ye haqeeqat he ke taqleed ne hamarey mazhab ko jitna nuqsan pohchaya he aur kisi ne nahi pohchaya ,
me and one of my friend , during our days in NED started to re-study and re-think why we are muslims and why we follow our respective sects .
I belonged to a barelvi and he belonged to ismaili Shiite family.
We deliberately independently started this quest so that we wont be affected by each other views.
We started from the scratch that is there is any GOD or there is just a hoax :-) , than when we realized yes , there is A GOD and this universe and system cannot run without a SUPER INTELLIGENT force. than we started our struggle to find out the best religion .
I have dozens of books in my personal library in pakistan having comparison of religion , we went to churches and mandirs in paksitan , asked the followers of other religions to send us the relevant matter , studied Christianity , Judaism , Hinduism , Jainism , Shintoism , Sham-ism Confucius-ism , Sikh , etc .
Than we concluded , that OK , there is a LORD , and it should be single GOD , the concept of polytheism is absurd , so we finalized judaism and islam .
Judaism seemed to be a very racial religion so very logically it cant be religion for whole world .
Jews believe that prophet hood can only remain in family of Prophet Jacob (Israel) also they are quite choosy in who shud be the prophet , sometime even prophet was from same lineage but they refused to follow him like prophet Jesus . Also they only like to stick with Bibi-SARAH children as capable of prophethood . They do not accept the other wife of Prophet Abraham , Bibi - Hajra ( Hager ) who was the mother of Prophet Ismail .
keep this feature of jews in mind , they are almost similar to shiites belives where imamat can remain only in one lineage , only children of fatima ra can become imams .the other wives of Ali ra cannot produce imams ( but still there was ashiite sect who used to follow Muhammad bin Al-hanfia , son of ali from other wife , Ameer Mukhtar was from same cult ) ... So basically both ideologies are racially affected.
and than we conclude that OK islam is the right religion ... remember till that time , we only concluded that islam is right religion , not islam is "best" religion .
And than we started learning about prophet muhammad saw and Quran and hadith in more depth , and yes we realized islam is the best as well.
Now , the most difficult part was , which sect we should start following ,
I would say there are few extreme positions as far as sects are concerned.
Let me briefly describe them , i apologize if i hurt any follower of respective religion , remember that's my conclusion about them , i can write pages by own understanding and knowledge (without copying and pasting from sectarian websites about these sects )
1 - Shiites ( Believes in Hereditary system of rule in islam , also got affected by persian and arab political conflicts )
They used to have dozens of sects within shiasm , whenever an imam died , there used to be four sects get out of his death :) , one believing imam is not yet died he has gone into ghebat and will return soon , some says NO... imam has died and now his son would be new imam , some says imam has died and now imamat is also perished and we should wait for qayamat :) , some says OK imam has died but now his brother shud be made as imam :) ... believe me , you take shiite historical books and you would SAME story after the death of each imam . Also there were different sects based on different lineage , HASSANI imams were different , HUSSAINI imams were different and ALAVI (sons from different wives of ALI RA) were different . Most of the pakistani people think that shiite means only Ithna Ashri , but still there are dozens of shiite sects all over the world believing on different imams , its mostly in iran , iraq and pakistan you can find twelver shiites , in yemen there are nizari ismaili , dawoodi bohras , in syria , there are alavis , nusayris , in oman there are ibadis etc etc
2 - Sunni-Sufiasm ( got affected by greek and persian philosophy )
[*=1]Barelviasm - Affected by Indian Hindus civilization ( remeber my family still follows it but i changed my sectarian believes )
[*=1]Deobandis - they are barelvi from top , means deobandi ulamas belives and barelvi ulama belives about sufiams is same , only difference is that at mass level barelvi propogate same sufi ideology , normal people cannot understand well that sufi ideology which is basically based on greek o persian philosophy and normal barelvi start doing shirk , but on the other hand , though deobnandi ulama follows same sufi ideology but they do not propogate that ideology to lower ranks of common people so normal deobandi has been saved from these philosophy .
An important point , I think there is NO harm in following greek o persian sufi philosophy , but one shud have excellent knowledge to follow it otherwise he shud not be a follower , if he starts following these ideologies without knowing there is a great chance that he would end up with shirk which almost all the barelvis are doing these days. its like PhD in islam if you want to understand sufiasm , i could not , so i decided to move away.
3 - Taqleedi Masaliks
- Shafayi
- Hanbali
- Hanfi
- Maliki
Well , by definition , taqleed is "following an imam blindly " , yes blindly ... so if i had to follow someone blindly , i would rather prefer Shiite Imams , at least they are from Prophet lineage , if m doing taqleed than why shud i follow such imams who are fallible ( gher-masoom , who can commit mistakes ) , at least shiite says that imams are infallible and they are masoom , they cant commit mistakes ... so if u wana do taqleed , the best thing to "blindly follow" a person who is masoom like shiite claims , so better to become shiite if u wana taqleed .
Else
the only choice left and that was the most logical choice ... was of...Gher Muqallid / SALAFI / WAHHABI / AHL-e-HADITH for us , and we both started following wahhabi maslak :)
by the way , we have no sympathy at all for saudi kings , when we follow salafiat , we do not have soft corner for saudi sex addict kings . ion fact all mullahs in saudia are using salafiat to defend kingdom which is very wrong , but at least from the religious perspective , ahl-e-hadith are the MOST logical among all muslim sects.
So we are not like Pakistani ghaddar twelvers who blindly follow iranian leaders and promote iranian interests on pakistani soil , similarly i hate those salafis who take favor od saudis and arab sex addicted kings and think them as saviors :)
...
So this was our journey ...
We started from Barelviat and Shiite .. became athiest for some time ...than become muslim , u can say re-born muslim :)
still we both do not like to identify ourselves other than muslim , we literally hate if someone ask what is ur sect and just for their tasalli we say we are salafi , otherwise i still believe keeping a muslim name is enough for us.
note : i still considers shiites and sunnis as muslims . and i do not differentiate them by saying momin n muslim :p
Also remember , and TRUST ME , there were may be political different groups after muhammad saw death, like followers of Ali RA , followers of Banu Umayya Illegitimate Kingdom , but religiously they were on same page , THEY DID NOT HAD differences of religious issues other than who will lead(imam) :-)
Shiite believed that religious and political leader shud be one and it is appointed by GOD and must be from prophet lineage ( i personally feel that here they are affected by jew and persian hereditary theories )
Banu Umayya and Banu Abbas followers belived on other illegitimate system of hereditary system of one tribe , umayya and abbas .
But major part of muslims kept themselves away from both extreme conditions and believed on election / selction / nomination or some kind of democracy in electing the Khalifa .
...
after couple of centuries , there were different fiqhs based on different religious people ruling about how we shud follow islam , again , core beliefs were same , like Tauheed , Nabuwwat and Akhirat , fiqhs were different , Fiqh Jafariiya , Faqh Hanafia , hanbalia , shafia , malikia , imam ishaq , imam hakim , etc etc had different interpretations about how to perform salat , wazoo , aftaar , sehar etc . but there was one religion .. later those political groups specially shiites changed everything and superseded imamat to even nabuwwat (except the nabuwwat of muhammad saw ) and there was no other reason but to have their OWN LEADER for their POLITICAL affairs ..
Also sunni ideologies got affected from greek o persian philosophy later. i'm not going to discuss muatazilla , asharis , al-kalam , etc etc.