The Claims of Modernists About Imam Ash-Shafi'i

Abstract

Since Imam Shafii's thoughts contributed in constituting the principles of thinking for the Islamic nation and he was the most prominent theorist of the moderate ideology in the Islamic thoughts, he has been criticized by every opponents of what the nation has unanimously agreed upon which is the imamate of this Imam.Moreover his opponents fabricated many claims about him. These claims were brought to light again by modernists. Although they apparently follow different schools of thought, they agreed on the impossibility of forming a legal system which was achieved by the Imam. As a result, the objective of this research was to clarify the core of modernism and discover the claims stated by modernists about the Imam - personally and ideologically - then criticize and refute them. Exerting my best efforts to achieve this objective, I adopted the inductive then the analytical deductive approach. Finally, the most important outcomes of this research are: First, Modernism represents a severe epistemological disconnect from the Islamic tradition, and attempts to reinterpret Islam in a manner that does not take into consideration what is necessarily known of the religion. Then, modernists considered that the utmost care of the Imam about the Arabic Language was an evidence of the Arabic hegemony specially the Qurashi one. And finally, the reason behind their claims concerning the impossibility of forming a legal system is to release themselves from the burden of applying the Ahkam( court rulings ) and their authority.