed if they do not accept your version of Islam – namely belief in the
consensus in interpretation of the four schools. My brother, don’t think that
people like Uthāmah Ibn Laden don’t have their scholars to rely on – or that
they are not sincerely committed to what they believe in or that there are no
chances that God will reward them for their sincerity. But that still doesn’t
necessarily make them right. This is what I have learnt from my scholars, whom
you say are not upright Muslims according to my testimony – a testimony I never
gave. My testimony is that they are good Muslims but have their failings and
weaknesses, and that they are not the paragons of perfection that are delivered
from all possibilities of error, and I reserve the right to disagree with them
and follow the verdict of some other scholar in an opinion that doesn’t convince
me. As for your charge that I am an Orientalist in the garb of Islam, I will say
this: I don’t believe that everything the Orientalists have said is necessarily
wrong. However, unlike scholars as Patricia Crone et al, I believe in the truth
of Islam as I have explained it in the points enumerated above. I love God and
the Prophet (sws) and glorify their names and believe in the Qur’ān and the
Sunnah as unaltered, authentic and final Divine guidance. And I respect and
honour all the companions of the Prophet (sws) who were true to him (as Abū Bakr,
‘Umar, Uthmān, ‘Ali, Mu‘āwiyyah et al radī Allah ‘anhum). Despite these beliefs
of mine, if you still want to call me an Orientalist, that’s your choice. Or
you could use some other invective that you like, but don’t insinuate wrongly
that I disparage scholars as Abū Hanifah or Mālik or Shāfi‘ī or Ibn Hanbal (may
God reward them for their efforts) – who never proclaimed infallibility for
themselves despite their immense stature and competence, for, to my mind, they
were great scholars and great Muslims – but they were also humans, who could
make mistakes and falter. As I love you still as a brother-in-faith whose tears
would be my tears and whose laughter would be my laughter, whose dreams would be
my dreams and whose prayer would be my prayer, I can only pray: May Allah reward
you with a good reward for following your heart even in your hate for me, and
that may He also give you the sagacity to love Him with a mind that continues to
seek the truth in the spirit that Imam Shāfi‘ī’s words epitomize:
I am convinced of the veracity of my opinions, but I do
consider it possible that they may turn out to be incorrect. Likewise, I am
convinced that the views different from mine are incorrect, but I do concede the
possibility that they may turn out to be right.
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