The categories (on the mustad'afin)

In the fifth part of the cycle “Towards a sociology of prophecy”, Rudian Zekthi completes the conceptual trilogy that begins with the groups (part one) and continues with the generations (part four) — now bringing the division of people into categories inside the frame. If the groups are what carry doctrine through society and the generations are what transmit it through time, the categories are the inner structures that decide what each person is answerable for before the divine call.

Zekthi reads closely verse 75 of surah an-Nisa — the central Qur'anic verse on the “mustad'afin”, the oppressed and the defenceless — and develops a sociological reading of the three categories the Qur'an distinguishes: the men, the women, and the mustad'afin. He argues that the categories are not static and that people move within them: a man can “descend” into the condition of the mustad'af if he does not carry his own responsibility, and each category has duties of its own that cannot be handed to another.

In the second half, Zekthi examines what follows in practice — why Muslims today so often fail to recognise their own category, why “the men” in the Qur'anic sense are not simply biological males but a category of responsibility, and how this reading applies to the contemporary context of Albanian Muslims. The lecture closes with the central question: which category are we in, and what concrete obligations come with it?

Some of the points covered: 📌 The groups, the generations, the categories: the conceptual trilogy of the cycle 📌 Verse 75 of surah an-Nisa, and the “mustad'afin” 📌 The three Qur'anic categories: the men, the women, the oppressed 📌 The categories are not static: moving between them 📌 Descending from the category of the man into that of the mustad'af 📌 Musa and Muhammad: two models of the answer to oppression 📌 Applying it to Albanian Muslims today

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