Something I’ve found very strange and perhaps a major ‘threat’ to the integrity of Islam is the concept of ‘professional’ imams. These are people who lead congretional prayers, give khutba, read nikkah and do other religious things for a living. They’ve made it their profession. I think that shouldn’t be the case. The professional imam should be abolished from the religion and instead of him another concept should take over: during a congretional prayer among the people present someone (wise) should be appointed and he should lead the prayer. and this person would change with successive prayers. Secondly, the khutba in its current form should be replaced by a seminar/workshop kind of concept, in which every week someone else gives a presentation about a current societal problem (perhaps even powerpoint could be used).
I think this new approach will have a few advantages over the classical one: firstly, often the professional imam has given up worldy habits for religious gains; but too often we see that such imams still have a longing for worldy things, and often misuse their religious power to gain that. secondly, by this rotational system of giving the khutba and the changing leader of the prayer, ‘religious power’ will be something of the past, because noone will be in a position to gain too much of it. thirdly, such concept will be more interactive and will contribute to otehr ppl thinking actively about religion instead of passive persons virtually sleeping during khutba and prayers.
I wonder whether the Qur’an prohibits such concept of a changing imam, and if not, i think this will be a great step forward in diluting religious power which was concentrated previously with one person, who often would use it to gain worldt benefits.
the presence of imams just shows the lack of faith in the congregation.... are we not sure there will be at least ONE pious Muslim in a gathering who can lead the prayers?? or do we have to pay someone to be available at all those times??
We typically have a visiting faculty imam for Fridays. However, having a regular imam at all times is a good back-up source, plus he can provide advice as a dependable source who is always there. With visiting faculty, you are never sure who will be there. Picking up one person for each prayer to lead sounds like an interesting idea if you have small gatherings. But will be a mess if there are 5,000 people in the gathering. I am not sure I see any benefit of selecting an imam on the fly. It just seems highly impractical.
Faisal: of course if you are expecting to get 5000+ people, then it is reasonable to select an imam beforehand, no problem with that. But i had the example in mind of my local mosque where around 50-100 come for prayers. Changing the imam is a very practical idea in this case
I'd be surprised if a 50-100 person mosque can even afford to have a full-time paid imam. Here, we have several mosques and the smallers ones are run by volunteers. About the only planning they try to do is to request someone to prepare a Friday sermon and lead prayers on Friday. The rest is pretty much on the fly... and these are small-sized mosques with 100-150 people (including ladies). Only the bigger mosques here (1,000+ jumma attendees) can even start to think about a full-time paid imam. Its expensive, you know.
In Pakistan, its different. I know cases, where Imam appeared first on the scene. The mosque came in afterwards. :-)
^here in Rotterdam there are 3 major mosques who all have around 50-250 people weekly for friday prayers, and all 3 have their OWN professional imam. Apart from that there are about 5/6 freelance imams as well, who stand in when one of them is on holidays.
Anyway, coming back to the khutba point, yesterday i was watching this lecture on ARY on Isra and Miraaj, and the imam there was just talking and talking...without even taking a breather. It was as if (and usually it is actually like that) he had just learnt three chapters by heart and as a taperecorder was just playing it. The thought struck me that what is the use of him just speaking a monotonous monologue like that. First of all the audience won't pay attention for long cuz people tend to get bored by no intonation. Secondly, i wonder whether he himself ever had a thorough thought on the subject. I can understand he believes this blindly, but at least what he can do is think about how this all relates to nowadays practical daily life, perhaps even try to find some correlations with other sources, try to investigate these issues a bit more. Perhaps not question these things, but at least just think by urself how u (perhaps) can get even more information on this. I doubt whether he ever had given this a thought.