OBEDIENCE OF PROPHETS & EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY

Posted by islamic web  |  at  10:18 PM

Definition of Obedience

طاع يطاع Each of these verb mean be rendered , he was or became obedient or he obeyed.

As the life of a Muslim must e directed upon a full and unreserved co-operation between his spiritual and his bodily Self, so the leadership of out Prophet embraces life as a compound entity, as sum total of moral and practical, individual and social manifestations. This is the deepest meaning of Sunnah.

The Qur’an sys.

“Whatever the Prophet enjoins you, accept; and whatever he forbids you, avoid"

"The Jews have been split up into seventy one sects, the Christians into seventy –two sects, and the Muslims will be split up into seventy –three sects" (jami, at –Tirmidhi.) In this connection it may be mentioned that in Arabian usage the number 70 very often stands for "many," and does not necessarily denote that actual, arithmetical figure. So the Prophet obviously intended to say that the sects and divisions among the Muslims would be very many, even more than those among the Jews and Christians.

And he added.

“Nay, by thy Sustainer! They do not attain to faith until they make thee (O Muhammad) a judge of what is in dispute between them and find in themselves no dislike of what thou decides, and submit with (full) submission”

And:

"Say [O Muhammad]: If you love God, follow me: God will love you and forgive you’re your sins; and God is Forgiving, a Dispenser of Grace. Say: Obey God and the Apostle, But if they turn away, behold, God loved not the Unbelievers, (Surah 3: -31,32).

The Sunnah of the Prophet is, therefore, next to the Qur’an, the second source of Islamic law of social and personal behavior; In fact, we must regard the Sunnah as the only valid explanation of the Quranic teachings. Many verses of the Holy Qur’an have an allegorical meaning and could be understood in deferent ways unless there was some definite system of interpretation. And there are, furthermore, many items of practical importance not explicitly dealt with in the Qur’an.

The spirit prevailing in the Holy Book is, to be sure, uniform throughout; but to deduce from it the practical attitude which we have to adopt is not in every faze an easy matter, So long as we believe that his Book is the Word of God, perfect in form and purpose, the only logical conclusion is that it never was intended to be used independently of the personal guidance of the Prophet which is embodied in the system of Sunnah. For the purposes of this chapter the following reflection should be sufficient. Our reasoning tells us that there could not possibly be a better interpreter of the Quranic teachings than he through whom they were revealed to humanity.

The slogan we so often hear in out days, “Let us go back to the Qur’an, but let us not be slavish followers of the Sunnah," merely betrays an ignorance of Islam. Those who speak so resemble a man who wishes to enter a palace but does not wish to employ the genuine key, which alone is fit open, the door.

And so we come to the very important question as to the authenticity of the sources, which reveal the life and the sayings of the Prophet to us. These sources are the ahadith, the Traditions of the sayings and actions of the Prophet reported and transmitted by his Companions and critically collected in the first few centuries of Islam. Many modern Muslims profess that they cannot rely upon the body of the ahadith on which it rests. It has become a matter of fashion in our days to deny, in principle, the authenticity of hedith and, therefore, of the whole structure of the Sunnah.