Ijtihad – Shias kontra Sunnis – Ur västvärldens ögon

En artikel som belyser varför Hizbollah och Nasrallah klarat av att lyckas i sin kamp mot väst, medan grupper som Al Qaidah och Osama bin Kharas män enbart lyckats skämma ut muslimerna, engelska, om ni behöver förklaringar var inte blyga att fråga:

Following quotations are from the book The Devil We Know – Dealings with

The New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer, an ex-CIA Officer – published

In 2008 Three Rivers Press, New York:

 

“The Sunni order is failing.  Given the character of Sunni Islam-n its lack of clerical

hierarchy and its lack of any real central authority, either religious or political – this

was destined to happen.  Modern Sunni Islam was never a force that could bring unity

or bring discipline to the Middle East.  It’s probably as well that it failed.

 

The Sunni fundamentalist have no real plan other than purifying Islam and imposing

strict adherence to Sharia law.  The Koran may have been a relevant source of law

in the seventh century, but it is not today.  Making the Koran the sole constitution for

Muslims is like Christians taking the Old Testament as their sole source of law. With

Sunni fundamentalists unable to stray far from the Koran’s literal interpretation, they

lack a constitutional or pragmatic model to follow.

 

The Shia, on the other hand, have a unique side to their religion – something called

Ijtihad, the “exercise of independent judgment.”  In effect, Ijtihad means that a

trained Shia imam may interpret the Koran according to reason and precedent; a

strictly literal interpretation of the Koran is rare in Shia Islam.  As Hassan Nasrallah

himself defined it in an interview with an Arabic newspaper, “Ijtihad makes permissible

adaptations to the requirements of time and place, permits one to respond to new

demands – upon the individual and communities, state and society.”

 

The practice has allowed the Shia to adapt much better to the twenty-first century.  For

instance, a Shia leader like Nasrallah has the authority to declare wars licit or illicit, while

a Sunni takfiri would never be allowed to compromise with a kafir, a non-Muslim enemy.

 

Unlike common Sunnis, a Shia cannot interpret the Koran on his own.  He needs an

intervening authority, a mujtahid – someone trained to exercise independent judgment

–          to help.  Nasrallah became secretary-general of Hezbollah not only because he

fought on the front lines but also because he underwent years of formal training, in

the Koran as well as subjects such as Aristotelian logic.  Although Nasrallah falls just

short of being a mujtahid, he acts as one, issuing edicts based on independent judgment,

the Koran, and the sayings of the prophet. Nasrallah’s approach to the world reflected

the fact that Shia religious education is rigorous enough, and broad enough, to maintain

much greater discipline than the Sunni can.

 

In Sunni Islam, by contrast, there is no hierarchy, and almost no discipline. A religious

education may be limited to what a self-appointed sheikh in the mosque might tell you.

Sunni takfiris, who so easily anathematize civil society and condone murder, are less

grounded in Islam. Osama bin Laden is an engineer by training.  His deputy Ayman

al-Zawaheri is a medical doctor.  The man who assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981 was

an army officer.   The Sunnis follow these nonreligious leaders unconsciously, straining

into messianic interpretations of the Koran. The Shia, by contrast, would never follow

a fatwa, a religious order, issued by someone with bin Laden’s thin scholarship.”

(pp.195-197)