Religious Duties

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RELIGIOUS DUTIES. The performance of. 
The teaching of the Hidayah on the subject is as follows:- 
"It is not lawful to accept a recompense for summoning the people to prayers, or for the performance of a pilgrimage, or of the duties of an Imam, or for teaching the Koran, or the law; for it is a general rule with our doctors that no recompense can be received for the performance of any duty purely of a religious nature. According to Shafei, it is allowed to receive pay for the performance at any religious duty which is not required of the hireling in virtue of a divine ordinance, as this is only accepting a recompense for a certain service; and as the acts above described are not ordained upon the hireling, it is consequently lawful to receive a recompense for them. The arguments of our doctors upon this point are twofold. First, the prophet has said, 'Read the Koran, but do not receive any recompense for so doing'; and he also directed Othman-bin-Abeeyas, that if he were appointed a Mawzin [a cryer to prayer] he should not take any wages Secondly, where an act of piety is performed, it springs solely from the performer (whence regard is had to his competency), and consequently he is not entitled to any recompense from another as in the cases of fasting or prayer. A teacher of the Koran, moreover, is incapable of instructing another in it, but by means of qualities existing in his scholar namely, capacity and docility, and therefore undertakes a thing the performance of which does not depend upon himself, which is consequently invalid. Some of our modem doctors, however, hold it lawful to receive wages for teaching the Koran in the present age, because an indifference has taken place with respect to religion, whence if people were to withhold from paying a recompense for instruction in the sacred writings, they would in time be disregarded: — and decrees pass accordingly.

Based on <a href="https://www.juancole.com/library/books/encyclopedias/dictionary-of-islam-hughes ">Hughes, Dictionary of Islam</a>

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