Let the days do what they will
Let the days do what they will
Be content with yourself when the divine decree is decided
Don't be impatient with adversity
For what happens in the life of this world does not last
Be strong in the face of afflictions
Let your character be one of forbearance and trust
If your flaws are many amongst the creation
And you are happy when they are covered
Veil them with generosity, for every flaw
Is covered - as they say - by generosity
Never appear humiliated before your enemies
For indeed the malicious joy of enemies is a trial
Don't hope for generosity from a miser
For in fire there is no water to quench one's thirst
Your provision is not diminished by you biding your time
And your provision is not increased through toil
No grief lasts, and no joy
And there is no privation and no prosperity
If you have contentment in your heart
You and the owner of the world are equal
When death befalls someone
No earth can protect him, nor sky
Allah's earth is vast, but
When the judgement descends, there's no escape
Let the day be treacherous from time to time
For there is no remedy in the face of death
[Translated from the Dīwān of Imām Ash-Shāfiʿī, p.26-27, Dār Al-Kutub Al-ʿIlmiyyah, Beirut, 1984]
Biography of Imām Ash-Shāfiʿī [d.204 AH/810 AD]:
D. 204 AH/819 AD. Known as the reviver and renewer of Islam in his era, Imām Ash-Shāfiʿī was the first of all the absolute mujtahids to write down a book explaining how to derive rulings in a systematic and cogent way. A direct descendant of the great-grandfather of the Prophet Muḥammad, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, and raised in the shadow of Masjid al-Aqṣā and the Sacred Masjid of Makkah, his knowledge of deriving furūʿ (branches) from Usūl (foundations) was second to none. It is for this reason that any faqīh after him owes a debt to him, for making fiqh an easier exercise to partake in for the scholar.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Western Mass “Education”
Book Review: Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2009)
Blurb for the 2009 edition: ‘Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City’s public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory government schooling has nothing to do with education, doing little but teach young people to conform to the economy and the social order. Dumbing Us Down reveals the shocking reality of today’s school system and has become a beacon for parents seeking alternatives to it. This edition celebrates the fact that the book continues to be highly relevant in setting the agenda for a complete overhaul of how we educate our children – and for what.’
The author: John Taylor Gatto is an internationally renowned speaker who lectures widely on school reform. He taught for 30 years in public schools before resigning on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal during the year he was named New York State's official "Teacher of the Year." On April 3, 2008, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard credited Mr. Gatto with adding the expression "dumbing us down" to the school debate worldwide.
Since its first publication in 1992, John Taylor Gatto’s damning exposure of compulsory schooling (not “education”) in America has sold over 150, 000 copies, and by writing this book review I would like to see that number rise further, as the information this rather short book contains opens one’s eyes and explains why school, especially in America but also Canada and the United Kingdom, was a miserable experience for so many of us and is now a miserable experience for our children. Furthermore, we can’t actually recall what we were taught that was of any benefit.
The 2009 edition includes a brilliant foreword by Thomas Moore, who mentions that Gatto’s understanding of education is that it should include the community: ‘John Gatto makes the important point that a community needs old people and children mixing together.’ For Muslims, this is extremely relevant for a number of reasons. First of all, it is very common in Muslim households, throughout the world, to find three generations living under one roof. One of the benefits of this is that the children can benefit directly from their grandparents. For example, while the father is at work, the son can spend his time with his grandfather, who has most likely retired after living a long life full of experiences and stories. Also, in addition to being retired, the grandfather is approaching the end of his life and is preparing himself to meet his Lord, so he is devoting more of his time to supererogatory acts of worship, such as extra fasting, night prayers and recitation of the Qurʾān. Think of the benefit that the grandchildren obtain by watching their grandparents doing these things, by watching them in this state. What better education could there be for children at that age? As a second point, Muslim institutions of learning have never (until the colonial age) categorised their students according to age, i.e. the grade classification system. How can children grow, develop and mature when they are constantly around their own age group? As a former schoolteacher in the UK, I myself have seen children behave horribly while at school but then behave the complete opposite later that same day while attending a class with adults at a community centre.
The book itself is a collection of five lectures and essays delivered and/or written by Gatto. The first lecture is called ‘The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher’, in which Gatto explains the seven lessons that teachers actually teach. The first is confusion. How is this so? Gatto says: ‘Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach disconnections…’ In other words, it’s all information with no meaning. Gatto states: ‘I teach the un-relating of everything, an infinite fragmentation the opposite of cohesion; what I do is more related to television programming than to making a scheme of order. In a world where home is only a ghost because both parents work, or because of too many job changes or too much ambition, or because something else has left everybody too confused to maintain a family relation, I teach students how to accept confusion as their destiny. That’s the first lesson I teach.’
The second is class position, i.e. teaching children their place in society. The third is indifference, in which children are taught not to care too much about anything. Gatto makes an interesting point about bells: ‘Indeed, the lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do. Bells are the secret logic of school time; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and the future, rendering every interval the same as any other, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.’ Isn’t it interesting that in the Muwaṭṭa of Imām Mālik and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, and other collections, there is the ḥadīth: “The angels do not accompany a group that has a dog or a bell.”?
The fourth and fifth lessons are emotional dependency and intellectual dependency. The first is a direct attack against individuality. Pupils are not allowed to express any form of individuality but instead must conform to the system. As for the latter, intellectual dependency, Gatto says: ‘This is the most important lesson of them all: we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives.’ Please see the article below ‘The religiosity and idolatry of the AGW movement’. Is it any wonder that so many of these brainwashing organisations exist and are flourishing in the west; from Greenpeace to Salafiyyah to a whole host of ‘sufi’ tareeqas? As Gatto says: ‘Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends on this lesson being learned. Think of what might fall apart if children weren’t trained to be dependent: the social services could hardly survive – they would vanish, I think, into the recent historical limbo out of which they arose. Counsellors and therapists would look on in horror as the supply of psychic invalids vanished. Commercial entertainment of all sorts, including television, would wither as people learned again how to make their own fun. Restaurants, the prepared food industry, and a whole host of other assorted food services would be drastically down-sized if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to plant, pick, chop, and cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too, as well as the clothing business and school teaching, unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people continued to pour out of our schools each year…We’ve built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don’t know how to tell themselves what to do.’
The last two lessons are provisional self-esteem, so that children’s evaluation of themselves is based on certified officials as opposed to parents, families and friends, and one can’t hide, so that children can be groomed into accepting constant surveillance throughout their lives.
In the next chapter, ‘The Psychopathic School’, Gatto enumerates eight pathologies of the children he teaches, which are: they are indifferent to the adult world, they have almost no curiosity, they have a poor sense of the future, they are ahistorical (i.e. have no understanding of how the past has affected the present), they are cruel to each other, they are uneasy with intimacy or candour, they are materialistic, and, last but not least, they are dependent, passive and timid in the presence of new challenges. Is this really what we want for our children? To fix this, Gatto suggests: ‘Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships – the one-day variety or longer – these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling.’ In other words, education should be taken out of the hand of so-called experts, who really know nothing about children and education, and be put back into the hands of families and communities.
The third chapter, entitled ‘The Green Monongahela’, includes the beautiful story of a girl called Milagros, of student of Gatto’s who was a brilliant reader but put in a low-level reading class, because the ‘administration’ had deemed that that was her place. After much struggle, Gatto finally managed to get her into the advanced reading class, and that same girl went on to become an award-winning teacher herself.
The fourth chapter is called ‘We Need Less School, Not More’, in which Gatto says: ‘No one survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents.’ He then goes on to discuss the key differences between communities and networks. ‘A community is a place in which people face each other over time in all their human variety: good parts, bad parts, and all the rest. Such places promote the highest quality of life possible – lives of engagement and participation.’ Networks, on the other hand, divide people and make them feel lonely, because they are inhuman mechanisms. Belonging to various networks eventually makes one feel alone in the middle of a crowd. For further discussion on this matter, read this article by Malcolm Gladwell. How human is Facebook, really?
The final chapter is called ‘The Congregational Principle’, in which the author condemns the idea of central planning and explains how the early European settlers in New England were Congregationalists and strictly individualistic. Each congregation has its own way of raising and educating children and even within each congregation there was a lack of uniformity. This allows for people to do their own reading and research, but still within set parameters. Orthodox Muslims (Ahl us-Sunnah wa Al-Jamāʿah) have the set parameters of the four madhabs and the creedal disciplines of the Ḥanbalīs, Ashʿarīs and Maturīdīs, while it is the Salafī cult that advocates central planning and ‘one right way’ of doing things. Central planning always stunts and numbs people because it prevents them from growing and developing naturally. Imam Muhammad Saeed Ramaḍān Al-Būṭī, in his great work Fiqh As-Sīrah, explains why the prohibition of alcohol in Islām worked and why it failed miserably when the US government tried to do it from 1919 to 1933. The key is that love of Allah and His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was planted firmly into the hearts of the Companions first, so that when the prohibition came they readily and willingly accepted it. In the US, the love of alcohol hadn’t been removed from the people’s hearts, so they resorted to clandestine methods of acquiring booze, which led to the formation of bootlegging syndicates and people like the notorious gangster Al Capone. Grassroots, family-based and/or community-based education, produces genuine, long-lasting changes in people, whereas government education and moralising, planned from central headquarters and issued from the top, always fails miserably.
In conclusion, Muslims living in the US, UK or Canada, and other countries, should consider the options of homeschooling or founding their own schools. In addition to the harms and dangers that Gatto mentions in his book, we should also be wary of the content that is taught, the beliefs and values that are being inculcated, such as atheism, secularism, evolution theory, the unity of all religions and other brands, forms and doctrines of kufr. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that our great scholars and jurists, such as Imam Ibn Al-Ḥājj [1], the great Maliki, Imām Yūsuf an-Nabahānī [2] , the great Shafiʿī, and Imām Aḥmad Shākir [3], the great Ḥanafī, have declared it impermissible for Muslims to send their children to such schools, and their ruling is the consensus of the Ummah.
The consensus of our scholars should be enough to dissuade us from sending our children to these schools, but for people who may think that it is pragmatic or practical, or even beneficial to do such a thing to their children, Gatto’s work should leave them in no doubt as to what is the best option for them. Furthermore, for Muslims who think it would be a good idea to borrow the western model and call it ‘Islamic’ when setting up their own schools, Gatto’s work comes as a stark warning and admonition. It is not just the content of these schools’ curricula that is the problem; the methods and means used are also damaging.
And with Allah alone is every success!
Dumbing Us Down is available from New Society Publishers as well as Amazon US and Amazon UK.
UPDATE: A podcast based on this post is available here.
_________________________________________
[1] See Al-Madkhal under the chapter ‘The Prohibition of sending Muslim children to Christian schools’
[2] See the Imām’s book Taḥdhīr ul-Muslimīn ʿan Madāris in-Naṣārā (A Warning to the Muslims about Christian Schools)
[3] See the Imām’s book Al-Khawātir fī At-Taʿlīm (Dangers in Education)
Blurb for the 2009 edition: ‘Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City’s public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory government schooling has nothing to do with education, doing little but teach young people to conform to the economy and the social order. Dumbing Us Down reveals the shocking reality of today’s school system and has become a beacon for parents seeking alternatives to it. This edition celebrates the fact that the book continues to be highly relevant in setting the agenda for a complete overhaul of how we educate our children – and for what.’
The author: John Taylor Gatto is an internationally renowned speaker who lectures widely on school reform. He taught for 30 years in public schools before resigning on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal during the year he was named New York State's official "Teacher of the Year." On April 3, 2008, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard credited Mr. Gatto with adding the expression "dumbing us down" to the school debate worldwide.
Since its first publication in 1992, John Taylor Gatto’s damning exposure of compulsory schooling (not “education”) in America has sold over 150, 000 copies, and by writing this book review I would like to see that number rise further, as the information this rather short book contains opens one’s eyes and explains why school, especially in America but also Canada and the United Kingdom, was a miserable experience for so many of us and is now a miserable experience for our children. Furthermore, we can’t actually recall what we were taught that was of any benefit.
The 2009 edition includes a brilliant foreword by Thomas Moore, who mentions that Gatto’s understanding of education is that it should include the community: ‘John Gatto makes the important point that a community needs old people and children mixing together.’ For Muslims, this is extremely relevant for a number of reasons. First of all, it is very common in Muslim households, throughout the world, to find three generations living under one roof. One of the benefits of this is that the children can benefit directly from their grandparents. For example, while the father is at work, the son can spend his time with his grandfather, who has most likely retired after living a long life full of experiences and stories. Also, in addition to being retired, the grandfather is approaching the end of his life and is preparing himself to meet his Lord, so he is devoting more of his time to supererogatory acts of worship, such as extra fasting, night prayers and recitation of the Qurʾān. Think of the benefit that the grandchildren obtain by watching their grandparents doing these things, by watching them in this state. What better education could there be for children at that age? As a second point, Muslim institutions of learning have never (until the colonial age) categorised their students according to age, i.e. the grade classification system. How can children grow, develop and mature when they are constantly around their own age group? As a former schoolteacher in the UK, I myself have seen children behave horribly while at school but then behave the complete opposite later that same day while attending a class with adults at a community centre.
The book itself is a collection of five lectures and essays delivered and/or written by Gatto. The first lecture is called ‘The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher’, in which Gatto explains the seven lessons that teachers actually teach. The first is confusion. How is this so? Gatto says: ‘Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach disconnections…’ In other words, it’s all information with no meaning. Gatto states: ‘I teach the un-relating of everything, an infinite fragmentation the opposite of cohesion; what I do is more related to television programming than to making a scheme of order. In a world where home is only a ghost because both parents work, or because of too many job changes or too much ambition, or because something else has left everybody too confused to maintain a family relation, I teach students how to accept confusion as their destiny. That’s the first lesson I teach.’
The second is class position, i.e. teaching children their place in society. The third is indifference, in which children are taught not to care too much about anything. Gatto makes an interesting point about bells: ‘Indeed, the lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do. Bells are the secret logic of school time; their logic is inexorable. Bells destroy the past and the future, rendering every interval the same as any other, as the abstraction of a map renders every living mountain and river the same, even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.’ Isn’t it interesting that in the Muwaṭṭa of Imām Mālik and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, and other collections, there is the ḥadīth: “The angels do not accompany a group that has a dog or a bell.”?
The fourth and fifth lessons are emotional dependency and intellectual dependency. The first is a direct attack against individuality. Pupils are not allowed to express any form of individuality but instead must conform to the system. As for the latter, intellectual dependency, Gatto says: ‘This is the most important lesson of them all: we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives.’ Please see the article below ‘The religiosity and idolatry of the AGW movement’. Is it any wonder that so many of these brainwashing organisations exist and are flourishing in the west; from Greenpeace to Salafiyyah to a whole host of ‘sufi’ tareeqas? As Gatto says: ‘Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends on this lesson being learned. Think of what might fall apart if children weren’t trained to be dependent: the social services could hardly survive – they would vanish, I think, into the recent historical limbo out of which they arose. Counsellors and therapists would look on in horror as the supply of psychic invalids vanished. Commercial entertainment of all sorts, including television, would wither as people learned again how to make their own fun. Restaurants, the prepared food industry, and a whole host of other assorted food services would be drastically down-sized if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to plant, pick, chop, and cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too, as well as the clothing business and school teaching, unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people continued to pour out of our schools each year…We’ve built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don’t know how to tell themselves what to do.’
The last two lessons are provisional self-esteem, so that children’s evaluation of themselves is based on certified officials as opposed to parents, families and friends, and one can’t hide, so that children can be groomed into accepting constant surveillance throughout their lives.
In the next chapter, ‘The Psychopathic School’, Gatto enumerates eight pathologies of the children he teaches, which are: they are indifferent to the adult world, they have almost no curiosity, they have a poor sense of the future, they are ahistorical (i.e. have no understanding of how the past has affected the present), they are cruel to each other, they are uneasy with intimacy or candour, they are materialistic, and, last but not least, they are dependent, passive and timid in the presence of new challenges. Is this really what we want for our children? To fix this, Gatto suggests: ‘Independent study, community service, adventures and experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships – the one-day variety or longer – these are all powerful, cheap, and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling.’ In other words, education should be taken out of the hand of so-called experts, who really know nothing about children and education, and be put back into the hands of families and communities.
The third chapter, entitled ‘The Green Monongahela’, includes the beautiful story of a girl called Milagros, of student of Gatto’s who was a brilliant reader but put in a low-level reading class, because the ‘administration’ had deemed that that was her place. After much struggle, Gatto finally managed to get her into the advanced reading class, and that same girl went on to become an award-winning teacher herself.
The fourth chapter is called ‘We Need Less School, Not More’, in which Gatto says: ‘No one survives these places with their humanity intact, not kids, not teachers, not administrators, and not parents.’ He then goes on to discuss the key differences between communities and networks. ‘A community is a place in which people face each other over time in all their human variety: good parts, bad parts, and all the rest. Such places promote the highest quality of life possible – lives of engagement and participation.’ Networks, on the other hand, divide people and make them feel lonely, because they are inhuman mechanisms. Belonging to various networks eventually makes one feel alone in the middle of a crowd. For further discussion on this matter, read this article by Malcolm Gladwell. How human is Facebook, really?
The final chapter is called ‘The Congregational Principle’, in which the author condemns the idea of central planning and explains how the early European settlers in New England were Congregationalists and strictly individualistic. Each congregation has its own way of raising and educating children and even within each congregation there was a lack of uniformity. This allows for people to do their own reading and research, but still within set parameters. Orthodox Muslims (Ahl us-Sunnah wa Al-Jamāʿah) have the set parameters of the four madhabs and the creedal disciplines of the Ḥanbalīs, Ashʿarīs and Maturīdīs, while it is the Salafī cult that advocates central planning and ‘one right way’ of doing things. Central planning always stunts and numbs people because it prevents them from growing and developing naturally. Imam Muhammad Saeed Ramaḍān Al-Būṭī, in his great work Fiqh As-Sīrah, explains why the prohibition of alcohol in Islām worked and why it failed miserably when the US government tried to do it from 1919 to 1933. The key is that love of Allah and His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was planted firmly into the hearts of the Companions first, so that when the prohibition came they readily and willingly accepted it. In the US, the love of alcohol hadn’t been removed from the people’s hearts, so they resorted to clandestine methods of acquiring booze, which led to the formation of bootlegging syndicates and people like the notorious gangster Al Capone. Grassroots, family-based and/or community-based education, produces genuine, long-lasting changes in people, whereas government education and moralising, planned from central headquarters and issued from the top, always fails miserably.
In conclusion, Muslims living in the US, UK or Canada, and other countries, should consider the options of homeschooling or founding their own schools. In addition to the harms and dangers that Gatto mentions in his book, we should also be wary of the content that is taught, the beliefs and values that are being inculcated, such as atheism, secularism, evolution theory, the unity of all religions and other brands, forms and doctrines of kufr. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that our great scholars and jurists, such as Imam Ibn Al-Ḥājj [1], the great Maliki, Imām Yūsuf an-Nabahānī [2] , the great Shafiʿī, and Imām Aḥmad Shākir [3], the great Ḥanafī, have declared it impermissible for Muslims to send their children to such schools, and their ruling is the consensus of the Ummah.
The consensus of our scholars should be enough to dissuade us from sending our children to these schools, but for people who may think that it is pragmatic or practical, or even beneficial to do such a thing to their children, Gatto’s work should leave them in no doubt as to what is the best option for them. Furthermore, for Muslims who think it would be a good idea to borrow the western model and call it ‘Islamic’ when setting up their own schools, Gatto’s work comes as a stark warning and admonition. It is not just the content of these schools’ curricula that is the problem; the methods and means used are also damaging.
And with Allah alone is every success!
Dumbing Us Down is available from New Society Publishers as well as Amazon US and Amazon UK.
UPDATE: A podcast based on this post is available here.
_________________________________________
[1] See Al-Madkhal under the chapter ‘The Prohibition of sending Muslim children to Christian schools’
[2] See the Imām’s book Taḥdhīr ul-Muslimīn ʿan Madāris in-Naṣārā (A Warning to the Muslims about Christian Schools)
[3] See the Imām’s book Al-Khawātir fī At-Taʿlīm (Dangers in Education)
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Book Release: The Divine Lightning
By Imam Sulaiman Ibn ‘Abdul Wahhab, translated by Al-Hajj Abu Ja’far Al-Hanbali (Spire Publishing, 2011)
Whether it be Al-Qaeda, Ahle Hadith, GIA or any other medley of titles, these groups stem from the same source: Muhammad ibn `Abdul Wahhab and his Ikhwan, or 'Brotherhood' movement. For the first time in English, the reader has a full historical and theological explanation of Salafi yyah. The author, Imam Sulaiman ibn `Abdul Wahhab, was the first to write about and ultimately fall victim to the movement. Anyone seeking answers - Muslim or not - needs to understand that this tribulation did not begin on a Tuesday in 2001, but in the mind of a false prophet more than 200 years ago.
Order your copy now from Amazon UK or Amazon US.
For Al-Hajj Abu Ja’far’s other books please visit www.htspub.com. For recordings of his classes and lectures please visit the Reasons for Faith Channel.
UPDATE: The book is also availble from/via Amazon Japan, Amazon Canada, Amazon Germany, and Amazon France. Amazon Austria will redirect you towards Amazon Germany. I hope that helps!
Whether it be Al-Qaeda, Ahle Hadith, GIA or any other medley of titles, these groups stem from the same source: Muhammad ibn `Abdul Wahhab and his Ikhwan, or 'Brotherhood' movement. For the first time in English, the reader has a full historical and theological explanation of Salafi yyah. The author, Imam Sulaiman ibn `Abdul Wahhab, was the first to write about and ultimately fall victim to the movement. Anyone seeking answers - Muslim or not - needs to understand that this tribulation did not begin on a Tuesday in 2001, but in the mind of a false prophet more than 200 years ago.
Order your copy now from Amazon UK or Amazon US.
For Al-Hajj Abu Ja’far’s other books please visit www.htspub.com. For recordings of his classes and lectures please visit the Reasons for Faith Channel.
UPDATE: The book is also availble from/via Amazon Japan, Amazon Canada, Amazon Germany, and Amazon France. Amazon Austria will redirect you towards Amazon Germany. I hope that helps!
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Fiqh of Minorities (Part 1)
By Sheikh Muḥammad Saʿīd Ramaḍān Al-Būti
It is not a coincidence that the call to ‘Fiqh of Minorities’ has come together with the plan aimed a dividing Islam. [1]
In an age in which the leaders of the ideological attack are planning, throughout the world, to divide the single global Islam into various local “Islams”, that differ and are in conflict with one another, [this ideological attack] follows in succession the voices calling to “Fiqh of Minorities” and these [two ideas] grant legitimacy to one another. In clarification of the matter, [Fiqh of Minorities] is nothing other than an Islamic garb that is appropriate for the Islam that is thriving today in the west, in Europe and America, not the other Islam that is prevalent in the traditional Muslim lands.
I have inquired before: ‘What are the reasons or foundations that make it necessary to give rise to this “Fiqh of Minorities”?’
The reply was: ‘There are many: the principle of benefits…necessities permit that which is forbidden…difficulty brings about ease…nothing has been made difficult for you in this religion. [See Al-Ḥājj 22:78]
I said: ‘But these reasons are not specific to Muslims living in Europe or America, rather they are reasons for a global Islamic fiqh that does not have a particular land. There has not been a day when there have not been reasons for what is called “Fiqh of Minorities” or anything else. Wherever you find a necessity, in its known legal meaning, the causative prohibition for it is lifted. And wherever you find a difficulty that goes beyond the usual limit, a legal dispensation is undertaken to lift it. And whenever the two benefits [the lifting of the causative prohibition and the legal dispensation] are opposed in the hierarchy of the objectives of Revealed Law, the first of them takes precedence. We have not found in the Qur’an or the Sunnah, and not in the speech of any of the imams of the Revealed Law, that these reasons are particular to the circumstances of minorities that are living in Dar al-Kufr[2] , and that it is not permissible for other Muslims, living in the Islamic world, to take them or use them as a basis.
I was told: ‘Indeed the necessities that create the urgent need for a special fiqh for these minorities are a result of their presence in societies that are not Islamic, and have particularities that are distinct from Islamic societies.’
I said: ‘What Islam is this that decrees that the mere presence of a Muslim in Dar al-Kufr is considered a necessity justifying the legislation of a special Islamic fiqh for him, in harmony with what surrounds him from the tendencies of kufr, iniquity, and disobedience? So why did Allah legislate emigration (hijra) and command it, from Dar al-Kufr (if it is not possible for a Muslim to apply the rulings of Islam in it) to Dar al-Islam? Why didn’t the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, and his Companions, when they were in the midst of the polytheists in Mecca, depend on that which he did not know, called “Fiqh of Minorities”?
If the mere presence of Muslims in Dar al-Kufr brings about the necessity, justifying the creation of a new fiqh that is appropriate to those lands and those in them, then who are those whom Allah, Exalted is He, said regarding them:
"When the angels seized the souls of those who were doing wrong to their own souls, they asked them: “What was the matter with you?” They answered: “We were oppressed in the land.” The angels replied: “Was not Allah’s earth spacious for you to emigrate in it?” Hell is the abode of such people and it is a very evil abode indeed." [An-Nisāʾ 4:97]?
And we were rejoicing because of the gradual increase of Muslims in the west, with their adherence to Islam and upholding of its rulings, causing the dissolution of the deviating Western civilization, dissolving in the stream of the Islamic civilization.
But we today, in the shadow of this beautiful call to what is known as “Fiqh of Minorities”, know that we are threatened with the opposite of what we were rejoicing about. We are threatened with the dissolution of the Islamic presence in the stream of the deviating Western civilization, and this fiqh is responsible.
[1] This was Sheikh Al-Būti's Word for the Month for June, 2001.
[2] According to Imām ibn Mufliḥ al-Ḥanbalī in Al-Adāb ash-Sharʿiyyah [v.1 pp.191-92], Dār al-Kufr are the lands in which the laws of kufr are predominant, while Dār al-Islām are the lands in which the laws of Islam are predominant. Please click on 'The Abodes of the Earth' below for further details.
Related Posts:
Fiqh of Minorities (Part 2)
The Abodes of the Earth
It is not a coincidence that the call to ‘Fiqh of Minorities’ has come together with the plan aimed a dividing Islam. [1]
In an age in which the leaders of the ideological attack are planning, throughout the world, to divide the single global Islam into various local “Islams”, that differ and are in conflict with one another, [this ideological attack] follows in succession the voices calling to “Fiqh of Minorities” and these [two ideas] grant legitimacy to one another. In clarification of the matter, [Fiqh of Minorities] is nothing other than an Islamic garb that is appropriate for the Islam that is thriving today in the west, in Europe and America, not the other Islam that is prevalent in the traditional Muslim lands.
I have inquired before: ‘What are the reasons or foundations that make it necessary to give rise to this “Fiqh of Minorities”?’
The reply was: ‘There are many: the principle of benefits…necessities permit that which is forbidden…difficulty brings about ease…nothing has been made difficult for you in this religion. [See Al-Ḥājj 22:78]
I said: ‘But these reasons are not specific to Muslims living in Europe or America, rather they are reasons for a global Islamic fiqh that does not have a particular land. There has not been a day when there have not been reasons for what is called “Fiqh of Minorities” or anything else. Wherever you find a necessity, in its known legal meaning, the causative prohibition for it is lifted. And wherever you find a difficulty that goes beyond the usual limit, a legal dispensation is undertaken to lift it. And whenever the two benefits [the lifting of the causative prohibition and the legal dispensation] are opposed in the hierarchy of the objectives of Revealed Law, the first of them takes precedence. We have not found in the Qur’an or the Sunnah, and not in the speech of any of the imams of the Revealed Law, that these reasons are particular to the circumstances of minorities that are living in Dar al-Kufr[2] , and that it is not permissible for other Muslims, living in the Islamic world, to take them or use them as a basis.
I was told: ‘Indeed the necessities that create the urgent need for a special fiqh for these minorities are a result of their presence in societies that are not Islamic, and have particularities that are distinct from Islamic societies.’
I said: ‘What Islam is this that decrees that the mere presence of a Muslim in Dar al-Kufr is considered a necessity justifying the legislation of a special Islamic fiqh for him, in harmony with what surrounds him from the tendencies of kufr, iniquity, and disobedience? So why did Allah legislate emigration (hijra) and command it, from Dar al-Kufr (if it is not possible for a Muslim to apply the rulings of Islam in it) to Dar al-Islam? Why didn’t the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, and his Companions, when they were in the midst of the polytheists in Mecca, depend on that which he did not know, called “Fiqh of Minorities”?
If the mere presence of Muslims in Dar al-Kufr brings about the necessity, justifying the creation of a new fiqh that is appropriate to those lands and those in them, then who are those whom Allah, Exalted is He, said regarding them:
"When the angels seized the souls of those who were doing wrong to their own souls, they asked them: “What was the matter with you?” They answered: “We were oppressed in the land.” The angels replied: “Was not Allah’s earth spacious for you to emigrate in it?” Hell is the abode of such people and it is a very evil abode indeed." [An-Nisāʾ 4:97]?
And we were rejoicing because of the gradual increase of Muslims in the west, with their adherence to Islam and upholding of its rulings, causing the dissolution of the deviating Western civilization, dissolving in the stream of the Islamic civilization.
But we today, in the shadow of this beautiful call to what is known as “Fiqh of Minorities”, know that we are threatened with the opposite of what we were rejoicing about. We are threatened with the dissolution of the Islamic presence in the stream of the deviating Western civilization, and this fiqh is responsible.
[1] This was Sheikh Al-Būti's Word for the Month for June, 2001.
[2] According to Imām ibn Mufliḥ al-Ḥanbalī in Al-Adāb ash-Sharʿiyyah [v.1 pp.191-92], Dār al-Kufr are the lands in which the laws of kufr are predominant, while Dār al-Islām are the lands in which the laws of Islam are predominant. Please click on 'The Abodes of the Earth' below for further details.
Related Posts:
Fiqh of Minorities (Part 2)
The Abodes of the Earth
Friday, 7 January 2011
The Objectives of the Revealed Law (Maqāṣid Ash-Sharīʿah)
A Brief Introduction
In the Name of Allah, The All Merciful, The Most Merciful
In the Arabic language, the word maqāṣid comes from the word maqṣid or maqṣūd. The maqṣid is the place that it is intended while the maqṣūd is the objective that is intended. In the terminology of Uṣūl Al-Fiqh, the maqāṣid are the objectives and wisdoms that the Lawgiver has laid down for every ruling of the Revealed Law, realising advantages for His slaves in the life of this world and the Hereafter by bringing about that which benefits them and warding off that which harms them.
The foundational purpose behind the legislations of Islām is consideration for the benefits of Allah’s slaves in terms of their Dīn as well as the life of this world in that which facilitates their task as vicegerents and enables them to inhabit and develop the earth.
Whenever Allah’s slaves seek benefit there is the risk of them moving away from the truth, due to those benefits mixing with harms, or going beyond moderation and balance and falling into neglect or excess, or the risk of following vain desires by giving precedence to worldly matters over matters of the Hereafter, or bringing something forward that should be delayed and delaying something that should be brought forward, or these benefits are subjected to opinions and vain desires…The Wise Lawgiver has laid down the foundations for procuring benefits and their limits by way of clarifying the general and comprehensive objectives of legislation, then ordering what branches out from these objectives in a precise manner such that no scope is left for vain desires to intervene or interfere and thus become the arbiter therein. Indeed, everything that brings about an objective of the Revealed Law is a sought-after benefit, and everything that contravenes the objective of the Lawgiver is a harm that must be averted and the means to it must be blocked.
The Lawgiver’s general objective behind legislating rulings: Indeed whoever examines the rulings of the Revealed Law and follows their development will find that legal responsibility (at-taklīf) is entirely about averting harm and bringing about benefit, and thus the rulings of the Revealed Law have only been established out of consideration for the benefits of Allah’s slaves and realising the utmost goodness for them in the life of this world and the Hereafter, or both of them together.
The reasoning behind The Lawgiver’s rulings and legislations is shown in the Noble Qurʾān and the Prophetic Sunnah; benefits for the slave in this world and in the Hereafter. This is what affirms His intention towards realising the welfare of His slaves and their success in both worlds. The Lawgiver’s consideration for the benefits of His slaves is not restricted to the scope of customs, transactions and punitive measures. Rather, they also include acts of worship that are considered to be the prime objective of worship…because Allah the Exalted has no need of His creation. Their obedience does not benefit Him and their disobedience does not harm Him. Rather, the objective of their worship is to return the benefit therein to them. Allah the Exalted has said, concluding the āya on wuḍūʾ (ablution): “Allah does not want to make things difficult for you, but He does want to purify you and to perfect His blessings upon you so that hopefully you will be thankful.” [Al-Māʾidah 5:6] Thus, Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has explained the objective behind legislating wuḍūʾ, which is purification from dirt, uncleanliness and sins. Likewise, He the Exalted explained the objective behind legislating the prayer in His statement: “The prayer precludes indecency and wronging.” [Al-ʿAnkabūt 29:45] The one who performs the prayer properly will be protected from committing blameworthy statements and actions. He the Exalted explained the objective behind legislating zakāt in His statement: “Take zakāt from their wealth to purify and cleanse them.” [At-Tawba 9:103] Thus, He has clarified that the objective behind legislating zakāt is to purify the wealthy from all forms of uncleanliness, material and spiritual.
The āyāt that show that the objectives of the Lawgiver are consideration for the benefit of His slaves, in their transactions, customs and punitive measures, include His, The Exalted’s, statement: “Among His Signs is that He created spouses for you of your own kind so that you might find tranquility in them. And He has placed affection and compassion between you.” [Ar-Rūm 30:21] Thus, the objective behind legislating marriage is tranquility, affection and compassion between the two spouses. The objective behind prohibiting intoxicants is in His, The Exalted’s, statement: “You who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, stone altars and divining arrows are filth from the handiwork of Shayṭān. Avoid them completely so that hopefully you will be successful.” [Al-Māʾidah 5:90] These things are filth. The objective behind legislating retaliation (al-qaṣāṣ) is in His, The Exalted’s, statement: “There is life for you in retaliation, O people of intelligence, so that hopefully you will have fear of Allah.” [Al-Baqara 2:179] i.e. preventing criminals from transgressing against life. From these āyāt it is clear that the Lawgiver’s general objective behind legislating rulings is consideration for the benefit of His slaves in both worlds, and it is the general objective behind all of legal responsibility and all states. The scholars have divided these benefits into three degrees: indispensible benefits (maṣāliḥ ḍarūriyyah), necessary benefits (maṣāliḥ ḥājiyyah) and refining benefits (maṣāliḥ taḥsīniyyah), and each of these degrees has that which perfects it (mukammilāt).
The objective behind maintaining these benefits is represented in preserving the five comprehensives (al-kulliyāt al-khams): Ad-Dīn (the religion), an-nafs (life), al-ʿaql (intellect), an-nasl (lineage), and al-māl (wealth and property). Therefore, preserving the foundations of these comprehensives is considered part of the indispensible benefits, while preserving other than them is considered part of the necessary or refining benefits.
Preserving the foundation of the Dīn requires faith in the pillars of the creed and establishing its acts of worship, such as the prayer, zakāt, fasting and the Ḥajj. The demand for these to be carried out is from the indispensible benefits, because the foundation of the Dīn cannot be established without them. As for demanding that which perfects this foundation, such as dispensations that makes things easier for those who are legally responsible, these are from the necessary benefits. As for demanding that which perfects supererogatory acts, etiquettes and virtues, this is from the refining benefits.
[Translated from Uṣūl al-Fiqh: As-Sanah Ath-Thāniyah min Salak Al-Bakālawriya, Shaʿbah At-Taʿlīm Al-Aṣīl, Maslak Al-ʿUlūm Ash-Sharʿīyyah by Ustadh ʿAli Filālī and colleagues at the Qarawiyyin High School, Fes, Morocco, p.11-12]
In the Name of Allah, The All Merciful, The Most Merciful
In the Arabic language, the word maqāṣid comes from the word maqṣid or maqṣūd. The maqṣid is the place that it is intended while the maqṣūd is the objective that is intended. In the terminology of Uṣūl Al-Fiqh, the maqāṣid are the objectives and wisdoms that the Lawgiver has laid down for every ruling of the Revealed Law, realising advantages for His slaves in the life of this world and the Hereafter by bringing about that which benefits them and warding off that which harms them.
The foundational purpose behind the legislations of Islām is consideration for the benefits of Allah’s slaves in terms of their Dīn as well as the life of this world in that which facilitates their task as vicegerents and enables them to inhabit and develop the earth.
Whenever Allah’s slaves seek benefit there is the risk of them moving away from the truth, due to those benefits mixing with harms, or going beyond moderation and balance and falling into neglect or excess, or the risk of following vain desires by giving precedence to worldly matters over matters of the Hereafter, or bringing something forward that should be delayed and delaying something that should be brought forward, or these benefits are subjected to opinions and vain desires…The Wise Lawgiver has laid down the foundations for procuring benefits and their limits by way of clarifying the general and comprehensive objectives of legislation, then ordering what branches out from these objectives in a precise manner such that no scope is left for vain desires to intervene or interfere and thus become the arbiter therein. Indeed, everything that brings about an objective of the Revealed Law is a sought-after benefit, and everything that contravenes the objective of the Lawgiver is a harm that must be averted and the means to it must be blocked.
The Lawgiver’s general objective behind legislating rulings: Indeed whoever examines the rulings of the Revealed Law and follows their development will find that legal responsibility (at-taklīf) is entirely about averting harm and bringing about benefit, and thus the rulings of the Revealed Law have only been established out of consideration for the benefits of Allah’s slaves and realising the utmost goodness for them in the life of this world and the Hereafter, or both of them together.
The reasoning behind The Lawgiver’s rulings and legislations is shown in the Noble Qurʾān and the Prophetic Sunnah; benefits for the slave in this world and in the Hereafter. This is what affirms His intention towards realising the welfare of His slaves and their success in both worlds. The Lawgiver’s consideration for the benefits of His slaves is not restricted to the scope of customs, transactions and punitive measures. Rather, they also include acts of worship that are considered to be the prime objective of worship…because Allah the Exalted has no need of His creation. Their obedience does not benefit Him and their disobedience does not harm Him. Rather, the objective of their worship is to return the benefit therein to them. Allah the Exalted has said, concluding the āya on wuḍūʾ (ablution): “Allah does not want to make things difficult for you, but He does want to purify you and to perfect His blessings upon you so that hopefully you will be thankful.” [Al-Māʾidah 5:6] Thus, Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has explained the objective behind legislating wuḍūʾ, which is purification from dirt, uncleanliness and sins. Likewise, He the Exalted explained the objective behind legislating the prayer in His statement: “The prayer precludes indecency and wronging.” [Al-ʿAnkabūt 29:45] The one who performs the prayer properly will be protected from committing blameworthy statements and actions. He the Exalted explained the objective behind legislating zakāt in His statement: “Take zakāt from their wealth to purify and cleanse them.” [At-Tawba 9:103] Thus, He has clarified that the objective behind legislating zakāt is to purify the wealthy from all forms of uncleanliness, material and spiritual.
The āyāt that show that the objectives of the Lawgiver are consideration for the benefit of His slaves, in their transactions, customs and punitive measures, include His, The Exalted’s, statement: “Among His Signs is that He created spouses for you of your own kind so that you might find tranquility in them. And He has placed affection and compassion between you.” [Ar-Rūm 30:21] Thus, the objective behind legislating marriage is tranquility, affection and compassion between the two spouses. The objective behind prohibiting intoxicants is in His, The Exalted’s, statement: “You who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, stone altars and divining arrows are filth from the handiwork of Shayṭān. Avoid them completely so that hopefully you will be successful.” [Al-Māʾidah 5:90] These things are filth. The objective behind legislating retaliation (al-qaṣāṣ) is in His, The Exalted’s, statement: “There is life for you in retaliation, O people of intelligence, so that hopefully you will have fear of Allah.” [Al-Baqara 2:179] i.e. preventing criminals from transgressing against life. From these āyāt it is clear that the Lawgiver’s general objective behind legislating rulings is consideration for the benefit of His slaves in both worlds, and it is the general objective behind all of legal responsibility and all states. The scholars have divided these benefits into three degrees: indispensible benefits (maṣāliḥ ḍarūriyyah), necessary benefits (maṣāliḥ ḥājiyyah) and refining benefits (maṣāliḥ taḥsīniyyah), and each of these degrees has that which perfects it (mukammilāt).
The objective behind maintaining these benefits is represented in preserving the five comprehensives (al-kulliyāt al-khams): Ad-Dīn (the religion), an-nafs (life), al-ʿaql (intellect), an-nasl (lineage), and al-māl (wealth and property). Therefore, preserving the foundations of these comprehensives is considered part of the indispensible benefits, while preserving other than them is considered part of the necessary or refining benefits.
Preserving the foundation of the Dīn requires faith in the pillars of the creed and establishing its acts of worship, such as the prayer, zakāt, fasting and the Ḥajj. The demand for these to be carried out is from the indispensible benefits, because the foundation of the Dīn cannot be established without them. As for demanding that which perfects this foundation, such as dispensations that makes things easier for those who are legally responsible, these are from the necessary benefits. As for demanding that which perfects supererogatory acts, etiquettes and virtues, this is from the refining benefits.
[Translated from Uṣūl al-Fiqh: As-Sanah Ath-Thāniyah min Salak Al-Bakālawriya, Shaʿbah At-Taʿlīm Al-Aṣīl, Maslak Al-ʿUlūm Ash-Sharʿīyyah by Ustadh ʿAli Filālī and colleagues at the Qarawiyyin High School, Fes, Morocco, p.11-12]
Friday, 31 December 2010
The Purpose of Life
A Brief Explanation
In the Name of Allah, The All Merciful, The Most Merciful
The questions of why we are here, where we have come from, and where we are going are relevant to all of humanity. Indeed the question of where we are going is addressed by Allah, in the Noble Qurʾān, in the following verses:
“And he [Muḥammad, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him] is not stingy with the revelation, and it [the Qurʾān] is not the speech of the accursed Satan. So where, then, are you going? Indeed it [the Qurʾān] is only a reminder for all of creation. For whoever wants to, from amongst you, let him be upright, and you do not will except that Allah wills, the Lord of all creation.” [Sūrah at-Takwīr 81:24-29]
These verses are primarily addressed to the disbelievers of Makkah. Where are they going? Are they going to accept salvation and the Message or are they going to reject it and become lost for all eternity?
This leads us to the next verse where Allah states very clearly why He created us:
"And I have not created the jinn and the humans except that they should worship Me." [Sūrah adh-Dhāriyāt 51:56]
This is the purpose of our existence, but what does worshipping Allah mean? The great Companion of the Messenger of Allah may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, Ibn ʿAbbās, may Allah be pleased with him, states in his commentary on the Qurʾān that Allah has not created us except that we should worship Him as the only god in existence. This is called Tawḥīd in Arabic. Allah has said:
"Know that there is no god but Allah, and seek forgiveness for your sins." [Surah Muḥammad 47:19]
Worshipping Allah also means having a direct relationship with Him. Allah is constantly calling humanity to Him, offering them guidance and forgiveness of their sins:
"O humanity! Worship your Lord Who created you and those who came before you so that you may achieve Taqwa." [Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:21]
‘Their messengers said: “Is there doubt in Allah, the Originator of the Heavens and the Earth?” He calls on you in order to forgive you your sins, and he gives you respite until an appointed time.’ [Sūrah Ibrāhīm 14:10]
"And if My slaves ask you [Muhammad, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him] about Me, indeed I am Near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls on Me, so let them respond to Me, and let them believe in Me so that they may be rightly-guided." [Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:186]
Allah does not reject humanity. It is humanity that accepts or rejects Him. This brings us to the issue of free will. Every individual has the choice to believe or disbelieve:
"And whoever from amongst you wants to, let him believe, and whoever from amongst you wants to, let him disbelieve." [Sūrah al-Kahf 18:29]
"He is the One Who created you, and from you is the disbeliever and from you is the believer." [Sūrah at-Taghābun 64:2]
"There is no compulsion in religion. Truth has been clearly distinguished from falsehood." [Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:256]
Does Allah need humanity to believe in Him and worship Him? Allah gives us the answer:
"If you disbelieve Allah has no need of you, and Allah is not pleased with disbelief for His slaves." [Sūrah az-Zumar 39:7]
Allah does not need us to have a relationship with Him, but He wants us to. This should make us realise that Allah’s mercy towards us is absolutely sincere.
What about salvation and perdition? As shown above, there are two kinds of people: the believer and the disbeliever, and Allah has made promises to both of them:
"Allah has promised the believing men and women that they shall have the Paradise, under which rivers flow." [Sūrah at-Tawbah 9:72]
"Allah has promised the hypocrites, men and women, and the disbelievers, the Fire of Hell, and they shall be in there forever." [Sūrah at-Tawbah 9:68]
"Indeed Allah does not break His promise." [Sūrah Āl-Imrān 3:9 and Sūrah ar-Raʿd 13:31]
Does Allah want to punish humanity for their disbelief? The following verse is very telling:
'Indeed those who disbelieved will be called [on the Day of Judgement]: “Your hatred of yourselves on this day is not as great as Allah’s hatred of the fact that you were called to faith [in this life] and you rejected it.”' [Sūrah al-Ghāfir 40:10]
Allah does not want anybody to go into the Hellfire, but He keeps His Word. This should make us realise that Paradise and Hell are not merely about reward and punishment, but they exist as a further impetus for humanity to have a relationship with Allah, their Lord and Creator.
The motivations behind worshipping Allah can be narrowed down to three:
1. Worshipping Allah out of fear of the Hellfire. This is the lowest.
2. Worshipping Allah out of desire for the Paradise.
3. Worshipping Allah for Who He is. This is the perfection of worship.
Worshipping Allah simply for Who He is could explain why the greatest reward for the believers is not necessarily to be in Paradise itself, but to see Him. The culmination of having a direct relationship with Allah in this life is simply to gaze at Him for all eternity in the next:
"Faces on that Day radiant, looking at their Lord." [Sūrah al-Qiyāmah 75:22-23]
"For those who did excellence is the best reward and something extra." [Sūrah Yūnus 10:26]
That something extra, according to all orthodox commentaries, is the seeing of Allah. How exactly this will be only Allah knows, but what a reward!
This is the purpose of life. It is left to humanity to make their own decision and they will be held responsible for that decision. Allah is At-Tawwāb [the Oft-Returning]; He is always ready to accept anybody who comes to Him, sincerely seeking a relationship with Him. Once that relationship is established Allah will never let go, but humanity is still free to do as they wish.
"There is no compulsion in religion: guidance has been clearly distinguished from error, so whoever rejects false gods and believes in Allah has grasped the firmest handhold, one that will never break."[Al-Baqarah 2:256]
In the Name of Allah, The All Merciful, The Most Merciful
The questions of why we are here, where we have come from, and where we are going are relevant to all of humanity. Indeed the question of where we are going is addressed by Allah, in the Noble Qurʾān, in the following verses:
“And he [Muḥammad, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him] is not stingy with the revelation, and it [the Qurʾān] is not the speech of the accursed Satan. So where, then, are you going? Indeed it [the Qurʾān] is only a reminder for all of creation. For whoever wants to, from amongst you, let him be upright, and you do not will except that Allah wills, the Lord of all creation.” [Sūrah at-Takwīr 81:24-29]
These verses are primarily addressed to the disbelievers of Makkah. Where are they going? Are they going to accept salvation and the Message or are they going to reject it and become lost for all eternity?
This leads us to the next verse where Allah states very clearly why He created us:
"And I have not created the jinn and the humans except that they should worship Me." [Sūrah adh-Dhāriyāt 51:56]
This is the purpose of our existence, but what does worshipping Allah mean? The great Companion of the Messenger of Allah may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, Ibn ʿAbbās, may Allah be pleased with him, states in his commentary on the Qurʾān that Allah has not created us except that we should worship Him as the only god in existence. This is called Tawḥīd in Arabic. Allah has said:
"Know that there is no god but Allah, and seek forgiveness for your sins." [Surah Muḥammad 47:19]
Worshipping Allah also means having a direct relationship with Him. Allah is constantly calling humanity to Him, offering them guidance and forgiveness of their sins:
"O humanity! Worship your Lord Who created you and those who came before you so that you may achieve Taqwa." [Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:21]
‘Their messengers said: “Is there doubt in Allah, the Originator of the Heavens and the Earth?” He calls on you in order to forgive you your sins, and he gives you respite until an appointed time.’ [Sūrah Ibrāhīm 14:10]
"And if My slaves ask you [Muhammad, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him] about Me, indeed I am Near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls on Me, so let them respond to Me, and let them believe in Me so that they may be rightly-guided." [Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:186]
Allah does not reject humanity. It is humanity that accepts or rejects Him. This brings us to the issue of free will. Every individual has the choice to believe or disbelieve:
"And whoever from amongst you wants to, let him believe, and whoever from amongst you wants to, let him disbelieve." [Sūrah al-Kahf 18:29]
"He is the One Who created you, and from you is the disbeliever and from you is the believer." [Sūrah at-Taghābun 64:2]
"There is no compulsion in religion. Truth has been clearly distinguished from falsehood." [Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:256]
Does Allah need humanity to believe in Him and worship Him? Allah gives us the answer:
"If you disbelieve Allah has no need of you, and Allah is not pleased with disbelief for His slaves." [Sūrah az-Zumar 39:7]
Allah does not need us to have a relationship with Him, but He wants us to. This should make us realise that Allah’s mercy towards us is absolutely sincere.
What about salvation and perdition? As shown above, there are two kinds of people: the believer and the disbeliever, and Allah has made promises to both of them:
"Allah has promised the believing men and women that they shall have the Paradise, under which rivers flow." [Sūrah at-Tawbah 9:72]
"Allah has promised the hypocrites, men and women, and the disbelievers, the Fire of Hell, and they shall be in there forever." [Sūrah at-Tawbah 9:68]
"Indeed Allah does not break His promise." [Sūrah Āl-Imrān 3:9 and Sūrah ar-Raʿd 13:31]
Does Allah want to punish humanity for their disbelief? The following verse is very telling:
'Indeed those who disbelieved will be called [on the Day of Judgement]: “Your hatred of yourselves on this day is not as great as Allah’s hatred of the fact that you were called to faith [in this life] and you rejected it.”' [Sūrah al-Ghāfir 40:10]
Allah does not want anybody to go into the Hellfire, but He keeps His Word. This should make us realise that Paradise and Hell are not merely about reward and punishment, but they exist as a further impetus for humanity to have a relationship with Allah, their Lord and Creator.
The motivations behind worshipping Allah can be narrowed down to three:
1. Worshipping Allah out of fear of the Hellfire. This is the lowest.
2. Worshipping Allah out of desire for the Paradise.
3. Worshipping Allah for Who He is. This is the perfection of worship.
Worshipping Allah simply for Who He is could explain why the greatest reward for the believers is not necessarily to be in Paradise itself, but to see Him. The culmination of having a direct relationship with Allah in this life is simply to gaze at Him for all eternity in the next:
"Faces on that Day radiant, looking at their Lord." [Sūrah al-Qiyāmah 75:22-23]
"For those who did excellence is the best reward and something extra." [Sūrah Yūnus 10:26]
That something extra, according to all orthodox commentaries, is the seeing of Allah. How exactly this will be only Allah knows, but what a reward!
This is the purpose of life. It is left to humanity to make their own decision and they will be held responsible for that decision. Allah is At-Tawwāb [the Oft-Returning]; He is always ready to accept anybody who comes to Him, sincerely seeking a relationship with Him. Once that relationship is established Allah will never let go, but humanity is still free to do as they wish.
"There is no compulsion in religion: guidance has been clearly distinguished from error, so whoever rejects false gods and believes in Allah has grasped the firmest handhold, one that will never break."[Al-Baqarah 2:256]
Saturday, 25 December 2010
Women in the Masjid
The Evidence from Sahih Muslim, with commentary by Sheikh al-Islam Yahya an-Nawawi
(#440) Zuheir bin Harb related [1] to us, Jarir bin Suheil related to us, from his father, from Abu Huraira, who said: ‘The Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “The best row for the men is the first, and the worst of them is the last. The best row for the women is the last, and the worst of them is the first.”
Imam an-Nawawi: Regarding the rows of the men, generally speaking, the best is always the first and the worst is always the last. As for the rows of the women, this hadith is referring to the rows of the women that pray with the men. If [the women] pray by themselves, without the men, then they become like men in the sense that their best row would be the first and the worst one would be the last. What is meant by ‘the worst row’ for men and women is the row that has the least reward and virtue, and is the furthest from what is sought by legislation. The best row is the opposite. The only virtue of the last row of the women, who pray with the men, is their distance from mixing with the men, seeing them and their hearts being attached to them upon seeing their movement and hearing their speech and so forth. The dispraise of the first row is the opposite of that, and Allah knows best.
(#441) Abu Bakr bin Abi Shaibah related to us, Waki’ related to us from Sufyan from Abu Hazim, from Sahl bin Sa’d, who said: ‘ I saw the men tying their lower garments around their necks, like children, because of the shortage of cloth, behind the Prophet may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, so someone said: “ O women! Don’t raise your heads until the men have gotten up.”
Imam an-Nawawi: (‘I saw the men tying their lower garments’). This means that they tied them because of their inadequacy, so that none of their nakedness would be revealed. This is a caution to cover nakedness and to be firm in maintaining that cover.
(‘O women! Don’t raise your heads until the men have gotten up’). This is so that no woman would see the nakedness of any of the men being revealed, and so forth.
(#442) ‘Amr an-Naqid and Zuheir bin Harb related to me, and both of them from Ibn ‘Uyainah. Zuheir said: ‘Sufyan bin ‘Uyainah related to us, from az-Zuhri, that he heard Salim narrate from his father. The Prophet, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, came to him and said: “If any of your women should seek permission to go to the masjid then don’t prevent them.”’
Harmala bin Yahya has told me, Ibn Wahb has informed [2] us. Yunus has informed me from Ibn Shihab, who said: ‘Salim bin ‘Abdullah has informed me that ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar said: “ I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, saying: “ Don’t prevent your women from going to the masjids if they seek your permission.”’
He [Salim bin ‘Abdullah] also said that Bilal bin ‘Abdullah said: ‘I swear by Allah! I will prevent them!’ ‘Abdullah [his father] turned to him and chastised him severely. I had never heard such a severe chastisement. He said: ‘I’m narrating from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, and you’re saying: “I swear by Allah! I will prevent them!”’
Imam an-Nawawi: In another narration: ‘He scolded him.’ And in another narration: ‘He struck him on his chest.”
Muhammad bin ‘Abdullah bin Numair related to us, my father has related to us and Ibn Idris, saying: ‘‘Ubaid Allah has told us, from Nafi’, from Ibn ‘Umar, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “Do not hinder the handmaidens of Allah from the masjids of Allah.”
Imam an-Nawawi: (Do not hinder the handmaidens of Allah from the masjids of Allah). This and what resembles it from the hadiths in this chapter clearly indicate that a woman should not be hindered from the masjid, but the scholars have mentioned conditions that are taken from the hadiths. They are that she should not be scented, nor beautified and she should not be wearing anklets that make noise. She should not be one who mixes with men, or a youth [3], or anyone who may cause temptation, and finally that there is nothing in the street that one fears could cause harm. This prohibition of preventing women from going out is predicated on kirahatu at-tanzih [reprehensible but closer to permissibility (mubah)] if the woman has a husband or master, and the aforementioned conditions are fulfilled. If the woman has no husband or master then it is impermissible to prevent her if the conditions are met.
Abu Kuraib related to us. Abu Mu’awiyah related to us, from al-‘Amash, from Mujahid, from Ibn ‘Umar who said: ‘The Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “Do not prevent the women from going to the masjids at night.”’ One of Ibn ‘Umar’s sons said: ‘We will not let them go out so as to prevent them from being corrupted.’ [4] Ibn ‘Umar then scolded him and said: ‘I say: “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said …” and you say: “We will not let them!”’
Muhammad bin Hatim and Ibn Rafi’ related to us, saying: ‘Shababah has told us: “ Warqa has told me from ‘Amr, from Mujahid, from Ibn ‘Umar who said: “ The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said: “ Let the women go to the masjids at night.” One of [Ibn ‘Umar’s] sons, called Waqid, said: “They may be corrupted.” [Ibn ‘Umar] then struck him on the chest and said: “I narrate something to you from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, and you say: “No!””
Haarun bin ‘Abdullah related to us. ‘Abdullah bin Yazid al-Muqari related to us. S’aeed (Ibn Abi Ayyub) related to us. Ka’b bin ‘Alqama related to us from Bilal bin ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar, from his father who said: ‘The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said: “Don’t deny women the fortune of going to the masjids, if they seek your permission.” Bilal said: ‘I swear by Allah! We will prevent them!’ Abdullah [Ibn ‘Umar] said to him: ‘I say: “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said…” and you say: “We will prevent them!”’
Imam an-Nawawi: His saying, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him: (Don’t deny women the fortune of going to the masjids, if they seek your permission) Likewise this occurs … [5] They [the women] are treated like men because of their demand to go out to the gatherings of dhikr, and Allah knows best.
Haarun bin Sa’eed al-Aiylee related to us. Ibn Wahb related to us. Makhrama has told me from his father, from Busr bin Sa’eed, that Zainab ath-Thaqafiyyah was narrating to us from the Messenger of Allah may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, that he said: "If any of you [women] attend the ‘Isha prayer then do not perfume yourselves that night."
Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shaiybah related to us, Yahya bin Sa’eed al-Qatan related to us, from Muhammad bin ‘Ajlan: ‘Bukair bin ‘Abdullah bin al-Ashaj has told me, from Busr bin Sa’eed, from Zainab the wife of ‘Abdullah, who said: “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said to us: “If any of you attend the masjid then don’t touch any perfume.””’
Imam an-Nawawi: His saying, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him (If any of you [women] attend the ‘Isha prayer, then do not perfume yourselves that night). This means that if a woman wants to attend. If she has already attended [‘Isha prayer] and returned to her house then do not stop her from perfuming herself. This also applies to his saying, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him: (If any of you attend the masjid then don’t touch any perfume), meaning ‘if you want to attend.’
Yahya bin Yahya related to us, and Ishaq bin Ibrahim. Yahya said: ‘ ‘Abdullah bin Muhammad bin ‘Abdullah bin Abi Farwata informed us, from Yazid bin Khusaifah, from Busr bin Sa’eed, from Abu Huraira, who said: “ The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said: “If any woman applies scent [to herself], then she should not pray the last night [al-‘isha al-aakhirah] prayer with us.””’
Imam an-Nawawi: In this is evidence of the permissibility for one to say ‘al-‘isha al-aakhirah’. As for what is transmitted from al-’Asm’ai that he said: ‘There is no reason for saying ‘al-isha al-aakhirah’, because we only have one isha, so don’t describe it as al-aakhirah [the last].’ That opinion is mistaken because of this hadith, and it has been established in Sahih Muslim from groups of Companions who described it as ‘al-isha al-akhir’.
‘Abdullah bin Maslama bin Qa’nab related to us. Sulaiman (ibn Bilal) has related to us, from Yahya (and he is ibn Sa’eed), from ‘Amra bint AbdurRahman, that she heard ‘Aisha, the wife of the Prophet, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, saying: ‘If the Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, had seen what the women have innovated he would have prevented them from the masjid, as the women of the Children of Israel were prevented.’ He [Yahya] said: ‘I said to ‘Amra: “Were the women of the Children of Israel prevented from the masjid?” She replied: “Yes.”’’[6]
Imam an-Nawawi: As for her saying (If the Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, had seen what the women have innovated he would have prevented them from the masjid), this is referring to beautification, perfuming and attractive clothing, and Allah knows best.
[Translated from Sahih Muslim bi Sharh an-Nawawi v.4 p.133-37]
Notes:
[1] Haddathana in Arabic. This can refer to relation by both book and speech.
[2] Akhbarana in Arabic. This usually refers to relation by book.
[3] Shaabbah in Arabic. This refers to a youth who may wear attractive clothing and draw attention.
[4] Is this not the same argument that many Muslims use today?
[5] The Imam discusses a grammar point here that is of little benefit to the non-Arabic speaker.
[6] The women of Children of Israel have been forbidden from the temple compound for the past 3000 years. One can see a startling similarity between Orthodox Judaism and what some Muslims are doing in the UK and USA today. There are three poignant similarities:
1) Women are either behind a curtain, on another floor or on the other side of the building where they’re neither seen nor heard and not consulted for advice or allowed to ask questions. 2) There is a startling lack of religious resources in the so-called ‘sisters’ sections’, such as a copy of the Qur’an (for Muslim women) or the Chumash (for Jewish women). 3) There is an open or implicit disapproval for their being there, based on protecting them from corruption. One can see disturbing trends with regards to the treatment of Muslim women in this age when comparing it to that of Jewish women when one looks at the almost identical layout of synagogues, such as Chabad House, Temple Dehirsh Sinai and Monachim Schneerson’s congregation, whose status in the synagogue is hauntingly familiar to that of many imams in today’s masjids, i.e. they are never questioned about what they say or do.
Related:
On Women And The Masjid, by Imam Abdul Haleem Mahmood
(#440) Zuheir bin Harb related [1] to us, Jarir bin Suheil related to us, from his father, from Abu Huraira, who said: ‘The Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “The best row for the men is the first, and the worst of them is the last. The best row for the women is the last, and the worst of them is the first.”
Imam an-Nawawi: Regarding the rows of the men, generally speaking, the best is always the first and the worst is always the last. As for the rows of the women, this hadith is referring to the rows of the women that pray with the men. If [the women] pray by themselves, without the men, then they become like men in the sense that their best row would be the first and the worst one would be the last. What is meant by ‘the worst row’ for men and women is the row that has the least reward and virtue, and is the furthest from what is sought by legislation. The best row is the opposite. The only virtue of the last row of the women, who pray with the men, is their distance from mixing with the men, seeing them and their hearts being attached to them upon seeing their movement and hearing their speech and so forth. The dispraise of the first row is the opposite of that, and Allah knows best.
(#441) Abu Bakr bin Abi Shaibah related to us, Waki’ related to us from Sufyan from Abu Hazim, from Sahl bin Sa’d, who said: ‘ I saw the men tying their lower garments around their necks, like children, because of the shortage of cloth, behind the Prophet may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, so someone said: “ O women! Don’t raise your heads until the men have gotten up.”
Imam an-Nawawi: (‘I saw the men tying their lower garments’). This means that they tied them because of their inadequacy, so that none of their nakedness would be revealed. This is a caution to cover nakedness and to be firm in maintaining that cover.
(‘O women! Don’t raise your heads until the men have gotten up’). This is so that no woman would see the nakedness of any of the men being revealed, and so forth.
(#442) ‘Amr an-Naqid and Zuheir bin Harb related to me, and both of them from Ibn ‘Uyainah. Zuheir said: ‘Sufyan bin ‘Uyainah related to us, from az-Zuhri, that he heard Salim narrate from his father. The Prophet, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, came to him and said: “If any of your women should seek permission to go to the masjid then don’t prevent them.”’
Harmala bin Yahya has told me, Ibn Wahb has informed [2] us. Yunus has informed me from Ibn Shihab, who said: ‘Salim bin ‘Abdullah has informed me that ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar said: “ I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, saying: “ Don’t prevent your women from going to the masjids if they seek your permission.”’
He [Salim bin ‘Abdullah] also said that Bilal bin ‘Abdullah said: ‘I swear by Allah! I will prevent them!’ ‘Abdullah [his father] turned to him and chastised him severely. I had never heard such a severe chastisement. He said: ‘I’m narrating from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, and you’re saying: “I swear by Allah! I will prevent them!”’
Imam an-Nawawi: In another narration: ‘He scolded him.’ And in another narration: ‘He struck him on his chest.”
Muhammad bin ‘Abdullah bin Numair related to us, my father has related to us and Ibn Idris, saying: ‘‘Ubaid Allah has told us, from Nafi’, from Ibn ‘Umar, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “Do not hinder the handmaidens of Allah from the masjids of Allah.”
Imam an-Nawawi: (Do not hinder the handmaidens of Allah from the masjids of Allah). This and what resembles it from the hadiths in this chapter clearly indicate that a woman should not be hindered from the masjid, but the scholars have mentioned conditions that are taken from the hadiths. They are that she should not be scented, nor beautified and she should not be wearing anklets that make noise. She should not be one who mixes with men, or a youth [3], or anyone who may cause temptation, and finally that there is nothing in the street that one fears could cause harm. This prohibition of preventing women from going out is predicated on kirahatu at-tanzih [reprehensible but closer to permissibility (mubah)] if the woman has a husband or master, and the aforementioned conditions are fulfilled. If the woman has no husband or master then it is impermissible to prevent her if the conditions are met.
Abu Kuraib related to us. Abu Mu’awiyah related to us, from al-‘Amash, from Mujahid, from Ibn ‘Umar who said: ‘The Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said: “Do not prevent the women from going to the masjids at night.”’ One of Ibn ‘Umar’s sons said: ‘We will not let them go out so as to prevent them from being corrupted.’ [4] Ibn ‘Umar then scolded him and said: ‘I say: “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, said …” and you say: “We will not let them!”’
Muhammad bin Hatim and Ibn Rafi’ related to us, saying: ‘Shababah has told us: “ Warqa has told me from ‘Amr, from Mujahid, from Ibn ‘Umar who said: “ The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said: “ Let the women go to the masjids at night.” One of [Ibn ‘Umar’s] sons, called Waqid, said: “They may be corrupted.” [Ibn ‘Umar] then struck him on the chest and said: “I narrate something to you from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, and you say: “No!””
Haarun bin ‘Abdullah related to us. ‘Abdullah bin Yazid al-Muqari related to us. S’aeed (Ibn Abi Ayyub) related to us. Ka’b bin ‘Alqama related to us from Bilal bin ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar, from his father who said: ‘The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said: “Don’t deny women the fortune of going to the masjids, if they seek your permission.” Bilal said: ‘I swear by Allah! We will prevent them!’ Abdullah [Ibn ‘Umar] said to him: ‘I say: “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said…” and you say: “We will prevent them!”’
Imam an-Nawawi: His saying, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him: (Don’t deny women the fortune of going to the masjids, if they seek your permission) Likewise this occurs … [5] They [the women] are treated like men because of their demand to go out to the gatherings of dhikr, and Allah knows best.
Haarun bin Sa’eed al-Aiylee related to us. Ibn Wahb related to us. Makhrama has told me from his father, from Busr bin Sa’eed, that Zainab ath-Thaqafiyyah was narrating to us from the Messenger of Allah may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, that he said: "If any of you [women] attend the ‘Isha prayer then do not perfume yourselves that night."
Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shaiybah related to us, Yahya bin Sa’eed al-Qatan related to us, from Muhammad bin ‘Ajlan: ‘Bukair bin ‘Abdullah bin al-Ashaj has told me, from Busr bin Sa’eed, from Zainab the wife of ‘Abdullah, who said: “The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said to us: “If any of you attend the masjid then don’t touch any perfume.””’
Imam an-Nawawi: His saying, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him (If any of you [women] attend the ‘Isha prayer, then do not perfume yourselves that night). This means that if a woman wants to attend. If she has already attended [‘Isha prayer] and returned to her house then do not stop her from perfuming herself. This also applies to his saying, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him: (If any of you attend the masjid then don’t touch any perfume), meaning ‘if you want to attend.’
Yahya bin Yahya related to us, and Ishaq bin Ibrahim. Yahya said: ‘ ‘Abdullah bin Muhammad bin ‘Abdullah bin Abi Farwata informed us, from Yazid bin Khusaifah, from Busr bin Sa’eed, from Abu Huraira, who said: “ The Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, said: “If any woman applies scent [to herself], then she should not pray the last night [al-‘isha al-aakhirah] prayer with us.””’
Imam an-Nawawi: In this is evidence of the permissibility for one to say ‘al-‘isha al-aakhirah’. As for what is transmitted from al-’Asm’ai that he said: ‘There is no reason for saying ‘al-isha al-aakhirah’, because we only have one isha, so don’t describe it as al-aakhirah [the last].’ That opinion is mistaken because of this hadith, and it has been established in Sahih Muslim from groups of Companions who described it as ‘al-isha al-akhir’.
‘Abdullah bin Maslama bin Qa’nab related to us. Sulaiman (ibn Bilal) has related to us, from Yahya (and he is ibn Sa’eed), from ‘Amra bint AbdurRahman, that she heard ‘Aisha, the wife of the Prophet, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, saying: ‘If the Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, had seen what the women have innovated he would have prevented them from the masjid, as the women of the Children of Israel were prevented.’ He [Yahya] said: ‘I said to ‘Amra: “Were the women of the Children of Israel prevented from the masjid?” She replied: “Yes.”’’[6]
Imam an-Nawawi: As for her saying (If the Messenger of Allah, may Allah's prayers and peace be upon him, had seen what the women have innovated he would have prevented them from the masjid), this is referring to beautification, perfuming and attractive clothing, and Allah knows best.
[Translated from Sahih Muslim bi Sharh an-Nawawi v.4 p.133-37]
Notes:
[1] Haddathana in Arabic. This can refer to relation by both book and speech.
[2] Akhbarana in Arabic. This usually refers to relation by book.
[3] Shaabbah in Arabic. This refers to a youth who may wear attractive clothing and draw attention.
[4] Is this not the same argument that many Muslims use today?
[5] The Imam discusses a grammar point here that is of little benefit to the non-Arabic speaker.
[6] The women of Children of Israel have been forbidden from the temple compound for the past 3000 years. One can see a startling similarity between Orthodox Judaism and what some Muslims are doing in the UK and USA today. There are three poignant similarities:
1) Women are either behind a curtain, on another floor or on the other side of the building where they’re neither seen nor heard and not consulted for advice or allowed to ask questions. 2) There is a startling lack of religious resources in the so-called ‘sisters’ sections’, such as a copy of the Qur’an (for Muslim women) or the Chumash (for Jewish women). 3) There is an open or implicit disapproval for their being there, based on protecting them from corruption. One can see disturbing trends with regards to the treatment of Muslim women in this age when comparing it to that of Jewish women when one looks at the almost identical layout of synagogues, such as Chabad House, Temple Dehirsh Sinai and Monachim Schneerson’s congregation, whose status in the synagogue is hauntingly familiar to that of many imams in today’s masjids, i.e. they are never questioned about what they say or do.
Related:
On Women And The Masjid, by Imam Abdul Haleem Mahmood
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Friedrich Nietzsche on Islam and Christianity
Assalaam alaykum,
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietszche wrote The Anti-Christ in 1888; a scathing polemic against Christianity, and he mentioned some interesting things about Islam in the process. The online version can be accessed here.
In Chapter 59, Nietzsche says:
"One needs but read any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top. It would be an error, however, to assume that there was any lack of understanding in the leaders of the Christian movement:--ah, but they were clever, clever to the point of holiness, these fathers of the church! What they lacked was something quite different. Nature neglected--perhaps forgot--to give them even the most modest endowment of respectable, of upright, of cleanly instincts. . . Between ourselves, they are not even men. . . . If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men. . . ."
And then there's Chapter 60:
"Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (--I do not say by what sort of feet--) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin--because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life! . . . The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust--a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile."--What they wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich. . . . Let us put aside our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more! The German nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking nobility, was in its element there: the church knew only too well how the German nobility was to be won . . . The German noble, always the "Swiss guard" of the church, always in the service of every bad instinct of the church--but well paid. . . Consider the fact that it is precisely the aid of German swords and German blood and valour that has enabled the church to carry through its war to the death upon everything noble on earth! At this point a host of painful questions suggest themselves. The German nobility stands outside the history of the higher civilization: the reason is obvious. . . Christianity, alcohol--the two great means of corruption. . . . Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not. . . . "War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!": this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel decently? I can't make out how a German could ever feel Christian. . . ."
For more information on the history of the crusades, please watch this video and those that follow, which are from week 5 of the series 13 Centuries of Islamic History.
Assalaam alaykum,
Mahdi
A note on the 'occidentalism' label:
Insha'Allah, this will be a label for blog posts (including book reviews) that examine and scrutinise western (i.e. European and American) civilisation and culture and compare it to Islamic civilisation, and with Allah alone is every success!
Thursday, 9 December 2010
The religioisty and idolatry of the AGW movement
Assalaam alaykum,
Global Warming summit begins with prayer to Mayan goddess Ixchel
If you think there is no religious aspect to the environmental movement, think again.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and a native of Costa Rica, opened the summit with an invocation to the ancient Mayan jaguar goddess Ixchel, saying that Ixchel was:
"the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you -- because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools."
According to Figueres, Ixchel is also a Mayan moon goddess.
Read the full article here.
Alhamdulilah, the plethora of nonsense that makes up the Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change/Ocean Acidification/Whatever Scare We Can Come Up With movement continues to be exposed. Alhamdulilah, over the past year we've learned how the science and the politics (it's never ideal when those two mix) of the movement are thoroughly corrupt, and now we learn that the movement is also dipping into theology.
The religious, or even cultic, nature of the movement has been noted by many. Have a look at this video in which Christopher Monckton, a member of the House of Lords in the UK, interviews a Greenpeace activist in Copenhagen during the 2009 UN Conference.
You will notice the following trends (which can also be found amongst Muslim cults such as HT and Salafiyyah):
1)A stunning ignorance concering what they claim to know. This Greenpeace activist knows nothing about climate science, just as Muslim cultists know next to nothing about the Qur'an, the Sunnah, or authentic creed and fiqh.
2) Two minutes into the video, the Greenpeace activist admits to only reading literature from Greenpeace and never accessing scienfitic literature directly. This is very typical of the cultic mind-set. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, are not allowed to read anything that has not been authorised by the organisation. HT is very similar in this regard, as are other Muslim cults. The reason is that the leaders of the cult, whether they be Mr. Al-Albani, Mr. Bin Baz, Mr. Taqi u-Deen An-Nabahani, or whoever, have to held in higher regard and authority, by the members, than the real 'ulama and fuqaha, such as Imams An-Nawawi, Muwaffaq u-Din ibn Qudamma, Yusuf ibn Abdul Barr, Ibn 'Abideen and so forth. Otherwise, the movement falls apart.
3) Refusal to accept the truth (or at least great difficulty in doing so) when it is presented. Despite being presented with the facts (i.e. no statistically significant warming for 10 years, no change in the amount of sea ice for 30 years etc.) the Greenpeace activist continues to hold her position. Of course, she doesn't have to readily accept what Monckton is telling her, but she should at least agree to check what he is saying, i.e. step aside the Greenpeace literature and read the scientific literature and data directly. Instead, she claims to 'have faith' that ice has been melting at the poles.
4) Seven and a half minutes in, the activist claims that Monckton is talking about one planet while she is talking about another planet. A similar thing can be said of Muslim cults. Orthodox Muslims talk about Islam, while cultists talk about their 'islam'. Any lengthy disucssion with a cultist leads to this conclusion; there is absolutely no common ground. Have a look at this discussion between Sheikh Ramadan Al-Bouti and a leading Salafi teacher. In the end, Sheikh Al-Bouti says: “Then let us end the investigation and discussion on this last remark of yours, since it closes the way to any common ground between you and me on which we can base a discussion. It is sufficient that with this bizarre answer of yours, you have departed from the consensus of the entire Islamic religion. By Allah, there is no meaning on the face of the earth for disgusting bigotry if it is not what you people have”.
5) Faith in the organisation. When confronted and asked why she doesn't check the scientific data herself, the Greenpeace activist claims to 'have faith' in the organisation.
6) Claiming to be too busy to check the facts and data. This is also very common amongst Muslim cultists. Salafis, for example, become particularly irate when something is said about their organisation, but when told to look up the facts for themselves they claim not to have time, to be too busy, etc. What is this an indication of? Laziness, pure and simple. Orthodox Muslims, on the other hand, are people who constanly read, study, review and check, and also cross reference. That is what we're supposed to do.
7) Refusing to acknowledge any potential wrongdoing on behalf of the organisation. At the end, the activist says that if she were to check and find that what Monckton is saying is true, she would not think Greenpeace had mislead her.
Eric Hoffer, in his book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, says that people join movements (like Salafiyyah and Greenpeace) because they fear an autonomous existence. They're much happier being followers and not having to deal with the burden of thinking for themselves. This is why they don't check facts and why they are so ignorant (like the activist in the video); because the doctrines of the organisation are not important to them. Rather, what is important to them is being part of an organisation, any organisation. This is also why some people jump from organisation to organisation, from HT, to Salafiyyah, to Ahmadiyyah, and then some questionable 'Sufi' tareeqa. The bottom line for these people is that they belong to something, and Allah knows best. As Orthodox Muslims, alhamdulilah, we know that we belong to Allah, and to Him we shall return.
Insha'Allah, a review of Eric Hoffer's book will appear on this blog at some point in the future.
And with Allah alone is every success!
Assalaam alaykum,
Mahdi
p.s. For an interesting lecture on HT click here. For an intersting lecture on Muslim cults in general click here and for an discussion on the methodology of cults and what to do if a loved one is ensnared by one, click here.
UPDATE: For an example of the stupidity and ignorance of mass movement followers, have a look at this video in which delegates at the current UN conference in Cancun willingly sign petitions to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide, aka water. Another example of these poor people falling for the same trick can be found here.
Related Posts:
Madness is Rare in Individuals (review of The True Believer)
Global Warming summit begins with prayer to Mayan goddess Ixchel
If you think there is no religious aspect to the environmental movement, think again.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and a native of Costa Rica, opened the summit with an invocation to the ancient Mayan jaguar goddess Ixchel, saying that Ixchel was:
"the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you -- because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools."
According to Figueres, Ixchel is also a Mayan moon goddess.
Read the full article here.
Alhamdulilah, the plethora of nonsense that makes up the Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change/Ocean Acidification/Whatever Scare We Can Come Up With movement continues to be exposed. Alhamdulilah, over the past year we've learned how the science and the politics (it's never ideal when those two mix) of the movement are thoroughly corrupt, and now we learn that the movement is also dipping into theology.
The religious, or even cultic, nature of the movement has been noted by many. Have a look at this video in which Christopher Monckton, a member of the House of Lords in the UK, interviews a Greenpeace activist in Copenhagen during the 2009 UN Conference.
You will notice the following trends (which can also be found amongst Muslim cults such as HT and Salafiyyah):
1)A stunning ignorance concering what they claim to know. This Greenpeace activist knows nothing about climate science, just as Muslim cultists know next to nothing about the Qur'an, the Sunnah, or authentic creed and fiqh.
2) Two minutes into the video, the Greenpeace activist admits to only reading literature from Greenpeace and never accessing scienfitic literature directly. This is very typical of the cultic mind-set. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, are not allowed to read anything that has not been authorised by the organisation. HT is very similar in this regard, as are other Muslim cults. The reason is that the leaders of the cult, whether they be Mr. Al-Albani, Mr. Bin Baz, Mr. Taqi u-Deen An-Nabahani, or whoever, have to held in higher regard and authority, by the members, than the real 'ulama and fuqaha, such as Imams An-Nawawi, Muwaffaq u-Din ibn Qudamma, Yusuf ibn Abdul Barr, Ibn 'Abideen and so forth. Otherwise, the movement falls apart.
3) Refusal to accept the truth (or at least great difficulty in doing so) when it is presented. Despite being presented with the facts (i.e. no statistically significant warming for 10 years, no change in the amount of sea ice for 30 years etc.) the Greenpeace activist continues to hold her position. Of course, she doesn't have to readily accept what Monckton is telling her, but she should at least agree to check what he is saying, i.e. step aside the Greenpeace literature and read the scientific literature and data directly. Instead, she claims to 'have faith' that ice has been melting at the poles.
4) Seven and a half minutes in, the activist claims that Monckton is talking about one planet while she is talking about another planet. A similar thing can be said of Muslim cults. Orthodox Muslims talk about Islam, while cultists talk about their 'islam'. Any lengthy disucssion with a cultist leads to this conclusion; there is absolutely no common ground. Have a look at this discussion between Sheikh Ramadan Al-Bouti and a leading Salafi teacher. In the end, Sheikh Al-Bouti says: “Then let us end the investigation and discussion on this last remark of yours, since it closes the way to any common ground between you and me on which we can base a discussion. It is sufficient that with this bizarre answer of yours, you have departed from the consensus of the entire Islamic religion. By Allah, there is no meaning on the face of the earth for disgusting bigotry if it is not what you people have”.
5) Faith in the organisation. When confronted and asked why she doesn't check the scientific data herself, the Greenpeace activist claims to 'have faith' in the organisation.
6) Claiming to be too busy to check the facts and data. This is also very common amongst Muslim cultists. Salafis, for example, become particularly irate when something is said about their organisation, but when told to look up the facts for themselves they claim not to have time, to be too busy, etc. What is this an indication of? Laziness, pure and simple. Orthodox Muslims, on the other hand, are people who constanly read, study, review and check, and also cross reference. That is what we're supposed to do.
7) Refusing to acknowledge any potential wrongdoing on behalf of the organisation. At the end, the activist says that if she were to check and find that what Monckton is saying is true, she would not think Greenpeace had mislead her.
Eric Hoffer, in his book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, says that people join movements (like Salafiyyah and Greenpeace) because they fear an autonomous existence. They're much happier being followers and not having to deal with the burden of thinking for themselves. This is why they don't check facts and why they are so ignorant (like the activist in the video); because the doctrines of the organisation are not important to them. Rather, what is important to them is being part of an organisation, any organisation. This is also why some people jump from organisation to organisation, from HT, to Salafiyyah, to Ahmadiyyah, and then some questionable 'Sufi' tareeqa. The bottom line for these people is that they belong to something, and Allah knows best. As Orthodox Muslims, alhamdulilah, we know that we belong to Allah, and to Him we shall return.
Insha'Allah, a review of Eric Hoffer's book will appear on this blog at some point in the future.
And with Allah alone is every success!
Assalaam alaykum,
Mahdi
p.s. For an interesting lecture on HT click here. For an intersting lecture on Muslim cults in general click here and for an discussion on the methodology of cults and what to do if a loved one is ensnared by one, click here.
UPDATE: For an example of the stupidity and ignorance of mass movement followers, have a look at this video in which delegates at the current UN conference in Cancun willingly sign petitions to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide, aka water. Another example of these poor people falling for the same trick can be found here.
Related Posts:
Madness is Rare in Individuals (review of The True Believer)
Monday, 6 December 2010
Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story
Assalaam alaykum,
Please click on this link to watch Martin Durkin's latest documentary entitled Britain's Trillion Pound Horror Story. Scary points include the fact that Britain's current debt is £4.8 trillion and the public sector in the UK is twice as large as that of China (yes, communist China) and it is larger than the country's private sector. Remember, governments and politicians don't have any money. ALL of it comes from the private sector. The film not only shows why Britain is a dreary, depressing and oppressive place to live, but one can also understand fully why England lost the 2018 FIFA World Cup bid. The country is bankrupt. You can also read this article from the Daily Telegraph.
What is of interest is that the points made in this film more or less dovetail with the Islamic understanding of taxation and economic growth. More taxation leads to economic stagnation. The Laffer curve demonstrates that for a while increasing taxation leads to increased government revenue, but at a certain point working people lose the motivation to work because taxation is so high. The result is that governments lose revenue. Obviously, 100% taxation would result in absolutlely no government income. Why work if the government takes everything? Arthur Laffer, the American ecnonomist credited with this idea, says that the idea is not original and can be found in the 1377 book Al-Muqadimmah, by Imam Ibn Khaldun. The Imam said:
In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...and sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation.
From my experience of living in the UK, and my regular visits to this day, I have noticed that Muslims are heavily involved in the public sector; either working for it or claiming money from it. I'm sorry to say, but this has contributed, and is still contributing, to Britain's decline. Whether this is pre-mediated revenge for the colonizing of India is anyone's guess, but living off of the state has never been considered noble in our Deen.
And Allah knows best!
Assalaam alaykum,
Mahdi
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