FACEBOOK DISCUSSIONS

AND INTRAFAITH DIALOGUE

By

Natasha Jevtovic

and

Abu Muhammad Al Sunni

2008

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This is a Facebook correspondence between a Muslim brother in London and a Muslim sister in Paris regarding Sunni and Shiite doctrines and schools of thought. The discussion group in which the correspondence was perpetrated was called Tawheed but unfortunately no longer exists as it became inactive. For this reason, we have decided to collect the correspondence and make it available again. Only the spelling mistakes have been corrected in order to preserve the original form of all posts. If a word has been added to complete some sentences, it has been placed under brackets: [abcd]. Original words marked in bold have been underlined. The brother Abu Mohammad Al Sunni has been left anonymous, to preserve his privacy, although he did reveal his real name by the end of the correspondence and became friends with Natasha Jevtovic. Thanks to the beauty of Islam, a conversation that started with insults ended up in a true friendship and a joint project to preach the faith to the other Muslim schools of thought.

Post #1 Abu Mohammad Al Sunni (London) wrote on Nov 11, 2007 at 6:04 PM Ya Shia ya Kaffara... I begin with no salam and no greeting but with full baraa. My issue with you is not the position of the hands or cursing the sahabah... these are all relatively side issues... compared with the subject of imamah. Oh Zanadiqah! why do you take Ali as a God beside Allah? Why do you slaughter in the name of Ali? Why do you [make] duas to Ali? What is the difference between your pagan ways and the pagan ways of Abu Jahl? Reply to AbuReport

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Post #2 1 reply You wrote on May 16, 2008 at 5:15 PM Dear everyone, Islam knows five schools of thought which are the following – Hanafi, Shafii, Maliki, Hanbali and Jaafari school. The first four are Sunni and the last one is Shia school. They are basically similar when it comes to the art of interpretation of religious laws or basic Monotheist faith. The main difference among them was once political but if we compare them today, we see as many differences among the four Sunni schools as we do among the first four and the Shia school. For example, the sayings of the prophet Muhammad were transmitted by his companions in the case of the Sunnis, whereas they were transmitted by his own family in the case of the Shia school. The Shia school was officially recognized with an appropriate fatwa by the Sheikh of Al Azhar in Egypt and has the same legal value as the first four schools. Therefore, Shia Muslims cannot be considered as infidels as it is sometimes the case with certain Sunni extremists. Looking at the clash between the Shia and Sunni group from the outside (as I am an independent thinker and also a specialist of Islamic faith) I sometimes get the feeling that certain Muslims treat better the other non-Muslims than their fellow Muslims belonging to a different school. They say that the non-Muslims do not know the truth so cannot be blamed, while the Muslims read the Koran and cannot but notice the truth. Yet, it is possible to interpret the Koran in many ways – which, by the way, makes it interesting for all generations during all those centuries – and all those different schools find proof in the Holy Scriptures for their claims. Let's leave God's job to God, as He will decide on the Judgment day who was right, and will judge everyone according to his ability to understand and will take into consideration his or her good intention. The Koran says specifically that Islamic faith cannot be imposed on anyone. The Prophetic sayings state that we should seek knowledge even if it were in China. Islam never preached uniformity and it is my intimate conviction that the Prophet would be wearing a suit and a tie if he had been sent in our century, as his purpose was always to be dressed in the best possible way and the most elegant one. Why not accept the plurality of opinion without judging anyone? The Prophet even said that we shouldn't judge the others in order to avoid being judged on the Last Day. So let's start tolerating those who don't think the way we do, as would do the Prophet himself. Salaam alaikum to all, Natasha Amina Jevtovic Reply to Your PostDelete Post

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Post #3 Abu Mohammad Al Sunni (Jefferson City / Columbia, MO) replied to your post on Jun 7, 2008 at 9:07 PM Salamu alaykum Natasha (unless you’re Shia I take the salams back)

Never in my life have I read a post where every single sentence seems to have a grave error. But, there was one line that caught my eye.

You said: They are basically similar when it comes to the art of interpretation of religious laws or basic Monotheist faith.

With all due respects Natasha, your knowledge of a) Islam is deficient and b) your understanding of the differences between Islam and Shiism is really bad.

There is very little difference between the Islamic beliefs and the Shia infidel beliefs. In fact, Islamic beliefs seem to be closer to Judaism then to Shiism.

Islam believes that only Allah knows the unseen and only He is in control of the universe. But Shias believe that their 12 imams have complete knowledge of the unseen and control every particle in the universe.

Imam believes that only prophets have revelation from Allah through angel Jibrail. But the Shias believe that Allah sends revelation directly to the 12 imams, which is similar to the Qadiyani belief that Mirza Ghulam received revelation after the prophet Muhammad (saw).

Muslims pray only to Allah and make dua only to Allah and slaughter only in Allah's name. But Shias call upon Hussein’s and Ali’s assistance and slaughter sheep in their name and make duas to them.

Reply to AbuReport

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Post #4 1 reply You replied to Abu's post on Jun 11, 2008 at 4:45 AM Salaam alaikum Abu Muhammad, I am a Muslim since 1992 and I accepted it through books and reading. I studied the Arabic language and Islamic civilization and I know a lot of historical facts. The fatwa of Al Azhar that recognized Shia Muslims as an authentic Islamic school is true. Well, it stands for the four usual Sunni schools. Do you come from some other Sunni school of thought that I don’t know of? I accept your salaams and I have to tell you – I refuse to choose between Shia and Sunni Muslims. I’m a Muslim, nothing more, but I share many Shiite beliefs such as the concept of God and His attributes, the immaculate nature of the prophets or modern ijtihâd. I don’t agree with some other things. Anyway, every person who says that there is no God but Allah and accepts the Prophet Muhammad as the last prophet is a Muslim and I believe him to be my brother. You can’t say that Shia Muslims are infidels, because you don’t know their hearts. Do you want to do Allah’s job? Besides, there is one very known tradition of the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w.a.s. that says, “Man kaffara Musliman fa huwa kâfir” meaning “he who accuses a Muslim of being an infidel, he is an infidel himself.” Allah is the only One who knows the hearts of men. So are you ready to take the risk? It is true that Islamic beliefs and those of Judaism are similar, though. I met some orthodox Jews and I was amazed – apart from rejecting some Prophets, they believe in tawheed like us. There are a lot of Muslims in the world who have some specific beliefs that aren’t “orthodox” such as Mawlawiyya turning Sufis in Turkey, or the people from the Maghreb countries who all believe in imam Mahdi and yet they are Sunni Muslims. (That’s because Maghreb countries were converted to Islam during the reign of Idrissi Shia caliphs.) There are some well-known writers who wrote non-Islamic theories, such as the case of Ibn Taymiyya who was an anthropomorphist (tashbîh) thinking that God had a body like humans, which is why he was imprisoned in Egypt and many scholars think that he was an infidel. He actually descended from the minbar in Damascus and reportedly said, “God descends from heaven the way I did it now.” And yet, people read his books even today and think he was a great scholar. In Tunisia, in a city called Gabes, they have a tomb of Boulbaba, “the barber of the Prophet Muhammad” – I’ve never found a trace of that one in history! – and yet people visit his tomb and chant dhikr to Allah. Some of the best Muslims I ever met were from African Mali, and yet, they circumcise baby girls! So, I don’t care how people come to Allah, I just love to see that wondrous variety all around the world. It’s a proof that Islam is capable of integrating every culture, every civilization, every nation. Just picture it – the Mongols sacked Baghdad and then settled down there and converted to Islam! They must have brought something of their own culture...

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The Koran often speaks of people who had special position with Allah and yet they were not Prophets. There is the story of Khidr who had greater knowledge than Allah’s prophet Musa a.s. (chapter The Kahf, The Cave). There’s also the story of some “friend of God” who brought the throne of the Queen of Sheba to the Prophet Suleiman a.s. “the one who had the knowledge of the Book”, chapter Naml (the Ants), verse 40. But these “miracles” are usually called “karâmât”, not “mu’jizât” and are of lower level. Concerning the Shiites, they don’t believe that the Imams had revelations like those of the Prophets, because Muhammad s.a.w.a.s. said, “Lâ nabiyya ba‘adî”, i.e. there will be no other prophet after me. Imams are considered as pure because the Shia Muslims quote the verse in which God said He had purified of sins the People of the House (of the Prophet), or ahl al-bayt (Chapter Al-Ahzab, 33). Another verse implies that the Koran cannot be interpreted (massa) but by the purified ones (56:79) and uses the word in passive, mutahharûn, instead of active, mutahhir, meaning those who purify themselves. They are but guardians and interpreters of Islam, that’s all. The sixth Imam of ahl al-bayt, Jaafar Sâdiq, was also the teacher of Abu Hanifa, one of the four Sunni jurists. I’ve never heard of Shiite people slaughtering sheep in the name of Ali and Hussain. Can you tell me what are the references? They ask the imams for intercession (shafa‘at) just like we ask each other to pray for us. Personally, whenever I pray for the others, Allah gives His blessings quicker than when I pray for myself. He is probably teaching us to be generous. (Have you noticed that each time you gave something to someone, you got even more from Allah?) I once had a very important and difficult exam at the University and I passed it through a miracle that happened after a prayer to God. I had to prepare another exam that summer and there was no time left to cover all the required material for the second one. Out of 90 questions from a 600 pages book, the professor would ask me only two. And I had only enough time to skim read ten lessons, out of which I memorized only two. So I prayed and said, “God, I know it’s not right because other people worked more than me and deserved Your help. But please, if You’ll just let me pass this exam, I promise to learn the whole book as soon as the exams are over.” Need I say that before I sat in front of my teacher, I knew that every single question paper on her desk would only have MY two questions? I could have taken any paper. And I knew in advance that I would pass the exam. In another occasion, I prayed to God that He punishes the hooligan who threw a bomb (a hand grenade) on the mosque where I was going and our muezzin was wounded. Later on, I felt bad because the day later, the person was killed and his photo was on TV. The muezzin swore it was the same person. If I were older, I could have forgiven as nobody died, but I was young and restless, I prayed for something evil. I regret today. See, I’m not a friend of God, I’m a simple person just like everyone else, but God answers to me when I ask him something and He leads me through my life. He does that with every believer who asks Him to because HE IS LIVING (Al-Hayy). There is a Koranic verse that says, “wa lâ ya’lamu ta’wîluhu illallâh wa al-râsikhûna fî al-‘ilm” meaning that the hidden meaning of the Koran is known only by Allah and

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those who are gifted with knowledge. Sufis use this verse to prove that there can be things learned people can get to know from the Koran, otherwise hidden from unlearned people, whereas others think that there’s a dot after the words “illallâh” and the rest of the words belongs to the next sentence. It’s the question of interpretation; the Prophet said that we should talk to people “according to their level of understanding”. The Koran does the same. Finally, Abu Huraira said once, “I have received two types of knowledge from the Prophet Muhammad. I have revealed one part, but if I would discover the second part, I would certainly be killed.” The Koran is a Book revealed to all generations until the end of the world. It is logical that people interpret it differently in different ages and according to their own level of understanding. But we only have one Koran and it is the same one for everyone. Let’s just read it as much as we can and ask Allah for guidance. Anyway, what’s your real name, Abu Muhammad? My Muslim name is Amina. It was given to me by a brother from Iraq, because I come from Bosnia, a country in which there was a genocide of Muslims so I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of Muslim people if I’d use my non-Muslim name when I come to the mosque. What’s your country of origin? Where is MO, is it Montana? Are you a convert too – I mean, can you read the Koran in Arabic? I’d love to correspond with you. You can use my [personal] e-mail for longer letters. May Allah bless you! Reply to Your PostDelete Post

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Post #5 Abu Mohammad Al Sunni (London) replied to your post on Jun 14, 2008 at 9:03 AM Wa alaykum al salam, I would like to start by apologizing if I sounded too harsh in my earlier reply.

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You say: "The fatwa of Al Azhar that recognized Shia Muslims as an authentic Islamic school is true." I say: You take one obscure fatwa that is at odds with all the previous scholars of ahlul sunnah. Forget Azhar for 1 minute... look at what Imam Malik of the Maliki school says: During one of Imam Malik's classes, it was mentioned that the rafidi Shia curse the sahaba. Imam Malik recited the verse, "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah and those with him are harsh with the disbelievers and gentle among themselves. So that the disbelievers may become enraged with them." (48:29) He then said, "Whoever becomes enraged when the Sahâbah are mentioned is the one about whom the verse speaks." (Tafseer al-Qurtubi) Look at what Abu Zur'ah Ar-Razi says: Abu Zur'ah ar-Razi: He said of the rafidi Shia doctrine of cursing the Sahâbah, "If you see someone degrade any of the companions of the Prophet SAWS know that he is a disbeliever. Because the Prophet SAWS was real, what he brought was the truth and all of it was conveyed to us by way of the Sahâbah. What those disbelievers wish to do is cast doubt on the reliability of our narrators in order to invalidate the Qur'an and Sunnah. Thus the disbelievers are the ones most deserving of defamation." Even if Shia were Muslims (which they aren't), you still can't consider them as a 5th school of ahlul sunnah. This is because ahlul sunnah are united in one belief system... and any one who differs from that belief system even if they are still Muslims like Asharis, they are not ahlul sunnah.

* * * You say: "I refuse to choose between Shia and Sunni Muslims." I say: Subhanallah! you must choose either to believe in the ultimate supreme nature of Allah and that He alone can answer out prayers and He alone we can turn to in prayer and supplications OR you can choose to believe that Ali and Hussain knew the unseen (even the Prophet saw didn't know all the unseen) or that we can make supplications to Ali.

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The choice is either you love the sahabah of Rasul Allah and His wives or you hate them.

* * * You say: "I share many Shiite beliefs such as the concept of God and His attributes, the immaculate nature of the prophets or modern ijtihâd. " I say: Sunnis believe in the immaculate nature of the Prophets but they don't put Ali on the same level as the prophets, as for ijtihad then we believe our scholars can do that but I doubt if you really know what ijtihad is and what the conditions of ijtihad is and what is permissible in ijtihad and not. As for believing in Allah and his attributes I would be interested to know how your belief differs from that of Sunni Muslims.

* * * You say: "Every person who says that there is no God but Allah and accepts the Prophet Muhammad as the last prophet is a Muslim." I say: La ilah illa Allah has conditions that must be fulfilled, for example even if one says the shahadah but bows down to other than Allah or believes in a divine being other than Allah, then he has negated the shahadah. Also, you have mistranslated la ilaha illa Allah, it doesn't mean there is "no God but Allah", actually it means "there is no object (or deity) worthy of worship except Allah" As for the prophet Muhammad being the last prophet, then what about the Shia claiming that Ali and Hussain contain a direct revelation of Allah that is even more efficient than that of the prophet Muhammad's revelation because it doesn't have to go through the angel Jibrail.

* * * You say: "You can’t say that Shia Muslims are infidels, because you don’t know their hearts." I say: Iman is not just what is in the hearts but is also defined by the actions of the limbs and the speech of the tongue, i.e. if someone doesn't pray he loses his iman but if someone prays more he gains more iman.

* * * You say: "Prophet Muhammad s.a.w.a.s. that says, “Man kaffara Musliman fa huwa kâfir” meaning “he who accuses a Muslim of being an infidel, he is an infidel himself.”

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I say: Astagfarullah! The prophet Muhammad NEVER said this statement... Seek refuge from Allah before you attribute a lie upon the Prophet.

* * * You say: "Orthodox Jews and I was amazed – apart from rejecting some Prophets, they believe in tawheed like us." I say: No, they don't believe in tawheed like us and that is why Allah called them disbelievers, but this issue is for a different time.

* * * You say: "Concerning the Shiites, they don’t believe that the Imams had revelations like those of the Prophets, because Muhammad s.a.w.a.s. said, “Lâ nabiyya ba‘adî”. I say: I swear by Allah that the Shia believe this and they have told me this in my presence and this is found in the books and I have never met a Shia who denied this.

* * * You say: "I’ve never heard of Shiite people slaughtering sheep in the name of Ali and Hussain." I Say: http://youtube.com/watch?v=t3ipes6kOFc

* * * You say: "They ask the imams for intercession (shafa‘at) just like we ask each other to pray for us." I say: Allah says in surah Yunus verse 18, Y Z[ ]_`دون ا f[ ونghjkو lmjnok Yو lهqrsk which means: "And they worship beside Allah what can وk|}}ن هـYyء Zjnwؤgot Zu ا`_[neither harm them nor profit them, and they say: These are our intercessors with Allah."

* * * You say: "Sufis use this verse to prove that there can be things learned people can get to know from the Koran, otherwise hidden from unlearned people." I say: Allah says in surah Yusuf verse 1, f}h~ Z��ب ا �_� �Zkت ا r`ا which means: Alif. Lam. Ra. These are verse of the Scripture that maketh plain. May Allah bless you too! Reply to AbuReport

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Post #6 You replied to Abu's post on Jun 24, 2008 at 6:49 AM Salâm alaykum! I was so happy to read your letter, Abu Muhammad. If you live in London, I hope to meet you one day, as I live in Paris. So, let me comment some points in your last post: YOU SAID: “Even if Shia were Muslims (which they aren't), you still can't consider them as a 5th school of ahlul sunnah... and any one who differs from that belief system even if they are still Muslims like Asharis they are not ahlul sunnah.” MY ANSWER: First of all, about the Sunni schools of thought – there exist Hanafi, Shafii, Maliki and Hanbali school and all are considered as orthodox Muslims and rightly guided. They are all represented in Al-Azhar mosque. The kalâm of the Ashari school is taught in all Sunni schools. You seem to think that Asharis are no longer ahl al-sunna? Please explain. (If you are from the Wahhabi movement, also called Al-Muwahhidûn – which seems so from the tone of your writing – you should know that the Wahhabism was created in the 18th century by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1787) and originated from the Hanbali school of thought, as well as teachings of Ibn Taymiyya and his disciple Ibn Qayyim.) I have another important question – which sources do you consider authentic in terms of prophetic traditions? Those universally accepted in the Sunni world are of Bukhari (died in 256/870), Muslim (d. 261/875), Abu Dawud (d.261/875), al-Tirmidhi (d. 279/892), al-Nasa`i (d. 303/915) and Ibn Maja (d. 273/886). They form a body of canonical hadith known as “the six books.” The Twelver Shias do follow the sunna of the Prophet Muhammad as it was preserved by his descendants. Just like the Sunnis have the aforementioned six books (al-sihah al-sitta), the Shiites have four books in which there are the hadith of Muhammad (�), only the chain of transmission is different. The founder of Shiite school, Jaafar Sadiq, was the professor of Abu Hanifa, who was the professor of imam Malik. Have you heard of Jaafar Sadiq? He was well versed in some other natural sciences, among which was alchemy and the famous Jabir al-Hayyan was his student. The Qur’an says for the Prophet’s family, “It is Allah’s wish to remove all blemish from you, O People of the House (or Ahl-ul Bayt), and purify you with a perfect purification” (33:33). The Shiites believe that the ahl al-bayt were the only people who had the right to comment on the Qur’an and the Prophet’s traditions, and who were able to answer any question concerning faith. But the sunna is the same! You are right when you say that one should not insult the friends of the Prophet. As a matter of fact, one should not insult anyone if he is a Muslim. The Prophet himself (�) never did. There’s a story when some Jew used to throw some garbage in front of his door and the Prophet never protested, so the man converted to Islam at the end, touched by his tolerance. He showed us the excellence of behaviour and

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I think we should always remember him whenever we want to do something, and ask ourselves would the Prophet approve of what we’re doing. I know a lot of Shiite people but they always refer to “our Sunni brothers” when they talk of the Sunnis. In fifteen years during which I was a Muslim, I have never heard any Shiite person speak badly of Sunni Muslims or call them infidels. But it is true that they quote some hadith from Sunni books to prove that the family of the Prophet was depraved of their rights of guiding the other Muslims and interpreting faith. Here is one such hadith of Al-Bukhâri and Muslim: « Narrated (‘Ubaydullâh ibn ‘Abdullâh): Ibn ‘Abbâs said, ‘When the ailment of the Prophet (�) became worse, he said, “Bring for me (writing) paper and I will write for you a statement after which you will not go astray.” But ‘Omar said, “The Prophet is seriously ill, and we have Allah’s book with us and that is sufficient for us.” But the Companions of the Prophet (�) differed about this and there was a hue and cry. On that the Prophet (�) said to them, “Go away (and leave me alone). It is not right that you should quarrel in front of me”.’ » (Source: Al Bukhâri, Sahîh, vol. I, tradition N°114 ; see also Summarized Sahîh al-Bukhâri by Al-Imâm Zain-ud-Din Ahmad ibn Abdul-Lateef Az-Zubaidi, p. 100, trad. N°94, published by Maktaba Dar-us-Salâm, Riyadh.)

YOU SAID, “The choice is either you love the sahabah of Rasul Allah and His wives or you hate them.” MY ANSWER: I neither love nor hate the Companions of the Prophet. I mean, I have a great respect for them and I am fond of them but I feel no excessive love. I am grateful because they helped preserve Islam for us today and I ask Allah to give them their rewards for that. They protected the Prophet and sometimes even risked their lives because of him. However, I do not believe they were immaculate or sinless as some people do (by accepting their sayings as hadith). The Qur’an says that “the first ones among the Refugees and the Ansâr...” (9:100) will be in paradise, but the word “among (min)” indicates a partition so not all of them are concerned by the verse. Another one (48:29) states that God will forgive those among them (minhum) who believe, meaning not all of them. My faith is not based on excessive reverence of any humans even if they were very close to the Prophet. If you love the friends of the Prophet and think all they did was right, what difference there is then between your belief and that of the Shiites who do the same with their imams? The Companions were normal people just like us today. For example, the Koran mentions that the wives of the Prophet used to plot together and he even told them once that he would divorce them if they didn’t stop. He had a city-state to govern and a lot of political problems, he couldn’t consecrate on such petty things. One day, he went to his wife Safiya (a converted Jewish woman) and drank a drink made of honey. Two other wives, Aisha and Hafsa, agreed on telling him that he had bad breath so that he could stop eating in Safiya’s house. They knew he loved honey and loved to stay clean, not having bad breath. So the Prophet said he would no longer eat honey if it made him have a bad breath. He never ate honey until the Koranic verse was revealed, “O Prophet, why forbiddest thou what God has made lawful to

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thee, seeking the good pleasure of thy wives?... It is possible that, if he divorces you, his Lord will give him in exchange wives better than you...” (66:1-5). I think I can understand Aisha because I am a woman, too. For example, the Prophet never married anyone else while he was with Khadija because he truly loved her. And then, when she died, he married all those women for political or social reasons and never forgot his first wife. Aisha was always asking him why he still thought of her and admitted that she was jealous of her even if she’s dead (Bukhâri, V:166). When she got lost in the desert because of the necklace she lost, people started to gossip – although they were believing Muslims, they were exactly like the people of today, with qualities and flaws – and Ali suggested that the Prophet should divorce to stop the people from gossiping and compromising his mission. That is probably the reason why Aisha disliked him and even caused the first civil war (The battle of the Camel), although God explicitly said to the wives of the Prophet to remain at home because they are not like other women, their status is special (sourat Ahzâb, 32 verse). I can understand her because she really loved the Prophet and had to compete for his attention. I would have probably done the same had I been in her shoes. Any woman would. YOU SAID: "Sunnis believe in the immaculate nature of the Prophets but they don't put Ali on the same level as the prophets... As for believing in Allah and His attributes I would be interested to know how your belief differs from that of Sunni Muslims.” MY ANSWER: I believe that God is the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, the Living, The Eternal One. He has His own will, He hears all and is aware of all things. He is Eternal, which means that He is before everything and after everything. (It means that even heaven and hell will disappear eventually.) He is the Keeper of promises, and is able to create His speech in any thing, such as the burning bush in which He created speech so that Moses (ع) could hear Him. God is not composed of any material, He does not have a body like any other living being, He cannot be seen, He does not need a place of abode, He is not subject to changes, He does not have needs, He does not enter any place, nor can anything enter God, He does not have any partner in His rule, His attributes such as “The All-Powerful” or “The All-Knowing” are a part of Him, not higher or lower than Him, and not divided from Him. God is not only in heaven – He is also on the earth, as He is Omnipresent. “His Throne comprises the heavens and earth” (2:255), says the Holy Qur’an. He also said, “We indeed created man; and We know what his soul whispers within him, and We are nearer to him than the jugular vein” (50:15). He is with everything, but He is not inside of any body and He does not abide inside of us. If He would be inside of us, then He would be limited, and that is logically impossible. (to be continued) (continued) Ali ibn Abi Talib said: “The first necessity of religion is knowing God, and the perfection of knowing God means testifying Him, and the perfection of testifying Him

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means believing in His Oneness, and the perfection of believing in His Oneness means believing in His purity, and the perfection of believing in His purity means denying His attributes, since every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is ascribed, and everything to which something is ascribed is different from that attribute. Therefore, who ascribes attributes to God, he ascribes to Him a partner, and he who ascribes to God a partner, he regards Him as duality, and he who regards Him as duality, he considers Him divided into parts, and he who considers Him divided into parts, misunderstands Him, and he who misunderstands Him specifies Him, and he who specifies Him limits Him, and he who limits Him, counts Him” (Nahj al-Balâghah, the first sermon. You can download the whole book from http://www.al-islam.org/nahjul/letters/). In addition, he explains how if one says that God is on something (such as the Christians, who believe that God resides in heaven and sits on the throne), he means that He is not on something else which denies His omnipresence. For me, this is the right way of understanding God, without misconceptions and misinterpretations. Only Islamic faith presents God in this way, and its concept of tawheed is based on sound logic.

I believe in the ultimate supreme nature of Allah and that He alone can answer our prayers. I also believe God’s omnipresence. But I still don’t want to choose between schools. There are some things in the hadiths that I refuse because I cannot accept it intellectually. Some Muslims believe that God literally sits on the throne beyond the seventh heaven, and that He is not present on the earth. They also believe that God descends on the first heaven in the third part of the night in order to hear our prayers more clearly. This is supposed to incite the Muslims to pray as much as they can in the nights. This belief originated from the following famous tradition ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad (�) and reported by Al-Bukhâri: “Narrated Abû Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him): Our Lord, the blessed, the superior, descends every night to the lowest heaven during the last third of the night and He says: ‘Is there anyone who evokes me, demands anything from me, so that I may respond to his invocation? Is there anyone who asks me for something so that I may grant him request? Is there anyone who seeks my forgiveness, so that I may forgive him?” (Also quoted in “Voluntary Worship, superiority and importance” by Fahad Dhaifullah Al-Qurashi, published by Al-Ahsa Islamic center, Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, 2003, p. 7.) The Arabic version is very clear: “yanzilu rabbunâ... ilâ al-samâ’i al-dunyâ – our Lord descends on the sky of this world.” This was probably imported from Judeo-Christian tradition. Some people do not believe that the Prophets are sinless, which is why I prefer to keep my own opinion. The most famous example is their interpretation of the chapter 80 from the Koran: “He frowned and turned away that the blind man came to him. And what should teach thee? Perchance he would cleanse him, or yet remember, and the Reminder profit him.” (80:1-4). They say that the blind man came to the Prophet Muhammad while he was talking to some rich person from Mecca and he frowned and turned away. How odd to say such a thing of an immaculate prophet! However, if we look at the text more closely, we see that the Koran speaks in third person of the one who frowned and then talks directly to

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someone else in second person. Perhaps to the one to whom the Koran is being revealed? Isn’t it logical that God would speak to Muhammad in second person (thee) and use the third person (he frowned) for some third person who did frown? I believe all Prophets were sinless (as they were purified by Allah) and that is why I rejected Christianity as it accused the Prophets of things like incest, drunkenness, murder, blasphemy, etc. Basically, I believe everything that is in the Koran, and whatever runs counter the Koran, I reject. It’s the easiest way, don’t you think? Oh, and yes, if there is something I haven’t noticed, if you show me the correct answer based on the Koran, I will accept with pleasure whatever you say. Thank you in advance! You said: Also, you have mistranslated la illa ila Allah, it doesn't mean there is "no God but Allah", actually it means "there is no object (or deity) worthy of worship except Allah" MY ANSWER: Yes, both translations are correct. “No god but Allah” means that anything else cannot be God, so cannot be worshipped. I think that most Muslims respect that today, with some exceptions. There are some that I met from the Maghrib countries who pray to jinn when they do black magic (most Moroccan women believe in magic! Even those who went to college!) and I sometimes try to explain to them the basics of tawheed, but they don’t always believe me as I am a convert from atheism and they are original Arabs. May Allah guide them. We had a case when someone had a heart failure and people wanted to perform a “ruqya” on him thinking that he was possessed with jinn, so they didn’t call the ambulance and inadvertently broke his chest bone, so the man died. It was on all the news here... As a Muslim, I do not believe in black magic and its power on believing people. The chapters of the Qur’an protect us from any evil just fine. God is more powerful than the devil and I am opposed to the idea that the Prophet might have been under spell, which some say happened, Shiites and Sunni Muslims alike. (This is only my opinion). YOU SAID: As for the prophet Muhammad being the last prophet then what about the Shia claiming that Ali and Hussain contain direct revelation of Allah that is even more efficient than that of the prophet Muhammad's revelation 'cos it doesn't have to go through the angel Jibrail? MY ANSWER: Please tell me where you heard or read this. If you have heard it from people, I’d like to write to them and prove them wrong. If there is a book, I’d like to write and publish a comment. This is shocking to me. But then again, I only met “conventional” twelver Shiites who believe in the last Prophet of God, Muhammad. I’ve never met anyone coming from such sects. And yet, I sometimes go to the Persian cultural centres to get books and know personally the Iranian cultural attaché. I’ve read the tradition “he who accuses a Muslim of being an infidel, he is an infidel himself” in a book that one Algerian student from Maliki school gave me ten years ago. Unfortunately, I no longer have references as to which volume or which page it

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was, so I’ll try to investigate and send you the answer. But if we forget this hadîth, there is a verse in the Qur’an that says, “Hold fast to the rope of Allah and do not separate into groups” (3:103). That’s why I don’t like to judge other people and prefer to keep praying for their guidance. Most people believe in wrong things because of ignorance, others do it out of love (like Christians) and all we can do is to pray for them. May Allah guide the whole humanity. Finally, regarding intercession (shafâ‘a), it is accepted by ijma‘ in the Sunni theology. It is possible with the authorization of Allah (“illâ bi idhnihi”, 2:255, 10:3,) and it can be made by those who have a covenant (‘ahd) with Him (19:87, 43:86) and it can also be done by the angels (21:26-28, 40:7, 42:5). The intercession of the Prophet Muhammad is based on the verses 17:79 and 93:5, as well as on traditions related by Aisha in which he went to the graveyard in the nights to pray for the dead. The verse 18 from Yunus that you quoted speaks of those who refuse to accept Islam, it is obvious from the context. The reason I accepted Islam was the fact that there was just God and nothing else. Regarding the Shiite comments on intercession, here is a link I have found on the website of their contemporary Tafsîr Al-Mizan of Tabataba’i: http://www.almizan.org/Discourses/QD13.asp (I haven’t read that part yet, I had no time). I must tell you that I myself never really thought of the issue and never investigated it that much; it was only natural to me not to pray to anyone but to Allah. I have never heard of Abu Zur'ah Ar-Razi. I only know Fakhr al-Din Razi. Could you tell me who he is? Do you know if there are websites on which I can find the tafseers in English (of Qurtubi, Ibn Kathir, Tabari, Sayyid Qutb and any others)? In France, I have great difficulties in finding reference books and in my own country not everything was translated or existent in libraries. Even when you do find books, they’re in abridged versions... Thank you! May Allah bless you and salâm alaykum! Even I still don’t know your real name, only that of your son... Reply to Your PostDelete Post

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Post #7 2 replies You replied to Abu's post on Jun 24, 2008 at 6:50 AM Salâm alaykum Abû Muhammad, There’s something else I’d like to add – here is one supplication known as “du‘â al-mashlûl”, the prayer of the paralysed man. There was a young man in Makka who wasn’t obedient to his father and kept beating him up and paying no attention to Islam. His rich father refused to give him the money that the young man would spend on women and gambling. One day, the young man stole the money and his father prayed to God to stop him from making any more sins, so God made him paralized. The young man prayed and prayed for years and when it became clear that he really did repent, Ali ibn Abi Talib and Hussain ibn Ali, who were making a tawâf around the Kaaba one night and heard the man praying, touched by his sincerity, they gave him this prayer and the young man was healed. They say that this prayer contains the Greatest name of God (ism al-a‘zam). I was searching for this supplication for years but never found it in its Arabic version; finally, in Paris, I met one eighteen year old French girl who was a converted Muslim but couldn’t speak any Arabic and she gifted me a book in which there was “du‘â al-mashlûl”. I was so happy! It was a miracle, coming from an unknown person in a foreign land! The book is called “Mafâtîh al-jinân” and its author is Shaikh ‘Abbas Qummi. This is a typical Shiite supplication – please tell me if you find any proof of infidelity or wrong beliefs in it. I hope it will prove you that those people aren’t astray after all... “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful! O Thou that answereth the prayers of the disconsolate in the depth of darkness; O Thou that wardeth off the baneful influences of calamities and diseases. Lo, those who surrounded the Kaaba sleep and wake up; But Thou, Exalted be thy Name, never sleepest. Forgive me by the Grace of Thy Bounty and Thy Mercy. O Thou towards whom all creation bows down in this Sanctuary! If Thy Mercy be not such as giveth hope to the transgressors, Then who is there to take pity on the sinners by His Bounty?" O Allah, I beseech Thee with Thy Name; the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Benign. O Lord of Majesty and Generosity; O Living; O Self-Subsisting, O Ever-living, there is no God but Thou. O Thou that art "He" of whom no one knoweth what "He" is, nor how "He" is, nor where "He" is, except "He." O Lord of the Great Kingdom and Supremacy. O Lord of Honour and Omnipotence: O Sovereign Lord, O Holy One! O Peace; O Keeper of Faith; O Guardian O Revered One; O Compeller; O Superb. O Creator; O Maker of all things from nothing; O Artist; O Beneficent; O Administrator; O Severe (in wrath); O Inventor; O Restorer; O Originator; O Most Loving: O Praised; O Adored. O Thou that art distant yet near; O Answerer of prayer; O Observer; O Reckoner. O Innovator; O Exalted; O Unassailable; O Hearer. O Knower; O Wise; O Bountiful; O Forbearing; O Eternal; O Lofty; O Great. O most Compassionate; O Giver of all good; O most perfect Requiter of good and evil; O Thou whose help is sought for. O Majestic; O Glorious; O Trusted; O Guardian; O Alleviator of suffering; O Fulfiller of hopes; O Guide; O Magnanimous. O Giver of

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guidance; O Commencer; O First; O Last; O Evident; O Hidden. O Established; O Everlasting; O Knowing; O Ruler; O Dispenser of justice; O Equitable; O Thou that disjoineth and uniteth; O Pure; O Purifier; O Powerful; O Almighty; O Great; O Magnificent. O One; O Matchless; O Eternal; O Absolute; O Thou that bareth none and is born of none; nor is there equal to Thee anyone nor hath Thee any spouse; nor any bearer of Thy burden; nor any consultant to give Thee advice; not does Thou need any supporter; nor is there with Thou any other deity; There is no God but Thou, and Thou art far exalted with great excellence above all that which the unjust folk do say concerning Thee. O High and Lofty; O most Glorious; O Opener; O Diffuser of fragrance; O Tolerant; O Helper; O Victorious; O Overtaker; O Destroyer; O Avenger; O Resurrector; O Inheritor; O Seeker; O Conquerer; O Thou from Whom no fugitive can escape. O Acceptor of repentance; O Ever-forgiving; O Great Bestower; O Causer of all causes; O Opener of doors (of relief and salvation); O Thou that answerest howsoever Thou art invoked. O Purifier; O Giver of manifold rewards; O Excuser; O Pardoner; O Light of all lights; O Director of all affairs. O Ever Blissful; O All-Aware; O Protector; O Luminous; O Seer; O Supporter; O Great. O Lone; O Unique; O Everlasting; O Upholder; O Eternal and Absolute. O Sufficer; O Healer; O Fulfiller of promises; O Deliver. O Benefactor; O Beautifier; O Bestower of grace; O Grantor of favors; O Gracious; O Peerless. O Thou that being Exalted overwhelmest; O Thou that being Master of all hast absolute power; O Thou, who being hidden art well informed; O Thou that being disobeyed forgiveth; O Thou Whom no thought can fully comprehend; nor sight perceive nor from whom any impression is hidden, O Nourisher of Mankind; O Ordainer of every destiny. O Thou of Exalted position; O Thou Formidable in Thy foundations; O Changer of times; O Acceptor of sacrifice; O Thou full of favors and benefactions; O Lord of Honor and Supremacy; O All Merciful; O most Compassionate; O Thou that has each day a distinctive Glory while no aspect of Thy Glory is erased by the prominence of another aspect. O Thou that art present in every place. O Hearer of all voices; O Answerer of prayers; O Giver of success in all requirements; O Fulfiller of all needs; O Bestower of blessings; O Thou that taketh pity on our tears. O Thou that raiseth from the pitfalls; O Thou that relieveth agonies; O thou that art the Cherisher of good deeds. O Thou that raiseth men in rank and degree; O Thou that accedeth to requests; O Thou that bringeth the dead to life; O Thou that gathereth together that which is scattered. O Thou that art informed of all intentions; Thou that restoreth that which has been lost; O Thou that art not confused by a multiplicity of voices; O Thou that art not harassed by a multitude of petitions; and Whom no darkness can hide or cover; O Light of heaven and earth. O Perfector of blessings; O Averter of calamaties; O Producer of zephyrs; O Gatherer of nations; O Healer of disease; O Creator of light and darkness; O Lord of generosity and munificence; O Thou (on) whose throne no one can set foot! O Thou more generous than the most generous; O Thou more munificent than the most munificent; O Thou most keen of hearing than the most keen of hearing; O Thou more keen of vision than the most perceiving; O Protecting neighbor of those that seek Thy neighborhood. O Refuge of the fearful; O Patron of the faithful; O Helper of those that seek Thy help; O ultimate Goal of those that aspire. O Companion of all strangers; O Friend of all the lonely ones; O Refuge of all outcasts; O Retreat of all persecuted ones; O Guardian of all those who stray. O Thou that takest pity on the aged and decrepit; O Thou that nourisheth the little baby; O Thou that joineth together broken ones; O Liberator of all prisoners; O

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Enricher of the miserable poor; O Protector of the frightened refugees; O Thou for Whom alone are both destiny and disposal; O Thou for Whom all difficult things are simple and easy; O Thou that doth not need any explanation. O Thou Mighty over all things; O Thou Knower of all things. O Thou Seer of all things. O Thou that maketh breezes blow; O Thou that cleaveth the day-break; O Reviver of the spirits; O Lord of Generosity and Clemency; O Thou in Whose hands are all keys. O Hearer of all voices; O Thou earlier in time than all that have passed away; O Giver of life to every soul after death. O my Means of defense in confronting hardships; O my Guardian in strange lands; O my Friend in my loneliness; O my Master in my bliss; O my Refuge at the time when the journey doth tire me out and my kinsfolk hand me over to my foes and all my comrades forsake me. O Supporter of those who have no support; O Guarantor of those who have no guarantee; O Wealth of those who have no wealth; O Means of those who have no strength; O Refuge of those who have no refuge; O Treasure of those who have no treasure; O Helper of those who have no helper; O Neighbor of those who have no neighbor. O my Neighbor that art adjacent; O my Support that art firm; O my God that art worshipped by virtue of positive knowledge; O lord of the Ancient House (the Ka'ba); O Thou full of loving and kindness; O nearest Friend. Liberate me from the choking fetters, Remove from me all sorrow, suffering and grief, Protect me from the evil that I am unable to bear, and help me in that which I am unable to do. O Thou that didst restore Yusuf unto Yaqub; O Thou that didst cure Ayyub of his malady; O Thou that didst forgive the fault of Dawood; O Thou that didst lift up Isa and saved him from the clutches of the Jews; O Thou that didst answer the prayer of Yunus from the darkness; O Thou that didst choose Musa by means of Thine inspired words; O Thou that didst forgive the omission of Adam and lifted up Idris to an exalted station by Thy mercy; O Thou that didst save Nooh from drowning; O Thou that didst destroy the former tribe of Ad and then Thamud, so that no trade of them remained, and destroyed the people of Noah aforetime, for verily they were the most unjust and most rebellious; and overturned the ruined and deserted towns;; O Thou that destroyed the people of Lot; and annihilated the people of Sho'aib; O Thou that chose Ibrahim as a friend; O Thou that chose Musa as one spoken unto; and chose Muhammed (Thy blessings be upon him and his Progeny) as Thy Beloved; O Thou that gavest unto Luqman wisdom; and bestowed upon Sulaiman a kingdom the like of which shall not be merited by anyone after him; O Thou that didst afford succour unto the two-horned one against the mighty tyrants; O Thou that didst grant unto Khizr immortality; and brought back for Yusha, the son of Nun, the sun after it had set; O Thou that gave solace unto the heart of Musa's mother; and protected the chastity of Mariam, the daughter of Imran; O Thou that didst fortify Yahya, the Son of Zakaria against sin; and abated the wrath for Musa; O Thou that gave glad tidings of (the Birth of) Yahya unto Zakaria; O Thou that saved Ismaeel from slaughter by substituting for him the Great Sacrifice; O Thou that didst accept the offering of Habeel and placed the curse upon Qabeel. O Subduer of the alien hordes for Muhammad - the blessings of Allah be upon him and his Progeny - bestow Thy blessings upon Muhammad and his Progeny and upon all Thy Messengers and upon the Angels that are near Thee and upon all Thine obedient servants. And I beg of Thee all the requests which anyone has begged of Thee with whom Thou has been pleased and unto whom Thou has assured the granting thereof, O Allah, O Allah, O Allah, O Most Merciful, O Most Merciful, O Most Merciful, O Most Beneficient, O Most Beneficient, O Most

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Beneficient, O Lord of Majesty and Grace, O Lord of Majesty and Grace, O Lord of Majesty and Grace. Through Thee, Through Thee, Through Thee, Through Thee, Through Thee, Through Thee, Through Thee I beseech thee with the help of all the Names whereby Thou hast named Thyself, or which Thou hast sent down in any of Thy inspired Scriptures, or Which Thou hast inscribed in Thy knowledge of the unknown; and (I beseech Thee) in the name of the honored and exalted positions of Thy Throne, and in the name of the utmost extent of Thy Mercy as expressed in Thy Book (the Quran) and in the name of that which "If all the trees on earth were to become pens and all the seven seas ink, the Words of Allah could not be fully written down." "Verily Allah is the Honored, the Wise"; And I beseech Thee with the help of Thy Beautiful Names which Thou has praised in Thy Book, saying: “Unto Allah belong the beautiful names – so call ye Him by Them”; And Thou hast said "Call unto Me and I shall answer you”; and Thou has said, "And when My servants ask something of Me, lo, I am near, and I grant the prayer of the supplicant when he asks anything of Me, so pray ye unto Me and believe in Me, that ye may be made perfect”; And Thou has said, "O My servants who have wronged yourselves, despair not of the Mercy of Allah; verily Allah forgiveth all the sins; verily He is the Forgiving, the Merciful." Therefore I pray unto Thee, My God, and I ask Thee, My Cherisher and Sustainer, and I hope from Thee, my Chief, and I crave Thy acceptance of my prayer, O my Protector, even as Thou hast promised me, and I call upon Thee even as Thou hast commanded me – So, do unto me what pleases Thee to do, O Generous One! (Here the Devotee should pray for the fulfillment of his valid desires.) And all Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds, and the blessings of Allah be upon Muhammad and all His Holy Descendants.” Hope you liked it! Salâm alaykum and Allah bless you! Natasha Amina

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Post #9 Abu Mohammad Al Sunni (London) replied to your post 12 hours ago When the rebels killed Uthman and mutilated his body, the wife of Uthman tried to intervene but the rebels cut of her finger. After Uthman was killed, most of the Muslim world gave Ali bayaah and he promised that when all people give him bayaah he will hunt the rebels and punish them. However in Syria, Muawiyah (ra) and the people there were shown the finger of the wife of Uthman and the story was related by his wife in graphic detail. This was too much for Muawiyah to hear and he said to Ali, “I WILL GIVE YOU BAYAH BUT ONLY IF WE CATCH THE KILLERS OF UTHMAN FIRST. Ali replied: No, first bayah, then we [will] catch [the] killers.” Imam Ali said that since imam Muawiyah is not giving me bayah, I have to fight him until I get the bayah (pledge of allegiance) from him. So there was a tense standoff between the two camps. Then this is where the mother of the believers Aisha comes in. Both camps agree to let her mediate talks between them because she is the wife of the prophet and the mother of the believers. So Imam Ali arranges for her to be escorted in a camel and she mediates peace talks between them. She convinces Muawiyah’s side to give bayah to Ali and that they work together to catch the killers of Uthman. The rebels began to get very worried, because Ali and Muawiyah combined will be a very strong force against them. So they made a devious plan where in the night some went to Muawiyah’s camp and the rest stayed in Ali’s camp. They began to start firing at each others camp. The sahabah woke up and each camp thought that the other side was attacking so the civil war started.

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You say: I believe that God is the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, the Living, The Eternal One. He has His own will, He hears all and is aware of all things. He is Eternal, which means that He is before everything and after everything. (It means that even heaven and hell will disappear eventually.) I say: how can you say heaven and hell will disappear, when Allah confirmed that the believers will receive eternal rewards in jannah and the disbelievers will stay in hell fire FOR EVER… how can you just deny these verses?!

* * * You say: “He is the Keeper of promises, and is able to create His speech in any thing, such as the burning bush in which He created speech so that Moses (ع) could hear Him.” I say: I have a question, do you believe the Quran (which is the speech of Allah) is created by Allah or is it from Allah (from his attributes i.e. uncreated)?

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* * * You say: “He cannot be seen,” I say: What about the verses of the Quran that talk about the believers SEEING ALLAH? Or do you also deny them?

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You say: “He does not need a place of abode, God is not only in heaven – He is also on the earth, as He is Omnipresent. “His Throne comprises the heavens and earth” (2:255), says the Holy Qur’an. He also said, “We indeed created man; and We know what his soul whispers within him, and We are nearer to him than the jugular vein” (50:15). He is with everything, but He is not inside of any body and He does not abide inside of us. If He would be inside of us, then He would be limited, and that is logically impossible.” I say: again you are attributing to Allah what He has not said, look at verse 2:255 [Shakir 2:255] Allah is He besides Whom there is no god, the Ever living, the Self-subsisting by Whom all subsist; slumber does not overtake Him nor sleep; whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His; who is he that can intercede with Him but by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them, and they cannot comprehend anything out of His knowledge except what He pleases, His knowledge extends over the heavens and the earth, and the preservation of them both tires Him not, and He is the Most High, the Great. Where does it say “His throne comprises the heaven and Earth” How about this verse: [Pickthal 57:4] He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days; then He mounted the Throne. He knoweth all that entereth the earth and all that emergeth therefrom and all that cometh down from the sky and all that ascendeth therein; and He is with you wheresoever ye may be. And Allah is Seer of what ye do. Allah repeatedly says that He is above the throne, which is above the 7 heavens and yet why do you insist on saying that Allah “is with everything”. I say that indeed Allah knows about everything but He does not mix with His creation. We believe Allah as He said is ABOVE THE THRONE. But we do not know how He is above the throne or what is the exact nature of istiwaa (rising) above the throne, but we must believe that Allah indeed is above us. Once the prophet asked a slave girl whom the people didn’t know if she was a Muslim or not: “where is Allah”, the girl pointed to the sky and said in the sky i.e. above us…prophet Muhammad after asking a few more questions ordered she be released because she has the correct belief.

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* * * You say: ”There are some things in the hadiths that I refuse because I cannot accept it intellectually.” I say: Now it is time to speak about kalam. What you have said here is typical mutazilite kalam thought, which says that if anything goes against my intellect or understanding or logic I will reject it even if Allah or His messenger says so! One mutazilite said “even if Allah comes to me and tells me a statement that doesn’t fit my understanding, I will still reject it and will tell Allah that this is not the covenant I was upon.” Why did the mutazilah come to this thought? Well it is because they placed intellect or logic as the primary source of deriving rulings. They made a wrong assumption, which you are also making, and that is that Allah and His messenger’s words can be illogical or unintellectual. In other words they assumed that there can be a clash between the textual evidences (Quran and sunnah) and logical inferences. But ahlul sunnah say this is a ridiculous assumption because it is impossible that Allah will reveal something that truly clashes with logic. HOWEVER SOMETIMES SOME THINGS DO NOT SEEM TO MAKE SENSE OR FIT INTO OUR FLAWED HUMAN MINDS SO IN THAT CASE WE TAKE ALLAH’S WISDOM INSTEAD OF OUR FLAWED INFERENCES. I give you an example, there is a famous hadith where the Prophet said: “if a fly falls into your drink dip it completely because one wing has the disease and the other has the antidote.” For many centuries, the people of kalam like the mutazilah denied this hadith saying it is impossible and doesn’t make sense. But in modern times the scientists discovered that indeed each fly has a pathogen in one wing and an anti pathogenic substance in the other wing… so kalam disproved the Prophet’s (saw) words but science came and proved the truth of the messenger of Allah. Know this Natasha that Islam consists of things that we as humans understand and things that are of the unseen that we do not understand. Imam Ali (ra) says that “had religion just been about logic we would have wiped under the socks and not above the socks.” This is because it makes sense to wipe under the socks but the prophet (saw) ordered us to actually wipe over it and we do it even though we don’t understand why. [Shakir 8:20] O you who believe! obey Allah and His Messenger and do not turn back from Him while you hear. [Shakir 8:21] And be not like those who said, We hear, and they did not obey. You know when every time I read these two verses I feel ashamed, because I believe in All that the messenger says but I still don’t act upon everything He says due to laziness or sin etc… HOWEVER YOU ARE GOING FURTHER AND CLEARLY DENYING WHAT THE MESSENGER OF ALLAH IS TELLING YOU!!!

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You say: “Some Muslims believe that God literally sits on the throne beyond the seventh heaven, and that He is not present on the earth.” I say: We have already discussed this earlier but I will say that ahlul sunnah do not say Allah “sits” but we say as Allah said “ istawa” meaning risen above. We do not know the nature of the rising and Allah has not said He actually sits but said He has risen in a manner that befits His majesty.

* * * You say: They also believe that God descends on the first heaven in the third part of the night in order to hear our prayers more clearly. This is supposed to incite the Muslims to pray as much as they can in the nights. This belief originated from the following famous tradition ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad (�) and reported by Al-Bukhâri: “Narrated Abû Hurairah (may Allah be pleased with him): Our Lord, the blessed, the superior, descends every night to the lowest heaven during the last third of the night and He says: ‘Is there anyone who evokes me, demands anything from me, so that I may respond to his invocation? Is there anyone who asks me for something so that I may grant him request? Is there anyone who seeks my forgiveness, so that I may forgive him?” (Also quoted in “Voluntary Worship, superiority and importance” by Fahad Dhaifullah Al-Qurashi, published by Al-Ahsa Islamic center, Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, 2003, p. 7.) The Arabic version is very clear: “yanzilu rabbunâ... ilâ al-samâ’i al-dunyâ – our Lord descends on the sky of this world.” This was probably imported from Judeo-Christian tradition.” I say: Again you are denying this sahih narration based on your (mis)understanding and you go further by making baseless assumptions that “this was probably imported from Judeo-Christian tradition”. Subhanallah! I am writing this in the last third of the night and I ask Allah to forgive you for this transgression against His Prophet and religion and to show me and you the straight path. Ahlul sunnah believe that Allah descends in a manner that is different to our descending, meaning Allah descends in a way we cannot imagine, in a way that He does not mix with His creation and In a may where He is still above the throne. This is of course something we humans fail to imagine.

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You say: “Some people do not believe that the Prophets are sinless, which is why I prefer to keep my own opinion. The most famous example is their interpretation of the chapter 80 from the Koran: “He frowned and turned away that the blind man came to him. And what should teach thee? Perchance he would cleanse him, or yet remember, and the Reminder profit him.” (80:1-4). They say that the blind man came to the Prophet Muhammad while he was talking to some rich person from Mecca and he frowned and turned away. How odd to say such a thing of an immaculate prophet! However, if we look at the text more closely, we see that the Koran speaks in third person of the one who frowned and then talks directly to someone else in second person. Perhaps to the one to whom the Koran is being

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revealed? Isn’t it logical that God would speak to Muhammad in second person (thee) and use the third person (he frowned) for some third person who did frown? I believe all Prophets were sinless (as they were purified by Allah) and that is why I rejected Christianity as it accused the Prophets of things like incest, drunkenness, murder, blasphemy, etc.” I say: Again you are disregarding the ayat of Allah because you fail to understand the verses. The Prophet was giving dawah to the mushrikeen and was busy presenting Islam to them when the blind companion came to him to ask a question. The prophet frowned and turned away because he was busy giving dawah to the mushrikeen. The Prophet did this because He thought this was in the interest of Islam, but Allah revealed these verses to show that he should give priority to the blind man. This is NOT a sin for 2 reasons: 1) the prophet (saw) didn’t know that he should give priority to the blind man over giving dawah, 2) this is a human error and not a sin.

* * *

You say: We had a case when someone had a heart failure and people wanted to perform a “ruqya” on him thinking that he was possessed with jinn, so they didn’t call the ambulance and inadvertently broke his chest bone, so the man died. It was on all the news here... As a Muslim, I do not believe in black magic and its power on believing people. The chapters of the Qur’an protect us from any evil just fine. God is more powerful than the devil and I am opposed to the idea that the Prophet might have been under spell, which some say happened, Shiites and Sunni Muslims alike. (This is only my opinion). I say: Again you simply deny the ahadith of rasul Allah even though I am almost sure that you have not studied or read a single book on the sciences of hadith. Allah and His messenger talked about magic and gave the remedies for Magic and for expelling Jinn. Also, the prophet WAS placed under the spell once but this only interfered in his personal life and not in revelation and Allah reveled to His Prophet how to reverse the effects of the spell.

* * *

You say: Please tell me where you heard or read this. If you have heard it from people, I’d like to write to them and prove them wrong. If there is a book, I’d like to write and publish a comment. This is shocking to me. But then again, I only met “conventional” twelver Shiites who believe in the last Prophet of God, Muhammad. I’ve never met anyone coming from such sects. And yet, I sometimes go to the Persian cultural centres to get books and know personally the Iranian cultural attaché. I say: I was told this by several Shia people and by Ammar Nakshawani who is a famous Shia preacher. This is also mentioned in their books but I don’t have the references with me at the moment.

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* * * You say: ”The verse 18 from Yunus that you quoted speaks of those who refuse to accept Islam, it is obvious from the context.” I say: The verse clearly shows the reason the mushrikeen committed shirk was because they took intercessors beside Allah and their excuse was that these “intercessors will draw us closer to Allah”, just like the modern day grave worshippers and the worshippers of Ali.

* * *

You say: Do you know if there are websites on which I can find the tafseers in English (of Qurtubi, Ibn Kathir, Tabari, Sayyid Qutb and any others)? In France, I have great difficulties in finding reference books and in my own country not everything was translated or existent in libraries. Even when you do find books, they’re in abridged versions... I say: http://www.tafsir.com/ which is tafsir of Ibn Kathir, is all I could find on the net, but if you need a tafsir of a particular verse you can ask me ‘cos I have all the tafasir books at home (not the Shia ones of course).

* * *

You say: Thank you! May Allah bless you and salâm alaykum! Even I still don’t know your real name, only that of your son... I say: I also thank you for this very interesting discussion… by the way Abu Muhammad is just a nickname… I don’t have any son.

* * *

You say: “Here is one supplication known as “du‘â al-mashlûl” I say: I have never come across this dua before… but I cannot comment on its authenticity until I see what has been said regarding its chain of narrators. Because most of Shia narrations are fabricated.

* * *

Finally I say, May Allah forgive our shortcomings and I ask Allah who has given Adam, Ibrahim and Muhammad (saw) knowledge and understanding to increase our knowledge and understanding. Abu Muhammad Reply to AbuReport

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Post #10 by Natasa Jevtovic, France, 3 July 2008, 15h25 My dear anonymous brother, It is such a pleasure to read your posts, honestly. I am happy to know someone like you who likes to read about Islam, analyze facts and consecrate his time on his fellow brothers and sisters, in the third part of the night. (How lovely! Thanks! May Allah reward you!) However, you don’t seem to admit when other people have a point. For example, what I wrote about the misinterpretation of Sura “He frowned” and the logical and grammatical proof I gave you, you didn’t seem to notice. You wrote back that what the Prophet did wasn’t a sin but a human error. (Says who?) You didn’t give me any proof for your claim, so I will hold on to my standpoint. For me, the Prophets are not the ordinary human beings and they cannot make any errors – because they are inspired by God and receive the WAHY. Besides, there is a well-known tradition according to which the Prophet Muhammad’s heart was cleansed by the angels when he was a child. But even if you don’t accept that one, there’s still the Qur’an clearly stating that whatever the Prophet tells us to do, we should do. So if he can still make errors, I don’t want him as my Prophet. I have met a lot of people who never change their minds. They can listen to you but it is as if their minds were sealed. Such is the case of the Evangelical Christians who have already decided what represents the truth for them. Whatever you tell them, they stay where they are. Please, do not be like that. You will still be a Muslim if you admit that it is true that Prophets are protected from errors, because the Qur’an speaks about two people in the chapter “He Frowned”. I have a very important question – why are you a Muslim? Is it because you believe that Islam is the truth or is it because you have found all of your forefathers following that path so you presumed that they couldn’t have been wrong? What would you do if you’d discover that something else is true? When I became a believer, I went everywhere – to the churches, to the Jewish community, to the Hindu temple and only accepted Islam after proving everything else wrong. That’s what we should do about Islam, too. We cannot just say that the Prophet frowned just because we heard it from our elders, and keep repeating it even when we receive a solid proof that it isn’t so. At least, can you prove me wrong? (Sorry for nagging...) I am a chain reader and always read almost everything I can find, not only about Islam. I love reading about the Christianity and debating with Christians. (I wrote a study about historical Jesus called “The Stumbling Block” in which Jesus is also presented from Muslim perspective.) I like looking at things from many different angles, because I noticed that Islam could be applied to everything, as it is not only a religion, but a complete way of thinking and living. It is also very important that we Muslims get to know other faiths and civilizations, because we cannot live excluded from the world or ignore it. Sometimes you can find the truth outside your own front yard – my younger sister became a believer thanks to heavy metal music!

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Unbelievable! As we lived in a Communist society in which faith was ignored, the only way she could ever hear about God was through American music. There’s a band called Skid Row and they say in one of their songs, “Why should we doubt the virgin white of fallen snow when faith’s our shelter from the cold...” In another one they said, “Doubt sees the obstacles and faith sees the way...” She became a believer and did some research and finally found Islam. Isn’t it lovely? That’s why I love listening to different sorts of people and their opinions. I once met a Christian who couldn’t decide in which church he should get himself baptized so he prayed and asked Jesus to show him which church he considered true, so he had a dream and saw Jesus on some mountain, with a bare chest and wrapped in white sheets, so he told him which one it was and the man woke up and forgot. Then he met me and I told him that this was the way Muslims get dressed when they go to hajj. Some signs come from people who aren’t like us, because Allah guides all people on earth and some of them accept to be guided and others don’t. The point is, Islam isn’t only what we already know. Sometimes, there can be something new and it can even be according to the Qur’an. (Qur’an repeatedly tells us, “consider this, it is something you didn’t know”.) You are allowed to think or say something new, not just repeat older traditions. Had the Qur’an been revealed only because of specific events (asbâb al-nuzûl) and not because of us today, then it would have died out long ago. It’s beauty and significance overlap all centuries and all times. Now let me answer the questions from your post: YOU SAID: “Muawiyah… said to Ali I WILL GIVE YOU BAYAH BUT ONLY IF WE CATCH THE KILLERS OF UTHMAN FIRST…ALI REPLIED: NO FIRST BAYAH THEN WE CATCH KILLERS.” ANSWER: I never really understood why people thought that Othman was killed by the partisans of Ali. There were delegations from Egypt and Iraq who came to him as a caliph in order to complain about their governors. One of them, I do not remember which one, vomited in the mihrâb while leading a prayer because he was drunk. There was so much oppression at that time that people wanted these governors to be replaced and came to the caliph to ask him to call them off. He wanted to receive them but his cousin Marwan, who was the Prime minister, wanted to show off so he went out and said that the caliph wouldn’t receive them. Othman was too old at that time and didn’t really intervene, he kept quiet in his room reading the Qur’an. I don’t think anyone ever discovered who it was who killed Othman. There was an insurrection and I know he was killed while reading the Holy Book, that particular mushâf stained with blood is kept in Istanbul in one museum. Most Western scholars think that Ali was too religious, too honest and thus too predictable to be a caliph. Actually, he wasn’t capable of imagining that people would deceive him and didn’t behave as a politician. When he was deadly wounded by sword while praying, he actually asked people to spare the life of the one who wounded him and only kill him if he dies – which he did three days later. People like

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Amr Ibn Al As would be better governors because Amr was a very cunning man and could unmask evil prospects of other people. Personally, what I dislike about the Shiites is that most of the things they write are based on such historical details and there is much less about the imams that people are supposed to take as guides. I know they were twelve but I don’t know much about their lives or deeds; for example, Jaafar Sadiq was an amazing person and a founder of Islamic jurisprudence (among other things) and yet with all those quantities of books I read in my life, there was only one short one about him and dozens and dozens of others about who killed whom, who was supposed to be where, and other irrelevant issues. Finally, who cares about those historical facts? They’re not life saving. There is a great book of correspondence called Kitâb al-Murâja‘ât by Sayyed Sharafuddin Musawy and it has about six or seven hundred pages, but they all discuss legitimacy. I wish they’d print something different for once. YOU SAID: “Imam Ali said that since imam Muawiyah is not giving me bayah I have to fight him until I get the bayah (pledge of allegiance) from him… so there was a tense standoff between the two camps. Then this is where the mother of the believers Aisha comes in… both camps agree to let her mediate talks between them because she is the wife of the prophet and the mother of the believers. So Imam Ali arranges for her to be escorted in a camel… and she mediates peace talks between them… she convinces Muawiyah’s side to give bayah to Ali and that they work together to catch the killers of Uthman…” I SAY: There were two different battles – the one against Muawiyah was on Siffin (the one where they put the pages of the Koran on spears) and the other one, the Camel battle, was near Basra. (Ali transferred the Islamic capital to Kufa because he didn’t want blood to be shed near the Holy Places.) Together with Aisha, there were Talha and Zubair participating in the second one. YOU SAID: “The rebels began to get very worried… because Ali and Muawiyah combined will be a very strong force against them… so they made a devious plan where in the night some went to Muawiyah’s camp and the rest stayed in Ali’s camp… they began to start firing at each others camp… the sahabah woke up and each camp thought that the other side was attacking so the civil war started…” ANSWER: Could you tell me where did you read this? It’s a very interesting theory! This would explain why the word fitna was used. YOU SAY: “How can you say heaven and hell will disappear, when Allah confirmed that the believers will receive eternal rewards in jannah and the disbelievers will stay in hell fire FOR EVER… how can you just deny these verses!” ANSWER: I don’t deny any verse of the Koran, heaven and hell will last forever, but forever means as long as time exists, i.e. until the end of time. Eventually everything will disappear, only God will remain eternal. We aren’t beyond time as God is. A verse in the Koran says that everything disappears eventually except the Face of

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God, Majestic, Splendid (Al-Rahmân, 26-27). Time is a relative thing created by the minds of men, as well as space. Time can be endlessly divided into the past and the future, until we are left with a fraction of a second which we cannot separate in two, so small that it stops existing. We created time and space to facilitate our life on earth. We live in three dimensions, but there are many more. Angels exist outside our three-dimensional world. According to some scholars, it seems that God will create other worlds after the end of this one, but I don’t really know any details. It’s possible. I haven’t been there yet to know for sure. Heaven and hell are unlike anything else we have encountered in this world, so it is difficult to imagine them. Ibn Sina denied the fire and thought that hell meant suffering because of separation from Allah. I don’t know where he got that. But if I understand the Qur’an correctly, no soul will be harmed and everyone will get exactly what he or she deserves. Islam is all about action and deeds, we are not saved only by grace (as Protestants think) but we have to perform good deeds, otherwise heaven and hell would lose all sense and purpose. YOUR QUESTION: “Do you believe the Quran (which is the speech of Allah) is created by Allah or is it from Allah (from his attributes i.e uncreated)?” ANSWER: I know that Asharis used to teach that the Quran was eternal and that the Mutazilites claimed the opposite, and that many people died because of it. Speech is one of the attributes of Allah and He materialized it in a burning bush so that Moses could hear it, but even before that episode, He was able to speak. The Asharis call it “speech of the soul”. Others deny this opinion and think that a speech cannot be called speech if it is not uttered. Jaafar Sâdiq said, as reported in Al-Kâfî, “Speaking is an attribute that comes into being and is not eternal. God, the Almighty and Glorified, was when there was no speaker.” There’s a verse in the Qur’an that says that we ourselves existed in Allah’s pre-thought (this is how they translate it in Bosnian) before we were created on Earth (the verse in which He asks the souls not yet created from Adam, “am I not your Lord” and they say “Yes”). Once we are born on earth, we forget that old pledge. This doesn’t mean that we’re eternal just as God is, but that God does whatever He wishes and that there cannot be a moment in which He didn’t know something. I don’t really know the answer, Allah knows best, but this question is speculative and a lot of blood was shed over it. I mean, it’s an interesting philosophical question but isn’t essential for our salvation and therefore is irrelevant. Mohammad Abduhu thinks the same in his book “Tawheed”. I share his view. YOU ASKED: “What about the verses of the Quran that talk about the believers SEEING ALLAH?” MY ANSWER: It’s impossible to see God in this world, but the best believers will have a special reward in paradise and will be able to see Him. I think that no man can explain how as some things aren’t allowed to men to learn. Some Sufis say that they can see the reflection of God in this world (they call it “tajall”) but they say it’s like a reflection in the mirror, you can’t see God with physical eyes, you just get the

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hint. But I don’t have enough knowledge about the issue. (I’d like to get the opportunity to be near Him in the world to come!) YOU ASKED: “Allah is He besides Whom there is no god, the Ever living, the Self-subsisting by Whom all subsist; slumber does not overtake Him nor sleep; whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His; who is he that can intercede with Him but by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is behind them, and they cannot comprehend anything out of His knowledge except what He pleases, His knowledge extends over the heavens and the earth, and the preservation of them both tires Him not, and He is the Most High, the Great.” [2:255] Where does it say “His throne comprises the heaven and Earth”? ANSWER: The part of the verse “His knowledge extends over the heavens and the earth” says “kursiyy” in Arabic, which is used as another word for Throne, at least in my country and with Hanafi people. (Kursiyy is a chair.) So you seem to think that God is above the throne which is beyond the seventh heaven and that He only sees what happens on earth? I didn’t understand it like that because I thought it would limit God. How can He not be somewhere else? Besides, the hadith about the slave girl (which I have heard once from the imam of my mosque, so I don’t know the isnad) maybe shouldn’t be taken literally? The Prophet once said that we should speak to the people according to their level of understanding. When the Bosnian imam told me that hadîth, he said that Islam was “democratic” and easy to understand for philosophers and laymen alike. He used it as a proof that people won’t be punished even when they believe in something wrong, out of ignorance. Maybe the slave girl couldn’t understand anything more profound? She meant that God was so great and superior to us, so she was right in a way. Maybe the Throne encompasses the heaven and the earth in a way we cannot understand because we only see physical world and perceive three dimensions. We cannot even see the angels, let alone understand God with our physical senses. Even the mountain crushed in awe according to one well-known âyat. Finally, one of God’s attributes is Muhît (innahu bi kulli shay’in muhît), meaning that He encompasses everything (41:54). Some translators add “by his knowledge” but the Arabic text doesn’t add anything. I spoke once to one scientist from Herzegovina who explained Allah in the following way: “When Allah says, ‘God is the light of the heavens and the earth,’ He might mean that He encompasses every atom in the cosmos – when you break the atom into protons and neutrons, you get energy and light.” But Allah knows best. YOU SAID: We believe Allah as He said is ABOVE THE THRONE. But we do not know how He is above the throne or what is the exact nature of istiwaa (rising) above the throne, but we must believe that Allah indeed is above us. ANSWER: I like the way you put it. You said, “in a manner that befits His majesty”. It’s beautiful. We Muslims believe in everything that is in the Qur’an and that the Qur’an has not been altered or corrupted, but some questions will always remain unanswered because we are not capable of finding the answers with our limited

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capacities. We cannot even understand the issue of human soul, so we must accept that we will never know everything. YOU SAID: “Now it is time to speak about kalam… what you have said here is typical mutazilite kalam thought, which says that if anything goes against my intellect or understanding or logic I will reject it even if Allah or His messenger says so!! One mutazilite said even if Allah comes to me and tells me a statement that doesn’t fit my understanding, I will still reject it and will tell Allah that this is not the covenant I was upon.” ANSWER: I like to understand everything I believe, and when I don’t, I leave it aside and keep searching. God promised that He wouldn’t punish us for something we don’t know but He asked us to think and search for knowledge. I don’t consider myself to be mutazilite because intellect cannot understand everything and even logic sometimes contains mistakes. For example, Schopenhauer asked, “Can God create a stone so heavy that He Himself cannot lift it?” The question is absurd because there is no answer. If God is God, He can create everything, and if He can create such a stone, than He isn’t omnipotent enough if He cannot lift it. Another famous example is a question on which you must answer by yes or no and it reads, “Is your next word going to be no?” So if you say yes, you lied; if you say no, you lied again! So not everything can be explained with logic. I try to see Islam as a whole because it’s a complete way of thinking and way of life – Islam is theology and philosophy and rhetoric and jurisprudence and history and sociology... Everything in the world is in some way related to Islam. So jurists should interpret verses about law, philosophers the metaphysical ones, linguists should debate on the overall harmony... The beauty of Islam is in its multiple facets allowing us to search for wisdom in whatever domain we need. When I wrote that I need to understand intellectually the things I believe in, I forgot to say something else that seems important now – ever since I became a Muslim, since fifteen years, I haven’t been able to attain one quality of other believers – that of fear. I honestly don’t fear Allah and the feeling is unknown to my heart and soul. And yet, I read the verses about hell, I believe in hell, I even read a book called “Life after death” (I think it was by Ghazali) that most people said they couldn’t sleep after reading. But I was just sad, uneasy, I thought that if Islam was really like that, than there was no beauty in it. Why would people believe out of fear? God says that His friends never fear and are never sad. I’d like to become a friend of Allah. YOU ASKED: “I am almost sure that you have not studied or read a single book on the sciences of hadith…” ANSWER: I do know the basic rules of the sciences of hadith. I know that the hadith must have a correct isnâd and matn in order to be authentic. But some of them aren’t authentic – they are called mawdu’ or even isrâ’iliyât. They have grades – there are those that all scholars agree on their authenticity (mutawâtir), those that are “correct” (sahîh), those that are “good” (hasan), those that are “weak” (dha‘îf) and so forth. Some hadîth were judged “solidly reliable” (thiqatun thabitun) and

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some “liar” (kadhdhab). They were divided into two groups: accepted (maqbul) and rejected (mardud), with each category further subdivided by degrees. The Prophet said that we should reject the traditions that are contrary to the Qur’an in a hadîth accepted by everyone. It means that there would be people who would invent hadîth, because Allah keeps the Qur’an from corruption but not the hadîth. Statements of the early Muslims, since they are not from Muhammad, are correctly referred to as athar and not hadith. Learning the relevant biographical details of the lives of thousands of men who appear in isnads and knowing from memory thousands of hadith along with their isnads, is called “Science of Men” (ilm al-rijâl). The fundamental criteria for determining the authenticity of a hadith was assessment of its isnad on two main criteria. One was whether all of its various links connected. There could be no anonymous transmitters, and all of the various transmitters’ lives had to overlap in time and, at some point, in space with both the transmitters they heard a hadith from and those they passed it on to. The second criterion was the moral standing of the men in the chain of transmitters, that is, whether they were all honest, morally upstanding men who could be counted on not to lie and fabricate hadith. Bukhari demanded evidence that two transmitters had in fact met, while Muslim asked only that there be evidence that they could have met. Ibn Qutayba shows the realization of hadith scholars of the widespread problem of the circulation of inauthentic hadith. He points to hadith spread by popular preachers claiming that lizards were disobedient Jews transformed by God, that a wolf was admitted to paradise for eating a tax collector, and that in answer to the paradox of who created God, it was claimed on the authority of Muhammad that when God decided to create Himself, he first created fast horses, set them off at a gallop and then made Himself our of their sweat. He wrote: “Such idiocies bring Islam into disrepute, reduce non-Muslims to guffaws, and make the religion unattractive to apostate and potential convert alike.” (Ta’wīl mukhtalif al-hadīth, pp. 7-8, as quoted by Kenneth Garden, Library research guide on Koran and Hadith, The Middle East Institute, Georgetown University.) Ibn Qutayba rejected the popular hadith circulating in his day on the basis of the absurdity of their content. Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1350) also wrote of the process of rejecting a hadith based on content. He gave the example of a hadith circulating in his day according to which, whenever one says, “There is no deity but God,” the first part of the declaration of faith, God creates from this sentence a bird with seventy thousand tongues. Ibn Qayyim writes that the claim is absurd, that experiment rejects it, it contradicts the well-known sunna, it contradicts the Koran, it sounds like the saying of mystics, and so on. This argument is well-known in Bosnia and I learned it from Fikr al-islâmiyya, a scientific publication printed by the University of Islamic Theology in Sarajevo. Basically, only the Qur’an is undoubtedly authentic and everything else must be compared to it in order to be authentified. The Prophet even asked us to do it.

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The most important thing we learn when we live in a Communist system is that we should NEVER FOLLOW PEOPLE but ONLY FOLLOW IDEAS. Apart from the Prophet, I don’t like following people with a blindfold because they can make an error. That’s why I like to question everything by comparing it with the Qur’an. If something passes the test of the Qur’an, I accept. YOU WROTE: “Tafsir of Ibn Kathir is all I could find on the net, but if you need a tafsir of a particular verse you can ask me cos I have all the tafasir books at home (not the Shia ones of course).” ANSWER: Thanks! You’re so nice to me! I will be very happy to read it on the web. Thanks for the help you offered. I’ll ask you to tell me some tafseer in my next post, insha’llah. (You really hate the Shiites... Try to get over it, because real Muslims cannot feel hatred towards anyone. I don’t think that the Prophet ever hated those who expelled him from home – he even prayed for them. Besides, most people on earth are wrong only because they’re ignorant.) YOU SAID: “Ammar Nakshawani... is a famous Shia preacher.” ANSWER: I haven’t heard of him yet. There’s someone I know in London who is a Shia representative of WABIL organization. If you wish, I’ll ask him what he thinks. The Shia people have two major schools of thought, that of Qum with Ayatollâh Khâmenei as a representative and that of Najaf with Ayatollâh Sistânî. They have some other mujtahids (such as Fadhlullâh in Lebanon) but they are less known and less followed. The main difference between these two schools is that in Qum they stand for “wilâyat al-faqîh” and politically active Islam, while Najafi school thinks that Muslims shouldn’t put themselves in danger and meddle with politics, and also hold that wilâyat al-faqîh isn’t necessarily the best type of government because religion should be separated from state. Shiites take these people as references (they call them “ayatollâh al-‘uzmâ”, the best learned mujtahids) and others aren’t being taken seriously. So don’t worry! YOU SAID: “I feel ashamed… because I believe in All that the messenger says but I still don’t act upon everything He says due to laziness or sin etc…” ANSWER: I too feel insignificant, very often. I keep wondering why God chose me. I was so ordinary, if not mediocre. What was He trying to do by converting me, me of all people, whereas there were many great people around me, who had wonderful qualities and souls, and yet they aren’t Muslims. I am so grateful, I just love my God so much. I don’t deserve this. I was raised by my aunt who wasn’t a believer but a very honest person, she always spoke the truth and taught me integrity. I pray to God that He saves her as she never harmed anyone. It was just circumstances, there was Communism in our country, and she went to the Partisans when she was fourteen and fought in the war like men, she was even imprisoned, she had a piece of a bomb in her foot all her life, and she thought God didn’t exist because she couldn’t understand it. Nobody around her believed. So I am often afraid for her, as well as for my father who wasn’t

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Muslim, but was a doctor and saved lives, he would bring people to the hospital in his own car in the middle of the night, he was so humble and behaved like Sahaba of those times. Allah says that He will never do any harm to anyone on the Judgment day. And yet, I feel inferior in front of such people, I feel that it isn’t just that I’m a Muslim and not them... As you said, HOWEVER SOMETIMES SOME THINGS DO NOT SEEM TO MAKE SENSE OR FIT INTO OUR FLAWED HUMAN MINDS SO IN THAT CASE WE TAKE ALLAH’S WISDOM INSTEAD OF OUR FLAWED INFERENCES. It’s beautiful. We don’t know if good people who were unbelievers would be saved but we hope and pray for them. And Allah knows best. Nobody acts upon everything that is required in Islam. You’re not the only one. We sometimes wish to do more, but we simply cannot. Sometimes it’s laziness and sometimes other external circumstances. For example, I no longer wear hijab (although I did some years ago) because it was dangerous to do it in my country with so many armed reserve soldiers around and in France you cannot find a job if you are veiled. God knows I tried, I even went to ask bakers if they would let me sell bread with a veil – although it was a non-qualified job and nothing like intellectual ones I dreamed of – and the Tunisian baker said, “Sorry, you’ll chase away my clients. Most of them aren’t Muslims.” I gave some English lessons in a Muslim school and at the end, when I politely asked when they would pay me, they said, “Pay you? This work is fî sabîl Allah!” So I was obliged to remove my veil and work with the French. Most girls in this country are discriminated and often expelled from high schools for wearing the veil. France is mostly atheist, but when I first came here, people told me that if I wanted to help my faith, I should stay here and help people here, because in other countries they already had their basic rights... YOU WROTE: “I don’t have any son” ANSWER: Well I hope you’ll get one. Nice people such as you should multiply. It would be a crime should you remain childless. May Allah give you a heir, insha’Allah. I’ll leave you now and ask Allah to guide you, protect you and forgive you throughout your life, amîn. Salâm alaykum!

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Abu Mohammad Al Sunni Sent: Mon 07/07/08 02:48 To: Natasha Jevtovic

l�}_t م�� Sister Amina, it is certainly a delight to be having this informative and interesting conversation with you. It is also quite humbling to be speaking to a prolific author as yourself and in fact if your books have reached the UK, tell me where so I can purchase them.

You said: “However, you don’t seem to admit when other people have a point. For example, what I wrote about the misinterpretation of Sura “He frowned” and the logical and grammatical proof I gave you, you didn’t seem to notice. You wrote back that what the Prophet did wasn’t a sin but a human error. (Says who?) You didn’t give me any proof for your claim, so I will hold on to my standpoint.”

Before I comment on this verse, I would actually like to start by saying that my methodology in this conversation is to remain generally silent in an aspect we agree or where I stand corrected and to reply as much as possible in aspects that I disagree with you on. I do this so I do not have to comment on every line that you write which will prolong my comments to an extent that may bore you. The downside to this approach is it appears that I am stubborn or just criticizing. One point I disagreed with you on the issue of the above mentioned verse…

It is of course your every right to maintain onto your viewpoint until you are given the evidences… as Islam is not a religion of blind following except to Allah and His messenger which you rightly said later on. With regards to the verse “He frowned and turned (His) back” which is in third person and then verse three “And what would make you know that He would purify Himself” which is talking directly to Prophet Muhammad. However, this is not a grammatical proof that the Prophet (Saw) did not frown at the blind man, rather this is the style of the Quran, Allah uses first person, second person, and third person as well as past, present and future tenses alternatively throughout the Quran. When Allah describes heaven and hell He Azza Wajjal sometimes uses the past tense to describe the hereafter and sometimes He talks about hell as if it is happening now and in other verses He talks about hell as a future occurrence. The rapid changes of tenses and speaking styles found in the Quran is known to Arabs (although the Quran uses it much more than a normal Arabic text would use). And as an Arab myself when I read this verse, I am left in no doubt that the person who is being addressed and this incidence is referred to is Prophet Muhammad (saw).

Another evidence is if we look in the books of tafsir we find a hadith narration reported in Musnad Abu A’laa:

Muhammad (ibn Mahdi) told us that Abdul Razak told him that Muammar told him that Qatadah told him that Anas ibn Malik said with regards to the verse: “He frowned and turned away” that Ibn Maktum came to the Prophet (saw) when the prophet was talking to Ubay ibn Khalaf and the prophet turned away from (ibn Maktum), so Allah revealed the verses; “He frowned and turned away”, “Because

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there came to him the blind man.” So afterwards the Prophet (saw) used to treat him with generosity.

Sorry my translation is bad but this narration and others reported in Al muwatta of Imam Malik and in Sunan of Tirmidhi all clearly say that it was the Prophet Muhammad who frowned and turned away. The books of tafsir that I have at home are filled with narrations that directly say that the Prophet frowned and turned away.

You say: “For me, the Prophets are not the ordinary human beings and they cannot make any errors – because they are inspired by God and receive the WAHY. Besides, there is a well-known tradition according to which the Prophet Muhammad’s heart was cleansed by the angels when he was a child. But even if you don’t accept that one, there’s still the Qur’an clearly stating that whatever the Prophet tells us to do, we should do. So if he can still make errors, I don’t want him as my Prophet.”

Ok so now that I have shown you evidences that the Prophet was the one who frowned and turned away, we must now address the dilemma of how could a prophet make human errors? Of course we both agree that the prophet never sin and the fact that the Prophet frowned and turned away is not a sin but rather a simple harmless error of human judgment. The Prophet is not an ordinary human but he is still a human. And the Arabic word for human is insan which means one who forgets or the forgetful one. Now, in the deliverance of the Quran, the divine message and the commandments, Allah protects His prophets from forgetting or making mistakes BUT IN HUMAN ACTIVITIES AND DECISIONS THE PROPHETS CAN ALSO MAKE ERRORS. As long as these errors do not interfere with the deliverance of the Quranic verses or divine message.

Let me give you an example, during the battles that the Prophet and His noble companions undertook, the Prophet would tell them a battle plan, then those sahabah of have knowledge of military strategy would say: “Oh messenger of Allah is this idea from Allah or is it your suggestion”, the prophet would say, “this is my suggestion” meaning there is no divine command, so they would then suggest a more strategic idea. Thus, the prophets when delivering the commandments from Allah do not make errors at all but in other aspects they can and do and this is part of normal human behaviour.

There is a wisdom and Allah knows best behind why Allah allowed Prophets to do errors in matters that do not interfere with the revelation. It could be so that they are a more understandable role model for us. So as we too make errors and sins we look at the prophets and do not despair but remain hopeful. As for sins, then no prophets do NOT commit sins, as for the sahabah and ahlul bayt then yes they commit sins but they repent and do not insist on their sins i.e. they are all righteous people. So when we look at the sahabah and see that they committed sins but got back on their feet and remained steadfast on the rope of Allah we too should take inspiration from that.

You say: “I have met a lot of people who never change their minds. They can listen to you but it is as if their minds were sealed. Such is the case of the Evangelical

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Christians who have already decided what represents the truth for them. Whatever you tell them, they stay where they are. Please, do not be like that. You will still be a Muslim if you admit that it is true that Prophets are protected from errors, because the Qur’an speaks about two people in the chapter “He Frowned”.”

And that is why we Muslims are required to ask Allah to guide us every day even though we believe we are guided i.e. we ask to remain on the correct guidance or to be guided to the correct guidance if we are misguided. As for the issue of the prophets committing errors then please see what I have written above and you should realize that no scholar of ahlul sunnah (or for that matter Shia as far as I know) has ever said that this verse didn’t apply to the prophet Muhammad (May Allah make him intercede for us on the day of judgment).

[You say:] “I have a very important question – why are you a Muslim? Is it because you believe that Islam is the truth or is it because you have found all of your forefathers following that path so you presumed that they couldn’t have been wrong? What would you do if you’d discover that something else is true? When I became a believer, I went everywhere – to the churches, to the Jewish community, to the Hindu temple and only accepted Islam after proving everything else wrong. That’s what we should do about Islam, too. We cannot just say that the Prophet frowned just because we heard it from our elders, and keep repeating it even when we receive a solid proof that it isn’t so. At least, can you prove me wrong? (Sorry for nagging...)”

I am a Muslim because:

a) I was born into a Muslim family,

b) When I was a child I was deeply interested in all religions (including even Greek and Roman religious mythology) but I only took Islam and Christianity seriously so one day I read the Quran completely and then I read the Bible but I kept on stopping as I found contradictions almost on every page and as for Old Testament it bored me too death (lol).

c) When I was young I had religious discussions with reverends and went to different churches to ask them questions but I didn’t see any sincerity in them and the more I looked into the religion I realized it is a false religion.

d) In Christianity, there is no eternal hell and no real punishment for non Christians but in Islam there was a horrible punishment waiting for those who disbelieved and it was eternal so by basic logic I had very little to lose by not being a Christian but I had everything to lose as a Muslim.

e) As for the other religions then by basic human logical inferences I ruled them out. For example, to be a proper Jew then your mother had to be Jewish. For a Hindu… sorry but no way was I gonna treat rats as sacred beings! Sikhs are just a mixture of Islam and Hindus. Atheists are just big gamblers…

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As for the issue that the prophet frowned, may I remind you that it is not only I but the many narrations in ALL books of narration as well as the understanding of Arabs of their mother tongue of this clear Arabic verse. So I could say to you that you should keep “repeating it even when we receive solid proof” that it is so (smile).

You say: “I am a chain reader and always read almost everything I can find, not only about Islam. I love reading about the Christianity and debating with Christians. (I wrote a study about historical Jesus called “The Stumbling Block” in which Jesus is also presented from Muslim perspective. I also wrote two books in French, one about genocide and another about real estate business, both have been published.)”

Wow! You seem to love writing and you def[initely] need to tell me where I can buy The Stumbling Block. You actually remind me of Imam Al Suyuti who was also a prolific writer in many sciences.

You said: “I never really understood why people thought that Othman was killed by the partisans of Ali. There were delegations from Egypt and Iraq who came to him as a caliph in order to complain about their governors. One of them, I do not remember which one, vomited in the mihrâb while leading a prayer because he was drunk. There was so much oppression at that time that people wanted these governors to be replaced and came to the caliph to ask him to call them off.”

Can you please give me source with chain of narration if possible of story this story especially about being drunk.

You said: “Personally, what I dislike about the Shiites is that most of the things they write are based on such historical details and there is much less about the imams that people are supposed to take as guides. I know they were twelve but I don’t know much about their lives or deeds; for example, Jaafar Sadiq was an amazing person and a founder of Islamic jurisprudence (among other things) and yet with all those quantities of books I read in my life, there was only one short one about him and dozens and dozens of others about who killed whom, who was supposed to be where, and other irrelevant issues. Finally, who cares about those historical facts? They’re not life saving. There is a great book of correspondence called Kitâb al-Murâja‘ât by Sayyed Sharafuddin Musawy and it has about six or seven hundred pages, but they all discuss legitimacy. I wish they’d print something different for once.”

How can they print something different if they don’t have… by the way if you look at the chains of narrators most of these narrations are not authentic even by their standards. In fact the Shias themselves say that they have no book that is fully authentic like the Bukhari is to the Sunnis… as for Imam Jaafar Al Sadiq who is descended from Abu Bakr in his mother and fathers side (which showed the extend of the intermarriage between them) something he was very proud of. Jaafar al Sadiq was very much a Sunni Muslim who by the way refused to revolt against the rulers of his time even though other members of ahlul bayt at that time revolted him and asked him to join them. He was a Sunni who took knowledge from Sunnis and taught Sunnis.

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You said: “Could you tell me where did you read this? It’s a very interesting theory! This would explain why the word fitna was used.”

I read this in the history books a while back and I also listened to it in several lectures but I can’t remember the exact reference… maybe bidah wal nihayah but when I find the reference I will tell you.

You said: “I don’t deny any verse of the Koran, heaven and hell will last forever, but forever means as long as time exists, i.e. until the end of time. Eventually everything will disappear, only God will remain eternal. We aren’t beyond time as God is. A verse in the Koran says that everything disappears eventually except the Face of God, Majestic, Splendid (Al-Rahmân, 26-27).”

Everything will be destroyed including us but haven’t you also read the verses about resurrection? Allah says in surah 98:6:

Zm}� fkgZ� l�om� رZu �� f}آr�~ Z��ب وا إن� اfk�� آrnوا ]f أه� ا

Indeed those who disbelieved from the people of the book and the mushrikeen are in hell fire abiding therein forever,

The word fkgZ� implies that they will never leave hell fire, they will always remain there forever. Ibn Kathir (ra) says about this verse و`}ن: أى�k Yو Zmot ن{`{ k Y f}¡آZ[ This means that they will remain in it and they will have no way out of it and they will not cease being in it.

And again any Arab like myself when reading this verses and others like it are left in no doubt that the disbelievers will go to hell and will not leave. So where did you get your interpretation from and say your scenario is correct, than what will happen to the believers after hell and heaven is no more?

[You say:] “Ibn Sina denied the fire and thought that hell meant suffering because of separation from Allah. I don’t know where he got that.”

And for that he was labelled a heretic…

[You say:] “But if I understand the Qur’an correctly, no soul will be harmed.”

Which verse says no soul will be harmed?

[You say:] “I know that Asharis used to teach that the Quran was eternal and that the Mutazilites claimed the opposite, and that many people died because of it. Speech is one of the attributes of Allah and He materialized it in a burning bush so that Moses could hear it, but even before that episode, He was able to speak. The Asharis call it “speech of the soul”. Others deny this opinion and think that a speech cannot be called speech if it is not uttered. Jaafar Sâdiq said, as reported in Al-Kâfî, “Speaking is an attribute that comes into being and is not eternal. God, the Almighty and Glorified, was when there was no speaker.”

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Ahlul sunnah believe that Allah speech is not created because His speech is one of His attributes, so if I say one of Allah’s attributes is created then that means Allah Himself is created because the attributes of Allah belong to Allah.

[You say:] “So you seem to think that God is above the throne which is beyond the seventh heaven and that He only sees what happens on earth? I didn’t understand it like that because I thought it would limit God. How can He not be somewhere else?”

No I don’t think I am just quoting the many verses in the Quran that say Allah is above the seventh heaven. You see, God cannot mix with His creation and He cannot be everywhere. Why? Because if He was everywhere then that would mean Allah is below me as well or under my shoes or in the toilet… rather Allah is above us.

[You say:] “Besides, the hadith about the slave girl (which I have heard once from the imam of my mosque, so I don’t know the isnad) maybe shouldn’t be taken literally?”

The Prophet Muhammad (saw) will never keep quite about something wrong because if he (saw) remains silent then this is taken as approval by him… this is from the basic principles of science of hadith.

[You say:] “When I wrote that I need to understand intellectually the things I believe in, I forgot to say something else that seems important now – ever since I became a Muslim, since fifteen years, I haven’t been able to attain one quality of other believers – that of fear. I honestly don’t fear Allah and the feeling is unknown to my heart and soul. And yet, I read the verses about hell, I believe in hell, I even read a book called “Life after death” (I think it was by Ghazali) that most people said they couldn’t sleep after reading. But I was just sad, uneasy, I thought that if Islam was really like that, than there was no beauty in it. Why would people believe out of fear? God says that His friends never fear and are never sad. I’d like to become a friend of Allah.”

My diagnosis of you as having mutazilite tendencies (despite not being fully mutazilite) is further confirmed here. The mutazilite and others relied solely on hope of Allah, undermining the fear of Allah. Whereas, the khaawarij sects relied solely on the fear on Allah and forgot the hope of Allah. Ahlul sunnah took the balanced approach which is to have a balance between the fear of Allah and the hope of Allah. Sayidnah Umar (ra) once said if it was announced that all of the people will be admitted to heaven except once person, I would FEAR ALLAH that I would be that one exception. And if it was announced that all people will be taken to hell fire except one person I would have HOPE IN ALLAH that I would be that one person. Allah created heaven and hell and the verses of the Quran were revealed about these two realities, so we can have hope and fear in Allah. We hope to achieve His reward in Jannah and fear His punishment in hell so the result is that we do good actions to attain His pleasure.

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As for being a friends of Allah or awliyah, all believers are awliyah of Allah despite the misconceptions around this concept. Allah says; “Indeed Allah is the waliy (friend) of the believers”.

[You say:] “I do know the basic rules of the sciences of hadith. I know that the hadith must have a correct isnâd and matn in order to be authentic. But some of them aren’t authentic – they are called mawdu’ or even isrâ’iliyât. They have grades – there are those that all scholars agree on their authenticity (mutawâtir), those that are “correct” (sahîh), those that are “good” (hasan), those that are “weak” (dha‘îf) and so forth. Some hadîth were judged “solidly reliable” (thiqatun thabitun) and some “liar” (kadhdhab). They were divided into two groups: accepted (maqbul) and rejected (mardud), with each category further subdivided by degrees. The Prophet said that we should reject the traditions that are contrary to the Qur’an in a hadîth accepted by everyone. It means that there would be people who would invent hadîth, because Allah keeps the Qur’an from corruption but not the hadîth. Statements of the early Muslims, since they are not from Muhammad, are correctly referred to as athar and not hadith.”

Ok I stand corrected on your knowledge of science of hadith… although just for academic purposes not all ahadith that are not authentic are mawdu but some are weak. [By the way], some scholars consider athar to also include what the prophet said. But [the] hadith or athar that doesn’t finish to Prophet Muhammad (saw) is called mursal. With those ending at a tabiyii (student of sahabi) is called munqati’ and if the statement is attributed to a sahabi but we don’t know if it’s his own opinion or the words of the prophet (saw), then this is called muwquf. And if two narrators are dropped from the chain then the narration is muaddal.

[You say:] “The fundamental criteria for determining the authenticity of a hadith was assessment of its isnad on two main criteria. One was whether all of its various links connected. There could be no anonymous transmitters, and all of the various transmitters’ lives had to overlap in time and, at some point, in space with both the transmitters they heard a hadith from and those they passed it on to. The second criterion was the moral standing of the men in the chain of transmitters, that is, whether they were all honest, morally upstanding men who could be counted on not to lie and fabricate hadith.”

The third criteria is that the narrators have to be thiqaa i.e. have good memory or are good at preserving the narrations they write down on paper.

[You say:] “The most important thing we learn when we live in a Communist system is that we should NEVER FOLLOW PEOPLE but ONLY FOLLOW IDEAS. Apart from the Prophet, I don’t like following people with a blindfold because they can make an error. That’s why I like to question everything by comparing it with the Qur’an. If something passes the test of the Qur’an, I accept.”

Good but what about if something passes the test of an authentic hadith, will you also accept it?

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[You say:] “(You really hate the Shiites... Try to get over it, because real Muslims cannot feel hatred towards anyone. I don’t think that the Prophet ever hated those who expelled him from home – he even prayed for them. Besides, most people on earth are wrong only because they’re ignorant.)”

Loving and hating are emotions that should be for the sake of Allah. There is a concept I would like you to research which is called walaa and baraa.

[You say:] “We don’t know if good people who were unbelievers would be saved but we hope and pray for them. And Allah knows best.”

Any one who dies upon other than Islam, Allah will not accept it from them and they will abide in hell forever. There are numerous verses in the Quran that talk about this. You yourself said earlier “if something passes the test of the Quran, I accept it.” So will you then accept the verses of the Quran that talk about the unbelievers…?

[You say:] “I even went to ask bakers if they would let me sell bread with a veil – although it was a non-qualified job and nothing like intellectual ones I dreamed of – and the Tunisian baker said, “Sorry, you’ll chase away my clients. Most of them aren’t Muslims.” I gave some English lessons in a Muslim school and at the end, when I politely asked when they would pay me, they said, “Pay you? This work is fî sabîl Allah!” So I was obliged to remove my veil and work with the French. Most girls in this country are discriminated and often expelled from high schools for wearing the veil. France is mostly atheist, but when I first came here, people told me that if I wanted to help my faith, I should stay here and help people here, because in other countries they already had their basic rights...”

This is the sad and often disgusting attitude of some Muslim employers today, but I say that know that Allah commanded the Hijab and when you know that then know that to be a friend of Allah you must sacrifice for the sake of Allah. “And whomsoever has piety then Allah will make an easy way out for him”. But you yourself know best your situation and Allah knows best.

[You say:] “Well I hope you’ll get one. Nice people such as you should multiply. It would be a crime should you remain childless. May Allah give you a heir, insha’Allah. I’ll leave you now and ask Allah to guide you, protect you and forgive you throughout your life, amîn.”

Ameen and may Allah reward you with endless bounties and with what no eyes, ears or senses have ever experienced.

Abu Mohammad Al Sunni

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To: Abu Mohammad Al Sunni Fri 25 July 2008 03:25 AM Dear Abu Mohammad,

l�}_t م��, I finally caught some moments to answer your email... Sorry for the delay, I was working a lot and didn’t really have any free time for pleasures. See, I usually have temporary jobs and some of them are quite demanding. This time, I’m an interpreter in an Italian school of fashion design; I just interpret into English what the professors say in French. I must confess that I find it difficult as I was always more interested in politics than in fashion and many technical words they use have never really existed in my vocabulary. I had to document myself on everything, on fashion history, on ways of fabrication of clothes or patterns and each possible word you might imagine and not imagine, even for all different types of fabrics. It’s a three week job but at least it was fun as I learned a lot. For example, did you ever imagine that the women in Europe started wearing shorter skirts because of shortages in raw materials (fabrics) during the two World Wars and because of the fact that they had to work (as all men were on the front) and had to go to the factories riding bicycles? Amazing... And then, the moment the First world war was over, Christian Dior made longer, elegant dresses?

So, let me start making comments on your last letter: again, on the infallible nature of the prophets, you mention the tafsîr and comments of different people among which is a certain Abu A’laa who wrote a Musnad. Who was this person? Is it another way of naming Ahmad (the author of the famous Musnad) or is it another person?

It is interesting what you wrote about the origin of the word insân “which means one who forgets or the forgetful one”. You must be thinking of the word root nasiya, which means “to forget” and out of which we derive words such as “nasy” and “nisyân” for forgetfulness. I have already heard someone mentioning this root related to the word “insân.” However, this conclusion is wrong because the noun “insân” does not come from this root; rather, it comes from the root “anisa” which means “to be companionable, sociable, nice, friendly, genial” (according to the Dictionary of Hans Wehr) and it is out of this root that we derive words such as “uns” (sociability), “ins” (human race) and “insân” (a human). It’s quite logical – the first root is composed of N-S-Y and the second of A-N-S. So in any Arabic dictionary that is organized by roots (such as Wehr’s, considered as the best ever) you won’t find “insân” under the root “n-s-y”.

Grammar and syntax are my greatest passions and I always notice even inadvertent omissions; for example, when writing about the Christians, you said, “by basic logic I had very little to lose by not being a Christian but I had everything to lose as a Muslim.” Did you mean “by not being a Muslim?” I know what you meant, it was just funny the way it sounded in the original version.

The Qur’an says that the members of the Prophet’s family have been purified of sins, “by perfect purification”, as testifies surat al-Ahzâb. So if they are sinless, being

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inferior in status to the Prophet, many scholars assumed that the Prophets had to be even more pure and this is why they believe that the interpretation according to which the Prophet Muhammad frowned was wrong. (This is why the Shiites believe in absolutely sinless nature of all the Prophets).

But here’s one interesting point – when I was reading the Qur’an, I have noticed some other things concerning the Prophets: remember the story of Yussuf a.s. when he was in prison and asked one of his cell mates to remember him and mention him before the Pharaoh as he must have forgotten about him in the dungeon. This was something huge, as you’re not supposed to rely on someone else apart from God – which is why God made the other man forget all about Yussuf a.s. so that he might reconsider and think about what he did. It seems that God teaches His prophets gradually and communicates with them little by little, giving them the opportunity of reconsidering things and improve themselves. The surat Kahf is similar, as a Prophet is receiving wisdom from someone who isn’t a Prophet. Maybe we are all special after all and anyone can reach the level of sâbiqûn not necessarily being a Prophet...

I’m happy to hear that you considered other faiths (it is quite rare to find it with other Muslims) because it gives you the opportunity to be more sure of yourself when you see how Islam is perfect as compared to the other incomplete beliefs... Sometimes this research can help us understand our own faith (for example, I have found that a lot of hadith are almost identical to the Biblical stories). Finally, it allows us to understand the world and the ways other people think, as well as to understand the world events. You found the Old Testament boring... I must confess that I didn’t read it entirely as it was monumental, I must have read one half; however, I have read the New Testament a couple of times and know it quite well only now. But I wasn’t really looking for contradictions when I first opened the Bible; I was more incapable of understanding the whole point because of my lack of historical and sociological knowledge (I first read it when I was seventeen.) But today, I find that many parts are quite awesome – for example, the psalms of David (Zabûr) are quite beautiful as well as the Book of Daniel, my favourite one. Some of the psalms mention Mecca, as well as the Prophet Muhammad.

You said that you didn’t find the Christians sincere. Personally, I have found many of them quite sincere (most of them think that they are saved on the day Jesus died for them and believe that they will go to Paradise; most of them feel close to God and try to build a “personal relationship” with Him, especially the Protestants, and finally, believe that there is no way of reaching God but through Jesus) but the problem of the Christians is in the fact that their beliefs are not in conformity with what God really revealed in the first place. So when you’re too sure of yourself while you’re living in error, the final outcome isn’t positive. But I believe they do have a sincere wish to find God; most of them don’t even hate us, they just think it’s pointless to discuss other faiths when they already have Jesus. (Which Christians did you meet and in which country? Were they Protestants, Catholics or Orthodox? Or belonging to some other smaller denomination?)

Yes, the Christianity teaches the existence of heaven and hell (the Kingdom of God is used as a metaphor for Paradise) and there is also a famous story of a rich man who

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was thrown in hell and asked the Prophet Abraham and a poor man Lazarus who was now in Paradise to place a thumb on his tongue to ease his pain in the fire (Luke 16:19-31). Actually, Islam, Judaism and Christianity are complementary as all the Prophets were believing Monotheists sent by One God. (I ruled out the other faiths, Jews and Sikhs, exactly for the same reasons as you did. I could never believe in sacred cows and my mother isn’t of Jewish origin.)

You said, “You actually remind me of Imam Al Suyuti who was also a prolific writer in many sciences.” Nobody has ever given me such a compliment before! May God bless you!

You asked me to give you the references about the reasons for the murder of caliph Othmân. Here are the sources:

1. Dr Taha Hussein, Al-Fitna al-Kubrâ (The Great Upheaval), Cairo, 1959

2. E. A. Belyaev, Arabs, Islam & the Arab Caliphate in the Early Middle Ages, New York, 1969

3. Ibn Athîr, Tarîkh Kâmil, vol. III

4. John Alden Williams, Themes of Islamic Civilization, 1971

5. Muhammad Ibn Ishâq, The Life of Muhammad

6. R. V. C. Bodley, The Messenger – the Life of Muhammad, New York, 1946

7. Sir John Glubb, The Great Arab Conquests, London, 1963

8. Tabari, History, Volume III

Actually, the reasons of the protest were quite serious. There was a lot of abuse of the government financial funds, as the Caliph was old and easily manipulated, so he couldn’t seem to refuse to give favours to his relatives who were greedy and didn’t care about Islam but for their own wealth. For example, as writes Phillip Hitti in his History of the Arabs, Amr ibn al-As was always in love with Egypt and wanted to become its governor, he was the one who conquered it after all. But he was deposed by Othman because the caliph preferred to appoint his foster brother Abdullah ibn Saad ibn Abi Sarh and the Muslims lost the control of the province. So Amr ibn al-As was sent to conquer it again and he was told that he could remain a governor but should let Abdullah take care of the finances. So Amr ibn al-As replied, “Oh, but that would mean that I should hold the cow by its horns and let the others milk it!” All historians agree on caliph’s nepotism. Other protests came from the people who objected because the oldest sahaba were mistreated; for example, Ammâr bin Yasser was beaten up until he fainted, Abû Dharr was banned from Medina and died alone in the desert, and so forth. I guess the problem which arose was related to the Arab culture and tribal system meddling with politics and government.

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You said, “the Shias themselves say that they have no book that is fully authentic like the Bukhari is to the Sunnis”. They believe that any book apart from the Qur’an could be submitted to objective analysis and do not even hold their own four books as 100% authentic and keep analyzing through the centuries. Not to speak of Al Bukhâri, which is purely Sunni but the Shiites still read it and comment on it, sometimes even proving their points such as quoting the tradition in which the Prophet asked for paper and pen to leave some sort of a will and the Companions refused to obey, or the one according to which “there would be 12 emirs and all of them from the Quraysh.”

You asked, “Good but what about if something passes the test of an authentic hadith, will you also accept it?” The answer is yes. Any hadîth that passes the test of the Qur’an and isn’t contrary to it, can be accepted. The Prophet said that we should compare everything with the Qur’an and if some people ascribe to him what he has not said, their allegations should be rejected. He literally said something like, “if anyone ascribes to me what I have not said, he’s building himself a place in the Fire.”

You said that “Imam Jaafar Al Sadiq descended from Abu Bakr in his mother and fathers side”. Did you mean Muhammad ibn Abî Bakr, who was a very known supporter of Ali?

You asked, “what will happen to the believers after hell and heaven is no more?” This is what I read this morning in the subway: “His life is perpetual, it is pre-eternal and post-eternal. Death and evanescence, non-existence and cessation cannot befall Him. Indeed, He Who is sempiternal, must, of course, be eternally enduring. He Who is necessarily existent, must, of course, be without beginning or end.” (By the Turkish author Bediuzzaman Saîd Nursî, The Key to Belief). It seems that a lot of Muslims believe that eternity (“khuld”) exists as long as the time itself exists, but that God exists beyond the time and will continue existing after everything else disappears. We aren’t eternal as God is, even if we do live in Heaven or Hell eternally (“khâlidûn”), but these things are speculative and this is just one way of understanding the Qur’anic message which doesn’t mean that there aren’t any more interpretations.

You asked, “Which verse says no soul will be harmed?” The chapter Zilzâl (99:7-8) says that whether you do a small particle of good or evil, you will see it [on the Judgment day]. God isn’t unjust with His creations and another verse says that even the good people coming from the People of the Book will have no fear on the Judgment day. So, when you said, “Any one who dies upon other than Islam, Allah will not accept it from them and they will abide in hell forever,” I really hope it isn’t entirely true because it leaves all of my family and most people from my country in hellfire. It leaves no hope for my father, who was a very just man and saved a lot of lives as a doctor, and finally did believe in One God, without practicing Islam which wasn’t his original belief... My father had one very beautiful quality – he always addressed himself to people with smile and understanding, and treated good and bad people alike. So, if some people were evil, when they would see that he was still not judging them or condemning them, they would become ashamed of themselves

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and become good. On his funeral, there were so many people that I couldn’t believe it – people came to me to thank me because he operated their noses or hands or helped them in some other way, there was even one very old man who came from a village situated 500 km away and said that he was my father’s high school teacher... I think he was the reason why I became a Muslim as he taught me integrity and moral values that Muslims are supposed to have. So I hope and pray that God accepts him and saves him from any harm.

You asked me to research “walaa and baraa.” What exactly do you mean? Is walaa the root out of which we get the word “waliyy” and is baraa the one out of which we get the things like “Allah barî’un min al-mushrikîne wa rasûlahu” meaning that God has nothing to do with the idolaters, neither does His prophet?

Are you sure that all believers are awliyah of Allah? Since we have different degrees in Paradise and people who are “sâbiqûn” as against all the other good people, I’d like to know how to become one of the sâbiqûn? But I feel so worthless sometimes, as I cannot even manage to fear God. I would really love to feel fear as the other good Muslims, but I cannot seem to. I just cannot imagine that He would throw me to hell after having guided me. It’s just like jealousy – all women are jealous in love and always make scenes to their husbands because they don’t want them to look at the other women... but I have never felt jealousy. I don’t care whether the one I love seeks the other women, as long as he has some time for me. I must be crazy...

Finally, I’d love to read about the Salafis and their doctrines. Can you tell me which reference books have been published? Is there some good website? Are they the same movement as the Wahhabis or a separate group and what are the most important scholars who influenced the Salafi school? I sometimes meet some Salafi people in France but they usually refuse to talk to women and the women I meet in the mosques here aren’t very helpful as they don’t know much and don’t even read a lot.

Thank you so much for your help, I appreciate it because you take so much time to write to me. May God bless you for your efforts on His way and may He give you Paradise. Amîn.

Your sister,

Natasha Amina Jevtovic

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l�}_t م�� Sister Amina, [Shakir 9:100] ”And (as for) the foremost, the first of the Muhajirs and the Ansars, and those who followed them in goodness, Allah is well pleased with them and they are well pleased with Him, and He has prepared for them gardens beneath which rivers flow, to abide in them for ever; that is the mighty achievement.”

Ramadan kareem to you and to your family in this most blessed month. And I hope that your job hunting was fruitful. I would like to first start by thanking you for sending me the Stumbling Block book, which I have found to be well presented, highly informative, and very articulate on your part. There may have been the odd sentences I would like further clarification or info on or even disagreed with but now is not the time for this… maybe after Ramadan.

[You say:] “So, let me start making comments on your last letter: again, on the infallible nature of the prophets, you mention the tafsîr and comments of different people among which is a certain Abu A’laa who wrote a Musnad. Who was this person? Is it another way of naming Ahmad (the author of the famous Musnad) or is it another person?”

The full name of this scholar is Ahmad bin Ali bin Al-Muthanaa bin Yahya Al-Tamimi Al-Musuli who was born in 250 H. He actually met Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal and even narrated ahadith from him as well as from imam Yahya ibn Muaen and Imam Ali bin Madani. Amongst those that took hadith from him were Imam Ibn Hibban and Al-Tabarani. His Musnad is 7555 hadith arranged in the style of a Musnad, where each section contain all the ahadith of a particular sahabi like Abu Bakr, then Umar etc.

[You say:] “It is interesting what you wrote about the origin of the word insân “which means one who forgets or the forgetful one”. You must be thinking of the word root nasiya, which means “to forget” and out of which we derive words such as “nasy” and “nisyân” for forgetfulness. I have already heard someone mentioning this root related to the word “insân.” However, this conclusion is wrong because the noun “insân” does not come from this root; rather, it comes from the root “anisa” which means “to be companionable, sociable, nice, friendly, genial” (according to the Dictionary of Hans Wehr) and it is out of this root that we derive words such as “uns” (sociability), “ins” (human race) and “insân” (a human). It’s quite logical – the first root is composed of N-S-Y and the second of A-N-S. So in any Arabic dictionary that is organized by roots (such as Wehr’s, considered as the best ever) you won’t find “insân” under the root “n-s-y”.

You are probably right here… my mistake. However, this should not distract us from the original discussion which was whether the Prophets can forget? In fact I came across a hadith lately in which the greatest of Allah’s creation, Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhe wassalam said: “I forget just like you forget”. So regardless of what exactly is the root word of insan, there is no denying that insan by his very nature is forgetful – be it a layman, a sahabi, or even a prophet. In Musnad Abu Dawud,

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Abdullah ibn Mas'ud narrates: The Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) offered prayer. The version of the narrator Ibrahim goes: I do not know whether he increased or decreased (the rak'ahs of prayer). When he gave the salutation, he was asked: Has something new happened in the prayer, Apostle of Allah? He said: What is it? They said: You prayed so many and so many (rak'ahs). He then relented his foot and faced the Qiblah and made two prostrations. He then gave the salutation. When he turned away (finished the prayer), he turned his face to us and said: Had anything new happened in prayer, I would have informed you. I am only a human being and I forget just as you do; so when I forget, remind me, and when any of you is in doubt about his prayer he should aim at what is correct, and complete his prayer in that respect, then give the salutation and afterwards made two prostrations. So we can see from the above hadith that Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhe wassalam by his own admission can forget because… he is a human. Only when it comes to revelation does Allah protect his word and prevents the Prophet from forgetting. [Shakir 75:16] “Do not move your tongue with it to make haste with it”, [Shakir 75:17] “Surely on Us (devolves) the collecting of it and the reciting of it.”

[You say:] “The Qur’an says that the members of the Prophet’s family have been purified of sins, “by perfect purification”, as testifies surat al-Ahzâb. So if they are sinless, being inferior in status to the Prophet, many scholars assumed that the Prophets had to be even more pure and this is why they believe that the interpretation according to which the Prophet Muhammad frowned was wrong. (This is why the Shiites believe in absolutely sinless nature of all the Prophets).”

You said language is your passion, well tafsir is mine so let’s discuss this verse in great detail especially the part of “Allah only desires to keep away the uncleanness from you, O people of the House! and to purify you a (thorough) purifying.” We had of course discussed this verse before in considerable detail but we did not discuss the implications of this verse i.e. does this verse mean the Ahlul Bayt are sinless like the Prophets? I found an interesting passage in Ruh Al Maani by Imam Al-Alousi, volume 12, page 198:

“The Shia used this verse to interpret al-rijz with sins and so they alleged that Ali, Fatima, and Al-Hassanein (Al-Hassan and Al-Hussain), may Allah be pleased with them, are sinless, just like the Prophet sallallahu alayhe wasallam is sinless. However, if we were to presume (that al-rijz equates sins) then this still does not mean that they (Ahlul Bayt) are sinless, but in actual fact is indicative of exactly the opposite because it is not said to one who is pure (of sins): I will purify you of sins if they are indeed sinless. Allah did not say He has removed from you al-rijz but He said He wants to remove from you al-rijz. Also, if purifying Ahlul Bayt means purifying from sins, then those sahabah that witnessed the battle of Badr are also sinless because Allah azza wajal says about the sahabah who witnessed Badr: [Shakir 5:6] “But He wishes to purify you and that He may complete His favour on you, so that you may be grateful,” end quote.

Amina please read the above passage and I do apologise for the poor translation, but I want you to ponder deeply on what Imam Al-Alousi (ra) said. The point I am trying to make is that Ahlul bayt do sin and make mistakes, but they do not PERSIST

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in sinning because Allah has made sins appear ugly to them and such is His purification. As for the issue of the frowning, I had already explained that frowning is not a sin, but a human error which prophets can and do make. How is frowning by any logic or textual evidences a sin?

[You say:] “But here’s one interesting point – when I was reading the Qur’an, I have noticed some other things concerning the Prophets: remember the story of Yussuf a.s. when he was in prison and asked one of his cell mates to remember him and mention him before the Pharaoh as he must have forgotten about him in the dungeon. This was something huge, as you’re not supposed to rely on someone else apart from God – which is why God made the other man forget all about Yussuf a.s. so that he might reconsider and think about what he did. It seems that God teaches His prophets gradually and communicates with them little by little, giving them the opportunity of reconsidering things and improve themselves. The surat Kahf is similar, as a Prophet is receiving wisdom from someone who isn’t a Prophet. Maybe we are all special after all and anyone can reach the level of sâbiqûn not necessarily being a Prophet...”

Allah knows best, however what I do know is that no one not even Ahlul Bayt can reach anywhere near the status of the lowest ranking prophet. As for sayidinah Musa taking knowledge from Khidr, many scholors said in fact Khidr is a Prophet but was lower in ranking that Sayidinah Musa.

[You say:] “I’m happy to hear that you considered other faiths (it is quite rare to find it with other Muslims) because it gives you the opportunity to be more sure of yourself when you see how Islam is perfect as compared to the other incomplete beliefs... Sometimes this research can help us understand our own faith (for example, I have found that a lot of hadith are almost identical to the Biblical stories). Finally, it allows us to understand the world and the ways other people think, as well as to understand the world events. You found the Old Testament boring... I must confess that I didn’t read it entirely as it was monumental, I must have read one half; however, I have read the New Testament a couple of times and know it quite well only now.”

I must say though that I would not recommend the average Muslim to read the scriptures of other religions as they might not have the necessary intellect or ability to differentiate between what is the truth (Quran) and what is the falsehood (other scriptures). I had only read these other scriptures because I was engaging at the time in a lot of theological discussion with Christians so I needed to know if a) their book contains any similarities I could point out to them or b) find contradictions. Beside engaging in daawah I see no reason why a Muslim should read other books for “guidance”. Also if one is going to read these scriptures, one should start with the Quran and use it as the standard for measuring other Books. This is because the Quran is the only book free of error.

Look at this hadith I found in Sunan Ad-Darimi, Vol. 1, Hadith No. 435: “Umar ibn al-Khattab brought to Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) a copy of the Torah and said: ‘Allah’s Messenger, this is a copy of the Torah’. He (Allah’s Messenger) kept quiet and he (Umar) began to read it. The colour of the face of Allah’s Messenger

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(peace be upon him) underwent a change, whereupon Abu Bakr said: “Would that your mother mourn you, don’t you see the face of Allah’s Messenger?’ Umar saw the face of Allah’s Messenger (pbuh) and said: ‘I seek refuge with Allah from the wrath of Allah and the wrath of His Messenger. We are well pleased with Allah as Lord, with Islam as religion, and with Muhammad as Prophet’. Whereupon Allah’s Messenger (pbuh) said : ‘By Him in Whose hand is the life of Muhammad, even if Moses were to appear before you and you were to follow him, leaving me aside, you would certainly stray into error; for if (Moses) were alive (now), and he found my prophetical ministry, he would have definitely followed me’.”

[You say:] “You said that you didn’t find the Christians sincere. Personally, I have found many of them quite sincere (most of them think that they are saved on the day Jesus died for them and believe that they will go to Paradise; most of them feel close to God and try to build a “personal relationship” with Him, especially the Protestants, and finally, believe that there is no way of reaching God but through Jesus) but the problem of the Christians is in the fact that their beliefs are not in conformity with what God really revealed in the first place. So when you’re too sure of yourself while you’re living in error, the final outcome isn’t positive. But I believe they do have a sincere wish to find God; most of them don’t even hate us, they just think it’s pointless to discuss of other faiths when they already have Jesus. (Which Christians did you meet and in which country? Were they Protestants, Catholics or Orthodox? Or belonging to some other smaller denomination?)”

Whilst it is true that Christians are on average more sincere than other religions and it seems that a Christian is more likely to accept Islam than any other religion. However, you are forgetting that sincerity (ikhlas) is a condition of la illah illa Allah, and true absolute sincerity is only possessed by Muslims. Take protestants for example, they were founded by Henry the VIII so that he could divorce his wives. So it is blatantly a man made religion and they know their history but still for some reason persist as protestants. Let us not confuse bad manners and arrogance with sincerity… for yes, Christians probably have some of the best manners and are on the whole rather humble, at least the ones I’ve interacted with. And you can not compare them with, say, Hindus...

When I was younger, as a child I visited my local Methodist church with a list of questions that I had in my study of Christianity. To my surprise he was a closet atheist! I said to him: why are you doing preaching in a church; he replied that it was just a job and that he had to leave soon to go to his other job. I also noticed that the clergy of all these false religions refuse to engage in a discussion with you. Having said all that, I will be just and say that here in the UK, we have a very good archbishop called Rowan Williams who is courageous enough to speak his own mind even if it goes against the church policy or even if some of his peers strongly object.

[You say:] “Yes, the Christianity teaches the existence of heaven and hell (the Kingdom of God is used as a metaphor for Paradise) and there is also a famous story of a rich man who was thrown in hell and asked the Prophet Abraham and a poor man Lazarus who was now in Paradise to place a thumb on his tongue to ease his pain in the fire (Luke 16:19-31). Actually, Islam, Judaism and Christianity are complementary as all the Prophets were believing Monotheists sent by One God. (I

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ruled out the other faiths, Jews and Sikhs, exactly for the same reasons as you did. I could never believe in sacred cows and my mother isn’t of Jewish origin.”

Lol at the last sentence… but you said something fundamentally wrong earlier when you made the assertion that “Islam, Judaism and Christianity are complementary as all the Prophets were believing Monotheists sent by One God.” It is of course true that all Prophets are muwahideen but that does not make Christianity and Judaism on par with Islam because these Prophets were actually Muslimeen themselves and Christianity and Judaism was merely a distortion of the Islamic message that these Prophets made. The doctrine of Christianity and Judaism is a false one that will lead its adherent who die upon such a belief to remain for ever in hellfire. Allah azza wajal says: “The only religion acceptable to Allah is Islam”. And Allah also says: [2:133] “Nay! were you witnesses when death visited Yaqoub, when he said to his sons: What will you serve after me? They said: We will serve your god and the god of your fathers, Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq, one Allah only, and to Him we are Muslimeen.” So you see sister Amina, the Prophets followed only one religion with one message, but to different people. It was only when Prophet Muhammad came that this one message and one religion became universality: “and We have not sent you (oh Muhammad) except as a Mercy to all of humanity”.

[You say:] “You asked me to give you the references about the reasons for the murder of caliph Othmân. Here are the sources:”

I thank you for providing me with these references and all at some of them especially the classical works. The problem with historical books is that they can often contain weak narrations. Tabari himself points this out in his introduction. As for some of the names there like Taha Hussein, well since it’s Ramadan I will be diplomatic and just say I will not be reading his “works” if they can be called such any time soon. When looking at these historical narratives we should always look at the chain of narrations in the same way as we do for hadith especially in such divisive matters as the early Islamic history. So instead of making a whole load of accusations against the best generation, we should first take one report at a time and analyse it from Tabari, Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Kathir, and Ibn Athir. We should refrain from orientalists or those like Taha who were heavily influenced and sometimes even plagiarized from the orientalists. We should also start if you are willing by presuming no prior prejudices or bias against the sahabah.

[You say:] “You said, “the Shias themselves say that they have no book that is fully authentic like the Bukhari is to the Sunnis”. They believe that any book apart from the Qur’an could be submitted to objective analysis and do not even hold their own four books as 100% authentic and keep analyzing through the centuries. Not to speak of Al Bukhâri, which is purely Sunni but the Shiites still read it and comment on it, sometimes even proving their points such as quoting the tradition in which the Prophet asked for paper and pen to leave some sort of a will and the Companions refused to obey, or the one according to which “there would be 12 emirs and all of them from the Quraysh”.”

One of the many problems with the Shia (and there are many) is that a hadith to them is not just what the Prophet sallallahu alayhe wasallam said but it could also be

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what the twelve imams said. Another thing about Shia is [that] they believe it is acceptable to lie in order to defend their religion. They are even allowed to fabricate hadith as they don’t see it as lying on the Prophet sallallahu alayhe wassalam but lying FOR the Prophet.

Can you provide me the hadith where the Prophet asked for a paper and pen and the sahabah refused to obey his orders, as this is a serious allegation against the sahabah? As for the hadith about the twelve KHULAFA all of whom will be from Quraish, then this hadith actually contradicts the Shia because only sayidinah Ali and Sayidnah Al-Hasan were caliphs; the other “imams” never assumed the position of khilafa. So how can this hadith be supporting their religion, when in fact it contradicts there whole imamat concept?

[You say:] “You said that “Imam Jaafar Al Sadiq descended from Abu Bakr in his mother and fathers side”. Did you mean Muhammad ibn Abî Bakr, who was a very known supporter of Ali?”

You make it sound that the other sahabas were not supportive of Ali. There were many sahabah who fought alongside Ali, which is more than could be said for the Shiite traitors who betrayed sayidnah Hussain. Also, all sahabah showed love and compassion towards each other and great respect and admiration. Read Nahjul Balagha and you will see how Sayidnah Ali praises and shows respect and even denies that he a divinely guided imam.

[You say:] “It seems that a lot of Muslims believe that eternity (“khuld”) exists as long as the time itself exists, but that God exists beyond the time and will continue existing after everything else disappears. We aren’t eternal as God is, even if we do live in Heaven or Hell eternally (“khâlidûn”), but these things are speculative and this is just one way of understanding the Qur’anic message which doesn’t mean that there aren’t any more interpretations.”

I have already shown you the words of the ijma of the scholars of tafsir that khulud means literally for ever. Hell and jannah have different time systems then in earth so there is still time – 1 day in hell = 1000 earth years. The point is that the disbeliever will NEVER ever leave hell fire. There is no room for speculation here, any Arab, even a child, will tell you [that] khalidun means abiding therein forever. This does not contradict with Allah being eternal because unlike Allah, hellfire has a beginning and an end (when everything will perish except Allah).

[You say:] “You asked me to research “walaa and baraa.” What exactly do you mean? Is walaa the root out of which we get the word “waliyy” and is baraa the one out of which we get the things like “Allah barî’un min al-mushrikîne wa rasûlahu” meaning that God has nothing to do with the idolaters, neither does His prophet?”

Correct, but there is more to it then that.

[You say:] “Are you sure that all believers are awliyah of Allah? Since we have different degrees in Paradise and people who are “sâbiqûn” as against all the other good people, I’d like to know how to become one of the sâbiqûn?”

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Allahu Allam about the sabiqoon, but I was reminded of what is in surat al Waqiah: [Shakir 56:10-14] “And the foremost are the foremost, these are they who are drawn nigh (to Allah), in the gardens of bliss. A numerous company from among the first {the sahabah} and a few from among the latter {i.e. our generation}”. {} added by me.

[You say:] “But I feel so worthless sometimes, as I cannot even manage to fear God. I would really love to feel fear as the other good Muslims, but I cannot seem to. I just cannot imagine that He would throw me to hell after having guided me.”

But the question, dear Amina, is: how do you know you have been guided – and if you are guided, how do you know that in ten or fifteen years time, or less or more, you will [not] become misguided? Don’t you fear that an abusive word here, a sinful action there may end up negating all your good actions? And don’t you fear the blazing fire which even some Muslims will enter albeit temporarily? And if you don’t fear, then the question would be has Allah given you – Amina – a guarantee that you will enter jannah?

[You say:] “It’s just like jealousy – all women are jealous in love and always make scenes to their husbands because they don’t want them to look at the other women... but I have never felt jealousy. I don’t care whether the one I love seeks the other women, as long as he has some time for me. I must be crazy...”

Or maybe it means you are from the elite women who are comfortable with the idea of polygamy (smile)…

[You say:] “Finally, I’d love to read about the Salafis and their doctrines. Can you tell me which reference books have been published? Is there some good website? Are they the same movement as the Wahhabis or a separate group and what are the most important scholars who influenced the Salafi school? I sometimes meet some Salafi people in France but they usually refuse to talk to women and the women I meet in the mosques here aren’t very helpful as they don’t know much and don’t even read a lot. Thank you so much for your help, I appreciate it because you take so much time to write to me. May God bless you for your efforts on His way and may He give you Paradise. Amîn.”

Ameen and to you too. The Salafis have a general and a specific meaning. The general meaning is that all Muslims should emulate the early Muslims in their character, belief and religious practice. A more specific meaning is that it is a reformation movement to [return from] unislamic practices such as those of Sufis or even worse Shia, back to the correct understanding of the Prophets and the early Muslim generation. There is an even more specific meaning of Salafi – which I reject – and that is the cultish mentality that some Salafis, especially in the Western hemisphere, exhibit. However, one thing that binds every single Salafi is agreement on one set of doctrines even if they disagree in other issues. Salafis are also evidence based and refuse blind following in matters of doctrine but accept that in matters of fiqh laymen may have to do taqlid (blind following) of the sheikh as long as the blind following does not go against a clear injunction in the Quran or hadith.

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There is often a misconception about Salafis that they are anti madhab and make up their own fiqh. None thing can be further from the truth, they actually do follow a madhab, usually Hanbali or Shafii. But instead of blindly following everything in the madhab, they are open to accept that in a particular issue their madhab can be wrong, especially if another madhab has stronger evidence.

The scholars also refuse the notion that the door to ijtihad is closed as some Sufis say, but rather they reserve the right to do ijtihad in fiqh issues (by following the broad principles – usul – of usually the Hanbali mathab) but not in matters of creed because the revelation ended with the most blessed of Allah’s creation sallallahu alayhe wasallam.

The most influential scholars to Salafis [are] generally the early classical Muslim scholars, but more specifically Imam Ahmad, Shaikh Ibn Taymiyyah, Shaikh Ibn Qayyim amongst many others and in more recent times scholars like Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab, Muhammad Abduhu (but I don’t know much about him) and others like Sheikh Ibn Uthaymeen.

As for the word “Wahabi” there is no such thing at all. In fact, no human being on the face of this Earth calls himself a Wahabi. It is just a made up term by Sufis and Shia to insult Sunnis in general but more specifically Salafis.

As for resources, well, here is a link to one of the most widely studied books on Salafi doctrine by no other than Sheikh Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab himself: http://islamicweb.com/beliefs/creed/abdulwahab/

Also, a famous QA site is: www.islamqa.com

But it is important to remember that Salafis do not believe in clerical hierarchy where a scholar speaks and the laymen just listen without asking for evidence, rather we believe it is a right of every sane human being to ask for evidence even if it is for basic things in creed. Moreover, every Muslim is advised to check all aspects of his beliefs and actions in the scale of the Quran and the authentic sunnah and should subsequently have the courage to reject any matters of belief, or actions, or statements by scholars IF they conflict with the textual evidences.

Finally, I ask Allah in this holy month to guide us to what ever is the straight path. Oh Allah, if the truth is with the Shia, guide us to that and if the truth is with the Sufis then guide us to that. And if the truth is with the Sunnis then guide us to that. Ameen.

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To Abu Mohammad Al Sunni

Salaam alaikum,

Dear brother,

I’m sorry for not having written for a long time but I’ll try to make it up to you...

I’m happy that you liked my book “the Stumbling Block” and you should know that you were the very first person who ever read it, so if you disagree with some things, especially from the Islamic standpoint, please tell me so that I might correct the errors before sending it to some publisher. Your opinion is very valuable to me, so please feel free to highlight the “odd sentences” because other readers could also find them odd and send me the letter bombs, who knows...

I had to read the other Holy Scriptures as well as the Qur’an because I was an atheist, I wasn’t taught to believe but to consider religion as wishful thinking of the old generations, so I had to look everywhere in order to come to Islam. I even went to the Bhakti temple and didn’t accept their faith because they couldn’t prove reincarnation. Later on, I used the knowledge of the Bible to preach Islam to people and eventually three of them became Muslims, two boys from Nigeria and one girl from Canada. I like reading everything, but only the Qur’an is 100% true, so it’s worth preaching for...

It’s true what you said for Protestants, it’s a man made religion. Actually, the whole Christianity is a man made religion because the original teachings of Jesus were not very far away of the original Judaism. I wish all those people would become Muslims, because many of them are sincerely trying to find God, but maybe they are just scared of Islam as most Westerners are and don’t even dream that it could bring them salvation.

I too had problems with those who refused to discuss with me. I gave a book of Ahmad Deedat to a friend who was a Jehovah’s Witness, and the next morning she left it in my mail box, deciding to stop any contact with me. I went to their community in Belgrade with a Muslim friend, and we invited them to Islam, but they never even wanted to talk to us, they just left the church. At the same tame, an American missionary came to the mosque and wanted to talk to us about Jesus, so we started convincing him and he went away. They keep living as we never existed.

One Adventist missionary from Serbia wanted to convert me, so I told him, “What is your opinion of the Prophet Muhammad?” He said, “What I think doesn’t matter, what matters is the truth”. Then I said, “So what is the truth?” He said, “I can’t tell you what is the truth, you have to figure it out yourself.” So I stopped discussing it with him. Actually, most people are not searching for the truth, they already decided what was true to them and cannot really discuss anything.

So I continued discussing with the Christians but without telling them I was a Muslim. I believe we have to preach Islam because it is our holy mission, and because Allah said in the Qur’an we should do it. Once I went to a Pentecostal church, […] talked to some believer and said to him, “See, I love reading the Bible and I believe in Jesus, but the problem I have is that there is no church that follows his teachings. All of them follow some teachings but none holds the whole truth.” He actually said, “Well, it’s simple – you should start your own church.” I couldn’t

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believe it! Instead of proving his church right, he told me to act according to my free will...

You made me laugh with the story of an atheist priest... Are you sure he wasn’t just trying to make you go away? Can’t you put in on Youtube so that the people from his church could stop listening to his preaching? It’s amazing!

Back in my country, my sister had a skinhead friend who was an atheist and his parents sent him to the school for priests because no other high school wanted to accept him – he had problems with alcohol and violence [as well as] bad results in school... Anyway, once he came to our house, saw a photograph of a black man in my room and said, “How can you even talk to the Blacks, it’s said in the Bible that even God cursed them...”

Here’s the story [he told me]: “The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth. Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders, they walked in backwards and covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.’ He also said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth, may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave’.” (Genesis 9:18-27)

Since the three sons of Noah were the only people who survived the flood, it is logical that all the nations in the world originated from them. Christian anthropologists usually say that three races originated from the three sons of Noah – white race from Shem, black race from Ham, and Asian race from Japheth.

Knowing that the black race originated from Ham, and knowing that Ham is to be “the lowest slave to his brothers,” all the racists in the world can now find the justification in the Holy Scriptures for their prejudices. This means that the Bible supports racism. I usually explain this to the African friends and then tell them that Islam put an end to this proclaiming all races equal.

I’d like to thank you for sending me the references for the book on Al-Tawhid of Abd-ul-Wahhab, I’m reading it at the time. I like it very much so far, although I have found a slight error in the chapter 13. Contrary to what is says, the verse 26:214 was revealed on a specific occasion, because the Prophet was commanded to invite his closest family members to become Muslims, during the times when the Message wasn’t being preached in public. So he invited 40 family members – the descendants of Abdul Muttalib, there were Abu Talib, Al Abbas, Hamza and Abu Lahab – and made some meat for dinner and only one sa’ (3 kg) of wheat for bread, but by a miracle it multiplied for them so they could all eat. But most of his cousins refused to follow him at that particular moment, and some of them rejoined him later. So the Prophet didn’t invite them “one at the time” and I don’t think Fatima was even born

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at that time. (Sources: Tabary, Ibn Athir, Abu Al Fida, Thomas Carlyle [On Hero Worship...], Edward Gibbon...). What do you think?

You asked me to tell you where is the hadîth of the Prophet’s illness: « Narrated (‘Ubaydullâh ibn ‘Abdullâh): Ibn ‘Abbâs said, ‘When the ailment of the Prophet (�) became worse, he said, “Bring for me (writing) paper and I will write for you a statement after which you will not go astray.” But ‘Omar said, “The Prophet is seriously ill, and we have Allah’s book with us and that is sufficient for us.” But the Companions of the Prophet (�) differed about this and there was a hue and cry. On that the Prophet (�) said to them, “Go away (and leave me alone). It is not right that you should quarrel in front of me”.’ » Source: Al Bukhâri, Sahîh, vol. I, tradition N°114 ; see also Summarized Sahîh al-Bukhâri by Al-Imâm Zain-ud-Din Ahmad ibn Abdul-Lateef Az-Zubaidi, translated by Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khân, p. 100, trad. N°94, published by Maktaba Dar-us-Salâm, Riyadh. [I only have the summarized version, but Al-Bukhârî exists also on the Internet, on the following page: www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/]

Actually, these words “hasbunâ kitabullâh” became so famous that some people accused Omar for wanting to destroy any book that wasn’t the Qur’an. For example, my professor of philosophy at the University actually said before students that caliph ‘Omar ordered the destruction of the Great library in Alexandria and that it was the proof of the Arabic savagery! However, the Great Library was burned down by Julius Caesar, by mistake though, some forty years before Jesus Christ was born! An intellectual from Belgrade wrote a text in a daily newspaper against caliph ‘Omar and said, “Beware of the man of just one book”. So I wrote an article proving that it wasn’t ‘Omar who burned down the library, and that another smaller library of Alexandria had been burned down by the order of the Byzantine emperor Theodosius! I said in the article that ‘Omar didn’t even want ‘Amr ibn al-‘As to conquer Egypt, as he didn’t want a sea to separate the Muslims from their caliph (this data was in Philip Hitti’s History of the Arabs, the only one I had read at the time). It is incredible how rumours start and how they are being spread!!!

The other hadîth about 12 khulafâ actually says there would be twelve amîrs, “ithnâ ‘ashara amîran, kulluhum min Quraysh” and it is in Bukhârî, The Book of Ahkâm, vol. 9, trad. N°329, as well as Summerized Sahîh al-Bukhâri by Al-Imâm Zain-ud-Din Ahmad ibn Abdul-Lateef Az-Zubaidi, translated by Dr Muhammad Muhsin Khân, p. 1026, trad. N°2209, published by Maktaba Dar-us-Salâm, Riyadh.

It’s true that in a way the Shiites betrayed imam Hussein, because they invited him themselves to come to Iraq and liberate them from a governor who was unjust, but when he almost got there, he met the poet Farazdaq coming from Iraq who told him, “Their tongues are with you and their swords are on you”, meaning that they would not fight with him. How was he supposed to fight a well trained army with only 70 people, among which there were children? It’s funny, but whenever I hear some Shiites say, “yâ laytanâ law kunnâ ma‘akum lanafûzu fawzân ‘azîman” or something like that, I don’t believe it, because most people aren’t courageous enough to fight injustice, they prefer being armchair critics. I once asked a Shiite scholar from Iran, who came to Serbia because they usually send scholars once a year even to the remotest countries, in order to answer religious questions, and asked him why the people hit themselves during the days of ‘Ashura, and he replied that it wasn’t

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necessary at all, that the Prophet himself only cried when he foretold that his grandson would be killed, but hitting oneself isn’t supposed to be an act bringing you closer to God.

Anyway, it shocks me when the Taliban kill Shiite Muslims because Muslims aren’t supposed to fight among themselves. I wish they redirected their energy on fighting against the foreign armies who occupy their lands...

Where exactly does the Nahjul Balaghah say that ‘Ali ibn Abî Talib denies being a divinely guided imam?

Regarding jealousy, I think I’m not a jealous woman because I come from the ex Communist block. I have a feeling that people who suffered from Communist dictatorship became without values, cruel and ruthless. This is why I am emotionally distant as I have seen everything in life (war, death, loss of national identity, loss of home country, etc.) as if I were one hundred and fifty years old.

Communism really marks you for life! I don’t understand people who think that genetic engineering with stem cells is wrong because nothing shocks me – only God creates out of nothing, and humans have to start with a stem cell. All this heritage comes from communism, which was the most dangerous ideology of the century and I’m determined to fight against it during my whole lifetime. Marx used to reject the whole idea of family as an institution because it was an invention of bourgeoisie! […]

Personally, I have a huge problem because of not being born in a Muslim family, so I neglect my ritual prayers as I never had an example to follow, I only have a strong faith and a sort of tawakkul in all situations of life. But it’s somehow philosophical, without being too implicated in religious rites, although I enjoy praying very much.

I simply love when people don’t follow a madhhab and find their own way according to the proof they find in the Qur’an! That, I believe, is the best way to the truth.

And finally, last but not least, I’m sending you some links regarding a new group of Muslims called “The Qur’anists”. I have a close friend from Tunisia who told me about them, so I went on their web page and was intrigued – they actually reject the hadîth altogether! It reminds me a lot of Protestantism that wanted to base the faith only on Scriptures, faith and grace of God. Well, even if it is true that only the Qur’an is 100% authentic and that some traditions aren’t, even if they are right on some points, rejecting all traditions is exaggerated... I’m going to answer to them, because they make certain mistakes in their analysis. If you’d like, we might do it together. Tell me what you think. Here are the links:

www.free-minds.org www.progressivemuslims.org Hoping to hear from you soon and promising to write back always, even if it’s late,

Wishing you a happy New Hijri Year,

Your faithful sister forever

AMINA

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-----Original Message----- From: Natasha Jevtovic Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 15:53:29 To: <koran114@aol.com> Subject: The Hadith Conspiracy and the Distortion of Islam Salaam alaikum Mr. Muhammed Asadi, I'm writing to you regarding your article on the Hadith Conspiracy and the Distortion of Islam. I examined it with great care, but I unfortunately don't have the full nine volumes of Al-Bukhâri, just the abridged version, translated by the same M. Muhsin Khan. I do accept the idea that the hadîth cannot be 100% authentic – because only the Qur'an is – and that the "science of men" isn't enough to test the authenticity, without checking out the "matn" or the text itself of the tradition. It is a good and innovative approach, because the traditions are meant to be compared to the Qur'an and rejected if they prove to be contradictory to the Divine Book. However, each research for the truth must be done with intellectual honesty and not based on the attempts to prove right one's points. This is the approach I used to accept Islam (as I grew up in a Communist and atheist society) - I searched for the truth only and looked everywhere, in Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism or modern sects. I studied the Arabic language and Islam and I like to follow common sense, refusing to accept anything for granted without double checking. I hope for your own good that you'll do the same. 1. You said, "The prophet according to Bukhari in one of the narration tells his companion Abu-Dharr Ghafari that the sun goes around the earth (421, pg. 283, vol. 4)." I checked out the tradition in question. You misinterpreted this hadîth, because it never said that the sun went around the earth, but that it prostrated before the Throne of God. I quote: "...It goes (i.e. travels) till it prostrates itself underneath the Throne, and takes permission to rise again, and it is permitted and then it will be about to prostrate itself but its prostration will not be accepted, and it will ask permission to go on its course, but it will not be permitted, but it will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the west. And that is the interpretation of the Statement of Allah, 'And the Sun runs on (tajrî) its fixed course for a term (appointed). That is the decree of Allah, the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing'" (Koran, 36:38). The Qur'an says in the chapter Ar-Rahmân, i.e. the All Merciful, "wa-sh-shamsu wa-l-qamaru yasjudân" meaning "the Sun and the Moon prostrate themselves", i.e. before God. Not physically, of course, but it should mean that they obey the principles laid down by Allah, as if they worshipped Him, not literaly by bowing down, but by accepting their existence in a limited period of time, as says the hadîth, "for an appointed term". Even the astronomers know that the Sun will cease to exist one day and transform itself into a red giant or white dwarf, whatever, I don't remember which one. When people say today that the Sun rises, it is in a figurative way and

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they don't mean that it goes somewhere to sleep. The Koran uses the term "tajrî" meaning that the Sun "runs on" or moves in the expanding universe, just like the rest of the solar system and all galaxies, but it doesn't say that it runs around the Earth. This is a well known scientific fact. 2. The hadîth you quoted, "no disease is contagious [Adwa]," Hadith 649, page 435, volume 7, isn't there in the abridged version, but there is a similar one (vol 7, hadîth 608) that says the following: "There is no 'Adwa (no contagious disease is conveyed without Allah's permission), nor is there any bad omen (from birds), nor is there any Hâmah, nor is there (any bad omen in the month of) Safar, and one should run away from the leper as one runs away from a lion". When translating the term 'Adwa in another tradition, M. Khan explains, "There is no 'Adwa (no disease is conveyed from the sick to the healthy without Allah's permission" (vol 7, hadîth 615). Personally, I would translate "Lâ 'adwâ" from this tradition as "there's no infection" or "there's no contagion" ... "but run away from the leper just like you run away from a lion." M. Muhsin Khan translates "safar" as a month in this tradition, and in another one (vol 7, 615) he says it's an abdominal disease. I see why, because this word indicates yellow colour, maybe he meant typhus. Maybe the Prophet meant to refer to that specific case... Anyway, when you quote someone without the context and without the full text, you may say anything. For example, the Bible says in the Psalms that there is no God. When you look the verse 14:1 in the Psalms more closely, you see, "The fool says in his heart: There is no God." If only the second part of the scripture is taken out of the context, one might open a Church and say that God does not really exist except in minds of the believers. 3. You wrote, "The Hadith mentions there being a cure for every ailment in black cumin seed [Hadith 591, pg. 400, vol 7]." Perhaps so. The traditions mention also Indian incense, cupping, or prayer. Apart from such herbs or honey, what other treatment existed back in those times? Another tradition says, "There is no disease that Allah has sent down, except that He also has sent down its treatment" (vol 7, t. 582). The tradition doesn't say which ones, but it isn't really the purpose of Islam or any other religion whatsoever to give answers to medical or astronomical problems, or even give historical facts. Religion is there to save souls and guide men to God. Qur'an isn't an encyclopaedia regrouping totality of human knowledge. When they're ill, people are supposed to know that they'll eventually die and meet God and try to make the encounter advantageous for them. But in those times, the Muslims seldom had food every day – Aisha says that it was only after the battle of Khaybar that she could eat dates to her heart's desire – and some verses of the Qur'an mention extreme poverty of the Prophet's own family (see Qur'an, 76:7-12). The traditions explain the context of the revelation of these verses, and say that the Prophet's own daughter had small children to feed and yet she gave some bread she baked, three days in a row, to a poor, an orphan and a slave who knocked on her door. Of course, she and her children remained hungry. So knowing this context, I don't believe that the Prophet could have luxury goods such as

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expensive medicines coming from Persia or Byzance. There were no doctors whatsoever in Arabia and there were only five literate people in Makkah when the Prophet started receiving the Message, so cumin seeds were probably good enough. I'm not saying that the Qur'an is supposed to be interpreted only in the context – we are supposed to see the importance of these verses today and apply them to our everyday life – but we can't just forget all that ever happened in history and rule out all traditions that give us important indications as to how and why it all happened. With the competence we have today, it shouldn't be a problem to perpetrate a critical analysis of the traditions and accept only those that follow the Qur'an. The tradition on camel urine isn't there in the abridged version, so I have to check elsewhere and I will need some more time, but I'll investigate it too. You also wrote, "The Hadith mentions that "fever" is from the "heat of hell" [Hadith 621, 622, page 417, vol 7]. Atrocious!" Actually, the name of the chapter is "Fever is from the heat of Hell", so the words come from Bukhârî himself, it isn't a hadîth. Then comes the hadîth which explains how high temperature was treated with water. 4. Where do the hadîth say that the Prophet ate with a leper? No reference was given. 5. The famous Hadith about the fly: "If a fly falls into the vessel of any of you, let him dip all of it (in the vessel) and then throw it away [and use the material in the vessel], for in one of its wings there is a disease and in the other there is a healing [Bukhari, Hadith 673, pg. 452, vol 7]. Here's the footnote from the abridged version: "Medically it is well known that a fly carries some pathogens on some parts of its body as mentioned by the Prophet... Similarly, Allah created organisms and other mechanisms which kill these pathogens e.g. Penicillin Fungus kills pathogenic organisms like Staphylococci and others... Recently experiments have been done under supervision which indicate that a fly carries the disease (pathogens) plus the antidote for those pathogenic organisms.(...) There are longitudinal yeast cells living in order to repeat their life cycle protrude through respiratory tubules of the fly and if the fly is dipped in a liquid, these cells burst in the fluid and the content of those cells is an antidote for the pathogens that the fly carries" (Translation of Bukhârî by M. Muhsin Khan, p. 945). 6. You say, "Ibn Kathir (2/29 and 50/1)... suggests that the earth is "carried on a giant bull." Ibn Kathir isn't a collector of traditions but a commentator of the Qur'an. Anyone is free to write a comment as he likes, anyone is entitled to be wrong and can be judged by the critics. But Ibn Kathir doesn't show on the list of six authentic Sunni collectors of Prophetic traditions, neither does he appear on the list of four Shiite ones... If he was wrong, he was wrong to himself. 7. "So called "Muslims" kill hundreds of dogs all over the world and consider them unclean". Muslims don't kill dogs all over the world! Saying such a thing is very unjust and you should bring a proof for such an anti-Islamic statement, which could be considered as racist in France where I live and punished by Criminal Law. Can you

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prove your statement by bringing official statistics, or a research done at some serious institution... anything? Muslims do consider dogs unclean and never keep them in the houses as pets, but prefer keeping them outside to keep their house, when and if they do have a dog, or use them for hunting. Even the dog from the cave mentioned in the sura N°18 was left at the entrance, "...and their dog, stretching its paws on the threshold" (Qur'an, 18:18). It is typically Western to have pets at home, probably because the society has become individualist and people see less and less of other humans. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal isn't on the list of six authentic Sunni collectors of Prophetic traditions, for a very good reason. He wasn't a collector of traditions but a jurist. He was the founder of the Hanbali school of thought and collected even non authentic traditions because he preferred them over his own interpretation – he was just too scared of being wrong. 8. You say, "Certain sects in Islam however, based on the authority of the Hadith forbid clams, shrimp, crab etc." You are talking of the Shiite Muslims. The Law of Moses also forbids the same foods, there must be a link. Which is why I pay attention as to who is writing the texts I read – is he a respected scholar or just a passionate preacher who has no academic background. I highly dislike reading on your website "Brother Naveed" or "Brother Layth" and not seeing the identity of the writers, in order to check their biography, their other publications, sources they used... I'm taking the articles from the Free Minds webpage very seriously and I hope not to find more such errors in future. Please double check or ask someone, because when you misquote something in order to make a point, it isn't intellectually honest. Search for the truth, don't search to prove a point. When you find the truth, stick to it wherever you find it. Sincerely Yours, Natasha Amina Jevtovic, Paris, France

Note: This article was sent to M. Muhammad Asadi, who never replied. Furthermore, it was posted on the forum of Free-Minds.org, under the title “Thoughts on intellectual honesty” but it was mostly ignored. The only comment, sent by a certain Mushu, was the following:

“I do not believe the authors of those articles are academics with published works. You'll find the majority of people writing about the reformation of the Islamic civilisation are not "respected scholars".

http://free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9602840.0

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From: Abu Mohammad Al Sunni

To: natashamina@hotmail.com Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 16:11:29 +0000 Subject: Re: The Hadith Conspiracy and the Distortion of Islam Absolutely brilliant rebuttal... although I do have my reservation about the paragraph about Ahmad ibn Hanbal as he was not just a jurist and founder of the Hanbali school but he is also one of the major collectors of hadith. His Musnad is a compilation of 30000 hadith i.e. the largest body of hadith in existence. But aside from that point I agree with rest of article and greatly enjoyed it. I might just take your offer of a tag team against the Quranists / hadith rejecters. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

From: natashamina@hotmail.com

To: Abu Mohammad Al Sunni Dearest brother, Salaam alaikum wa rahmatullah, Thank you kindly for your remark and compliments. Yes, I know that Ahmad Ibn Hanbal was also a collectioner of hadîth and that his collection is the largest one available, but his Musnad isn't regarded as a hadîth collection only, which is why I wrote it. I stand corrected. I hope M. Asadi will write back and I'll send you his reply. Thanks for the offer of joining the tag team, let's win them over for Islam! Your sister forever,

Natasha Amina JEVTOVIC