🕯️ When Scholars Shift — A Personal Reflection on Sayyid Abbas Ayleya
It’s even more painful when the change comes from someone you once admired.
The True Role of the Alim: Guiding Hearts to Allah, Not Gatekeeping Power
It’s even more painful when the change comes from someone you once admired.
I remember hearing Sayyid Abbas Ayleya in Canada — it must have been around the year 2000. He gave meaningful speeches back then. There was depth, sincerity, and a connection to the inner path. But what I’m hearing now is not the same voice. It’s not the same direction. And it’s certainly not the same trust.
In his recent speech, he used the same reductionist tactic I’ve seen elsewhere. He framed the question of a real scholar’s duty as a false binary:
This is not just simplistic — it’s deeply misleading.
First, no one in the Shia world seriously claims that the primary duty of an alim is simply to lead prayer - or simple give speeches. That’s an empty placeholder, a strawman, meant to make the second option — allegiance to the leader — appear profound by contrast. But this framing ignores the entire prophetic and Qur’anic model of what it means to lead.
If anything, the duty of the alim is not to lead prayer, nor to lead to the Leader, but to lead the ummah to Allah — to awaken their hearts, expand their understanding, and connect them directly to the Qur’an, to the Ahlul Bayt (as), and ultimately to the Imam of their time (ajtf).
And here’s the irony: the Imam himself, in Mikyal al-Makarim, tells us he wants the believers to speak to him — with our lips moving. He does not say: "Let the scholars bring you to me." He says: “You, speak to me.”
There is no proxy. There is no mediator. There is direct access.
So when Abbas Ayleya says that the job of the alim is to join people with the Leader — he’s removing the Qur’anic and Imamic model of direct connection, and replacing it with a structured gatekeeping system that was never meant to exist in Shia theology.
📖 Tafseer Ignored, Covenant Forgotten
And perhaps the root of the problem is even deeper.
In Al-Mizan, Allama Tabataba’i makes a critical point: even the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) was not sent to give his own interpretation of the Qur’an, but to guide the people in understanding it. This is the role of the true scholar: not to replace the Qur’an, but to bring the seeker into the Qur’an.
But that role has been buried.
Because even in the hawza today, tafsir is not emphasized. The Qur’an is no longer the center — it’s become a symbol, a background. And when the Book of Allah is sidelined, the covenant is forgotten.
In fact, I remember in a conversation I had with a cleric, I mentioned the concept of the covenant — the primordial bond between us and Allah. His response?
“Remind me.”
What more proof do we need that we are drifting from the essence? The very heart of divine relationship — the covenant — has been so neglected that even among scholars and directors, it’s a subject that must be reminded.
🔚 The Alim is Not a Politician — He is a Bridge
The tragedy is not just that a scholar has changed.
The tragedy is that many have become spokespeople for political systems, rather than bridges to divine light.
They no longer lead people to Cordoba — to revival, brilliance, and deep connection with Allah.
They lead them into a structure of hierarchy, control, and slogans.
But the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) did not build a hierarchy. He built a movement of awakened hearts.
The Imams (as) did not demand loyalty to politics. They demanded loyalty to truth — to knowledge, to justice, to taharah, and to hikmah.
We don’t want rebellion.
We want return — to Qur’an, to tafsir, to dhikr, to purification, to the real covenant.
And we want scholars who remember that the highest title they carry is not "representative of the Leader" — but guide to Allah.
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