Muqtada Hits the Books;
Said to aim at one day being Ayatollah
The Associated Press reports that Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr has gone back to his studies of Shiite law and jurisprudence in Najaf. He began work toward becoming an independent jurisprudent (mujtahid) in 2000 under the supervision of Muhammad Ishaq Fayyad (an Afghan grand ayatollah), AP says, but since 2003 his political duties have taken him away from his studies.
I should explain some things about how the system works. The study toward becoming a mujtahid or jurisprudent is not the same as becoming an ayatollah. An independent jurisprudent has the degrees ("permissions" from his teachers to teach the books he mastered with them). He can engage in independent legal thinking and is forbidden to blindly follow any other cleric-- unlike the laity without a formal training in Shiite law, who are commanded to 'emulate' or obey implicitly the rulings of a trained religious jurisprudent.
You can be an independent jurisprudent without being an ayatollah. Muqtada probably does not really hold the rank of hujjatu'l-Islam, though many of his followers refer to him that way out of respect. Ayatollah, in turn, is a fairly senior rank you would reach after many years of teaching and writing. You have to produce a manual of ritual and legal practice for the laity, or Tawdih al-Masa'il (clarification of issues). You have to have a fair following among laypeople. And you have to enjoy the esteem of the already-existing ayatollahs. (It helps, but it is not a prerequisite, to be from a prominent clerical family or to be a putative descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, or Sayyid.)
Even if he finishes his studies and becomes a mujtahid or independent jurisprudent, Muqtada al-Sadr would under ordinary circumstances be many years away from becoming an ayatollah. It is not
even clear that Muqtada is capable of producing the kind of detailed scholarship that ordinarily is necessary to win the title of ayatollah. He does not have the reputation of deep scholar.
It may be that Muqtada's political position will cause people to call him an ayatollah before he really earns the rank, but that will be a political effect, not an ordinary working of the religious hierarchy.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Muqtada's rival who is much his senior in age, is much more likely to become an ayatollah in the next decade.
Above mere 'ayatollah' is the position of Grand Ayatollah. There are four persons with this rank in Najaf. There are a limited number of Grand Ayatollahs in the world. Since the rank is by popular acclamation, there are disputes about who has reached that level.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/14/2007 06:25:00 AM
4 Comments:
"Ayatollah, in turn, is a fairly senior rank you would reach after many years of teaching and writing. You have to produce a manual of ritual and legal practice for the laity, or Tawdih al-Masa'il (clarification of issues)."
Sorry for the pedestrian comment, but 'clarifying issues' doesn't seem like a renewable business model to me - particularly aimed at lay persons. In other words, don't people get really bored of writing these, and conversely bored of reading them?
These types of required texts don't strike me as equivalent to say a dissertation which attempt to engage a novel aspect of scholarship for other experts, a tedious task for both composer and reader, but a common prayer book with interpretations of common rules? Or is it more like a the books that politicians have increasingly begun publishing prior to running for election? A popular tract that gives people reasons to follow without engaging in detailed argument or policy debate. A text that will lay out their direction or style of leadership within an established doctrine, in this case intended to cement a theological following rather than a electoral base.
Thanks for clarifying
I got a little lost in all the technicalities. To me, what all this means is, instead of having his militia kill women and gays whose clothing or behavior he objects to, he can now have them legally stoned or beheaded. What an impovement and victory for civility. Or am I just being a secular progressive?
A lot of religions have similar underlying "business models" when it comes to the propagation of religious doctrine by scholars.
If you're going to base your way of life off the same texts for hundreds of years, it's a given that you're going to need experts in each generation to attempt to translate/interpret/extrapolate/analyze these ancient works and explain how they are relevant to life today.
As technology and science move forward, there is always a need for religious scholars to publish new texts taking into account the new things on this planet. 200 years ago, the Catholic Church had no teachings about abortion. Today they do. That is an example of the kind of thing that any religion has to do -- i.e., apply its ancient teachings to new knowledge. Else the religion becomes pretty much irrelevant because it ceases to become a guide to how to live a "moral" life in the world as it is, and becomes more a history text of how to live a moral life in the world as it was hundreds or thousands of years ago. [Note: This is not to say that I agree with, say, the Catholic Church's teachings on abortion. Just that there was some serious scholarship put into those teachings, regardless of whether we laypeople agree with them or not.]
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