الحمد لله رب العالمين، وصلى الله وسلم وبارك على نبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين
وبعد السلام عليكم و رحمة الله
I'am deeply affected by a current social phenomenon that is affecting the Muslims of today's world. This phenomenon is definitely linked to the fact of a lack of state structure in the Muslim world in the khilafa model. However life continues to go on regardless of a khilafa or the lack thereof. The same holds true for individual lives of people.
It saddens me to hear the stories of preachers, leaders, callers, teachers, or scholars of Islam in expressing a feeling of sighing towards this phenomenon. One such story that has prompted me to this brief article is a story I had just recently read by a teacher regarding communal economic support for the intellectual class of our society.
To be more blunt here, I feel that in this very issue, I must stoke Muslim sentiments in order to attack their hearts, or their crude and haphazard perception of Islam and the sunnah in this very topic.
What really pisses me off is when Muslims behave normally for everything else on the planet except when it comes to their own education, Islamic education. So please, by all means, take and understand that this article is meant to kick the Muslims straight in the ass until they finally get the point. Sometimes, just sometimes, people need a kick in the ass in order to see the light of day and kick them out of their delusions.
What needs to be said needs to be said. The sunnah of Allah established on the face of the earth, among many others, in the world of mu'amalaat (financial, business, cultural dealings and interactions) is a dunyawi maxim.
"You get exactly what you pay for"
If you pay for a cheap version of a product, expect that product to have deficiencies (for the most part) in its quality. Likewise, if you pay someone a lousy salary, you can expect a lousy service. Or expect a higher turnover rate as an employer.
All of Islamic learning IS and MUST be understood as the affairs of state and not just simply "dawah". What kills me here is how stupid some Muslims can be by finding general excerpts from the Qur'an or sunnah on how "the Prophet ﷺ gave dawah for free".
Yes, dawah to the message is free. Nobody remotely connected with Islamic academia and its sciences denies or opposes this practice. However the affairs of state in how Islam thrived as a societal body, even though the Messenger was not given a weekly stipend of some sort, but he was paid, either thru the spoils of war, or in communal financial aid. Moreover in the time of the Messenger ﷺ, the bartering system was still in operation as an economic derivative. That ceased or drastically reduced immediately during the time of the four khulafa since the Islamic realm was morphing from a insular dessert nomadic civilization into an international urbanized centralized civilization. With this paradigm meant the continued emphatic reliance on a monetary system, even to the point that Umar رضي الله عنه had to coin the first official mint distributing the first economic coin issued by the khilafa.
Everything is a part of dawah, and teaching is considered, socially, as dawah. In terms of legal status, it is treated more so as a business or a state subsidy. One or the other, or sometimes the state has a hybrid of both.
In our times, as everyone knows we are khilafaless. However, the fact remains that Islamic academia, scholarship, and teaching must go on, and if there is no state subsidized infrastructure to make Islamic education free for the people, then guess what? The duty of continuing Islamic teaching now falls upon the people. And the primary source of this happening is monetary income.
What kills me here is when Muslims are dumb enough to assume that Imams of masjids should do what they do for an extremely lousy salary, or even more absurd, free!!!
Allow me to explain to the average Muslims involved in community work who behave in this fashion have actually done here with this absurd notion above. What you have ultimately done was you have indirectly, (Note: key word is INDIRECTLY) did the following
1. You have told such an Imam that he has wasted his time learning the religion, he should have dedicated a portion of his life to secular knowledge in order to "get a real job". This is a slap i the face considering he did what he did to teach you your religion. And teaching and the learning process in Islam is just as much a profession as secular, or as I like to say, the natural sciences.
2. You have told him that his life has no value
The scenarios can continue to be enumerated.
Furthermore, when Muslims enact their communal policies in this regard about limiting the salary of the Imam, there are a number of problems that become born as a result of this
1. The Imam has degraded himself in his quality. He is constantly worrying about how he is going to pay a number of bills or even support his family. This subtracts from his focus on doing what he has to do to bring quality teaching and education
2. He may have to subtract his physical time to the masjid in order to get a second job to make ends meet.
3. It may cause marital discord
There is an excerpt that a brother posted in this regard on Facebook that is most pertinent in condemning this asinine thinking Muslims have about teaching or Imamship posts. It was said
"There was an Imam who wanted applied for a job at a masjid. So after he met with the committee one of the guys said to him will you do it fee sabeelillah or paid? So the Imam was on the ball and replied: 'Well the petrol in my car doesn't work on feesabillilah nor does the road tax nor the house rent nor the weekly shopping nor the phone bill… Then he said if you want a free Imam give up your job and take the helm or better still get your son to give up everything and work for free in the mosque' :)"
This quote is demonstrative of a serious dysfunctional logic found within many Islamic communities globally on this very issue.
If you expect someone to do this task for free, do it yourself. Or sacrifice your child to do it themselves. Spend 6-10 years of your life learning a science or two in Islam and come back and teach the people for free. And tell your rent collector that because you dedicated your life to Islamic dawah, your home should be free. Tell your wife that you dont charge the Masjid anything for your services so therefore you can't provide for her and examine if these individuals will accept your condition.
The emphasis of this write up is simply, you get what you pay for. Not every community is the same. There are differing dynamics. Some are small, huge, isolated, some are used more as musalah's for the ease of prayer and so the khutba in such places is only to accommodate the locals in that part of the area whereas the majority of muslims attend the main masjid. Everything has its due. So if a community does not need a full time Imam, they can do with a part time Imam or simply a knowledgeable brother filling in the place. If the community is seeking maybe one or two minor general lectures in the week and not an Imam for every salah, then that is fine. But when a community requires a full time Imam dispensing 3 or more lectures a week and possibly with some other projects, this is a full time job. The Imam must be compensated a reasonable salary ACCORDING TO the norms of that city and state. A reasonable salary is not paying the Imam a $500 a week when the average means of making an income in such a place is towards an $800 a week salary and higher. Be real.
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