Towards an authentic understanding of Islam.

Today there are many attempts to reduce the Message of Islam and distort its deeper meaning. The most obvious reduction is that which consists in claiming to "secularize Muslim culture", by requiring the distinction between the religious sphere and the administration of the affairs of the city. The most considerable deformation is that which consists in questioning its sources: The Koran and the Sunna (the prophetic tradition). However, if Islam is indeed a global and total way of life, it is not for all that a totalitarian ideology. And if he invites us to return to the revealed texts which have the force of law, he does not congien for all that to fundamentalism.

In the Treatise on the teachings that he intended for committed Muslims, Imam Hassan Al-Banna highlighted that the understanding of Islam (al-fahm) constitutes, before sincerity (al-ikhlâs) and action (al-'amal), a pillar without which the edifice of the Muslim community simply cannot be built. He determined twenty, which, in the opinion of a large number of contemporary scholars, reveal an unequaled broadness of view on important doctrinal questions, delivered to the reader in an elegant and concise style.

By these principles, he thus answered many questions which caused divisions within the community and which weakened it:

• What about the whole of Islam?
• How to appreciate the Revelation and return to the sources: the Koran and the Sunna?
• How to put an end to superstitions and innovations, without however denying the spiritual dimension of the human soul?
• How to admit the diversity of opinions on secondary questions, while being intransigent on the very foundations of Islam?
• How to understand the Divine Names and Attributes, discarding anthropomorphism and agnosticism?
• How to estimate the opinion of imams, without limiting oneself to blind conformism?
• How should we consider the relationship between revealed law and rational investigation free from all obstacles? And so on.

So many questions that led to the fragmentation of the Muslim community, and to which the imam responds by banishing partial views that do not correspond to the teachings of the Prophet, and by excluding extreme positions that contradict the middle ground in which the Muslim faith.

Prepared, translated and annotated by Moncef Zenati