Quotes About Ulama

However, because the Ulama have tended to regard Islamic practice as informing Islamic theology, orthopraxy and orthodoxy are intimately bound together in Islam, meaning questions of theology, or kalam, are impossible to separate from questions of law, or fiqh.

Unshackled by the state, the Ulama were now free to ascend to a position of unquestioned religious authority in the Ummah, which they used not only to institutionalize their legal and theological opinions into distinct schools of thought but also to formulate a binding, comprehensive code of conduct called the Shariah, forever transforming Islam from a religion into an all-embracing way of life: one that the Ulama claimed sole authority to define.

Ibn Taymiyyah was a worrying figure to the establishment. His return to the fundamentals of the Quran and sunnah and his denial of much of the rich spirituality and philosophy of Islam may have been reactionary, but it was also revolutionary. He outraged the conservative ulama, who clung to the textbook answers, and criticized the Mamluk government of Syria for practices which contravened Islamic law as he understood it.