A True Voice

A True Voice Undoubtedly, what Sayyed Rashid Rida suggested was proper, but not a single Indian Muslim religious scholar appeared to consider this suggestion worthy of attention. Besides Sayyed Rashid Rida, there were other perceptive individuals who, at this time, sought to draw the attention of the Ulama to the fact of how necessary it was to abandon useless political involvement and to devote their energies instead to constructive, resultoriented work. However, the opinions of such people made no impact, so Ulama’s caravan rushed headlong onto the path of destructive politics. One reason for this was that the Ulama had begun to consider criticism abhorrent, almost as if it were a sin. They did not attempt to discuss the points raised by Sayyed Rashid Rida seriously. Most of the Ulama only knew what they deeply revered as the practice of their predecessors or ‘elders’. Because the opinions of people like Sayyed Rashid Rida were construed as being a criticism of their predecessors, hence they were rejected. It was unthinkable for the Ulama to rethink the methods their predecessors had adopted, critique them, or adopt any other methods but the ones that their ‘elders’ had used. An illustration of this is found in the life of Sayyed Ahmad Barelvi (d. 1831), who is considered by his