Difference between Din and Shari'ah
An Extract from book " Let us be muslim " by moulana Abul Aala Moududi (R A)
Difference between Din and Shari'ah
Brothers in Islam! When talking of Islam we often hear and use two particular words: one is Din and the other is Shari'ah. But very few understand the true meaning of Din and Shari'ah. Not only the illiterate, but even reasonably educated people and many religious scholars too, do not fully grasp the important distinctions between the two concepts. Due to this ignorance, Din and Shari'ah are often confused with each other, creating serious malaises.
Meaning of Din :
The word 'Din'is used in several meanings. The first is sovereignty, power, lordship, kingship, or ruler ship. The second is the opposite of this, i.e., submission, obedience, service or slavery. The third is to bring to account, to judge, or to dispense reward and punishment for actions. All those three uses are found in Qur'an.
Allah says:
The only [true] Din in the sight of God is [man's] self-surrender [to Him] (Al-Imran 3:19).
Here, Din is that way of life in which we recognize Allah alone as the possessor of all power and majesty and surrender ourselves to Him. We must not abase or humble ourselves before anybody save Him. We must regard only Allah as Master, Lord, and Sovereign, and must not be slaves or servants to anybody but Him. We must accept only Allah as the lord of reward and punishment. We should covet no reward; fear no punishment, except His. Islam is the name of this Din.
False Din arises when you ascribe real powers to anyone besides Allah, when you take anyone as a real ruler and master, as a dispenser f real reward and punishment, when you bow your heads before him in humility, when you serve him and obey his orders, when you cover his reward and fear his punishment more than Allah's. This kind of Din Allah never accepts because it is totally contrary to reality.
No other being in the whole universe except God possesses any power and might, nor does anybody else's sovereignty and kingship exist. We have not been created to be servants and slaves of anyone else except that real master who can judge us and award reward and punishment. In many places in the Qur'an these facts have been explained.
And whoso seeks a Din other than Islam. It will not be accepted from him (al-Imran 3:85).
Thus anyone who disregards the sovereignty and kingship of God, acknowledges someone else as his master and ruler, becomes his servants and slave, and considers anyone as a dispenser of reward and punishment in his win right, will never have his Din or conduct accepted by God because:
They were not enjoined anything but that they should serve God, making submission exclusively his, turning away [from all false gods] (al-Bayyinah 98:5).
God has not created human beings to server anyone except Himself. It is, therefore, incumbent on them to turn away from all false gods and reserves their submission, r their true Din, for Allah alone. They should single-mindedly devote themselves to His service and consider themselves as being accountable only to Him:
What! Do they see a Din other that God's whereas unto him surrenders whatever is in the heavens and on earth, willingly or unwillingly and unto Him all must return? (Al Imran 3:83).
How can we human beings incline to be servants and to submit to someone other than God, when all other things on earth and in the heavens are slaves and obedient servants of God alone, accounting for their deeds to no other authority than God? Does man want to adopt a deviant way for himself, some kind of independent and autonomous existence, in defiance of the entire universe?
He it is who has sent forth His Messenger with the guidance and the way of Truth, so that he makes it prevail over all ways [religions], however much Mushriks [who take gods besides God] may dislike it(al-Tawbah 9:33)
Allah has sent His Messenger with the true Din for the purpose of ending the sovereignty of all false gods and granting us immense freedom so that we live as servants of none but the lord of the universe, no matter how much the idolaters and polytheist's ay dislike or oppose such a course.
And fight them, until there is no rebellion [against God] and all submission is to God alone (al-Anfal 8:39).
The lesson is clear: we must fight until the sovereignty of all begins other than Allah is brought to an end, until only the law of God rules in the world, until the sovereignty of God alone is acknowledged, until we serve only Him.
Thus these three meaning of Din stands out:
To acknowledge God as Lord, Master, and Ruler.
To Obey and server only Him.
To be accountable to Him, to fear only his punishment and to covet only his reward.
Children of Adam! If there should come to you Messengers from among you, who convey My revelations unto you, who convey My revelations unto you, the whosoever refrains from evil and lives rightly-no fear shall be on them, and neither shall they sorrow (al-A'raf 7:35).
No individual receives Allah's commandments directly. Hence, whosoever acknowledges Allah as Ruler can be accepted as obedient to Him only when he becomes obedient to His Messengers and lives by the guidance received through them?
Din consists of these fundamental principles
Meaning of Shari'ah :
We turn no to the Shari'ah. The meaning of the Shari'ah is 'why'and 'path'. You enter Din when you accept God as you sovereign, accept to live in service to him, accept that the Messenger holds authority on His behalf, and accept that the book has been sent by Him. The ways in which you them have to serve God and the path you have to travel along in order to obey him is called the Shari'ah
This 'way'or 'Path', too, has been given by God through His Messenger. It is he who teaches you how to worship the Master, how to make your bodies and hearts clean, what is righteousness and piety, how to discharge rights, how to undertake transactions and dealings with our fellow-beings, indeed how to lead our entire lives.
Nature of differences
The key difference between Din and Shari'ah is this: while Din always has been, and still is one the same, many Shari'ahs were revealed. Some were subsequently cancelled or changed, but without changing the Din. The Din of Nuh was the same as that of Ibrahim, Musa, Isa, Shu'ayb, Hud, Salih and Muhammad, peace be on them, but their Shari'ahs varied from each other to some extent. The prescribed ways of performing the Prayer and observing the Fast were different. Injunctions about Halal (permissible) and Haram (forbidden), rules of cleanliness and codes of marriage, divorce and inheritance also differed. In spite of this, all were Muslims- the followers of Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa or Isa, and we too, are all Muslims. Because Din is one and the same for all. This sows that Din is unaffected by differences in the regulations and laws of the Shari'ah. Din remains the same though precise details of following it differ.
An example will illustrate the difference between Din and Shari'ah. Suppose a master has many servants. If some of them do no acknowledge him as their master nor consider his orders worthy of obedience, they cannot be considered servants at all. But those who acknowledge his as their master consider it their duty to obey him clearly belong to the category of servants. The duties they perform and the way they serve him may be different, but they still remain his true servants.
If the master has shown one servant one way to serve him and a different way to another, no one has any right to claim that he alone is a rightful servant and that others are not. Similarly, if one servant understands his master's will in one way and another servant in another way, and both are equally good servants. Quite possibly one may err in understanding the meaning of a particular directive, but as long as he does not refuse to obey it, no one has a right to brand him as disobedient, or excommunicate him.
Understand clearly this difference between Din and Shari'ah. Before the Prophet, blessing and peace be upon him, Allah sent various Shari'ahs through various prophets. One mode of service was ordained through one prophet. Those who served the Master in these differing ways were all Muslims. Then, when the Prophet came, blessing and peace be upon him, the Master declared: Now we abrogate all the previous codes. From now on whoever wants to serve Us must follow the code which We are giving through Our last Messenger.
From them on, no servant has the right to serve according to the previous codes. If he does not accept the new code and continues to follow the old, he is in fact obeying his own dictates, not those of the Master. Such a person can no longer be legitimately called a servant; he becomes, in religious language, a Kafir.
Juristic Differences between Muslims
The first part of the example applies to those who calm to follow the earlier prophets. Te second part applies to the followers of the Prophet Muhammad, blessing and peace be upon him.
Anyone who believes that the Shari'ah gives by him has been sent down by Allah, and therefore must be followed is Muslim. One person may understand the injunctions of the Shari'ah in one way and another person in another way, and both may follow them according to their particular understanding. However widely they may differ, both will be able to call themselves servants. For both will be acting in the consciousness that they are doing their Master's bidding.
In such a case, what right has one servant to say that he alone is the genuine servant while the other is not? The most he can argue is that he has understood the correct meaning of his Master's order while the other has not. But this does not give him the authority to expel the latter from the fold of servants (that is, call him a Kafir). Anyone who does display such temerity assumes, as it were, the status of the Master. He would seem to be saying, 'Just as it is compulsory for you to obey the Master's order, so also it is compulsory for you to accept my way of understanding. If you fail to do that, I shall, with my won power, dismiss you from the Master's service'.
For this very reason the prophet, blessing and peace be upon him, said: 'Whosoever unjustified brands a Muslims as Kafir, his verdict will rebound on him'(Bukhari, Muslim). For, God has made the submission to His guidance the test of whether or not one is a Muslim. A person who insists upon such submission to his own interpretation and judgement and assumes such powers of dismissal for himself, irrespective of whether or not the other Muslim has in fact acted as a Kafir.
Brothers! I hope you now fully understand the important difference between Din and Shari'ah and also comprehend the fact that differences on the modes of serving God do mean deviation from Din. Of course, a person who follows a particular course must genuinely know and believe that God and the Messenger have actually enjoined him to do what he is doing, and in support of his actions, he should produce authentic evidence from the Book of God or the Sunnah of His Messenger.
Ignoring the Nature of Differences :
Consider, now, what great harm is being caused to Muslims by not observing between Din and Shari'ah.
There are several ways of performing Prayers among muslims. We may rest our hands on our chests, or we place them on our navels. We may recite Surah al-Fatihah while praying behind the Iman, or we may not. We may utter Amin Loudly, or quietly. Each of us will be following his respective method in full consciousness of that fact that it was followed by the Prophet blessing and peace be upon him, and that we have the evidence to support this claim. each of us is. Therefore, equally a follower of the Prophet.
But some people take these issues of detail in Shari'ah as fundamental issues of Din itself. They have, therefore, established their own separate congregations and their own mosques. They have abused each other, forcibly driven their opponents from mosques, fought legal battles and split the Prophet's Ummah into various sects. When even this was not enough to satisfy them, they started, on the slightest of pretexts, labeling each other as Kafir, sinner and heretic. They are not happy unless they impose their understanding on everyone else.
The different schools (madhabib) of Hanafi, Shafi'I, Ahl-Hadith and so on which you see among Muslims all acknowledge the Qur'an and Hadith as their final authority and derive injunctions from them according to their own understanding. It may be that one school's understanding is correct and another's is incorrect. I myself am a follower of one of these schools and argue with those who are opposed to it in order to explain to them what is correct in my view and prove wrong what I consider to be wrong
But it is one thing for somebody's understanding to be wrong and it is quite another to expel him from Islam. Every Muslim has the right to follow the Shari'ah according to his understanding. If ten Muslims follow ten different methods, all of them are surely Muslims as long as they believe that they must submit to the law of God. they constitute one Ummah and there is no reason for them to form separate sects. Only those who do not understand this point split the Ummah into different factions for trivial reasons, set apart their congregations and mosques, prevent intermarriages and social relations and organize their groups as if each one is an Ummah by itself.
Sectarianism
It is impossible to overestimate the harm caused by Muslims by this sectarianism. On the face of it muslims are one Ummah. In India alone today there are about eighty million of them. If such a big community were really united a worked together to make Allah's guidance supreme, who in the world would have the courage to oppose it? But sectarianism has led this Ummah to be split into hundreds of factions, their hearts sundered from each other. They are incapable of uniting even at times of gravest crisis. A Muslim belonging to one faction is often more prejudiced against a Muslim belonging to another faction that against a Christian or a Jew. At times, members of one Muslim faction have gone to the extent of siding with unbelievers to humiliate a member of another Muslim faction.
You should not, therefore, be, surprised to see Muslims living in servitude to others. This is what they have earned by their actions. Upon them has descended that punishment which Allah has warned them of:
...[He will] divide you in sects and make you taste the violence of one and another (al-An'am 6:65).
Dissension, cutting each other's throat, subjugation of tyranny and oppression, all these are forms of God's punishment visited upon Muslims of today throughout the world.
This punishment is very evident in the Punjab today. Here sectarian strife is very widespread. Consequently, in spite of your numerical majority, you are powerless. If you want to further your well-being, you must demolish these sectarian barriers united Ummah. There is no basis whatever in God's Shari'ah to make Shi'aah, Sunni, Hanafi, Ahl-Hadith, Deobandi, and Barelvi and so on into ignorance. Allah made us only one Ummah: the Ummah Muslimah
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