Den fremragende tale holdt af Sheikh Nuh Keller 29 August i London om Jihad, kan findes paa www.deenport.com under lessons.

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En nyttig artikel om den velsignede maaned vi befinder os i, der florerer mange paastande om at den ene og den anden sunnah folk foretager sig i Sha’ban er bid’a, inshaallah vil denne artikel belyse emnet og opklare en del af forvirringen.

By Mufti Taqi Usmani

- The Night of Bara’ah
- What Should be Done in this Night?
- What Should Not be Done in This Night
- Fast of the 15th Sha’ban

Sha’ban is one of the meritorious months for which we find some particular instructions in the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam. It is reported in the authentic ahadith that Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, used to fast most of the month in Sha’ban. These fasts were not obligatory on him but Sha’ban is the month immediately preceding the month of Ramadan. Therefore, some preparatory measures are suggested by Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam. Some of these are given below:

1. The blessed companion Anas, Radi-Allahu anhu, reports that Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, was asked, “Which fast is the most meritorious after the fasts of Ramadan?” He replied, “Fasts of Shaban in honor of Ramadan.”

2. The blessed companion Usama ibn Zaid, Radi-Allahu anhu, reports that he asked Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam: “Messenger of Allah, I have seen you fasting in the month of Sha’ban so frequently that I have never seen you fasting in any other month.” Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, replied: “That (Sha’ban) is a month between Rajab and Ramadan which is neglected by many people. And it is a month in which an account of the deeds (of human beings) is presented before the Lord of the universe, so, I wish that my deeds be presented at a time when I am in a state of fasting.”

3. Ummul Mu’mineen ‘Aishah, Radi-Allahu anha, says, “Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, used to fast the whole of Sha’ban. I said to him, ‘Messenger of Allah, is Sha’ban your most favorite month for fasting?’ He said, ‘In this month Allah prescribes the list of the persons dying this year. Therefore, I like that my death comes when I am in a state of fasting.”

4. In another Tradition she says, “Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, would sometimes begin to fast continuously until we thought he would not stop fasting, and sometimes he used to stop fasting until we thought he would never fast. I never saw the Messenger of Allah, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, fasting a complete month, except the month of Ramadan, and I have never seen him fasting in a month more frequently than he did in Sha’ban.”

5. In another report she says, “I never saw the Messenger of Allah, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, fasting in a month so profusely as he did in the month of Sha’ban. He used to fast in that month leaving only a few days, rather, he used to fast almost the whole of the month.”

6. Ummul-Mu’mineen Umm Salamah, Radi-Allahu anha, says: “I have never seen the Messenger of Allah fasting for two months continuously except in the months of Sha’ban and Ramadan.”

These reports indicate that fasting in the month of Sha’ban, though not obligatory, is so meritorious that Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, did not like to miss it.

But it should be kept in mind that the fasts of Sha’ban are for those persons only who are capable of keeping them without causing deficiency in the obligatory fasts of Ramadan. Therefore, if one fears that after fasting in Sha’ban, he will lose strength or freshness for the fasts of Ramadan and will not be able to fast in it with freshness, he should not fast in Sha’ban, because the fasts of Ramadan, being obligatory, are more important than the optional fasts of Sha’ban. That is why Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, himself has forbidden the Muslims from fasting one or two days immediately before the commencement of Ramadan. The blessed Companion Abu Hurairah, Radi-Allahu anhu, reports Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, to have said, “Do not fast after the first half of the month of Sha’ban is gone.”

According to another report Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam has said: “Do not precede the month of Ramadan with one or two fasts.”

The essence of the above-quoted ahadith is that Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, himself used to fast most of the month of Sha’ban, because he had no fear of developing weakness or weariness before the commencement of Ramadan. As for others, he ordered them not to fast after the 15th of Sha’ban for the fear that they would lose their strength and freshness before Ramadan starts, and would not be able to welcome the month of Ramadan with enthusiasm.

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The Night of Bara’ah

Another significant feature of the month of Sha’ban is that it consists of a night which is termed in Shariah as “Laylatul-bara’ah” (The night of freedom from Fire). This is the night occurring between 14th and 15th day of Sha’ban. There are certain traditions of Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, to prove that it is a meritorious night in which the people of the earth are attended by special Divine mercy. Some of these traditions are quoted as follows:

1. Ummul-Mu’mineen ‘Aishah, Radi-Allahu anha, is reported to have said, “Once Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, performed the Salah of the night (Tahajjud) and made a very long Sajdah until I feared that he had passed away. When I saw this, I rose (from my bed) and moved his thumb (to ascertain whether he is alive). The thumb moved, and I returned (to my place). Then I heard him saying in Sajdah: ‘I seek refuge of Your forgiveness from Your punishment, and I seek refuge of Your pleasure from Your annoyance, and I seek Your refuge from Yourself. I cannot praise You as fully as You deserve. You are exactly as You have defined Yourself.’ Thereafter, when he raised his head from Sajdah and finished his salah, he said to me: ‘Aishah, did you think that the Prophet has betrayed you?’ I said, ‘No, O Prophet of Allah, but I was afraid that your soul has been taken away because your Sajdah was very long.’ He asked me, ‘Do you know which night is this?’ I said, ‘Allah and His Messenger know best.’ He said, ‘This is the night of the half of Sha’ban. Allah Almighty looks upon His slaves in this night and forgives those who seek forgiveness and bestows His mercy upon those who pray for mercy but keeps those who have malice (against a Muslim) as they were before, (and does not forgive them unless they relieve themselves from malice).’”

2. In another Tradition Sayyidah’ Aishah, Radi-Allahu anha, has reported that Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, has said, “Allah Almighty descends (in a manner He best knows it) in the night occurring in the middle of Sha’ban and forgives a large number of people more than the number of the fibers on the sheep of the tribe, Kalb.”

Kalb was a big tribe the members of which had a very large number of sheep. Therefore, the last sentence of the hadith indicates the big number of the people who are forgiven in this night by Allah Almighty.

3. In yet another Tradition, she has reported Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, to have said, “This is the middle Night of Sha’ban. Allah frees in it a large number of the people from Fire, more than the number of the hair growing on the sheep of the tribe, Kalb. But He does not even look at a person who associates partners with Allah, or at a person who nourishes malice in his heart (against someone), or at a person who cuts off the ties of kinship, or at a man who leaves his clothes extending beyond his ankles (as a sign of pride), or at a person who disobeys his parents, or at a person who has a habit of drinking wine.”

4. Sayyidna Mu’adh ibn Jabal, Radi-Allahu anhu, reports that Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, has said: “Allah Almighty looks upon all those created by Him in the middle Night of Sha’ban and forgives all those created by Him, except the one who associates partners with Him or the one who has malice in his heart (against a Muslim)”.

Although the chain of narrators of some of these traditions suffers with some minor technical defects, yet when all these traditions are combined together, it becomes clear that this night has some well founded merits, and observing this night as a sacred night is not a baseless concoction as envisaged by some modern scholars who, on the basis of these minor defects, have totally rejected to give any special importance to this night. In fact, some of these traditions have been held by some scholars of hadith as authentic and the defects in the chain of some others have been treated by them as minor technical defects which, according to the science of hadith, are curable by the variety of their ways of narration. That is why the elders of the ummah have constantly been observing this night as a night of special merits and have been spending it in worship and prayers.

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What Should be Done in this Night?

In order to observe the Night of Bara’ah, one should remain awakened in this night as much as he can. If someone has better opportunities, he should spend the whole night in worship and prayer. However, if one cannot do so for one reason or another, he can select a considerable portion of the night, preferably of the second half of it for this purpose, and should perform the following acts of worship:

(a) Salah. Salah is the most preferable act to be performed in this night. There is no particular number of Rak’at but preferably it should not be less than eight. It is also advisable that each part of the Salah like qiyam, rukoo’ and sajdah should be longer than normal. The longest surahs of the Holy Qur’an one remembers by heart should be recited in the Salah of this night. If someone does not remember the long surahs, he can also recite several short surahs in one rak’ah.

(b) Tilawa. The recitation of the Holy Qur’an is another form of worship, very beneficent in this night. After performing Salah, or at any other time, one should recite as much of the Holy Qur’an as he can.

(c) Dhikr. One should also perform dhikr (recitation of the name of Allah) in this night. Particularly the following dhikr is very useful:

One should recite Salah (durood) on Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, as many times as he can. The dhikr can also be recited while walking, lying on bed and during other hours of work or leisure.

(d) Dua. The best benefit one can draw from the blessings of this night is prayers and supplications. It is hoped that all the prayers in this night will be accepted by our Lord, insha-Allah. Prayer itself is an ‘Ibadah, and Allah Almighty gives reward on each prayer along with the fulfillment of the supplicator’s need. Even if the purpose prayed for is not achieved, one cannot be deprived of the reward of the prayer which is sometimes more precious than the mundane benefits one strives for. The prayers and supplications also strengthen one’s relation with Allah Almighty, which is the main purpose of all kinds and forms of worship.

One can pray for whatever purpose he wishes. But the best supplications are the ones made by Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam. These are so comprehensive and all-encompassing prayers that recitation of the Qur’an and dhikr should be performed in this night individually, not collectively. The Nafl Salah should not be performed in Jama’ah, nor should the Muslims arrange gatherings in the mosques in order to celebrate the night in a collective manner.

On the contrary, this night is meant for worshipping Allah in solitude. It is the time to enjoy the direct contact with the Lord of the Universe, and to devote one’s attention to Him and Him alone. These are the precious hours of the night in which nobody should intervene between one and his Lord, and one should turn to Allah with total concentration, not disturbed or intermitted by any one else.

That is why Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, observed the acts of worship in this night in total seclusion, not accompanied by anyone, not even by his favorite life companion Sayyidah ‘Aishah, Radi-Allahu anha, and that is why all forms of the optional worship (Nafl Ibadah), are advised by him to be done in individual, not in collective manner.

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Fast of the 15th Sha’ban

On the day immediately following the Night of Bara’ah, i.e. the 15th of Sha’ban, it is mustahabb (advisable) to keep fast. Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, is reported to have recommended this fast emphatically. Although the scholars of hadith have some doubts in the authenticity of this report, yet it is mentioned earlier that the fasts of the first half of Sha’ban have special merits and Prophet Muhammad, Sall-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, used to fast most of the days in Sha’ban. Moreover, a large number of the elders (salaf) of the Ummah have been observing the fast of the 15th of Sha’ban. This constant practice indicates that they have accepted the relevant hadith as authentic.

Therefore, it is advisable to fast the 15th of Sha’ban as an optional (nafl) fast. One can also keep a fast of qada on this day and it is hoped that he can also benefit from the merits of this fast.

En fyldestgoerende artikel om et meget vigtigt emne der ofte misforstaas nutildags

©Nuh Ha Mim Keller 1995

The following is the text of a talk given by Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller at Nottingham and Trent University on Wednesday 25th January 1995.
In the name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
There are few topics that generate as much controversy today in Islam as what is sunna and what is bida or reprehensible innovation, perhaps because of the times Muslims live in today and the challenges they face. Without a doubt, one of the greatest events in impact upon Muslims in the last thousand years is the end of the Islamic caliphate at the first of this century, an event that marked not only the passing of temporal, political authority, but in many respects the passing of the consensus of orthodox Sunni Islam as well. No one familiar with the classical literature in any of the Islamic legal sciences, whether Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir), hadith, or jurisprudence (fiqh), can fail to be struck by the fact that questions are asked today about basic fundamentals of Islamic Sacred Law (Sharia) and its ancillary disciplines that would not have been asked in the Islamic period not because Islamic scholars were not brilliant enough to produce the questions, but because they already knew the answers.
My talk tonight will aim to clarify some possible misunderstandings of the concept of innovation (bida) in Islam, in light of the prophetic hadith,
“Beware of matters newly begun, for every matter newly begun is innovation, every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in hell.”
The sources I use are traditional Islamic sources, and my discussion will centre on three points:
The first point is that scholars say that the above hadith does not refer to all new things without restriction, but only to those which nothing in Sacred Law attests to the validity of. The use of the word “every” in the hadith does not indicate an absolute generalization, for there are many examples of similar generalizations in the Qur’an and sunna that are not applicable without restriction, but rather are qualified by restrictions found in other primary textual evidence.
The second point is that the sunna and way of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was to accept new acts initiated in Islam that were of the good and did not conflict with established principles of Sacred Law, and to reject things that were otherwise.
And our third and last point is that new matters in Islam may not be rejected merely because they did not exist in the first century, but must be evaluated and judged according to the comprehensive methodology of Sacred Law, by virtue of which it is and remains the final and universal moral code for all peoples until the end of time.
Our first point, that the hadith does not refer to all new things without restriction, but only to those which nothing in Sacred Law attests to the validity of, may at first seem strange, in view of the wording of the hadith, which says, “every matter newly begun is innovation, every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in hell.” Now the word “bida” or “innovation” linguistically means anything new, So our first question must be about the generalizability of the word every in the hadith: does it literally mean that everything new in the world is haram or unlawful? The answer is no. Why?
In answer to this question, we may note that there are many similar generalities in the Qur’an and sunna, all of them admitting of some qualification, such as the word of Allah Most High in Surat al-Najm,
“. . . A man can have nothing, except what he strives for” (Qur’an 53:39),
despite there being an overwhelming amount of evidence that a Muslim benefits from the spiritual works of others, for example, from his fellow Muslims, the prayers of angels for him, the funeral prayer over him, charity given by others in his name, and the supplications of believers for him;
Or consider the words of Allah to unbelievers in Surat al-Anbiya,
“Verily you and what you worship apart from Allah are the fuel of hell” (Qur’an 21:98),
“what you worship” being a general expression, while there is no doubt that Jesus, his mother, and the angels were all worshipped apart from Allah, but are not “the fuel of hell”, so are not what is meant by the verse; Or the word of Allah Most High in Surat al-Anam about past nations who paid no heed to the warners who were sent to them,
“But when they forgot what they had been reminded of, We opened unto them the doors of everything” (Qur’an 6:44),
though the doors of mercy were not opened unto them; And the hadith related by Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
“No one who prays before sunrise and before sunset will enter hell”,
which is a generalised expression that definitely does not mean what its outward generality implies, for someone who prays the dawn and midafternoon prayers and neglects all other prayers and obligatory works is certainly not meant. It is rather a generalization whose intended referent is particular, or a generalization that is qualified by other texts, for when there are fully authenticated hadiths, it is obligatory to reach an accord between them, because they are in reality as a single hadith, the statements that appear without further qualification being qualified by those that furnish the qualification, that the combined implications of all of them may be utilized.
Let us look for a moment at bida or innovation in the light of the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) concerning new matters. Sunna and innovation (bida) are two opposed terms in the language of the Lawgiver (Allah bless him and give him peace), such that neither can be defined without reference to the other, meaning that they are opposites, and things are made clear by their opposites. Many writers have sought to define innovation (bida) without defining the sunna, while it is primary, and have thus fallen into inextricable difficulties and conflicts with the primary textual evidence that contradicts their definition of innovation, whereas if they had first defined the sunna, they would have produced a criterion free of shortcomings.
Sunna, in both the language of the Arabs and the Sacred Law, means way, as is illustrated by the words of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace),
“He who inaugurates a good sunna in Islam [dis: Reliance of the Traveller p58.1(2)] …And he who introduces a bad sunna in Islam…”, sunna meaning way or custom. The way of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in giving guidance, accepting, and rejecting: this is the sunna. For “good sunna” and “bad sunna” mean a “good way” or “bad way”, and cannot possibly mean anything else. Thus, the meaning of “sunna” is not what most students, let alone ordinary people, understand; namely, that it is the prophetic hadith (as when sunna is contrasted with “Kitab”, i.e. Qur’an, in distinguishing textual sources), or the opposite of the obligatory (as when sunna, i.e. recommended, is contrasted with obligatory in legal contexts), since the former is a technical usage coined by hadith scholars, while the latter is a technical usage coined by legal scholars and specialists in fundamentals of jurisprudence. Both of these are usages of later origin that are not what is meant by sunna here. Rather, the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is his way of acting, ordering, accepting, and rejecting, and the way of his Rightly Guided Caliphs who followed his way acting, ordering, accepting, and rejecting. So practices that are newly begun must be examined in light of the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and his way and path in acceptance or rejection.
Now, there are a great number of hadiths, most of them in the rigorously authenticated (sahih) collections, showing that many of the prophetic Companions initiated new acts, forms of invocation (dhikr), supplications (dua), and so on, that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) had never previously done or ordered to be done. Rather, the Companions did them because of their inference and conviction that such acts were of the good that Islam and the Prophet of Islam came with and in general terms urged the like of to be done, in accordance with the word of Allah Most High in Surat al-Hajj,
“And do the good, that haply you may succeed” (Qur’an 22:77),
and the hadith of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace),
“He who inaugurates a good sunna in Islam earns the reward of it and all who perform it after him without diminishing their own rewards in the slightest.”
Though the original context of the hadith was giving charity, the interpretative principle established by the scholarly consensus (def: Reliance of the Traveller b7) of specialists in fundamentals of Sacred Law is that the point of primary texts lies in the generality of their lexical significance, not the specificity of their historical context, without this implying that just anyone may make provisions in the Sacred Law, for Islam is defined by principles and criteria, such that whatever one initiates as a sunna must be subject to its rules, strictures, and primary textual evidence.
From this investigative point of departure, one may observe that many of the prophetic Companions performed various acts through their own personal reasoning, (ijtihad), and that the sunna and way of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) was both to accept those that were acts of worship and good deeds conformable with what the Sacred Law had established and not in conflict with it; and to reject those which were otherwise. This was his sunna and way, upon which his caliphal successors and Companions proceeded, and from which Islamic scholars (Allah be well pleased with them) have established the rule that any new matter must be judged according to the principles and primary texts of Sacred Law: whatever is attested to by the law as being good is acknowledged as good, and whatever is attested to by the law as being a contravention and bad is rejected as a blameworthy innovation (bida). They sometimes term the former a good innovation (bida hasana) in view of it lexically being termed an innovation , but legally speaking it is not really an innovation but rather an inferable sunna as long as the primary texts of the Sacred Law attest to its being acceptable.
We now turn to the primary textual evidence previously alluded to concerning the acts of the Companions and how the Prophet, (Allah bless him and give him peace) responded to them:
(1) Bukhari and Muslim relate from Abu Hurayra (Allah be well pleased with him) that at the dawn prayer the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said to Bilal, “Bilal, tell me which of your acts in Islam you are most hopeful about, for I have heard the footfall of your sandals in paradise”, and he replied, “I have done nothing I am more hopeful about than the fact that I do not perform ablution at any time of the night or day without praying with that ablution whatever has been destined for me to pray.”
Ibn Hajar Asqalani says in Fath al-Bari that the hadith shows it is permissible to use personal reasoning (ijtihad) in choosing times for acts of worship, for Bilal reached the conclusions he mentioned by his own inference, and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) confirmed him therein.
Similar to this is the hadith in Bukhari about Khubayb (who asked to pray two rakas before being executed by idolaters in Mecca) who was the first to establish the sunna of two rak’as for those who are steadfast in going to their death. These hadiths are explicit evidence that Bilal and Khubayb used their own personal reasoning (ijtihad) in choosing the times of acts of worship, without any previous command or precedent from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) other than the general demand to perform the prayer.
(2) Bukhari and Muslim relate that Rifa’a ibn Rafi said, “When we were praying behind the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and he raised his head from bowing and said , “Allah hears whoever praises Him”, a man behind him said, “Our Lord, Yours is the praise, abundantly, wholesomely, and blessedly therein.” When he rose to leave, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) asked “who said it”, and when the man replied that it was he, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “I saw thirty-odd angels each striving to be the one to write it.” Ibn Hajar says in Fath al-Bari that the hadith indicates the permissibility of initiating new expressions of dhikr in the prayer other than the ones related through hadith texts, as long as they do not contradict those conveyed by the hadith [since the above words were a mere enhancement and addendum to the known, sunna dhikr].
(3) Bukhari relates from Aisha (Allah be well pleased with her) that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) dispatched a man at the head of a military expedition who recited the Qur’an for his companions at prayer, finishing each recital with al-Ikhlas (Qur’an 112). When they returned, they mentioned this to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), who told them, “Ask him why he does this”, and when they asked him, the man replied, “because it describes the All-merciful, and I love to recite it.” The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said to them, “Tell him Allah loves him.” In spite of this, we do not know of any scholar who holds that doing the above is recommended, for the acts the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to do regularly are superior, though his confirming the like of this illustrates his sunna regarding his acceptance of various forms of obedience and acts of worship, and shows he did not consider the like of this to be a reprehensible innovation (bida), as do the bigots who vie with each other to be the first to brand acts as innovation and misguidance. Further, it will be noticed that all the preceding hadiths are about the prayer, which is the most important of bodily acts of worship, and of which the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “Pray as you have seen me pray”, despite which he accepted the above examples of personal reasoning because they did not depart from the form defined by the Lawgiver, for every limit must be observed, while there is latitude in everything besides, as long as it is within the general category of being called for by Sacred Law. This is the sunna of the Prophet and his way (Allah bless him and give him peace) and is as clear as can be. Islamic scholars infer from it that every act for which there is evidence in Sacred Law that it is called for and which does not oppose an unequivocal primary text or entail harmful consequences is not included in the category of reprehensible innovation (bida), but rather is of the sunna, even if there should exist something whose performance is superior to it.
(4) Bukhari relates from Abu Said al-Khudri that a band of the Companions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) departed on one of their journeys, alighting at the encampment of some desert Arabs whom they asked to be their hosts, but who refused to have them as guests. The leader of the encampment was stung by a scorpion, and his followers tried everything to cure him, and when all had failed, one said, “If you would approach the group camped near you, one of them might have something”. So they came to them and said, “O band of men, our leader has been stung and weve tried everything. Do any of you have something for it?” and one of them replied, “Yes, by Allah, I recite healing words [ruqya, def: Reliance of the Traveller w17] over people, but by Allah, we asked you to be our hosts and you refused, so I will not recite anything unless you give us a fee”. They then agreed upon a herd of sheep, so the man went and began spitting and reciting the Fatiha over the victim until he got up and walked as if he were a camel released from its hobble, nothing the matter with him. They paid the agreed upon fee, which some of the Companions wanted to divide up, but the man who had done the reciting told them, “Do not do so until we reach the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and tell him what has happened, to see what he may order us to do”. They came to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and told him what had occurred, and he said, “How did you know it was of the words which heal? You were right. Divide up the herd and give me a share.”
The hadith is explicit that the Companion had no previous knowledge that reciting the Fatiha to heal (ruqya) was countenanced by Sacred Law, but rather did so because of his own personal reasoning (ijtihad), and since it did not contravene anything that had been legislated, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) confirmed him therein because it was of his sunna and way to accept and confirm what contained good and did not entail harm, even if it did not proceed from the acts of the Prophet himself (Allah bless him and give him peace) as a definitive precedent.
(5) Bukhari relates from Abu Said al-Khudri that one man heard another reciting al-Ikhlas (Qur’an 112) over and over again, so when morning came he went to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and sarcastically mentioned it to him. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “By Him in whose hand is my soul, it equals one-third of the Qur’an.” Daraqutni recorded another version of this hadith in which the man said, “I have a neighbor who prays at night and does not recite anything but al-Ikhlas.” The hadith shows that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) confirmed the persons restricting himself to this sura while praying at night, despite its not being what the Prophet himself did (Allah bless him and give him peace), for though the Prophets practice of reciting from the whole Qur’an was superior, the mans act was within the general parameters of the sunna and there was nothing blameworthy about it in any case.
(6) Ahmad and Ibn Hibban relates from Abdullah ibn Burayda that his father said, I entered the mosque with the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), where a man was at prayer, supplicating: “O Allah, I ask You by the fact that I testify You are Allah, there is no god but You, the One, the Ultimate, who did not beget and was not begotten, and to whom none is equal”, and the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “By Him in whose hand is my soul, he has asked Allah by His greatest name, which if He is asked by it He gives, and if supplicated He answers”. It is plain that this supplication came spontaneously from the Companion, and since it conformed to what the Sacred Law calls for, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) confirmed it with the highest degree of approbation and acceptance, while it is not known that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) had ever taught it to him (Adilla Ahl al-Sunna wa’al-Jamaa, 119-33).
We are now able to return to the hadith with which I began my talk tonight, in which the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “. . . Beware of matters newly begun, for every innovation is misguidance”. And understand it as expounded by a classic scholar of Islam, Sheikh Muhammad Jurdani, who said:
“Beware of matters newly begun”, distance yourselves and be wary of matters newly innovated that did not previously exist”, i.e. things invented in Islam that contravene the Sacred Law, “for every innovation is misguidance” meaning that every innovation is the opposite of the truth, i.e. falsehood, a hadith that has been related elsewhere as: “for every newly begun matter is innovation, every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in hell” meaning that everyone who is misguided, whether through himself or by following another, is in hell, the hadith referring to matters that are not good innovations with a basis in Sacred Law. It has been stated (by Izz ibn Abd al-Salam) that innovations (bida) fall under the five headings of the Sacred Law (n: i.e. the obligatory, unlawful, recommended, offensive, and permissible):
(1) The first category comprises innovations that are obligatory , such as recording the Qur’an and the laws of Islam in writing when it was feared that something might be lost from them; the study of the disciplines of Arabic that are necessary to understand the Qur’an and sunna such as grammar, word declension, and lexicography; hadith classification to distinguish between genuine and spurious prophetic traditions; and the philosophical refutations of arguments advanced by the Mu’tazilites and the like.
(2) The second category is that of unlawful innovations such as non- Islamic taxes and levies, giving positions of authority in Sacred Law to those unfit for them, and devoting ones time to learning the beliefs of heretical sects that contravene the tenets of faith of Ahl al-Sunna.
(3) The third category consists of recommended innovations such as building hostels and schools of Sacred Law, recording the research of Islamic schools of legal thought, writing books on beneficial subjects, extensive research into fundamentals and particular applications of Sacred Law, in-depth studies of Arabic linguistics, the reciting of wirds (def: Reliance of the Traveller w20) by those with a Sufi path, and commemorating the birth (mawlid), of the Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace) and wearing ones best and rejoicing at it.
(4) The fourth category includes innovations that are offensive, such as embellishing mosques, decorating the Qur’an and having a backup man (muballigh) loudly repeat the spoken Allahu Akbar of the imam when the latter’s voice is already clearly audible to those who are praying behind him.
(5) the fifth category is that of innovations that are permissible, such as sifting flour, using spoons and having more enjoyable food, drink and housing. (al Jawahir al-luluiyya fi sharh al-Arbain al-nawawiyya, 220-21).
I will conclude my remarks tonight with a translation of Sheikh Abdullah al-Ghimari, who said: In his al-Qawaid al-kubra, “Izz ibn Abd al-Salam classifies innovations (bida), according to their benefit, harm, or indifference, into the five categories of rulings: the obligatory, recommended, unlawful, offensive, and permissible; giving examples of each and mentioning the principles of Sacred Law that verify his classification. His words on the subject display his keen insight and comprehensive knowledge of both the principles of jurisprudence and the human advantages and disadvantages in view of which the Lawgiver has established the rulings of Sacred Law.
Because his classification of innovation (bida) was established on a firm basis in Islamic jurisprudence and legal principles, it was confirmed by Imam Nawawi, Ibn Hajar Asqalani, and the vast majority of Islamic scholars, who received his words with acceptance and viewed it obligatory to apply them to the new events and contingencies that occur with the changing times and the peoples who live in them. One may not support the denial of his classification by clinging to the hadith “Every innovation is misguidance”, because the only form of innovation that is without exception misguidance is that concerning tenets of faith, like the innovations of the Mutazilites, Qadarites, Murjiites, and so on, that contradicted the beliefs of the early Muslims. This is the innovation of misguidance because it is harmful and devoid of benefit. As for innovation in works, meaning the occurrence of an act connected with worship or something else that did not exist in the first century of Islam, it must necessarily be judged according to the five categories mentioned by Izz ibn Abd al-Salam. To claim that such innovation is misguidance without further qualification is simply not applicable to it, for new things are among the exigencies brought into being by the passage of time and generations, and nothing that is new lacks a ruling of Allah Most High that is applicable to it, whether explicitly mentioned in primary texts, or inferable from them in some way. The only reason that Islamic law can be valid for every time and place and be the consummate and most perfect of all divine laws is because it comprises general methodological principles and universal criteria, together with the ability its scholars have been endowed with to understand its primary texts, the knowledge of types of analogy and parallelism, and the other excellences that characterize it. Were we to rule that every new act that has come into being after the first century of Islam is an innovation of misguidance without considering whether it entails benefit or harm, it would invalidate a large share of the fundamental bases of Sacred Law as well as those rulings established by analogical reasoning, and would narrow and limit the Sacred Laws vast and comprehensive scope. (Adilla Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jamaa, 145-47).
Wa Jazakum Allahu khayran, wal-hamdu lillahi Rabbil Alamin.

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Kronik: Lovet være Allah, fædrelandet og Anders Fogh
Information 19. august 2005

Lovet være Allah, fædrelandet og Hans eminence Anders Fogh Rasmussen, sådan kan begyndelsen på fredags-prædikener måske komme til at lyde i Danmark i en ikke så fjern fremtid i samme stil som i de fleste muslimske lande, hvor staten blander sig i uddannelsen af imamer

Af Omar Shah

Imam-uddannelse eller nærmere ‘dansk imam-uddannelse’ er blevet tidens buzz word. Ministre, biskopper og fremtrædende muslimer næsten falder over hinanden i iver over denne mirakelløsning, der skal sikre ‘den moderate islams’ udvikling i Danmark. Da nødvendigheden og ikke mindst plausibiliteten af en dansk imam-uddannelse ikke kan evalueres uden at forstå ‘problemerne’ med de eksisterende imamer, er det vigtigt at kigge nærmere på dem.
Det altovervejende flertal af imamer i danske moskeer er her på relativt korte ophold (grundet visarestriktioner). De leder bønnerne i moskeerne, prædiker på modersmålene og opfylder forældregruppens spirituelle behov, men i modsætning til i deres hjemlande, hvor de også opfylder en samfundsmæssig opgave som rådgivere og mæglere, er det begrænset, hvilken rolle de kan spille i Danmark, da de fleste simpelthen ikke når at få et dybere indblik i samfundsforholdene.
Endvidere er de etnisk baserede moskeer, hvor imamerne er ansat alt andet end in blandt de unge, for hvem den specifikke etniske identitet ofte spiller en meget mindre rolle end det, at de er indvandrere og muslimer. Miljøer, hvor halvdelen af deres multietniske vennekreds ville føle sig uvelkomne, er derfor ikke højst på ønskelisten, og de søger ikke deres inspiration i moskeer, hvor der prædikes ‘indvandrerislam’ på fremmede sprog, men tværtimod i miljøer, hvor sproget er dansk, og hvor klientellet er multietnisk, hvadenten det er hos Hizb-ut-Tahrir eller salafistiske miljøer.
Det er derfor misvisende at beskylde imamerne for at fastholde de unge i en bestemt form for islam, de eksisterende imamer spiller en relativt lille rolle for andengenerationsindvandrerne, der først og fremmest søger rådgivning og inspiration hos mennesker, de kan forholde sig til, netop fordi mange imamer ikke fanger deres interesse. Således kan man ikke sige, at de fastholdes i forældrenes islam, tværtimod!

Kendskab ikke lig accept
Tesen om, at de fleste imamer i landet ikke er rigtige imamer, holder ikke, tværtimod har så godt som alle de store moskeer rigtige imamer med en formel teologisk uddannelse tilknyttet. På den anden side er så godt som alle de prædikanter, der er populære blandt de unge, selvlærte. Det, der tiltrækker de unge til disse personer og miljøerne omkring dem, er ikke den teologiske kunnen, men først og fremmest, at personerne har et solidt kendskab til det danske samfund, taler til de unge på et sprog de forstår og i en relevant kontekst nemlig Danmark anno 2005!
I modsætning til hvad flere politikere og ‘eksperter’ mener, så er kendskab til en kultur ikke lig med blind accept eller en følelse af tilhørsforhold. Jørgen Bæk Simonsen og Tim Jensen må vel siges at have et godt kendskab til den islamiske tro og kultur, men dette betyder på ingen måde, at de har et tilhørsforhold til den eller personligt accepterer den. Postulatet om, at imamer og muslimer, der ‘prædiker imod den danske kultur’, ikke har nok kendskab til den, er velsagtens den mest naive teori i den danske integrationsdebat, en teori hele debatten om en dansk imamuddannelse synes at bygge på .
I modsætning til imamerne i moskeerne, der ofte tager udgangspunkt i hjemlandets realiteter, tager prædikanterne netop udgangspunkt i de unges realitet. Racisme, diskrimination og islamofobi har de oplevet i samme omfang som de unge tilhørere og har ofte selv været igennem et typisk dansk ungdomsliv med stoffer alkohol og piger. Så hvor imamerne kommer fra en teologisk vinkel, kommer disse prædikanter fra en teologisk og en praktisk vinkel.
De trænger ikke igennem på grund af deres egen og modtagergruppens uvidenhed omkring det danske samfund, tværtimod er deres kald baseret på førstehåndskendskab til det danske samfund inklusive det danske demokrati. De forstår udmærket godt demokratiets præmisser, og som det er blevet bekræftet igen og igen, at den politiks proces i Danmark idag ikke er rummelig nok til politikere med muslimske holdninger. Unge der hører at demokratiet er uislamisk, kan med deres egne øjne se, hvordan den ene muslim efter den anden er blevet presset ud af politik, medmindre der er tale om muslimer, der aktivt støtter sager, der er i diametral modsætning til alt, hvad islam står for.
På bagrund af ovenstående er de klart at ingen af de fremsatte imamuddanelsesforslag er nogen nem mirakelløsning.
Hvis vi tager forslaget om, at det skal være en ren samfundsvidenskabelig overbygning uden teologisk indhold, kan vi starte med at spørge, hvorfor denne overbygning kun skal gælde for muslimer og ikke andre udenlandske forkyndere? Hvis det handler om, at forkynderen med sit nye tilegnede kendskab til det danske samfund bedre kan vejlede sin menighed, er det direkte diskriminerende kun at rette den imod muslimer, da en hindupræst fra Tamil Nadu vel ikke kan formodes at have et større kendskab til Grundtvig end en imam fra Istanbul! Målsætningen knytter sig desværre igen til teorien om, at modstand mod danske værdier skyldes uvidenhed. En yderst naiv formodning.

Teologisk uddannelse
Forslaget om, at det skal være en decideret dansk teologisk imamuddannelse, rummer endnu flere problemer. Islamisk ortodoksi har visse rammer, der uanset meningsforskelle på visse perifere områder, overholdes på tværs af sekter og retsskoler. Hvis fortalere for en imamuddannelse har planer om at indføre en form for modereret islamisk teologi, der i højere grad vil forene det islamiske og danske livssyn eller rettere amputere de dele af islam, der ikke stemmer overens med det danske, kan der vente dem en slem overraskelse.
For det første vil en imamuddannelse, der ikke underviser i islam, men i orientalistiske teorier og en sekulariseret hjemmestrikket teologi, blive opfattet netop som en sådan af de muslimske samfund. Staten kan uddanne personer, der kaldes imamer og har et flot diplom, men hvis de ikke har menighedens accept, er det i sidste ende et mislykket integrationsprojekt på skatteydernes regning.
Den danske imam Abdul Wahid Petersen har udtalt, at han tror en dansk uddannelse vil give imamerne en større autoritet blandt muslimerne i Danmark, jeg kunne ikke være mere uenig. Enhver med kendskab til den muslimske verden ved hvilken skepsis, der er over for fatwaer udstedt af statsimamer. Denne mistro overfor staten findes om muligt i endnu højere grad her i Danmark, efter et årti med stramninger har de fleste muslimer en indbygget skepsis overfor statslige tiltag. Derfor kan det at være statsautoriseret hurtigt blive et handikap snarere end en fordel, og enhver mild fatwa eller prædiken, en sådan imam måtte komme med, vil straks blive set i lyset af, at han jo er statsuddannet (måske ovenikøbet statslønnet). En dansk imam uddannelse kan måske give større autoritet blandt ikke muslimer, men bestemt ikke blandt muslimer.
Af grunde opremset ovenfor mener jeg, at et egentligt statsligt imamprojekt er dømt til at mislykkes. Islam havde ingen reformation i 1530′erne og kommer ikke til at have en i 2005 eller 2050 for den sags skyld. Der er mange områder hvorpå de eksisterende imamer kan forbedre sig, ikke mindst med hensyn til deres sprogkundskaber og evne til at forholde sig til det danske samfund, hvilket er essentielt, hvis de skal kunne formidle et budskab og spille en aktiv rolle blandt muslimerne i Danmark. Fra muslimernes side må målet på sigt være at oprette uafhængige institutioner, der kan uddanne imamer i hvert fald til husbehov, men det er nok utopisk at forestille sig, at et dansk islamisk universitet kommer til at konkurrere med Al-Azhar eller Medinas universitet i den nærmeste fremtid. Indtil da må man klart håbe at flere muslimer med en opvækst i Danmark er villige til, at studere islamisk teologi på de læreanstalter (i den muslimske verden), der findes idag.
Dette vil måske ikke tilfredsstille politikere, der ønsker en fordansket islam, men faktum er, at processen ikke kan tvinges ned over hovedet på muslimerne, og at ethvert sådan forsøg vil virke frastødene. En forståelse for dansk kultur er ikke per automatik lig med accept af dansk kultur, og det faktum vil imamer, der starter deres khutbaer (prædikener under middagsbønnen, red.) med en lovprisning af Allah, fædrelandet og Fogh, ikke kunne ændre på.

Kronikøren er uddannet økonom og revisor og har blandt andet skrevet om strømningerne blandt unge muslimer i Danmark i bogen ‘Islam, Kristendom og det Moderne’ (2004)

Politiken 29. juni 2005

Unge indvandrere render ikke rundt med store ambitioner om at blive kriminelle. Men når de møder fordomme og placeres bagest i jobkøen, kan den kriminelle løbebane blive den uheldige genvej til den vestlige drøm om materiel lykke. Medierne vil helst give andre forklaringer på Nørrebros uro. Kronikøren er revisor.

Af Omar Shah

Godt en måned efter episoden ved Rust har støvet endnu ikke lagt sig. Endnu et voldeligt dødsfald har fundet sted på Nørrebro, og vi har oplevet endnu en ‘omgang’, der ikke lader turen efter drabet på Antonio Curra noget tilbage.

Der er få steder i Danmark, hvor drab kan afstedkomme den opmærksomhed, som drab på Nørrebro får. Ikke fordi - som en udenforstående kunne tro - Nørrebro er et af de steder, hvor der dræbes flest mennesker, men netop fordi bydelen har indprentet sig i politikeres og lederskribenters bevidsthed og er blevet gjort til en næsten mytologisk sagnomspunden bydel, hvor gangstere og islamister hærger i et afskåret parallelsamfund, der styres af religiøse mørkemænd med årtusinde gamle regler.

Dette billede er temmelig langt fra sandheden, men ikke desto mindre ser det ud til, at der er et betydeligt antal politikere og mediemennesker, der ønsker at opretholde det. Det er dog ikke et konsensusbillede, der er kommet frem, godt nok kan folk enes om, at noget er rivende galt på Nørrebro, men hvorvidt det er islamisterne, gangsterne eller sågar beduiner med deres kameler, der har ansvaret, har der ikke været enighed om.

Både drabet og den efterfølgende debat om Abu Labans nu famøse forslag om blodpenge passede dog som fod i hose for alarmisterne. Der er ikke noget nyt i, at fantasien får frit løb, når politikere og ‘eksperter’ skal forklare, hvad der er gået galt for bydelen, men man har flere gange troet, at målet var fuldt, blot for endnu en gang at blive overrasket over en eller anden politikers eller lederskribents fantasi.

Uanset variationerne i forklaringerne er der blevet tegnet et billede af et samfund afskåret fra resten af Danmark med egne normer og værdier, hvor islamismen og gangstervældet hersker. Et bekvemt skræmmebillede, der kan hives frem efter behov, når nye frihedsbegrænsende tiltag skal gennemføres.

Reaktionerne på Abu Labans udspil overraskede ikke, men graden af hån og nedladenhed overgik alligevel, hvad der før er blevet sagt - specielt fordi udspillet i realiteten ikke adskiller sig fra ’sekulær’ mægling og konfliktløsning.

Antisharia-hysteriet fik hurtigt taget overhånd, igen var forestillingen om, at en religiøs mørkemand skulle komme og ignorere dansk retspraksis mere, end tyndhudede xenofober kunne klare. Ministre kom med forskellige kommentarer om kameler og middelalder og understregede, at vi i Danmark har et retssystem, der bruges til at dømme, ikke to eller flere. I hysteriet blev pointen, at det her ikke handler om strafudmåling, men om kompensation, helt overset. Det lod ikke til, at hverken Fogh, Hvilshøj eller Espersen havde sat sig helt ind i, hvad der var blevet sagt, faktisk var Birthe Rønn Hornbech en af de få politikere, der udmærkede sig ved sin saglighed - hvilket heller ikke er første gang,

I vores fagre moderne verden fjernt fra både beduiner og kameler er det bestemt ikke ualmindeligt i både injuriesager og andre sagsanlæg (ikke mindst i forretningsverdenen), at involverede parter løser en problemstilling uden om domstolene, ej heller er konfliktråd et ukendt fænomen. Forslaget om ‘blodpenge’ var et kompensations- og mæglingsforslag til afværgelse af en eskalering, og hverken en udmåling af en straf eller en erstatning for den danske lov. Ingen person bosat i Danmark er i tvivl om, at der her i landet findes gældende love, der håndhæves, og at handlinger i modstrid med disse vil få konsekvenser, uanset hvad man personligt måtte mene om dem og deres grundlag.

Det er ikke utænkeligt, at et menneske kunne mene, at det er uretfærdigt, at en person, der driver en beværtning, hvor klientellet befinder sig i en alkoholrus, kaldes en velintegreret entreprenør med iværksætterånd, mens en person, der i samme kvarter har en beværtning, hvor klientellet befinder sig i en hashrus, kaldes en uintegreret kriminel fra indvandrernes nye underklasse; det ændrer bare ikke på det faktum, at værtshuset ifølge loven er en lovlig forretning, mens hashklubben er ulovlig, og at hashklubejeren kan se frem til fængselsstraf og ikke ros! Dette faktum er der ingen, der betvivler - hverken på Nørrebro eller andre steder i landet.

‘The usual suspects’, islamisterne og de etniske kriminelle, har også været oppe og vende, denne gang ved en fælles optræden fra to af de populæreste aktører! En af de ledende aviser kom med den opsigtsvækkende ‘afsløring’, at ud over at kriminelle på Nørrebro nu efter sigende var begyndt at blive mere religiøse, så havde flere medlemmer af Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) et dobbeltjob som pushere, når de ikke lige stod og delte løbesedler ud eller holdt stormøder. Blandt andet var det bevist, at pushere, islamister og gadeplansmedarbejdere gik på cafe sammen, og at HT-medlemmer til skræk og rædsel havde omgang med kriminelle andengenerationsindvandrere.

Med den slags kreative konklusioner er det bestemt ikke overraskende, at så godt som hele artiklen byggede på forskellige ‘anonyme kilder i miljøet’. Det overraskende er derimod, at det kan vække så stor bestyrtelse, at HT-medlemmer omgås kriminelle. At medlemmer af en bevægelse, der har det som et af sine erklærede mål at ’sprede islams tanker og den muslimske livsførelse’, omgås unge, der efter deres mening ikke har den rette livsstil, er omtrent lige så opsigtsvækkende, som at kristne missionærer i Indien omgås hinduer.

At synet af unge fra de forskellige miljøer på cafe sammen skulle bevise en stor sammensværgelse, er også forunderligt. Først og fremmest er naboskab en almindelig dyd (og i endnu høj grad i ‘fremmede’ kulturer), og det kan ikke forventes, at unge, der er vokset op sammen, slår hånden af hinanden, fordi de ikke er enige om alt. Der er endvidere flere familier med ‘højtstående’ medlemmer i begge lejre. Der er vel ikke noget usædvanligt i, at et HT-medlem med kriminelle familiemedlemmer og naboer hellere vil se dem i HT end som kriminelle og derfor omgås dem for at forsøge at præge dem?

I sidste ende ‘rekrutterer’ både HT, kriminelle miljøer og sågar Københavns Kommune fra de samme miljøer, og derfor er der i og for sig ikke noget underligt i, at et ungt menneske kan være i tvivl om, hvilket et han helst vil tilhøre. Hvis Københavns Kommune har ansat flere personer med fortsat tilknytning til det kriminelle miljø som gadeplansmedarbejdere, gør det så Københavns Kommune til en kriminel organisation? Hvis man brugte samme logik som den, der bruges over for HT, betyder det, at Københavns Kommune ikke blot tolererer kriminalitet, men i sig selv er et kriminelt foretagende ved at ansætte mennesker fra de kriminelle miljøer. Argumentation som ovenstående har udelukkende til formål at overbevise folk om, at ‘islamisterne’ er en flok hyklere, der ikke engang er tro imod egne principper.

I modsætning til teorier om et parallelt retssystem og samarbejde mellem islamister og hashhandlere er forestillingen om et parallelt samfund, der opstår, når majoritetssamfundet af en eller anden grund ikke er rummeligt, en reel problemstilling, og uanset hvilken definition man bruger, er det nok de færreste, der kan argumentere for, at der ikke allerede eksisterer en form for parallelsamfund. Men svarene på to spørgsmål bliver tit taget for givet:

1) I hvilken grad dette parallelsamfund er religiøst (fremmed-)kulturelt betinget, og 2) i hvilken grad det er selvvalgt.

Når talen falder på parallelsamfund i Danmark, følges påstanden af en uforklarlig grund altid op med en formodning om, at det enten er 100 procent selvvalgt af indvandrerne, eller at det er religiøse mørkemænd, der med deres middelalderlige prædikener forankret i hjemlandenes fjerne kulturer skaber kløfter mellem de etniske unge og resten af samfundet.

Det parallelle samfund - eller den subkultur - vi oplever i Danmark og mange andre europæiske lande er dog langtfra en importeret ‘muslimsk’ subkultur, ej heller er den arabisk, tyrkisk eller noget tredje. Det er i bund og grund en ‘minoritets’-subkultur, der også opleves i lande, hvor minoriteterne ikke adskiller sig religiøst. Det mest oplagte sammenligningsgrundlag er den sorte subkultur og latino-subkulturen fra USA, hvor følelsen af eksklusion fra majoritetssamfundet har ført til samfund med parallelle normer, parallel underholdningskultur og så videre.

I et af dagbladene kunne vi læse, at det ikke er alle indvandrerne, der er at finde i et parallelsamfund, men at indvandrerne er blevet delt i en over- og underklasse, hvor underklassen misunder overklassen og derfor optræder aggressivt over for denne. Blandt andet skulle episoden ved Rust være et eksempel på dette. Der er ingen tvivl om, at visse minoritetsunge har haft større udholdenhed og modstandskraft end andre over for samfundets tyngende faktorer og derfor har klaret sig bedre, men ligefrem at tale om en splittelse er der ikke meget belæg for, ligesom man heller ikke siger, at det danske folk er splittet i en over- og underklasse, fordi nogle danskere er direktører, mens andre er alkoholikere og funktionelle analfabeter.

Dansk racisme og xenofobi har om noget faktisk gjort skellene mellem ‘klasserne’ mindre, end de sikkert ville have været med mindre modvilje, da det igen og igen bliver bekræftet, at man er i samme båd og udsat for de samme fordomme og nedladende kommentarer, hvad enten man er ‘taber’ eller akademiker.

At en række personligheder med flere forretninger og millionomsætning skulle være misundelige på, at en mand får lov til at stå i døren til en natklub, er en grotesk teori, og der er nok ikke den store tvivl om, hvem de fleste indvandrerunge vil opfatte som ‘højere oppe’. Et par af mine bekendte har arbejdet som dørmænd, og det var ikke ligefrem på grund af ‘den ophøjede status’, der fulgte med jobbet, tværtimod!

Den ene er universitetsuddannet akademiker, mens den anden er uddannet fra CBS, begge født og opvoksede i Danmark og socialt ressourcestærke personer. Valget af jobbet som dørmand hang i højere grad sammen med træthed over at sende ansøgninger, og at »der i det mindste var en smule mere værdighed i det end at feje gader eller gøre rent«. Efter deres udsagn er dørmænd ofte mennesker, der »ikke kan stave deres eget navn«, og ikke et job, der giver anledning til megen stolthed.

Ovennævnte historie er ikke på nogen måde enestående og sender desværre et signal til mange unge indvandrere. At se en person, der har studeret, stå som dørmand, er langtfra en opløftende eller motiverende tanke. En hashklub er en forretning, der er til at tage og føle på, at stå i arbejdsløshedskøen efter flere års studier og ende i en akademisk blindgyde styrker ikke følelsen af accept, tværtimod.

Alle mennesker vil gerne opnå personlig succes, ikke mindst i det succesdrevne vestlige samfund, og ‘indvandrer’-kulturen har et meget stærkere vestligt islæt, end mange er villige til at indrømme. Når unge vokser op i et samfund, hvor materialismen og hedonismen er hovedværdierne, så er der et ekstra stort pres på for at ‘nyde livet’ og blive til noget stort, hvis ikke på den ene måde, så på den anden. Det er samme materialistiske fiksering, som vi også ser i den amerikanske ‘bling-bling’-kultur.

Denne fiksering får desværre også nogle til at springe over, hvor gærdet er lavest, specielt hvis gærdet i forvejen er urimeligt højt. Kriminaliteten er en direkte konsekvens af denne higen efter ’succes’, og hvis den ene vej har for mange forhindringer, ja så er der desværre mange, der tvinges til at vælge den anden vej, hvor der lettere kan gøres karriere. Der er ikke meget beduinkultur over den tankegang, og man kunne uden mange justeringer bruge enhver amerikansk sociologs teorier om sorte og latino-subkulturer og se stærke paralleller. Mange af vores politikere og ‘eksperter’ har overset, at de unge i ‘parallelsamfundene’ ikke render rundt med en stor ambition om at blive tabere, men at de i kraft af barrierer i samfundet hellere vil opnå status og ’succes’ på andre præmisser end blive fiaskoer i mainstreamsamfundet.

Det er ikke første og heller ikke sidste gang, at Nørrebro, muslimer, indvandrere, islamister og andre skræmmebilleder vil blive hevet frem. Igen og igen mindes vi om, hvor skidt det står til med integrationen, indvandrerne halter bagefter, er kriminelle, er isolationister, og man kunne blive ved. Alt i alt ikke meget at sige til, at en ung ‘opvandrer’ har den opfattelse, at det omkringliggende samfund opfatter ham som et problem og intet mindre end en fiasko. Det er ikke tit, vi får at høre, at for mange af de indvandrere, der får sig en uddannelse, er der tale om et kvantespring med hensyn til den sociale arv. Ikke bare et skridt fremad på den sociale stige, som det måske ville være tilfældet for en dansk murersøn. For mange indvandreres vedkommende taler vi bogstaveligt talt om børn, hvis forældre er analfabeter.

Pessimismen er vedvarende, og når takken for den store indsats mod stærke odds er ignorering og en plads i arbejdsløshedskøen, så er det ikke ligefrem en opmuntring, der giver en lyst til at yde en større indsats. Det er ikke alle indvandrere, der føler sig udstødte, der ender som kriminelle, og der er mange indvandrerkriminelle, der er relativt velintegrerede, men med den nuværende attitude over for etniske minoriteter i Danmark er vi allerede begyndt at se samme mønstre som i USA. Og det kan let blive værre.

Det er let at skubbe ansvaret fra sig og skyde skylden på religion og fjerne kulturer, men denne eskapisme fra politikeres og mediers side bringer ikke en løsning nærmere.

Selv om problemerne skaffer både integrationskonsulenter og journalister mad på bordet, og Nørrebro tjener som kærkomment skræmmebillede, hver gang politikerne skal have vedtaget en ny stramning, er ingen af os i det lange løb tjent med et hysteri, der bygger på falske præmisser. De eneste ‘vindere’ i et sådant tilfælde er de propagandister, der forudser raceoptøjer og før eller siden vil se deres spådom gå i opfyldelse.

Politiken 18. november 2004

Muslimer beskrives som sarte, hvis de lader sig støde af tidens rå debattone. Men hvor rå må denne tone egentlig blive? Mordet på Theo van Gogh giver anledning til selvransagelse i det danske debatmiljø.

Af Omar Shah

Siden mordet på den hollandske instruktør Theo van Gogh 2. november har debatten her i landet kørt på fuld styrke, så man skulle tro, det var her, mordet var begået. Dette står i stor kontrast til den opmærksomhed, mordet har fået i f.eks. England.
Omdrejningspunktet for debatten har næsten udelukkende været fundamentalisternes ’stadig større trussel mod ytringsfriheden’, og Theo van Gogh er blevet fremstillet i et monofacetteret skær som en ytringsfrihedens og demokratiets forkæmper, der blot ønskede at gøre op med den totalitære islam. Den anden side af sagen, nemlig hvorvidt en film som ‘Submission’ er hensigtsmæssig i nogen forstand, og hvilket formål den egentlig tjener, er næsten forbigået i tavshed, og derved er den anden del af ligningen - nemlig grænsen for ytringsfrihed og konsekvensen af at håne og krænke - højst blevet berørt perifert.
Situationen i Holland er ikke ulig den i Danmark, om end Danmark hidtil har været sparet for vold og hærværk i en større skala. Holland har ud over det seneste drab oplevet drabet på Pim Fortuyn, og den seneste bølge af voldsomt hærværk og brandstiftelser, der kan være en forløber for en ny krystalnat, har yderligere bidraget til et klima af had og gensidig mistro. Nogle højreradikale er ligefrem begyndt at tale om frontlinjestater i en kulturkrig mellem den muslimske og vestlige verden.
Forargede politikere og redaktører har råbt op, som om ytringsfrihed var et absolut begreb, men begrebet ubegrænset ytringsfrihed eksisterer ikke nogen steder - heller ikke i Danmark, da straffeloven indeholder flere paragraffer, der skal regulere folks ytringer; og det er ikke for ingenting, at vi blandt andet har censur på film og videoer, og at Kenneth Bigleys halshugning ikke vises på tv. Spørgsmålet er, hvor grænsen bør gå, og hvad der er tilladeligt, så længe hensigten er at skabe debat?
Der er først og fremmest en klar forskel på at debattere og på at provokere eller forarge. Mange provokatører vil gemme sig under den frie debats kappe, men hvor saglige debattører belyser problemstillinger og forsøger at bidrage med konstruktive løsninger, er provokatører og demagoger ikke interesserede i løsninger, men udelukkende i at puste til ilden for at opnå en eskalering, der kan få deres profetier til at gå i opfyldelse.
Tonen i indvandrer- (og primært islam-) debatten har ændret sig meget det sidste årti og er blevet rå i en sådan grad, at det skaber associationer til 1930′ernes Nazityskland. At lægge hele folkeslag eller en hel religion og dens udøvere for had er blevet en rutinesag og ikke længere noget, der kan få folk op af stolen. I takt med den stigende bekymring over indvandring er de højreorienterede partier blevet stadig mere stuerene, og deres ekstreme retorik blevet mere og mere mainstream.
Debatten har således bevæget sig ud på et skråplan, hvor grænserne for det tilladelige konstant rykkes, og hvor gårsdagens tabuer bliver ’saglige’ udsagn, blot de gentages tilpas mange gange. I denne form for ‘debat’ er rollerne som protagonister og antagonister tildelt på forhånd, islamisterne (læs: enhver muslim, der ikke er ‘integreret nok’, uanset dennes uddannelsesniveau og eller beskæftigelse) er de onde, mens de højreorienterede provokatører er de gode.
Desværre er det i forlængelse af den øgede forråelse og tildelingen af roller som antagonister og protagonister blevet fast kutyme at opfatte muslimer som sarte, når disse føler sig forulempede, da antagonister tilsyneladende ikke har ret til at opfatte sig selv som ofre, og på den anden side opfattes protagonisterne rutinemæssigt som ofre, selv hvor disse aktivt optræder som provokatører (og demagoger).
Det er i denne kontekst og inden for disse spilleregler, vi skal se Theo van Gogh og Ayaan Hirsi Alis bidrag til ‘debatten’ i Holland, og det er hverken oplysning eller sameksistens, men derimod stigmatisering af den værste slags, de er eksponenter for.
Som instruktør var Theo van Gogh bestemt ikke en Steven Spielberg, ej heller en debatskaber som Michael Moore, og ikke tilnærmelsesvis en Leni Riefenstahl. Den instruktør, han nok bedst kan sammenlignes med i sin mission, er Fritz Hippler (nazisten, der instruerede ‘Der ewige Jude’ (1940)), og ‘Submission’ har da også klart mere til fælles med ‘Der ewige Jude’ end med Moores ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ eller Riefenstahls ‘Viljens triumf’ for den sags skyld. Hvor ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ var debatskabende og ‘Viljens triumf’ er proaktivt glorificerende, er ‘Submission’ (i stil med ‘Der ewige Jude’) manipulerende og stigmatiserende. Som propagandist havde van Gogh således intet andet formål end at lægge en befolkningsgruppe for had og nedgøre en religion og dennes udøvere.
Det kan nok undre mange danskere, at en kortfilm på 10 minutter i den grad kan få sindene i kog hos muslimer, og dette er til dels også forståeligt af to grunde.
1) Danskere har i modsætning til f.eks. amerikanere og franskmænd ikke nogen symboler (hvad enten disse er af religiøs eller sekulær natur), de opfatter som direkte hellige (f.eks. nationale flag, Bibelen osv.), og har derfor i endnu højere grad end mange andre vestlige folkeslag svært ved at forstå, at nogen kan blive virkelig stødt over, at noget, de holder helligt, hånes.
2) Det er svært for udenforstående at gennemskue den bevidste manipulation med Koranen og islam, som van Gogh foretager for at fremstille islam som en religion, der billiger uhyrligheder mod kvinder. Allerede selve titlen, ‘Submission’, er en direkte reference til det arabiske ord islam, og man bliver heller ikke i tvivl om, at det er religionen snarere end fundamentalister, der står for skud. Brugen af ‘monologer til gud’ og korancitater i filmen understreger, at det er islam/gud, der står for skud, og ikke mænd med en muslimsk kulturbaggrund. Ved denne manipulation fremstilles religionen islam som en religion, der billiger og ligefrem opfordrer til forbrydelser som incest, voldtægt og hustruvold. Incest og voldtægt er klart ikke islamiske fænomener, men i filmen fremstilles de som direkte produkter af religionen. Filmen misbruger flere koranvers til at give et bevidst forkert indtryk og har klart ikke til formål at oplyse om faktiske forhold, ej heller har den til formål at skabe debat, derimod har den som ‘Der ewige Jude’, der også eksponerer myter, dét eneste formål at lægge muslimer for had.
Med sin meget voldsomme blanding af nøgenhed og visuelle koranvers sigter filmen direkte efter at provokere menige muslimer og ikke specifikt islamister, da der ikke er noget politisk over provokationen i filmen. At vise en (mere eller mindre nøgen) kvinde bede er endvidere en spottende hån af den muslimske bøn, der af muslimer opfattes som direkte kommunikation med Gud, og både van Gogh og Hirsi Ali har vidst, hvilke knapper de skulle trykke på.
Denne bevidste provokation skal igen ses i sammenhæng med den allerede betændte situation i Holland. Det er soleklart, at van Gogh ikke blot ønskede at opildne til had mod muslimer, men også at fremprovokere en voldsom reaktion, der ikke blot ville stigmatisere muslimer yderligere, men også gøre ham og hans ligesindede til martyrer. Om end han nok ikke havde forestillet sig, at reaktionen blev så voldsom, som den blev.
Filmen har således et dobbelt formål: 1) at påvirke seernes syn på islam og muslimer i den negative retning, 2) at fremprovokere en reaktion, der yderligere vil stigmatisere muslimerne (de på forhånd udråbte antagonister) og give protagonisterne ret i deres ‘analyser og profetier’.
I en samfundsmæssig kontekst er faren ved denne film ikke den indvirkning, den vil få på eventuelle muslimske seeres blodtryk, men den vrede, den vil fremkalde hos muslimer, og det yderligere had og mistænksomhed, den vil fremkalde hos det ikkemuslimske publikum, og den vil således bidrage til at grave de allerede eksisterende kløfter dybere.
Når man som muslim klager over hån og fejludlægning af religionen, plejer man at få at vide, at man er demokratisk analfabet, ikke har fattet ytringsfriheden, har berøringsangst og ikke ønsker at diskutere eller forsvare sine synspunkter, og det er også denne vogn, store dele af pressen er hoppet med på i dækningen af mordet på van Gogh. Realiteten er, at det er de færreste muslimer, der ikke ønsker at diskutere. Pointen er, at der er forskel på diskussion/ debat og på propaganda og manipulation. Samfundsmæssige problemer og/eller forskelle med ideologisk udspring er det ikke bare muligt, men tilmed sundt at diskutere, og jeg ville gladelig være den første til at diskutere problemer, hvor de end måtte forekomme.
Voldtægt, hustruvold og incest er forbrydelser, der desværre forekommer både i den vestlige og den muslimske verden.
Disse er vigtige at diskutere og forebygge - berøringsangst tjener ingen andre end gerningsmændene, hvad enten disse er brune eller hvide, muslimer, kristne eller ateister. Det er derimod direkte usagligt at bebrejde kristendommen eller den danske kulturarv per se for de utallige voldtægter og incestforbrydelser, der hvert år begås i Danmark.
Hvis jeg ser en ‘dekadence’ i den nutidige danske kultur, ville jeg hverken finde det rimeligt at skyde skylden på Bibelens Jesus, Grundtvig eller på Holger Danske for den sags skyld, men snarere analysere den i konteksten af dagens realiteter for at kunne forstå baggrunden. Hovedspørgsmålet er, om man vitterlig har et ønske om at sætte sig ind i realiteten eller udelukkende vil propagandere og eksponere en myte.
I den forgangne uge er volden eksploderet i Holland med angreb på moskeer, muslimske skoler og kirker; vold avler vold, og det lader til, at mange kræfter kun havde ventet på en situation som mordet for at kunne slå til. Desværre har vi endnu en gang fået bekræftet den ensidige fokus på problemet, da der ikke ligefrem har været kø for at fordømme eller ‘tage afstand’ fra disse handlinger, som det så ofte kræves af muslimer.
Det er sørgeligt, at Theo van Gogh blev myrdet og derved blev martyr og selv i døden får lov til at sprede den gift, han spredte i live.
Uanset brutaliteten i hans død gør det ham stadig ikke til andet end det, han var: en opmærksomhedssøgende provokatør, der ikke fordrede fredelig sameksistens, men det stik modsatte.
I Danmark er det også opmærksomhedsskabende at svine islam til, og vi har mange debattører, der føler sig ekstra udsatte og frygter islamistisk vold; dette er klart beklageligt, men i sidste ende er truslerne, de efter sigende modtager, ikke meget anderledes end de trusler, Slimane (’Guantánamofangen’) modtog, efter at han stod frem i pressen og kom med udtalelser, som mange danskere opfattede som kontroversielle. Den danske imam Abdul Wahid Petersen er heller ikke helt ubekendt med trusler og chikane, og dette er desværre blevet en realitet, uanset hvilken side af skillelinjen man befinder sig på.
For nogle kan ‘offerrollen’ være en genvej til berømmelse (mennesker, der ved enhver lejlighed skal omtale deres ‘overfald’), mens det for andre desværre bliver en bitter realitet. Lederen af det hollandske ekstremistparti LPF, Sergej Moleveld, er senest blevet arresteret for at have sendt falske ‘islamiske trusler’, et fænomen, vi desværre også tidligere har set i Danmark.
Vi har i Danmark ytringsfrihed, en frihed, som højreekstremister og provokatører ofte er de første til at påberåbe sig, men desværre også de første til at forsøge at fratage mennesker, de er uenige med, såsom såkaldte islamister.
Der findes i den danske lovgivning både racisme- og injurieparagraffer, men i situationen med de på forhånd definerede antagonister og protagonister er det næsten urimeligt at opnå retfærdighed ad den vej. Når en krænkende udtalelse omhandler islam, er man på forhånd udråbt til at være sart, og det er blevet ikke blot acceptabelt og stuerent, men ligefrem prisværdigt at svine islam til. Forfattere og ‘debattører’, der nedgør islam, kaldes ikke ansvarsløse, men modige, og muslimer, der tager til genmæle, er klart enten uintegrerede, demokratiske analfabeter eller islamister i fåreklæder.
Ordene ansvar og konsekvens er glemt, og ordet er frit, så længe man er islamkritisk vel at mærke. Denne stigmatisering og usaglige tone er ikke sund for noget samfund, og i takt med at følelsen af stigmatisering stiger hos unge muslimer, og graden af foragt og mistænksomhed stiger hos ikkemuslimer, vil vold, som vi har set den de seneste par dage, kun eskalere.
Hvis muslimer ikke føler, at samfundet indeholder mekanismer, der garanterer deres værdighed, eller at retfærdigheden sker fyldest, vil der netop opstå en følelse af afmagt og desperation, der i værste fald kan føre til mord som det, vi så på van Gogh. Det er let for et samfund, der ikke vil se sandheden om sin egen debatkultur i øjnene, at sige, at problemet udelukkende er fundamentalismen, men det er ikke i noget samfunds tjeneste stædigt at lukke øjnene for realiteten og lade hadet og mistroen stige dag for dag som en direkte konsekvens af, at grupper med en bestemt dagsorden uhindret kan lægge andre for had.
Øgede sanktioner mod muslimer uden tilsvarende sanktioner mod ekstremister på højrefløjen kan ikke andet end overbevise van Goghs morders åndsfæller om, at den eneste måde at forhindre den slags propaganda på desværre er at ty til gadens parlament.
Det ville være’sjovt’ at erstatte ordet ‘muslim’ med ‘jøde’ i dagens debat og se et ramaskrig rejse sig. For et par år siden ville jeg have vægret mig ved at sammenligne vores situation med jødernes i 1920′ernes og 1930′ernes Tyskland, men i dag er det kun graden af vold, der mangler, før sammenligningen er komplet.
Hvis ‘Der ewige Jude’ var produceret i dag og handlede om muslimer, ville ‘fortalere for ytringsfriheden’ uden tvivl forsvare den, kalde den oplysende og et vigtigt indslag i debatten, mens de muslimer, der gerne så sig fri for den, ville blive kaldt sarte, og et eventuelt forbud mod den ville blive opfattet som et knæfald for berøringsangste rabiate muslimer.
Antiislamismen skyller hen over Europa, og efter de seneste dages vold i Holland kræver det ikke så megen fantasi igen at forestille sig en ‘krystalnat’ i en ikke fjern fremtid. ‘Aldrig mere’ var et godt slogan; det er i alles interesse, at vi lærer dette og ikke lader nutidige demagoger påberåbe sig samme ytringsfrihed, som Fritz Hippler så fortrinligt gjorde brug af.

OMAR SHAH
Kronikøren er revisor samt samfundsdebattør og medforfatter til antologien ‘Islam, kristendom og det moderne’, 2004, Tiderne Skifter.

Nedenstaaende artikel er en af de bedste med hensyn til forstaaelsen af hvorfor det er noedvendigt for muslimer at foelge madhahib. Artikel er taget fra sunnipath, og en udviddet version af artiklen findes i noterne til bogen “Al-Maqasid” oversat til engelsk som Imam Nawawis manual of Islam af Sheikh Nuh Keller

© Nuh Ha Mim Keller

“Who needs the Imams of Sacred Law when we have the Qur’an and hadith? Why can’t we take our Islam from the word of Allah and His Messenger?” Nuh Ha Mim Keller explains the necessity to respect and value scholars and the schools of Islamic law.

The work of the mujtahid Imams of Sacred Law, those who deduce shari‘a rulings from Qur’an and hadith, has been the object of my research for some years now, during which I have sometimes heard the question: “Who needs the Imams of Sacred Law when we have the Qur’an and hadith? Why can’t we take our Islam from the word of Allah and His Messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace), which are divinely protected from error, instead of taking it from the madhhabs or “schools of jurisprudence” of the mujtahid Imams such as Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi‘i, and Ahmad, which are not?”

It cannot be hidden from any of you how urgent this issue is, or that many of the disagreements we see and hear in our mosques these days are due to lack of knowledge of fiqh or “Islamic jurisprudence” and its relation to Islam as a whole. Now, perhaps more than ever before, it is time for us to get back to basics and ask ourselves how we understand and carry out the commands of Allah.

We will first discuss the knowledge of Islam that all of us possess, and then show where fiqh enters into it. We will look at the qualifications mentioned in the Qur’an and sunna for those who do fiqh, the mujtahid scholars. We will focus first on the extent of the mujtahid scholar’s knowledge—how many hadiths he has to know, and so on—and then we will look at the depth of his knowledge, through actual examples of dalils or “legal proofs” that demonstrate how scholars join between different and even contradictory hadiths to produce a unified and consistent legal ruling.

We will close by discussing the mujtahid’s relation to the science of hadith authentication, and the conditions by which a scholar knows that a given hadith is sahih or “rigorously authenticated,” so that he can accept and follow it.

Qur’an and Hadith. The knowledge that you and I take from the Qur’an and the hadith is of several types: the first and most important concerns our faith, and is the knowledge of Allah and His attributes, and the other basic tenets of Islamic belief such as the messengerhood of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), the Last Day, and so on. Every Muslim can and must acquire this knowledge from the Book of Allah and the sunna.

This is also the case with a second type of general knowledge, which does not concern faith, however, but rather works: the general laws of Islam to do good, to avoid evil, to perform the prayer, pay zakat, fast Ramadan, to cooperate with others in good works, and so forth. Anyone can learn and understand these general rules, which summarize the sirat al-mustaqim or “straight path” of our religion.

Fiqh. A third type of knowledge is of the specific details of Islamic practice. Whereas anyone can understand the first two types of knowledge from the Qur’an and hadith, the understanding of this third type has a special name, fiqh, meaning literally “understanding.” And people differ in their capacity to do it.

I had a visitor one day in Jordan, for example, who, when we talked about why he hadn’t yet gone on hajj, mentioned the hadith of Anas ibn Malik that

the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “Whoever prays the dawn prayer (fajr) in a group and then sits and does dhikr until the sun rises, then prays two rak‘as, shall have the like of the reward of a hajj and an ‘umra.” Anas said, “The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: ‘Completely, completely, completely’” (Tirmidhi, 2.481).

My visitor had done just that this very morning, and he now believed that he had fulfilled his obligation to perform the hajj, and had no need to go to Mecca. The hadith was well authenticated (hasan). I distinguished for my visitor between having the reward of something, and lifting the obligation of Islam by actually doing it, and he saw my point.

But there is a larger lesson here, that while the Qur’an and the sunna are ma‘sum or “divinely protected from error,” the understanding of them is not. And someone who derives rulings from the Qur’an and hadith without training in ijtihad or “deduction from primary texts” as my visitor did, will be responsible for it on the Day of Judgment, just as an amateur doctor who had never been to medical school would be responsible if he performed an operation and somebody died under his knife.

Why? Because Allah has explained in the Qur’an that fiqh, the detailed understanding of the divine command, requires specially trained members of the Muslim community to learn and teach it. Allah says in surat al-Tawba:

“Not all of the believers should go to fight. Of every section of them, why does not one part alone go forth, that the rest may gain understanding of the religion, and to admonish their people when they return, that perhaps they may take warning” (Qur’an 9:122)

—where the expression li yatafaqqahu fi al-din, “to gain understanding of the religion,” is derived from precisely the same root (f-q-h) as the word fiqh or “jurisprudence,” and is what Western students of Arabic would call a “fifth-form verb” (tafa‘‘ala), which indicates that the meaning contained in the root, understanding, is accomplished through careful, sustained effort.

This Qur’anic verse establishes that there should be a category of people who have learned the religion so as to be qualified in turn to teach it. And Allah has commanded those who do not know a ruling in Sacred Law to ask those who do, by saying in surat al-Nahl,

“Ask those who recall if you know not” (Qur’an 16:43),

in which the words “those who recall,” ahl al-dhikri, indicate those with knowledge of the Qur’an and sunna, at their forefront the mujtahid Imams of this Umma. Why? Because, first of all, the Qur’an and hadith are in Arabic, and as a translator, I can assure you that it is not just any Arabic.

To understand the Qur’an and sunna, the mujtahid must have complete knowledge of the Arabic language in the same capacity as the early Arabs themselves had before the language came to be used by non-native speakers. This qualification, which almost no one in our time has, is not the main subject of my essay, but even if we did have it, what if you or I, though not trained specialists, wanted to deduce details of Islamic practice directly from the sources? After all, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has said, in the hadith of Bukhari and Muslim: “When a judge gives judgement and strives to know a ruling (ijtahada) and is correct, he has two rewards. If he gives judgement and strives to know a ruling, but is wrong, he has one reward” (Bukhari, 9.133).

The answer is that the term ijtihad or “striving to know a ruling” in this hadith does not mean just any person’s efforts to understand and operationalize an Islamic ruling, but rather the person with sound knowledge of everything the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) taught that relates to the question. Whoever makes ijtihad without this qualification is a criminal. The proof of this is the hadith that the Companion Jabir ibn ‘Abdullah said:

We went on a journey, and a stone struck one of us and opened a gash in his head. When he later had a wet-dream in his sleep, he then asked his companions, “Do you find any dispensation for me to perform dry ablution (tayammum)?” [Meaning instead of a full purificatory bath (ghusl).] They told him, “We don’t find any dispensation for you if you can use water.”

So he performed the purificatory bath and his wound opened and he died. When we came to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), he was told of this and he said: “They have killed him, may Allah kill them. Why did they not ask?—for they didn’t know. The only cure for someone who does not know what to say is to ask” (Abu Dawud, 1.93).

This hadith, which was related by Abu Dawud, is well authenticated (hasan), and every Muslim who has any taqwa should reflect on it carefully, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) indicated in it—in the strongest language possible—that to judge on a rule of Islam on the basis of insufficient knowledge is a crime. And like it is the well authenticated hadith “Whoever is given a legal opinion (fatwa) without knowledge, his sin is but upon the person who gave him the opinion” (Abu Dawud, 3.321).

The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) also said:

Judges are three: two of them in hell, and one in paradise. A man who knows the truth and judges accordingly, he shall go to paradise. A man who judges for people while ignorant, he shall go to hell. And a man who knows the truth but rules unjustly, he shall go to hell (Sharh al-sunna, 10.94).

This hadith, which was related by Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, and others, is rigorously authenticated (sahih), and any Muslim who would like to avoid the hellfire should soberly consider the fate of whoever, in the words of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), “judges for people while ignorant.”

Yet we all have our Yusuf ‘Ali Qur’ans, and our Sahih al-Bukhari translations. Aren’t these adequate scholarly resources?

These are valuable books, and do convey perhaps the largest and most important part of our din: the basic Islamic beliefs, and general laws of the religion. Our discussion here is not about these broad principles, but rather about understanding specific details of Islamic practice, which is called precisely fiqh. For this, I think any honest investigator who studies the issues will agree that the English translations are not enough. They are not enough because understanding the total Qur’an and hadith textual corpus, which comprises what we call the din, requires two dimensions in a scholar: a dimension of breadth, the substantive knowledge of all the texts; and a dimension of depth, the methodological tools needed to join between all the Qur’anic verses and hadiths, even those that ostensibly contradict one another.

Knowledge of Primary Texts. As for the breadth of a mujtahid’s knowledge, it is recorded that Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s student Muhammad ibn ‘Ubaydullah ibn al-Munadi heard a man ask him [Imam Ahmad]: “When a man has memorized 100,000 hadiths, is he a scholar of Sacred Law, a faqih?” And he said, “No.” The man asked, “200,000 then?” And he said, “No.” The man asked, “Then 300,000?” And he said, “No.” The man asked, “400,000?” And Ahmad gestured with his hand to signify “about that many” (Ibn al-Qayyim: I‘lam al-muwaqqi‘in, 4.205).

In truth, by the term “hadith” here Imam Ahmad meant the hadiths of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in all their various chains of transmission, counting each chain of transmission as a separate hadith, and perhaps also counting the statements of the Sahaba. But the larger point here is that even if we eliminate the different chains, and speak only about the hadiths from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) that are plainly acceptable as evidence, whether sahih, “rigorously authenticated” or hasan “well authenticated” (which for purposes of ijtihad, may be assimilated to the sahih), we are still speaking of well over 10,000 hadiths, and they are not contained in Bukhari alone, or in Bukhari and Muslim alone, nor yet in any six books, or even in any nine. Yet whoever wants to give a fatwa or “formal legal opinion” and judge for people that something is lawful or unlawful, obligatory or sunna, must know all the primary texts that relate to it. For the perhaps 10,000 hadiths that are sahih are, for the mujtahid, as one single hadith, and he must first know them in order to join between them to explain the unified command of Allah.

I say “join between” because most of you must be aware that some sahih hadiths seem to controvert other equally sahih hadiths. What does a mujtahid do in such an instance?

Ijtihad. Let’s look at some examples. Most of us know the hadiths about fasting on the Day of ‘Arafa for the non-pilgrim, that “it expiates [the sins of] the year before and the year after” (Muslim, 2.819). But another rigorously authenticated hadith prohibits fasting on Friday alone (Bukhari, 3.54), and a well authenticated hadith prohibits fasting on Saturday alone (Tirmidhi, 3.120), of which Tirmidhi explains, “The meaning of the ‘offensiveness’ in this is when a man singles out Saturday to fast on, since the Jews venerate Saturdays” (ibid.). Some scholars hold Sundays offensive to fast on for the same reason, that they are venerated by non-Muslims. (Other hadiths permit fasting one of these days together with the day before or the day after it, perhaps because no religion venerates two of the days in a row.) The question arises: What does one do when ‘Arafa falls on a Friday, a Saturday, or a Sunday? The general demand for fasting on the Day of ‘Arafa might well be qualified by the specific prohibition of fasting on just one of these days. But a mujtahid aware of the whole hadith corpus would certainly know a third hadith related by Muslim that is even more specific, and says: “Do not single out Friday from among other days to fast on, unless it coincides with a fast one of you performs” (Muslim, 2.801).

The latter hadith establishes for the mujtahid the general principle that the ruling for fasting on a day normally prohibited to fast on changes when it “coincides with a fast one of you performs”—and so there is no problem with fasting whether the Day of Arafa falls on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

Here as elsewhere, whoever wants to understand the ruling of doing something in Islam must know all the texts connected with it. Because as ordinary Muslims, you and I are not only responsible for obeying the Qur’anic verses and hadiths we are familiar with. We are responsible for obeying all of them, the whole shari‘a. And if we are not personally qualified to join between all of its texts—and we have heard Ahmad ibn Hanbal discuss how much knowledge this takes—we must follow someone who can, which is why Allah tells us, “Ask those who recall if you know not.”

The size and nature of this knowledge necessitate that the non-specialist use adab or “proper respect” towards the scholars of fiqh when he finds a hadith, whether in Bukhari or elsewhere, that ostensibly contradicts the schools of fiqh. A non-scholar, for example, reading through Sahih al-Bukhari will find the hadith that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) bared a thigh on the ride back from Khaybar (Bukhari, 1.103–4). And he might imagine that the four madhhabs or “legal schools”—Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i, and Hanbali—were mistaken in their judgment that the thigh is ‘awra or “nakedness that must be covered.”

But in fact there are a number of other hadiths, all of them well authenticated (hasan) or rigorously authenticated (sahih) that prove that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) explicitly commanded various Sahaba to cover the thigh because it was nakedness. Hakim reports that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) saw Jarhad in the mosque wearing a mantle, and his thigh became uncovered, so the Prophet told him, “The thigh is part of one’s nakedness” (al-Mustadrak), of which Hakim said, “This is a hadith whose chain of transmission is rigorously authenticated (sahih),” which Imam Dhahabi confirmed (ibid.). Imam al-Baghawi records the sahih hadith that “the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) passed by Ma‘mar, whose two thighs were exposed, and told him, ‘O Ma‘mar, cover your two thighs, for the two thighs are nakedness’” (Sharh al-sunna 9.21). And Ahmad ibn Hanbal records that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “When one of you marries [someone to] his servant or hired man, let him not look at his nakedness, for what is below his navel to his two knees is nakedness” (Ahmad, 2.187), a hadith with a well authenticated (hasan) chain of transmission. The mujtahid Imams of the four schools knew these hadiths, and joined between them and the Khaybar hadith in Bukhari by the methodological principle that: “An explicit command in words from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is given precedence over an action of his.” Why?

Among other reasons, because certain laws of the shari‘a applied to the Prophet alone (Allah bless him and give him peace). Such as the fact that when he went into battle, he was not permitted to retreat, no matter how outnumbered. Or such as the obligatoriness for him alone of praying tahajjud or “night vigil prayer” after rising from sleep before dawn, which is merely sunna for the rest of us. Or such as the permissibility for him alone of not breaking his fast at night between fast-days. Or such as the permissibility for him alone of having more than four wives—the means through which Allah, in His wisdom, preserved for us the minutest details of the Prophet’s day-to-day sunna (Allah bless him and give him peace), which a larger number of wives would be far abler to observe and remember.

Because certain laws of the shari‘a applied to him alone, the scholars of ijtihad have established the principle that in many cases, when an act was done by the Prophet personally (Allah bless him and give him peace), such as bearing the thigh after Khaybar, and when he gave an explicit command to us to do something else, in this case, to cover the thigh because it is nakedness, then the command is adopted for us, and the act is considered to pertain to him alone (Allah bless him and give him peace).

We can see from this example the kind of scholarship it takes to seriously comprehend the whole body of hadith, both in breadth of knowledge, and depth of interpretive understanding or fiqh, and that anyone who would give a fatwa, on the basis of the Khaybar hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari, that “the scholars are wrong and the hadith is right” would be guilty of criminal negligence for his ignorance.

When one does not have substantive knowledge of the Qur’an and hadith corpus, and lacks the fiqh methodology to comprehensively join between it, the hadiths one has read are not enough. To take another example, there is a well authenticated (hasan) hadith that “the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) cursed women who visit graves” (Tirmidhi, 3.371). But scholars say that the prohibition of women visiting graves was abrogated (mansukh) by the rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith “I had forbidden you to visit graves, but now visit them” (Muslim, 2.672).

Here, although the expression “now visit them” (fa zuruha) is an imperative to men (or to a group of whom at least some are men), the fact that the hadith permits women as well as men to now visit graves is shown by another hadith related by Muslim in his Sahih that when ‘A’isha asked the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) what she should say if she visited graves, he told her, “Say: ‘Peace be upon the believers and Muslims of the folk of these abodes: May Allah have mercy on those of us who have gone ahead and those who have stayed behind: Allah willing, we shall certainly be joining you’” (Muslim, 2.671), which plainly entails the permissibility of her visiting graves in order to say this, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) would never have taught her these words if visiting the graves to say them had been disobedience. In other words, knowing all these hadiths, together with the methodological principle of naskh or “abrogation,” is essential to drawing the valid fiqh conclusion that the first hadith in which “the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) cursed women who visit graves”—was abrogated by the second hadith, as is attested to by the third.

Or consider the Qur’anic text in surat al-Ma’ida:

“The food of those who have been given the Book is lawful for you, and your food is lawful for them” (Qur’an 5:5).

This is a general ruling ostensibly pertaining to all their food. Yet this ruling is subject to takhsis, or “restriction” by more specific rulings that prove that certain foods of Ahl al-Kitab, “those who have been given the Book,” such as pork, or animals not properly slaughtered, are not lawful for us.

Ignorance of this principle of takhsis or restriction seems to be especially common among would-be mujtahids of our times, from whom we often hear the more general ruling in the words “But the Qur’an says,” or “But the hadith says,” without any mention of the more particular ruling from a different hadith or Qur’anic versethat restricts it. The reply can only be “Yes, brother, the Qur’an does say, ‘The food of those who have been given the Book is lawful for you,’ But what else does it say?” or “Yes, the hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari says the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) bared his thigh on the return from Khaybar. But what else do the hadiths say, and more importantly, are you sure you know it?”

The above examples illustrate only a few of the methodological rules needed by the mujtahid to understand and operationalize Islam by joining between all the evidence. Firstly, we saw the principle of takhsis or “restriction” of general rules by more specific ones, both in the example of fasting on the Day of ‘Arafa when it falls on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and the example of the food of Ahl al-Kitab. Secondly, in the Khaybar hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari about baring the thigh and the hadiths commanding that the thigh be covered, we saw the principle of how an explicit prophetic command in words is given precedence over a mere action when there is a contradiction. Thirdly, we saw the principle of nasikh wa mansukh, of “an earlier ruling being abrogated by a later one,” in the example of the initial prohibition of women visiting graves, and their subsequently being permitted to.

These are only three of the ways that two or more texts of the Qur’an and hadith may enter into and qualify one another, rules that someone who derives the shari‘a from them must know. In other words, they are but three tools of a whole methodological toolbox. We do not have the time tonight to go through all these tools in detail, although we can mention some in passing, giving first their Arabic names, such as:

The ‘amm, a text of general applicability to many legal rulings, and its opposite:
The khass, that which is applicable to only one ruling or type of ruling.
The mujmal, that which requires other texts to be fully understood, and its opposite:
The mubayyan, that which is plain without other texts.
The mutlaq, that which is applicable without restriction, and its opposite:
The muqayyad, that which has restrictions given in other texts.
The nasikh, that which supersedes previous revealed rulings, and its opposite:
The mansukh: that which is superseded.
The nass: that which unequivocally decides a particular legal question, and its opposite:
The dhahir: that which can bear more than one interpretation.
My point in mentioning what a mujtahid is, what fiqh is, and the types of texts that embody Allah’s commands, with the examples that illustrate them, is to answer our original question: “Why can’t we take our Islamic practice from the word of Allah and His messenger, which are divinely protected, instead of taking it from mujtahid Imams, who are not?” The answer, we have seen, is that revelation cannot be acted upon without understanding, and understanding requires firstly that one have the breadth of mastery of the whole, and secondly, the knowledge of how the parts relate to each other. Whoever joins between these two dimensions of the revelation is taking his Islamic practice from the word of Allah and His messenger, whether he does so personally, by being a mujtahid Imam, or whether by a means of another, by following one.

Following Scholars (Taqlid). The Qur’an clearly distinguishes between these two levels—the nonspecialists whose way is taqlid or “following the results of scholar without knowing the detailed evidence”; and those whose task is to know and evaluate the evidence—by Allah Most High saying in surat al-Nisa’:

“If they had referred it to the Messenger and to those of authority among them, then those of them whose task it is to find it out would have known the matter” (Qur’an 4:83)

—where alladhina yastanbitunahu minhum, “those of them whose task it is to find it out,” refers to those possessing the capacity to infer legal rulings directly from evidence, which is called in Arabic precisely istinbat, showing, as Qur’anic exegete al-Razi says, that “Allah has commanded those morally responsible to refer actual facts to someone who can infer (yastanbitu) the legal ruling concerning them” (Tafsir al-Fakhr al-Razi, 10.205).

A person who has reached this level can and indeed must draw his inferences directly from evidence, and may not merely follow another scholar’s conclusions without examining the evidence (taqlid), a rule expressed in books of methodological principles of fiqh as: Laysa li al-‘alim an yuqallida, “The alim [i.e. the mujtahid at the level of instinbat referred to by the above Qur’anic verse] may not merely follow another scholar” (al-Juwayni: Sharh al-Waraqat, 75), meaning it is not legally permissible for one mujtahid to follow another mujtahid unless he knows and agrees with his evidences.

The mujtahid Imams trained a number of scholars who were at this level. Imam Shafi‘i had al-Muzani, and Imam Abu Hanifa had Abu Yusuf and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani. It was to such students that Abu Hanifa addressed his words: “It is unlawful for whoever does not know my evidence to give my position as a fatwa” (al-Hamid: Luzum ittiba‘ madhahib al-a’imma, 6), and, “It is not lawful for anyone to give our position as a fatwa until he knows where we have taken it from” (ibid.).

It is one of the howlers of our times that these words are sometimes quoted as though they were addressed to ordinary Muslims. If it were unlawful for the carpenter, the sailor, the computer programmer, the doctor, to do any act of worship before he had mastered the entire textual corpus of the Qur’an and thousands of hadiths, together with all the methodological principles needed to weigh the evidence and comprehensively join between it, he would either have to give up his profession or give up his religion. A lifetime of study would hardly be enough for this, a fact that Abu Hanifa knew better than anyone else, and it was to scholars of istinbat, the mujtahids, that he addressed his remarks. Whoever quotes these words to non-scholars to try to suggest that Abu Hanifa meant that it is wrong for ordinary Muslims to accept the work of scholars, should stop for a moment to reflect how insane this is, particularly in view of the life work of Abu Hanifa from beginning to end, which consisted precisely in summarizing the fiqh rulings of the religion for ordinary people to follow and benefit from.

Imam Shafi‘i was also addressing this top level of scholars when he said: “When a hadith is sahih, it is my school (madhhab)”—which has been misunderstood by some to mean that if one finds a hadith, for example, in Sahih al-Bukhari that is inconsistent with a position of Shafi‘i’s, one should presume that he was ignorant of it, drop the fiqh, and accept the hadith.

I think the examples we have heard tonight of joining between several hadiths for a single ruling are too clear to misunderstand Shafi‘i in this way. Shafi‘i is referring to hadiths that he was previously unaware of and that mujtahid scholars know him to have been unaware of when he gave a particular ruling. And this, as Imam Nawawi has said, “is very difficult,” for Shafi‘i was aware of a great deal. We have heard the opinion of Shafi‘i’s student Ahmad ibn Hanbal about how many hadiths a faqih must know, and he unquestionably considered Shafi‘i to be such a scholar, for Shafi‘i was his sheikh in fiqh. Ibn Khuzayma, known as “the Imam of Imams” in hadith memorization, was once asked, “Do you know of any rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith that Shafi‘i did not place in his books?” And he said “No” (Nawawi: al-Majmu‘, 1.10). And Imam Dhahabi has said, “Shafi‘i did not make a single mistake about a hadith” (Ibn Subki: Tabaqat al-Shafi‘iyya, 9.114). It is clear from all of this that Imam Shafi‘i’s statement “When a hadith is sahih, it is my position” only makes sense—and could result in meaningful corrections—if addressed to scholars at a level of hadith mastery comparable to his own.

Hadith Authentication. The last point raises another issue that few people are aware of today, and I shall devote the final part of my speech to it. Just as the mujtahid Imam is not like us in his command of the Qur’an and hadith evidence and the principles needed to join between it and infer rulings from it, so too he is not like us in the way he judges the authenticity of hadiths. If a person who is not a hadith specialist needs to rate a hadith, he will usually want to know if it appears, for example, in Sahih al-Bukhari, or Sahih Muslim, or if some hadith scholar has declared it to be sahih or hasan. A mujtahid does not do this.

Rather, he reaches an independent judgment as to whether a particular hadith is truly from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) through his own knowledge of hadith narrators and the sciences of hadith, and not from taqlid or “following the opinion of another hadith scholar.”

It is thus not necessarily an evidence against the positions of a mujtahid that Bukhari, or Muslim, or whoever, has accepted a hadith that contradicts the mujtahid’s evidence. Why? Because among hadith scholars, the reliability rating of individual narrators in hadith chains of transmission are disagreed about and therefore hadiths are disagreed about in the same manner that particular questions of fiqh are disagreed about among the scholars of fiqh. Like the schools of fiqh, the extent of this disagreement is relatively small in relation to the whole, but one should remember that it does exist.

Because a mujtahid scholar is not bound to accept another scholar’s ijtihad regarding a particular hadith, the ijtihad of a hadith specialist of our own time that, for example, a hadith is weak (da‘if), is not necessarily an evidence against the ijtihad of a previous mujtahid that the hadith is acceptable. This is particularly true in the present day, when specialists in hadith are not at the level of their predecessors in either knowledge of hadith sciences, or memorization of hadiths.

We should also remember what sahih means. I shall conclude my essay with the five conditions that have to be met for a hadith to be considered sahih, and we shall see, in sha’ Allah, how the scholars of hadith have differed about them, a discussion drawn in its outlines from contemporary Syrian hadith scholar Muhammad ‘Awwama’s Athar al-hadith al-sharif fi ikhtilaf al-A’imma al-fuqaha [The effect of hadith on the differences of the Imams of fiqh] (21–23):

(a) The first condition is that a hadith must go back to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) by a continuous chain of narrators. There is a difference of opinion here between Bukhari and Muslim, in that Bukhari held that for any two adjacent narrators in a chain of transmission, it must be historically established that the two actually met, whereas Muslim and others stipulated only that their meeting have been possible, such as by one having lived in a particular city that the other is known to have visited at least once in his life. So some hadiths will be acceptable to Muslim that will not be acceptable to Bukhari and those of the mujtahid imams who adopt his criterion.

(b) The second condition for a sahih hadith is that the narrators be morally upright. The scholars have disagreed about the definition of this, some accepting that it is enough that a narrator be a Muslim who is not proven to have been unacceptable. Others stipulate that he be outwardly established as having been morally upright, while other scholars stipulate that this be established inwardly as well. These different criteria are naturally reasons why two mujtahids may differ about the authenticity of a single hadith.

(c) The third condition is that the narrators must be known to have had accurate memories. The verification of this is similarly subject to some disagreement between the Imams of hadith, resulting in differences about reliability ratings of particular narrators, and therefore of particular hadiths.

(d) The fourth condition for a sahih hadith is that the text and transmission of the hadith must be free of shudhudh, or “variance from established standard narrations of it.” An example is when a hadith is related by five different narrators who are contemporaries of one another, all of whom relate the same hadith from the same sheikh through his chain of transmission back to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). Here, if we find that four of the hadiths have the same wording but one of them has a variant wording, the hadith with the variant wording is called shadhdh or “deviant,” and it is not accepted, because the difference is naturally assumed to be the mistake of the one narrator, since all of the narrators heard the hadith from the same sheikh.

There is a hadith (to take an example researched by our hadith teacher, sheikh Shu‘ayb al-Arna’ut) related by Ahmad (4.318), Bayhaqi (2.132), Ibn Khuzayma (1.354), and Ibn Hibban, with a reliable chain of narrators (thiqat)—except for Kulayb ibn Hisham, who is a merely “acceptable” (saduq), not “reliable” (thiqa)—that the Companion Wa’il ibn Hujr al-Hadrami said that when he watched the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) kneeling in the Tashahhud or “Testification of Faith” of his prayer, the Prophet lifted his [index] finger, and I saw him move it, supplicating with it. I came [some time] after that and saw people in [winter] over-cloaks, their hands moving under the cloaks (Ibn Hibban, 5.170–71).

Now, all of the versions of the hadith mentioning that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) moved his finger have been related to us by way of Za’ida ibn Qudama al-Thaqafi, a narrator who is considered reliable, and who transmitted it from the hadith sheikh ‘Asim ibn Kulayb, who related it from his father Kulayb ibn Shihab, from Wa’il ibn Hujr al-Hadrami. But we find that this version of “moving the finger” contradicts versions of the hadith transmitted from the same sheikh, ‘Asim ibn Kulayb, by no less than ten of ‘Asim’s other students, all of them reliable, who heard ‘Asim report that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) did not move but rather pointed (ashara) with his index finger (towards the qibla or “direction of prayer”).

These companions of ‘Asim (with their hadiths, which are well authenticated (hasan)) are: Sufyan al-Thawri: “then he pointed with his index finger, putting the thumb to the middle finger to make a ring with them” (al-Musannaf 2.68–69); Sufyan ibn ‘Uyayna: “he joined his thumb and middle finger to make a ring, and pointed with his index finger” (Ahmad, 4.318); Shu‘ba ibn al-Hajjaj: “he pointed with his index finger, and formed a ring with the middle one” (Ahmad, 4.319); Qays ibn al-Rabi‘: “then he joined his thumb and middle finger to make a ring, and pointed with his index finger” (Tabarani, 22.33–34); ‘Abd al-Wahid ibn Ziyad al-‘Abdi: “he made a ring with a finger, and pointed with his index finger” (Ahmad, 4.316); ‘Abdullah ibn Idris al-Awdi: “he had joined his thumb and middle finger to make a ring, and raised the finger between them to make du‘a (supplication) in the Testification of Faith” (Ibn Majah, 1.295); Zuhayr ibn Mu‘awiya: “and I saw him [‘Asim] say, ‘Like this,’—and Zuhayr pointed with his first index finger, holding two fingers in, and made a ring with his thumb and second index [middle] finger” (Ahmad, 4.318–19); Abu al-Ahwas Sallam ibn Sulaym: “he began making du‘a like this—meaning with his index finger, pointing with it—” (Musnad al-Tayalisi, 137); Bishr ibn al-Mufaddal: “and I saw him [‘Asim] say, ‘Like this,’—and Bishr joined his thumb and middle finger to make a ring, and pointed with his index finger” (Abi Dawud, 1.251); and Khalid ibn Abdullah al-Wasiti: “then he joined his thumb and middle finger to make a ring, and pointed with his index finger” (Bayhaqi, 2.131).

All of these narrators are reliable (thiqat), and all heard ‘Asim ibn Kulayb relate that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) “pointed with (ashara bi) his index finger” during the Testimony of Faith in his prayer. There are many other narrations of “pointing with the index finger” transmitted through sheikhs other than ‘Asim, omitted here for brevity—four of them, for example, in Sahih Muslim, 1.408–9). The point is, for illustrating the meaning of a shadhdh or “deviant hadith,” that the version of moving the finger was conveyed only by Za’ida ibn Qudama from ‘Asim. Ibn Khuzayma says: “There is not a single hadith containing yuharrikuha (‘he moved it’) except this hadith mentioned by Za’ida” (Ibn Khuzayma, 1.354).

So we know that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to point with his index finger, and that the version of “moving his fin