Islam's Reformers .pdf

the ones which the mufassirs mentioned. Among those which Iread, I liked the one which Ibn Jarîr at-Tabarî mentioned best,though it is not in a capacity to relieve me sentimentally.”However, for example, the Qur’ân commentary by al-Baidâwî,who has been loved and respected by all mufassirs, and also itsannotation by Shaikh-zâda explain this âyat more clearly andsatisfactorily. Hadrat Sayyid ’Abdulhakîm Arwâsî, a greatIslamic scholar of profound knowledge and an expert intasawwuf, explained this âyat at the Bâyezîd Mosque inIstanbul for many days, quoting from the annotation of al-Baidâwî’s Qur’ân commentary and from the Qur’âncommentaries by Abussu’ûd and Ni’metullah, thus satisfying thesouls of those cultured youngsters who listened to him inadmiration. If Sayyid Qutb, too, had been honoured withattending the lectures and suhba of such a profound Islamicscholar who was perfect both in bâtinî and zâhirî knowledge,and if he had attained a few drops of his ocean of knowledgeand ma’rifa, he would have understood something from theovert meanings, expressions, indications, denotations,necessitations and implications of âyats. Perhaps he wouldhave perceived what tafsîr and mufassir meant. The faid ofthose lectures, softening and purifying the hearts that were hardlike rocks and pitch-black, could make people distinguish theright from the wrong and tremble with feeling the greatness ofIslamic scholars and of the Salaf as-Sâlihîn. Surely, theyrealized the highness of the scholars of Ahl as-Sunna so wellthat they fully believed that for attaining endless bliss there wasno other way than following them. Hadrat al-Imâm ar-RabbânîAhmad al-Fârûqî repeatedly stated in his book Maktûbât thatthese scholars were the ones who were lauded in by thehadîths, “They are the prophets’ inheritors,” and “Their inkwill weigh heavier than the blood of martyrs.”Sayyid Qutb’s attempt to exploit an âyat from the Mâida sûrain order to authenticate his undervaluation of hundreds ofscholars of Tafsîr, which he parenthesizes with a laudation ofan equivocal name, Muhammad ibn Jarîr [1] , betrays the fact that[1]The following information is given under the entry TABARΑrahmatullâhi ’alaih’ in the biography section of the Turkish bookSeâdet-i-ebediyye: “Abû Ja’far Muhammad bin Jarîr (224 [A.D.839]-Tabaristân-310 [A.D. 923]-Baghdâd) was a great scholar- 235 -