Resettled Imam Wastes No Time: A Seminar In Sumy

“If it weren't for bad luck have no luck at all” — this proverb perfectly reflects the current situation of Sumy Muslims. This community never had their own Imam with theological education before, and so they gained religious knowledge (on something more difficult than basic everyday religious practice) once in a while, when receiving Imams from other cities. Now they’ve got one on their own: Mr.Rustak Khusnutdinov, Imam at Donetsk ICC was forced to leave his city because of the terrorist occupation and received a warm welcome in Sumy, at Social organisation “Druzhba” (Ukr. “Friendship”).

The new Imam started educating his new parishioners and giving lessons. Besides, he wanted them to have ground knowledge of the basics, so he invited his colleague from Dnipropetrovs, Shaikh Edgar Devliqamov, and facilitated a seminar for 30 guests, mostly new Muslims, under the auspices of RAMU “Umma”.

The lectures brought up topics of Unity in Islam and understanding importance of priorities.

People have always had different views on the matters that were not clearly defined , and this was reflected in theological schools (both existing now and extinct with their last follower). However the founders of those schools, while being very educated people of their time and having a lot of pro’s supporting their point of view, had a great respect for one another, as well as for each other’s intellectual heritage, considering different opinions for controversial matters essential for  intellectual and emotional maturity of their communities.

As for the priorities, every Muslim needs to understand them in order to make best decisions in a variety of situations. If the matter is complicated, however, and a theological decision (fatwa) is required, one needs to approach a scholar, first of all the one who knows the realities of the society the applicant lives in, not some famous scholar from a distant country with another social and political system, as the risk is high that the fatwa in that case would be useless for the applicant because of the scholar’s wrong understanding of his society, so his recommendations would be impossible to implement.