The Dar al Taqrib in Cairo

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The Dar al Taqrib in Cairo[1]

Amongst all collective endeavours for Taqrib, none reaches the prominence as well as importance of the Dar al Taqrib in Cairo. It might even be said that the Dar al Taqrib served as the inspiration for other Taqrib ventures. The Dar al Insaf in Beirut clearly stated that it aimed to follow the line set by the Dar al Taqrib, while the Dar Ahlul Bayt of Talib al Rifa’i could very well be regarded as the continuation of the work started by the Dar al Taqrib. No study of the Taqrib phenomenon could therefore ever be complete without an in-depth examination of the Dar al Taqrib in Cairo. For all practical purposes, the Dar al Taqrib may be considered the only serious Taqrib effort during the first half of this century, since all the other efforts were much too short lived, in addition to the fact that the scholars who participated in them did not enjoy the same esteem as those who took part in the Dar al Taqrib.

 

Beginning

The history of the Dar al Taqrib goes back to the 1940s, when a Shia scholar from Iran by the name of Muhammad Taqi al Qummi sent out an invitation to the ‘Ulama’ to participate in this attempt to bring the Shia and the Ahlus Sunnah closer to one another. A number of Sunni ‘Ulama’ from Egypt and Zaidi scholars from Yemen responded to his invitation. One of the early participants, Sheikh ‘Abdul Latif Muhammad al Subki, a member of the Hay’at Kibar al ‘Ulama’ (Council of Senior ‘Ulama’) in Egypt, relates the beginning of the Dar al Taqrib in the following manner:

 

The one who worked for the establishment of this group was a Shia sheikh who has been living in Egypt for some time. A group of respected ‘Ulama’ of Egypt responded to his invitation. It wouldn’t have been becoming of any Muslim to ignore a call for renewing Muslim unity which the Qur’an itself calls for…

I was attracted by this call. I was honoured by being made a member amongst those great men. So, what has our group achieved after about four years? In the beginning it held meetings consecutively, sometimes for the purpose of meeting one another and electing a head, a representative and a secretary; sometimes to receive a guest from the East who was visiting the headquarters; and sometimes to listen to letters being read out from various quarters, amongst them letters from Najaf, the center of the Shia, in which the writers requested for an address to be delivered at the ceremonies being held to commemorate Imam Hussain. In that same session, it was suggested to us that the group must approach al Azhar with a demand that Shia Fiqh be taught side by side with the schools of the Ahlus Sunnah. This suggestion was quickly suppressed because it was premature, as some members had murmured.

Thereafter the meetings stopped, and the group’s activities became confined to the publication of a journal by the Dar al Taqrib called Risalat al Islam.[2]

 

The Dar al Taqrib spent lavishly. Sheikh ‘Abdul Latif al Subki writes:

 

It made me doubt—and every other innocent member has to doubt with me—that the Dar al Taqrib was spending freely without us knowing where the money was coming from and without any of us being asked to contribute membership fees to pay for an elegant headquarters expensively fitted and furnished. It spent on its journal, paying the people in charge of it, the writers of articles as well as maintaining a high level of quality in the appearance of the journal. These, and other, expenses required a very generous source of income, so from where did it come and at whose expense?[3]

 

It would later come to light that al Qummi was not alone in this venture. He had the full support and backing of the leading Shia scholars of Qom and Najaf. The contemporary Lebanese Shia scholar, Ahmed Mughniyah, writes that “neither al Qummi nor anyone else could have conducted an operation of this kind on his own, independent of the maraji’ (leading Shia mujtahids) and without their agreement.”[4] There thus seems to be grounds for the assumption that al Qummi’s coming to Egypt and founding the Dar al Taqrib was premeditated and planned by the Shia scholars of Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran. Having previously seen how Shia missionaries used to come to Egypt for the ostensible purpose of Taqrib, it is not at all farfetched to see al Qummi’s establishment of the Dar al Taqrib and his invitation to the ‘Ulama’ of Egypt to join it as yet another link in the same chain.

The founding of the Dar al Taqrib was therefore a unilateral venture by the Shia, which the Ahlus Sunnah were in due course invited to join. Seeing as the venture was supported entirely by funds from the Shia side, without the Sunni participants ever being asked for any kind of contribution, the possibility must not be dismissed that the Dar al Taqrib was essentially working for the advantage of Shi’ism.

 

Slogan

Al Qummi initially made it clear that the Dar al Taqrib was striving to bring the Shia and the Ahlus Sunnah closer to one another without prevailing on any of the two to abandon its mazhab. He writes:

 

Our call is that the people of Islam unite upon the fundamentals of Islam, those fundamentals without which nobody can be a Muslim, and that they look at issues beyond that without any wish or desire to split or overpower, but rather as people who search for truth and correct knowledge. If they are then able to reach consensus, through fairness and clear proof, upon an issue which they once disagreed upon, then so be it. Otherwise, let each of them retain his own view without imposing it upon others. Let them think good of one another, because differences on issues other than the fundamentals of religion do not affect Iman, and do not cast anyone out of the fold of Islam.[5]

 

The sentiments expressed here are the essence of any Taqrib effort. It is generally suggested that there is enough common ground between the Ahlus Sunnah and the Shia to achieve the kind of working solution described here. That, however, is an oversimplification of a problem that has roots much deeper than what the credulous onlooker may see, or may want to see.

This line of thought presupposes that the Ahlus Sunnah and the Shia share a common set of fundamentals, represented in belief in Allah, the Ambiya’, revelation, the Hereafter, etc. It overlooks the fact that the Shia have beliefs which to them are on exactly the same plane of importance as the abovementioned fundamentals. The reference, of course, is to their belief of Imamah, the rejector of which is exactly the same as one who rejects Nubuwwah.[6] It is at this kind of juncture that the entire Taqrib operation becomes a unilateral process instead of a bilateral one, with Sunnis expected to make room for the Shia, without the Shia having to budge one inch.

With the passage of time, the Dar al Taqrib came to display a bit more of its true colours. In the third year of publication, the journal Risalat al Islam carried an article by one of the leading Shia scholars of Iran, Muhammad Salih al Ha’iri, under the caption “A Practical Method of Taqrib”. In it the author demands that the Ahlus Sunnah start referring to the eight Hadith sources of the Shia, that a chair be established at al Azhar for the teaching of Shia Fiqh along with Shia ‘aqa’id, and that the Ahlus Sunnah admit and accept the doctrine of Imamah.[7]

The publication of an article of this nature was not at all strange, since Muhammad Taqi al Qummi had himself the previous year written an article in which he openly asked the following question, “So what will it be for them (the Ahlus Sunnah) to accept that which is beyond the Fiqh (of the Shia) just like they have accepted the Fiqh (of the Shia)? After all, what difference is there between the usul (primary issues) of knowledge and the furu’ (secondary issues) of knowledge?”[8]

By posing this question, al Qummi revealed the idea that lay at the crux of the Dar al Taqrib. It was there not to bring about rapprochement between the Ahlus Sunnah, but to draw the Ahlus Sunnah into the web of Shi’ism.

 

Publications

Another area in which the true intentions of the Dar al Taqrib became apparent was that of its publications. The publications of the Dar al Taqrib were almost all, without exception, classical Shia works. It started with the compendium of Najm al Din al Hilli (died 676 AH) on Shia fiqh, called al Mukhtasar al Nafi’. This work was published by the Ministry of Awqaf on the recommendation of the Dar al Taqrib. Other works published were the following:

1. Tadhkirat al Fuqaha’ by Ibn Mutahhar al Hilli (died 726 AH)
2. Wasa’il al Shia by al Hurr al ‘Amili (died 1104 AH)
3. Mustadrak al Wasa’il by Hussain al Nuri al Tabarsi, the author of the infamous book Fasl al Khitab in which he attempts to prove that the Qur’an was interpolated.
4. Al Hajj ‘ala al Mazahib al Khamsah (Hajj according to the five schools)
5. Tafsir Majma’ al Bayan by Abu ‘Ali al Tabarsi (died 548)
6. Hadith al Thaqalayn by Muhammad Qawam al Din al Qummi, a contemporary scholar.

As a further measure of conferring legitimacy on his publications, al Qummi got Egyptian scholars to write the forewords or do the editing of these books. Some of them, like Dr. Hamid Hifni Dawood, a lecturer in linguistics at ‘Ayn Shams University, or Dr. Muhammad ‘Abdul Mun’im Khafaji, a litterateur who wrote the foreword to a Shia Hadith work like Wasa’il al Shia and al Tabarsi’s Mustadrak al Wasa’il, were in no way qualified to express an opinion about the books they were writing forewords to.

In light of the mounting evidence about the real role the Dar al Taqrib had come to play in Egypt, many of those who joined the group in full sincerity came to regret their involvement and started to withdraw. Some of them left in silence and others announced their withdrawal.

Dr. Muhammad al Bahi, for example, was a man who welcomed the establishment of the Dar al Taqrib at its inception. He is described in Risalat al Islam as “an ‘Alim, a researcher, one of those who are free in thought and believe in the idea of Taqrib.”[9] However, after a period of involvement he loses hope in the Dar al Taqrib and expresses his thoughts about it in the following words:

 

A movement was established in Cairo for the purpose of bringing the Shia and the Ahlus Sunnah closer to one another. But instead of concentrating its efforts on calling towards that which the Qur’an calls for… it is concentrating all its energy on bringing alive the fiqh, usul, tafsir etc., of the Shia and publishing articles which call for not discriminating between Muslims.[10]

 

Sheikh ‘Abdul Latif al Subki, after four years of involvement with the Dar al Taqrib, realises al Qummi’s true aims and withdraws. He publishes the reasons for his withdrawal in the Majallat al Azhar. Sheikh Taha Muhammad al Sakit and Sheikh Muhammad ‘Arafah, another member of the Council of Senior ‘Ulama’, both sever their ties with the Dar al Taqrib.

Soon the Dar al Taqrib dwindled into a mere skeleton of what it once had been, with only a few persons left who were kept behind by their dependence on the income provided by the Dar al Taqrib. The only sign of activity that remained was the publication of Risalat al Islam. And in time that too, became part of the past.

Ultimately it turned out that the reason for which the Dar al Taqrib was founded and the philosophy upon which it was built became the cause of its failure and downfall.

 

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[1] The material in this article is taken from Dr. Nasir al Qifari’s work Mas’alat al Taqrib bayna Ahlus Sunnah wa al Shia.

[2] Majallat al Azhar, 24/285-286.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ahmed Mughniyah: al Khumayni Aqwaluhu wa Af’aluhu, 27.

[5] Al Wahdah al Islamiyyah aw al Taqrib bayna al Mazahib, 64-65.

[6] See our article: The Qur’an and Imamah in the January 1997 issue of al Istiqamah.

[7] Risalat al Islam, 3/403.

[8] Risalat al Islam, 2/169.

[9] Risalat al Islam, 8/107.

[10] Muhammad al Bahi: al Fikr al Islami wa al Mujtama’at al Mu’asirah, 439.