Sermon 17: Among all the people the most detested by Allah
are two persons. One is he who is devoted to his self. So, he is deviated from
the true path and loves speaking about (foul) innovations and inviting towards
wrong path. He is therefore a nuisance for those who are inspired with love of
him, is himself mislead from the guidance of those preceding him, misleads those
who follow him in his life or after his death, carries the weight of other’s
sins and is entangled in his own misdeeds. The other man is he who has picked
up ignorance. He moves among the ignorant, is senseless in the thick of
mischief and is blind to the advantages of peace. Those resembling like men have
named him scholar, but he is not so. He goes out early morning to collect
things whose deficiency is better than plenty, till when he has quenched his
thirst from polluted water and acquired meaningless things, he sits among the
people as a judge for solving whatever is confusing to others. If an ambiguous
problem is presented before him, he manages shabby arguments about it of his
own accord and passes judgement on its basis. In this way he is entangled in
the confusion of doubts as in the spider’s web, not knowing whether he was
right or wrong. If he is right, he fears lest he erred, while if he is wrong, he
hopes he is right. He is ignorant, wandering astray in ignorance and riding on
carriages aimlessly moving in darkness. He did not find reality of knowledge.
He scatters the traditions as the wind scatters dry leaves.
By Allah, he is not capable of solving the problems that
come to him nor is fit for the position assigned to him. Whatever he does not
know he does not regard it worth knowing. He does not realize that what is
beyond his reach is within the reach of others. If anything is not clear to him,
he keeps quiet over it because he knows his own ignorance. Lost lives are
crying against his unjust verdicts, and properties (that have been wrongly
disposed of) are grumbling against him.
I complain to Allah about persons who live ignorant and die
misguided. For them nothing is more worthless than the Qur’an if it is recited
as it should be recited, nor anything more valuable than the Qur’an if its
verses are removed from their places, nor anything more vicious than virtue nor
more virtuous than vice.
Sermon 18: When a problem is put before anyone of them, he
passes judgement on it from his imagination. When the same problem is placed before
another of them, he passes an opposite verdict. Then these judges go to the
chief who had appointed them, and he confirms all the verdicts, although their
Allah is one (and the same), their prophet is one (and the same), their Book
(Qur’an) is one (and the same)! Is it that Allah ordered them to differ, and
they obeyed Him? Or (is it that) Allah sent an incomplete Faith and sought
their help to complete it. Or they are His partners in the affairs, so that it
is their share of duty to pronounce, and He has to agree? Or is it that Allah,
the Glorified, sent a perfect faith but the Prophet fell short of conveying it
and handing it over (to the people)? The fact is that Allah the Glorified says,
“We have not neglected
anything in the Book (Qur’an) (6:38) and in it is a clarification of
everything. And He says that one part of the Qur’an verifies another and that
there is no divergence in it as He says, “If it had been from any other than Allah, they would surely have
found in it much discrepancy. “(4:82)
Certainly,
the outside of the Qur’an is wonderful and in its inside is deep (in meaning),
its wonders will never disappear, its amazements will never pass away, and its intricacies
cannot be cleared except through itself.
Source: Nahjul Balagha Part One-The Sermons by Sharif Razi
(r.a.)
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