Past eventOther · The Lantern of the Path · Session 16

The Qur'anic Concept of Wilayah

Wednesday, 12 March 2025

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Wilayah, Part 2 When Rome threatened to cut off the Muslim world's supply of coins, it was the Imam who taught the caliph how to strike his own. This session calls it one of the strangest events in early Islamic history: a sitting Imam advising a caliph he did not recognise as legitimate, because the alternative was dependency on a hostile power. The Imam instructed the state in the weight, dimensions and metal content of its own coinage. The session uses the episode to draw out the second, external half of wilayah — guardianship, the bond that both unites and separates: a Muslim community may trade and treat with the wider world, but it may never come, even fractionally, under its influence or control. The internal half is argued through a different image: carpet weavers, each working hard as an individual, but producing something lopsided and mismatched unless one person plans the pattern and directs every thread. A society is the same. Its strength cannot be coordinated without a single point — a heart — to which every part answers. That point, the session argues from the Qur'an's own language in Surah al-Maidah, is the Imam: appointed either by name, as Imam Ali, peace be upon him, was, or, after the Twelve, by a stated set of qualifications — the jurist who "protects himself from sin, safeguards his religion, opposes his desires, and obeys the command of his Master". What actually holds a self-organising community together once it refuses to answer to anyone outside itself? What the evening covers The coinage story. Why an Imam once taught a caliphate how to mint its own currency, and what it says about dependency. The carpet weavers. The image used for why a community without a single, coordinating centre produces something incoherent. Surah al-Maidah, verse 55. How this verse is read as identifying the Imam as the community's central authority. Two ways to be appointed. Leadership named directly, versus leadership recognised by qualification.

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لا إِلَهَ إِلا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ لا شَرِيكَ لَهُ لَهُ الْمُلْكُ وَ لَهُ الْحَمْدُ يُحْيِي وَ يُمِيتُ وَ يُمِيتُ وَ يُحْيِي وَ هُوَ حَيٌّ لا يَمُوتُ بِيَدِهِ الْخَيْرُ وَ هُوَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْ ءٍ قَدِيرٌ

There is no deity but Allah, the One, without partner. Sovereignty and praise belong to Him. He gives life and causes death, He causes death and gives life, and He Himself is the Ever-Living who never dies. All goodness is in His hand, and He has power over all things.

Mafatih al-Jinan, Supplications (Duas), Dua al-Asharat, Line 13