💠Ayatollah Motahari states:

“The Quran is anchored in reproaching those who are under the yoke of blindly following their ancestors and forefathers and refuse to think so as to set themselves free. What is the purpose of the Quran in this reproach? It’s purpose is training. That is, it actually wants to awaken people to set discernment, reasoning and thinking as their scale and criterion and not to do anything merely on the pretext that their forefathers did so.One day, I listed the Quranic verses about blind following and imitation of forbearers, I observed that they are many. And what was interesting for me was that no prophet invited his people without being met with this excuse:

إِنَّا عَلَىٰ آثَارِهِم مُّقْتَدُونَ

‘we found our fathers following a creed and we are indeed following in their footstep’ (Quran 43:23).

The prophets’ communities were very diverse as far as their traditions were concerned. Every prophet raised an issue which was relevant to his community’s way of life and faced a problem unique to that community. Yet there was one problem common to all communities and which all prophets faced, and that was the burden of imitating forefathers and predecessors; in today’s parlance, it is called ‘traditionalism’ [(pertaining to cultural customs)]. On the contrary, the prophets awakened the peoples minds, telling them to think..

أَوَلَوْ كَانَ آبَاؤُهُمْ لَا يَعْقِلُونَ شَيْئًا وَلَا يَهْتَدُونَ

‘What(!?), Even if their fathers neither applied any reason nor were guided?'” (Quran 2:170)

📚”Training and Education in Islam” by Ayatollah Murtada Mutahhari, pg. 35-36