Islam's Reformers .pdf

neglect to warn them about Islam’s commands and prohibitions.Mawdûdî, who cannot sense the nuance between these two,attacks Islamic scholars and caliphs by writing in a haphazardway. If, instead of writing about their few faults, he had thehonour of writing about their goodness and services to Islam, hewould fill volumes of books. Especially the Ottoman caliphswere all learned, pious, just, perfect and blessed persons.An argument based on the surmise that the scholars (in thebranches) of Hadîth and Fiqh were devoid of rationalknowledge betrays an utter lack of understanding concerningthe greatness of Islamic scholars. An Islamic scholar is a greatperson who has reached the grade of ijtihâd in religiousknowledge and learned well what has been discovered up to histime in experimental knowledge and who has attained thedegree of Wilâyat al-khâssa al-Muhammadiyya in the ma’rifa ofthe heart.For the truth-seeking younger generation, who are confusedby Mawdûdî’s aggression, which is so vulgarly sordid as to callthe Muslim caliphs “irreligious”, the short biographies of somecaliphs in the history book Mir’ât al-kâ’inât are translated in thefollowing paragraphs [1] :“VI: Mu’âwiya [2] (radiy-Allâhu ’anh) was one of Rasûlullah’s(’alaihi ’s-salâm) clerks who wrote down the Qur’ân. Heacquired his prayers which asked blessings on him. He had astrong reason and intellect, much clemency, generosity andadministrative power. He was mild, majestic and brave. Helooked as if he had been created to be a sultân. He conqueredSudan, Afghanistan, many parts of India, Cyprus, going to thelast one in person. He sent troops to Constantinople. Hiscaliphate was rightful.“The lâ-madhhabî slander Mu’âwiya on account of hiscombat against ’Alî (radiy-Allâhu ’anhumâ) and grievouslyexaggerate the sad situations which might take place in anycombat. When the Ahl as-Sunna scholars give them answers[1]The Roman numeral in front of each name shows his order ofcaliphate and the Arabic numerals in parentheses show the datesof his birth and death in the Muslim calendar. Long biographies ofKhulafâ’ ar-Râshidîn, Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs are givenunder the heading “Iwâz” in the famous work by ad-Damîrî.[2] The book begins with blessings invoked on Hadrat Mu’âwiya.- 165 -