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Spirit of Islam Issue 35 November 2015
Every act of worship
has a spirit as well as
an external form.
Minhaj
is essentially based on
ijtihad
(exercise of judgement with
reasoning). Since
ijtihad
will remain operative among the Muslim
ummah
(followers of Prophet Muhammad) till the Day of Judgment,
Muslim scholars agree that differences or changes in issues related to
minhaj
will continue to be made.
Addressing the Prophet, God says in the Quran
(6: 90)
:
Those [the previous prophets] were the people whom God
guided. Follow their guidance then and say, “I ask no reward for
this from you: it is only a reminder for all mankind”.
Hence, the Prophet repeatedly adopted the manner of earlier prophets
in matters of
minhaj
. One can discover examples of this from the
Quran—for instance, exercising patience in the face of the oppression
of opponents
(46: 35)
, following the
sunnah
or practice of the Prophet
Joseph in the wake of the victory over Makkah and forgiving the
oppressors
(12: 92)
.
The differences in the
shariah
s of the prophets
is nomysteriousmatter. It is based on a proven
law of nature—that even if people’s beliefs are
exactly the same, the external circumstances
in the context of which they function can
never be identical. Even a prophet may face
different circumstances at different points
in his life. Hence, it is absolutely natural that
in the application of the
shariah
there would
be differences according to the prevailing
circumstances. That the
shariah
s of different prophets have been
different is because of the need to take into account the differences in
the prevailing circumstances that the different prophets faced.
For instance, as conditions grew severe for Prophet Muhammad
in Makkah, God commanded him to leave Makkah and migrate to
Madinah. In contrast to this, though conditions that the Prophet Jesus
faced in Jerusalem had also become severe, he was not commanded
by God to leave Jerusalem and go somewhere else. One reason for
this difference is that when Prophet Muhammad migrated to Madinah,
the conditions there were very different from those in Makkah and the
centre of Islam could very easily be established there, while at the time
of Prophet Jesus, there was no place outside Jerusalem like Madinah
where he could have gone in order to preach under better conditions.