The inflexibility of Akhbarism still reigns in many of the...

The inflexibility of Akhbarism still reigns in many of the matters of akhlaq (ethics) and in social problems, even in some parts of fiqh. But now is not the time for me to expand on this.

One thing which is a cause of the popularity of the Akhbari way of thinking is their self­righteousness, which is pleasing to ordinary people, because their ideas are formulated in such a way that they seem to be claiming: "we are not saying anything we have invented ourselves, we are people of obedience and submission; we say nothing except what the Imam al­Baqir (or the Imam al­Sadiq, etc.) said; we do not speak ourselves, we only say what the ma`sumin said." In the chapter on ihtiyat and bara'a (precaution and exemption from obligation) in his "Fara' id al­Usul" the Shaykh al­Ansari quotes from Ni`mat Allah al­Jaza'iri [^31], who maintained the doctrine of the Akhbaris: Can any rational person conceive the possibility that on the day of Resurrection they will bring forth one of the slaves of Allah (i.e., the Akhbaris) and ask him how he acted, and that when he says that he acted according to what the ma`sumin ordered and that everywhere there was no word from the ma`sumin he desisted as a precaution, they will take such a person to Hell, while they will lead a thoughtless person who was inattentive to the words of the ma`sumin (i.e., an Usuli who follows the doctrine of ijtihad), who rejects every hadith on the slightest pretext, to heaven?

It is not possible! The answer which the mujtahids give is that this kind of obedience and submission is not submission to the words of the ma`sumin, but submission to ignorance. If it is really certain that the ma`sumin said something, then we must submit; but these people wanted to submit ignorantly to everything they heard.

I will give as an example something which I have recently come across, so that the difference between the rigid Akhbari way of thinking and the ijtihadi way of thinking can be seen. Previous…