If the world of Islam is put into a snow globe, and an outsider peers in, he might be forgiven for thinking that those little people walking about on the streets are Pavlov’s dogs. Every time the outsider whispers the word bida, the people inside would go insane and start beating one another with shoes, sandals and anything else they can get their hands on.
Pavlov’s dogs, of course, were the test animals that the Russian doctor Ivan Petrovich Pavlov experimented on in the 1890s. He would start out by always ringing a bell before feeding the dogs. The animals would then salivate at the prospect of food. Not long after, Pavlov would simply ring the bell without bringing the food, and the animals would still salivate. Pavlov called this habit conditional reflex, in which a living thing responds to stimuli instead of the real object of its desire. The stimuli for a lot of Muslims today seems to be words like bida, but is this reaction really warranted?
Bida is the Arabic word for innovation, although I personally believe it is more accurate to define it as novel. Innovation has acquired a positive connotation in English, and most non-Muslims would struggle to understand why Muslims hate innovation, and hence, progress. Actually, bida has meanings rooted in two different viewpoints; the lexical and the technical. The lexical meaning of bida, as I mentioned above, is novelty. The technical meaning of bida is a novelty initiated after the time of the generation of early Muslims known as Tabi’in 1.
While regurgitating the words of scholars who have long passed on is a distasteful prospect for some, their understanding of bida must be appreciated before we can set out to grasp the meaning of this contentious word ourselves. Hence, according to Al-Jurjani:
Whatever contrivance contradicts the Sunna, and it is named bida because whoever supports it innovated it without basis from an Imam. It consists in a novel matter which the Companions and Successors did not follow and which is unsupported by legal proof 2.
Unsurprisingly, Imam ash-Shafi (d.819 AD), the great jurist who distilled the best methods of Islamic jurisprudence of his time and made them into a complete system, divided novelty into two kinds; the good and the blameworthy.
I heard al-Shafi’i say: Innovation is two types: praiseworthy innovation and blameworthy innovation. Whatever conforms to the Sunna is approved and whatever opposes it is abominable 3.
An example of a ‘good innovation’ are the diacritical marks that were incorporated into the Quranic script to facilitate recitation. It was added long after Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime. In discussing the dots, Imam al-Ghazali (d.1111 AD)- that towering theologian who is also known as Hujjat al-Islam (the proof of Islam)- had clearly identified them as a good innovation.
No one can deny that the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad had themselves come up with spontaneous forms of worship all the time- from maintaining perpetual fasts to composing songs of praise for God and the Prophet. Thus, what Imam ash-Shafi’i means by good innovation is the form that the Companions had followed, and that which is inherited by the body of scholars who constitute the massive majority (Jumhur) of Sunni Muslims.
Early authorities of Islam had possessed a far more rational concept of novelty than most people care to admit. In fact, the prominent scholar Imam Izz ibn Abd al-Salam had formulated five categories of Bida 4 to that end:
Every innovation is a misguidance
For some, it will come as a surprise. Bida divided into many shades? After all, what about the Hadith that explicitly states:
Every innovation is a misguidance 5.
Does this not contradict all those scholars who not only promoted good innovations, but went on to divide bida into five categories? The problem here is not the Hadith or the scholars’ opinions. The problem here is the difference in the way we interpret the words of the Hadith and the way the scholars had interpreted it.
The word ‘every’ in ‘every innovation is represented by the Arabic ‘kull’. If we understand ‘kull’ literally, it will lead us to the inevitable conclusion that all innovations are bad. But does ‘kull’ really mean ‘all’ in the Arabic language. Did the scholars and jurists understand ‘kull’ in this way? Evidence in the Quran suggest that ‘kull’ can be used generally and not universally. For example, in this verse:
Destroying all things by commandment of its Lord. And morning found them so that naught could be seen save their dwellings 6.
The dwellings were spared, even though God had commanded ‘all’ things to be destroyed. So ‘kull’ does not necessarily point to a universal application. Every innovation does not mean all innovations, and Imam ash-Shafi’i clearly accepted this position because he divided bida into good and bad.
But the literalist interpreters of the Hadith will press on. They will say, that when scholars of such caliber as Imam ash-Shafi’i had described an innovation as good, it is only a linguistic and not legal reference. In short, it is like saying “What marvelous inventions fridge magnets are!”
This is absurd, since Imam ash-Shafi’i positively anchors good innovations to acts that conform to the Sunna:
Whatever conforms to the Sunna is approved… 7
And what is the Sunna but a primary source of law in Islam. Imam ash-Shafi’i’s stance on the Sunna and its place in Sacred Law had been so firm that some people still fault him for being overly zealous. Nonetheless, he belongs to a category of scholars known as Mujtahid Mutlaq, or those who have absolute liberty to extend the Sacred Law through interpretation. In Sunni culture, the findings of a Mujtahid like Imam ash-Shafi’i are binding and themselves used as proofs. If we turned to Imam Izz ibn Abd al-Salam, we see the same acceptance of distinguishing between good and bad innovations. In fact, his division of bida into five categories mirrors the Sacred Law’s division of acts into five categories, also, of:
Proof once again that the early scholars had been engaging in more than just linguistic wordplay. Without the due process of Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) to properly ground and contextualize the term, we will end up with all kinds of ignoramus people running around and beating their fellow Muslims with it.
These bida-beaters might be a small faction now, but if Muslims allow it to fester, they will have compatriots who consider themselves to be the only “correct” expression of Islam while the other Muslims- in fact the great majority of them- are nothing more than ahl-al-bida (people of innovation).
Fiqh is supposed to make the rituals of belief easy to implement and follow. Instead, what you have today is are ideologies constructed by laymen who, bereft of the subtleties of well-honed methodologies, resort to the only interpretative tool they have at their disposal- linguistic literalism. The major signs of half-baked fiqh are:
Half-baked fiqh is a symptom of an incredibly-literate society that has not internalized knowledge. It puts an insane value on ‘absolute’ answers and does not tolerate differences of opinion. This is sad, because as Imam ash-Shafi’i well-understood:
Knowledge is not what is memorized. Knowledge is what benefits.
So tell me, have you ever had the misfortune to meet an innovation hothead? Tell me all about it here, why don’t you?
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