Tradition Must Live Within Us

Peace, one and all…

Tradition is a treasure-chest.  It is the collected wisdom of our past, and of those who went before us.  It is the distilled knowledge of our forebears and the distillation process is life itself.

But, if it remains inert, if is not brought to life within us, it is merely a dead weight.  If it remains merely a memory and a theory, it will be unable to support us as we face life’s challenges.  It must be made to live through our practice – so that we too might add to that great storehouse in our turn.

It is not enough merely to know, it is also necessary to do.  Information and practice together constitute true knowledge, ilm.  When one of the pillars is missing, the house of tradition remains at best half-finished.

In this sense, it is something of a misnomer to speak of the closing of the gates of ijtihad – as if it were even possible to speak of walling off the natural and inevitable process of adapting to a changing world.  Whilst we might indeed speak of ijtihad in a juristic sense, it is important to understand that we all engage in a struggle to apply what we know to our diverse situations.  Whether we seek the advice of the learned or not, we alone are individually responsible for putting knowledge into practice – for making tradition live within our individual hearts.

The terms by which we refer to such adaptations are largely irrelevant – so long as we understand that human beings have always and will always react to their lived environments, which is to say that they will always attempt to shape them in some way.

Adaptation is both normal and natural.  Indeed, it is inevitable.  If there is an essence, an undisturbed centre, then it does not belong to this world of change and flux.  No, permanence is an attribute of God and one in which we have no true share, except insofar and inasmuch as we participate in this sacred dance of life.

Wa akhiru da’wana an il hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen.

Ma’as salama,
Abdur Rahman