Islam's Reformers .pdf

hesitancy about acts of disposal concerning the inheritedproperty) because it belonged to orphans. As Muhammad ibnSîrîn reported, ’Ubaidat as-Salmânî divided the property ofinheritance and distributed it to the orphans. Then he orderedthem to slaughter a sheep. It was cooked and given to thepeople mentioned in the âyat and they ate it. And he said, ‘If itweren’t for this âyat, I would pay for the sheep.’ It is not fard butmustahab to give something to these people.” As it is seen, theinheritors will give as much as they want to. Nothing can betaken away from them by force. Sayyid Qutb changes the word‘present’ in the âyat into ‘existing at any place’. No Islamicscholar has made such a change up to now. The person whotranslated this book from Arabic might have understood SayyidQutb’s error and tries to explain it away by saying that it ispossible to take inheritance tax from the inheritors and give it tothose who are not inheritors, thus changing the âyat altogether.It was quite a long time ago when the Islamic scholars predictedthat one day the ignorant would be religious authorities andnothing would remain for the Devil to do.In his book Fî dilâl al-Qur’ân, attempting to interpret the33rd âyat of the sûrat al-Mâ’ida, Sayyid Qutb writes the ijtihâdsof the four madhhabs and says, “In this respect, we considerImâm Mâlik’s opinion to be worth preference. We are in favourof his opinion.” This writing of his again shows that he is not amember of any madhhab, that he thinks of himself as superiorto the imâms of madhhabs and that he knows nothing of theknowledge of usûl al-fiqh. A few pages later, in the subject ofpunishing the thief, he gives the ijtihâds of the four madhhabsand says, “But Imâm Abû Yûsuf opposes al-Imâm al-a’zam, anda third point of view, different from the other two, comesforward,” and thus he uses indecent, irreverent terms againstthe imâms of the madhhabs and their ijtihâds. He thinks ijtihâdsas mere thoughts and ideas. On the contrary, Islamic religion isa religion of good manners and beautiful morals. Islamicscholars have been the representatives of Islamic religion ingood manners and beautiful morals, and they have introduced itto the world as such. Sayyid Qutb differs from Islamic scholarsin this respect, too.When interpreting the 93rd âyat of the sûrat al-Mâ’ida, hesays, “About the context of this statement in the Qur’ân, I couldnot find a way of interpretation which relieves one’s soul among- 234 -