Question:

Please explain about imitation and its position in Islam.

Answer:

A very important rule that every Muslim must know and pay attention to, is lack of authority of conjecture in Islam. Almighty God has emphasized in different verses of Quran: «إِنَّ الظَّنَّ لَا يُغْنِي مِنَ الْحَقِّ شَيْئًا» (Yunus/ 36) which means “Undoubtedly, suspicion does not reveal anything from the truth” and has blamed some people for following conjecture and has said: «إِنْ يَتَّبِعُونَ إِلَّا الظَّنَّ وَإِنْ هُمْ إِلَّا يَخْرُصُونَ» (Yunus/ 66) which means “They do not follow anything but conjecture and do nothing but conjecture”! This means that beliefs and deeds of Muslims must always be based on certainty and a belief and deed which is based on conjecture is not right and acceptable by God. This is while, imitating others in beliefs and deeds, meaning following their words and deeds without knowing their reasons, will only cause conjecture unanimously by all Muslims and will not cause certainty and yet, based on God’s clear word “will not reveal anything from the truth”. But the reason of those who believe imitation in deeds is permissible is that they assume deeds are different from beliefs, while this difference is not proved in Islam and God’s word in Quran is general and includes both beliefs and deeds. This means that every Muslim, just as he learns reading and writing and other necessities of his life, must learn his Islamic beliefs and deeds and should not accept any belief and deed without a definite and certain reason and do not perform it. As his Excellency Mansoor Hashemi Khorasani has stated in the book “Return to Islam”, definite and certain reasons are the Quran verses and Mutawatir narrations and of course hearing directly from God’s Caliph on earth, and this is pure and complete Islam which is not infected by conjectures.