Regarding the imam as contemptible

Question

The imam of a mosque leads the prayer in return for a payment from the harvest, but some people regard the imam as a contemptible slave and call him a beggar. What is the ruling for such people?

Answer

To think that, because the imam is paid a salary or a harvest-share payment, he has become our slave and [that] we have bought him is wrong. This notion springs from arrogance (takabbur). It has come in the noble hadith that whoever has arrogance the weight of a speck in his heart cannot enter Paradise until he has been burnt in Hell and then brought out.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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