The blog Volume of Interactions has a great blog entry which states something that I’ve been believing for the past few years. In his own words, he writes that Muslims are too reliant on “these religious ‘middle-men'”. I call these “religious middle-men” as the priestly class. More from the blog:
In Malaysia, we have large governmental organizations like JAIS, JAKIM, etc. making macro religious decisions for us. In our local mosques (and we tend to frequent the same mosques every week for the sake of convenience), micro religious decisions are made for us in the guise of sermons, prayer groups and neighbourhood councils.
We have ranks and ranks of imams/muftis/”learned” scholars between us and Allah — am i the only one who sees something wrong with this?
I’ve touched on the concept of priestly class a few months ago though that entry took a more general approach.
I actually didn’t want to blog on this issue and had planned to write about something else. However, an article at the New York Times encouraged me to change my plan. The article is titled “A Liberal Brother at Odds With the Muslim Brotherhood“:
MR. BANNA says one of the fundamental problems with religious leaders in Egypt is that they look to the interpretations of their ancestors and not to the Koran itself. To look directly at the book, and not at the words as interpreted by men living in a different time, would have a liberating effect, he says.
Word.
At one of the favorite blogs, Laputan Logic, he blogged on why Muslims prefer lunar calender to solar, far too long ago:
The Islamic calender on the other hand is never synchronized with the solar year because from its inception, special measures were taken to actually prevent this correction process from taking place. The intention behind this was to remove the need for expert knowledge when it came to determining the times and dates of religious observance, something that in the past had always been associated with the work of priests. This was a conscious decision by the founders of Islam as a way to prevent the rise of a priestly class or Church establishment within Islam, something to set it apart from other religions.
Unfortunately, the priestly class is taking over that job too, despite early Muslims’ deliberate attempt to not to let that happen.
