On Halal (Lawful)





132. Shall I tell you who are best and worst among you?  The best of you is the one whose charity is expected and from whom evil is not.  The worst of you is the one from whom no good is expected and from whose evil none feels safe (Abu Huraira RA, H)


C: Spiritual merit must be practically demonstrable. Anybody can boast of private spiritual experiences and even miracles. The real miracle however is projecting and confirming such an image of trust and decency that people will trust you more than themselves in taking care of their interests and they will never be disappointed.  This man only is the true and highest saint. At the opposite extreme we have the man whom nobody dares to trust or can resist to avoid.



133. Shall I tell you who is most generous?  The most generous is Allah. The most generous is Allah. The most generous is Allah.  As for myself I am the most generous of the sons of Adam.  After me the most generous of people is that person who acquired knowledge and then spread his knowledge. Such a person is raised as a nation (umma) in himself. It is such person who spent himself for Allah till he died in the Way of Allah (Anas RA, Ibn Hibban)


 

C: What a wonder that the Messenger of Allah identifies the acquisition of pious knowledge and its dissemination as the single most generous act!  And that must be very true. Without knowledge man is no more than a beast even if the most intelligent one.  All gifts of nature risk going to waste and all dangers are out to punish us if we remain ignorant of facts and  truths which can help us live wisely and informedly.  It is almost the case that for man knowledge is like space. Without space nothing can exist and even time becomes irrelevant assuming that it can exist at all without space.  Allah said “Only the knowledgeable fear Allah”*



134. The best among you is the one who learns and then teaches the Qur’an



C: This inexorably flows from the last few hadihs and is undeniable fact.





29.  ON HALAL (THE LAWFUL)


135. Let your heart issue the fatwa for you.  Put your hand on your heart: if it sees the halal it calms down. If it sees haram it becomes agitated. Avoid a thing which arouse your suspicion, even when a mufti rules in favour of it.  No doubt true believers abandon small dubious things for fear of falling into big ones (Uthman b. Ata RA, Ramuz al Ahadith)

 

C: Worrying warning to those unscrupulous and audacious rulers on religious matters who slyly and skilfully legitimise plainly disturbing acts or reject as binding quite reasonably just and beneficial actions.  One classical and only too disgusting example is a rule about theft.  It is ruled that if a man steals something just above the lower limit of hadd punishable theft by taking the object by hand is to be amputated at the wrist. But if another steals millions by bank frauds he cannot be punished by amputation!  So the poor and ignorant fellow is crushed for peanuts while the massive thief gets away with robbing the whole world!  Another bad example is a ruling that for a murder hadd to be implemented the killer must have inflicted the mortal harm by using an iron implement. If, instead, he poisons the victim or throws him off a cliff, or by any other means however horrific, languishing or cruel he is not to be hadd punished but may pay blood money and serve a prison term. Good news for all brutal dictators, sly gansters and plain conspirators.  We must firstly point out that such sick fataws are not universally accepted but from locality to locality, from school to school of law. They are often justified by dubious hadiths which throughout the first few formative centuries of Islam after the golden era of the Prophet sws and his greatest sahaba, came handy to incredibly impious and nasty rulers and in fact had become a growth industry. Plainly the aim was to spare the big boys from being mutilated or executed for their horrific crimes. In still another ridiculous case the fatwa is that if a husband can be made to pronounce the word ‘divorce’ by whatever means including a beat-up, a blood-curdling threat or a word-play trick divorce happens and his wife can be taken away. On humbler and more general level this great hadith advises us not to cheat in our pious rulings simply because words of the Qur’an and hadith may admit more than one interpretation irrespective of what each indicates from a wisdom or morality point of view.  CONSULT YOUR HEARTS SAYS THE PROPHET (sws): If the ruling satisfies your best conscience let it stand, if it offends your sense of justice and decency then abandon it. Unfortunately this advice has not been very popular among muslims from very early on. In the past it was always axiomatic that some muftis were buyable and the more skilful a mufti in bending the Qur’an and procuring a hadith and also massaging logic the higher fees he commanded.  But muslims have hardly been alone in such dirty tricks. Today the so-called advanced and civilised societies may boast of anything but the fairness of their laws and legal procedures.  In a battle of minds between  the prosecution and defence in any Western court both sides are free to ingenuously distort both facts and the law and what a barrister of lesser capacity may lose for his client another barrister of a higher capacity may win for him, of course at a much higher consideration.  Additionally unjust laws are constantly churned out by parliaments and local governments where a parking mistake can cost to the offender far more than a drink-drive offence ending with the death of an innocent pedestrian.  Godlessness is so rampant which needed not be.


136. O people, Allah has sent down His Book on the tongue of His Messenger sws. He made His Halal halal, He made His haram haram.  Whatever he made halal in His Book He sent down on the tongue of His Messenger remains halal until the Day of Resurrection. Whatever He made haram in His Book He send down on the tongue of his Messenger sws remain halal until the Day of Resurrection (Anas RA, Abu Nasr)


C: Islamic Law is not negotiable. But that is not the same as non-reformable. What classical jurists ruled under the circumstances and in the ethos of their times may well be improved upon by later generations considering their circumstances and their reigning ethos of the times. For example, the classical ulema superseded the polular election of a caliph by adopting and legitimising first the violent usurpation of the caliphate and then its dynastic transmission irrespective of the qualifications of a son or other relation succeeding a dead caliph. Under their changed circumstances that was inevitable. Now the ethos is democracy and both the Qur’an and the Hadith have enough in them to legitimise a democratic way of government.  Of course muslims may not be ready for democracy nor democracy is a even reasonably perfect regime. Allah knows best.


137. Seeking halal earnings is an obligation like other (religious) obligations (ibn Mas’ud RA, Baihaqi)


C: A definitive ban on idleness, begging without very good excuse or other forms of parasitical existence.  Earning his livelihood by honest work is an obligation and not a mere option. Ottoman sultans were all craftsmen who worked at their crafts and sold their works for a living.


138. The most beautiful of halal is what you earn by the work of your hands (Makhul RA, Baihaqi)


C: Eating from inheritance or gifts are legitimate but earning one’s livelihood is very lovely in the Sight of Allah.



30.  WORSHIPPING/SERVICE (IBADAT)


139. Best of service to Allah begins with seeking (pious) knowledge (Abu Huraira RA, Y)


C:  Even most arduous worshipping exercises without adequate knowledge count for rather little, simply because with his narrow and empty mind an ignorant worshipper cannot produce enough holy emotions in his mind to nurture his soul and make it grow and soar into sacred territory.  Proper and adequate knowledge motivates, creates stronger and richer pious emotions and enables one to recognise and respond to both opportunities and dangers in his spiritual life.  He may, for example detect any signs of hypocrisy threatening to subvert him or an occasion to recite that part of the Qur’an instead of another simply because the former part will fit his current mood and need better etc.  To so enrich and fertilise one’s spiritual life more and more pious knowledge is necessary. Islam is the only religion which values knowledge above all else, provided it is the right kind of knowledge and is rightly understood and applied.


140. The best asceticism in the world is thinking about death and the best service to Allah comes from pious contemplation.  Whoever fears what is to come after death finds his grave a garden of the gardens of the Paradise (Anas RA, Y)


C: Death is such a grim prospect and its remembrance so shaking that to wake up man to his spiritual side and its requirements nothing serves him better.  For young people it is the single most terrifying thought and all major religions used it as their Democles’s sword to shake the complacent to spiritual action. Some religions and some Sufis developed methods to enhance its shocking power, like lying in a grave for a period or even being temporarily buried in one.  Such drastic methods are of questionable value and simple contemplation of death by a sensitive soul goes a long way  to motivate it to take spiritual matters more seriously.  This then becomes an effective alternative to physical asceticism. In fact it should be even better because ascetic practices may inspire one with pride and arrogance but thinking of death can never cause that but only abject fear and worry.  When this fear leads to sincere devotions they are imbued with pious thoughts  which then fills one with all the capital to beat the terrors of afterdeath.


141. Best of service to Allah begins with deep understanding (fiqh of Islam) (Saad RA, Abu Shaikh)

 

C: Sure. Understanding spiritual statements make all the difference between the fertile devotions and the barren.


142. Take up of worshipping what you can cope with. Unless you are wearied (of worshipping)  Allah will not weary (Aisha RA, B)


C: Worshipping becomes counter-productive once the threshold of satiety is reached.  Continuing with worship despite it is as harmful as continuing eating after the stomach feels full and begins to protest.  The ignorant insistence of some naïve if ambitious mystics on forcing their ‘egos’ to obey them and continue is totally misguided and will eventually backfire and backfire badly.


143. Do not try to go on too much with night worship, for you cannot bear with it; if any of you feels sleepy let him lie down and go to sleep (Anas RA, Y)


C: Gives an example of the above principle. The Prophet sws should be obeyed.

 

144. Says your Lord “O son of Adam, empty your heart to give space to my service so that I give you richness of the heart and fill your hands with provisions. O son of Adam, do not distance yourself from me or I fill your heart with poverty and fill your hands with hard work (Ma’qil RA, T)


C: An ignorant man’s heart is like a junkyard bursting with all sorts of indifferent or positively harmful mental and psychological junk with only a few useful items. As he goes through life incessantly bombarded by claims, counter-claims, true and false news, encouragements and discouragements, beliefs and denials…. From so many quarters and interest groups and so busy with tiresome toils and worries and the exhausted restings they force him to take, his brain’s memory circuitry and his catalogue of  emotions filled with unexamined lusts, loves, ambitions, fears and hostilities leaves at a loss about what to make of his both hectic and lethargic life.  Like a small child lost and stranded from its parents in a vast funfair he vacillates between making the best of the attractions available and increasingly anxiously looking for the parents.  Because his psychic house is so overcrowded and disorganised he can make little sense of his life and for his sanity’s sake he confines his activities to pick up more of the simplistically pleasurable things and shun the apparently painful without much regard for the longer term results of each.  That is when people take to drink or debauchery or what have you. In other words and in summary, his heart is a dizzying mess filled to bursting with junk, which, was he to organise them could in fact fitted in to a fraction of his inner space and leave him ample ground for better things.  That is what Allah is saying to this man.  He means this: Do a good house cleaning. Identify and discard all rubbish and the rest arrange in a sensible order so that you can access all you need instantly when you need them. The rest of your heart is now available to be filled with jewellery and medicine and  refreshments all of which is available at God’s supermarket and for free, the only cost being your walking in and carrying out the goods you find.  When your psychic house is so tidied up and enhanced by superior stores of great goods your inner wealth ensures that your outer needs like food and other material prosperity come your way easier than before.  Because you are now wise you identify opportunities more successfully and know what moves to make and can move more easily in the pursuit of your needs.  You cut out all waste because you know what is good and essential and what is bad and superfluous.  Filled with the Light and Wisdom of God you either do not make any mistakes or if you somehow do you can see your mistakes and take corrective action.  Last and most important is your earning your prosperity in the hereafter which adds to your overall prosperity in this world which prosperity is mainly spiritual but still containing a perfectly adequate share of material prosperity by any Godly man’s standards.


Contrarily, if man dares to ignore Allah and bury himself in the confused toils of his junkyard he only finds poverty at least in the form of insatiable needs and he also finds himself tied up with too much work at least in the form of an oppressive sense of lack of time and narrowness of space with no relief in sight. Many people grow prematurely old because of such Godless life while those who can manage better only collect more sins as they sail through their deceived existence.


145. Says Allah the Most High: “I accept salat from the one who bows in humility to my Greatness and passes his days keeping me in mind and does not persist in error but each night goes to bed repentant and feeds the hungry and protects the stranger and pities the small and respects the great. If such a person asks from Me I give him. If he prays to Me I grant. If he puts his distress to Me I show mercy to him and relieve him”


C: It is already rare and difficult for anybody to turn away from the junkyard competitions of this world and orient himself to God when he begins to pray the salat, among other religious obligations. But a new problem may begin. Are his devotions being accepted by God or are he just fooling himself? The confusion comes from the devil’s interference with his new life.  Seeing that the man has definitely opted for a pious life the devil makes a desperate move and employs a novel tactic:  Why not infect the man with pride and heedlessness and thereby make his devotions ineffectual in taking him to God’s pleasure? “Let me infect him with pride” he says.  “Let me infect him also with hypocrisy so that one of his  aims in his devotions becomes a showing- off”. “My next move should be to busy his mind with mean thoughts which will crowd out godly thoughts” he further plans. Because the man’s mind becomes severally infected thus he feels not much remorse for his sins- in fact he is hardly aware of having sinned all day- he goes to bed complacently happy with himself and cannot repent except perhaps uttering a few routine words of repentance devoid of any conviction. Devoid because the next day he will happily repeat his sins.  Lastly the devil will constantly press him not to give charity to anybody or act chivalrously towards anybody in distress and needing rescue.


But this does not have to be so.  Recognising and dismissing his devil man can improve in piety day by day until at each bedtime he wipes his slate of errors clean by remorsefully apologising to God and each morning going on a spree of charity and chivalry all of which will be embedded in a nutritious matrix of regular religious devotion.  Then Allah will adopt him as a friend and look after him as only true, wise and powerful friend can. Amen
Ali RA, Baihaqi)

 

 

31.  ON FAITH (IMAN)



146. Three things in a man help perfect his faith:  When an act is for Allah he will not fear being blamed by any blamer (but do the act).  He will never dissimulate in his acts of worship. If two alternative courses of action is presented to him, one good for this world and the other good  for the hereafter he will go for the one good for the hereafter (Abu Huraira RA, Y)


C: We must be brave in our service to Allah and not fear blame or censure from any quarters. We must be sincere and not adulterate our acts of piety with hypocrisy. A good way of ensuring this is keeping secret as many acts of piety we manage as possible. When only Allah knows hypocrisy becomes impossible. Lastly the Prophet sws is saying that worldly considerations should never get in our way  when we face a duty by the performance of which Allah’s pleasure may be hoped.  In other words at every road parting take the road to God and not to the ego. For example, abandon a worldly gain if you must, when you are called to relieve the distress of an  innocent servant of Allah presents his case to you and you can help him.  All these help to perfect your faith and what life is for if not a perfect faith.

 

147. Whoever loves for Allah and hates for Allah and gives for Allah and withholds for Allah his faith has attained perfection (Abu Umama RA, D)


C: Nothing more, nothing less.  Then you are all for Allah and Allah is all out for you. That is the greatest success man can aspire at and attain in his brief life.


148. Among the best signs of a man’s faith is his knowing that Allah is with him wherever he may be (Ubada b. Samit RA, ibn Hibban)


C: Inability to forget Allah is the real zikr no matter who says or does what about zikr. Allah is too Great and Powerful to share a space with anybody: if Allah is Present in your heart none else can be there to counter His saving and blessing action in you.

 

149. Unless you love each other you have no faith (Abu Musa RA, T)


C: Acid test for faith among muslims.  Unfortunately the test often fails.  It comes when there is something to share. A sufi story illustrates this point well: A teacher was passing through a market place tailed by his pupils. They came across a pile of dogs smugly wound together happily dozing.  “What a nice example of brotherhood among even dogs” commented one pupil. The master smiled handing him a coin “Will you please go son and buy some scrap meat from the butcher opposite?”.  When the meat arrived the teacher flung it on the dogs. At no time all woke up and begin a ferocious fight over the meat. “That is the amount of their brotherhood” commented the teacher “it lasts until the meat comes”.  Real believers are few and far in between. They will not join any dogfights when worldly goods or positions drop among the people but watch sadly from a distance. Dubious muslims always make the majority and provided it is in their reach they will miss no dogfight to share any goodies which show up.  Leave aside merchants or tradesmen but even most ulema and mashayikh or supposedly pious men sharing the offices in a pious association or religious politicians running for office in a party show all the signs of that dogfight in that market place quoted. Accusations and feathers fly and thanks God if blood also is not shed.


150. Allah created faith within tolerance and sense of shame and created disbelief within miserliness and long ambitions (ibn Abbas RA, Y)


C: A complementary statement to the above.  Believers can tolerate others and are ashamed to cheat or offend anybody.  They consistently prefer worldly loss to worldly gain makeable at the expense of cheating or beating others.  A hypocrite is miserly with any pious sacrifice and his worldly ambitions may have a beginning but know  no end.  He is always planning, scheming and conspiring for his mean if grand objectives, will tolerate no rival or opposition and will grab any opportunity with no scuples troubling his conscience. As such they are Satan’s agents among muslims and so dangerous that even prophets need behave with caution towards them.  Thus Allah said “They ARE the enemy, so (o Prophet sws,) be on your guard against them” (Q 63: 4)


151. None of you has really believed until and unless he loves me more than his child, more than his parents and more than all people (Anas RA, B)


C: That is because all worldly loves are mixed blessings and may lead both to good and evil. Many crimes are committed to serve the imagined interests of the loved ones and since crime leads to more crime, loves unmodified by piety are never safe bets. But when we love Allah’s Messenger sws more than any other human being this love is safe.  With Rasulullah’s sws love dominant we will not be tempted to crime for a misguided zeal based on love to anybody but will have the discrimination and determination to stop when Allah’s Rights intervene. Love not moderated by piety is blind as they say while love moderated by piety has the keenest vision and wisest judgment.  Tribalism and partisanship among muslims are examples of blind loves which are as harmful as blind hates and in fact lead to blind hates.


152. One who is happy with his Lord being Allah and his religion being Islam and his messenger being Muhammad sws has tasted the sweetness of faith (Abbas RA, H)


C: Exactly. Not any faith is true faith as the secularists and some misguided mystics want us to believe. Only when Allah and Islam and Muhammad sws come together we have a valid faith which is the sweetest and most beneficial thing in the world.


153. Faith is of two parts: Half is giving thanks, the other half is being patient (Anas RA, Y)


C:  Giving thanks proceeds from happy satisfaction and without happy satisfaction with the Lord having faith is out of question. Similarly faith means such trust in Allah’s goodness that no afflictions feels too great to make the believer to snap and drop out of faith. May Allah in His kindness never try us too hard.


154. Faith consists of knowledge in the heart, confession by mouth and performance of the items required by it (Ali RA, M)


C: The first is the root, the second is he trunk and the third the fruit. All go together.  In fact the last is the best proof and without it the rest count less


155. Faith in the heart consists of loving Allah (Abu Huraira RA, Y)


C: LOVE is the name of the faith game. A reluctant or resentful consent to the existence and commandments of God is not real faith but a dangerous form of anxiety neurosis of which the sufferer can suddenly snap and switch to disbelief. That means in those we teach we must cultivate love of God as much as the fear.


156. Faith in Allah is confession by the tongue, confirmation by the heart and implementation by the limbs (Aisha RA, Y)


C: As precise and as clinical as to be expected from our mother Aisha RA whose hadiths are always of such high intellectual quality.



32.  CONSULATATION AND HEART SEARCHING


157. “O Ali, one who searched for Allah’s permission (through istikhara) did not miss out on anything.  One who took advice properly did not regret it (Ali RA, B)


C: A comprehensive guidance for finding the right way in all situations only the Messenger of Allah sws could formulate.  The highest and surest way is consulting none other than Allah the Infallible and Most Gracious. This is done through a method called istikhara whose literal meaning is searching for the good.  The Prophet sws taught us a prayer called istikhara and when no amount of outer advice satisfies our need for finding the solution to a serious dilemma in our life we can pray in the way described by Allah’s Messenger sws and Allah will tell us through a dream by some metaphoric representation which we will understand.


As for the second and more frequently needed method, it is consulting people whom we believe or are told are experts or experienced in the matters worrying us. Or the adviser is expected to help because he is generally wise and conscientious and may be trusted. Most things we regret having done in life are done rashly and recklessly and without taking advice either of Allah or His servants


158. The consulter is entitled to help. The consulted need be trustworthy (Aisha RA, Askari)

 

C: The Prophet sws warns that if a muslim is consulted by another he must give the required advice. This is a duty of brotherhood Allah will question him about. Additionally the consultant must be honest and helpful in his advice and not misguiding or irrelevant.  What a precision and wholesomeness of wisdom!


159. One who searches for Allah’s permission did not lose out on anything. One who properly consulted did not regret it. One who economised never lacked anything ( Anas RA, T)


C: Again isthihara: it is a way for the non-prophet check his desires with Allah’s pleasure. Istikhara is a great gift of Allah to this umma which gives them a prophetic venue to the unseen as confined to their pressing needs, which is most proper. Again, consulting another brother who knows better will always help; the consulter will not regret it.  Lastly we have this gem: If one avoids waste or excess and shows reasonable thrift without falling into stinginess he will not lack anything as far as his decent basic needs are concerned. This is guaranteed.


160. Think long and hard before you attempt anything serious. If you are satisfied that it will bring good do it. If not drop it


C: The way forward for us is not too frequent isikhara and taking advice. Before these we must first exercise our own minds as much as we can and see whether we ourselves can find the required solution by Allah’s Kind Help. If, having done enough reasoning, research and soul searching  we feel that doing a thing will most probably be right then we can do it with tawakkul (relying on Allah). If we are not ourselves convinced and our hearts feel doubts then we better drop it



33.  ON THE HEART


161. A heart devoid of wisdom is like a derelict house.  Therefore learn and teach, develop understanding and insight. Do not die ignorants for Allah will accept no apology for ignorance (ibn Umar RA, ibn Sebti)


C: Knowledge many may have.  Inspiration many may get. But without wisdom to marshall our knowledge and inspirations and apply them to tasks facing us we can make no good use of any.  Many people are full of knowledge but their minds who contain this knowledge is like a derelict library with all the books in it gathering dust and rotting in indiscriminate heaps with vermin eating them into shreds. Such disorganised knowledge stored without wisdom can do little for its owner. But to start with, most people acquire no significant knowledge at all on matters which are life and death issues for themselves, especially as regards their spiritual needs.   Islam could not value useful knowledge more and here the Prophet sws is urging us to both learn and teach all manner of useful things; not only that but we must try to understand what we commit to our memory and exercise our minds to gain more and more insight into the relevance and significance of what we have memorised. The ultimate aim is equipping ourselves with enough workable knowledge to chart our path in life towards pleasing the Lord before anything else. If we do not work like that and remain ignorants our protestations of ignorance will not save us from Allah’s wrath.


162. The sweetness of faith will not enter a man’s heart unless he talks about possibly true words while the risk of untruth exists and unless he shuns too much argument even when he is in the right (Abu Musa RA, Y)


C: How unanswerable an argument!  To attain and retain the sweetness which is peculiar to true iman we must first avoid talking too much and risking thereby saying things which we can’t be sure about.  Directly related to this recklessness is proceeding into the territory of argumentation where we increasingly insist on our points of view and take the debate as a duel to death with the opponent.  This is such a bad mistake that it should not be allowed to happen even when we are surely in the right.  Remember: Allah sent down Surat al Kafirun!


163. Do you want your heart to mellow and your needs satisfied? Then show mercy to the orphan and feed him from what you feed yourself. You then find your heart soften and your needs delivered (Abu Darda RA, T)


C: Only mellowed hearts are suitable receptacles for strong enough faith while a hard heart is like hard rock which no amount of rain can penetrate and make fertile. To have our own heart mellowed enough we must exercise it in acts mellowing the hearts of others.  One of the most deserving for winning the heart is one who desperately needs help and in olden times the epitome of this type of needy person was an orphan.  In a modern context any kind help doable to any one in desperate need will do and a believers heart can only resonate with the happiness it caused in the grateful heart of another and mellow more. What is more, a charitable soul’s charitable acts are rewarded by Allah even while still in this world. Allah sees to it that his needs are met and he is never left helpless.


164. I swear by the One in Whose Hand is my soul that a servant will not be a muslim unless his heart is purified by submission to Allah and will not attain certainty of faith unless his neighbour feels certainly safe from his mischief (ibn Mas’ud RA, Ramuz al Ahadith)


C: A definition of Islam which equates Islam and iman, which equation is missing in most people.  They are muslims by profession but hardly submitted their will to Allah’s.  It also transpires from above that the only way to purify our heart is submitting our will to Allah’s Will which is exactly the same as investigating from the Qur’an and the Hadith and from saintly ulema who are more competent in the two sources to find what Allah wants from us and do as He wants. This has another extension and it is that we must listen to our heart when we want to go forward in any important situation: Allah’s Will on the matter cannot fail to make a workable impression on our heart. Add to this consultation and istikhara and you cannot go wrong. Lastly: There is an objective test for having a believer’s heart-  our friends and neighbours feel at ease with and trust us.


165. There is a piece of flesh in man which, when sound the rest of his body is sound and when ill, the rest of his body is also ill. That is the heart (Nu’man RA,T)


C: All organs follow the heart in both its senses: The physical heart supplies all the rest with all the nutrients and air they need thanks to its circulatory and respiratory function. If those are compromised all organs must suffer. The heart in spiritual sense has the same make or break role: When the thoughts and emotions of a man are in turmoil all his other psychological functions deteriorate. The cure is bringing the mind back to tranquillity and that is when Allah is properly remembered. “Ala bizikrillahi tatmainnal quloob”

 

 

34.  ON EASE


166. Make easy, do not make difficult.  Give good news, do not cause disgust. When you are angry shut up (Ibn Abbas RA, T)


C: All proponents of Islam beware: You must always endeavour to present Islam in a good light of ease, comfort and reasonableness. Do not make claims or go to lengths which will make Islam’s image one of impossible hard work, atrocious sacrifice, cheerless austerity and merciless censure and stricture. In fact those who do these are often people who secretly hate Islam but for some reasons feel compelled to spread it. The reason is perhaps is a sick need to spread the hatred they feel for Islam which they entirely misunderstood themselves. Such people are often the authors of books on Islam with extremist, absolutist and condemnatory messages throughout which almost deifying praises and satanising denunciations run in parallel. They derive a sick pleasure from terrifying their imaginary dissenters and turning them into a pillar salt should they dare to issue a sigh of disbelief in their extremist claims.


What we must do instead, the Prophet sws says, is constantly emphasising the goodnews that Allah is out to help and bless us with Islam and that He made it easy and pleasurable enough for us to follow and apply. And that is the truth.

 

167. Ease is a sign of blessing, difficulty is a sign of unblessedness (Said b.Jubair RA, Y)
C: Very short words with very long implications: If Allah wants something from you He will FACILITATE it for you provided you have the necessary good will in pleasing Allah under all circumstances. Conversely when Allah wants you to have one thing instead of another you may fancy more he sends that thing to wind around your legs or fall into your arms almost begging you to be taken.  You should then ACCEPT Allah’s choice and not wait for a supposedly second and better chance.  The only exception is when the thing asking to be taken is haram pure and simple in which case what Allah wants is testing and rewarding you for not taking it out of His fear- which again is a gift.


Anything, repeat, anything which looks and feels like backbreaking in the hard work or excessive sacrifices which it seems to require is an unblessed affair we should rather not get involved into. A good example appropriate for our times is terrorism. In fact all terrorist acts and regimes throughout story attain their aims if they attain them at all, only temporarily at appalling costs to all parties involved and yet never achieve what they set out to achieve in a permanent way but sooner or later the more peaceful and accommodating systems re-establish themselves. As such, even a too drastic, atrocious and risky medical treatment may be a curse never to be accepted. And most people decline such treatments. But the rule is general and we should look each situation afresh if it justifies the sacrifices or hard work it demands and shun it like plague if it does not.

A practical example:  You want to buy a house and suddenly you discover to your surprise that the next door or so is put on sale and in fact is a reasonable bet.  Being more ambitious though, you look it down and diversify into a greater area in order to find your ‘ideal’ home.  You discover another home put on sale which looks to you as you could not wish for a better house. You eagerly get into negotiations to find that at every step of the way unexpected obstacles stack up against you.  One day the owner or agent does not turn up at the appointment to show you around the house, next time the police cordons off the area to investigate a crime, then you are shown around only to learn the next day that it was mistakenly advertised as freehold but was only available on short lease. You still go ahead and apply for a loan but are turned down time and again on flimsy grounds. Then one day the owner of the nearby house knocks on your door and makes you an offer you can’t refuse. If you have spiritual insight you repent from running after the difficult option and opt for this easy one which is asking to be taken.  You buy and plan to move in only to be again told that the seller has even better things to offer;  he offers you to keep all the excellent furniture he was supposed to move out for a price which borders on the ridiculous while another neighbour talks about her not affording to replace her awfully worn out ones. You happily donate your old but good furniture to her and emigrate to your palatially furbished new house, not needing a loan at all because your old house was snapped up at no time by a cash buyer and you already had enough savings to pay up for the rest of the price.  This kind of ‘baraka’ happen to all good servants of Allah every now and then and they prove a yardstick to measure the health of your relationship with the All-Gracious.  In brief ease in an affair is a sign of Allah’s blessing while undue or unexpected hardship which knows no going away is a sign of great danger and still going for it is neither heroism or pious sacrifice but impiety and foolhardy and may lead to an ever-diversifying and spiralling out of control set of disastrous events for many parties, connected or unconnected. We take refuge in Allah.

The very same principle applies to even the highest subjects, both in science and religion.  In science a theory is more correct and more conducive to other correct conclusions the simpler it is.  Newtons theory of gravitation which explains the motions of heavenly bodies is so simple that it is expressed by a formula even secondary schoolchildren can understand and use:


Gravitational attraction between two heavenly bodies is directly proportional to the masses of the two  and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.   In formula form   G= k. M. m/d(sq)


Mind you there are theories which are so complicated that they raise as many questions as they claim to solve and take pages to explain and formulate.


In religions we have dogmas which are as simple and reasonable for anybody to understand and appreciate, the top best being “La ilaha illallah”. There are dogmas which a thousand theologians can debate to the end of the time without being able to come to a common agreement, one of the worst being the Christian Trinity. Here again the simplicity is a sign for blessing and difficulty a sign of unblessedness.  In religious practices there are some which are both easy and very pleasing, like the salat and sawm in Islam.  But certain muslims practice these in such amount and extension that rarely anybody else can manage. That must be wrong and the Prophet sws said that it was wrong. Like fasting everyday of one’s life except the days when fasting is banned. In other religions there are demands that simply shock normal people- like burning all the widows of a dead man in the same pyre as for himself.  This must be unblessed, wrong. More generally those who develop and defend spiritual points which are too hard for even very intelligent men to understand or too foreign-looking to stomach have been producing unblessed material.  Spirituality is based on unquestionable inner truths and truth is always simple-  very simple indeed.




PART THREE


PROBLEMATIC HADITHS


INTRODUCTION



As already noted in Hadith Studies 1,  a hadith consists of two parts: One, the isnad (transmission chain) and two, the matn (text).  Muhaddithin (hadith scholars) did their best to verify the health of the both elements but could not succeed infinitely.  Some were more strict, competent, intelligent and pious than others and with the consensus of all Sunni ulema Bukhari succeeded most,  closely followed by Muslim who was his pupil.


But equally none of the muhaddithin escaped criticism simply because Hadith is a science and other than mathematics no science is exact-  even physics is not. The hadith collecting person must take a lot of information on faith for he has no way of FULLY checking all the bits of information given.  In the case of ahadith on dogma the task is made easier by comparing a given hadith with the verses of the Qur’an-  if there is a good fit then the hadith cannot be dismissed on matn grounds though the sanad is another matter. These are the easiest of ahadith to judge.  At the other extreme are the ahadith on future events which the ahadith prophesy.  The problems with them are at least two, as far as their matns go: On the one hand  there is always the possibility that they were invented to support a political, legal or sectarian claim; on the other hand some relate to events in the future and therefore we have no direct means to check.  But here again the prophecies which are more or less represented in  the Qur’an as well may be evaluated by referring them to the verses of the Qur’an.  Yet this has not been as non-problematic as one could expect.  That is because of two reasons again.  Some politically motivated second or third rate hadith reporters (which we decline to call real muhaddithin) tried to fit the political events which they liked or disliked into these prophecies.  Even worse, when ahadith lacked, they invented ahadith to support their favourites and subvert their opponents and rivals.  Let us give just one example:  Umar b. Abd al Aziz has been considered the only truly pious caliph among the Umayyad caliphs who were actually just kings usurping the caliphate.  During his brief reign which was terminated by his assassination by poison he did a lot to remedy the wrongs done to very many muslims by his predecessors including Muawia RA, the first caliph.  For example he banned all the cursings made against Ali RA and his house. He also tried to compensate the losses sustained by the victims of the Umayyad impieties. In this context he had employed an exemplary man. We shall see what was done to this man later.


Another very important category of problematic hadith, often overlapping with the above, are ahadith about ‘the Signs of the Hour’.  Here we meet two kinds of reports. The first have to do about general moral decline as the Hour comes closer and as such are often very instructive.  In general they stress that as more and more muslims undergo moral degeneration nearer and nearer must be the Hour. The second are specific prophecies giving names, places and sometimes even dates for events in future as Signs of the Hour. Among the most important prophecies are Masih al Dajjal or simply Dajjal,  then Mahdi and then the second coming of the Christ.  The first and the last have a rather disturbing parallel with the Christian eschatology and the Mahdi sits uncomfortably between the two apocalyptic figures.  Interestingly there is a deafening silence in the Qur’an about these three figures and if we are to believe their great importance in Hadith and consider the Qur’an’s utter silence about them while the same Qur’an is reporting other Signs like Dabbet al Ard and Ya’juj and Ma’juj,  one wonders why the Qur’an and Hadith are giving such divergent lists of the Signs of the Hour.  Since the Qur’an cannot be wrong, then what? But that is not all: The dubious ahadith carry detailed and simply bizarre features, sometimes at the fringes of the trifling; they lack depth and leave an acerbic taste of improbability.  They suffer also from many of the conspiratorial ethos of the political prophecies with which they sometimes merge. Here functions and dates simply don’t match. Lastly the scenes depicted in them gives a clear picture of the exact lifestyle and agendas of the first and second century Islam, with almost all events happening in Arabia and Syria, almost all actors are Arabs. None of the historical developments which occurred since Islam’s third century to date and beyond are mentioned.  It is as if they never occurred.  Lastly, significant and sometimes also flagrant discrepancies with the Qur’an are only too visible to explain away.


One cannot be sure but it may be that as Christians converted to Islam sincerely or hypocritically depending on each person, many Christian elements entered into circulation among muslims which elements were gradually Islamised by the same method with which political hadiths were created.  Lastly, all major Hadith works were compiled at least two centuries after the Hijra and in an environmet where the Arab element was heavily diluted by Persian (ex- Magian) and Greek and North African (both Christian), with their rich cultures plowed into the Arab-Islamic like rich manure. Political infighting and sectarian rivalries were both rife and ruthless and what better ploy to employ to win a contest than forge a hadith fixing the solution and win more supporters? Allah knows best and if we ourselves make any mistakes in judging any ahadith without meaning to we beg Allah to forgive and guide us and we beg our brothers to tolerate us and correct us if we are in the wrong and they can correct us.



ON FUTURE GREAT WAR (MALHAMAT AL KUBRA) OR WARS (MALAHIM)


1. The Hour will not come until you fight against the Turks who have small eyes and red faces and short noses. It is as if their faces are like leather shields (Abu Huraira RA, Khamsata)


C: Well, turks were invaded and fought by Muslims and eventually joined Islam and replaced Arabs as Islam’s champions for a thousand years. Nothing about it is said in a single so-called hadith but only the evil of the turk and their ugly features, all of which exactly reflect the views of the horrified Arabs who found turks very tough and did not expect their eventual full conversion to Islam and their great services to it for a very long time after Arabs were spent within less than two centuries.  Since the Prophet sws was neither racist nor, had he known them, could be ignorant of the turks’ potential and future performance if inspired knowledge about them, such hadiths pose a problem. In another Hadith quoted in Ramuz al Ahadith the Prophet sws allegedly says that the turks are the worst of the creation and they will conquer the whole world.


2.  The Hour will not come until the Romans descend on A’maq or Daabiq. Against them will go an army from Medina made of the best people on earth. When they are arranged in ranks …. One third of them are put to flight by the Romans and these Allah will never forgive. Another third are killed and become the best of martyrs in the Sight of Allah. The last third gain victory and conquer Constantinople and they divide the the spoils… when the Satan shouts among them: “Masih (Dajjal) has raided and appropriated your families”. They then leave the place despite the news being false.  When they come to Damascus and when they are preparing for war arranging their ranks and salat is about to be performed Jesus son of Mary comes down and leads them in prayer (in another hadith, he refuses to lead them but defers to the muslim’s existing imam which is elsewhere identified as Mahdi. When the enemy of Allah (Dejjal) sees him (true Masih) he melts like salt melts in water….” (Abu Huraira RA, M)


C: Totally unfitting historical realities.  Constantinople was conquered in 1453 by the turks and not by ‘the best of people from Medina’ and the conquerors were not turned back on the news of Dejjal having raided their families back at home.  There is also intrinsic weaknesses.  How can the Prophet sws first describe the army of Medina as made of the best of people and then accuse one third for flight from enemy and condemn them eternally to hell? Then an equal portion die as martyrs and gain merit more than the martyrs of Badr and Uhud.  The last third beat the Romans and then conquer Constantinople. But after dividing the spoils the Satan deceives these best of creation- all whom must be awliya- who then abandon the conquest and resort back to Medina to recover their families. But they somehow show up in Damascus instead of Medina and find Jesus come down and also Dajjal being present who then melts like salt. Where is their contemporary Mahdi and why Mahdi’s armies are such a mixed bag and how Mahdi’s about seven year utopic golden era blessing the whole world is challenged and conquered by Dajjal is not explained.  And how the advent of a perfect world (in which lions and cows graze side by side and the cow is not eaten by the lion) has to await Jesus and could not be realised either by the greatest of all men and Allah’s most successful messenger Muhammad sws or by his worthy son Mahdi is not clear. Is Jesus saying the last word in salvation in both worlds, as the Christians claim and boast of? There is also Scriptural disclaimers to contend with: Why we do not find either Allah or Jesus mention this second mission of Jesus in the Qur’an (S. al Maida, 116- 118) ?. There Allah questions Jesus about his role in the invention of the Trinitarian dogma against which he protests his IGNORANCE and not being responsible at all. Had he been sent a second time to deal with Christian’s he would also mention that and explain that in his Second Coming he had sorted out the problem and  punished the miscreants and brought the whole mankind to Islam.


The whole scenery and features in these dubious ahadith hardly look like the end of the days after the humanity has made so much scientific and technological advances none of which are to be seen anywhere. Instead the same Arab tribal and (Eastern Roman) imperial features prevail and ancient technologies, arms and strategies firmly persist. In fact the Islamic scenery of Umayyad times are unmistakeably present and everything revolves around early Medieval Mecca, Medina and Damascus and then the current rivalry between the Umayyad State and the Byzantine Romans, with all those horse or camel riding and sword-wielding combatants flooding the battlegrounds.  Now long extinct tribes are identified in many of these problem ahadith and all preoccupations and worries are the very same as Umayyad or at the latest Abbasid times.  The above hadith itself smacks of a forgery designed to motivate a certain campaign against the Eastern Romans pre-warning against a desertion, promising highest martyr status to those who stand fast and fall and for the survivors the conquest of the capital of that now extinct  Roman empire.


The language has a  coffee-shop gossip or story-telling quality and gets increasingly illogical in sequence and sketchy in detail.  Compared with ahadith on other than futuristic subjects which ahadith are epitomes of wisdom, insight, inspiration and eloquence these problem ahadiths crawl on and meander confusedly on the literary level of the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of John.  Which look quite below the capacity and dignity of that epitome of wisdom and realism the Messenger of Allah sws.


Such ahadith stoop to their worst when exact names and word portraits of well-known political and religious personalities are identified as Allah’s darlings or enemies and prophetic orders are reported for their elevation or destruction.  Of these we shall see a few.



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