The Verse of Surah al-A'raf 28
The third verse condemning taqlid reads:
And when they commit an indecency they say, 'We found our fathers practising it, and God has commanded us to do it.' Say: 'God does not command indecency; what, do you say concerning God such things as you do not know?' (7:28)
This verse, like the two verses reviewed in previous sections, raises the issue of following fathers and ancestors, but it begins with the phrase "when they commit an indecency" and explicitly shows that the prohibition of taqlid applies to actions and rulings as well, not just to beliefs.
Does the verse distinguish between proper and improper taqlid?
Again, to show that defenders of taqlid also relate this verse to taqlid but exempt current taqlid from it, we refer to Tafsir Noor, which writes about this verse:
"Evildoers imitate their ancestors and attribute their polytheism to God... The ways of the past are not always valuable, and inappropriate imitation of predecessors is forbidden."
In other words, they claim this verse only forbids inappropriate taqlid, and the taqlid they promote is not inappropriate and forbidden — without providing any evidence or proof for this restriction they impose on the verse. Where in this verse, or its surrounding verses, or anywhere else in the Qur'an and hadith, is such a qualification found? The use of the phrase "God has commanded us to do it" immediately after "we found our fathers practising it" in this verse shows even more explicitly than the previous two verses that the addressees believed they were imitating knowledgeable people. When it says they believed their action was according to God's command, it is clear that not all of them claimed prophethood and direct reception of revelation — rather, they relied on an intermediary, an interpreter, and an interpretation of the scripture and the traditions of the prophets, imagining that what their fathers did was based on God's command. In other words, this verse clarifies the semantic field of the two previous verses, showing that when they said "we follow our fathers," they meant following based on belief in their correctness.
A stronger piece of evidence for this claim is found in the subsequent verses, especially verse 30, which says: "(God) guided a group, and for another group, misguidance is justified; they have taken devils as patrons besides God and think they are guided." The fact that it says they consider themselves guided shows that in their imagination and belief, they were following good people. For this reason, when the command to commit indecency reached them through intermediaries polluted by satanic temptations, they considered it God's commandment. Since they were confident about being guided, they no longer thought about the ugliness of their action or the ugliness of what they attributed to God.
The subsequent verses also relate to taqlid. Verse 31 commands being adorned at mosques and avoiding excess, then asks: "Who has forbidden the adornment of God...? God has only forbidden indecencies, both open and secret, and sin and unjust aggression, and that you associate with God that for which He has sent down no authority, and that you say concerning God what you do not know." Note that one of the types of shirk is shirk in obedience — when people should obey God's command but, by ignoring the call of reason and innate nature and not weighing others' arguments, they make a particular person their guardian and God's partner in obedience, while God has not authorized following them.
Four verses later, verse 37 continues: "Who does greater wrong than he who forges a lie against God or cries lies to His signs? Those — their share of the Book shall reach them; till when Our messengers come to them, to take them away, they say, 'Where is that you were calling upon apart from God?' They say, 'They have gone astray from us,' and they bear witness against themselves that they were unbelievers." In other words, until that moment they claimed to worship God, but when asked where those who were supposed to answer on their behalf are, they reply "we have lost them" — which itself testifies that they were not worshipping God.
Verses 38 and 39 appear to be about generations that followed earlier generations without examining evidence and imitated them — "He says, 'Enter the Fire among the nations that passed away before you of jinn and men.' Whenever a nation enters, it curses its sister-nation, until when they all follow each other into it, the last of them says to the first, 'Our Lord, these led us astray; so give them a double chastisement of the Fire.' He says, 'To each a double, but you do not know.' And the first of them says to the last, 'You have no advantage over us, therefore taste the chastisement for what you were earning.'"
As can be seen, the context of these verses is precisely about the imitation of the ignorant by the knowledgeable, and those who attribute their evil deeds to God based on their trust in the knowledge of their fathers, ancestors, guardians, and leaders, considering themselves guided. Interestingly, verse 42 describing the people of Paradise says: "We charge no soul save to its capacity" — while this same lack of capacity is one of the excuses of the people of taqlid for withdrawing from acquiring knowledge about God's commands and their religious duties.
Parent page: Verses Condemning Taqlid