Encouraging Scholars and Jurists to Speak Out Against Blind Taqlid
Leading scholars and jurists must continue to speak out against blind taqlid (particularly without regard to context).[864] There is a relatively small but growing group of scholars who are pointing to the Qur’an and even examples from the life of the Prophet which documents silence as to any worldly punishment for blasphemy and apostasy (other than that classified as treason).
It is high time that other prominent and populist scholars speak out, just as Shaikh Ghamidi, Shaikh Badawi, Prof. Kamali, Maulana Khan, Shaikh Ahmed Kutty[865] and others have done, and challenge the existing juristic rulings in a contemporary context. Indeed, this chorus must grow and continue to reiterate that the Qur’an and the thrust of prophetic teachings vindicate the right to freedom of expression and religious liberty. They must continue to proclaim loudly that while these are serious sins, apostasy (with or without treason) and blasphemy do not positively have to carry hudud penalties.Unfortunately, for a very long time, traditional scholars have helped to perpetuate an aura of infallibility and mystery surrounding religious knowledge. This has enabled some to maintain their entrenched positions as guardians of ‘sacred’ knowledge, which is supposedly inaccessible and cannot be even commented upon except by those who are deemed ‘authorized’ to do so by opaque bodies or individuals that are as numerous and transient as there are groups. This has served some of them well by enabling them to maintain their hierarchical positions and monopolies over the ‘correct’ interpretations of Islam without having to justify, explain or even make such knowledge relevant to modern realities. The disconnect between the theoretical formulations and lived realities is starkly evident in most Muslim societies, and risks making Islam effectively irrelevant in the lives of the newer generations. Prominent Islamic jurist Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya, for instance, notes:
Whoever issues rulings to the people merely on the basis of what is transmitted in the compendia despite differences in their customs, usages, times, conditions and the special circumstances of their situations has gone astray and leads others astray. His crime against the religion is greater than the crime of a physician who gives people medical prescriptions without regard to the differences of their climes, norms, the times they live in, and their physical conditions but merely in accordance with what he finds written down in some medical book about people with similar anatomies. Such is an ignorant physician; the other is an ignorant jurisconsult but more detrimental.[866]
C.