By Cyril Anderson

Page One of Two

One of the distinctive aspects of the Shia branch of Islam is the relatively strong, centralized authority known as the marjaiyyat.  This is not a central authority in quite the same regimented way as the Catholic Church; there is no Shia Pope, there are no Shia Bishops, no Shia College of Cardinals.

 However, there is a much more centralized concentration of religious authority than in Sunni Islam, and much more of a sense of a clear process of education and training to have credible credentials.  In the Sunni branch, in the current situation, all it sometimes takes for someone to have religious authority is to have more learning than the average and to declare himself a scholar.

Now, to be fair, it has not always been such an anarchic sort of state within the Sunni branch, nor is this a universal trend today.  There are some well-established centers of Sunni learning with deep roots and an established reputation; Al-Azhar University in Cairo being a prime example.  Also, traditionally, and to some extent today, within the four main Sunni schools of jurisprudence, it has been considered a requirement for a student to study under a master or masters who themselves had studied under similar masters, with a line of transmission of knowledge and teaching tracing back uninterrupted to the early generations of Islam.  Sufi orders even today are very strict about this too.  Under this system, a student must get an ijaza, or permission, from a master teacher before being able to teach under his own authority.  This is still the case wherever the traditional schools are taken seriously, and act as a sort of quality check in the form of established credentials. 

The problem is with some more recent elements, the Salafists, most notably, who consciously reject these traditional schools, and with them, the chains of teacher to student links that have traditionally served as quality checks on the knowledge of teachers and as a way to preserve the body of knowledge.  While these groups do tend to appear superficially to be very scrupulous and objective in their zealous insistence on going back to the earliest narration sources (ahadith) and analyzing these early sources directly, there is a problem in that these scholars, in rejecting the roughly 12 centuries of scholarly tradition developed since the time of the compiling of the major ahadith collections, throw out as “innovations” the efforts of this tradition to elaborate, over time, how the eternal principles of the religion derivable from the earliest sources can be adapted and applied to changing historical circumstances. This serves to sever the people from their intellectual roots and center and creates a situation where it is easy for people to go astray because there is no established way to identify who has genuine credentials to teach and be listened to, and who doesn’t.  It creates a situation where it is easier for outsiders to manipulate people in different directions for their own purposes.  Because the world in which we live today is greatly distanced both in time and in culture from the one in which Muhammad lived, it is necessary to apply some sort of interpretive apparatus to close this gap and derive guidance for today from the early sources.  The problem is that the Salafists, unlike the more established schools, tend to be less upfront and explicit in what systematic principles or method they are using. 

 In Shia Islam, however, there is much more of a sense of an institution of religious leadership accepted across the believers without a real parallel within the Sunni branch.  All people might not agree with all marja’as, and people will have their particular favorites, but there is a huge respect for the institution as a whole.

 It should be noted that there is no parallel within Shia Islam, or Islam in general, of a doctrine of “Papal infallibility.”  Mere scholars are seen as people of great honor; indeed, a popularly quoted ahadith states that “the ink of a scholar is greater than the blood of a martyr.”  However, they are seen as fallible humans with imperfect knowledge, with the ability to make mistakes, including on matters of religious judgment.  

The main reference in Islam about the importance of marjai’yyat is verse 9:122 which states: “Nor should the Believers all go forth together: if a contingent from every expedition remained behind, they could devote themselves to studies in religion, and admonish the people when they return (raja’oo) to them,- that thus they (may learn) to guard themselves (against evil). (Qu’ran 9:122)  In fact, this verse is the origin of the term marja’; (marja’ being a highly qualified scholar who can be referred to for guidance in religious matters, particularly in jurisprudential matters) a marja’ is one to whom the people return (raja’a) for answers to religious questions

 There are religious narrations attributed to the 12^th Imam stating that are often taken to support the notion that the institution of marjai’yyat as a whole is granted by the Imam the right to act as “general representatives” of the Imam during his ghaybat al-kubraa (Greater Occultation).   That is, at the beginning of the greater occultation, the 12^th Imam reportedly told his representative at the time that the believers should seek out knowledgeable scholars o the religion for answers to their problems.  As such, there is a religious foundation for a position of honor and respect that needs to be paid to this institution as whole.  As or the more complicated questions as to whether such narrations provide support for the belief that a believer must make taqleed (imitation) to one and only one mujtahid for jurisprudential matters, or as to whether such narrations support the political doctrine that political guardianship (wilayat) rightly rests in the hands of jurisprudents (fuqaha), this is another matter.  What is clear, however, is that the marjaiyyat overall, as an institution, is a sound one, with strong, deep, authentic roots going back to the time of the imams. To make an analogy with the Christian tradition, while there is no clear parallel to the figure of a Pope, there is something similar in some ways to the notion of Apostolic Sucession in terms of the community of scholars helping to form a relatively unbroken chain of transmission from the time of the Prophet and Imams down to our time.

 Religiously, there is nothing wrong with questioning a particular judgment of a particular scholar.  Practically, there is great reluctance on the part of orthodox believers to question any of the marjaiyyat.  However, the fact remains that there is nothing religiously wrong with questioning any individual scholar.  And indeed, an educated individual who sees what he believes to be an error in judgment on the part of a scholar has a duty to speak against it.  But it must be noted that this must be done in a spirit of respect for the institution of marjaiyyat as a whole and with due respect to the scholar in that he is a member of that institution.

 We must also understand the important difference between seeking necessary reforms to the system of marjaiyyat and how it functions in a particular time period in striving to follow the mandate given it by the 12^th Imam, and a wholesale attack on the institution as a whole.  One should not try to right the wrong of a problematic judgment by a particular representative of this institution or of a current sub-optimal functioning of the institution by doing the greater wrong of undermining the key institution of the religion.  In challenging a particular position or scholar, or in proposing or discussing systematic reform, one must still show due respect for the institution as a whole and of its sacred importance and centrality in the religion.  Criticism is allowed, and even necessary; however, it must always be a criticism born out of love, out of a desire to help this noble institution to function better.  There are many out there today whose critiques are clearly coming from a mean-spirited desire, not to fix or reform the institution of marjaiyyat, but to cripple or destroy it altogether.   We must beware of such people, and keep clearly in our minds the key distinction between these two types of critique.

                                     Part One              Part Two