The following is a passage from an article by late Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan Sahib published in the Review of Religions, December 1984 issue. It starts, Islam has no church yet the exposition of the teachings and the values set out in the Quran as applicable to the changing pattern of human life from age to age has not only kept pace with but has always been ahead of such change.
I shall be most grateful if Huzoor most kindly throws some light on the subject that Islam has no church. What is meant by the church here? Yes, you know in every religion there are rights to be performed, religious rights are to be performed in every religion and in most religions those rights are to be performed, are to be led by some ordained people who are ordained, who are permitted to carry out those religious rights after some training and some dedication by an institution of some sort.
So when this worship or the institution of other rights is institutionalized completely, this is called a church. In Christianity it is institutionalized, in Islam there is no institutionalization of any sort. For instance, if there are a few Muslims together they can choose their Imam and anyone can lead a prayer. If somebody dies anyone can perform the rites pertaining to the death. If a child is born anyone can say the Adhan in one ear and Takbeer in the other. So every rite which a Muslim is expected to perform can be carried out, can be performed by any Muslim who knows how to go about it.
So there is no monopolization of religious rites whatsoever. In this way, in this sense, Islam has no church and Christianity has a church but in other ways there are specialist people who specialize on religion and who acquire a sort of religious authority which is not imposed on people as such through a church. But who being scholarly people have respect in the society from their point of view and also they are expected to perform the rites generally, more often than ordinary people. This got started in Islam as well quite early with the result that ultimately, though not officially, though not with the sanction of the Holy Quran, yet a sort of church came into being in Islam as well.
And this Mullah Khalji which has taken the whole society into strong grip now, this is a sort of unofficial Islamic church. So no longer can it be said that Islam has no church. We should say Islam has no authentic church on the authority of the Holy Quran. But it has developed into a system which we can compare with the church in other religions.
