A few weeks ago I was sent a preview copy of a book which I was to soon discover could be as crucial to Muslims in the West as Gai Eatons’ ‘Islam and the Destiny of Man’ or Jeffrey Lang’s ‘Losing My Religion’. The reason was the same as for those two essential works: it actually addresses, in a cogent and frank way, the main causes of Muslim and non – Muslim doubts about truth of Islam. And it provides answers – but not the easy populist and frequently falsifiable ones that Muslims have hitherto had to be contented with.

Under the deceptively bland title of ‘Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith‘, the authors have produced a wide ranging exploration into the truth of Islam and more fundamentally, how we know anything is true. Both a survey of controversies and sectarianism in modern and classical Islam as well as a dissection of those issues and hadith which cause consternation to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, it answers with great honesty and effectiveness the kinds of questions I receive on this site daily. Furthermore, it does so from a place of authenticity within Islam (the references are worth the asking price alone).

Taking in everything from wife beating through divinely sanctioned violence and slavery to comparative religion, the book is frighteningly ambitious and yet succeeds wonderfully.

The authors’ re-examination of the issue of apostasy killing is certain to infuriate many Muslims and Islamophobes in equal measure – no bad thing given how politicised this issue has become, with both sides disregarding theology and using it dishonestly as a means of gaining popularity amongst their cohorts.

I have been aware of and impressed by Avicenna Academies’ work for some time now and have often featured it on this site (their ‘Avicenna Answers’ website is one of the best Islamic resources on the web, though admittedly, that is not saying much) but I must admit, I had no idea they were capable of such a wide reaching treatment of what ails modern Muslims. After much pleading, they have allowed me to include an excerpts from the book before it goes on sale this week.

I always tell readers who have doubts about Islam to consult Lang’s essential ‘Losing My Religion’, but with the imminent release of this work I will have to direct them to this masterpiece: I can honestly say it will come to be seen, if not in the authors lifetime, then eventually, as one of the most important works ever produced about Islam in the English language.

About the Book

In Islam there are many sources of religion, three of them are agreed upon by all groups of Sunni Muslims. In order of priority they are Quran (القران), Hadith (الحديث) and Ijma’a (الإجماع). This book will deal with the thousands of hadith that form part of the Islamic tradition.

Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith is a manual which explains the methodology of the traditional Islamic Hanafi School towards hadith. There are thousands of hadith; the concern of both the scholar and the layman is what their approach should be to these narrations. We know some hadith are accepted into theology or belief, and thus they need to fulfil the highest criteria of validity. Other hadith are accepted into law and everyday practice, but for these the burden of proof required is less than in issues of theology – yet they still require strong evidence in favour of their authenticity, especially when they can result in rulings about legal punishments (and especially capital punishment). Yet others are examples of how to follow the Prophetic tradition or words of wisdom, and consequently the degree of verifiability required for these is much lower. We also have some hadith which are completely rejected based on a variety of principles which are discussed in detail in the manual. Therefore, succinct principles to be used in the application of hadith are of the utmost importance. These principles were established by great Scholars from the early period of the development of Islamic theology and jurisprudence such as Imam Abu Hanifa (d. 767/148 AH), Imam Malik (d. 795/179 AH) and Imam Shafi’i (d. 820/204 AH).

Despite the modern day epistemic confusion when it comes to hadith, these principles were in fact strictly followed by Imam Abu Hanifa and the early Hanafis.

322 Pages (with Index, tables, diagrams and some Arabic text), Hardback/Dust jacket

Price £15

Order here:http://www.avicennaacademy.com/mustalah-book/

Another brief review:

‘I’m going to go all out here and say that I think this is one of the best books in the English language on Islam period, whether for Muslims or non-Muslims. I seriously rank it up there with the works of Gai Eaton or Jeffrey Lang. The reason is not because of literary merit (it is written in a simple, unpretentious style) but rather because it addresses, under it’s rather misleading title, those exact issues which cause people to have serious doubts about Islam, both from within and without the faith.

This is the first book I have seen which basically systematically tackles all of the controversial hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), not only on a case by case basis but also in PRINCIPLE, so you can generalise the authors’ approach, which they identify with that of traditional Islam, to other purported narrations from the Prophet Muhammad. Further, it does so in an honest way rather than bending over backwards with hard-to-swallow apologetics just because the narrations are in the canonical collections such as ‘Sahih Al Bukhari’.

For example, the narration in ‘Bukhari’ that there is no capital punishment for murdering non-Muslims in cold blood. Though it is in a canonical collection, Muslim scholars to a ‘T’ rejected it and considered it a forgery. But it was happily brought back by puritanical and violent movements in Islam, most recently ISIS. But people trying to appear ‘authentic’ today from within the Muslim community as well as Islamophobes refuse to deny this narration as the earlier generations did. Furthermore, when they do make excuses for it, they never say that Scholars such as Bukhari erred by including it and others like it. This leaves Muslims confused and vulnerable.

The authors approach empowers readers to tackle these narrations and for added measure they show without a shadow of a doubt that the narration was rejected by Muslim communities of the past, providing extensive references. They also tackle controversial issues such as warfare, apostasy killing, dress codes, gender segregation etc. They stubbornly refuse to ‘play to the gallery’, whether that is Muslims or secular folk.

It really does not spare the rod for Muslims or Islamophobes and is a really beautiful example of honesty and critical inquiry. Most of the time, Muslims and others have to put up with Evangelical style posturing and half (or non-truths) about controversial hadiths from Salafo-Wahhabi or other groups with an ‘angle’. This leaves them with doubts and at the end of the day, the arguments are weak and are clearly of a ‘no retreat, no surrender’ sort, with most popular Muslim groups being totally unwilling to ‘reject’ a hadith from ‘canonical’ collections, even if these were not accepted by Islamic scholars and the Companions of the prophet. This obsession with cheap arguments, spurious hadith and puritanism (often to appeal to Saudi or Gulf funding) is causing many to leave Islam and many others to not consider it seriously in the first place.

The authors write from the earliest Hanafi texts (a school of jurisprudence which is the earliest and still most followed in Islam) and remove the puritanical and modernist accretions from the faith and leave an easy to follow and understand religion. I was very impressed with the breadth of their knowledge in both Islam, comparative religion, philosophy and other disciplines.

There are about 60 pages of references, many from hard to find books, lots of tables and illustrations to aid understanding and an extensive glossary. It’s just not like the myopic, sectarian and generally un-academic works Muslims have had to put up with in English from the so-called Islamic ‘Scholars’. The author’s voice is articulate, sincere and comes across as genuinely concerned for humanity and the future of religion in general, not just Islam.

In summary, I would recommend this to anyone who has doubts about Islam (from any background).’

CONTENTS

Arabic Transliteration Key 1

Prologue 2

A Short Biography Of Imam Abu Hanifa 6

Introduction 10

Part I – The Connected Chain 15

Types of Sunnah 16

Verbal Sunnah 20

How the Narrations Are Connected [To the Prophet] 23

Mutawatir [Mass Narration] 24

Mashhūr [Famous Narrations] 29

Aĥad [The Statement of One Person] 34

The Ruling on Aĥad [Narrations] 40

Rulings on the Rejection of Aĥad 45

The Categories of the Narrators of Aĥad 49

The Known Narrators 53

The Unknown Narrators 60

Summary 68

The Brief Specifications For A Narrator 70

Intellect 73

Memory 76

Righteousness 82

Islam 86

Maturity 90

Freed from Innovation 93

Part II – The Disconnected Chain 96

Categories of Disconnection 97

The Ruling 102

Implicit Disconnection 107

Disconnection Due to Opposing [A Stronger Proof of Islam] 109

The Reasons for Comparing Aĥad to the rest of the Religion 111

Types of Opposing 115

Disconnection Due to a Defect in the Narrator 128

The Ruling 131

Part III – The Subject of the Narration 136

The Subject of the Narration 137

The Ruling 138

Part IV – Types of Sunnah 144

About the Narration 145

Types of Narration 147

Rulings Pertaining to the Conditions of the Receiver 149

Initial Condition (Azīmah) In Listening 150

Replacement (Rukhsah) In Narrating 156

Writing the Hadith 163

Issues Pertaining to the Narrator 167

Condition for Narrating Hadith Literally or by Meaning 169

Types of Sunnah in Terms of their Meaning 171

The Ruling 173

Types of Narrations and their Strength 178

Part V – Criticism of Narrations 181

Criticisms from the Narrator 182

The Ruling 183

Criticism from Other than the Narrator 189

Criticism from the Companions (Ŝaĥabah) 190

Criticism from the Scholars of Hadith 193

Explained Criticism 196

Types of Accepted Defect 198

Types of Agreed Criticism 201

Ruling on the Types of Criticism of the Narrator 202

Reasons Which Are Not Valid Defects 203

[Miscellaneous] Issues 207

Part VI – Sunnah of Action and Tacit Approval 209

Sunnah of Action 210

Ruling on Following the Four Types 215

Tacit Approval 221

Practical Application of the Hanafi Hadith Methodology 223

Apostasy 226

Niqaab [Face Veil] 232

Black Magic 237

Advice about Excessive Involvement in Hadith 243

Conclusion 248

Glossary 251

Index 262

Bibliography 265

SAMPLE PAGES

Prologue

There are many purported sources of the Islamic religion, three of which are agreed upon by all the groups of Sunni Muslims. They are, in order of priority, the Quran, the Hadith (which report the actions, statements and tacit approval of the Prophet (r)) and Ijmāʿ (consensus). This book deals with the many thousands of hadith which form a part of the Islamic tradition. Are all these Hadith accepted? If not, then which ones are rejected? And why?

The principles of categorising and using hadith were set up by the two major schools of jurisprudential thought – the Hanafis and Shafi’is. Their respective principles of hadith result in the theology and jurisprudence of that particular school.

During the past eight hundred years, Shafi’i principles of hadith (‘Muŝŧalaĥ‘) have become very well-known, to the point where they were even adopted by most Hanafis. In contemporary times, nearly all Islamic institutes tend to teach Shafi’i hadith methodology. This has had the unfortunate result of confusion for Hanafis, since the principles of hadith they were learning are not congruent with the Hanafi jurisprudence they follow. A great deal of cognitive dissonance results.

For instance, consider the hadith about black magic affecting the Prophet Muhammad (r), reportedly narrated by Aisha (y) in ‘Sahih al-Bukhari’, a book which is considered by many Muslims in current times as being second only to the Quran itself. After being affected by said black magic, “The Prophet (r) continued for such-and-such time imagining that he had slept [had sexual relations] with his wives, when in fact he had not….”[i] In a second narration concerning the same event, also found in Sahih al-Bukhari, it is stated that “Once the Prophet (r) was bewitched, so that he began to imagine that he had done a thing when in fact, he had not done

it.” These hadith highlight quite a few important issues. Firstly, the mind of the Prophet (r) supposedly being affected to such an extent that he was imagining or hallucinating events occurring and not aware of what was happening around him. This could bring the entire religion of Islam into question. For instance, were parts of the Quran revealed during this time? Could parts of the Quran have been missed by the Prophet (r) due to him allegedly losing control of his mind? Are there then errors in the Quran as the Prophet (r) did not have control? The main role of any Prophet is to convey the message of God, and if there is a possibility of distortion in the message at the very point at which it is being revealed, it seemingly renders the entire process worthless. A message that can, even in theory, be distorted or contain significant errors cannot be trusted and therefore it can be argued that the entire religion cannot be trusted.

Ibn Hajar Asqalani (d. 1449/852 AH) is a famous pioneer of the Shafi’i Muŝŧalaĥ of hadith. He is also one of the main reasons for ‘Sahih al-Bukhari’ currently holding the position of the second most valued book in Islam. His commentary on Bukhari’s collection is considered the most authoritative amongst all of the scholars of hadith. But in this commentary he not only accepts this hadith, he compounds the problem by stating that the hadith was ‘only rejected by heretics’. [ii] Thus according to Ibn Hajar at least, rejecting this hadith results in a person leaving the parameters of Sunni Islam.

Qadi Iyaad (d. 1149/543 AH), a Maliki scholar, who is renowned for writing one of the best biographies of the Prophet (r), also tried to address this issue and explains that he believes that the magic did not affect the mind of the Prophet (r) but rather his body, which resulted in the Prophet (r) suffering from sexual impotence.[iii] This statement of Qadi Iyaad also highlights serious issues. From the outset, to speak about the Prophet (r) in this manner is highly unbecoming. Also, from whom was this information taken? Which of the wives of the Prophet (r) informed the people of the physical problems facing her husband? Is this not an

insult to the wives of the Prophet (r)? In fact, none of them did and this whole story is only a conjecture of the scholars!

The Hanafis on the other hand do not try to give their ‘own’ interpretation to this hadith and instead reject it outright based on their classical principles. The first question that arises is what are the effects of black magic? Imam Baidawi, a Hanafi scholar from the thirteenth century, explains in his Tafsīr (interpretation of the Quran) that someone affected by such magic loses his ”Aql” (brain and mind).[iv] This would bring the message of Islam into disrepute as the mind of the Prophet (r) has been compromised.

But the primary problem with this hadith is that it directly contradicts the text of the Quran: “We are most knowing of how they listen to it, when they listen to you, and when they are in private conversation, the wrongdoers say, “You follow none but a man affected by magic.”[v] According to God, the people who said the Prophet (r) was a man affected by magic were wrongdoers or oppressors (‘žālimīn’). Imam Abu Mansur al-Māturidī (d. 944/333 AH), a renowned scholar from the fourth Islamic century and the founder of Māturidī ʿAqīda (theological School), denied the notion that the Prophet (r) was affected by black magic at all and rejected this hadith. He also said the reason for the revelation (Asbāb al-Nuzūl) of ‘Surah Al-Falaq’ (The Daybreak) and ‘Surah Al-Naas’ (Mankind), which are two portions of the Quran which some claim refer to the Prophet (r) being affected by magical forces, was not as a result of magic at all but instead he emphasised that the two chapters were revealed whilst the Prophet (r) was merely on a journey.[vi] Imam Abu Bakr al-Jassas al-Razi al-Hanafi was a prominent Hanafi jurist from the fourth century, one of the most respected scholars in the field of Uŝūl (epistemic principles), and the grand-teacher of Abul Hasan al Quduri, who wrote the most famous and most commonly used primer in Hanafi jurisprudence, ‘Mukhtasar al-Quduri’. He not only rejected this hadith but stated “the ignorant of the Hashawis (anthropomorphists, those who believe that God is a form or body bound by space) narrated this hadith without knowing it was fabricated.”[vii] These strong statements of the Hanafi scholars demonstrate the philosophy of the school concerning certain types of hadith. As we can see, the issues at stake are of crucial importance for both Islamic theology and comparative religious studies.

This is the first book which contains the traditional Hanafi principles of hadith, with an English translation and commentary in one volume. It is recommended to readers of all backgrounds who interact with hadith, but especially those who have read hadith and are left confused because they seemingly defy logic, ethics, or clash with the principles of the Islamic religion.

INTRODUCTION

This book is a manual which explains the methodology of the traditional Islamic Hanafi School towards hadith. There are thousands of hadith; the concern of both the scholar and the layman is what their approach should be to these narrations. We know that some of these hadith are accepted into theology or belief, and thus need to fulfil the highest criteria of proof. Other hadith are accepted into law and everyday practice, but for these the burden of proof required is less than in issues of theology – yet they still require strong evidence in favour of their authenticity, especially when they can result in rulings about legal punishments (and especially capital punishment). Yet others are examples of how to follow the Prophetic tradition or words of wisdom, and consequently the degree of verifiability required for these is much lower. We also have some hadith which are completely rejected based on a variety of principles which will be discussed later in the manual. Therefore, succinct principles to be used in the application of hadith are of the utmost importance. These principles were established by great Scholars from the early period of the development of Islamic theology and jurisprudence such as Imam Abu Hanifa (d. 767/148 AH), Imam Malik (d. 795/179 AH) and Imam Shafi’i (d. 820/204 AH).

Despite todays’ epistemic confusion amongst Muslims when it comes to hadith, these principles were in fact strictly followed by Imam Abu Hanifa and the early Hanafis. An example is the following hadith found in the collection of Bukhari: “When two people engage in a transaction, each of them has the right to choose to annul it as long as they haven’t parted and are still together…”[1] Imam Abu Hanifa took issue with the hadith stating that the transaction is not complete until the participants separate.

Ibrahim bin Bashar (d. 844/230 AH) claims that Sufyan ibn Uyaynah (d. 815/200 AH) said; “Imam Abu Hanifa used to reject the hadith of Prophet (r), and he gave some examples”. Regarding the above hadith Imam Abu Hanifa said; “what happens if the both of them are on a boat, how are they able to separate?”[2] In another statement relayed by Bishr bin Mufaddal about the same hadith, Imam Abu Hanifa said “this is poetry”, meaning that this hadith is a fabrication. Bishr bin Mufaddal then narrated another hadith to Imam Abu Hanifa which is also found in Bukhari; “Qatadah narrated from Anas that a Jewish man fractured the skull of a woman by assaulting her with two rocks, so the Prophet (r) fractured the man’s skull with two rocks as well.”[3] Imam Abu Hanifa said this hadith was a ‘delusion’.[4]

Imam Abu Hanifa was not rejecting the words of the Prophet (r) but rather was denying that these words came from the Prophet (r) in the first place. This distinction is very important when trying to understand the methodology of the Hanafis.

As stated at the outset, this is the first book in the modern era which contains the science of hadith based solely on the principles of the Hanafi school of thought. Across the globe, people are taught Shafi’i Muŝŧalaĥ, which is in some instances taught in tandem with the Hanafi Muŝŧalaĥ, leaving the student or lay individual confused.

Hanafi Muŝŧalaĥ, Māturidī ʿAqīda, Hanafi Uŝūl and Hanafi Fiqh are all cogs in the same machine. Their principles are interconnected and there should never be a situation when there is any conflict between them. Hanafi Uŝūl are the principles used to derive rulings based on the primary sources, which are the Quran and Sunnah. This subject also develops rulings that are based on scholarly consensus (Ijmāʿ), and the application of analogical reasoning (Qiyyās) in order to derive legal precedent. Qiyyās is used when matters are not mentioned specifically in the primary sources but have some similarity to issues which are found therein. Hanafi Muŝŧalaĥ is in fact a branch of Hanafi Uŝūl which deals solely with the principles of verifying hadith. Once these principles are applied, the results form a part of

Hanafi theology which is commonly known as ‘Māturidī ʿAqīda’ (one of the two great subdivisions of Sunni theology, with the other being Ashʿarīsm), as well as Hanafi Fiqh, which are foundational legal principles and maxims.

An example may help illustrate this point. Take the hadith in the collection of Abu Dawood where Abu Zahr (y) is lying on his chest, and the Prophet (r) reportedly said “Don’t lie on your chest, as the people of Hell will be doing this.”[5]

The later Māturidīs were heavily influenced by the principles of the Ashʿarīs, which is generally the theological orientation of the Shafi’i and Maliki Schools, and therefore based on this hadith stated that lying on one’s chest is major sin.[6] According to classical Māturidīs however, this hadith is in fact rejected, and the basis of this is the Hanafi epistemology in the scrutinising of hadith. The Māturidīs find it highly improbable that the Ŝaĥabah (companions of the Prophet (r)) would not know that lying on one’s chest is a major sin in Islam, since it implies that the Ŝaĥabah as a body were either heedless or ignorant of such basic rulings. The second issue is that any major sin is a fundamental issue, which everyone should know, yet in this case it is narrated by only one person in a single narration. In Uŝūl this is known as ʿUmūm Al-Balwā’, an issue that affects a large number of people yet only a few people narrate the hadith. The acceptance of this hadith will result in the lowering of the status of the Ŝaĥabah, as it either demonstrates their ignorance or their inability to understand the importance of relaying such a crucial component of the religion to the rest of the Muslim nation. Therefore based on this, the hadith is rejected.

What has gone before may lead people to claim that the author is being ‘sectarian’ or igniting divisions between the different schools such as the Shafi’is or the Hanafis. However, this is in fact a spurious and misleading claim as it is not sectarian to state one’s schools’ position academically. Rather, people today paradoxically remind Muslims that there is a mercy in the differences of opinions of the

scholars and yet at the same time insist that everyone must follow the Shafi’i/Hanbali hadith methodology, denouncing all others as heretics or sectarians and even claiming that all Sunni Muslims have agreed upon (‘Ijmāʿ’ or consensus) the Shafi’i principles – a claim which we shall see does not hold up to scrutiny. The same claim is frequently made about the collection of Bukhari, with vociferous protests that Bukhari is ‘agreed upon’ and that ‘no-one’ in classical Sunni Islam rejects or questions the hadith contained within it. However, this is itself an exaggeration and sectarian challenge and seeks to stifle the variety within classical Sunnism by insisting on a single (usually Shafi’i or Hanbali) approach to hadith, when there are just as valid (and in the case of the Hanafi and Maliki Schools, earlier) alternatives. Our purpose is not challenge or debate but rather to present the diversity of traditional Islam so that students and readers can make informed choices, as opposed to enforcing a false orthodoxy as many would like to…

But one might ask: why are these principles we hope to elucidate applied only to hadith and not to the Quran? Or to put it another way, since the Quran is uncritically accepted as authentic by all Muslims, why do we not extend the same courtesy to the hadith literature? The answer lies in the fact that the Quran is ‘mutawātir’ (mass narrated)[8] and thus considered totally reliable and beyond the possibility of forgery – therefore we don’t have principles that test whether aspects of it should be accepted or rejected.

With hadith, principles are however needed, as we have thousands of strong, weak and fabricated hadith. The differences in the schools are in great measure due to the different principles they follow in the science of hadith. When hadith scholars state that a person is a strong or weak narrator, the reason must be

investigated (according to the Hanafis) to establish if we agree with the judgement. For example, if it is stated that a person is weak due to their being an expert in legal reasoning (Fiqh), we reject this explanation for excluding he or she as a narrator.[9] The reason given for rejecting a narrator has to be something that is cogent and will reasonably affect the authenticity of the narration. The hadith scholars, such as Imam Bukhari, are not given a monopoly over such things – at least according to the Hanafis.

The Maliki methodology bears some similarity to that of the Hanafis, whereas the Shafi’is and Hanbalis (and modern day Salafists and Wahhabis for that matter) differ from both Hanafis and Malikis in their principles of scrutinising hadith. The reason for this in our opinion is that Imams Abu Hanifa and Malik applied a high level of reasoning and deduction when establishing axioms to authenticate hadith. An emphasis was placed on the application of the narration by the Ŝaĥabah (with Imam Malik further specifying this to the Ŝaĥabah of Madinah).[10] The Shafi’i and Hanbali methodology places a greater or even exclusive emphasis on the narrator and whether he meets their criteria.[11] The Hanafis scrutinise the text and content of the narration as well as the narrators and chain of transmission.

With our necessary preamble completed, let us now begin to examine the Hanafi approach to hadith.

Niqaab [Face Veil]

The ‘niqaab’ is a veil for the face that leaves the area around the eyes clear. Nearly all scholars agree that the hijaab (a simple headscarf) is compulsory but there is a disagreement about the niqaab. Some scholars hold it is compulsory to wear whereas on the opposite side of spectrum many believe that it is recommended that women do not wear the niqaab. This issue leaves many people from various communities uncomfortable and therefore it will be beneficial to compare it to the Hanafi principles of hadith. This is the strongest hadith used (although others are deployed in the same vein) in terms of authenticity by those who propagate the compulsion of wearing the niqaab:

Narrated ‘Abdullah bin Abbas: Al-Fadl (y) (his brother) was riding behind Allah’s Apostle and a woman from the tribe of Khath’am came and Al-Fadl (y) started looking at her and she started looking at him. The Prophet turned Al-Fadl’s (y) face to the other side.[i]

The reasoning for the proof of niqaab that is given from this narration is that the actions of the Prophet (r) demonstrated the impermissibility of Al-Fadl ibn Abbas (y) looking at a woman. This hadith deals with the action of the Prophet (r) as opposed to the verbal statement. Therefore, according to what we have learnt, the action should have been applied specifically to the above situation rather than generally to all circumstances. This tradition does not meet the requirements of mutawātir nor mashhūr and so is aĥad. Consequently, for now there is a possibility it could be right and an equal possibility that it could be wrong…

Regular visitors to the site may remember the flurry of ‘warnings’, fake reviews and general mass hysteria amongst certain sects of Islam and Muslim speakers that greeted the launch of what one would have at first thought assumed would be a somewhat dry book of only academic interest on Hanafi hadith methodology about six months ago (you can see some hilarious ‘reviews’ of the book, using the interesting method of not having read it, in the comments section here:http://asharisassemble.com/2015/05/06/muslim-confused-finally-some-real-help-arrives/ The previous record holding ‘reviewer’ had possibly read up to about forty pages of the three hundred or so). In fact, it seems to have even inspired a copycat or ‘pirated’ book as well, which I guess is some kind of flattery.

Well it seems that finally, after those six months and what must have been, from the evidence and celebration on-line, a herculean collective effort by a cross party selection of Salafists and their familiars, someone has actually read and reviewed the book. And it only took half an Earth year!

Or perhaps not, if Nikita is to be believed…

An astonishing and frightening chronicle of lies, misdirection and disregard for the Muslim public’s intellectual and moral well-being by Salafists (and others) on this evidence. See for yourself – her ‘autopsy’ is very, shall we say, educational.

And as always, Nikitas, erm, ‘style’ is her own and not the editors or necessarily the site’s opinions.

By Suede Nikita

I have been alerted by readers and students to the ‘review’, which I will reproduce below, of a book that we have been advocating heavily for British and other Muslims on this site, ‘Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith’:

http://www.avicennaacademy.com/mustalah-book/

Having read the book, as a Maliki and non-Maturidi (the usual theological school of Hanifites), I of course had many disagreements with its author. But I advocated the book strongly for its honest and uncompromising portrayal of the classical Hanafi school and its willingness to furnish students such as my own with the tools they need to address the questions they have about Islam, most of which do indeed arise from hadith. I was also heartened to see scholars in the UK who were not grovelling for handouts from what can accurately be called ‘petro-Islam’ and were taking classical scholarship to the academic level it needs to be at to enter the UK mainstream.

Yet I was unsurprised to see from my students this piece, which is being gleefully promoted and forwarded by various groups within the Muslim community. The timing was amusing because, just as the recent election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour party in the UK sent both ‘right’ and ‘left’ into conniptions against him, the approval of this review showed what these groups and their followers actually think. Just like the political parties and parliamentary Labour party itself in the UK who claim that they are ‘democratic’ and ‘different’ and give people a ‘choice’, yet when someone they all don’t like comes on the scene, they suddenly forget their ‘differences’ and rally behind the common cause – in the case of Corbyn that no genuinely left wing person should be allowed to run for higher office and in the case of Sheikh Atabek that any hadith methodology differing from the Salafi/Hanbali one should not be countenanced under any circumstances.

Although the review is the very definition of hack job, with the author repeatedly demanding readers kowtow to argument from authority (despite his having no Islamic or academic qualification whatsoever – by his own admission) as well as the tried and tested method of attempting to fool the readership by inappropriate referencing, excessive verbiage and assuming that they can’t read Arabic as well as outright falsification (but in a very obvious way that would make an Islamophobe blush), I thought nonetheless that I would go through it here to highlight the distortions which so – called ‘students of knowledge’ like to carry out in the name of religion, so that readers can be suitably equipped and empowered against these misleading and banal diatribes.

It also illustrates something very sad; namely that Allah promised to protect the Quran and not ‘Islam’. We can see the truth of this in that Muslims are just as, if not more inclined to lie about religion than any of the other groups they accuse of this.

Although I detest the method of reproducing the original that one is critiquing, I could not help it in this as the errors were so profuse and brazen, so accept my apologies for this hackneyed ‘literary’ device.

Oh, and for lazy people or those who struggle with Arabic, here is my short, one word ‘review of the review’ here:

Or, if you are a glutton for punishment, the original is in purple below…

Past century and a half is marked by scores of books and articles written to question the authority of hadith in different ways. Some of the proponents of such ideas were blunt and bold enough to say that they consider no hadith a valid source on Islamic law and etiquette. There were and still around are others who do not claim to reject all hadiths but through their ad hoc approach they provide for themselves the laxity to reject almost every hadith at will. The commonality among these groups is in their frank and loud disavowal of the traditional knowledge stream.

We have all see this in the movies – you know, when they go to court and the lawyer tries to lead the witness to say what he wants. So before presenting anything resembling a review, he mentions hadith rejection. Because anyone who disagrees with him is automatically a heretic as he will soon accuse the authors of being (notice how he does not feel the need to state which hadith methodology he is following – presumably he is a sect unto himself, as indeed will also become apparent soon). The way academics do this is to at least present some evidence for their case and then make their accusation or conclusion. But the opening paragraph is meant to suitably put you in the mood of the noble defenders of hadith versus the modernists.

Atabek Shukurov’s work Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith, with translation and commentary by Sulaiman Ahmed, is however different because it makes no sweeping claim of the kind. In fact, it uses the name of the earliest and most widely followed scholarly stream within the broader Sunnite tradition. The central and incessantly repeated clamour on almost every page of the book is about rejuvenating and resuscitating the hadith approach of the Hanafi school. And it is under this tag all the claims are made against hadith, the second primary source of the Islamic worldview.

Something being a ‘second primary’ source is an oxymoron, since primary means ‘first or highest in rank or importance’. So what he wants to say is that hadith is a ‘secondary’ source in Islam. But he can’t bring himself to say that of course and this in fact reflects the confusion these individuals have between the Quran and the hadith.

As a tree is known by the fruit it bears the true merits of the book under review can be best gauged through the analysis of the ideas presented in its final section, “Practical Application of the Hanafi Hadith Methodology.” Apostasy is first of the three issues discussed. Making the peculiarly polemic attacks on just one hadith on the subject, it is suggested that per the Hanafi methodology the punishment of apostasy is not proven and “those scholars of the past and present who based on this choose to reject the killing of apostates should not be marginalised,” (p.231). Much to the reader’s disappointment not a single past or even present scholar is mentioned as one having rejected the killing of apostates. Every thinking reader must ask if the author can name a single, yes only a single, classical Hanafi scholar of note who rejected the capital punishment for apostates?

It’s actually a really banal technique of argumentation at work here and betrays the true purpose of these types of ‘reviews’ – to stop you reading the books they don’t want you to or engaging with the ideas they don’t want you to. As for the issue of apostasy being addressed through one hadith alone, if the book had been read or presented honestly, it would be clear that it is teaching how to go through an individual hadith using the Hanafi principles and then seeing how it matches up. The idea of the examples is so that the readers can try this for themselves. The author of the book explicitly stated that he was tackling this hadith because it is the primary one used to justify the killing of apostates.

Note that hilariously, this author has failed to furnish any kind of defence of the hadith or the killing of apostates, unless one considers his ‘argument’ that not a single Hanafi said this before. So we should just kill people, even if it does not make any sense because ‘the scholars’ say so (the ‘theological’ school of not thinking about stuff you believe in)? The funny thing is that these guys are allegedly involved in ‘Dawah’, which means inviting people to accept Islam. I wonder if they would accept the authenticity of the doctrine of the Trinity based on the fact that no Catholic scholar ever denied it?

Shamelessly he removes the brackets that come immediately after that quote: “(and as we have seen, Ibn Umar, Imam Nakhai and Imam Abu Hanifa did not accept Ikrama as a narrator)”, this statement is therefore clearly in the context of Usul (i.e ‘principles’) which Salafis may not understand (since they have no Usul to speak of, as will be seen shortly). Also, the author clearly states that the entire section of “practical applications of hadith methodology” was for the purposes of applying the principles on hadith. It is not an attempt to try to prove any issue, which unlike the method of Cheeba would require in depth research and demonstration of proofs and references. It seems that Cheeba saw the word ‘apostasy’ and ‘niqaab’ and it made him ‘lose the plot’, completely not understanding the purpose of the section. Maybe he was worried that he would be smited by Salafis humanoid god if he didn’t kill apostates or force woman to wear the niqaab. Who knows but expunging one’s own psychology is not theology nor ‘reviewing’ anything.

The second practical application of Hanafi methodology is around the issue of “Niqaab [Face Veil].” Every serious student of knowledge would expect a discussion on the true nature of the ruling of niqab, whether it is obligatory or recommendatory. However, one is amazed in this section again the hadith analysis (it merits aside) is done for only one hadith. Thereafter, bereaving of its actual context and commentary of the first recipients of revelation – the Companions- the words “ma zahara minha” (‘that which is apparent’) in Qur’an 24:31 are twisted to claim that “the wearing of niqaab (face veil) directly conflicts with the Qur’an,” and “[if] there was any ruling that should be established from the verse of the Qur’an it would be that wearing of the face veil is in fact forbidden.” (p.235) It is not for us to turn this review into a full-fledged academic refutation of every claim in the book, however, here again the author signally fails to name a single Hanafi scholar who held this opinion.

Once again, how is this even a ‘review’? He presents no argument or information at all. There are several bald lies though: the Niqaab can at a minimum be ‘recommendatory’. So it is impossible that niqaab can be anything less than recommended. Says who? Again, we are told that no Hanafis say this (even though that is the main position of the school and it is famously known that Hanafis are the most dismissive of covering the face). In fact, his abysmally poor written English is seemingly the cause of the problem – he means he wants a Hanafi scholar who says that wearing the face veil is forbidden. In fact there are even such scholars but that author never said that was the Hanafi position. What we see here is an over-abundance of bile and very poor reading comprehension.

Hilariously, after telling us that ‘Every serious student of knowledge would expect a discussion on the true nature of the ruling of niqab…’ he himself fails to provide this and, as per Salafist protocol, name drops ‘the Companions’ to make it look like the face veil is compulsory. But the fact is he is too poorly read and ignorant of the sources to furnish an argument or even a reference, so he resorts to saying that this is not a full-fledged academic refutation (as if anyone would mistake this for anything resembling academia in any case). But then he still gives his unsubstantiated opinion – against that of a scholar. Yet he is demanding scholarly proof for all assertions. But then he himself is not a scholar and is critiquing a book by a scholar. How does this work?

In any case, the title of the book is ‘Hanafi Principles of testing Hadith’, not ‘Hanafi Principles of Naming Scholars and Arguing from Authority’. It is meant to look at principles and empower readers to apply them. If the purpose was argument from authorities then why write a book as opposed to telling people to shut up and accept it (the ‘theological’ school known as ‘Talibanism’, close to the heart of Deobandis in any case)?

As an aside, it is interesting what else he is saying here: basically, how dare the scholar in question, understand the clear meaning of the Quran without showing a scholar who had the same understanding. If it is the case that the Quran is not understandable without the opinion of other scholars, even for a Arabic specialist like Shukurov, then can Cheeba state this fact clearly and adhere to it? Also, reading the Quran is stupid then – even scholars who studied the Quran for decades need to read the tafseers since they are more accurate than God. Hmmmmmm…

The third manifestation of practical application of Hanafi methodology is in the arguments about hadith reports on the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) getting affected by Black Magic. Claiming that Qur’an is “quite clear” that those who claim the Prophet (ﷺ) was affected by magic are wrongdoers and that, if accepted, it would raise doubts about revelation, the author after rejecting for spooky assumptions the explanations offered claims that accepting the hadith reports on this account and outrage at the publications of the Prophet’s caricatures “alludes to double standards.” (p.241) Finally as in the beginning of the book (p.4) it is claimed that Abu Mansur Al-Maturidi (d. 333) rejected the hadiths on this account and denied that the last two chapters of the Qur’an were revealed in this background (p.242). It is, however, striking to note that far from rejecting the hadith and the incident of magic affecting the Prophet (ﷺ), Al-Maturidi actually finds in it two-fold proof of Prophethood (wajhān fi ithbāt al-risalatahu wa al-nabuwatahu). (Ta’wilāt Ahlul Sunnah, Vol.10, 653) Besides Al-Maturidi, the major Hanafi authority in Hadith, Abu Ja’far Al-Tahawi (d. 321) also accepted the hadith about magic affecting the Prophet (ﷺ) (Sharh Mushkil Al-Athār, Hadith 5935). Among Hanafis Al-Jassās (d. 370) surely rejected the hadith on the subject but this rejection was due to his theologically Mu’tazalite inclinations rather than his expertise as a Hanafi jurist.

This is very beneficial to readers as an example of the kinds of devices that are employed by dishonest Muslims; note here he is trying to use authorities such as Maturidi, Tahawi and Jassas. He is telling us on his own authority (sans reference) that Tahawi is the ‘senior’ authority in Hanafi hadith (so what were these Hanafis doing until the 300’s? Why, waiting for Tahawi to be born apparently!) and that Jassas is ‘Mu’tazilite’ (he safety nets with ‘inclination’. Note how we don’t have the ‘inclinations’ of any of the other scholars he mentions here or later). How do we know this? And why is it bad?

As for the references, they are again simply bald lies. He is counting on your inability to read Arabic or check them up. What is ironic is that he then calls the next part of his review ‘Factual errors, insinuations, frauds’.

He has clearly not understood the text nor terminologies of the scholars (in fact those who can read Arabic know that he is lying or has the reading comprehension of a pre-schooler in Arabic). Before Imam Maturidi makes the point Cheeba mentioned he uses the word “Lakin qeela”, which means that it is weak. The author Sulaiman Ahmad spoke in detail about the black magic issue in a recent discussion a few months ago, which was also published, where he also had other deceptive Muslims try to deploy similar tactics, but they was refuted so badly the people simply failed to answer the question of why they edited out the ‘Lakin Qeela’ part of Maturidis statement. Maybe it’s only non-Muslims who are to be punished for changing religious texts but it’s fine for Salafis to do it? Who Knew!

The famous scholar Samar an-Nass, who has a following amongst Cheeba types, accepted a debate about this issue but after this discussion went into hiding. So these sly tactics of twisting information to suit the Salafi/Deobandi agenda will not work, at least on people who can read Arabic or understand terms like Lakin qeela (i.e five year olds).

Also of note is the cherry picking of scholars. These people are used to doing this in their debates with Christians. So here he is saying that Sheikh Atabek [always referred to by Cheeba by his first name of ‘Atabek’ whereas everyone else gets at least a second name. Perhaps Salafis think this is clever way to insult people. But does anyone care about these types of playground stupidities?] is wrong according to Maturidis. Later, he will start using Salafi sources such as Albani, who do not accept the sources he has used here and in fact consider Maturidi and his creed to be heresy. No consistency…or even a discernible methodology.

The work is also riddled with factual errors, insinuations and even outright frauds. For instance, it is claimed that Abu Hanifa (d. 150 AH) had “students who were Maturidi in theology” (p.8) when the founder of the Maturidi school was born no earlier than 235 AH. It is like saying Ibn Mas’ud (d. 32 AH) or ‘Alqama bin Qais (d. 70 AH) were Hanafis.

This is just cheap semantics. Maturidi himself asserts repeatedly that he is merely codifying Hanafi creed in his own works and it was due to his codification as opposed to origination that it became known as ‘Maturidi’ aqeeda. Hence Maturidi himself would claim that Abu Hanifa was ‘Maturidi’ and that Maturidi creed is the genuine Islamic creed and has thus existed since the beginning of Islam and in fact even before – unless he is trying to say that Maturidi is a heretic and brought a new issue into creed/aqeeda (which is what crypto-Salafis like Cheeba actually believe and honest Wahhabis openly state). This betrays the Wahhabi leanings of the writer – they are well known for labelling Asharis, Brelwis or whoever as those eponyms with the insinuation that only they (the Salafis) are following the ‘Salaf’ and everyone else’s theology is a later invention of Maturidi, Ashari, Ahmed Ridha Khan etc

In arguing against the preservation of hadith the author claims that while we have the divine guarantee for protection of Qur’an there is no such promise in favor of hadith (p.109). In an attempt to refute the “salafi” claim that Qur’an 15:9 entails the same promise for hadith as well, the author states, “why God does not say what he means if he indeed meant ‘hadith’ when he says ‘Qur’an’” (p.110) while the verse in question (i.e. Qur’an 15:9) does not really use the word “Qur’an” it simply says “dhikr”. It is, however, pertinent to note that just a few pages later the author correctly translates the said verse and writes ‘Qur’an’ only in parenthesis (p.118) apparently because unlike p.110 there he was not trying to neutralize an argument for hadith preservation.

If anyone can understand the ‘English’ here please send the answer on a postcard. I think he is saying that the Quran does guarantee the preservation of hadith. But again, no proof offered. Looks like God needs an editor. Since we are about to see how much Cheeba loves editors, maybe he can apply for the job?

In his mention of ‘problems’ with black magic hadith in the prologue to the book there is another factual misrepresentation by Atabek. He mentions “Abdullah ibn Omar Al-Baidāwi”, the author of Anwār Al-Tanzil as “a Hanafi scholar from the thirteenth century” (p.4) whereas in reality Al-Baidāwi was a recognized Shafi’i scholar as evident from his juristic discussions in his tafsir and also from the accounts in biographical dictionaries. That his tafsir is largely a condensation of Hanafi_in_Fiqh Al-Zamakhshari’s tafsir and many later Hanafis wrote glosses over it is not enough to classify Al-Baidāwi as a Hanafi.

Al Baidawi is indeed Shafi. But so what?

And notice how this individual, of absolutely no scholarly credentials or academic authority, demands that you accept this on his personal authority. Which would be fine…if he had not throughout been taking ‘Atabek’, who is at the very least a qualified Islamic Scholar possessing all of the necessaries (apart from being a Deobandi with Salafi leanings of course, so he’s not good enough for Cheeba), to task for not relating everything back to another scholar. So only scholars have to follow scholars but keyboard warriors can state whatever with impunity? Thus the more qualified you are in Islam, the more you have to argue with authority but rank amateurs can narrate on their own authority? Whaaaaa!?

Notice how he does not tell us what the massive consequence of Baydawi being Shafi is – since in fact it is of no significance other than being a minor errata in the book. Which, like all books not written by God, it will contain many of. But apparently this constitutes ‘outright fraud’.

Using weak and even fabricated hadith reports to emphasize textual criticism

Bear with me, this is where readers will really benefit from being forewarned about the dishonesty of certain Muslims. Try to ignore the horrendous English and proof reading in Cheebas tract.

Coming to the treatment of specific narrations while the underdone across all the chapters of the book is that per Hanafi methodology isnād analysis alone is not enough to separate chaff from the wheat and textual (matn) criticism is very important, what we find is that in many cases the examples brought are hadith reports that are isnād wise signally weak and at times outright fabrications.

On p.36 a report reading “The first thing that was created was a horse, then himself [God]. Then the Prophet (ﷺ)” is mentioned. Besides the fact that the translation is not faithful the hadith has been recognized as a fabrication. In fact the reference cited for this narration is a Shafiite Al-Suyuti’s “Al-La’ali Al-masnu’ah fi Al-ahadith Al-mawdu’ah” (The Fake Pearls in Fabricated Hadiths) and yet right after quoting the above report it is stated that, “even if the chain is authentic according to the Shafi’is, this is irrelevant to Hanafis” (p.36) which clearly insinuates that Shafi’is somehow accept the chain of this report as authentic.

Why and how is the translation not faithful? Because Cheeba says so of course! Even assuming that Cheeba is the gatekeeper of the Arabic language and ignoring his insinuation that ‘Atabek’ is unable to understand it (surely a claim that requires some proof given that this is a man who has numerous licences in Arabic from senior Arabic linguists, teaches it for a living and lived in the Arab worked for years), would it not serve the authors case (defaming Atabek Shukurov) better to actually show how poor this translation is (it’s not)? Totally unacedemic and purely polemical.

Boldly, he again insinuates that Sheikh Atabek can’t understand Arabic, since purportedly he does not know the title of the book he himself is referencing – what is hilarious is that we are expected to believe that since one Shafi scholar recognised that the hadith was a fake, that means no Shafi ever accepted it or that this is the main or indeed only position of the Shafis. So then why was Sayuti writing a book on fake hadith if Shafis all knew they were fake? On this evidence it is clear that Cheebas own understanding of English and Arabic is worthy of scrutiny.

In fact, one often finds these types of ad hominem and fantastical attacks from ‘the students of knowledge’ from Salafist backgrounds: I have experience of this myself – when I have asked scholars like Haitham Haddad and some Deobandi Sheikhs for a debate I have been refused, often by their using my gender as an excuse. But then their students, usually with their help, feel free to mount the most absurd and outrageous attacks. So throughout this article, we hear that people who teach Arabic in accredited institutions and even at GCSE level in schools which undergo OFSTED inspection, are in fact totally incapable of basic Arabic translation. And who is telling us? A person who by his own confession has no ijaazat, diploma, degree (like most of these guys he’s ‘undertaking’ it), native reading or speaking – in short, nothing. Since when was the ‘classical methodology’ to let people like this speak on anything let alone Islam?

If you refute such people you gain nothing and their fans just turn around and say ‘well [insert name here] was not a scholar, big deal’. So the scholars such as Atabek Shukurov or the actual translator, (which the book made clear was in fact not him but Sulaiman Ahmed, but Cheeba is too erect at the possibility of scoring points on Atabek Shukurov the heretic to worry about the small details) lose out by refuting these people since if they failed to do so, they were beaten by an amateur and if they succeed, well, then they fought an amateur. It’s a great and cowardly ploy. Haddad and these people’s Sheikhs (Samir An Nas is another example as well as basically the whole Deobandi establishment) curiously never come out of their hiding places. They also love the fall-back position that ‘debating is haraam (forbidden)’. But having your students post fake reviews to claim heresy and fraud is halal?!

Also, is Cheeba saying textual criticism is not allowed? If so, say it plainly!

Doublespeak, but where neither meaning makes any sense.

As an example of “an ahād hadith that is accepted as ‘Sahih’ (according to Shafi’is and Salafis)” contradicting the Qur’an the author quotes the narration from ‘Umar given by Abu Dawud etc. “The husband will never be asked [by God] concerning the reason for hitting his wife.” (p.118) However, many prominent scholars including the ‘celebrated’ salafi hadith scholar Al-Albani have declared it as weak. Others who showed its weakness or graded it as such include ‘Ali bin Al-Madini (as quoted by Ibn Kathir), Ahmad Shakir and Shu’ayb Al-Arna’ut.

So no one accepts this hadith as Sahih because Albani and some other modern day guys don’t accept it? So then why did senior Muhaddith Abu Dawood from 1000 plus years before Albani include it? And are all those guys more senior in hadith than him? And if they can be better than the imams of hadith then why not extend the same privilege to Shukurov? (Who Cheeba was berating for not bringing a ‘Hanafi’ for literally everything he says – yet Cheeba is here using a famous Salafi scholar from very recently. Of course, on questioning Cheeba will still deny being Salafi!)

Thus ‘Atabek’ (notice how Albani is never called ‘Nassiruddin’, but has some honorifics in place at least) is allegedly a villain for attacking hadith but saying the author of one of the six canonical collections included ‘weak hadith’ sans explanation is fine?

What happened to ‘following the Salaf’? How come Albani is being preferred over the earlier scholars (even Abu Dawood and Bukhari are not from the Salaf but heck, he’s thousand years before Albani!)

BTW, can Cheeba furnish us with the percentages of scholars who did and did not accept this hadith instead of these three hand picked Salafis/Azhari/Hanafi ones (I like how he has switched to whichever scholars and sect best serve his purpose: we have transitioned to Salafis after going through Hanafis and Shafis above, each one deployed to make a different case, since Cheeba is in fact not only a master of Arabic but he is also making a new Madhab that is Maturidi in Aqeeda, Tahawi in some Hadith and Albani in other hadith. One could joke that ‘consistency’ is not in his vocabulary but given his horrendous written English, this is actually a possibility).

Also, why does Cheeba not tell the truth, that nearly all Salafi scholars apart from Albani consider this hadith to be fine and act on it? In fact, this was a point they criticised Albani on!

In Cheeba’s language he is nakedly erecting ‘lies, distortions and outright fabrications’. If this is what Muslims have come to, frankly lying and misrepresenting in the name of religion, are not non-Muslims entirely justified upon reading this kind of nonsense to remain firmly in their unislamic faith?

Now, since I know you love to be dazzled by Arabic names and quotes (as Cheeba tried but failed to do, because, you know that’s hard if you can’t really even read stuff like ‘lakin‘), enjoy the following conclusive proof of this sad and hateful individual’s lies. After this, further debunking will become unnecessary as his review is clearly then academic bunk but I will continue regardless. Because I enjoy it.

Al-Ash’ath ibn Qays said “I was guest of Umar (RA), during the night he stood up, grabbed his wife and began beating her, he then called me and said “oh Ash’ath…take from me three things which I have taken from the Prophet (PBUH), [the first is] do not ask a man for the reason behind why he is beating his wife, do not ask a man who amongst his brother he trusts and who he does not, and do not sleep before performing witr [prayer].

This is an authentic hadith which Bukhari and Muslim did not narrate presented by Hakim, who is narrating it as ‘authentic’. When Al-Dhahabi confirms a hadith then according to the muhadditheen this narration increases in strength. In the footnote on the same page Imam (Dh)Zahabi is confirming it is authentic. (Al-Mustadrak, Vol 4, P194)

The book of Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, ‘Ithaf al-Mahara’.

Look kids, Arabic and scholars names! Swooon!!!!

Ibn Hajar (the same authority Cheeba frequently uses to ‘explain’ hadith which Christians challenge him on) comments on this hadith, confirms it is authentic and that it is narrated from the collection of Hakim and confirms that Imam Hakim stated that it is authentic. [It is a common habit of hadith scholars that when they are narrating a hadith and they do give further explanation or present an alternative opinion that they are confirming it is authentic]. (Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Ithaf al-Mahara Vol 12, P106)

This is a clear example of someone who knows Arabic attempting to access the classical sources but not understanding the methodology of classical scholars. 

This is a commentary on the Adhkar of Imam Nawawi.

Hadith is authentic as Ibn Hajar al-Haytami stated in his book Tanbih al-Akhyar. (Which is also a short commentary on Nawawi) (Al-Futuhatul Rabaniyah ala Adhkar Al-Nawawiyah, Imam Ibn Allan Ash-Shafi’i, Vol 7, P93)

This is a summarised version of Tafsir Ibn Kathir. Anyone can go and check this volume online. Once again Ibn Kathir mentions it without any further elaboration. Once again it is the methodology of the muhadditheen, unless Cheeba thinks that Ibn Kathir is mentioning it and does not explain that he actually thinks it is weak, in order to misguide people. 

Since Cheeba is trying to name drop, notice that I just hilariously nuked him with the giants of traditional scholarship, versus his scholars born in the last century. But he even lied about them:

Here is a comment from Ahmad Shakir (d.1958) where he states that this hadith is authentic, therefore Cheeba is in fact quoting from a scholar who is not consistent on this issue. It clearly demonstrates either lack of knowledge or deception on his part quoting where he states it is weak but ignoring the fact that he contradicts himself and states it is authentic.

Here, a different Salafi scholar (one not named Albani for once) states that this hadith is authentic and the reason behind Ahmed Shakir stating it is weak is due to one of the narrators Dawood al-Audi, he mistakenly thought it was Dawood bin Yazeed bin Abdur Rehman bin Audi who is weak, and based on this he stated that this hadith is weak, but in reality the narrator is Dawood al-Audi who is righteous as it is confirmed in the narration of Imam Ibn Abi Yala. (Targheeb of Manzari, Vol 1, p188)

It’s pretty lame when you even have to teach Salafism to Salafis because they are that uneducated. Sheesh. What next, teaching ISIS to rape?

Albani is known to be inconsistent and contradict himself so his opinion is not accepted but on the other side as demonstrated we have a big list of famous classical Muhadditheen. It is clear that Deobandis and Salafis are trying to hide the fact that according to their own principles these hadith are authentic and accepted. This is clear attempt to modernise their own school most likely to appease their allegedly hated West (with whom, you might have heard, those who sponsored Albani and Co. have a few small petroleum deals). So a clear attempt to hide the fact that they believe in wife beating based on hadith that meet their principles.

Also Dear Reader, don’t you feel insulted that ‘Cheebacca’ (sorry, but its funnier than calling poor Shukurov ‘Atabek’ at least) is basically taking you for both an idiot and lazy and gambling on the fact that you can’t read Arabic? Is this how we speak of and promote religion? ‘Tis a shame!

Imam Ahmad said “a man should not be asked why he is beating his wife as “no one has the right to question why a man is beating his wife and this includes her father”, the author continues and says that this is due to the hadith narrated in Abu Dawood”. (Matalib Uwl an-Nuha, Hasan Ash Shatti al-Hanbali Vol 5, P288)

Imam Ahmad is more honest than these liars, who will fabricate information and reject hadith without any basis and principles – which is naked is modernism. Rejecting hadith based on principles however is the method of classical scholarship.

By the way, Cheeba basically went ‘full Quilliam’ by insisting that Ahmad, Ibn Hajar and the giants of hadith basically suck compared to Albani and Shakir (modern and/or fringe guys).

We should not be surprised – if he is happy to insult scholars of today like Shukurov, why not go all the way and cuss out Ahmad and others like he did (albeit in a cowardly way)?

There is more queer stuff in an example of ahād reports contradicting theology which as quoted in the book reads, “Then above the seventh heaven there is a sea, between whose top and bottom is a distance …” This has been referred to as “a Sahih hadith narrated in Abu Dawood and Ibn Majah …” (p.124) and the citation for this is the Al-Risalah’s First Edition (2009) of Sunan Abu Dawud Hadith 4723 (p.293), but if we check this work we find that the editor Shu’ayb Al-Arna’ut has categorically stated that the report is “da’if” (weak). Likewise, the Salafi scholar Al-Albani has also graded it as weak. One wonders how the author fabricated the notion of hadith being “Sahih” in the first place when the very citation he brings mentions its weakness.

As above!

So apparently, ‘Sahih’ (lets call this ‘authentic’ in English) is not decided by any classical scholar and in fact not even by the canonical books such as ‘Sunan Abu Dawood’ but by scholars from 20th century such as Albani (again) and Shu’ayb Al-Arna’ut (from this century too).

What were Muslims doing for the intervening 1200 years and what was the status of these hadith for all that time!?

And notice that in Cheeba’s madhab you are only allow to read hadith books with the comments of the ‘editor’ (who was born some 1200 years after that book was written). Remind you of his approach to the Quran?

Thus he is advocating something far more radical and hadith rejecting than poor maligned ‘Atabek’. So should we also read Bukhari with the ‘editors’ comments? And which editor? And why did no one ‘edit’ this 1100 years ago, specifically, Imam Bukhari?

We already saw that Cheeba is apparently establishing his own sect by picking and choosing scholars and methodologies (hey, if Deoband and Ibn Taymiyya can do it, why not! I’ll be launching mine to coincide with the next ‘Avengers’ movie), but it may enlighten the reader here to know that Albani insulted Abu Hanifa himself as being ‘weak’ in hadith (we have all heard this from Salafis – see, I can use baseless argument from authority too!) yet we have to take his evidence repeatedly in a critique on a book about Hanafi principles of hadith and Al Arna’ut, the other scholar quoted, in fact allegedly chastised him for this https://hanafiyya.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/shuayb-al-arnauts-critique-of-albanis-comment-on-abu-hanifa/

Taking Albani’s grading of Hanafi’s hadith methodology is a bit like insisting on Hitler as an expert witness in Jewish Talmudic Law.

What’s even funnier is the catastrophic failure of intellect that is apparent by Cheeba saying that Arnaut declared the hadith to not be ‘Sahih’. But Arn’aut is a Hanafi sympathiser and that is exactly what poor ‘Atabek’ is arguing – that Hanafis reject this hadith whereas Shafis and Hanbalis accept it! (Albani, BTW is neither.) So Cheebas ‘case’ here is that Sheikh Shukurov is wrong because he’s a Hanafi and other Hanafis said he is right. What the…?!

You see girls and boys, this is what happens when you read religious texts…while high on PCP.

I personally find it is best to let my students wait a few hours if they insist on taking drugs before studying Islam. I find it makes more sense to them that way.

It is in fact extremely sad that someone so unintelligent and with such poor academic abilities feels that he can present Islam to the world and respond to the criticisms of non-Muslims. But poor Cheeba is not to be blamed; that some feel we have to rely on such as him is a symptom of how far Muslims have fallen.

Along with the hadith reports from the Messenger of Allah, there is similar oblivion with regards to a narration from Imam Abu Hanifa. On p.11 the author refers to a report from Tarikh Baghdad wherein it is alleged that Abu Hanifa called a hadith (which is narrated in Sahih Bukhari as well) a “delusion”. However, as clarified by the editor of the referenced edition the report is dubious as it is related on the authority of a weak narrator.

Again, the message is ‘don’t you dare read the book of hadith, instead look at what the editor said about it instead – 1000 years later!’

By now, does anyone even believe Cheeba that this is what the editor even said? In fact, by accepting this statement of the editor we are in fact agreeing that ‘Tarikh Bagdad’, a rather classical work, is in fact weak and Muslim scholars are stupid as they did not realise this till the ‘editor’ and Cheeba came along. He is in fact saying that Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi basically sucks and the editor is better than a thousand years’ worth of scholars. Like his other cowardly insinuation of course, Cheeba lacks the testicular fortitude to say what he wants, but his poor language make it easy to see that for even a basic reader.

If anyone had insinuated this about Imam Bukhari’s collection, Cheeba would be calling for blood. But he did just that in the cases of Tarikh Baghdad, Sunan Abu Dawood and Ibn Majah and even Imam Ahmad…and yet Sheikhs Sulaiman and Atabek are the hadith rejecters?!

More play on narrations

‘More’?!

I hope the readers can see that we have yet to see any. Maybe he means plays on words by him?

At one place the author takes exception to a hadith reported by Abu Dawud etc. condemning people who do one of four things including “twisting one’s beard” (p.65). The hadith is clearly mistranslated. Hadith actually condemns “one who ties (a knot in) his beard” (man ‘aqada lihyatahu). Moreover, the author not only refuses to see the actual context of condemnation in the practice being a remnant of the pre-Islamic (jahili) practices he claims the hadith was largely unknown and that “Umar had the habit of twisting his beard as did other Sahabah” and as a reference Al-Tabarani’s Al-Mujam Al-Kabeer, Hadith 54 is cited (p.282). But when we go back to check the cited source we find it mentions Umar’s twisting of the mustaches, and not beard, in state of anger. The author, we see, resorts to two-fold fraud (twisting for tying and beard for mustaches) to cast aspersions on an otherwise authentic hadith.

So just as I mentioned, again the insulation that Sheikhs Shukurov and Ahmed can’t read or translate Arabic.

He mentions a context for the hadith as jahili practices – again on his own authority, which is unsurprisingly wrong too. Why can’t ‘Atabek’ do this though? Or is it an ‘academic’ device only for rank amateurs like Cheeba?

Commentary of Suyuti – remember, Cheeba is keen to try and use this scholar. He flopped before, but it’s funny to bash people with the same scholars they try to invoke to help them, so let’s do this!

In terms of what is meant by ‘the one who locks his beard’, some said it means to lock it or to twist it. Some others said that Arabians used to do it before the war, so the Prophet (PBUH) ordered them to not do it. In the explanation of Muhammed bin Rabi’ah the hadith is referring to anyone who locks the beard in prayer. Sabith bin Qasim said that in the time of Jayliyyah they used to take the skins of the trees to hang it on the neck as sign that they are performing hajj, [so that no one would attempt to kill them], so lihyatahu here means the skin of tree. Ibn Daqiq al-Eid said this is closest to the truth – but we do not have a textual proof of its meaning.

Commentary of Sindhi:

He said that some said it means to lock or twist it, second they used to do it in war as arrogance, third it is twisting the beard as non-Arabians do.

So there is no proof what is meant by locking or twisting the beard. ‘Qeela’ is mentioned meaning that there is no strong opinion on this matter and no one knows the context, there is no textual proof. We already saw with Cheeba’s errrr ‘quote’ of Imam Maturidi and black magic that poor Cheeba does not actually know what ‘qeela’ means.

From Ali Al Qari (another classic giant, unlike Albani and the others name dropped by Cheeba. At least name drop someone famous!): What is the meaning of locking beard? “The majority said it is to lock it or twist it, and this is against the sunnah, as the sunnah is to comb it. Or they did it in war, or the Prophet (PBUH) said comb it as locking it is imitating women or non-Arabians did it, as the Prophet (PBUH) said do not do it as it is changing the creation of God or it was a ritual of the Jahlis because anyone who had one wife would have one small lock and if they had two then he would have two locks.

Ali al-Qari continues by explaining the part of the hadith which states that the Prophet (PBUH) will disown the person for such a small action. He brings forward the opinion of Ibn Hajar to say that the Prophet (PBUH) did not mean it he was merely exaggerating the point. Then Ali al-Qari criticised this opinion and stated that this is not from the Prophet (PBUH) but it is something (which is an addition) from the narrator. (Mirkaat of Mulla Ali al-Qari Vol 2, P62)

So clearly Ali al-Qari is reacting to the notion that there will be such a severe reaction from God due to a person merely locking or twisting the beard. Also no one knows the context (but Cheeba doesn’t care and just fabricates it).

For the use of the word ‘qeela’, Cheeba needs to study Arabic. I heard Sheikh Sulaiman teaches pro bono in the UK!

Also, how do you tie a knot in a beard without twisting it anyway?

Disregard for Interpretive devices. Boldness in rejecting hadiths

Look who’s talking! A minute again he was ‘boldly’ rejecting hadiths based on what current century Salafi scholars had said, and disregarding classical texts and hadith collections without so much as a nod at ‘interpretive devices’.

For the authentic reports discussed the author is always in a hurry to reject the hadith reports and attribute rejection of the same to Hanafi scholars. He makes no mention of interpretative devices like ta’wīl (interpretation other than the apparent), takhsīs (specification), tansīkh (abrogation), tatbīq (reconciliation) etc. It reminds one of Al-Tahawi complaining that one interpreting the hadith differently should not be accused of rejecting it (Sharh Ma’āni Al-Athār, Vol.2, 134). It seems Atabek and co. who claims to revive the Hanafi methodology has taken the approach of intra-Islamic polemicists that Al-Tahawi -arguably the most prominent hadith scholar among the Hanafis ever- once encountered but they are doing it to a more dangerous end.

It seems the Cheeba does not understand hadith methodology at all. He is attempting to come across clever by narrating a few terminologies that can be found in the books of usul or ‘principles’ or ‘epistemology’ (a science not recognised by Salafis and nor understood by Deobandis). There are narrations that clearly conflict with Quran, which is why classical scholars of all schools spoke about what one should do in that situation. If he actually understood the example given about the gospels (below) he would understand that Muslims do not stretch and twist the issue like the people Cheeba attempts to preach to. But instead Muslims deploy a very scientific and forensic approach in accepting/rejecting texts that conflict with the Quran.

Thus no consistency and laughable logic. We can also see once again that the author, who was previously demanding Hanafi references for the issues of killing apostates and niqaab once again is pushing only Al Tahawi (and this on his own authority). The reason for this will become clear (or already is from his past behaviour to careful readers).

Atabek takes up the issue of the hadith translated in his book as, “When two people engage in a transaction, each of them has the right to choose to annul it as long as they haven’t parted and are still together …” (p.10) Using the statements of the scholars who differed with Imam Abu Hanifa’s position and accused him of going against it Atabek brings it as an example of “some hadith which are completely rejected based on a variety of principles.” (p.10) The reality of the matter, however, is simply that Imam Abu Hanifa interpreted the hadith differently. He said the parting mentioned in the hadith is not in physical sense rather in the sense of agreement. (Sharh Mushkil Al-Athār, Vol.13, 272)

However, it is to be noted that in above quoted translation of the hadith the words “and are still together” are unwarranted and actually against the interpretation made by Imam Abu Hanifa.

Huh?

Says who?!

Among “the hadiths [that] are rejected by Hanafi principles”, according to the author, is “hadith narrated in Abu Dawood by Abu Hurairah; “the illegitimate child is the most evil of the three [meaning out of the mother, father and child”” (p.119). Al-Tahawi Al-Hanafi, however, feels no qualms in accepting this hadith because he brings a report in which Aisha, the mother of the believers, explained the right context of the narration that it was actually about a specific person. Al-Tahawi further elucidates that the hadith is not general about every illegitimate child, rather it was specific to a person who hurt the Prophet (ﷺ) and the Prophet (ﷺ) pronounced that he was more evil than his mother and the man who illegally begat him. (Sharh Mushkil Al-Athār, Vol.2, 367-369)

So the purpose of the Hadiths was to clarify the Quran? We were told not to read the Quran without the ‘explanations’ by Cheeba. But the hadith requires its own explanation? So the Quran is preserved. The hadith is also perfectly preserved. And the explanations of the scholars (which all conflict as a rule) are also perfectly preserved!? What new species of stupidity is this?

Also, how come Abu Dawood and Abu Huraira are portrayed as being ignorant and did not mention this very important point that Tahawi found?

Clever readers will notice that this is the ‘editor’ game being played again: before, we were rejecting Abu Dawood’s hadith as Cheeba wanted due to the editor (from the 20^th Century). Now we are to accept Abu Dawoods hadith because of another narration which Tahawi brought (and is this even authentic according to non-Hanafis? Albani?). This is so obtuse that I can’t even call it lying or deception, since those acts require a certain minimal level of competence.

Cheeba has also introduced the greater problems of why Abu Huraira and Abu Dawood narrate controversial stuff like kids will go to Hell. And then don’t explain it, leaving it to Tahawi much later. The parallels with the Evangelical Christians Cheeba claims to ‘debate’ (actually, learns from) are tantalising.

Author then brings the hadith “in Tirmidhi that “whoever drinks wine, then, lash him. If he return to it, then on the fourth time kill him”” as an example of reports contradicting the action of their narrators. He then argues, “this hadith was completely ignored by the Sahabah and never implemented” and therefore, he says, “the Hanafis also reject this hadith.” (p.121) Hanafis, like others, do not question the authenticity of this hadith and instead argue that it was in fact abrogated as stated by Al-Tahawi (Sharh Ma’āni Al-Athār, Hadith 4944)

Curious that the book in question has over 60 pages of references and Cheeba, as we can all see, has much more limited resources or else why is he ‘spamming’ a single scholar, Tahawi, who he would have you believe is the greatest Hanafi hadith scholar (because of course no one understood Hanafi hadith methodology until the year 239, though Abu Hanifa was born in 63 AH. Tahawi differed significantly from the earlier Hanafis – and the whole point of the book was that later Hanafis and especially Deobandis abandoned the original Hanafi hadith methodology. Unsurprisingly, Cheeba ‘pick and mixes’ later Hanafis, disinclined to the hadith methodology of the earlier Hanafis.

What is more sad is the ammunition having incompetent people like this in the public sphere gives to atheists and Islam bashers. He is simply not intelligent enough to see the catastrophic theological problems that arise from saying that things like the death penalty for drinking can be ‘abrogated’. Or that drinking (times four) has the same punishment as child killing.

On the science and narrators of hadith

The producers of the book seem to be on a mission to reject everything that Muslims in the West, vast majority of whom is uninitiated in Islamic sciences besides being alienated from the atmosphere of reverence for the sacred that by Allah’s grace and despite all the ensuing troubles continues to prevail in traditional Muslim societies, find difficult to comprehend. Thus we find that besides attacks on peculiar hadith reports the axe also falls on the very science of hadith. It is alleged that “chain of a hadith can be fabricated quite easily” and that “an expert forger” can work in ways “ensuring that the narrators and chains are acceptable” and he, the forger, “can then add any text to this chain and after a few generations when it has been become [sic] widespread it is considered a Sahih hadith, … especially if this tradition is then later narrated in one of the highly respected canonical collections of hadith” (p.110). In hardly minced words the seed of doubt has been sown with regards to all the hadith collections and hadith reports. The emphasis on textual criticism over and above isnād criticism has taken an override and isnād criticism is laid to rest.

‘In hardly minced words the seed of doubt has been sown with regards to all the hadith collections and hadith reports’. Although this is a bit fresh coming from someone who would have us cast doubt on Abu Dawood and Ibn Majah as well as the Sahabah for the comments of 20^th Century state sponsored Salafi scholars, he showed his intellectual incompetence by telling us that ‘Atabek’ is favouring textual criticism. And that is meant to be bad?!

The whole point of the book, which this critic has in no way read on this evidence, is that textual criticism is the methodology of the Hanafis and has been neglected.

His criticism is basically ‘Hanafis dare to disagree with ‘us’!’

Yet in ‘debates’, these individuals are always assuring Christians that the ‘differences of the scholars are a blessing to the Ummah’.

BTW, why can’t people forge chains? Notice how this person and others like him can only preach to the converted and play to the gallery. If he believes that chains are impossible to forge, then let us know the proof so that we can benefit too. Also, let us know the purpose of making the Quran mass narrated/muttawatir if chains are so self-evidently ‘unforgeable’. It is as easy to envision Cheeba being divested of his faith by an atheist on the evidence of statements like these as it is to imagine Miley Cyrus divesting herself of her clothes at a concert. In Vegas.

The book highlights criticism of ‘Ikrama, the freed-slave of Ibn ‘Abbas (pp. 133, 227-228) and goes on to claim that “it is agreed by consensus that he was from the Khawarij” (p. 228). Besides the questions around merit and truth of this allegation against ‘Ikrama, the claim of consensus on this point is certainly false. Ahmad, Al-‘Ijli and Al-Tabari are reported to have vindicated ‘Ikrama of this accusation. (Fath Al-Bāri, Vol.1, 428)

Likewise, the claim that Imam Al-Bukhari “does not narrate from Hanafis” (p. 134) is erroneous. Mufīḍ Al-Rahman Al-Shātghāmi’s treatise on the subject, Al-Wardah Al-Hāḍirah, deflates this claim.

Among the weirdest things is the comparison of Muslim narrators and their reports with those of St. Paul and other Christians. In criticism of ahād reports the rhetoric leads the author to say, “if the chain was authentic we would accept the testimony of one person (or a few) that Jesus was indeed crucified or that he was the pre-existent ‘son’ of God? Or how about the testimony of Paul that he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus?” (p. 41). This is truly ridiculous as the author conveniently overlooks the simple issue of reliability of the narrators in the first place and conflates apparent contradiction between Qur’an and Hadith with Judeo-Christian beliefs plainly refuted in the Qur’an. The absurdity of this line of reasoning reaches the ultimate level when the author goes on to refer to St. Paul as “Tābi’” (p. 42) in making brownie points against hadith. It is however, interesting to consider how this rhetoric originally aimed at ahād reports focuses on tabi’un.

This guy complaining of ‘rhetoric’ is a bit like Obama complaining about a drone strike.

It is also disturbing that a person who claims to dialogue with Christians can utter these types of statements: the issue of the reliability of narrators is what is under discussion (one that he fails to carry out). It is also further proof that he did not read the book and instead, along with his presumably equally incompetent helpers, has gone on an extensive quote mining exercise (in fact Salafis find it almost unbearable to engage with things they disagree with on any level – you will rarely find one of them who has even read the Bible cover to cover, preferring to go straight for books such as those of Bart Ehrman. They simply do not have the patience and tolerance to actually read stuff they don’t like). In fact the book asserts that the whole distinctive excellence of Hanafi hadith methodology is rested on the idea that it is harsh towards narrations that conflict with the Quran (like the idea the Prophet attempted assault of a woman, was affected by black magic or that children can go to Hell for their parents being adulterers).

Cheeba has suddenly become a classical Hanafi when it comes to the Gospels (where a ‘sound’ chain would be rejected for being in conflict with the Quran) and is now insisting that Christianity is wrong because it conflicts with the Quran – ahad chains or not! (In fact Christians make no effort to present a chain for the Gospels – they do have a few manuscripts which are in fact pretty early when compared to some of the hadith literature).

Sheikh Sulaiman could have similarly used the example of the Shi’ite narrations, which they also claim are ‘authentic’ and have had their narrators and isnads ‘checked’.

It also once again demonstrates the inability of these individuals to not only represent Islam but even theism: he failed to mention how Muslims know that the Quran is true – namely the intellect. So what if the narrations from hadith clash with the intellect, such as the sun bowing to the Arsh (Cheeba offered a laughable and ‘Manna from heaven’ for atheists ‘explanation’ for this on his own site). Ahmed offers a solution – agree or not is another matter. But what is Cheebas solution? Total inconsistency and patchwork – a little from Albani, a little from Tahawai and a bit of logic (only when it suits), Quran (when it suits) and Hadith (unless Alabani says otherwise).

Also, notice the utterly impotent attempt to make it appear that the authors of the book were attacking tabai’s = successors (who BTW included numerous heretical groups like Khawarij, Shiites and Mutazzila anyway) – after he himself just cussed out Abu Dawood, collectors of the main hadith collections, Ahmad and even Abu Huraira – since they all needed Albani, Cheeba and Co. to sort out their gross ‘errors’!

As for Ikrima – he tells us that ‘Ahmad has vindicated him from the accusation of being Khwarij’! Hilariously false! 

Imam Ahmad, Ibn Sireen, Saeed ibn Musayyab and many others confirm that he is Khawaarij. (Mizan al-Itidal Vol 4). Imam Malik refused to narrate from him as did Imam Muslim:

Sorry, couldn’t get it uploaded in order. But can Cheeba read this stuff anyway? He’s certainly counting that you can’t, I assure you.

And you see the ‘imam picking’ game again, where it is fine to ignore people up to and including Malik and Ahmad. Classic Salafi games and a wonderful illustration for readers. That’s actually the whole issue Shukurov was addressing – that partisans such as these take what Ibn Hajar and Bukhari do and to hell with the rest – but that Hanafis should look at the opinions of giants such as Malik and Ibn Sireen etc and not beginning and ending Islam with ‘Bukhari’ like Salafists.

Would Cheeba have us question the ‘merit and truth’ of these Imams along with poor ‘Atabek’? As we have seen above, he implicitly does by setting up Albani against them!

I actually have no idea of the guy or book that he claims confirms Bukhari narrates from Hanafis, but at this stage, do we have any reason to believe anything he says or any name he drops? 

Readers are right to be offended – like a medieval priest knowing people read Latin, Cheeba is fleecing his congregation on the assumption that they cannot read Arabic at the level of an eleven year old. If you had access to the language and the terminology, you would pay no heed to the deceptions of Salafists.

One of the claims repeated in the book is about Abu Huraira not being a faqīh (pp. 56, 187-188) To this end he uses an anecdote mentioned by Al-Sarakhsi and ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Al-Bukhari about Ibn ‘Abbas’s comment regarding Abu Huraira’s narration on performing ablution (wudu’) for carrying a dead person (p. 56). The anecdote is reported without any isnād in the said works. The issue is similar to the better known anecdote in which Ibn ‘Abbas raises a similar question regarding Abu Huraira’s narration on performing ablution for taking something cooked on fire. Just as the ruling for performing ablution for taking something cooked on fire is explained by the interpretive device of tansikh (abrogation) which is supported by a narration of Abu Huraira himself (Abu Yusuf’s Kitāb Al-Athār, Hadith 41) this ruling can also be specific in some ways or abrogated, if verified for its authenticity in the first place. There is proof that Ibn ‘Abbas asked Abu Huraira to give a legal verdict on a more complex subject of divorce, (Muwatta Mālik, Hadith 2110, Sharh Ma’āni Al-Athār, Hadith 4478) ‘Abdul Majīd Al-Turkamani has addressed the issue in his work, Dirāsat fi ‘Ulum Al-Hadith ‘ala Manhaj Al-Hanafiyya p.236-241 and given names of Hanafi scholars who have categorically mentioned that Abu Huraira was indeed a faqīh. ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Al-Bukhari from whom the author quotes the above-mentioned anecdote himself writes just a few pages later, “We do not accept that Abu Huraira was not a faqīh. Indeed he was a faqīh.” (Kashf Al-Asrar, Vol.2, 559)

So now this unqualified, non – scholar, sub-academic, in British terms, a ‘nobody’, can not only take shots at suitably qualified people like Shukurov and Ahmed but also famous imams like Al-Sarakhsi and ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Al-Bukhari (for not ‘providing isnads’ – incidentally he just opened up the whole of Islam and hadith for attack because nearly everything has this issue and in most methodologies a reliable scholar narrating something is itself regarded as an isnad, as the authors mentioned in their book, had he read it instead of trying to quote mine. But orientalists will have a field day, since the books of isnad and biographies/rijal of narrators…usually don’t themselves have an isnad).

Also please remember Dear Reader, criticising the isnad of classical works is a favourite tactic of Salafis. Soon, non-Muslims will use the evolution of the work of Schacht etc to turn this around on them and make them apostate (at which point they will immediately forget their former attachment to killing apostates).

This is another useful trick for readers to note – notice how he is not saying that no one says that Abu Huraira is not a faqih but rather just picking and choosing a few who do accept him. So just silly games to misguide people.

In fact, Ibrahim Nakhai (the senior teacher of Abu Hanifa) does not even accept hadith from Abu Huraira let alone accepting him as a faqih (in English, legal theorist). If Shukorov or Ahmed had claimed that there was consensus that Abu Huraira is not a faqih, then there would be a case. Hilariously, Cheeba has been more deceptive by implying that Abu Haraira was accepted by everyone as a faqih…and then not showing this.

The author also claims that those known for the ability and qualities of narration unlike those recognized for knowledge and ability of ruling, “if their narration conflicts with analogy, then the analogy takes precedence due to necessity of independent reasoning,” and mentions Abu Huraira and Anas bin Malik as example (p.54). He further writes, “When there is conflict between analogy and the narration of non-faqīh Sahabi, Imam Karkhi gives priority to the narration whereas Imam Eisaa ibn Abbaan gives priority to analogy and his position is the official stance (‘mu’tamad’)” (p.58). The citation for this claim is Nizamuddin Al-Laknawi’s “Fawatih Al-Rahamut” whereas in reality the author of the cited work makes no claim for any “official stance” on the issue and merely describes what ‘Eisa bin Aban (and Abu Zaid Al-Dabusi) preferred. Al-Turkamani in his earlier mentioned work (pp.210-243) has treated the subject at length and shown that unconditional preference of narration over analogy is the opinion authentically narrated from Abu Hanifa, Abu Yusuf, Muhammad bin Al-Hasan Al-Shaibani and the majority of Hanafi scholars. Conditional preference of analogy over narration is a minority opinion. Naturally, the opinion of the founders of the school and the majority is the one that matters.

Why should we trust Al Turkmani (who most readers won’t know is Deobandi/Salafi like Cheeba himself), over the giants of Eisa Ibn Abban and Imam Dabusi? No reason.

But that is the point of Salafists, to try and dazzle you with names and Arabic. Cheeba is incapable on both fronts however, so readers need not worry.

By now we should not be surprised at non-specialist incompetents such as Cheeba telling us about the ‘authentically narrated’ opinions of Abu Hanifa (and others) sans reference.

What is interesting is that common or garden variety lay Salafis think that they are on a level to debate with the scholars of ‘Ahlul Bidat’ (heretics, as they take the authors of the book to be – see below) while their own teachers shirk this ‘responsibility’. This gives the students, whose entire Islamic scholarship oeuvre is the ability to read Arabic (at the level of a nine or twelve year old) great confidence. You see this all of the time; laymen on the internet ‘refuting’ serious scholars such as Gibril Haddad or Hisham Kabbani. This serves the dual purpose of making these individuals believe that they are academically ‘well hung’ and sparing their leaders the embarrassment of being shown to be incompetent and violent actual heretics. It also helps that for every ‘sheikh’ there are, like, a million students, some of whom were given a cheap laptop for Christmas. These individuals can then literally ejaculate their banality over the internet and many Muslims will take them seriously due to their Arabic ‘literacy’ (incidentally this kind of ‘Internet Islam’ is a major factor in so-called radicalisation and jihadi recruitment as non-Arabic readers are misled and seduced by such ‘students of knowledge’ over the internet).

Cheeba has of course hidden himself behind his claim that this isn’t a refutation or an academic discourse. That goes without saying. In English, you can’t call this a review either.

But then…why write at all?

Inconsistencies or manifestations of ad hoc approach

He’s kidding right?

Is he talking to himself?!

Besides, the merits of the positions taken, the book is internally inconsistent as well. While the author first alleged that Hanafis “completely rejected” the hadith about two people engaged in a transaction and the choice to annul it (p.10), later in the book he presents the same hadith as case “when the hadith has many meanings … The narrator acting on one of the meanings does not eliminate the possibility of other meanings being correct,” (p.186)

So?

At one place the author finds fault with the hadith; “If a woman marries without the permission of a representative, her marriage is not valid” for being “narrated from one lady Sahabiyah” (i.e. Aisha) and contradicting the principle of “‘Umum Al-Balwaa’” (p.37) but later the same is presented as an example of a case where “the hadith is accepted.” (p.186)

In the case of someone of average literacy and intelligence, one would immediately accuse the author of these words of deception. However, on the foregoing evidence, it is quite possible that Cheeba is in fact unable to correctly understand what was written – namely that Aisha’s action of letting a woman choose her own marriage partner went against her own hadith of a woman needing a guardian to approve marriage, so it is her action ‘hadith’ and not the first hadith which is accepted.

Instead of trying to lay it on so thick and trying to play every trick he can think of (such as trying to make it appear that A’isha was being disrespected by the author, when she is in fact both a lady and a sahabah, what of it?), Cheeba would have been better off presenting this as a typo or poor choice of verbiage. Instead he chooses to milk it for all it (isn’t) worth and instead scoring points on ‘Atabek’ for being confusing or making a simple error, he face plants.

On p.116 the following statement regarding the enumerated eight “Types of Opposition” is translated in a weird and possibly misleading way.

و قبلها الإمام الشافعي رحمة الله في رواية عنه اكتفاء بظاهر الاتصال. و في رواية ردها

Translation of this statement is given as, “In one narration Imam Shafi’i rejects all these categories due to their implicit disconnection and in a second narration he accepts them.” Without digging for details of the issue one can only wonder why this alteration in the sequence of narrations including words explaining the first one. Was it to highlight the alleged narration on Al-Shafi’i’s rejection of those categories?

Why should we trust his Arabic, errr, ‘skills’ and not the authors? And if you don’t want to ‘dig into it’, why mention it? Cheap tactics, no doubt learnt at the feet of Evangelicals. Also, does it really matter what Imam comes first in the sentence, the point is that he has two statements in one he rejects and in another he accepts. Again for Cheeba this is confusing, it may be that he can only comprehend the first few words and therefore he needs the statement that Imam Shafi’ ‘accepts’ to come first.

Referencing is also sometimes faulty. A couple of examples from those cross examined include the citation simply “Abu Bakr Al-Rāzi Al-Jassās, “Al-Fusul fi Al-Usul”, Volume 2” without publisher name or page number (p.286) and for the hadith of Aisha “narrated by Tirmidhi” related to marriage (p.186) the reference is to a report from Sunan Abu Dawud, chapters on purification.

The index is equally poor. There is no entry even for certain proper names such as, Abu Yusuf, Al-Tahawi and Ikrama. Against the entry “Khawarij” five pages (139, 2014, 205, 206, 243) are mentioned and you do not find anything about Khawarij on these pages.

Finally, while the whole book is about the rant on ‘delivering’ contemporary Hanafis from the ‘Shafi’i Musatalah’, it is ironical that for a qualification of a condition of tawatur (p.25, note 40) the only citation presented is Nuzhat Al-Nazr  of “Ibn Hajar Al-Asqalani Al-Shafi” (p.270)

This has got to be a joke right? In 60 plus pages of references he finds one given without a publisher or page number?! But he then concludes based on this that the referencing is poor! This is truly taking bile to an unprecedented and depraved depth. The desperation to find something, anything to criticise has turned him into a raving madman. The irony is that his whole tripe-like essay was full of so many errors that I had to reproduce it and write a commentary longer than the essay – because, like the literary equivalent of ‘Doctor Who’s’ Tardis, Cheebas piece contains more errors than the actual length of the piece! He managed to make more mistakes than the amount of writing his essay, which is some kind of miracle. That’s like writing a book of a hundred pages that has so many factual errors that it takes three hundred pages to mention them all. And by no means have I exhausted Cheebas incompetence.

Two things are funny here: firstly, most of the books from Salafis/Deobandis don’t even have references at all let alone an index – just browse any bookshop and you will be made aware of this. It is a bad habit of incompetent people to criticise others for things they themselves cannot get right. Likewise, he is telling us to take Albanis un-indexed and unreferenced books over Sunan Abu Dawood and Ibn Majah, but Sheikh Atabek, who is one of the few Muslim scholars in English who has produced a thoroughly referenced book and extremely rarely for Muslim authors, included an index (not found in virtually any Deobandi texts in Arabic or English) is to be taken to task for this. Also, Al Ghazzali, Ibn Taymiyya and Tahawi refused to include indexes, as did everyone at the time. So what?

What is also completely depressing is that he thinks using Ibn Hajar as a reference is unacceptable because he is Shafi – y’know, since a book on Hanafi methodology means you have to abandon any similarities with other madhabs (at which point Cheeba and his large support unit of propagandists would immediately accuse Sheikh Atabek of being ‘sectarian’). Hilariously though, this means that Sheikh Atabek cannot narrate from Al Ghazzali, Imam Al Ashari, Razi and everyone else who is not Hanafi. But Cheeba can use Salafis when he likes, Shafis when he likes, himself when he likes, Hanafis if the weather is cold that day….

Summary

The only thing worthwhile in the book is its binding and quality of the paper used. Content wise it is poor, erroneous, misleading and even carelessly worked out. Far from being a good source to know the Hanafi positions on issues in Hadith sciences the book altogether misrepresents the school and tries to put a traditionalist garb over the heretic agendas of hadith rejecters of sorts. No matter how much the author may have attempted to preempt the due reaction to his book and create an air of innocence around him the fact remains it is clearly an attempt to bereave the ummah of confidence in hadith and implicating the bastions of hadith and sunnah in this sinister game.

Poetically, this summary can be used as the closing remarks about his own abysmally poor ‘review’ or rather smear piece by just changing a few words like the title. Sadly though, it lacks even the merits of paper or good binding and is a dreadful waste of both electrons/Quantum waves and pixels. Notice the endgame, which was in his opening as well – implicit takfir and accusations of heresy.

This is the danger of fanatics and partisans such as Cheeba: we saw how loose they are with killing in the issue of apostasy, where proof was just not needed (or a scholars opinion was enough). Dear Readers, can you rest easy when your religion is being disgraced under the misnomer of ‘dawah’ by these individuals – when they are willing to accuse people of heresy while having such astonishingly poor knowledge themselves?

To paraphrase: people who believe absurdities can commit atrocities. If this is the hideous level of Islamic knowledge and academic incompetence (and I could have multiplied demonstrations, classical proofs and references almost indefinitely simply by virtue of knowing Arabic and having an internet connection) which allows people like Cheeba to call out well known scholars such as Sheikh Atabek as ‘heretics’ (and please read what people of his sect believe should be done to ‘heretics’), what do you think he would do to lay Muslims like you? What justice can you or the poor non – Muslims expect from such people? Perhaps the wise readers can already seeing the justice of Cheebas ideological bedfellows – on the nightly news.

Point of reflection: notice how these people, apart from implicitly insulting the giants of hadith and classical scholarship, while at the same time accusing modern people such as Sheikh Atabek of ‘hadith rejection’, never mention what their methodology is for rejecting any hadith – since they are purely Salafi in that they insist on looking at the chain alone. The crime of all Hanafis in general and Shukurov in particular was to disagree with them. In a most uncouth fashion, they hide and never admit their hadith methodology, least of all to Christians, since to be consistent, it would lead to them accepting any and all hadith with a ‘Sahih’ chain. You can fathom some of those hadith here:http://asharisassemble.com/2014/05/27/have-you-been-blackmailed-by-bukhari-yet/

So according to them, just as Shukurov says in his book, according to these people, hadith can never be rejected on content, only on ‘chains‘. But they never admit this openly if they can help it: having to insist on ‘intellect’ on Christian and Hindu texts and relegating the same intellect to the dustheap when it comes to anything other than chains of narrators when dealing with hadith is no doubt embarrassing to explain.

But safe to say, by adopting their approach, we would not just be accusing ISIS of assaulting captives but even the Prophet – since all such hadith are ‘sahih‘ according to their chains alone. It is only a comparison with the Quran, other reports, scholars acceptance and above all, intellect (i.e Maliki and Hanafi principles) – what is being decried as ‘textual criticism’, ‘modernism’ and ‘hadith rejection’ by these despots, that we were able to weed out these hadiths, which even made it into Bukhari (again, sans explanation and require the unconvincing gymnastics of Cheeba and company, which basically imply that even Bukhari narrates incompetently and needs correction:http://www.letmeturnthetables.com/2011/04/jauniyya-woman-refuge-from-prophet.html. Hilariously, Sahih Bukari is supposed to be a kind of commentary on the Quran. But according to Cheeba it needs its own commentary. And so on ad infinitum, down the road to scepticism and atheism).

That was the sole crime of the authors, i.e. defending Islam and the Prophet, by rejecting these narrations, whereas the approach of Salafis is to accept these enormities and give them a ‘spin’. For this attempt at exonerating the Prophet from having lost his mind, or having said his wife Khadijas’ children born before Islam (and who died in infancy) would go to Hell or that there is no punishment for killing non-Muslims, the authors have been anathematised and declared heretics. Go figure.

PS Please remember kids:

And Salafism!

It is very common for us to receive questions from confused people about references or sources that they have been exposed to by Wahhabis/Salafis. In 90% of cases, this is due to the recipients inability to read Arabic (incidentally, a lot of so-called radicalisation proceeds in this manner also, with people being groomed to join ISIS etc based on fatwas, hadith and opinions which they cannot even read in the original Arabic). I have long known that Wahhabis employ certain stereotyped fraudulent and academically bankrupt techniques to mislead people, so I was very happy when Nikita submitted the article on which this one builds: http://asharisassemble.com/2015/10/05/muslims-proudly-display-academic-standards/

That piece employed the popular ‘ internet debunking’ style, using a book review by a Wahhabi propagandist as a jumping off point to expose the strategies and techniques Wahhabis employ in general. Judging from the number of views and reactions, it had a utility and benefit far beyond the simple premise of its author. Providentially, the purveyors of the original misinformation piece circulated a defence of it (amongst themselves only this time though, presumably fearing further embarrassment), allowing our writer to reproduce it here and with even greater exposition of Salafi heterodoxy and academic fraud. I can honestly say that this is a master-class and can suffice to defend oneself against Wahhabi, err, ‘mind rape’ on campus, in the mosque or indeed the internet.

However, it is necessary to read the original article to be ‘fully armed’, to have context and to see just how deep their rabbit hole goes…

    By Suede Nikita

I recently had to educate an errant ‘student of ‘knowledge’ on his absolutely lamentable ‘review’ of Atabek Shukurov and Sulaiman Ahmed’s highly educational book ‘Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith‘:http://asharisassemble.com/2015/10/05/muslims-proudly-display-academic-standards/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hanafi-Principles-Testing-Hadith-Shukurov/dp/0993018300/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444592906&sr=1-1&keywords=hanafi+principles+of+testing+hadith

It seems that this piece was in fact a group effort, making the errors even more egregious. To add further embarrassment, Cheeba almost immediately altered his review – without admitting this on his site – to change ‘the language and a couple of issues…and to use the full name of the author’. Hilariously, he tried to copy my style of referencing and repeated his gaffe of being unable to read Maturidi’s Kitab Ut Tawhid. Although that’s ignominious in and of itself, the hastily erected ‘defence’ he suffered at the hands of an individual named ‘Bassam Zawadi’ was even worse – and for entertainment and illustration, I thought I would cause this couplet further embarrassment by dissecting this even more banal waffle here (although Zawadi/Cheeba, henceforth ‘Cheewadi’, did not make it public, somewhat understandable after the response to their, errr, scholarship).

What one has to remember is that when these people are exposed as charlatans, they at the very least need to respond to their fan base, so although they for instance did not dare to engage Shukurov or Ahmed, who are all over Facebook and the internet like white on rice, but rather circulated their ramblings to their own ‘followers’, when my article caused understandable negative exposure, they embarked on this hasty face saving measure, which actually makes things worse, again demonstrating that they have absolutely no credentials or talents.

These internet personalities have two strategies, whether Wahhabis or their Evangelical Christian near cousins: firstly, they accrue status amongst their even more obtunded followers in the West by pretending to be competent in Arabic. And amongst their Arabic fans they score points by pretending to be competent in English. They never bother to study anything such as Fiqh, Usool or Tafseer but instead pretend that they have by quoting Arabic that their fans can hardly even read (they are basically looking it up as they go along – but they don’t even know which books to look it up in as will become clear soon). In addition, despite being Salafis, they take it upon themselves to narrate the positions of the orthodox schools – which they usually do by using Salafi sources, as I pointed out in my last article.

In short, Salafi Islam-spamming in both the internet and real life consists merely of the following:

1. Never admit your Wahhabism
2. Act like you are the caretakers of the Arabic language/Islam and are the only ones who can understand them
3. Quote Arabic without explaining anything correctly
4. Narrate the positions of the other schools inaccurately/through Salafi sources
5. Narrate hadith through Albani
6. Don’t give references but keep asking for them, when you get them, ignore them
7. Mistranslate and misquote at will
8. Use the above steps to accept and reject what you want

Wonderfully for them, this can be generalised in Dawah and apologetics. So notice that they went to great effort to denigrate the hadith grading of Abu Dawood for the sake of modern scholars in the issue of wife beating, which they find embarrassing. But then their Muftis and scholars such as Ibn Baz (and all others) accept the beating of one’s wife anyway. And then they claim to follow the Salaf. It is merely absurd.

BTW, after seeing this gross incompetence in Islam and Arabic language, I am not interested in further exhibitions of Cheewaadi’s foolishness. I want to hear from someone qualified to have dialogue – a scholar, even if they are Salafi. It is a waste of time to throw peals before swine and I am only inclined to do so because I enjoy showing up dirty tricks, whether by Islamophobes or their Salafi friends.

Without further ado, let us drive a stake through the beating heart of the vampire and finish him off!

This is a comment on this article by brother Bassam Zawadi: “A “response” has been written to brother Waqar’s critical review of Atabek’s book “Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith”.

Keeping aside the author’s lack of maturity and manners (which are not fruits of someone who is sincere and knowledgeable) and the fact that the author didn’t academically address many of the points made which are obvious to anyone reading and paying attention carefully, let me highlight some of the key points…

Look who’s talking!

It’s funny how all of these guys discover ‘adab’ when they get a few intellectual chastisements – yet Cheeba, who insults senior scholars such as Imam Ahmad and Abu Dawood (a tradition about to be continued and expanded on by Zawadi) as being incompetent in hadith, insists on calling Atabek Shukurov ‘Atabek’ and labels him a ‘heretic’ is still a ‘brother’! ‘Insulting’ is only what is done by others according to Wahhabis!

Here check out Zawadis ‘adab’ or manners here:

I hope he applies the same level of ‘adab‘ his colleague/alter ego Cheeba and his disdain for the English language (clearly seen from the opening sentence of his original article, and to which he admitted above)…and to famous Wahhabi scholars who affront the Queens English like Haitham ‘Yani’ Haddad:

Rock solid English on display there, I’m sure you’ll agree!

I mean this poor guy can’t even speak Arabic, his native tongue, properly. So I hope these guys will be chastising him for causing them ‘headaches’ as well as poor ‘Atabek’.

Also, note the awesome Salafi technique deployed in this ‘response’ of ignoring 99.99998% of what was written and trying to make themselves look clever by trying to highlight a few points in random order… Which they also fail to do! While we are complaining of shoddy scholarship…

1) Cheeba’s disdain and denigration of Ahmad’s hadith scholarship  – Not addressed

2) His disdain and correction of Abu Dawood and Ibn Majah in hadith – Not Addressed

3) Use of Albani who also ‘corrected’ Bukahri, not by Hanafi principles but by himself – Not Addressed

4) Absolute lack of qualifications for Cheeba – Not addressed

5) Cheeba’s failure to understand written Arabic – not addressed

6) Cheeba’s misrepresentation of modern sources (while setting them up against the classical ones) – not addressed

7) Cheeba’s modernism – not addressed

8) Cheeba’s implicit takfir and inability to write or read English to a book review level – not addressed

9) Flagrant misquote from Shukurov’s book – Not addressed

10) Apostasy killing a ‘must’ and anathematisation due to this of Shukurov – not addressed

11) Niqaab – not addressed

12) Black Magic – not addressed

13) Lying about Maturidi creed – Not addressed (*in fact repeated in his new ‘version’)

14) Inability to read basic Arabic terms like ‘lakin qeela‘ – not addressed (*repeated in his new ‘version’)

15) Possible total illiteracy in Arabic – not addressed 

16) Accusing Imams of creed of ‘making it up’ – not addressed

17) Significance of Baidawi being Shafi  – Not Addressed

18) Cheeba and Salafi acceptance of wife beating and then putting Hadith in doubt nonetheless –  Not Addressed

19) Denigration of Tarikh Baghdad  (and its author) –  Not Addressed 

20) Twisting the beard – Not Addressed

21) 15 pages of Arabic sources from classical books –  Not Addressed/Not Read

22) What hadith methodology do they follow? – Not Addressed

23) Which school of jurisprudence do they follow? –  Not Addressed

24) Which Usool of Tafseer ?  –  Not Addressed

25) Tahawi being the greatest Hanafi in hadith? Source?  – Not Addressed

26) Cheeba claiming that Imams such as Al-Sarakhsi and ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Al-Bukhari academically incompetent and failed to supply ‘chains’ – Not Addressed

27) Similarities with modernists and Evangelical Christians – Not Addressed

28) Use of Al Turkmani as a source of Hanafi madhab – Not Addressed

30) Use of Albani and Salafis as a source of Hanafism – Not Addressed

31) Issue of studying Islam while high on Crack cociane – Not Addressed

…Ad Nauseum.

You get the idea.

No doubt Chewaadi will argue that their response was ‘not meant to be academic or rigorous’ (as if we need to be told this) but this is just like someone who’s impotent saying he wasn’t actually trying to have sex. Then why take off your pants dear? In reality, this is a hastily constructed panic ‘patch’ to try and reassure their fans who were ‘shook’ by the response (as they get by anyone who can name scholars and read the Arabic), while they await support from their senior Wahhabi captains such as Haddad and Co. who are hiding behind the scenes. I have already asked Haddad, Nadwi and many others for a dialogue, debate, munazara, fist fight, whatever, but they are unwilling and indeed use any excuse, such as they will not debate women/Muslims (depends on the week) – even if the women are scholars! Even the offer of wearing a niqaab or debating a male colleague does not bring these people out of their bolt holes. Yet their students and familiars are infesting the internet like paedophiles in Disneyland.

You see the same cowardice when it comes to Shukurov, since they boldly and publicly called him a heretic, why not post their reviews on his Facebook and blog (he hardly seems to do anything other than be messing around on-line anyway)? That tells you all you need to know. They not only don’t want to have a discussion face to face but even dialogue with the heretics online is haraam now? Then why write the review? To misguide their own followers only, who they fear may start asking difficult questions if they read the book, hence the goal is to stop their zombie fan club from picking it up in the first place. Prevention, as they say, is better than cure.

It’s funny because that was one of the learning points I mentioned in the original article – like Cheeba trying to dismiss 60 pages of references due to one of them not having a publication date. This actually works on extremely stupid people, so Zawadi will try it here again because his (very small it seems) fan club was obviously shaken by his vigorous endorsement of Cheeba’s horrendously poor ‘review’.

Readers will see that this is a failed face-saving exercise that fails to respond to a lengthy article or engage with the classical references (I’m pretty sure this guy can’t read Arabic well either) and doesn’t actually mandate any kind of response. But I’m going to do it anyway, since I am quite sadistic.

Also, if anyone knows who ‘Zawadi’ is, please let me know, I’m worried from a quick online search that he’s twelve or something from the evidence here so I don’t want to be accused of bullying.

– The author makes the claim that the Hanafi position is that the niqaab is not recommended. Any citations or evidence pointing to that? Nope, none.

Notice that Zawadi, a Wahhabi, is asking for references for the well-known Hanafi position – yet found no qualms about reposting Cheeba’s completely unreferenced comments on the very same topic. Asking for a reference from Hanafis for the issue of niqaab, which is basically not mandated in any of their classical books, opinions from Zahiri Riwayat etc, is like asking a Salafi for a reference on wife beating or enslaving female captives (i.e unnecessary).

Also, it is totally cool how he has saved me from having to prove Cheeba’s Salafist affiliation.

And again, see how he has references for basically nothing he says! Because referencing is also something, like ‘adab’ only non-Salafis need to do!

– Regarding the weakening of the Abu Dawud hadith, the author doesn’t get the point that brother Waqar is making. Brother Waqar is refuting the false generic claim that this hadith is “Sahih’ (according to Shafi’is and Salafis)” making it seem like this is the official position of Shafis and Salafis (by the way it doesn’t make sense to really make a distinction here, since there are many Salafis who are Shafis), while this is completely false and that this is a matter of Ijtihaad and difference of opinion, JUST AS HOW there are Hanafis who have disagreed with each other regarding the authenticity of ahaadith at times. SECONDLY, how come there is no regard for the interpretation that Shafi scholars gave to this hadith and that it’s only to be understood in light of the conditions set out by Islam (e.g. darban ghayra mubarrih, etc.)? I wonder why. I mean isn’t their UNDERSTANDING more important than their GRADING of these ahaadith?

Uhh, the issue under discussion was their grading, as in ‘accepted’ or not. If Zawadi/Cheeba has/have suddenly converted to ‘matn’ criticism (which they denigratingly refer to as ‘textual criticism’, as if ‘isnads‘ or chains of hadith are not also found in texts) then let them do it publicly. This is wonderful because it further demonstrates what I wanted readers to see – Salafi tricks, quote mining and the assumption that the readers can’t read Arabic correctly (like themselves). What is really funny is that below you will see ‘Cheewaadi’ insist we take the grading not the meaning. And then switch again.

It’s also funny that after being outclassed, he has suddenly become really liberal in hadith. But it was clear that Bassam and Cheeba were arguing for ‘Atabek’ and Co. lying about the hadith’s authenticity. The hadith was authentic – yet they wanted us to take latter day authorities (notably Salafi hadith fraudster and all round heretic Albani, see:http://www.livingislam.org/alb_e.html) as opposed to Abu Dawood and many others as covered in detail in my article. Hilariously, Zawadi not only does not exonerate Cheema from the allegation of having accused Abu Dawood and others of inserting inauthentic hadith (sans explanation) but makes it worse.

The fact is simple, if these hadith are ‘weak’ according to Shafis or Muhaditheen or whoever: why did muhaditheen narrate them and grade them as ‘not weak’ or ‘Sahih’? Why didn’t they explain themselves instead of relying on Albani 1200 years later? What happened to ‘following the earlier generations’? And if it is their ‘UNDERSTANDING’ (in capitals!) that’s ‘important’, then where is it and why didn’t Cheeba or Zawadi (Cheewadi? Zaweeba?) present it.

Rather, they have their own principles of hadith, made up ad hoc – which is Salafism in a nutshell.

Also, he’s saying that all there is no point distinguishing between Shafis and Salafis because some of them are Salafis? I don’t know how Shafis feel about this but to me that’s like saying its fine to say that all men are rapists since some are so why distinguish.

– The ignorant author then presents a hadith declared Saheeh by adh-Dhahabi in his talkhees, while it’s known that we are not to take adh-Dhahabi’s rulings from his talkhees since it was a book he authored earlier on and was lenient during grading. He disagrees with some of his judgments in this book such as Meezaan Al-‘Itidaal. If we refer to adh-Dhahabi’s Meezan (see here https://books.google.com.sa/books?id=woFg3SuRa74C&pg=PT331&lpg=PT331&dq=%D9%84%D8%A7+%D8%AA%D8%B3%D8%A3%D9%84+%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%AC%D9%84+%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%85+%D9%8A%D8%B6%D8%B1%D8%A8+%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A3%D8%AA%D9%87+%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B0%D9%87%D8%A8%D9%8A&source=bl&ots=HGCFwXKlev&sig=ttoX8AGJLN8FHrbVOFXuPO570no&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CGAQ6AEwCGoVChMI6Imq99uyAIVyVkUCh0bKQo7#v=onepage&q=%D9%84%D8%A7%20%D8%AA%D8%B3%D8%A3%D9%84%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%AC%D9%84%20%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%85%20%D9%8A%D8%B6%D8%B1%D8%A8%20%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A3%D8%AA%D9%87%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B0%D9%87%D8%A8%D9%8A&f=false) we see that he in fact declares the hadeeth from Abu Dawud to be weak due to Abdul Rahman Al-Mosli being an unknown narrator. Even Ibn Hajar declared this narrator weak in his Tahdheeb at-Tahdheeb. In the other narration that the author provides, you see the name as Abdulrahman bin Abdullah Al Makki, however this is the same Abdul Rahman (i.e. Al-Mosli) (see المنتخب من مسند عبد بن حميد تحقيق مصطفى العدوي). So in reality, adh-Dhahabi would have viewed this narration to be weak as his final position. But, the author is ignorant and isn’t qualified to access these classical sources directly. So once again, no one is disputing that there are scholars who authenticated this hadith, but for the author to portray it as if it’s the generic position of all Shafis is completely misleading and brother Waqar’s point was to demonstrate that this is false.

Wow, that’s a lot of waffle just to admit that I was right and Cheeba was wrong!

But…since neither of you know the main position or methodology of Shafis, by your own admission here, how do you know what is and is not the ‘generic position’? And just as I said, if the hadith is accepted by Abu Dawood or a classical authority, why does Cheeba repeatedly bring up Albani, and now had to ask Zawadi to get him a different source? Cheeba didn’t bring Dhahabi – he brought Albani and God knows what other latter day scholars. So Zawadi is not even bothering to defend Cheeba, who he praised so highly, but offering new references – making my point for me. He just wants to look clever.

A useful tip is that if you have nothing to say…then don’t say it!

Now if you like, you can skip this next section of proofs for the summary below, but I would advise you stick with it and be forewarned when Salafis try to manipulate you in this manner next time.

We need to clear this up, because Cheewadi is impugning one of the most used books; the ‘Talkhees‘ of Imam Dhahabi. I brought a narration from this (as well as from Imam Nawawi, Ibn Kathir, Ibn Hajar and numerous others which Zaweeba just ignored because he can’t reply back to them) to show that the narration of Abu Dawood was authentic according to most senior non-Hanafis (on the issue of wife beating, where Cheezaadee accused Shukurov of bringing ‘weak and fabricated reports to emphasise textual criticism‘) In ‘Talkhees‘ Imam Dhahabi comments on the authenticity of the ‘Mustadrak‘ of Imam Hakim. Thus Muhaddiths coming after him, if they wish to use the ‘Mustadrak‘ of Imam Hakim, look at what Dhahabi said in ”Talkhees”…which Zaweeba is occultly rejecting.

This is in fact, you guessed it, ANOTHER BRAND SPANKING NEW INNOVATION by Albani, the Salafi hadith failure we encountered before. Essentially, all of the biggest classical scholars accept the narration of Hakim if and when confirmed by Imam Dhahabi – and by scholars I mean giants such as Ibn Hajar (who he dared to claim as support for his modernist position), Sayuti and numerous others – I will reproduce their comments for all to see.

I’ve presented the relevant sections instead of the whole page – of course this will not help people who cannot read Arabic nor understand the scholars terminologies like Chewaadi.

Here are quotes from Abdul -Rauf al-Munawi another great ‘muhaddith’ from about 400 years ago. Some are not in order, but you have the page numbers – and if you can actually read Arabic, unlike these guys, it won’t be a problem!

If they were able to understand, these resources would teach them everything they need to know. But they think just sending links to random ‘edited’ books without showing the relevant passages is ‘academic’.

Here is Ahmad Shakir:

Here Laknawi is setting it up as a principle of Hadeeth that we don’t trust Mustadrak of Hakim…unless we check it in Talkhees of Dhahabi. WordPress keeps flipping the images – I can’t be bothered to keep adding them individually.

Zafar Thanawi is also setting it as a principle in his I’la Sunan book: Even Deobandis are not agreeing with Cheewadi’s rampant hadith distortion:

The thing is that Chawaadi himself accepts narrations from Hakim via Imam Dhahabi when trying to support his naked Evangelical-style anthropomorphism:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vbe/showthread.php?t=3661 (if you can stomach it, you can see more of his anti-Sunni rants here, and yet we are expected to take his word for the Hanafi and Matruridi position despite his hateful and anthropomorphist stance:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vbe/showthread.php?t=15833) [1]. 

Also notice how when it comes to his anthropomorphism, Zaweeba now wants you just to take the hadith scholars grading as opposed to their understanding, in contradistinction to his stated position above (‘we need to look at their understanding blah blah’) i.e. bald lies. Also notice how Ibn Hajr is, according to Zawadi/Cheeba/Legion an As’harite heretic – but he nonetheless uses him as a proof here (debunked below).

As I said, absolutely no consistency – rejecting the classical books when he wants to, taking bits of them when feels like it. In fact this is Wahhabism to a ‘t’ – each Salafist has his own religion, identical to the situation in Protestantism in Christianity (which goes towards explaining the parasitic/symbiotic relationship between ‘dawah‘ wanabee celebrities such as Zareeba and Christian Islamophobes like David Wood and company).

So merely to defend Cheba, Zawadi wants us to destroy Dhabhi, Sayuti, Ibn Hajar, Hakim, in short, everything he wants, for the sake of the brand new position of Albani/Zawadi/Cheeba that Hakim as presented in Dhahabi’s ‘Tadlees‘ is not reliable. He is also trying to tell Dahabi what he should have done in the issue of narrations from Mosli – even though no one knows if this is the first or second Mosli (apart from of course, Albani – see below). Furthermore, Zawadi and Albani understood this but none of the other giants of hadith did so. So much for ‘classical’ principles – these guys are as brazenly modern as Quiliam but under a more sinister guise. BTW, they also made it possible to reject whatever you want based on this rubbish methodology. And then they accuse Shukurov of rejecting narrations. Absurdly ironic.

If you can stomach any more of Zaweeba’s abject lies, he says that Ibn Hajar regards Mosli as ‘weak’, but if this is the same Mosli, how come Ibn Hajar graded the hadith of Abu Dawood as ‘Sahih’ (Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Ithaf al-Mahara Vol 12, P106)? So after teaching hadith sciences to all those other Imams such as Dhahabi, they are teaching Ibn Hajar how he should have graded the hadith, since he accepted and ‘unacceptable’ narrator!

The inescapable fact that Zaweeba never studied hadith or Islam formally at all is within this very lie he is telling: a narrator being weak does not necessitate a hadith being weak anyway – the hadith may have another chain or narrator. And we don’t take the opinion of Dhahabi nor Ibn Hajar from their biography books but rather their books which they have written to explain the ‘hukm‘ of the hadith (which ironically Baseeba was demanding above that we take their ‘understanding’ and not their narration – of course, he is utterly clueless). It is essential, nay, compulsory for students of Islam and hadith to know this! It is a totally new principle set up by Albani and his followers (like Zaweeba) to take ‘hukm’ from the history books and ignore the actual books where the author is ‘testing’ the narration. They employ this Bi’dat Munkara (reprehensible innovation) and modernism when the hadith opposes them – otherwise they stay with the standard procedure. Vile, I’m sure you will all agree.

I know it is a lot to follow for non-specialists, but I hope you see now that it was worth it: literally everything they claimed was a lie. What separates them from the non-Muslims and others who lie about religion in order to misguide people? In fact, people who claim to do ‘dawah‘ such as Baseeba are doing a service only in that they give non-Muslims an excellent excuse before God on the day of judgement for not accepting Islam – they can just ask God if he expects them to take the religion of such flagrant perjurers seriously. If Muslims lie in religion too, so people are somewhat now justified in dismissing all religion aren’t they?

As I said, I uploaded a lot of evidence from authoritative books before, and I got no response. I assume this is because they are unable to read and understand these sources. So now the response should be from one of their scholars, who is on a level to debate, not someone who did the equivalent of GCSE Arabic, got a D and happens to have a laptop. I don’t want a response from these Haddad and Co. ‘backup dancers’ as so far we did not see any proof that they can understand or assimilate the information.

– The foolish author says that just because Ahmad Shakir may have changed his mind later on regarding the grading of the narration that this would imply that he is either being deceptive or ignorant. What a foolish remark! As if scholars can’t make mistakes (something the author ironically acknowledges in the article) and then later on correct themselves!

No, it implies that Cheeba is being fatuous by showing only one opinion of Shakir’s (classic Salafi tactic). Zawadi struggles in his (?native) tongue of Arabic so we can forgive him for failing to read English properly. In any case, he once again for validates my point. But if you know of Cheeba’s crass errors, why did you approve of and share his post!?

– Absolute foolish remarks from the author regarding Tarikh Baghdad. The author refers to Tarikh Baghdad as a hadith book! Can someone please tell the author what Tarikh means! Secondly, the foolish and ignorant author makes the claim that the implications of taking a modern editors comment (based on referring to classical books of rijal!) on grading a narration in a classical book somehow shows that everyone thought that the narration is authentic until a 20th century editor came along and said otherwise. I mean… how do you respond to such stupidity? Really? What could be said to this UTTER STUPIDITY?

Huh?!

Nowhere in my article did I call ‘Tarik Baghdad‘, which I actually had to read unlike Cheeba and Zawadi, a ‘hadith’ book. I did say Cheeba rejects it, like other classical texts such as Bukhari, Abu Dawood etc and then calls Atabek Hadith rejector!

By now, does anyone even believe Cheeba that this is what the editor even said? In fact, by accepting this statement of the editor we are in fact agreeing that ‘Tarikh Bagdad’, a rather classical work, is in fact weak and Muslim scholars are stupid as they did not realise this till the ‘editor’ and Cheeba came along. He is in fact saying that Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi basically sucks and the editor is better than a thousand years’ worth of scholars. Like his other cowardly insinuation of course, Cheeba lacks the testicular fortitude to say what he wants, but his poor language make it easy to see that for even a basic reader.

If anyone had insinuated this about Imam Bukhari’s collection, Cheeba would be calling for blood. But he did just that in the cases of Tarikh Baghdad, Sunan Abu Dawood and Ibn Majah and even Imam Ahmad…and yet Sheikhs Sulaiman and Atabek are the hadith rejecters?!

Is it a case of ‘can’t read’ or ‘won’t read’? We saw in the case of Cheeba that sadly it is both.

So when unable to find a mistake, make one up…and then write a long paragraph about it. This is about as rigorous as me saying Zawadi is a Satan Worshipper and then refuting Satan worship and how dumb it is…without him actually ever having said or done anything to indicate that he was i.e mental.

As for the issue of riijal, they likewise don’t have sufficient English reading comprehension to even read what I said. Or are just lying. But people who can read above 9th grade already know that. Obviously, I can’t now start teaching ‘ZawaChee’ English.

Funny how modern day editors applied the ‘principles in the classic books of rijal’ better than the classical people themselves, who presumably were idiots for 1000 years until Zaweeba came along. Another typical Salafi trope.

Also, Does CheeBassam know any other insults apart from ‘foolish’? Isn’t it getting a bit, like, repetitive?

– Anyone can see the dishonesty of the author in terms of not properly engaging with brother Waqar’s critical point that Hanafis using ta’wil to interpret some ahaadith as opposed to taking them literally does not amount to them rejecting the hadeeth. I mean just read the author’s response to Waqar’s comment regarding at-Tahawi on the illegitimate child hadeeth and see how that the foolish and ignorant author can’t be taken seriously at all on an academic level. Same thing regarding the abrogation of the “killing the drunkard” hadith and how the author confuses adopting a view of abrogation with adopting a view of rejection. What lack of poor understanding of fiqh and hadeeth sciences!

I mean I can’t even reply to this non-argument. This guy has in effect written an information free paragraph here. That’s actually an impressive skill. Notice how neither Cheeba nor Zawadi have ever told us what ‘fiqh and hadith sciences’ they follow, not where they learnt them (i.e none and nowhere, as you saw, Cheeba just makes it up: Aqeeda from no-one, hadith from Albani, Tafseer from, err, himself etc).

In fact all Wahhabis are like this because they are a heretical sect who can best be described as Haswee mujassims in aqeeda and Neo-Hanbali/Albani in hadith – have their own modern and novel ‘principles’, but if they come out of the closet then it’s a problem for them.

– Even if Ikrima was from the Khawarij, it’s known that you can accept ahaadeeth from trustworthy innovators not known for lying to spread the views of their sect! This is something known.

Who said you can’t accept hadith from Khawarij? Even Sulaiman Ahmed said in the book that he accepts Ikrima as a narrator.

Hah! Didn’t really read the book did you? Just like I said. 

The issue under discussion was whether Ikrima was or was not Khawarij since Cheeba was trying to make it appear this was some kind of lie to insinuate that some said he was, and even naming scholars like Imam Ahmad and baldly lying about their opinion (thoroughly debunked in the article and a point which ‘CheeWaadi’s’ lack of scholarly Arabic probably doesn’t allow them to engage with – there were over six pages of references just on this topic in the main article). Zawadi has just come down on the side of ‘Atabek’.

BTW, interesting…people who ‘innovate’ in religion and are murderous towards the Sahaba such as the Khawarij can be ‘trustworthy’?

Whhhaaaaaaaaattt?!

So here Zawadi is telling us that the narrators need only be ‘trustworthy’, not good Muslims or good people, or at least not murderers. We look forward to his ‘make it up as you go along’ hadith methodology. And don’t let your Christian fans know that Khawarij stuff please or they’ll Google it!

Also, Khawarij don’t even accept hadith themselves and are basically ‘hadith rejecters’ as most of the Sahabah are kaafir according to them. So how is Zareebas explanation any use? Wahhbais are in love with Khawarij for obvious reasons which again, you can see on the nightly news.

In fact, Imam Bukhari narrates from Khawarij and the reason given by Ibn Hajar and others is that Khawarij believe that lying is kufr so it’s fine.

Shukurov said in his book that the Mu’tazilla believe the same (which is true), but they are hardly ever narrated from as opposed to the Khawarij, but at least Ibn Hajar has consistency and ‘Atabek’ has references, what has Zawadi got? He was just demanding references for everything from the author’s having visited the dentist to Hanafis denying niqaab but now he’s just said that totally psycho sects like Khawarij can narrate (and indeed they can) but no explanation or reference! In fact, I had to help him out!

– The “Al-Nakhai not taking from Abu Hurayra” claim is addressed here http://bayanelislam.net/Suspicion.aspx?id=03-01-0077 for those interested

Errr…no it isn’t. It’s addressed in these books such ‘Tareekh Dimashq’, ‘Bidaya wa Nihaya’ and many others which you have not read – Dhahabi also mentioned it in ‘Siyar A’lam’ so no one can deny it. Stop trying to ‘spin’ and displaying other people’s ‘knowledge’ which you can’t even understand – go and learn and get some consistent methodology instead of responding with ‘links’. My own article is an excellent primer for you. But it’s not my job to teach them the basics. It is however unsurprising – does this guy have any qualifications or degrees or ijazas or is he just like Cheeba? Being an amateur is fine – after thirty years teaching I still consider myself one. But you have to show some knowledge, like I did by dissection your friend’s embarrassing rant.

What do we get in response? Lies, links and waffle.

Maybe I should debate with the people who wrote the links then. I brought classical references and scans from the scholars of hadith, and this is my reward?!

Well, I might as well start acting like a Salafi and posting Arabic and name dropping scholars. But unlike this fellow, I can do it properly…because I can read at a level above a 6th grader!

				الحديث النبوي ومكانته في الفكر الإسلامي الحديث إذا كانت السمة الأساسية التي طبعت نصوص الحديث النبوي منذ القديم هي سمة الخلاف في شأنه وشأن حجيته، فإن اللافت للنظر عند دراسة مكانة الحديث النبوي في الفكر الإسلامي ا…
				View on www.mominoun.com	Preview by Yahoo

In the red box is the narration of Ahmad for the statement of Ibrahim Nakhai – the chain is; Son of Ahmad from Ahmad from Abu Usama from A’mash from Ibrahim [as in ‘Nakhai’]. There are many chains, and here is one of the chains we can check together.

We saw two things; 

1. There are chains.

2. Chains are not disconnected.

We saw that Zaweeba lied (through his presentation of this ‘evidence’) in one line twice. Since Cheewadi obviously thinks that Ahmad is incompetent (a claim he has insinuated twice now), let us check again if Imam Ahmad is right and if each narrator indeed narrated from the one above: Since Baseema was keen to educate as using Imam Dahabi, lets use the biographies from his  ”Siyar a’lam al-nubala”:

Biography of Ahmad’s chain from the book of Dhahabi ”Siyar a’lam al-nubala” volume 13 – it says that he is ”Hafidh”, it proves that he is authentic. It also says that he narrated from his father directly. So no disconnection between him and his father.

Unlike Cheewadi, we can read and translate!

Ignominiously embarrassing for the Wahhabi pair…

In a nutshell, not only does the author lack proper adab, but also basic fundamental knowledge in the hadeeth sciences (or likely any other Islamic science for that matter).”

As the kids say nowadays, LOL!

Is this really all that Cheeba and the Salafis can conjure up? And where on Earth did they post this? In secret to their fans on Facebook!

These Sulaiman Ahmed and Shukurov guys are all over Facebook like a rash, but instead of taking on the ‘heretics’ so that everyone can benefit from their huge Salafist knowledge, Baseema rather tries to circulate his ‘responses’ amongst each other like young boys do with dirty magazines. I guess that’s apt then.

I must admit, this type of cowardice is usually due to sour grapes – the two Hanafis publish a handsome 300 page book and started a bit of a quiet revolution with it. CheeWadi brings what? A couple of irrelevant internet links and badly constructed lies. Shamelessly, they even put this review on Amazon.

Dear Reader, could we wish for a better demonstration of the tricks used by Salafis and indeed all kinds of dishonest people in any kind of belief system in life?

They assume three things only: that you are stupid and lazy and won’t read, that you are unable to read Arabic and finally that they can fool you with rhetoric and lying. But rhetoric and even lying is ultimately a function of intellect, which according to Wahhabis is ‘haraam‘ or ‘forbidden’, so they can never get you on the last one, but be sure not to let them get you on the first two either!

Update: Just as I had been hoping, Cheewaadi has ‘reassured’ his followers with the following response (in private of course). I had been wanting this desperately since it would removes doubts from readers who might have a niggling feeling that the Wahhabis could reply and that maybe this argument was above their heads – by no means, as is clear here.

I had also laid a few ‘traps’ in my article since I suspected that Zaweeba can’t understand Arabic enough to read my sources. It also helps to decimate his ‘reputation’ amongst his poor misguided followers even more. Let’s embarrass him again (even though he was unable to respond to literally everything – and this time had to admit it and ask his followers for help!).

Clearly, he thinks he’s the teacher here! Since neither he nor Cheeba provided references for any of his claims, literally not a single reference, by what authority does he ask for references for Hanafi positions? This is another classic Salafi tactic – when outclassed ask for ‘references’, giving none yourself. Amusingly, he himself stays true to character and provides nothing for his claim about the Shafi position (which they have never stated nor referenced – this is the third time) and not even the Salafi one! The endgame here for them is to try and say that the niqaab is ‘recommended’ or ‘mustahab‘ in the Hanafi school – and it isn’t even that! But look it up yourself you brats! You’ve provided a grand total of three fake internet links and I’ve carpet-bombed you with dozens of pages of classical books. And they dare to ask for references? The Chutzpah here is almost worth respecting. Almost.

It’s also funny how they find a few pages to be ‘extremely’ long – so we know they have never read a book of, say, a few hundred pages then, which by their estimation must be ‘infinitely long’. In fact, I had to cut my article in half – so profligate were their mistakes.

I also like how he has to copy my language and complains about personal attacks – after calling Shukurov and Co a heretic, and peppering his articles with insults, though he only knows two: ‘foolish’ and ‘ignorant’ – someone buy this kid a Thesaurus. In fact these guys suck badly at insulting as well. When someone insults them properly, like a bully who gets slapped, they go running to their proverbial mommys and complaining about ‘adab’, as I predicted.

Check out some of Cheebama Bin Laden’s fan clubs ‘adab’ here:

If that’s the right position regarding the ‘Talkhees‘ of Dhahabi then how come only Bassam and this Bashaar Awad (who is so famous that no one has ever heard of him) know it and Ibn Hajar, Sayuti, Abdul – Rauf al-Munawi, Laknawi and Deobandis as well as Imam Dhahbi himself are ignorant of it?!

Absolutely dreadful comeback and totally proves the modernism – had to resort to a modern ‘non-Salafi’ scholar (says Baseema) to refute classical giants. Wahhabism 101.

BTW, he baldly did the same trick as last time – where he linked to a book which linked to another ad infinitum with no classical sources in site. This time we have degenerated to ‘wordpress’ sites as a reference – but the ignominy doesn’t stop there – the wordpress has as its reference… you guessed it another wordpress site:https://islamclass.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/contemporary-scholars-on-al-dhahabis-talkhis-of-al-hakims-al-mustadrak/

Hilariously, even in the wordpress reference that this modern day ‘authority’ Awad is used for, there is no reply or mention about Ibn Hajr, Sayuti, Laknawai blah blah declaring the narration of Hakim via Dhahabi being reliable. In fact Awad bizarrely asserts that he does not know where this notion came from i.e he is ignorant of the confirmations of Ibn hajar et al.

Flummoxed, Baseema literally just did the same thing he was chastised so badly for twice before – he just hoped you would not check the ‘reference’!

It’s fine to believe such nonsensical modernist things if you want, but then don’t pretend to be supporting classical Islam – just as stated, this is a modern position and a contradiction of the giants of hadith. This is just ‘Wahhabi Quilliam’ in action.

The worst thing is, he is so deranged and hateful of the classical scholars (like a good Salafi) that he can’t even bring himself to say ‘Ibn Hajar is not a heretic’, which would be a good way of defending himself from the accusation that he claims this – all he can say is Ibn Hajar is not ‘necessarily’ a heretic. Imagine Cheewadi being accused of being a rampant homosexual and then denying it when asked by saying ‘not necessarily’ and you get an idea about what kind of language is being used here.

Ibn Hajar is A’shari according to himself and everyone else apart from Zaweeba – who is all over the ‘ahlalhadeeth’ site declaring A’sharis to be heretics, as I mentioned. You do the math (let me guess, according to Wahhabis and only them, Ibn Hajar is not A’shari. Ohh wait, he actually just tried that!).

Still angling for the cheap shot – and still failing. After telling people to ‘read’ the quote, he deliberately leaves out the lines of the article preceding, where his own friend Barack Cheebama states that the narration from ‘Tarikh‘ is also found in Sahih Bukhari as well:

Along with the hadith reports from the Messenger of Allah, there is similar oblivion with regards to a narration from Imam Abu Hanifa. On p.11 the author refers to a report from Tarikh Baghdad wherein it is alleged that Abu Hanifa called a hadith (which is narrated in Sahih Bukhari as well) a “delusion”. However, as clarified by the editor of the referenced edition the report is dubious as it is related on the authority of a weak narrator.

Again, the message is ‘don’t you dare read the book of hadith, instead look at what the editor said about it instead – 1000 years later!’

Or is ‘Sahih Bukhari‘ not a hadith book? And why do we need to reject the hadith of Bukhari because a modern editor of Tarikh finds it to have a weak narrator in that book?

So why is it that Cheezadi is telling us it’s in Bukhari but we should reject it based on what the modern editor of Tarikh said? Isn’t this exactly what I said about Wahhabi methodology, rejecting the narrations of classical hadith books and histories for the sake of selected modern ‘editors’? An absolutely lame attempt to make it look like I don’t understand what tarikh means after I decimated poor Cheewadi with an avalanche of classical references… that they once again showed no evidence that they could read. In fact they proved they couldn’t see here:

Apart from the fact that now we have the commentary of the article from Chewaadi, this is just another lie – but one that allows me to conclusively show that he does not know Arabic! Witness this screen capture, from the very article that he used to ‘defend’ the issue of Nakhai not narrating from Abu Huraira:

In any case, the idea that the chain was disconnected or non-existent were both refuted – Chewaadi is simply unable to respond to the chain analysis (from Dhahabi’s ‘Siyar‘ and Imam Ahmad). Also notice yet again, the only trick they have – a modern scholar against Dhahabi and Imam Ahmad and God knows who else? What is the point of engaging with such people and presenting them the authoritative books when they believe Islamic scholarship started with Salafist internet sites? And then can’t even read their own salafist articles!

In fact, he shows his reading age = 6 again by talking nonsense about the ‘Ilal‘ of Imam Ahmad (he can’t read it anyway) and not understanding the story from the references I gave about Nakhai and A’mash. They all tell the same story – that A’mash used to narrate stories from Abu Huraira to Nakhai and Nakhai used to get annoyed and basically tell him to be quiet, because ‘we’ reject all of that. Baseema Bin Laden is trying to say that When Nakhai says ‘we’ he means the Kufi scholars and not himself! Apart from the fact that this makes things worse since he will be narrating from scholars even more senior to him (and from the salaf), humiliatingly, Zaweeba doesn’t even understand the sources – his Arabic is just not there:

This is the most honest bit – where he admits he actually is too much of a lightweight to respond to anything and asks for their help. 

Sad, but at least now we know that they are simply unable to respond, so we can rest assured that our recent schooling on avoiding Wahhabi heresies and distortions was adequate to show up the utter impotence of Wahhabi propagandists when faced with even very basic scholarship or academia.

Schooled x3! (Or ‘Cubed’ if you prefer)

[Notice how their scholars are still too scared to step forward, despite their followers being drubbed all over the internet. But we know how Wahhabis really like to spread their ‘scholarship’ i.e. when your arguments and knowledge are so poor, you can almost excuse them for resorting to violence!]

IMPORTANT: It is critical for young British Muslims to understand the standard Wahhabi tactics displayed by these ‘dawah’ guys – I understand that most people on campus don’t have time to learn Arabic and Islamic scholarship – they just want to get on with their lives – and that’s fine. But this makes it all the more important to be forewarned and forearmed against Salafi deceptions – since it is these exact same steps they use to radicalise youth and get them to join jihadi movements like ISIS. ‘Hadith’ here is interchangeable for ‘Islamic fatwas’, ‘the Islamic position’, ‘ijma’ (consensus), ‘what the Salaf said’ and even the Quran:

1. Use ahad hadith (single chain narrations) to persuade people that this is what the Prophet said (most of ISIS ‘fatwas’ from raping Yazidis to killing people are extracted from ahad hadith)
2. Use these ahad hadith in the way you want with no regard for how classical authorities understood them
3. Pretend things are Muttawatir (mass transmitted like the Quran) and Ijma (agreed) when they are not – if challenged give evidence without translating or mistranslate. If cornered, use Salafi sources (Ibn Taymiyya etc) to ‘prove’
4. Decry anyone who disagrees as a modernist or heretic
5. Mistranslate these hadiths (and everything else) at will – Allah will reward you, it’s for a good cause etc.
6. Use modern scholars, specifically Albani to reject any hadith from Bukhari on down when it doesn’t suit you
7. Never allow an open debate with non-Wahhabi/Salafi scholars where our authorities can be discredited

Remember, it is these very same ‘dawah’ people who are usually doing the radicalisation too:

https://youtu.be/7F0oqqm5ZgY?t=485

(he says ‘whether you make jihad peaceably or you defend you brothers and sisters’ -clearly indicating milatary jihad…and then shames himself by lying about it in his defence video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITW8WlSupiA

Don’t let yourself or your family become victims.

[1] Learn more about Zareeba and companies lammentable creed in their own words here:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vbe/showthread.php?t=3661

http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vbe/showthread.php?t=15833

http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vbe/showthread.php?t=5170

And here:

http://asharisassemble.com/2013/11/06/the-strange-case-of-ibn-taymiyyah/

http://asharisassemble.com/2013/10/06/ibn-taymiyya-explains-how-to-find-god-in-a-bucket%e2%80%8f/

 

SA: Sheikh Abu Mansur Maturidi speaks about two verses that people believe to have been revealed in the incident of black magic. Please follow the text;

(‘Qul a’udhu birabbi al-nas’) explicitly looks like being an order to the Prophet PBUH to do this specific thing – seeking refuge – that’s how after the command it is mentioned (‘I seek refuge by the Lord of people’)

– But God knows better, it’s meaning is two things;

1. It is an order to the people to whom he is passing it onto, and it is teaching them…
2. The order is for others. But order of saying is left there so it will be a continuous command for ever. 

Again Shaykh Atabek explains:

– As you can see, Abu Mansur didn’t accept that this order is directed towards the Prophet as these people who believe in his being affected by black magic claim.
– If we go with these people however, then look at what God is allegedly ordering the Prophet PBUH to seek protection from; a ‘Waswas’ [whisper or perversion] that makes deception in the heart of  people.

Now a question;

Do you guys believe that Prophets’ heart is reachable for the Satans’ of jinn and ins to do waswasah? If ‘no’ then the order of reading these Suras is not to Muhammad (SAW) but to the people as Abu Mansur said. Lets look at the next text.

God informed his Prophet about a secret conversation that Mushriks [Meccan polytheist opponents of Muhammad] had. That was a proof for him being a Prophet, because how else could he know that conversation except by divine intervention? And God calls these Mushriks ‘Dhalimeen’ – oppressors because they knew that the Prophet is not insane and nor he is a person affected by magic. But mushriks alleged these things nonetheless, and described the Prophet as insane and debilitated by magic – knowing all along that The Prophet is not. 

So here is an easy and clear denial from Abu Mansur saying that Muhammad wasn’t affected by magic. Now it is worth knowing who are the ones who say that The Prophet was  affected;

Mushriks of Quraish (as Quran mentioned)
Orientalists (many of whom accept this and the ‘Satanic verses’ story for obvious reasons)
Muhaddiths
Salafis
Ash’aris
Deobandis
Beralawis 
Latest Maturidis
Some of Ja’faris

As we saw, some of them called the rejection of the Prophet being affected by magic a ”dangerous and false claim”. So, regardless, I follow Quran, Abu Mansur and Abu Bakr in favour of this ‘dangerous claim’.  

  

 

SA: MJ, by ‘you guys’ I mean the people working with you such as that Deobandi brother and the people from Arab peninsula that you mentioned.

You insulted, publicly called us heretics then you went to ‘private message’ and tried to dodge the issue when I said clearly to you to bring this up in public and I will refute it. As I saw your dishonesty and you ran away.

As I always said in discussion with you guys I’m willing to do it only publicly since you have shown that you practice ‘Takiyah’ [not admitting to one’s true beliefs in public].

Your filthy language is also unbelievable: I will never call a person a ‘dog’. It’s embarrassing.

I’m ready to carry on the dialogue about these issues but first I ask for honesty and sticking to the point and you brining equivalent proof.

So I honestly begin:

My premise is that: I reject Hadith in Bukhari and as such I don’t believe that the Prophet was affect by magic.

Your premise: you accept all Hadith in Bukhari and as such do you accept the conclusion that Prophet lost his mind or was impotent?

Clearly, Ahmad is referring to previous campaigns of slander and anathematisation by the advocates of the position that the Prophet was affected by magic. These are easily seen online. Note that he has again translated the relevant passage verbatim and stated his and Imam Maturidi’s position clearly.

YA: It isn’t ‘guys’ calling those who adopt your opinion heretics it is Badr al-Din al-Ayni and others.

YA: It is weird that you advise brothers that they need nothing more to understand the science of hadith than one small book. While you completely disparage individuals who have spent significant portions of their live studying abroad and studying many books. If people should go study, then with who? You and your shaykh? Those who are obviously propagating opinions that the classical scholars said are innovation and heresy What does studying abroad here have to do with your rejection of hadith? Nothing.

I comment on this because this is a favourite tactic of Salafists and Deobandis who wish to market themselves as Hanafites or Sunnis: notice that he ignores Maturidi, who is in fact the ‘author’ of Hanafite creed and instead name drops a Salafi and Deobabandi favourite, the hadith scholar Badr al Din Al Ayni – the very same scholar who neglected Hanafite principles to make a compromise with the Muhaditheen. Note that Ahmad had already said that in contradistinction to the Hanafites, the muhaditheen, including those like Ayni who ‘sold out’ to Muhaditheen principles, accept that black magic was done on the Prophet, so what is the point of his opponent saying this?

It illustrates for us nicely that when Salafis wish to infiltrate the ‘madhabs‘, and especially the Maliki and Hanafi schools, they quote mine much later scholars who were advocates of abandoning Hanafi and Maliki creedal principles and hadith methodology and accepting the redaction of Bukhari and the other Muhaditheen uncritically. 

In essence, he is saying that you should learn the positions of Hanafis and others through the Muhaditheen, which is absurd as in most cases they were opponents.

YA: Why don’t you translate the first wajh Maturidi mentions:

بما علمه بالوحي أنه سحر  [he helpfully does not translate it either]

SA: Yaqub you’re not even smart enough to realise that there were two different threads [on Facebook]. So what if Badr Al-din al-Ayni said it, people who everyone considers untouchable scholars called Abu Hanifa heretic. That doesn’t prove anything. We know Ayni loved Bukhari.

People you quoted yourself insulted Ghazali too so that doesn’t prove anything.

This is a good point: people name drop scholars as if they were all some kind of monolithic mass. This is nonsense. Imams like Shafi and Malik insulted each other and we know that people until the time of Ghazzali (himself not excluded) were insulting the founders of rival schools (in his case he insulted Abu Hanifa due to his esteemed teacher Imam Al Juwayni’s conflict with the Hanafites). The point is that Ayni agrees with Bukhari against Maturidi, so is inadmissible as evidence for Maturidi’s positions.

YA: And highlight who is actually rejecting the hadith in this passage. It is Abu Bakr al-Asamm, the Mutazilite.

[again, no translation offered, despite the discussion taking place in English, a favourite Salafi tactic which you must be aware of. The reason for not translating will become obvious here too]

Maturidi is refuting Asamm who rejected the hadith. Hence the word ولكن.

SA: You are so dishonest it is unbelievable. When scholars say ‘Qeeela’ they mean it is ‘weak’, have you studied anything at all? Assam didn’t reject the Hadith he didn’t even mention which of the two Hadith he is rejecting

Stop wasting our time and snipping bits and being evil. Translate it all.

YA: I am not going to translate it. Anyone who comes can read it and judge for their own selves.

YA: When scholars say ولكن they are indicating to what comes after to be preferred.

YA: After that Maturidi confirms the sihr.

YA: If you have another place he denies it, or Imam Abu Hanifa for that matter, please share it.

YA: You can see also that Asamm’s line of argument is basically the same thing as yours.

Although Assam’s opinion is not given in the text anyway, and it is not even clear what Maturidi is attributing to him or which hadith Assam rejected, we have the ‘you are a Mu’tazzilite’ hurling to try and anathematise Ahmed in the eyes of the readers. Note again the brazen refusal to translate. And now he is asking for an opinion of Abu Hanifa as opposed to Maturidi – the whole idea is to get the inconvenient Maturidi out of the picture.

SA: Yaqub stop playing games and translate all of it. You’re taking snippets like a dodgy guy. You not translating shows your deception. No more snippets. Translate ALL THE TEXT, especially the bit where Imam Maturidi says (‘Thuma Al Asloo Inthana‘). If you refuse, then don’t come back.

YA: If you want the whole passage translated. Do it yourself.

Huh?! Then why argue?

SA: Lol too funny. You’re not willing to translate, only to take just snippets

MJ: Oh and Shaykh Hasan Hitu and others in aqidah islamiyyah also mentions what Marizi said when speaking of magic

Another interloper appears and immediately begins name dropping. Notice how no one is willing to engage with or even translate what Maturidi has said in plain Arabic – namely that he rejects that the Prophet was ever afflicted with black magic. The game here is to name drop and obfuscate to avoid having to openly reject Maturidi and hence anathematise one of the Imams of creed (Salafis true position vis-a-vis Asharis and Maturidis)

SA: Jamili, option to translate all of it is there for you too. But before you do, confirm your position. Again don’t post until you do this and you both confirm your position.

YA: Again, anyone who comes can review the passage from Maturidi and evaluate it themselves.

Tahawi confirms the sihr, ‘Ayni confirms it and calls those who reject the hadith innovators. ‘Ayni’s position is also what is taken by Hafiz Ibn Hajar and Maziri.

Do you have a clear statement from Maturidi in which he rejected this hadith? Do you have a clear statement from Imam Abu Hanifah in which he rejected this hadith?

Again, a bunch of guys who are not Maturidi (or even Hanafi in some cases) accept black magic – but the discussion is not on whether these hadith scholars accept it or not but rather what Maturidi said – which Ahmed’s opponents are unwilling to translate, even though they insist on conducting this charade in English, for the purpose of confusing English readers who can’t read the Arabic. Salafis love to ‘acquire’ as many English speakers as they can, thereby making it easier for them to spread their ideology in the dominant language and to the dominant region of the time.

Also, note that since the beginning, neither of the interlopers have stated their position on the Prophet suffering from insanity and impotence – the whole ‘discussion’ is a mere charade.

SA: Like I said don’t bring names of people as proof: I already said all these accepted magic.

Mushriks of Quraish (as Quran mentioned)
Orientalists
Muhaddiths
Salafis
Ash’aris
Deobandis
Brelawis  
Latest Maturidis
Some of Ja’faris

Both of you should confirm your position and translate all the text

YA: Wait, are you saying you do not accept sihr altogether? I would take the opinion of a great hadith scholar like Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani or Badr al-Din al-‘Ayni regarding who is a heretic over yours. We accept the opinion of the scholars of jarh and ta’dil regarding establishing innovation and ascribing that to individuals.

Again, an attempt to impugn and anathematise Ahmed, a Hanafite, as a Mu’tazzilite by attributing the Mutazzilite denial of Black Magic to him, a baseless diversion. Note again, that we are to name drop hadith scholars and ignore what Maturidi said (which is what is under discussion).

Another learning point here is that Salafis would like you to learn creed from the (late) scholars of hadith like Ibn Hajar or Ayni. But the Imams of creed are entirely different. This is like asking your doctor to fly a jumbo jet. In fact, this is the distinction between the Maliki and Hanafite versus the Salafist position – the latter would like to bin the opinions of the Imams of creed such as Maturidi, Tahawi, Ashari, Ghazali etc in favour of a literalist adoption of context-less hadith from muhaditheen. This is just the people of jurisprudence versus the people of hadith in a different guise, with the interlopers name dropping hadith scholars hoping you will be too naive to notice what is going on. Notice the peppering of Arabic terminology sans explanation or translation to try and impress the reader – again, standard Salafist operating procedure to show they have knowledge.

Hilariously, Ibn Hajar is neither Hanafi nor Maturidi.

MJ: After he mentioned all three opinions he has adopted the first approach which is to teach. However, he is stating that the seeking refuge was revealed to teach and not because of something that occurred. So from this, he is stating that his opinion that the Sabab nuzool (the reason of revelation) was to teach and not because of an occurrence. This does not mean he negated that magic has its effect. This in usool is not a dhahir never mind a nass.

So, as Ibn Hajar says in Hadi Us-Sari, Bukhari is confirmed Sahih by ‘udool (trustworthy narrators) and the ummah has accepted it, so if you want to break this code, you need to bring a hujjah zahirah (a clear, absolute proof)!

Seeing that the ruse is in danger, this guy finally tries commentary and partial translation of Maturidis text, where he argues that Maturidi stated that the reason for the revelation of the verses of the Quran allegedly dealing with black magic was not because black magic occurred but to teach people about it (which is true). But he absurdly claims that even this does not constitute denial of black magic by Maturidi, since he is merely saying that the reason for the verses revelation is not black magic being done on the Prophet. But maybe he still believed that it had been done. Which I hope you realise is a stretch at best – so he then goes on to say that Maturidi must have accepted black magic…because the later non-Hanafi imams of hadith who came after him did. So the game is the same – a flimsy translation and the assertion as above that the final say on creed is not with the imams of creed such as Maturidi, but rather with muhaditheen such as Bukhari and his famous commentator (and non-Hanafite) Ibn Hajar Asqalani.

This could have been shortened to ‘it doesn’t matter what Maturidi says, go with the hadith and muhaditheen‘ – but that would have given the game away. Notice how he is confusing the audience in his first paragraph – where he basically admits what Ahmed has been saying all along – by once again dropping untranslated (and irrelevant) Arabic terms to show how clever he is. This is the same as a physicist turning up and saying things like ‘entanglement’, ‘black body radiation’ and ‘Scwarzchild radius’ without any context or explanation, hoping that this would cow you into being impressed with him.

But no physicist would ever act as stupidly as a Muslim scholar (though some have tried).

Also, a question for consideration: why is it SO important to believe that the Prophet was affected by black magic and became impotent and deluded? 

SA: This is not the first time your brought Ibn Hajar as proof. This time you are demanding absolute evidence because of the opinion of Ibn Hajar. Can you then confirm that Prophet revealed SATANIC VERSES as Ibn Hajar believes and stated it, and if you don’t believe this, can you bring absolute evidence to disprove the opinion of Ibn Hajar?

Ahmad is stating that since Ibn Hajar, the much later 15th century (died 1449 CE), who MJ is demanding be taken as an authority in Maturidi creed (despite his being not only an A’sharite but a mu’haddith and not a theologian), believes in the authenticity of the ‘Satanic Verses’ incident, does MJ accept this or is his offer of Ibn Hajar as a proof and an authority spurious?

MJ: I’m sorry Sulaiman but this is not how the religion works. You are the one that needs to bring evidence. As you should be aware of in fiqh, the hujjah is upon the one who wants to break what is set. So bring your hujjah zahirah forth.

This is how a debate works. Otherwise it’s just throwing things left, right and centre.

MJ: Also this is not the opinion of Ibn Hajar solely. This is in the fatwa of Ibn Salah and many others of Ahl Us -Sunna across all the schools. Anybody who has read on this topic will be aware of this.

I wouldn’t want to state my position either if I believed what this MJ ‘scholar’ does. Notice that Ibn Salah is another hadith scholar and partisan of Ibn Hajar, in the sense that he is the main person responsible for the popularisation of Bukhari’s redaction and advocating for the ‘abrogation’ of the Hanafi and Maliki as well as other hadith methodologies in favour of blind adherence to that of Muhaditheen as typified by Imam Bukhari. So we have the same game again – you can only learn about Maturidi creed from other people who were not of his school and did not even address it, and worse still were opposed to him. And even then, they can only be from the muhaditheen. And only some of them etc. 

Notice that the liberal dropping of Arabic terms, none of which are relevant, continues to show how learned and what a good ‘scholar’ MJ is. He is claiming that Ahmed needs to bring the proof ‘to break what is set’ – but it was ‘set’ by Ibn Hajar et al – so why can’t Ahmed mention that if they are the ones doing the setting, must we not also accept their other, err, ‘idiosyncratic’ stances such as that the Prophet accepted shirk (associating partners with God) in the ‘Satanic Verses’ incident (another issue rejected by Maturidi but accepted by others, especially the muhaditheen)? 

SA: Jamilli I will give you some credit, at least you admitted about the translation, unlike the other person.

Now my claim and premise was that Abu Mansoor rejected that black magic was done on the Prophet as per what the Hadith in Bukhari states.

He does this 3 times in the text.

Firstly, the Hadith in Bukhari is explaining the Asbab Nuzool [reason for] the revelation, Imam Maturidi rejected this explanation as he said it is to TEACH and NOT because Magic occurred. The Hadith in Bukhari is saying  the opposite – that magic occurred and this is the reason for the revelation.

Secondly, the position held by Bukhari is called by Imam Maturidi ‘Qeela’, i.e weak.

Thirdly, he narrates the verse in the Quran where it was states MUSHRIKS [Meccan pagans or polytheists] said Prophet (PBUH) was affected by MAGIC and he was INSANE. However, this is what the actual Hadith in Bukhari says, so God was wrong to insult them because according to the Hadith in Bukhari, Muhammad was affected by magic and he was insane.

Now as per the rules of Islamic debate please state your premise and claim and being the proof from the books.

This is merely what the text of Maturidi says and what was stated by Shukurov and Ahmed at the beginning – so what was the point of the profuse obfuscations by MJ and YA?

YA: Admitted what about what translation?

YA: In the passage, the only one who rejects the narration outright is the Mutazilite Abu Bakr al-Asamm.

SA: YA, I’ve been advised by brothers to keep patient and the truth will come out. As you have not made a single academic comment in the last week, if you post again you will be removed. I’m sorry but time is a precious commodity and I could be using it to help people.

As long as MJ remains honest and follows the rules of discussion, I will continue to respond to him.

Quite right. YA is simply unable or unwilling to read Arabic and indeed has been contradicted by his own side in MJ. It is tantamount to argue in front of someone who cannot read Chinese that something that says ‘right’ is saying ‘wrong’, on the assumption that the audience will fall for it due to not being Chinese. This is astonishingly banal in front of people who can speak Chinese however.

MJ First and foremost I do not see the reason for your blocking Shaykh YA. It is totally unnecessary.

On to the topic, Your claim is Abu Mansoor rejects the Hadith which is in Bukhari. I ask you, where does he say that? Abu Mansoor, Rahimahu Allah, has done tarjih (preference) and has stated clearly that he does not see the reason of revelation of this Surah to be because of an occurrence that happened. In أضواء البيان, [curiously, yet again selectively untranslated – see later] the author says the mufasiroon [Quranic commentators] are unanimous that this was revealed due to that. Furthermore, as Shaykh Yaqub stated previously, after that statement of Abu Bakr al-Assam, Abu Mansoor used ‘Lakin’ [Arabic for ‘but’] which is him making clear he DOES NOT take accept what Abu Bakr al-Assam said and then said the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was affected by magic and then explained this opinion in two ways. At the end of it, Abu mansoor clearly states that his opinion is that this Surah was revealed with the first opinion he mentioned which is to teach, but nowhere does he state that he rejects magic to have been done on the Prophet ﷺ. Rather, he affirms that this is an opinion but he sees this Surah to be revealed for teaching.

Secondly, the Hadith in Bukhari is not not under any title for the tafsir [exegesis, especially of Quran] or reason of revelation of this chapter. Rather, you will find it under the chapter of magic and whether a dhimmi [essentially a non-Muslim in a ‘Muslim’ land] is killed because of magic performance.

Finally, as is clearly stated in the books of aqidah and you may open any one you wish, you will find that magic cannot affect the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in his mind nor in revelation. Other than that, it may have affected him ﷺ just like any other illness and then passed and this was also mentioned by Abu Mansoor in that text.

Now I will relate to you who has narrated this Hadith and let the public be aware that this is not a joke to just play with Hadith and use your minds as you wish. Allah gave you an intellect and it is a tool which the law praises but it never ever rules what the shari’ah has stipulated:

This Hadith is in Bukhari in five chapters [Notice the trick here: he wants you to think it is five hadith or five chains. It is merely the same hadith and the same chain, repeated five times in Bukhari’s book. In an astonishing display of dishonesty, he admits this below while restating the alleged multiplicity while trying to conceal that all of the chains converge on the same narrator i.e the hadith is single chain and ahad]. In the narration of Ibn Namir, who is a trustworthy narrator which the scholars narrate from and so does Ahmad and Ibn Al-Madini (Tahdheeb, Ibn Sa’d, Ibn Abi Hatim), Ahmad narrates from this Hadith in ‘Al-Musnad’ and so does Muslim in his ‘Sahih’ on the authority of Abu Kurayb. Ibn Maajah narrates this on the authority of Abu Bakr b. Shaybah and both narrators from Ibn Namir.

Also, many of the trustworthy narrators have narrated this on the authority of Hisham b. ‘Urwah, then his father and then Aishah, May Allah be Pleased with her. This chain is found in Musnad of Ahmad via Ma’mar and another chain via Abu Usama b. Hammad b. Usama. Bukhari and Muslim both narrate via Abu Usama. Ahmad and Ibn Sa’d narrate via Wuhayb. Bukhari narrates it again via Isa b. Younus, and via Ibn ‘Uyaynah, and via Anas b. ‘iyadh Abu Dhamrah. Then Bukhari also narrates it Mu’allaqan from the narration of Layth b. Sa’d. All of these narrated on the authority of Hisham b. Urwah, then his father and then ‘Aishah, May Allah be Pleased with her. Then Bukhari says after the narration of ‘Isa b. Yunus, “he heard it before that from Ibn Jurayh” and says, “the family of Urwah recited to me on the authority of ‘Urwah.” Also, Ibn ‘Uyaynah asked Hisham about him and he narrated it to him on the authority of his father and then ‘Aishah, May Allah be Pleased with her.

Ibn Kathir also narrated this in his tafsir of ‘Surah Falaq’.

A similar occurrence was also narrated in the Hadith of Zayd b. Arqam. Ahmad relates this in his Musnad 4:367 (Halabi) on the authority of Abu Mu’awiyah, ‘Amash, Yazid b. Hayyan then Zayd b. Arqam. And this is a sound chain. Yazid b. Hayyan Abu Hayyan at-Taymi is a trustworthy narrator and a tabi’i (tahdheeb, Al-Kabir of Bukhari, Ibn Abi Hatim).

Ibn Sa’d also related this on the authority of Musa b. Mas’ud, on the authority of Sufyan ath-Thawri, on the authority of Al-‘Amash, on the authority of of Thumamah Al-Muhallimi, on the authority of Zayd b. Arqam. This chain is also sound. All narrators in this are trustworthy (Thiqah).

Al-Haythami also narrates this in Majma’ az-Zawaid with two narrations. He said, “Nasa’i related it in short and then Tabarani did so with many chains and the narrators in one of those chains are sahih (sound).

As you all see, there are many narrators of this Hadith and many of the names will be famous and known to you. When a Hadith scholar says they are trustworthy, they test them vigorously before they pass a comment as this is sound or not.

We do not neglect the intellect, however how can your intellect neglect all of these trustworthy narrators and the ones I have mentioned is just a drop in the sea.

These people and many more prior to them which were refuted by the likes of Al-Marizi and others claim that such narration removes trust in legislating the religion because it is possible, if this is allowed, that they may say they met Jibreel but they actually didn’t. However, this is all rejected because evidence is established that the Prophet ﷺ is truthful by Qur’an in what he ﷺ relates from Allah and that he ﷺ is protected in propagating the message. And as is known in usool and logic, to make permissible that which is already established by evidence is nullified. Therefore, the claim they make at the start is already null.

In regards to your point of mushrikeen, the tafsir is rejecting the claim that they made regarding him ﷺ being affected by magic when he ﷺ recited upon them the Qur’an and that he ﷺ is the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. This is mentioned by Ahl us-Sunna as I just mentioned that he ﷺ is protected as is clearly mentioned by Qur’an in these regards.

The principle I mentioned at the end in Arabic is

تجويز ما قام الدليل على خلافه باطل

Here we see the game afoot. According to this scholar, the translation is wrong after all. But this is just the entrée (for now, he will come back to this), his main course, as you will see, is that: 

1. We have to accept the hadith because it is Bukhari, and I named dropped a bunch of narrators
2. Don’t use your intellect to question or reject hadith if they have ‘sound’ chains
3. Only my chosen Muhaditheenn have the right to define sound chains, not Malikis or Hanafis, and especially not the early pre-Bukhari ones

He then contradicts himself and applies and demands the ‘intellect and logic’ to stipulate how the black magic affected the Prophet and ignores the hadith of Bukhari which says his mind and sexual potency was affected. This is sadly typical of the scholars of today and especially the Salafists – literalists, but when challenged, suddenly rationalists.

Likewise, he has interpreted the Quranic injunction that only the Mushrikeen and dhalimoon accuse the Prophet of being affected by Black Magic as meaning that the Prophet will not be affected by magic when it comes to reciting the Quran but in other things (like sanity), he can be. And he claims this is known by ‘logic’. Leave aside that this is absurd since how can one be insane and yet be reliable in religious matters, but we can see there is no consistency – we are to accept the hadith based on narrators and yet reject what it says based on logic. I don’t even know what they call that, err, ‘epistemology’.

The idea of specifying or abrogating verses of the Quran, here seen in the example of the Quran saying that only ‘bad’ people accuse Muhammed of being affected by Black magic, by using the hadith is the methodology of Muhaditheen and Shafis as well. It is clearly rejected by Hanafites and again, Ahmad as a Hanafite is being compelled to reconcile a hadith with the Quran when that lack of concordance is the very basis in Hanafite methodology to not accept the hadith in the first place.

Notice once again, naming something in Arabic makes it automatically ‘true‘.

SA: I’ve responded to your points academically and I have numbered each point. Please respond to each number to keep on point.

a) “I do not see the reason for your blocking Shaykh Yaqub Abdurrahman.”

Here are the statements of YA:

“Why don’t you translate the first wajh Maturidi mentions” “He confirms the sihr in the passage brother” “I am not going to translate it. Anyone who comes can read it and judge for their own selves” “If you want the whole passage translated. Do it yourself.”

I blocked your Shaykh as he was making completely non-academic points, not willing to take the time to translate but instead posting snippets which I see as dishonest and a way of confusing people, he did this the last time and wasted all of our time for 2 days without bringing any proof, he posted after I warned him so I blocked him. Back on point please and let’s keep it academic.

1) “Your claim is Abu Mansoor rejects the Hadith which is in Bukhari. I ask you, where does he say that?”

Shaykh Abu Mansoor al-Maturidi states the word “Qeela” before he mentions the narration about the Jewish person performing black magic on the Prophet (PBUH). “Qeela” is “Seeghat al-Tamreedh” (Weakening Form) which I hope you know, “Seeghat al-Tamreedh” is used as a means of rejecting whatever comes after, which is the Jewish person performing black magic on the Prophet

2) “In Adhwaaul Biyaan, the author says the mufasiroon are unanimous that this was revealed due to that”

Shaykh Abu Mansoor al-Maturidi was a Mujtahid [highest level] Mufassir [commentator of Quran], Mujtahid Mutaqallim [theologian] and Mujtahid Faqhee [jurist]. Abu Bakr al-Jassas al-Hanafi was Mujtahid Mufassir, Mujtahid Usuli and Mujtahid Mujtahid Faqhee.

You quoted Ijma [consensus – basically saying that all Muslims agree on something] from “Adhwaaul Biyaan” a book written by “Muhammed Amin bin Mohammed Mukhtaar Shanqiti” who died in 1973. He is a Salafist-Mujassim [anthropomorphist]. I am a Hanafi and you refuted the position of a Mujtahid Hanafi Imam by narrating from a Salafist. I was not aware that this discussion was with a Salafist, anyway back to the Hanafi point.

So you admitted Shaykh Abu Mansoor al-Maturidi’s position was that the reason for revelation of Surah al-Falaq and Surah an-Nass was not due to Black Magic and yet you quoted Ijma from a Salafist to say the reason for revelation was Black Magic. He will most likely be narrating form Qurtubi and he is not Mujtahid [again, a high level or in some interpretations the highest level of Islamic scholarship]. So you either contradicted yourself by narrating both or you believe Shaykh Abu Mansoor al-Maturidi went against Ijma. Please check the rules of Ijma as you cannot have Ijma (= consensus} without Mujtahids agreeing on it. In fact, the two Mujtahids Mufassirs rejected black magic as a reason for revelation. For me these Mujtahid Mufassirs are well above all the other Mufassirs that you can even think about mentioning.

If you want a quote from a non-Mujtahid then, Shaykh Muhammed Tahir ibn Ash’oor, a Maliki Ashari, in ‘Tafsir Al-Tahrir Wal Tanwir’, Vol 30, p. 631 also rejects magic as the reason for the revelation of the two verses. They are contemporaries but I will take the position of a Maliki over a Salafist.

Ijma can only be established by Mujtahid Mufassir, and if there is only one Mujtahid Mufassir then what he says is Ijma.

Can you name the Mujtahid Mufassir who created this ijma that your Salafist Shaykh is claiming? You will need to find these Mujtahid Mufassirs who followed what you said, Salafi-Mujasim Muqallids do not bring forth any weight to the argument. But the two Mujtahids I mentioned are giants and if they say no magic that’s ijma. But muqallids [basically, lower level scholar who have to follow the mujtahids] agreeing on something opposite to this is breaking ijma, and Ibn Hajar, Ibn Salah, Qadi Iyad, Maziri and Qurtubi are all Muqaallids, not Mujtahids

3) “that statement of Abu Bakr al-Assam”

Please can you quote Abu Bakr al-Assam verbatim please, what is he exactly rejecting?

4) “after that statement of Abu Bakr al-Assam, Abu Mansoor used ‘Lakin’ which is him making clear he DOES NOT accept what Abu Bakr al-Assam said”

‘Lakin’ does not support your position. On the contrary, he says ‘Lakin Intha’na fee ma QEELA’ which means “but according to us in terms of what was said, that the Prophet was affected by magic…” So once again he is not affirming but stating “Qeela” which once again is “Seegahtu al Tamreeb”. [see above]

5) “the Hadith in Bukhari is not not under any title for the tafsir or reason of revelation of this chapter. Rather, you will find it under the chapter of magic and whether a dhimmi is killed because of magic performance.”

You quoted from your Mujassim scholar that it was Ijma that the narration was for the two verses, so you according to you Bukhari is rejecting Ijma as he has not put it under the chapter of “Reason of Revelation”. Unless you are accepting Bukhari’s position and as such you are suggesting that the magic occurred twice. One for the two verses and another time as Bukhari never mentioned it in the chapter on reasons for the revelation of certain verses.

6) “is clearly stated in the books of aqidah and you may open any one you wish, you will find that magic cannot affect the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in his mind nor in revelation.”

This is what I am asking you to do. Your hadith in Bukhari clearly states the Prophet lost his mind and was imagining events occurring. Are you rejecting this bit of the hadith or do you accept it? If you accept it then you are contravening the books of Aqeedah [creed or religious dogma] which I am upholding, if you reject that he lost his mind then you are also rejecting selective passages of the hadith. Please explain.

7) “it may have affected him ﷺ just like any other illness and then passed and this was also mentioned by Abu Mansoor in that text.”

It is not mentioned in the text. Bukhari says the Prophet (PBUH) lost his mind, Qadi Iyaad [a later Maliki scholar inclined towards Bukhari and the muhaditheen] said the Prophet was sexually impotent for one year: as he approached his wives, he would lose his erection. Are you rejecting a part of the text in Bukhari and talking the position of Qadi Iyaad? Or are you rejecting both positions and creating a new position?

8) “We do not neglect the intellect, however how can your intellect neglect all of these trustworthy narrators and the ones I have mentioned is just a drop in the sea”

The drop in the sea you speak of, have narrated this hadith in many different contradictory manners, so which drop shall I take as they are not from the same sea. In some narrations it is an immature kid who performs the magic, in others it is a Jewish person, in yet another it is a lady who performs the magic. In some narrations it happened for three days and in others for forty days.

In terms of the intellect and it’s primacy over the single chain narrations, the Hanafis, Shafis, Malikis and some Hanbalis such Ibnul Jawzi apply the intellect on the text of ahad [broadly speaking, single chain narrations]

Also the narrations that you have mentioned are weak even according to the Muhaditheen, because they contain weak and unreliable narrators.

You mentioned that this was narrated by “Ibn Saad and other Thiqaa narrators”. Are you making this statement intentionally or by mistake? All of these are weak. If you narrated this and you didn’t know that’s bad but if you know then that is really scary. You will struggle to find any authentic narration even according to the Muhaditheen except the Aisha one – which is narrated to only Urwa, which is then narrated to only his son Hisham [i.e single chain]. You also said Laith bin Saad narrated it but did you know he narrated it from Hisham? So there is no need to mention a big list of names when the reality is quite different and they are all from the same source.

9) Please translate the verse about magic and Shaykh Abu Mansoor’s Tafseer.

The statements of the brother trying to attribute being under magic and insanity to the Prophet Muhammad as per the Hadith in Bukhari sure do sound like the same statement made by the Mushriks which were admonished by God in the Quran.

10. “Believing in possibility of opposite which was proven is void”

This principle is irrelevant except that I would say believing that the Prophet lost his mind/Impotent is batil (void).

11. Also, a Mujtahid quoting something does not mean he believes in it, as we know the famous incident of Imam Malik – when someone came to him to ask about why he put the hadith about buying and selling and having a choice to nullify the transaction (which is also contained in Bukhari) in his ‘Muwatta’, but he rejected it. Imam Malik replied that “it was to let the people know that he rejected not because he didn’t know it but he rejected knowingly”.

I have taken some time to respond to your points, I expect an academic response, which is on point addressing the points I made without deviating I expect complete honesty, if this does not happen I will end the discussion as I could have used this time to do work that open minded people would actually benefit from.

There is not much to be said here apart from the note that we can see that Ahmed is actually bothering to translate and refraining from name dropping. He is naive to expect an academic discussion though, as will soon become clear.

MJ: 1) Abu Mansoor said ‘Lakin’ and then ‘fi ma qeel’. So he does not accept Abu Bakr’s statement and neither does he see this opinion to be the correct stance according to his tarjih for the reason of revelation. To make it plain and clear as I have already done, ABU MANSOOR HAS REJECTED THAT THIS WAS REVEALED BECAUSE OF THAT INCIDENT. This does not mean he rejected the Hadith. Where is the dilalal iltizaam in this which you are making?

Continued use of obscurantist language and untranslated terms to hide the simple fact that there is no factual content to this statement at all, other than to hide that Imam Maturidi unambiguously rejected black magic being done on the Prophet. MJ, who I remind you, is an Islamic scholar of ‘note’, shamelessly continues to obfuscate by saying that Maturidi is not rejecting that the Prophet suffered from black magic but rather that he rejects that there are passages of the Quran revealed for this purpose. Assuming that is true, in this lengthy dialogue, we have not seen MJ or his cronies show Maturidi’s acceptance, other than by insisting that there is no way that Maturidi could have disagreed with Bukhari et al so it must be true.

2) I quoted from that book and the author said ‘ittafaq’. By ‘unanimous’ I did not mean ‘ijma‘. Furthermore now you are hiding being men and saying Abu Mansoor a mujtahid is my evidence. You still have no leg to stand on because he has not rejected that Hadith on magic as I have made absolutely clear.

I hope the readers can appreciate the rank hypocrisy here of Muslim scholars: having appealed to argument from authority ad-nauseum, he is nonetheless affronted when it is applied against him. Even to the extent that he is objecting to the authority of Maturidi being used to show Maturidi’s own opinion!

Note the astonishing dishonesty – he deliberately fails to address why he narrated the position of Maturidi’s from a 1970’s avowedly Salafi scholar’s book. As I have hopefully made clear – Salafis are modernists – 1400 years of learning and tradition go in the bin for the rants of their latter day 20th century scholars – yet Salafis decry ‘modernists’. That’s like a lesbian calling a gay man ‘homosexual’ in a derogatory manner.

3) Abu Bakr is stating that “there is a narration which they have mentioned which is not permissible, so I left it.” Who is they? And what is not permissible? If it’s because of what I have already mentioned, then Ahl us Sunna have already clarified the boundaries of magic with Qur’an and Hadith.

4) This has been addressed previously.

5) you are know only attempting to refute me because I quoted from ‘Adhwaa Bayaan’. This has not refuted my case about the sentence you are trying to refute here. Very academic indeed Sulaiman….

Notice the true colours of the alleged Hanafi authority here: he is crying foul because he has been criticised for narrating from Wahhabi scholars. He sees no issue with narrating the position of Maturidi through those who label him a heretic and are the antithesis of his theology. As I mentioned at the beginning, that is the whole game of Salafism: narrate the position of the classical schools falsely through the mouths of Wahhabi scholars for the purpose of appropriating the authority and following of the classical schools for their own nefarious modernism and heresy.

It is exactly the same as someone arguing that we should ask Martin Luther what the position of the Pope was on a particular matter.

6) I accept what the narration says. However it was, it was just like an illness which came upon him ﷺ and then he ﷺ was cured by Allah.

Remember, the narration in question asserts that the Prophet lost his mind and didn’t know what he was doing and became impotent. Perhaps for a period of three months. He is ashamed to say that he accepts this. This is a good thing.

7) again, Abu Mansoor states three opinions why these Surahs were revealed and the third he said is because he ﷺ was affected by magic. He does that take this stance for the reason of revelation but he does not reject the fact anywhere in that text that he rejects magic. He has only rejected that this was the reason for revelation.

8) I will struggle? Read again and look at the narrators and the hukm [command] given.

9) Abu mansoor has said that they are oppressors because they knew he was not crazy and not affected my magic and they said this to him and related to him whatever they did regarding magic and loss of mind and this is not the case.

I have mentioned what the mushrikeen did and how this relates to them and it’s context. You are now creating a new addition from your own mind and putting that Hadith into this where there is no correlation apart from the word. Look at the previous lines before he underlined part which says,

“They conspired between themselves that he is affected my magic and he is crazy and he is a sorcerer. Then Allah informed His Prophet ﷺ what they were hiding and conspiring in order to guide them to his message and for them to know that he ﷺ knows what has been conspired by Allah.”

Finally, in desperation, he is offering a translation. Why not start in this manner instead of offering untranslated technical terms to show his ‘scholarly’ credentials?

10) the principle stands and you are rejecting it based on Intellect and no textual evidence which is no hujjah zahirah at all. If you reject principles of usool and logic, what basis at you talking from?!?!?

I just want readers to note Wahhabi stupidity: in the first sentence he accuses Ahmad of rejecting a principle based on his use of intellect. He then, in the very next sentence chastises him for rejecting and not using ‘epistemology and logic’ i.e intellect. This is simply moronic but is in fact the style Wahhabis employ while debating non-Muslims, in which case they apply ‘science and logic’, which they promptly forget when it comes to hadith, which are to be judged on ‘chain only’, unless of course they wish to show us where clashing with reality or observation was a criteria for rejection of hadith. The inconsistency is galling and would put off any prospective ‘religious shopper’

Sulaiman Ahmed, not in one place have you academically refuted my argument against you. Rather you sit there and just curse one man after another and at the same time reject these trustworthy narrators. Did you know in fiqh to to ta’n (accuse) to a trustworthy person (‘adl) you need your hujjah zahirah otherwise you get whipped? You are doing ta’n to a great number of them such as Sufyan b. ‘Uyaynah, Sufyan ath-thawri, [these were hadith scholars who showed great enmity to Hanafites – recall that it is the Hanafi position that is being debated here, yet these people are being brought as ‘reliable witnesses’ – note the complete subterfuge; MJ is very obviously from the outset a Salafi posing as a Hanafi] Ibn Namir etc.

Violence threatened in a cowardly and veiled way – ‘you deserve to be whipped etc’. Salafi 101 again and more proof if it was needed that despite their denials, ISIS is an authentic ”Islamic State” – as far as Wahhabis go anyway

Imam Malik also rejected the fact that Awais Al-Qarni existed and this is in Sahih Muslim?!?!? The ‘ulama understand his to be that this Hadith with that chain didn’t reach him when he said that and then later on when his was related to him with the chain he did accept this.

So my argument as before still stands, where does Abu mansoor reject the Hadith of magic? (The answer is nowhere because he doesn’t and I have explained what he is rejecting. You are taking a snippet out of its context and then you accuse others of this. Have some dignity!). If the public don’t believe me, please take that copy to any learned scholar and ask them to explain it to you and if they said opposite to what i have said, let me know.

Since you cannot prove Abu mansoor said it, I ask you to prove how you make takhsees (specify) the verse that you quote “Allah will protect you from mankind” to only this Hadith and magic. Where is the evidence to say it is only for that and not any other harm? As you know, takhsees needs evidence otherwise the verse remains ‘aam (general) so it should mean no harm will come to him ﷺ in any form but it is known he ﷺ had rotten meat thrown on him and had stones thrown at him in ta’if and his ﷺ upper garment pulled such that it left a mark on his ﷺ blessed neck, may my mother and father be sacrificed for him ﷺ.

I love how he has suddenly decided to start translating technical terms! Bit late in the game. Notice the overly dramatic and unacademic offers to sacrifice his mum and dad for the Prophet. This is the kind of nonsense which makes the irreligious look down their nose at Muslim scholars.

If you have no script evidence for takhsees, then you only have the intellect to do takhsees. And you doing takhsees on a matter by YOUR intellect against Ahl us Sunna which you see to be the case which is totally flawed.

Note the famously inconsistent position on the intellect of not only Wahhabis but also Muslim scholars in general. He has variously chastised Ahmed for using it and not using it. Here we have anew bastardisation: He is accusing Ahmed of using his intellect instead of that of ‘Ahlus Sunnah‘. Leaving aside the impossibility of using anyone else’s intellect or indeed other mental components, this is just argument from authority and indeed, we saw who he means by ‘Ahlus Sunnah‘ – a Wahhabi and a couple of name-dropped Muhaditheen (Ibn Hajar and Ibn Salah)

Block me if you wish, but I hope the public can see the lies and deceit you guys are putting on the public platform and attempting to lead people astray.

Not once, and the public and academics can see, have you actually refuted my argument with textual evidence or support. You have just picked a name and decided to curse him and then use that against me throughout this whole thing.

جاء الحق و زهق الباطل. أن الباطل كان زهوقا

Allah says, “Truth has come and falsehood has perished. Indeed, falsehood is bound to be perished.”

The abuse of both Quran and hadith to insult ones opponent and play to the gallery is disgustingly common in encounters with Wahhabites.

That is the nature of these false claims which is in reality your opinion and Shaykh Atabek, not the Hanafi madhab.

This is very fresh coming from someone who demands that Hanafi madhab be taken from Salafis, Muhaditheen, Shafis, Hanbalis…in short, anyone but Hanafis!

And if you want more chains of that Hadith, Ibn Hajar [another muhaddith from the rival Shafi/A’shari school] in ‘Fath Al-Bari’ goes into significant detail about the turuq and different chains [just above he treated us to a lengthy passage about all the different chains of the hadith – but now when exposed that all of these amount to just one chain, he abstains from quoting again and merely tells us to ‘look it up’. So why not present the ‘different’ chains in his original one page post on ‘chains’ (plural) which was in fact just one chain? The answer is simple and ells you a lot about Muslim scholars – he assumes you can’t look it up in Arabic]

Be aware of these scholars, some of whom (the first two only) are indeed top scholars, that Salafis almost exclusively rely on: Ibn Hajar, Ibn Salah, Albani, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Qayyum, Uthaymeen and Ibn Baz. Most other they mention will be intimately connected to these. The Deoband school add Gangohi and the Thanwi’s amongst others. It always comes back to these very latter day guys. Presumably Islam did not exist until they came along, much like how Orientalists such as Tom Holland (too stupid to even be called an orientalist) assert.

SA: Wow. I don’t know what to say. I did in fact expect such a weak response without any research, academia and unscientific as your Shaykh Samir an-Nass calls it, but I was hoping for more. Sad times. In your post all you did was try to insult and rather than answer any of the points and in fact what frustrates me is that I wasted my time with someone who did not have the calibre nor the academic honesty to address this issue. The remaining responses from your side should be from Shaykh Samir an-Nass himself. At least, I hope, there will be a better and on point response.

1) Issue of ‘Qeela’ being ‘Seeghat al-Tamreedh’ NOT ADDRESSED

2) I quoted two mujtahid Mufassirs, you quoted your Salafi imam. I asked for mujtahid Mufassirs on your side. NOT ADDRESSED

3) Abu Bakr is stating that “there is a narration which they have mentioned which is not permissible, so I left it.” Who is they? And what is not permissible?

Rest of your statement is assumption. So we don’t know which position Abu Bakr al-Assam was in fact rejecting. How have you made this magical assumption? NOT ADDRESSED

4) After ‘LAKIN’ it says ‘QEELA‘, still NOT ADDRESSED

Ahmed still hasn’t realised the banality of the game being played against him: he simply is too inexperienced and naive to appreciate that the whole gambit of the Salafists rests on simply mistranslating the word ‘Qeela‘ refusing to admit that it is a sort of prefix which denies what comes after it (in its scholarly use by Muslims). He does not realise that the whole charade is about denying that ‘Qeela’ is used to reject something. He is soon to be disabused of his naiveté.

5) Did not answer if magic happened twice or once and why your points are contradictory. NOT ADDRESSED

6) You accept narration that the Prophet lost his mind but then have not shown why you contradictorily reject this and say it was an illness, and when you accept the Hadith in Bukhari why you are contradicting the books of aqeedah. NOT ADDRESSED

7) You accept the Hadith in Bukhari about the Prophet losing his mind. In the Hadith it does not say he had an illness. Where on earth did you get this information from? Again, NOT ADDRESSED

8) NOT ADDRESSED

9) “They conspired between themselves that he is affected by magic and he is crazy (lost his mind) and he is a sorcerer. Then Allah informed His Prophet ﷺ what they were hiding and conspiring in order to guide them to his message and for them to know that he ﷺ knows what has been conspired by Allah.”

The verse of the Quran matches up nicely with your views.

10) Saying the Prophet has lost his mind is ‘batil’ [iniquitous falsehood]

11) Imam Malik not knowing a) something exists and b) rejecting a Hadith and nonetheless placing it in his collection for illustration that he dares to reject it are in fact two different things. NOT ADDRESSED

12) The Question you ask about ‘Thasees’, there is an easy answer that a student who learns one basic book in Usul [epistemology] can answer and I will also address this once you do what I said.

At least Ahmed is not naive enough to jump from point to point as the Salafis would like him to do.

13) “That is the nature of these false claims which is in reality your opinion and Shaykh Atabek, not the Hanafi madhab”

No brother with my claim I have two giant Mufusareen [Quranic commentators] that the reason for revelation was not magic but instead was to teach.

On your side you have shown only a Salafist imam and if you work hard, which you didn’t, you may find opinions of Muqaallids.

In reality what it is that you are doing is forcing impotence on the Prophet so it matches up with your Salafi-Deobandi version of Islam. You can have that version of Islam but please don’t make it look like it is the original Hanafi position. We’ve seen this in arguments before where the Prophet (PBUH) is made lower than other creatures. I’m not being sectarian – people can follow any sect they wish but your slander needs to be addressed. In reality, the Deobandi and Salafist Muslims have been fixated with these Hadith to denigrate the Prophet (PBUH) and have influenced everyone. But now some do Mawlids [this is a celebration of the Prophet’s birthday and is hated by puritanical groups like the Wahhabis, Salafis, Deobandis etc]. I don’t accept this version of Islam.

You then quoted erroneous and emotional tripe about ‘truth coming’, this is why you were not given ijaza [permission to teach or the equivalent of a diploma or certificate of competence] by Shaykh Atabek in aqeedah [creed] and tajweed [Arabic pronunciation]. He was most likely concerned that you would place your Salafist-Deobandi version of Islam on it. Like I said, I have no problem with your sect but don’t make it out as though it is the position of the Hanafi giants of this ummah, who actually respected the Prophet (PBUH).

Back on point, you haven’t taken the time to address anything. I’m not being horrible but the rules to discussion are that you’re well versed in the field you are discussing and that does not mean collecting ijazas but studying intensively. So it means strong knowledge in Hanafi Usul, Hanafi and Shafi Mustalah, terminologies used by scholars, Hanafi Fiqh [jurispudence], Maturidi and Ashari aqeedah for this issue. I’m not confident based on the discussion you have expertise on this issue. I had many more points to make but my initial ones weren’t even addressed.

Brother, don’t take this personally. But as you have not addressed anything at all, I want you instead to relieve yourself, and take my points to your teacher, Shaykh Samir an-Nass [a famous ‘Hanafi’ scholar from Syria who is basically a Salafi] and let him address them. I hope his arguments will be on point and he will address each issue and will understand the points I have made and we can continue discussing this issue. Please don’t waste our time with a response that even a beginner student can make.

So your next post should be from Shaykh Samir an-Nass.

MJ: You haven’t read a word of what I have said. You claim to be behind Abu Mansoor when he doesn’t even mention what you say. So you don’t have a mujtahid. I’m not standing behind a salafi. Ibn Kathir mentions this in Surah Falaq tafsir with his chain, if only you read what I wrote.

Hilariously, Ibn Kathir is another ”go to” Imam of the Salafis: he is in fact well known for narrating anthropomorphisms and is a student of Salafi archfiend Ibn Taymiyya – next to whom he is buried. In any case, literally no one accepts Ibn Kathir as an Imam of Creed nor is he in any way qualified to challenge the opinion of Maturidi, even according to his not inconsiderable fan club. He is also, as per Salafist protocol, very late (after Ibn Taymiyya and so 15th century onwards)

I’m sorry Sulaiman. But you have shown no light of knowledge at all. Allah help you and all those that are falling for this.

I have told you the that hujjah [proof] is upon the muda’i (the claimer). You have your claim and it was flawed. So Abu Mansoor is not on your side. Abu Bakr opinion is not taken by Abu Mansoor. So at the moment you are behind a Mu’tazilte [the hated enemies of Muhaditheen and Salafis and the go to guys when trying to accuse someone of heresy. Salafist groups and sadly most A’sharis as well, condition their students from childhood to imagine the rationalist Mu’tazzila as the worst things ever, whereas the barbaric violent Khawarij, who ironically were also rationalists and hadith rejecters are given a ”pass”. We will ignore the foolishness of narrating hadith from people who don’t recognise the validity of hadith – namely the Khawarij] opinion. That’s your standing. And oh yeah, your own whim and intellect.

You see to try and respect the Prophet ﷺ, when in fact you disrespect his inheritors and disrespect him ﷺ.

Anybody who understands what I have written will know that you have addressed nothing and you have no leg to stand on. Abu Mansoor, Rahim Ullah, is free from your claims.

Salafist- Deobandi Islam? Name calling again and another conclusion from nothing. You can even make takhsees of my approach based on your intellect of putting snippets together and here we have a Salafist-Deobandi? Nice usool.

Anyway, it’s clear you don’t want to discuss academically. I leave you to know that Abu Mansoor does not support you and you are behind a mu’tazilte opinion. That is what we have gathered already.

Wa alaikum assalaam wa rahmat Ullahi wa barakaatoh.

Again, notice the typical Salafi Latin drama antics and the accusations of name calling…while himself name calling. Also notice the vile ‘Salafi Sin’ of not admitting that one is a Salafi – nor does he deny it though.

SA: You have not addressed one point. I even numbered them to make it easy for you. Please take them to your shaykh. I expect a better response after the time I have taken.

You keep saying I’m behind the Mutazalite Abu Bakr Al-Assam’s opinion yet you yourself established that we didn’t know his opinion. Complete dishonesty and frankly, deception and lying.

In reality at that time Hashwis (Salafists equivalents in the classical period), hated all Hanafis and called them ‘Mutazalite’. Even Abu Hanifa was called Mutazalite as he didn’t adhere to your Salafist version of Islam.

We have here an important point for the uninitiated: Muslims who are educated in or exposed to Deo-Salafi mosques or teachers are taught from an early age that Imam Ahmad was subjected to imprisonment and torture by the Mu’tazzilites under the reign of Caliph Ma’moun (or his successor). However, as has been made abundantly clear by orientalists and genuine scholars, this is half a story. Ahmad was imprisoned for maybe 18 moths or perhaps much less. He was not executed (unlike Malik and Abu Hanfia who were assassinated). After the time of the ‘minha‘ which was the inquisition up to assert whether Muslim scholars believed in the created-ness of the Quran (of which Ahmad fell foul since his position was that the Quran is uncreated in its written and recited form – incidentally, the wrong position, though students are never told this), which frankly was rather mild as seen by Imam Ahmad’s survival, there was a counter inquisition by the Muhaditheen and Hanbali mobs which led to the murder of countless Hanafites and Mu’tazillites – Ahmed has cottoned on to the fact that when Muhaditheen of old are talking about ‘mutazzilites’, they in fact mean all of their enemies, particularly Hanafis. The elevation of Imam Ahmad’s trial and the wilful ignorance of the genocide of his opponents that followed it (recently displayed by Jonathan AC Brown, a crypto-Salafist himself) is a standard trope of Deo-Salafists as they find it expedient to support the Muhaditheen and Salafis against the Hanafites, more galling in the Deobandi case given they claim to be Hanafis themselves.

In reality you have shown you are with the Salafist-Deobandi version of Islam. Ibn Kathir [as mentioned, a Quranic commentator again, inclined against Hanafis and a student of Salafi arch-fiend Ibn Taymiyyah] is a muqallid (you do know what that means right?).

‘Respecting knowledge’ is in fact tackling issues that you have studied intensively. So are you an expert in the Hanafi/Shafi school? From this discussion it seems neither.

If you are not addressing this academically and on point and are not able to analyse the points I have made, as you don’t know basic terminologies then at least look at it from the position of how disgusting your view is:

The Prophet (PBUH) is impotent is your position, and as related by Qadi Iyad [a Maliki jurist highly regarded, but again, a partisan of hadith and advocate of ignoring Maliki hadith methodology in favour of accepting reports willy-nilly] this was for one whole year, would you say the same about your own father or yourself? Disgusting.

The Prophet Muhammad lost his mind and didn’t know when he was having sex. Disgusting.

The Prophet Muhammad would approach his wife and he would become ‘limp’ as Qadi Iyad said. Disgusting.

These are what you mean by ‘physical illness’ which you convoluted yourself.

Indeed, Salafis often play to the gallery – MJ asserted the Prophet was suffering from physical illnesses, after the assertions of previous scholars such as Iyad – but he deliberately omitted what these ailments were, and they were indeed most foul, for the sake of masking the real difficulties with the ”gotta accept them all’ approach to the narrations of Bukhari

But then you guys say we ‘respect’ the Prophet Muhammad when it is time for Mawlid. £££ (ca – ching!) £££ [a reference to the donations which are made by Muslims on the Prophet’s birthday]

Like I said take my point to your Shaykh, Samir al-Nass as I had many more proofs waiting. And when he responds, I will respond.

Samir An Naas is a famous scholar and senior of MJ. He also claims to be a Hanafite but is indistinguishable form a Salafist.

I’m disappointed because unlike Shaykh Atabek, who knows nearly all of this from the top of his head, it takes me a long time to research, to make sure the point I narrate is relevant to the point, is strong, has basis and refutes the point of the other person. When this is not reciprocated, then it is terribly disappointing.

This shows how foolish Ahmed is – he is unaware of the epic time wasting strategies of Salafis. We saw this repeatedly on this site where they would refuse to translate, demand proofs and when proffered, would disengage.

MJ: Hang on, I’m a salafi, do I celebrate mawlid? (According to you)

As you can see, you are no longer fit to debate. You tell people to study and say you have so many points. You haven’t made one at all to engage the discussion. You hide behind your status of ‘shaykh’ [teacher, scholar or literally ‘old man’] which you gained in how many years sorry? And then say I don’t have time and I have a lot more but I wait.

It would be interested to hear you read one line in Arabic correctly. For a while you guys in Avicenna used to call ‘mustalah Hadith’ as ‘mustalal’…

Recall that MJ was complaining about ‘name calling’ previously. The ‘bad manners’ or adhab card is also inconsistently employed by all stripes of Islamic scholars.

This is the end of the so-called discussion.

I hope the public have seen your deceit and treachery. Hiding behind I could do this and that and not engage the points and rather just keep saying you don’t know this and don’t know that. Anybody with some idea, is aware of the points I made have basis in fiqh, usool and Hadith. And yours? Show me someone other than Avicenna who will give basis and backing to your approach and is not Mu’tazili.

If you didn’t get the idea from the get go, the game here is to repeatedly accuse Ahmed of being a Mu’tazzilte heretic, which the Muslims have suitably been conditioned to hate and switch off to for years.

Allah help you all.

SA: You have not addressed any of my points, since you know that they don’t match with your Salafi-Deobandi version of Islam. Hence why you hate the Hanafi way.

What made you ‘shaykh’ is that you happened to be born in Iran and as such can speak Arabic. I’m afraid, like many other claiming to be Sheikhs, that’s it. According to you Prophet is impotent and yet you want to celebrate his Mawlid. Odd.

It is sad that it takes Ahmed this long to realise that the only ‘knowledge’ that 90% of Muslim scholars have is the ability to read Arabic. If they even come across a layman with a little bit of knowledge and the ability to read Arabic they are nixed. That’s the whole game. It is also why Salafis immediately start teaching their adepts Arabic (poorly). To impress on the poor Muslims that they have ‘knowledge’. It is just as how some people in the Developing world lionise anyone who can speak English.

Look the last few posts – we are needlessly posting against each other.

Ask Shaykh Samir to respond to each numbered point I made with references and proof. If he does, then he has proven his point. If not, I have proven mine.

MJ: I am salafi but yet I celebrate mawlid according to you? I hate the Hanafi way? Some teachers of mine are Hanafi and senior Hanafi scholars.

So I was born in Iran and I speak Arabic and it makes me shaykh? Strange deduction again.

This discussion was over a long time ago. You must bring your evidence forth for you to reject Bukhari and it must be clear evidence. Abu Mansoor text is not supporting you. If Abu Bakr is all you have, then that has been flawed already. So what’s left? Your opinion based in your intellect and I think this is what you were getting at before where you feel you can do takhsees of that verse with your opinion and reach this conclusion and then remove the Nass.

Remember that a clear text right at the start where Imam Abu Mansooor Maturidi clearly says that he rejects the narrations of Bukhari (which had not been compiled then) where the Prophet Muhammad is affected by Black Magic? But MJ keeps pretending that this has not happened, or that the text does not exist. Once again, he is banking on showmanship to trump scholarship and on you not knowing Arabic or the meanings of the words ”qeela” and ‘lakin‘. It is just shocking and why I felt that readers have to see the depths that so – called Islamic scholars will go to for the ends of misleading people. They are no less than the most cunning baptist ministers.

Do not bring shaykh samir’s name into this conversation. If he wants to deal with you, he will. He already has dealt with you on that video, but if you want to bring this nonsense to him, then it is up to him how he wants to deal with you guys, May Allah Preserve him.

SA: If you are slandering me, I am okay with it but It is funny how you keep saying ‘you guys’. Don’t show any respect to your own teacher Shaykh Atabek? You have learnt and studied from him, grovelled for Ijaza [permission to teach], which was refused and then you insult him publicly. Is this you version of ‘Prophetic Knowledge’? Have a bit of shame.

If you post again without addressing the point I will keep posting the points that were not addressed. You can consult with Shaykh Samir and bring evidence to answer the question.

1) Issue of Qeela being Seeghat al-Tamreedh NOT ADDRESSED

2) I quoted two mujtahid Mufassirs [senior-most commentators on the Quran], you quoted your Salafi imam. I asked for mujtahid Mufassirs from your side. NOT ADDRESSED

3) Abu Bakr is stating that “there is a narration which they have mentioned which is not permissible, so I left it.” Who are ‘they’? And what is not permissible?

The rest of your statement is assumption. So we don’t know which position Abu Bakr al-Assam was in fact rejecting. How have you made the magic assumption? NOT ADDRESSED

4) After ‘LAKIN’ it says ‘QEELA’, still NOT ADDRESSED

5) You did not answer whether magic happened twice or once and why your points are contradictory. NOT ADDRESSED

6) You ‘accept’ narration that the Prophet lost his mind but then have not shown why you actually reject this and say it was an illness and why when you accept the Hadith in Bukhari why you are at the same time contradicting the books of aqeedah [creed]. NOT ADDRESSED

7) You accept the Hadith in Bukhari about the Prophet losing his mind. In the Hadith it does not say he had an ‘illness’. Where did you get that from? Again NOT ADDRESSED

8) NOT ADDRESSED

9) “They conspired between themselves that he is affected my magic and he is crazy (lost his mind) and he is a sorcerer. Then Allah informed His Prophet ﷺ what they were hiding and conspiring in order to guide them to his message and for them to know that he ﷺ knows what has been conspired by Allah.”

The verse of the Quran matches up nicely with your views.

10) Saying the Prophet has lost his mind is batil [false]

11) Imam Malik not knowing something exists and rejecting Hadith and placing it in his collection are two different things. NOT ADDRESSED

12) The Question you ask about Thasees, there is an easy answer that a student who learns one basic book in Usul [epistemic or juristic principles] can answer – and I will also address this, once you do what I said.

If these points a unequivocally refuted then my position is refuted.

Until then however, I have proven that Shaykh Abu Mansoor rejected that the verses were revealed due to the Prophet (PBUH) being affected by Black Magic. So I say Shaykh Abu Mansoor al-Maturidi was rejecting the black magic on the Prophet (PBUH).

When scholars use the word “Qeela” it is “Seeghat al-Tamreedh“.

What is “Seeghat Al-Tamreedh“?

MJ: How Maturidi uses lakn and qila can be seen in other places. Like:
(2.a) Maturidi said,
وقوله: (فِي الصور) قيل الصور هو القرن ينفخ فيه النفخة الأولى فيصعق من في السماوات ومن في الأرض إلا من شاء اللَّه، ثم ينفخ فيه مرة فإذا هم قيام ينظرون. ومنهم من يقول أي نفخ الروح في صور الخلق؛ لكن جمع الصورة الصور، بنصب الواو فلا يحتمل أن يكون المراد منه جمع الصورة
(2.b)
ومنهم من ذكر أن الكافور شيء جرى ذكره في الكتب المتقدمة فذكر كذلك في القرآن. ومنهم من قال إنه عين من عيون الجنة. ومنهم من صرفه إلى الكافور المعروف. لكن قيل إنه كناية عن طيب الشراب وقيل إنه كناية عن برودة الشراب لأنه ذكر أن ذلك الشراب في طبعه كالكافور لأن ألذ الشراب عند الناس البارد منه لا أن يكون في نفسه باردا وذكروا أن الكأس لا تسمى كأسا حتى يكون فيها خمر.
(3.b)
قيل فيه بوجهين وإلا فظاهر القصاص لا يكون حياة، لكن قيل من تفكره في نفسه قتلها إذا قتل آخر ارتدع عن قتله، فتحيا النفسان جميعا.

MJ: Also, Naysaburi makes basically the same point as Sahib Adwa’ al-Bayan:
وقال جمهور المفسرين إن لبيد بن الأعصم اليهودي سحر النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم في إحدى عشرة عقدة في وتر ودسه في بئر ذي أروان فمرض النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم واشتد ذلك عليه ثلاث ليال فنزلت المعوذتان وأخبره جبرائيل بموضع السحر فأرسل عليا بطلبه وجاء به وقال جبرائيل اقرأ السورتين فكان كلما يقرأ آية تنحل عقدة فيجد بعض الراحة والخفة حتى إذا أتمهما فكأنما أنشط من عقال. طعنت المعتزلة في هذه الرواية بأنها توجب تسلط الكفار والأشرار على الأنبياء.

MJ: From Tafsir al-Qurtubi,

مَعَ اتِّفَاقِ الْمُفَسِّرِينَ عَلَى أَنَّ سَبَبَ نُزُولِهَا مَا كَانَ مِنْ سِحْرِ لَبِيَدِ بْنِ الْأَعْصَمِ، وَهُوَ مِمَّا خَرَّجَهُ الْبُخَارِيُّ وَمُسْلِمٌ وَغَيْرُهُمَا عَنْ عَائِشَةَ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهَا قَالَتْ: سَحَرَ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ يَهُودِيٌّ مِنْ يَهُودِ بَنِي زُرَيْقٍ يُقَالُ لَهُ لَبِيَدُ بْنُ الْأَعْصَمِ، الْحَدِيثَ. وَفِيهِ: أَنَّ النَّبِيَّ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ قَالَ لَمَّا حُلَّ السِّحْرِ: (إِنَّ اللَّهَ شَفَانِي). وَالشِّفَاءُ إِنَّمَا يَكُونُ بِرَفْعِ الْعِلَّةِ وَزَوَالِ الْمَرَضِ، فَدَلَّ عَلَى أَنَّ لَهُ حَقًّا وَحَقِيقَةً، فَهُوَ مَقْطُوعٌ بِهِ بِإِخْبَارِ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى وَرَسُولُهُ عَلَى وُجُودِهِ وَوُقُوعِهِ. وَعَلَى هَذَا أَهْلُ الْحَلِّ وَالْعَقْدِ الَّذِينَ يَنْعَقِدُ بِهِمُ الْإِجْمَاعُ، وَلَا عِبْرَةَ مَعَ اتِّفَاقِهِمْ بِحُثَالَةِ الْمُعْتَزِلَةِ وَمُخَالَفَتِهِمْ أَهْلَ الْحَقِّ.

[none translated – and two of them are from A’sharis, which is a creed already accepting that the Prophet was affected by Black Magic – and this is not even under discussion – the issue is what did Maturidi say, since he disagrees with A’sharis on this. Nonetheless, notice the shocking dishonesty of Muslim scholars – bringing A’sharites as untranslated Arabic proofs of the Maturidi position. It’s like narrating form a Democrat and saying ‘this is the Republican position’].

He is again banking on your ability not to read Arabic – Arabic readers note that Maturidi is again using ‘qeela‘ to reject what comes after – MJ is simply to dishonest or foolish to understand this as he cannot fathom or allow you to see that Maturidi disagrees with Bukhari.

Finally, MJ gets to the point. But why was this not brought before? Remember, Muslims scholars, like hyenas, usually hunt in packs. He is no doubt being helped by his partisans such as Samir An Naas. See how we suddenly have ‘new’ evidence. It would have been useful to have this from the start.

SZH: Although The hadith of Prophet (صل الله عليه وسلم) being affected by magic is narrated by Bukhari, ibn sa’d but as per the Usool hadith, ”Riwayatan” this hadith is weak

-As per the Hadith 5765 of Bukhari ‘The comb and hairs etc were taken out from the well’ BUT at the same time, as per the hadith 5766 of Bukhari ‘these things were NOT taken out of the well’
-as per hadith 5765 of Bukhari due to magic Prophet (صل الله عليه وسلم) would think he had done a work but actually he wouldn’t have done it’.
-as per hadith from Tabaqat of Ibn Sa’d vol 2 page 152
‘due to magic Prophet (صل الله عليه وسلم) when he looked at anything he would think it any other thing’ i.e his eyesight was affected.
-as per Hadith 19765 from Musannaf Abdr Razaq ‘Prophet (صل الله عليه وسلم) became impotent (العياذ بالله) for ONE year
-As per Hadith of ibn Sa’d vol 2 page 153, when 11 verse (of al-Falq and al-Naas [chapters of the Quran]) were recited, the threads/knots would open (from the thing on which magic spell was made)…but HERE it should be noted that These Suras are ‘Makki’ [Meccan period] whereas the magic incident is ‘Madni’ [Madinan period, i./e later in the Prophets life]

So as per Muhadiseen this Hadith is مضطرب
Similarly it opposes the Quran
Eg:

ولا يفلح الساحر حيث اتی
‘…. and wherever a magician may come, he will not be successful.’
Sura Taha verse 69.

So that is why it is best to reject this hadith.

Similarly the incident of Magic is narrated to be done after the Treaty of Hudaybia, and in that year the Prophet (صل الله عليه وسلم) was busy in achieving victory in many battles and many other things but this narration says that his mind/body/eyesight was affected. So it is not possible for a person who is affected by magic on mind/body to do these lots of victories.

MJ: I think you will find that if you read some tafsir books and Hadith books that this is not the case. Please reference the book you are quoting from when you say the Hadith is mudhtarib. Jazak Allahu khayra.

But this new interloper, yet another Muslim scholar, already explained it and gave the reasons for weakness. Instead of addressing the complaints against the hadith, he wants the book from which the interloper derived the complaints. Textualist when it suits, rationalist when it suits…

SA: Shaykh Syed Zahid Hussain, thank you for taking your time to being evidence about the weakness of the chains regarding point 7, from what I know you are Hanafi and well versed in the Hanafi school and as such your input will add only benefit to this thread.

But I want to take 1 point at a time. Because posting a lot of things causes too much dust and the issue is lost.

MJ, lets both of us keep on point and not take snipes at each other, even with back handed comments. Let’s bring honesty to the discussion.

1) You bought some texts from Asharis [theological group, related closely to the party of hadith], when I already that they believe in the sexual impotence of the Prophet. In terms of the Maturidi text you bought we can discuss that issue in a different thread BUT you still haven’t answered the question:

When scholars use the word “Qeela” it is “Seeghat Al-Tamreedh“

Ahmed has finally cottoned on to the ruse (very late in the game) – Salafis wish to deny that ‘qeela‘ is ‘seeghat al tamreedh‘- namely, a way of rejecting what follows the word ‘qeela‘. By denying that this is the case, Salafis can literally make ‘no’ into ‘yes’ and completely re-write all of Islamic scholarship.

Don’t believe me? Then keep reading.

What is ‘Seegah Al-Tamreedh‘?

Please answer this question as this is where we are disagreeing. I am saying Imam Maturidi is rejecting the hadith and you’re saying he is not.

Please let’s stay on topic.

When scholars use the word “Qeela” it is “Seeghat Al-Tamreedh“

What is ‘Seegah Al-Tamreedh‘?

RP: Please continue Shaykh Sulaiman…the proofs have been very convincing thus far and furthermore you are doing a great spiritual service to the honour of the Prophet by bringing to bear scholarly arguments, the very lack of which are the basis for well meaning supporters of the Prophets isma being maligned as opposers of the authentic traditions. Your task is in its very nature noble and the opposition’s can only be miserable.

Finally, someone intercedes on behalf of the Prophet. And it only took about 20 pages.

MJ: Here is Tahawi in Sharh Mushkil Athaar (vol 15 pg 180) speaking about magic. This is the narration of Zayd b. Arqam which states that the Prophet ﷺ was affected by magic by one of the Jews and the Falaq and naas were revealed.

 

 

This is what Tahawi said in conclusion to these two narrations,“Both of these narrations indicate that the action of magic did remain to the time where the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was affected by magic. So if it can remain until then, it can continue also after that.”

 

[Not translated]

See how he doesn’t want to address the issue about the word ‘qeela‘ denoting rejection?

And why are we talking about Tahawi when the discussion was about Maturidi? Games and name dropping. Jumping from point to point is a strategy of all dishonest people but is typified in Muslims by Salafists

  

SA: Please answer the question I have asked numerous times, I will then deal with the issues you have presented. What is ‘Seegah Al-Tamreedh‘? Please answer this question as this is where we are disagreeing. I am saying Imam Maturidi is rejecting the hadith and you’re saying he is not. Please let’s stay on topic. When scholars use the word “Qeela” it is “Seeghat Al-Tamreedh“. What is ‘Seegah Al-Tamreedh‘?

 

MJ: Seegah at-Tamreedh is used generally to indicate that this is not the reliable position. However context is important and not always does ‘qeela’ mean it is weak. Regardless, when he said, “However, according to us from what has been said (fi ma qeel) the Prophet ﷺ was affected by magic” and then explained it in two ways. He said qeela in all the other ones as well except the teaching. So at the end he has confirmed that his opinion FOR THE REASON OF REVELATION was the first to teach. Again, I repeat myself, he has not rejected magic being done to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He has rejected that this was the reason for why these two chapters were revealed. I have previously addressed every point. And anybody that has objective thinking will be aware of that.

You are welcome to discuss this with me in Sheffield in my house. I am no longer going to be involving myself in this debate as I have answered all that you need from before.

Lets see if he sticks to this and stops inflicting his lies on the public – he is now saying something brand new that ‘qeela‘ does not always mean that what comes after it is rejected. Prepare for Salafis to literally throw classical Islam in the bin and then assert that they are combating ”modernists”. Note that he is still trying his fall back position that Maturidi is rejecting that the reason for revelation is magic – but he wants a separate place where Maturidi says it did not happen at all. And we are to accept that in the absence of this, Maturidi did accept that black magic took place on the Prophet Muhammed – the reason is that Bukhari says so and no one is allowed to disagree with him, even Hanafis like Maturidi who do indeed completely disagree with the later scholar and non-Hanafi.

Notice that Maturidi unambiguously rejected the hadith that MJ is claiming was not rejected. Once again, he is banking on a western audience and Arabs with no knowledge of scholarly terminologies, or else his deception is woefully poor.

 

  

 

Imam Nawawi, Shafi/Ashari, ‘Majum‘, Volume 1, Page 104. Briefly, he is explaining that when a hadith is weak it is not permissible to use “Seeghat al-Jazm” but instead you have to use “Seegha al-Tamreedh” such as “Yuqolu” (this is the present and future tense of the word “Qeela”, which is the same word in the past tense).

“Seeghat al-Jazm” is used for Sahih and Hasan Hadith.
“Seegha al-Tamreedh” is for any hadith beside these two types!

 

 

Ibn Salah, in ‘Muqaddimah ibn Salah‘, Page 287. ‘If you want to narrate a weak hadith then do not use “Seeghat al-Jazm”’

 

 

 

 

This is a difficult question to get an authoritative answer for (but it shouldn’t be) – and hardly ever spoken of by ‘dawah carriers’, with rare exceptions. The reasons for this frequent omission will soon become abundantly clear.

From the outset, on such an important and understandably emotive topic, let me reassure my readers, that ‘circumcision’ in the sense of surgical assault on the clitoris, infibulation etc or indeed any type of tampering with the female clitoris is unequivocally prohibited, (in Arabic terminology ‘haraam’) and is hideously immoral and this is the unanimous agreement of all within the bounds of orthodox traditional Islam and sharia.

However, I must now go into more detail: because as Islamophobes and sadly Salafis as well will remind us, ‘circumcision’ (translated as ‘khitan’ in Arabic) is mentioned for women in no less than the Muwatta of Imam Malik (the early hadith compendium) as well as in Bukhari’s ‘Adhab wal Mufrad’ – several times the euphemism ‘when the circumcised part touches the circumcised part’ (i.e that of the man and the woman) is used to describe sexual activity, even in at least one case reportedly by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). This of course has led Islamophobes, the genuinely uninformed and inexcusably ignorant (often Muslims) to shout it at the top of their lungs and make a direct link between the reprehensible practices of some Sub-Saharan (and Egyptian) communities and orthodox Islam.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

But then why is ‘circumcision’ (or ‘khitan’) mentioned for women in Islamic sources at all? It was clearly widespread in pre-Islamic Arabia and there is a narration that Hadrat Uthman (RA), the third Caliph, allowed women to be circumcised when it was requested. A group of female prisoners of war had a female warden who asked him whether the captives should be circumcised as per custom at that time, and Uthman allowed it..

The key issue here is what was meant by ‘khitan’ of a woman (or even a man): even amongst the pagan Arabs it meant only taking off part of the labia minora (or as they described it ‘that part between the clitoris and urethra which looks like the comb of a rooster’ – more on this later) and absolutely nothing else. This is a procedure known as a ‘limited labioplasty’ and is common today for cosmetic purposes (though that was not the Arabs reason – more on this in a moment too).

As mentioned, this practice (limited labioplasty) was very widespread during the time of the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs, and likewise during the time of The Prophet (SAW). He is neither reported to have praised it nor proscribed it. In fact his alleged view on it is only mentioned in one undoubtedly weak hadith from ‘Sunan Abu Dawood’ (a famous collection of hadith narrations) which has two versions. In it, a woman of the Ansar (the ‘helpers’ from Medina) approaches the Prophet and asks if she is allowed to continue circumcising women, as that was her profession.

Narration #1: ‘If you want to do it, make it very shallow (arabic ‘ashimi’) and do not go very deep. Because it will brighten the face of the woman and give more portion to the husband’.

Narration #2 ‘do not go very deep because it gives more portion of enjoyment (‘athza’ in Arabic) for the lady and that is more liked by the husband’.

Both versions of this narration are weak…but so what?

Both are straightforward: that ‘khitan’, or ‘circumcision’ if you will, for the woman is merely tolerated and if done is to be for the express purpose of ‘improving her enjoyment of sex’.

How so?

The classical scholars have explained while commenting on this hadith that the logic was that when the Labia Minora are at their full extent they may partially cover or obstruct the clitoris thereby reducing it’s stimulation by friction from the male pubis (or indeed penis, especially if it is large) during sex. This in turn may conceivably delay female orgasm, since clitoral stimulation is a big part of this. Clearly the hadith commentators were already well beyond denying the female orgasm which was sadly found in some other societies until much later. Since many men suffer from premature ejaculation, failure to stimulate the clitoris would make this shortcoming even worse and may cause the woman to not experience orgasm at all during sex. Hence the woman climaxing at the same time (or at least near to) as the man is more ‘liked by the husband’, as per the hadith. It is clearly also less sexual work for him if what they say about better exposure to the clitoris is correct. Note that the covering or hood (anatomically ‘prepuce’) of the clitoris is not mentioned.

The euphemism in the first narration ‘brighten her face’ also refers to the woman’s enjoyment of sex, since depression or unhappiness is often referred to as ‘darkening of the face’ in Arabic (another misunderstood expression, which people incorrectly portray as racist).

Therefore the phrase ‘athza-lil-maraa’ in the above hadith or ‘more portion of enjoyment to the lady’ in English, is explained as to help women reach orgasm by partially removing obstructions to clitoral stimulation (namely large or mobile labia minora, especially after multiple pregnancies), especially if the man has a smaller penis or suffers from the common enough problem of premature ejaculation.

This is obvious without the commentary on the hadith to anyone who has had sex with a woman or is familiar with the rudiments of female anatomy:

Or from the (now famous) classic ‘Greys’ Anatomy’:

This is not some clever idea or interpretation I have dreamed up: not only is it obvious from the text of the Hadith, but it is the consensus of the four schools of Islamic Jurisprudence that anything other than this is ‘muthla’ (Arabic for mutilation) and thus absolutely prohibited (‘haraam’) and punishable. Therefore we are the first to welcome punitive measures by the British government against FGM and demand that others follow suit.

Once again: it is the consensus (‘ijmaa’) of the four madhahib (as mentioned, the schools of jurisprudence in Islam) unanimously, that only, as they call them ‘minor lips’ can be partially removed – without touching the clitoris at all and without reaching the urethra at all.

The proof is in the agreed upon (by orthodox Muslims as opposed to modernist or protestant movements such as Salafism) books of Islamic law and conduct: ‘Bahur Rayagh‘, the authoritative text of the Hanafis is quoted below. Hanafis hold that circumcision for women is merely permissible – the Shafis, Malikis and Hanbalis hold it to be sunnah or waajib – so Muslims speakers and dawah carriers who say that ‘it is mutilation’ without clarifying why, for example, there is an opinion of Ahmad ibn Hanbal saying that it is compulsory, are leaving themselves wide open for a humiliating rebuttal, let alone the other narrations mentioned. Nonetheless, it has to be said that even regarding the limited labioplasty ‘khitan’, the Hanafi position is clearly the only tenable one – how do the other schools establish a compulsory action based on a single weak hadith?

‘It is the khitan of the lady to remove the skin which looks like the comb of the rooster (‘that thing on the head of the rooster’)…between the clitoris and the urethra there is a thin layer of skin; it is this that can be removed.’

In the ‘Majmoo’, Imam Nawawi (read: an authority) repeated the above quote.

In the Hanbali (most literalistic) school, Mansur ibn Yunus Al Buhayti repeated the above mentioned quote verbatim.

Another Hanbalite authority, the famous Ibn Qudamah Al Maqdisi:

‘The khitan is to remove the slim skin on the top of the vaginal opening’.

Note that it is interesting that even the entirely legal (and increasingly popular at the time of writing) procedure of ‘Labioplasties’ practised nowadays (often for cosmetic reasons or influenced by the types of vaginas popularised in pornographic imagery) is completely prohibited in Islam as they involve; ‘a plastic surgery procedure for altering the labia minora (inner labia) and the labia majora (outer labia)’ (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labiaplasty), and Islam is completely unequivocal about anything other than only a slight trimming of the inner labia being genital mutilation (recall: ‘muthla’ in Arabic sharia terminology). Labioplasty with clitoral unhooding, is also practised in the UK/US especially if the clitoral prepuce (or ‘hood’) is too thick and interferes with sexual stimulation and is even more problematic Islamicaly – as per the prohibition of going and tampering with anything other than the labia minora (which would also exclude the clitoral prepuce).

It is clear that the problem we appear to have in the West is how to make Islam more tolerant of the widespread forms of vaginal (plastic) surgery practised here rather than Islam being permissive of the vulgarity that is FGM. Given the long-standing ijma (consensus) of Islamic jurists on this issue though, that leeway for allowing even procedures such as therapeutic clitoral unhooding is likely to be…well, perhaps none.

So let me just emphasise once again to make it abundantly clear: even the types of vaginal surgeries commonly practised in the UK and US are proscribed by traditional, old fashioned Orthodox Islam – let alone the entirely absurd claim of Islam being an excuse for FGM. In fact, Islam has a far more harsh definition of FGM than the law as it stands now.

I would personally support voices which question the expansion and acceptability of potentially harmful vaginal cosmetic surgery (although, truth be told, I would argue the same for cosmetic breast augmentation – but that’s a whole different story).

Okay, you may well ask, but then where did the idea, that no doubt exists and is sadly practised that ‘khitan’= female circumcision = removing the clitoris’ come from if all this is true?

If the Four Schools of Islamic Jurisprudence are unanimous, and condemn mutilation of the clitoris or cutting anything other than the labia minora, then why does the problem even exist?

And why aren’t most Muslim speakers, with few exceptions, willing to clarify this matter, especially as some of the classical schools regard ‘khitan’ as compulsory for women? (It is not even compulsory for men in the Hanafi school by the way)

The problem, as so often, begins with the unusual and troubling opinions of controversial 14^th century heterodox thinker Taqi Ad Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (1263 – 1328 C.E).

He popularised his (personal) view that ‘khitan’ or ‘circumcision’ was carried out for the actual reason of reducing the sex drive of women, that if women are circumcised they will ‘not enjoy it (sex) too much’. Even he however did not go so far as to say the clitoris should be removed (but he is implying it, in direct contravention of the hadith we mentioned from Abu Dawood).

Ibn Taymiyya is mentioned by the hadith master Ibn Hajar Al Asqalani to have left the consensus of Muslims on twenty or more issues: this is perhaps the most sickeningly gynophobic in an already disturbing oeuvre.

His disciple (and fellow icon of the Salafi/Wahhabi movement) Ibn Qayyum Al Jawzi, in his book ‘The Sunnats Pertaining to the Newborn’ sadly followed His Masters Voice and said that khitan was to ‘balance/lower the desire of the female’.

Of course, this is again in direct contravention to the alleged saying of the Prophet who said that if done, it should be only to ‘give her more portion in the enjoyment of sex’ (‘Athza-lil-maraa’). So much for a ‘Quran and Sunnah’ based religion I guess…

Interestingly, the only other scholar I could find who went against the consensus was Ibn Jawzi (the student of Abdul Qadir Al Jilani, not of Ibn Taymiyya), who mentioned it in his commentary on the difficult hadith of Bukhari, regarding the episode where Abu Bakr (RA) allegedly returned the insult of an opponent by mentioning the clitoris (which is ‘Al bidr/badr’ in Arabic). Ibn Jawzi said that the ‘bidr’ was ‘the part the lady lady leaves behind when she is circumcised’.

We can at least perhaps excuse the ramblings of Ibn Taymiyya, who never had a wife or sexual partner that we know of at least, and could perhaps be ignorant of such matters and since he did not explicitly say that the clitoris should be mutilated. Sadly however, contemporary Salafi scholars such as Nasiruddin Albani, Muhammad Hasan and Albanis’ Egyptian disciple (though they apparently only met for three hours) Huwayni, have shown no such restraint and have been far more explicit – they have said that ‘khitan’ is indeed FGM and involves the removal of ‘some part of the clitoris’, but not all (most generous of them: I wonder if they would be similarly accommodating if someone were to cut off ‘only a part’ of the head of their penis’?). They claim the saying of The Prophet (SAW) ‘keep it shallow’ refers to the clitoris.

I am sorry to be blunt: this is sheer madness and a gross and inexcusable violation of traditional Islamic law for fourteen centuries (i.e forever).

However Albani does not stop there: he violates a second consensus by saying that ‘khitan’ (which in his case really is FGM), is only to be practised on certain ladies. And who are these unlucky women? Well the ones from ‘hot countries, due to their well developed clitoris’. I will leave it to the reader to figure out how he came to this gynaecological conclusion.

Even more horrifically, doyen and most senior of the latter day Salafis, rector and founder of Medina ‘University’ Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah Ibn Baz (1910 – 1999) went so far as to say that French women in particular should be preferentially subjected to a clitorectomy due to their sexual habits. How he arrived at this disgusting (and racist) stereotype does not bear thinking about.

So now perhaps it becomes clear why people from certain orientations in the Islamic community and the ‘dawah’ movement are unwilling to speak about important concerns that non-Muslims (and most Muslims) will have: for the sake of not going against Albani and other Wahhabi figureheads, the enquiring mind is met with amateurish efforts which are easily refuted (or even deliberately dishonest) or worst of all, a wall of silence on the issue, as we find from most of the well known Dawah carriers in the UK (I’m talking about iERA if you did not take the hint).

Yet worse, the scholarly authority behind organisations such as iERA and public speakers such as Hamza Tzortzis, Haitham Al Haddad, makes remarks on ‘female circumcision’ without the necessary clarifications: given his militant insistence on the Wahhabi tradition, one suspects they would not be forthcoming in any case…

An interesting critique of Labioplasties in the UK (often for cosmetic reasons):

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/sex-and-relationships/labiaplasty.htm

Wikipedia explains the WHO gradings of FGM: the ‘lowest’ grade, Ia, still involves the clitoris (it is removal of the clitoral hood and as mentioned, may be carried out in the NHS for a think and obstructing hood as mentioned above), in contravention to the consensus of the Muslim schools of jurisprudence and thus even this is a major sin and forbidden:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#Procedures_and_health_effects

A more academic presentation of much of the same information, by an Islamic jurist:

By Suede Nikita

I plagiarised most of this via Facebook from one of the few authentic Islamic scholars people have access to in the UK – Sheikh Atabek Nasafi (http://www.avicennaanswers.com/). It shows, shall we say, the ‘counter intuitive’ views of scholars popularised in the UK by self-proclaimed ‘Muslim intellectuals’ such as Hamza Tzortzis, Haitham Haddad and Akram Nadwi.

Some of these individuals take it upon themselves to ‘demonstrate’ (I use the term in it’s loosest sense) that Islam is rational and even debate non-Muslims on this. We must be most grateful that these said non-Muslims do not know that the aforementioned ‘intellectuals’ believe in a God who has limits, climbs ropes and is in fact a giant humongous ring containing the universe within himself – for this is what their Imams or rather ‘Sheikh Ul Islam’s’ demand we believe. 

Hilariously, Tzortzis recently took it upon himself to remind the well known Blogger and writer Paul Williams on Twitter that revelation agrees with the ‘sound mind’.

But then how ‘sound’ are these bizarre Creeds that he himself holds as an aficionado and populariser of Ibn Taymiyya et al? Perhaps sensing his shaky intellectual foundations, he has recently taken to quote mining Al Ghazzali (neglecting to mention that Ibn Taymiyyah accused him of promoting disbelief).

Likewise, Akram Nadwi inflicts entire courses on unsuspecting Muslims aggressively promoting the belowmentioned views of Ibn Taymiyya and others of his ilk http://akramnadwi.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/akram-nadwis-strange-salafi-views-on-aqida/.

Recently, voices such as Adam Deen have come out and questioned whether Tzortzis’ repeated assertions of promoting an Islam which ‘makes sense’ actually hold water: http://adamdeen.com/2014/06/03/intellectual-apostasy/

I will have to leave it to the reader to judge if Tzortzis and companies claims of being ‘both religious and rational’ ring true in light of the teachings of their Imams…

The man Salafis insist is ‘Shaykh of Islam’ (‘Doctor Maximus’) Usman Darimi writes;

”God has a Hadd (limits) but no one knows it except him. No one should imagine God’s limits as his own limits. We believe in Hadd, but we leave it’s knowledge to God. Space is also limit. And He is on his Arsh above the heavens.”

So there are not one but two ‘limits’ to God!?

My actual face when I read that

These two words; ‘Hadd’ and ‘Makanah’, are not in the Quran nor in the Sunnah. From here we understand that when Salafi brothers say ‘we follow only what God and the Prophet say’ they are just kidding.

Darimi saying; ”We believe in Hadd but we don’t know it’s meaning” is him merely fooling people because he says; ”Space is also Hadd (limit)”. So, if we don’t know the meaning of Hadd, then how does he know that ‘Hadd’ and ‘Space’ are in fact the same?

In this text, Shaykh of ”Islam”, Ibn Taymiyyah is discussing the physical position of God as related to the Arsh (‘Throne’) and the ‘Spheres’ (of the Heavens as per the Greek and Ptolemaic system). He is discussing what he considers are the two possibilities regarding the shape of the Arsh – firstly that it is circular or secondly that it is flat.

He then uses ‘geometry’ (I use the term very loosely) to clarify the ‘position’ of God vis-a-vis each of these two possibilities (which are in fact both impossible, but leave that aside for the time being), saying that if the Arsh is circular then God is surrounding it, and is thus still above the universe because ‘the outside of the circle from it’s centre is towards the ‘above” (according to Ibn Taymiyyah).

But if the Arsh is flat then God being above it means that the ‘six directions’ are applicable on the creation only, but as for God there are only ‘two directions’ ‘Above’ and ‘Beneath’. And because the universe is ‘beneath’ so he must be above. Why only two directions apply is not explained and geometry is perfunctorily abandoned regarding this claim.

After all of this (and much more) he says;

”We don’t attribute to God anything he didn’t attribute to himself. Mutakallims are Kuffar because they use Greek philosophy to describe God” 

Maybe he thinks that Geometry is not a ‘Greek’ thing (although even Aristotle would have considered applying geometry to God to be heresy)…

Geometry teaches amongst other things ‘shape’ or ‘topology’ maybe. But it is not applicable to God, and nor is direction or being in need of a place as Ibn Taymiyyah is insists on doing.

Back to Usman Darimi again:

”Because the Alive Sustainer does whatever he wants; So he moves if he wants, comes down if he wants, grabs if he wants, releases if he wants, sits if he wants.That’s because the difference between the alive and dead thing is ”Harakah” (movement). So each living thing moves! And each dead thing doesn’t move!”

Does the Quran and Sunnah say that the difference between living and dead things is ‘movement’? Or that the life of God is like the life of the dependant creatures? Not at all. So where then did the Salafis get this from? It is a hodgepodge of Greek philosophy, amateur biology and God knows what else. But where is the Islamic foundation for this heretical claim?

So Dharimi compares God to animals. Because according to him, the difference between dead animals and alive animals is movement. Hmm.. and then Salafis criticise Hanafis and other for using ‘Qiyas’ or analogy. But here they are using an ‘analogy’ very freely. For God. With animals.

He also tells us God does ‘whatever he wants’. So can God become Jesus then? Or Satan? God only does things that are possible for him – he can’t decide to stop being God for example. But that is a digression.

I have two questions of ‘Imam’ Darimi:

1. Where is the mention of ”Harakah” or God moving in Quran or Sunnah. Like, at all?
2. Who told you that it is permissible to compare God with creatures or animals and to thus set up a new ”Sifah” (Attribute) of God?

Usman Darimi carries on;

”God did touch Adam while creating him. And He didn’t touch anything else!”

The Arabic ”Masees” means ‘touching’. But where is it in the Quran and Sunnah!?

As you can see, it’s not quite like when Salafis tell us that they follow the ‘Quran and Sunnah’.

So I suggest to my Salafi brothers and sisters: stop insulting people by saying ‘He is an innovator, he rejects the Sunna, he is an apostate’ etc and lets go back together to the original teachings of the Quran.

Since you love to insult people by claiming they are opposing Bukhari or hadith, as you can see, the method of your Imams is opposing the Quran itself.

So which one is worse?

At least we Hanafis have our conditions to test Hadeeth and thus accept them or reject them. But do you have any principles which allow you to reject the Quran?

Or are you rejecting it merely because Ibn Taymiyyah and Darimi etc. rejected it?

Many of you are shocked and do not believe in what you see here.

Some of you will start looking for excuses for these imams. Some of you will go to sheikh such and such and so and so to get some ‘explanation’.

I know this reaction well.

It usually happens when you find reality to be different to what you thought it to be. All of these sheikhs that you go to for explanations will talk a lot in order to convince you.

But keep in mind that they will never actually answer your question. Instead they will just take you around and around in circles.

But only the real genuine Muslims amongst us will be able to put the Quran above these useless beliefs.

Islamic scholar Sheikh Atabek Nasafi responds to a worryingly common enquiry…

Q. Does a lady need permission from the husband to leave her house?

Answer:

Before answering I want to point out a few issues;
1. We Muslims have our ‘special’ way of treating our wives
2. Marriage is not a buying and selling transaction in which man buys a ‘she-slave’.
3. Prophet PBUH came to free the people from physical, mental and intellectual slavery
4. We have something called ‘culture’ which should be followed in order to have a good relationship

So, the answer is;

If a lady is leaving the house with the intention of escaping from the duties of the marriage, then that is one of the reasons for destruction of the family. So it is prohibited if that is the reason.

But if she is leaving the house for shopping, working, visiting her relatives or friends etc. there is nothing wrong with it. And she doesn’t (initially) need permission from her husband.

God said;

‘And due to the wives is similar to what is expected of them, according to what is reasonable’ 

Quran 2;228

According to this verse, the rights of husband and wife are equal. This means anyone who says that a husband has the right to jail his wife in the house, he has to say that the wife also has the right to jail her husband in the house too, if he is consistent.

Anyone that wants to disagree with this verse, needs to quote ‘Mutawatir’ (mass narrated) hadeeth as it is not allowed to oppose the Quran by lesser evidence.

Because of this type of incorrect fatawa (that women cannot leave the house without permission), we have made our Muslim ladies disabled, ignorant and unwise. Thus, sadly we never had a big number of female scholars. Just by narrating few hadeeths they don’t become great Muhadditha (female scholar of hadith) as some so-called apologists claim. Can anyone mention the name of book of a Muhadditha scholar that would equal Muwatta of Malik or Saheeh Muslim? I am afraid not.

I think these type of fatawa which enslave the ladies are produced to keep the ladies socially impotent.
And the reason for that in turn is they wanted to keep whole Muslim nation ignorant – because the first education of anyone is taken from their mothers – the first 5-10 years of knowledge and tarbia is the thing that sets up the foundation for the whole personality of the person.

So if you want to destroy the whole nation, then make sure that the females of that nation are held back.

Also the prohibition of women driving cars is coming from the same exact sources…

Well, what can I say: when people insult the use of the intellect and the brain by offensive, insulting names, these types of fatawa from such people are not strange are they?

Sheikh Atabek Shukrov Nasafi is a noted scholar and specialist in Islamic aqeeda and theological sciences. Undertaking his religious studies at first in secret in Uzbekistan while it was part of the USSR, he has gone on to have an eclectic and comprehensive Islamic education all over the Muslim world.

Already a scholar when he arrived in the Middle East, he studied in Damascus under such luminaries as Mohammad Adnan Darwish, graduating finally from Al Azhar but only after having studied both in Medina and the wider region, for example under Sh. Uthaymeen (and numerous others).

He is currently based in the Northwest of England where he is the founder of the Avicenna Academy.

http://www.avicennaacademy.com/

http://www.avicennaanswers.com

http://www.avicennaanswers.com

Sheikh Atabek Shukurov here presents a very disturbing article about the shocking and unhinjed statements of the senior-most Salafi Imams on how to deal with dissenters. Be warned, not for the faint of heart…

How we should act with ‘opposing groups’?

Well, we could start by examining this advice, or rather a fatwa from the book of ‘Sharh Sunnah’ of Barbahari (the untouchable and beloved Imam of Salafis):

– Some scholars said (and unfortunately Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal RA is one of them);

A Jahmite is a Kafir!

He is not Ahl-Qibla (Not a Muslim)!

Permissible to be killed!

Doesn’t get an inheritance (from his Muslim Relatives), nor do they get it from him!

– If you see someone sitting with the Bid’atis then warn him and let him know what he is doing is wrong! And if he goes to them after knowing then stay away from him because he is Bid’ati!

– If you see someone from Ahl Sunnah has bad behaviour, is disobedient, non-righteous, a sinner, making errors, so stay with him as long as he is Sunni! But if you see someone working hard to worship (God), staying away from luxuries in life, and lost his comfortable life by worshipping, so don’t sit with him! Don’t listen to him! Don’t walk with him! Because you are not secured from been inclined to his opinion, so you will go astray!

Sufyan Thawri said; Any one listens to the Bid’ati, will leave the protection of God! And will be left over with the Bid’as.

This is the first portion of quotations from different scholars about how we should be acting with the differing groups of Muslims. It was from the Hanabila. There will be some more from them, and then from Hanafis. At the end I will make conclusion. Me posting these opinions doesn’t mean that I accept them. But each single person who is making these statements are responsible for their own opinions. I only can comment here by saying; Oh, Really?!

Barbahari carries on in his book ‘Sharh Sunnah’:

Dawood bin Abu Hind said; God revealed to Prophet Musa bin Imran; Don’t sit with the people of Bid’a! If you sit with them and find confusion in your heart, I will throw you into Hellfire!

Fudail bin Iyad said; Any one keeps a company of innovator, will not be given wisdom. Don’t keep the company of innovators, because I think if you do, you will be cursed (by God)!

Anyone loves an innovator, God will nullify his good deeds, and the light of Islam will leave his heart!

If you see an innovator in one street then walk through different street!

It comes to this; Don’t sit with them! Don’t walk in the street where you see an innovator! Don’t like him! Your deeds will be nullified!

All of these are big claims! Don’t we need a Quranic proof for them?

Barbahari carries on;

Fudail bin Iyad said; Anyone who respects an innovator is the one who is helping to ruin Islam.

Anyone who smiles at the face of an innovator is the one who is humiliating what God revealed to Muhammad PBUH.

Anyone marries off his daughter to an innovator cut his family chains

Anyone follows the burial of an innovator, God will carry on been angry at him until he comes back!

Fudaid bin Iyad said; I will eat with a Jewish and Christian person but I won’t eat with an innovator. I would love to have an iron curtain between me and an innovator.

If God knows that some person hates an innovator He will forgive him, even if this person has little knowledge.

No Sunni can keep a good relationship with an innovator except by hypocrisy!

Any one who turns his face away from an innovator, God will fill his heart with Iman. Anyone who speaks harshly to an innovator, God will give him a peace in the Great Fear of the Last day.

Anyone that humiliates an innovator God will give him 100 levels in Paradise!

This then is the opinion of Hanbalis about Innovators. Obviously, each group calls the opposite group innovators. Meaning that no Muslim should be speaking to any other Muslim…

From the book of ”Sunnah” of Abdullah son of Imam Ahmad (the founder of Hanbali madhab)

”I asked my father (Ahmad bin Hanbal) about praying behind an innovator.

He said; ”It is not allowed to pray behind them, such as Jahmite and Mutazilite! Ibrahim bin Tahman said; Jahmites are disbelievers, and Qadaris are Disbelievers. Kharija said; Jahmites are disbelievers! O people, let the wives of Jahmites know that they are divorcees! Its not permissible for them to live with their husbands! Don’t visit when they are ill! Don’t attend their burial! then he recited Surah Taha uto (Ar-Rahman ‘Alal-‘Arshi stawaa) then said; istawa doesn’t have any meaning but sitting!

Ibn Mubarak said; Jahmites are kuffar! Hasan bin Isa said; Jahmites are kuffar and the ones who are not sure that Jahmites kuffar are kuffar too!

Sufyan bin ‘Uyayna said; Quran is the word of God. Anyone says that it is created is kafir! And the one who doubts that he is Kafir is kafir too!

Sufyan bin ‘Uyayna said; Anyone says that the Quran is created has to be crucified on a mountain!”

There are a few points;

1. This book is also taught in their (Salafis/Wahhabis) institutes and mosques. And you can find it’s audio lectures on the net

2. The main foundation of their aqeeda is; ‘Sunna’ of Abdulla son of Ahmad, ‘Sunna’ of Ibn Batta, ‘Sunna’ Ibn Abu Asim, and the ‘Sharh Sunna’ of Barbahari. And all of these books are full of this takfeer, and the fatwas of chopping off the heads or crucifying the opposite groups.

3. ‘Jahmites’ are the ones who don’t accept the literal meaning of the ‘Mutashabihat’ (ambiguous or metaphorical passages of the Quran), so it includes each single Muslim except Salafis – Asharis, Maturidis, Mu’tazzila, Shia, Sufis etc. Even Khawarij accept the Quran’s metaphorical meaning. So when they say ‘Jahmites’, they mean the majority of Muslims through history (Abu Hanifa, Malik, Al Ghazzali, Imam Razi, As Suyuti, Ibn Hajar, Al Juwayni, Qadi iyad, Ibn Jawzi, Ibn Qudamah…) and living today.

4. By ‘Qadaris’ they mean the ones who don’t believe that humans are forced to do what is predestined to them. So it is again everyone except them and Ash’aris.

5. Not having certainty about some kafir being kafir is not kufr! It is just that these people have an obsession with takfeer.

6. ‘Istawa’ not having any other meaning except ‘sitting’, is just absurd. It proves that this guy doesn’t have adequate breadth of knowledge of the Arabic Language.

I am not here to criticise Salafi aqeeda – their aqeeda has been criticised academically by many great scholars. My intention here is to show how we Muslims (Salafis, Maturidis, Ash’aris) are oppressing each other by these fatwas of such and such which goes against the teaching of the Quran and real sunna of the Prophet (not the sunna of Ahmad or his son).

Let’s look next at the issue from the Hadith point of view:

First Hadeeth says;

Qadaris are Zoroastrians of this nation. Don’t visit them when they are ill! Don’t attend their burial when they die! Abu Huraira RA narrated; Each nation has Zoroastrians in them. And the Zoroastrians of this nation are Qadaris. Don’t visit them when they are ill! Don’t pray their Janaza when they are dead!

The meaning of ”Qadari” it is the person who doesn’t believe that you are forced to do what ever God has predestined for you. Meaning this hadeeth is about Mu’tazila and Maturidis, as Salafis and Ash’aris, so they both believe in it. Also, pay attention that the text of these hadeeths is ‘copied and pasted’ by Barbahari and his collegues

But both of the hadeeths are fabricated (so it proves that Barbahari and his friends don’t have great knowledge of Hadeeth).

Please follow the text;

”Anyone who humiliates the innovator, God will fill his heart by tranquillity and belief! When you see an innovator then humiliate him to his face (not behind his back)! Because, Glorious God hates all of the innovators! Not one of them will pass the Sirat! But they will be falling off from the Sirat as locusts and flies! When some innovator dies there will be great opening for Islam! Any innovator who denies Destiny, God will not even look at his case but he will be thrown into Hell! Even if he will be killed by being oppressed between two corners of Ka’ba! Even if he will be patient with the oppressive murderer ,expecting a reward from God!” 

All of these hadeeths are fabricated!

Look at the last one! The one who fabricated it is shameless hypocrite who attributes an oppression to God!

”God will be angry when some disobedient person is praised! Any one shows respect to the disobedient is helping the destruction of Islam!” 

Another pile of fabricated narrations!

But pay attention to the 100% similarity between the previous fatawa and the text of these narrations. So I think that they were giving fatwa based on these fabricated texts.

Q: Can we speak to the opposite groups?

 

God says; And speak to people good [words]! 2;83

 

I know the emotional people will straight away will say; ”Yes, but innovators are not ”people” but they are pigs and monkeys! – I am sorry but that is ridiculous.

 

 

 

 

Q: Can I sit and speak with the opposite groups? And can I have a good relationship with them, especially if the sheikh of that group criticized my sheikh in such and such issue?

 

God says; O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm for Allah, witnesses in justice, and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just; that is nearer to righteousness. And fear Allah ; indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what you do.

And finally;

 

Q. How come you are opposing Sufyan and Fudail and Hasan? Isn’t it that Fulan and Fulan said; Any one opposes these scholars, he is not in Sunnah?

 

I say; Anyone who opposes Quran he is not in Islam!

 

So they who have believed in him, honoured him, supported him and followed the light which was sent down with him – it is those who will be the successful. 7;157

 

Let’s finish off this topic…

 

 

Q. What did The Prophet PBUH says about;

 

1. Not speaking to a Bid’ati Muslim

2. Turning away your face

3. Not walking in the same street with him

4. Humiliating him to his face

5. Showing an angry face

6. Living with pigs but not with him

7. Hatred against him so God fills your heart by ”Iman”

8. Hatred against him so God forgives you etc

 

So Prophet PBUH responds to all of these questions;

 

Abu Ayub RA narrated from the Prophet PBUH; ”It is not permissible for a Muslim to leave his Brother for more than three nights. [Its not permitted for them to] meet each other and one of them turns away from the second and the second turns away from the first one! And the best of them two is the one who speaks first!

 

Malik and Bukhari Abu Huraira RA narrated from the Prophet PBUH;

 

”O people, don’t do ill thoughts about each other! Indeed the ill thought is the biggest lie! Don’t spy on each other! Don’t be jealous towards each other! Don’t hate each other! O slaves of God, be brothers as God ordered you! The Muslim is a brother of a Muslim! So he doesn’t oppress him, doesn’t disown him, doesn’t humiliate him! Cautiousness is here (he repeated that three times pointing to his chest). It is good enough for a person to be an evil man just to humiliate his Brother! It is prohibited for Muslims their blood, possessions, Honour!

 

Also narrated; O people, don’t compete with each other! Don’t leave each other! Don’t cut the chain between each other! …

 

Narrated by Bukhari and Muslim

 

Where is the Prophetic Islam and barbarian Islam? No comments needed, except that there are some evil shuykh and molanas who will say; ‘They are not Muslims but gustakhs, pigs, khabeeths…’ Well, if the word of God and Prophet doesn’t convince you then no one can convince you!

 

 

 

Further, Prophet PBUH said; ”Any one leaves his brother for more than three days, he enters the hell unless God shows him a Mercy”. Authentic, narrated by Tabarani 

 

Prophet PBUH said; ‘It is not permissible for a Muslim to leave his brother for more than three nights. If they do so, then they are away from the guidance as long as they insist on it! Any of them starts speaking will be forgiven! And when he speaks but the second doesn’t respond Angels will respond to him, and Satan will respond to the second one! But if they insist on not speaking, they wont enter Paradise, Never!’

 

Ahmad and Tabarani, authentic

 

Prophet Said; ”Not speaking for one year equals to the sin of killing him” Hakim

 

So, all of these fatawas of fulan and fulan was taking us to Hell!

 

Please keep in your mind that ‘Fulan and Fulan’ (‘so and so’) scholars could give 100% obviously erroneous fatwas too. And this post is good example of such fatwas!

 

Conclusion;

 

1. All of those fatawa are nothing but trial to destroy Islam

2. From today onward we don’t worship ‘Fulans’

3. Quranic Islam and Quranic God is much more merciful than barbarian Islam and barbarian God!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a fascinating overlap between Salafis and most self proclaimed ‘Liberals’, both of whom seem to be having an (presumably) unconscious competition as to who can be the most bigoted and inflexible in their respective world-views. This congruence however is regarding what the ‘punishment’ for homosexual action should be in Islamic law (commonly referred to pejoratively as ‘Shariah’ Law’). Revealingly, they would both really like it to be death.

Of course, they differ as to why they would like this to be the case: for Liberals, taking on Islam as part of their extended spectrum war on religion/tradition and the family, they would like to show that Islam oppresses and kills sexual minorities and is as dangerous and intolerant as people suspect. Gay rights currently being a ’cause celebre’ (to the neglect of nearly every other type of rights such as the right to citizenship, education or even life if you happen to live in the poorer parts of the world – far more attention is lavished by Liberals on the cause of gay marriage than, say, eradicating child death from hunger, which is presumably to be left to Russell Brand), it would of course be expeditious if Islam were to mandate that homosexuality be punishable by death. We could then all switch off our brains and dismiss it as the ‘medieval’ menace we suspect it to be.

Salafis and their puritanical brethren the Deobandis would also love the punishment for homosexuality to be death – because to a puritan, anything harsh, violent or difficult is Manna from heaven and therefore more authentic, pure and religious. Suspicion of ease or pleasure is primal to the puritan world-view. It is a way for them to show just how diametrically they are opposed to what they think is ‘modernity’ but is usually more accurately leniency or mercy (though they would hate for it to be put thus) and to thereby earn points with a mass of Muslims feeling that their values and traditions are under threat. Minorities, whether they are religions, Goths or punk rockers, love to differentiate themselves from the masses and most Muslim groups are in fact exactly the same (albeit rather less fashionable).

The first matter that needs to be clarified is that homosexual orientation and even behaviour is not punishable in Islam at all (though it is morally reprimanded and in no uncertain terms). First of all, in Islamic legal theory it is nigh on impossible to prove anyone’s sexual peccadillos – which is why the Ottomans decriminalised homosexuality in 1858, something which helps proves our thesis as this undeniable fact is vigorously denied by both Islamophobes and Salafists – one could write a whole article about how both groups are keen to attribute this not to the traditional Hanafism of the Ottomans but to ‘secular’ Tanzimat reforms, betraying symmetrical and near complete ignorance of Ottoman history (or on how to use a search engine). Basically, being a sexually practising gay is not something which is punishable in Islamic law. What is punishable is the same thing that is punishable in the heterosexual case – having public intercourse in front of four or more witnesses, perhaps better called ‘public lewdness’. Like at an orgy or a sex tape or something. Or what is commonly known as ‘dogging’ in England.

In the Hanafi case, this in the worst scenario can result in flogging: any person who has straight or gay sex in front of four or more witnesses deliberately, will risk being publicly flogged (though the second Caliph Umar (RA), even lifted this punishment after a young man apostated after being caught ‘en flagrante’). In fact, the punishment for having gay public sex, as the talk by the noted traditionalist scholar below shows, was actually less than for having straight public sex. Which is a bit odd, but there you go.

Of course, this will neither please Salafis, who will be appalled at the leniency of the traditional (and majority) legal school of the Hanafis, nor Liberals, who will be furious that anyone should consider flogging people who have sex in public, put up porn videos etc at all but in the homology of their disapproval perhaps there is a lesson for people who can think critically.

After this guys first talk, elucidating the issue perfectly cogently and with referenced evidence that viewers could chase up for themselves, this poor traditionist had to film a second part (included below) since he was accosted with denials by Muslims who accused him of being a ‘sell out’ and pandering to the Zeitgeist. Yet he was only stating the position of the earliest and most authoritative jurist, Abu Hanifa, born in 63 AH (some time before the zeitgeist), whose legal school was and still is followed by the majority of Muslims – and more importantly by nearly all of the major Muslim empires and states (such as the Samanis, Timurids, Mughals and lately, the Ottomans), and is also the one followed by nearly all of the non-Arab Muslims of the world.

The Hanafis took a similar position on gay sex as they did on adultery (though they rightly identified that there was no punishment stipulated for the former in the Quran at all, and thus they too were reluctant to stipulate what God had not): namely that vigorous moral disapproval and punishment are two different things. None of the Muslim exegetes and authoritative scholars approved of homosexual action or for that matter fornication or adultery – but they did not mandate a punishment for them.

Of course, puritans cannot understand how you could disapprove of something without mandating a punishment but this is a failure of imagination and orthodoxy on their part. It is clear to even a unlearned reader of the Quran that for the vast number of vices the Quran is keen to elucidate at length, such as deception, avarice or the neglect of the poor and destitute, there is nonetheless no legal punishment stipulated.

The Islamic position on homosexual action is in no way exceptional within the context of Islamic legal theory and ethics, much to the chagrin of Salafists and their equally inflexible bedfellows, Liberals.

I like this scholar because he is brave enough to tell it like it is, regardless of kowtowing to either Muslims or non-Muslims, and gives enough detail to save me having to do an article about this, as I have long been planning. In short he explains that whereas the Quran is clear on stipulating a censure for ‘zina’ (illicit intercourse – either fornication or adultery, which incidentally are not referred to separately in the Quran but jointly under the term ‘zina’ and thus the Hanafis and others agree on the same sanction for both – namely flogging, and not stoning), it neglects to both specify one for homosexual sex or to class it as ‘adultery’. Therefore, in serious matters that mandate a physical punishment, lesser evidence than the Quran is not aldmitted by Hanafi legal theory (and most Malikis as well). In this and other cases, the Hadith are indeed lesser evidence, irrespective of their being graded ‘sahih’ (and the hadith gradings of jurists differ from that of hadith scholars). And in any case, the Hanafis find significant fault with hadiths calling for the capital punishment of either adulterers or homosexuals these narrations are boldly rejected by that legal school as well as by many other jurists, as the speaker ably demonstrates.

But at the same time, it is rather, well, pathetic that the well known Hanafi position on there being no punishment for homosexuality is resisted by so many Muslims. I mean, I knew about this when I was studying the rudiments of Islam, so it is somewhat indicative of the level of ‘authenticity’ that we have from groups such as Salafis, Deobandis, HT or whatever, that their explanations of the ‘Islamic’ approach to homosexuality failed to include the authoritative position of the Hanafis – rather, finding this position embarrassing, they followed the methodology of the Islamophobes and seemingly lied or ‘forgot’ about it.

Perhaps they were so worried about the proliferation of homosexuality in the Muslim community that they felt they had to help God and the classical scholars out by appearing to be ‘tough on gayness and tough on the causes of gayness’. Which is ironic, as they are also very tough on the ’causes’ of heterosexuality (like guys and girls being able to mix or talk to one another)…

So now you have the ACTUAL Islamic position on ‘punishing’ homosexual sex. In public. If any Liberals, Secularists and their ‘Islamic’ iterations, the Salafis, know any better, then allow me to utter the immortal words: ‘Come at me bro!’.

But if you can’t, then have the epistemic humility to admit your error and stop embarrassing the religion of God with your banality and nonsense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJl4j_r5wdo&list=UUNQMOOMpH5KEWDnQCxXgfeA

Sheikh Atabek Shukrov Nasafi is a noted scholar and specialist in Islamic aqeeda and theological sciences. Undertaking his religious studies at first in secret in Uzbekistan while it was part of the USSR, he has gone on to have an eclectic and comprehensive Islamic education all over the Muslim world.

Already a scholar when he arrived in the Middle East, he studied in Damascus under such luminaries as Mhmd Adnan Darwish, graduating finally from Al Azhar but only after having studied both in Medina and the wider region, for example under Sh. Uthaymeen (and numerous others).

He is currently based in the Northwest of England where he is the founder of the Avicenna Academy.

http://www.avicennaacademy.com/

An extremely rare example of academic honesty by Muslim scholars, whose general answer, (as much as they try to hide it) to all aqeeda (creed), fiqh (legal) or spiritual enquires is violence (*but not in the ‘UK’ only in an Islamic state and only if all the conditions are met blah blah). Enjoy it while it lasts.

It comprehensively dismantles the idiotic position held by most Muslims scholars today that non-Muslims are to be killed for blasphemy, especially against the Prophet Muhammad (*but not in the ‘UK’ only in an Islamic state and only if all the conditions are met blah blah). I am glad that someone spoke up about this with through references, even though it shows how intellectually degenerate Muslims are nowadays: first of all, non-Muslim’s whole religion is ‘blasphemy’ for Muslims (and vice versa) and insulting God is worse than insulting the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) – and since Muslims have allowed people to make statues of God as a naked woman or animal or whatever for centuries without killing the worshippers, it automatically follows that insulting the Prophet could not result in death either.

But multiplying excuses for violence (*but not in the ‘UK’ only in an Islamic state and only if all the conditions are met blah blah) beyond necessity and out with all proportion of traditional Hanafi Islam is the hallmark of nearly all of the visible sects of Islam today. And then they are ‘shocked’ when people commit acts of violence. Go figure.

By Sulaiman Ahmed and Sheikh Atabek Shukurov

I often look at the online fatwas and talks of Islamic ‘scholars’ and wonder if perhaps they are deliberately trying to arm Islamophobes or to further garner harassment and vilification for Muslims with their bizarre pronouncements. What makes me really sad is that they never couch these as their own idiosyncratic and extremist positions but rather impugn the whole of Islam by insisting that these are the ‘mainstream’ or normative Islamic verdicts, when in fact they have concocted these to please their Salafi paymasters or to whip up their followers into a (violent) hysteria. We have seen this kind of thing multiple times in the past, where scholars have worsened as opposed to resisted sectarian tensions and extra judicial violence, falling victim to the worst caricatures of religion by its enemies. Now we are seeing it again, this time in Pakistan concerning blasphemy laws as applied to non-Muslims who live in a Muslim country – a country which purportedly follows the normative Hanafi Sunni School of Islam, which categorically and famously does not allow the killing of non-Muslims for ‘blasphemy’. Of course, this does not stop said scholars from binning thirteen hundred years of Hanafi heritage when it suits them. Sadly this cannot be helped, but their disgraceful and fraudulent presentation of the Hanafi School, which they claim to follow in the same breath as rubbishing its tenants, must be addressed.

One may ask what is so strange or interesting about his case to both the Islamophobic press and Muslims scholars. Is it not resoundingly obvious? A vigilante by the name of Mumtaz Qadiri took the law into his own hands and killed a person he was being paid to protect, the governor of the Pakistani state of Punjab, Salman Taseer (who he claims was a blasphemerand therefore an apostate both, for and before questioning Pakistan’s blasphemy law during a fracas about the incident below). The expected response would be that everyone condemns and denounces this killer, right? Sadly not so, as many Muslim Scholars from the Brelwi sect, dominant in Pakistan, including many from the UK, have either supported him openly by stating ‘he did what we could not’ or claimed that he is a martyr. These scholars were in reality encouraging people to kill and then calling these killers ‘martyrs’ or ‘shaheed’, who in Islam are people who have a very lofty status with God after death. However, as soon as the British Media get a hold of it[i] – they all started deleting their posts faster than you can say ‘security risk’ or ‘person of interest’. So these so-called scholars do not even have the courage or dignity to back up their ‘convictions’ by leaving the posts on their wall. This is due to fear of the UK government, which, like it or not (and they most certainly do not) is in fact one of the most lawful countries. Yet these same people ask or encourage others to kill and become ‘martyrs’. They do not mind that you receive a prison sentence, are killed or are given capital punishment but they want to make sure they keep their jobs, institutes and money out of fear of being investigated or asked questions. This is pure hypocrisy, or rather something worse.

All of this began with the case of Aasia Noreen. In June 2009 Aasia Bibi, a poor Christian woman with three children from a low ‘caste’ was working on a farm in Shiekhupura, Pakistan. She was asked to collect water from a well and as she was doing this, she took a sip of water using an old cup. Two workers who were Muslims and neighbours of Aasia refused the water stating, ‘we do not take water from the hands of a Christian’.[ii] After this there was a quarrel between the women where heated words were exchanged. It is only at this point there is a dispute about what was said. In court documents, Aasia Noreen maintains that she never made any blasphemous comments and that she respects the Quran as well as the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). The two sisters argue that Aasia stated that ‘the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) was ill on bed for one month and before his death and insects emerged from his mouth and ear. That he married Khadijah for the purposes of looting her wealth and that the Quran is a ‘man made book’.[iii] The claimants are all connected – two of them are sisters and were studying under the wife of Qari Saleem, the religious scholar who brought forth the claim against Aasia Noreen, who herself maintains that ‘she was falsely accused to settle an old score’.[iv] The claimants all maintain that Aasia confessed to her crime when confronted by hundreds or perhaps thousands of people from her own and nearby villages. They claim that it was ‘civil’ and that Aasia confessed to her crimes but Aasia argues that it was far from ‘civil’, and that: ‘In the village they tried to put a noose around my neck, so that they could kill me,’ and that it was out of fear for her life that she confessed to the crimes of which she had been accused. When analysing the testimonies of the claimants there are many contradictions within their statements with some aspects giving clear indications of ‘coaching’. In court, Aasia maintained her innocence and clarifies that she offered an oath on the Bible that she has never stated “such derogatory…and shameful remarks against the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) and the Holy Quran.” She went onto say “I have great respect and honour to the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) as well as the Holy Quran”. What compounds the problem is that since 1953 in Baluchistan, Islamabad and the entire state of Punjab, the majority of people accused of blasphemy have been people from minorities such as Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis and Shia. Proportionally, in the entirety of Pakistan, minorities are accused of blasphemy much more than Sunni Muslims. The case took a dreadful twist when the Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, acted as an interloper for Aasia and said the blasphemy laws should be changed. He was subsequently gunned down by his own on-duty bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, who claimed that he committed the murder but was ‘provoked’ by Taseer and offered a ‘theological’ justification for his actions, adducing ‘proof’ of Taseer’s apostasy and blasphemy such as that he ‘drank scotch’ (although he admits to never having seen this) and was married to a Sikh etc. (see Criminal Appeals no 210 and 211, Supreme Court of Pakistan). We will leave aside the fact that none of these things is ‘blasphemy’ or worthy of the death penalty in Islam anyway, but I can imagine any non-Muslim friends of Islam understandably being horrified by this account and the extremely ‘inclusive’ criteria that Muslims seem to have for killing people. But please bear with me a while longer.

What compounds the issue is that Brelwi fanatics sent a letter to the Habaib, who are Shafis and who are in all likelihood not aware of the specifics of this case, as well as the case of Mumtaz Qadiri for an Islamic ruling. Now in the letter they mentioned, “It was investigated by a police officer and she admitted her crime in front of him.” Now in the court documents it does not mention she admitted her crime in front of the police officer. In fact she admitted her crime in front of a mob of people who were ready to lynch her. In her statement recorded under section 342 Cr.P.C:

“I offered an oath to the police on the Bible that I have never passed such derogatory and shameful remarks against the Prophet (ﷺ) and the Holy Quran. I have great respect and honour to the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) as well as the Quran.”[v]

I want to say at the outset that understanding ‘blasphemy’ as committed by non-Muslims in Islam actually requires absolutely no Islamic knowledge and can be understood by anyone with a modicum of common sense: it is clear that blaspheming the Prophet (ﷺ) and insulting him or calling him names is dreadful to Muslims. It is however likewise clear that the Prophet (ﷺ) is ‘insulted’ daily, explicitly or implicitly by non-Muslims who don’t believe in him (about five and half billion people, i.e most of Earth) and either regard him as wrong but innocuous or a liar and so on. We do not kill these people.

Aasia Noreen’s three daughters

Further, it is obvious that insulting God is much worse than insulting Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). According to Muslims, ideas like the Trinity or making an idol of God as, for example, as a naked women with her foot balanced on a skull, is blasphemy. Yet we do not go around burning down temples and challenging Hindus or Christians to a fight (not that many Muslims and non-Muslims alike wouldn’t like to see this). Also consider what unprecedented chaos would ensue if Hindus and Christians started to apply their blasphemy laws onto Muslims and declared monotheism or ‘tawhid’ to be grounds for killing people in a Hindu or Christian state (and this has happened). How would that work?

We might also have to kill a whole bunch of Muslims (perhaps the majority) who accuse the Prophet (ﷺ) of losing his mind due to ‘black magic’ or compromising on monotheism due to the ‘Satanic Verses’, because, spin it how you will, those are insulting too.

So it is obvious from first principles that the non-Muslim citizens, by their very existence, are usually blaspheming, by Muslim standards – if not the Prophet (ﷺ) then certainly God. Even their worship is sometimes ‘blasphemous’ vis-a-vis Islamic norms. It is likewise then obvious that there can be no death penalty for them in Islam, no matter how disturbing Muslims find this, because then we would have to fight and kill almost everyone who was not Muslim. Of course, some people would actually like this. I hope people can appreciate both that such people are ‘mental’ and the inescapable weight of this rational argument. It is in fact not only a clear and rational necessity but is in fact the very same argument furnished by the first jurisprudential ‘Imam’ of Sunni Muslims, Abu Hanifa. But of course, many Muslims today don’t like this. Maybe it’s too simple or too bloodless or lacks the necessary ‘drama’ they feel should be associated with insults directed at the Prophet (ﷺ). But religion is not about drama, hysteria or mobs. Religion is about answering those questions we ask which distinguish us from beasts: Why am I here? How should I live? Is there anything after death? Why do pain and loss exist, and so on.

Sadly, God is one of the most insulted ‘things’ in the world today. It detracts nothing from him. By rejecting him we only hurt ourselves and deny purpose and hope in an otherwise vast and unfeeling universe. When Pharaoh denied God and claimed to usurp him, who did you feel sorry for, God for having been rejected and insulted or Pharaoh?

I felt sorry for Pharaoh, he deceived himself by not accepting God. So did Moses – he persisted in trying to help him for a long time.

Now: is Islam really violent and does it really suppress minorities? The answer to this is a resounding ‘No!’ but you would never know that if you were to look at the viler pronouncements of both UK scholars such as the Brelwi adept Asrar Rashid nor those of ‘Dawah activists’, who are actually Salafis masquerading as Hanafis to groom and inveigle their way into normative Muslim communities[vi]

Bear in mind before reading further the general strategy of such groups and individuals:

1. Ignoring the position of the Hanafi school, (which precisely for its understanding attitude to minorities and Muslims alike achieved success amongst non-Arabs and in lands with many non-Muslims) and presenting the extremely latter day and heterodox positions of Salafi influenced and cult-like groups from the subcontinent such as Deobandis (who were actually until 2005 apparently proudly funded by the Saudi government) and Brelwis. As for the former, they ignore the normative positions and methodology of Hanafis in favour of their modernist founders such as Shaykh Ashraf Ali Thanwi, Rashid Ahmad Gangohi and such. In the case of the latter, they defer to the equally late and heterodox Shaykh Ahmed Ridha Khan in all matters. Both groups are beholden to Shah Wali Allah, a eighteenth century anti-Sufi scholar who acted as an apologist and propagandist for Salafi archfiend Ibn Taymiyyah in the Indian Subcontinent
2. Quote mining anyone and everyone they can find, especially people such as Shah Wali Allah and Ibn Abideen (who also took the positions of Ibn Taymiyyahh as opposed to Abu Hanifa – though he, unlike them, was open about this) and basically anyone they can find to try and turn the Salafi position into the Hanafi position – so the Hanafi and Maturidi position, which is anathema to the Salafis, is only to be taken and understood through those scholars who claim to be Hanafi but are in fact adherents of the Salafis position – this the same strategy as narrating the Hanafi position through Deobandis and Brelwis. It would assist Salafis greatly if they could pretend that Hanafis are really just Salafis and could thus occupy the ideological ‘main space’. The problem for them is that the scholars they wish to use, whether the very late ones of Deoband and Brelwis or the merely ‘late’ ones such as Shah Wali Allah and Ibn Abideen, openly abandon Hanafi principles.
3. Deploying ‘reason’ and legal arguments…but only if they lead to killing people. Ignoring reason and law in all other cases.
4. Blatantly, shamelessly, uninhibitedly and flagrantly ignoring the Hanafi position and following that of the other contradicting schools. Because it’s always better to err onthe side of killing isn’t it?
5. If all else fails, in case of emergency, break glass and freely mistranslate the Arabic

People of average intelligence and gullibility need read no further – as long as they look critically at the arguments of those who claim that Hanafis support the killing of non-Muslim blasphemers, they will find they invariably fall into one of these categories.

Bearing these points in mind, let’s look at the actual Islamic position of non-Muslims living in Muslim lands. Please remember that Pakistan alleges to be a country that follows the ‘Sunni Hanafi School’ in Islamic Jurisprudence and theology. Therefore let’s look at what is the position of this classical school really is.

Imam Abu Bakr al-Jassas al-Razi al-Hanafi was a prominent Hanafi jurist from the fourth century, one of the most respected scholars in the field of Usul (epistemic principles), and the grand-teacher of Abul Hasan al Quduri, who wrote the most famous and most commonly used primer in Hanafi jurisprudence, ‘Mukhtasar al-Quduri’.[vii] Salafis and occult Salafis alike would very much like to eradicate this man from the history of Islamic scholarship – it would make their lives much easier – but he is too central, too early and too big a deal in the Hanafi school to do away with – not that this stops them from trying.

Jassas stated in his book ‘Mukhtasar Ikhtilaf’ in the chapter titled ‘Dhimmi (Non-Muslim living in lands controlled by Muslims) insulting the Prophet’ (ﷺ) that according to Hanafi Imams, aDhimmi (recall, this is a non-Muslim citizen of an ‘Islamic State’) is not killed but insteadta’dheer (discretionary punishment, which is a maximum of lashing twenty nine) is applicable.[viii]

As an aside, a vile strategy being used by faux Hanafis such as Rashid and their impious ilk is to claim that this ‘ta’dheer’ or ‘discretionary punishment’ can include death, thereby turning Hanafis repudiation of the death penalty into a charade where they kill them nonetheless under ‘judge’s discretion’ – but this is sheer unacademic and fraudulent poppycock – since it is an unassailable pillar of Hanafite law that discretionary punishments can never exceed the mandatory ones – the lowest of which historically is forty lashes to a slave – so the highest discretionary or ta’dheer punishment can be as a maximum thirty nine lashes only. So where did they get this ‘discretionary death penalty’ from? Indeed, non-Muslims are justified in fearing, nay, even hating us if we are willing to lie and manipulate to this degree to justify killing. Furthermore, it is funny how God failed to clarify what you would have thought were important matters like killing but instead left it to the ‘discretion’ of judges.

As proof for his stance, Imam Jassas mentions the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ)which were reported by Ibn Umar (ra), Anas (ra) and Aisha (ra) about a Jewish person who insulted and cursed the Prophet (ﷺ) when they were greeting one another – but yet the Prophet (ﷺ) never killed him nor did he order the Sahabah (companions) to kill him.[ix] But of course, Salafis, Brelwis and Deobandis are always harassing people to follow hadith, anathematising those who question hadith and so on – unless the hadith stops them from stuff they want to do (like killing people for rubbish reasons), in which case they shamelessly ignore them or conveniently discover a ‘weakness’ in their chain which everyone else overlooked for a millennium and an half.

Jassas concludes the analysis of this hadith by stating that if a Muslim were to insult the Prophet (ﷺ) he would become an apostate and would have to be killed (because his stance is that apostates should be killed) but for some reason the Prophet (ﷺ) did not kill this Jewish person. He then narrates the hadith of Anas where a Jewish lady poisons food which the Prophet (ﷺ) then eats. When the Sahabah (companions of the Prophet (ﷺ)) caught her and asked him if they should kill her, he said ‘No!’

Jassas states that there is no disagreement that if a Muslim were to do the same thing, he would then become an apostate that is liable for the death penalty. Jassas concludes his explanation of the hadith by stating that the Prophet (ﷺ) not killing her proves that thedhimmi must not killed. Jassas then goes even further, showing a comprehensive and bipartisan style which would shame todays scholars, and analyses the hadith used by those who support the position that a non-Muslim living in a Muslim land should be killed for blaspheming the Prophet (ﷺ) and says that; ‘if someone were to ask about the incident where a person came to Umar (ra) and said; “I have heard that some monk insulted the Prophet(ﷺ)’’. Umar (ra) said; ‘if I would hear that I would kill him,’ then we do not agree with them about this issue and the chain of the hadith is weak’.[x]

Imam Tahawi another genuinely authoritative and genuinely early Hanafi scholar from the fourth century (as opposed to the handpicked, novel and ‘cross party’ groups of scholars served up to a vulnerable Muslim public by those demanding blasphemy killing), in his book ‘Mukhtasar Tahawi’ which has a commentary by Imam Jassas states:

‘If a Dhimmi insults the Prophet (ﷺ) he will not be killed but instead will be disciplined. This is because they have been left alone to practise their religion, and their religion includes worshiping someone beside God and rejecting the Prophet (ﷺ). The proof of this is Jews visited the Prophet (ﷺ)and they said ‘Damn you!’, and the Prophet (ﷺ) replied ‘you too’ but he did not order from them to be killed’’.[xi]

Abu ‘Abdullah Al-Qurtubi, a Maliki scholar from the thirteenth century stated that:

‘If a Dhimmi insults the Prophet (ﷺ) he will be killed according to Imam Malik, Imam Shafi, Imam Ahmad and others but according to Imam Abu Hanifa and Imam Thawri, he will not be killed’.

Even the senior authorities in the other, rival schools are admitting that Hanafis are not in favour of killing non-Muslims who blaspheme. Not that this will stop the likes of Sheikh Rashid (and too many others to mention) bending over backwards and doing verbal somersaults to try and justify killing people nonetheless – after all, who needs laws or coexistence? As Hiroshi Sakurazaka put it: ‘All you need is ‘kill’’.

Now Imam Qurtubi attempts to justify the position of his school (the Maliki school), harder to find in Pakistan than a Latin Americans at a Donald Trump rally) by explaining that if a Dhimmiinsults the Prophet (ﷺ), degrades him, describes him by something which is not acceptable, then he should be killed as they do not give him protection for insulting the Prophet (ﷺ). He further explained that his opponents in this issue are Imam Abu Hanifa and Sufyan Thawri and that their followers from Kufa (now in Iraq) as they argued that disbelief is a much bigger issue than insulting – and no one asked for a carte blanche killing spree on non-Muslims (they obviously never met todays scholars and ‘Dawah’ activists). The position of Imam Abu Hanifa and Sufyan Thawri was that a Dhimmi must be disciplined and ta’dheer must be applied. This is exactly the rational argument I stated at the outset.

Remember, according to Imam Abu Hanifa the minimum punishment of ta’dheer is a stern look and the maximum is thirty nine lashes. Imam Qurtubi then attempts to refute the position of Imam Abu Hanifa [xii] – which is more than a bit above his pay grade, and kind of ignores the whole ‘follow the salaf’ thing that the advocates of blasphemy killing are always going on about – since Abu Hanifa is one of the salaf and Qurtubi most certainly is not.

Qurtubi continues that the scholars held the same position in the case of a Dhimmi who insults Islam. A Dhimmi that criticises the religion has his agreement (with the Islamic State – a ‘contract’ of citizenship if you will) nullified according to the official position of Imam Malik and that this was also the position of the Shafi school but Imam Abu Hanifa said that thedhimmi will be asked to repent from his statement because criticising Islam does not nullify the contract seeing as God allowed fighting based on only two conditions and both of these conditions must be present according to Imam Abu Hanifa. (This is based on Surah Tawbah verse 12).

If they violate their oaths after having made a treaty with you and condemn your faith, then fight against these leaders of ungodliness, who have no regard for their own oaths, so that they will stop their aggression.

The first is breaking of the contract and the second is critiquing the religion. Qurtubi argued for his own proof that when they say something against the religion this ‘automatically nullifies’ the contract of citizenship. The fact that God mentioned two conditions does not mean they have to do both, for us to fight against them, according to Qurtubi. Qurtubi then argues that in his school of thought this means if the non-Muslim citizens do something prohibited in the contract, it then becomes permissible to fight against them. If they do not do something which is prohibited in the contract but instead if they criticise the religion it nullifies the contract anyway and Malikis can fight against them.[xiii] Which means that Imam Abu Hanifa holds the position in contradistinction to Qurtubi, the Malikis and Shafis, to say nothing of the Hanbalis and Salafis, that a Dhimmi must not be killed even if they insult Islam or insult the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ).

What is really funny and sad is that Abu Hanifa’s opponents and critics in the distant past were much more honest about his position than those like Asrar Rashid and Co. who claim to be championing his own school, today.

Muhammad Amin Ibn Abidin is a Hanafi jurist from the nineteenth century who wrote a long piece about this issue. He is considered a senior Hanafite, but Salafis and others cannot get enough of him because he was fond of quoting their all-time favourite person ever, Ibn Taymiyyah, who was an avowed enemy of Hanafi methodology and creed and let alone wanting to kill non-Muslims for insulting the Prophet (ﷺ), wanted to kill Muslims for saying the intention to prayer out loud. Let’s go through Ibn Abideen’s reasoning. I’m afraid it’s long.

‘If a Dhimmi insults the Prophet (ﷺ) and he does it publicly or does it regularly then he will be killed even if it is woman and this is the ruling from now as narrated from ‘Durr’ and ‘Muntaqa’, this is what Temurtashi [another scholar and commentator] mentioned in his summary’.

Obviously, Salafis, Deobandis and Brelwis are over the moon at reading this, remember, ‘all you need is kill’.

Ibn Abideen is therefore explaining that this is the brand new fatwa of the Hanafi School which he is following. I think the more perceptive readers will see where this is going.

According to Ibn Abideen, Ramli, a Hanafi scholar added a further condition that if there was no prior agreement with the non-Muslims and if they then commit blasphemy then the ‘contract’ will be nullified. On the other hand if it is mentioned in the contract with the Dhimmithen it is obvious, meaning that they can be killed (so the discussion is exactly the same as what the previous Maliki who was trying to attack the Hanafi position, Imam Qurtubi said above). Imam Abu Yusuf (a student of Abu Hanifa) in the book ‘Kharaaj’ mentioned that it was stated in a contract of Abu Ubayda with people of Syria, he said that he would leave their churches, monasteries and temples with the condition that they would not build new places of worship and that they would not insult or beat Muslims. Ibn Abideen narrates that Alama Qasim mentioned from Khalal and Bayhaqi in the chapter of contracts, that when he came to Umar (ra) with the book, there was an extra condition that Christians will not beat Muslims. If they will not keep to this, then the contract will be nullified and it becomes permissible for us to do what we do with our enemies and rebels. After a lengthy preamble, Ibn Abideen continues that the summary of what he mentioned is that the contract will not be nullified unless it was specifically stipulated in that contract that if non-Muslims insult or blaspheme it will be nullified, otherwise it will not be nullified, unless they insult publicly or it becomes their habit as he mentioned before.[xiv]

In this issue Shurunbulali, whom Ibn Abideen quotes, wanted to convert the position of the Hanafis to that of the Malikis but because of the conditions mentioned such as the ruling of Umar not being applicable on other places (i.e. it is not general), Ibn Abideen explained however that he was not able to do it (that is, reconcile the Hanafis non-killing position with the killing opinion of Malikis). Ibn Abideen explains that he found quite a few references about a person falling within the parameters of blasphemy if these two things (public insult or habitual insults) occur, but the primary source of all of these references is Hafiz Uddin Nasafi, who said if a Dhimmi insults Islam publicly, it becomes permissible to kill him. This is because the agreement between him and the state was that he should not criticise Islam, but if he does criticises Islam, he himself then nullifies the contract and this contract is no longer applicable on him. Ibn Abideen then says, that even this position will necessitate that the reason for the nullification of the contract is that he should not be insulting Islam, and that there is no need for an extra condition as this is known by having a simple contract. Ibn Abideen explains ‘But that is going against our Hanafi scholars’ – so he tells the reader to ‘contemplate for yourself’. Ibn Abideen is alluding to the classical Hanafi position which was mentioned by the authorities Jassas and Tahawi – namely that insulting Islam is a part of their [non-Muslims] religion and we give them the right to follow different religions. Thus the justification of Imam Nasafi for killing is clashing with the position of the Hanafi School and this is why Ibn Abideen is saying that there is an obstacle and his opinion cannot be taken.

So Ibn Abideen has rejected the position of Nasafi and explained that it does not meet the principles of the Hanafi School – as of yet he has not provided proof for his own position.

Ibn Abideen then goes on to say that it was Imam Shafi who introduced the idea that insulting Islam is not seen as something which is covered within the contract of a [Dhimmi], because a part of following their own religion is being able to insult Islam. Something which is claimed by the Hanafi School. Abu Sauud, an Ottoman Scholar, mentioned in his commentary that if they will mention our Prophet (ﷺ) by some evil comment which is based on their religion, or that he was not a Prophet (ﷺ), or he killed Jews without justice, or attributed a lie to him, then according to some scholars his contract will not nullified. If he mentioned something which is not concerning his non-Muslim religious beliefs and not part of his religion, then as that is not part of the religion of the Dhimmi, he will be disciplined and punished – and according to this commentator, ‘disciplining’ and ‘punishing’ will include killing for the person who will do it continuously or publicly. Here Ibn Abideen is clearly going against the position of the Hanafi School as ‘disciplining’ means ta’dheer (discretionary punishment) and themaximum punishment for this is thirty nine lashes. Ibn Abideen continues that its proof is what we mentioned above from Hafiz Uddin Nasafi in terms of it being public or continuous and that it is mentioned in the chapter of ta’dheer that the arrogant oppressor will be killed, the highway robber will be killed, the people who commit major sin will be killed and Nasafi said kill anyone who causes harm to the people – but Ibn Abideen has already refuted this position and admitted that it does not match with Hanafi principles and authorities. So as you can see Ibn Abideen has not been able to provide proof from the Hanafis, and he has even gone so far as to refute the same person he is now relying on as a proof for killing blasphemers (and even then, only in public or habitual cases) as he has admitted that Nasafi is incongruent with Hanafi rulings on the matter.

Ibn Abideen then uses the book ‘as-Sarim al-Maslul’ of Ibn Taymiyyah al-Hanbali. Here it is stated that Imam Abu Hanifa and his student said the contract of citizenship will not be nullified by insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) or Islam and the dhimmi will not be killed due to it, but he will get ta’dheer in the case of his doing it publicly…Ibn Taymiyyah goes on to say that according to Hanafi principles, people on whom there is no death penalty – can nonetheless be killed by the khalifah and the king will have right to kill him and it is permissible for the king to increase the official Islamic punishment if the king thinks it will have a benefit.

Quite apart from the fact that we can still see this bizarre ruling in effect in oppressive Wahhabi regimes inspired by Ibn Taymiyyah – from Saudi Arabia to ISIS, and the fact that we can see that when it comes to killing, people are willing to ditch the Sharia entirely and defer to a kind of ‘divine right of kings’, the problem with this is that no Hanafi ever made this statement. Ibn Taymiyyah continues that Hanafis justify this by the reasoning that the Prophet (ﷺ) and the Sahabah used to kill giving the reason that this type of death penalty is a ‘political death penalty’. There are quite a few problematic issues with this as I am sure readers can see, the first being that in the Hanafi School there is no such thing as Siyasa(political punishment) at all. If you ever wanted to see as example of a politically motivated fatwa’, then here it is.

The second problematic issue is that Ibn Abideen has not been able to find any Hanafi to support his opinion (and if he can’t even find it, what chance do the erstwhile ‘Hanafis’ Asrar Rashid and Co. have?) but is instead totally randomly using the opinion of Ibn Taymiyyah, the father of modern day Salafism and by no stretch of the imagination a Hanafi – in fact Ibn Abideen’s Ottoman employers had actually banned Ibn Taymiyyah’s works as an affront to Sunnism.[xv]

Ibn Abideen continues with more proofs outwith the classical Hanafi School, saying that Badr al-Din al-Aini states that it his opinion based on his ‘personal choice’, that Dhimmis can be killed for blasphemy. We can see that he had not used the Hanafi School as a basis of his opinion or it would not be his ‘personal choice’ otherwise (who knew that the personal choice extended to such matters as killing – but that’s a separate issue). Badr al-Din al-Aini is a hadith orientated scholar, and hence not in accordance with methodology of the Hanafi School. He is the brother in law of Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, a prominent Shafi scholar and his student Kamal ibn Hummam followed this opinion too. More on them later.

So what we are seeing is a wholesale, but honest and frank (unlike todays horrendous deceptions), abandonment, by a set of later scholars, of the authentic and early Hanafi position of not prescribing the death penalty for non-Muslims who blaspheme, in favour of Hanbali, Shafis and even anthropomorphists who do support it. If anyone pulled off such a maneuver today, they would be harangued with cries of betrayal of the Sharia and appeasing the government or the ‘West’, let alone modernism. But when it comes to fatwas that deal with violence, well…’all you need is ‘kill’’.

Ibn Abideen says explicitly that ‘it is a judgement of the rulers that we have to follow the opinion of our scholars who support killing the one who insults’. So the Hanafi madhab is to be decided by the government of the time and the ‘blessing’ of the differences of opinions of the scholars that we are always being told about is to be overlooked. Or as Henry Ford put it: ‘Available in any colour, as long as it’s black’. What this means is that Ibn Abideen has not brought forth any proof from the Hanafis to support his position. The main reason for him attempting to prove this position is the pressure he received from his employers, the Ottoman Empire c. 1800. Therefore he brought forth the famous opinion of Ibn Taymiyyah that killing people for political reasons is permissible. He states that Ibn Taymiyyah is reliable when he is narrating the Hanafi School and therefore this has to be accepted.[xvi] This is scandalous, as for the first time ever, we are being told that the Hanafi school has to in fact be narrated through a Hanbali anthropomorphist scholar who came seven hundred years after Imam Abu Hanifa and opposes the Hanafi Maturidi school anyway. Ibn Taymiyyah is known for supporting killing over peace, having a habit of transmitting incorrect information from scholars, making errors when narrating scholarly consensus (ijma) and is known to transmit disagreements when there is ijma on the issue. Therefore not only is he an extremist, but he is completely unreliable.

Imam Jassas says that concerning a Dhimmi who insults the Prophet (ﷺ) publicly, there is disagreement amongst the jurists. So this contradicts the statement of Ibn Abideen who stated that there was no disagreement about either public or private insults. Jassas says ‘our scholars said he will be given ta’dheer and will not be killed, this is narrated by Thawri. But Abu Qasim narrated from Imam Malik that the Dhimmi will be killed unless he accepts Islam. Waleed ibn Muslim narrated from Owzai and Malik that anyone who insults the Prophet (ﷺ), that is apostasy, and he must repent or otherwise he will be killed’. Jassas then continues and tests the issue of ‘breaking an agreement of citizenship’ and he states that according to Imam Abu Hanifa that agreement will only be broken in one scenario, and that is if this Dhimmi goes and joins the country who is at war with your country. Imam Malik, Imam Shafi and Imam Ahmad said it will be broken even if he critiques our religion.[xvii] A Dhimmi who publicly insults the Prophet (ﷺ) is different to the Muslim who publicly insults the Prophet (ﷺ).[xviii]

So as you see that Hanafis are quite clear about this issue even when related to an insult in apublic context.

Now, some people deceptively use the quote from Imam Muhammad, a student of Abu Hanifa, to present the case that it is permissible to kill the Dhimmi. “If she publicly insults the Prophet (ﷺ) there is nothing wrong in killing her.”^[xix] Not only has the quote been taken out of context but it has only been used in the issue of a Dhimmi when it is not referring to aDhimmi at all. The ruse is to use this quote as a reference for a Dhimmi when Imam Muhammad was speaking about the Harbi (Non-Muslim who is not living in Muslim land, whose military is a threat to the safety of the Muslims). Remember in the Hanafi School (and common sense), killing old people and woman in the battlefield is not permissible. That is what the entirety of the chapter from Imam Muhammad is referring to. The chapter is in fact called ‘who amongst the HARBI can and cannot be killed’.[xx] He mentioned that if someone kills Harbi women and old men (in the battlefield) there is no penalty but instead it is better not to do it (Khilaaful Awlaa) The second thing is that according to Imam Muhammad, it will be permissible to kill the Harbi woman if she insults the Prophet (ﷺ) publicly. So there is a difference between a non-Muslim who is protected by their contract, which allows for them to live peacefully in Muslim land and a Non-Muslim who does not live in Muslim land. Using this as reference to give one a licence to kill is completely unacceptable. It seems like the modus operandi is that if you cannot find a classical reference to support your bloodlust then you have to fabricate a reference which has no relevance to the topic at hand.

Unlike most Muslims scholars and so-called apologists, I believe in neither undue violence nor undue censorship: you are free to follow either the early Hanafis such as Abu Hanifa and Imams Jassas and Tahawi from the first to the fourth centuries or you can follow the ‘new’ opinions of eighteenth century authorities and the ‘interpretations’ of rival and antagonistic schools. But please be consistent: if people from the eighteenth century or whatever can rewrite the Hanafi school, then don’t complain about someone doing that today either. Don’t complain about ‘modernism’ and if rivals are the most reliable narrators of one’s own position, then I am sure Salafi followers of Ibn Taymiyyah will have no problems with people narratinghis positions through Sufis. All I ask is to be consistent and not just pick and choose your favourite evidence when you feel like making a big song and dance about how pious you are because you are willing to kill people because they ‘insulted Islam’. If killing is the determinant of piety then I guess Genghis Khan was an archangel. Who knew.

Sadly, this will not be enough to silence the voices that incite and bray so loudly in our community, only to fall silent when they are called out by the press. So allow me to present a veritable barrage of scholars of all stripes, including Salafis and Zahiris, who despite being trenchant critics of Hanafism, are far more honest and state the real position of Abu Hanifa and others of authority in that school, that non-Muslims citizens are not licit to kill for blasphemy, than today’s erstwhile Hanafis.

Muhammad ash-Shawkani, a scholar from the eighteenth century, beloved of Salafis, explains in his ‘Tafseer’ (commentary of the Quran), that Abu Hanifa used Surah Tawbah verse 12-16, to say that if a Dhimmi criticises the religion he will not be killed unless he disowns the citizens contract. ‘This is because God only allowed one to fight non-Muslim citizens if two conditions are met, the first is them disowning the contract and the second is insulting the religion. But Imam Malik, Shafi and others said critiquing the religion is enough to be killed because by critiquing, the contract will be nullified’.[xxi]

Ibn Hazm an eleventh century Zahiri scholar says that according to the Zahiri School, thedhimmi who insults the Prophet (ﷺ) according to Imam Malik must be killed without any excuse, this is also the opinion of Layth ibn Sa’d. Imam Shafi said we have to include the (two extra) conditions (stating it continuously or in public):

On the other hand Imam Abu Hanifa and Sufyan and their followers said that anyone who insults God, or his Prophet (ﷺ), will not be killed but he will stopped from it. Some of the Hanafis said we apply ta’dheer. There is a narration from Ibn Umar wherein he states ‘anyone who commits blasphemy must be killed without any excuse’ and therefore, [according to Ibn Hazm] the Hanafis have proven their misguidance and slander by using the Hadith of Anas (ra)about the group of Jews and the Prophet (ﷺ) responded to them by saying ‘to you too’.[xxii]The Hanafis also use the hadith of Aisha and the Jewish lady poisoning him and that the Prophet (ﷺ) did not say kill them and so we do not kill them.

Ibn Hazm explains that the Hanafis have no proof beside what he mentioned.[xxiii]

Mahmud al-Alusi, an Iraqi/Ottoman scholar, wrote in ‘Ruh al-Ma`ani’ that the scholars who supported killing if the non-Muslim citizen insults publicly are Malik, Shafi, Layth and this was supported by Ibn Hummam:

‘We already said the Dhimmis pay the tax and this protects them and their disbelief (kufr), so insult of the Prophet (ﷺ) is not worse than other kufri beliefs, which are protected by their tax [the ‘jizya’ or exemption tax on non-Muslims]. So that tax which is protecting them by their bigger kufri statements will protect them from insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) and the religion. The criticism mentioned in the Quran is different to what Malik, Ahmad and Ibn Hummam are saying. That is not justice to the Quran. Based on this it is necessary to not apply the ta’dheer too, paying tax means that we have given them permission to make kufri statements. So if the tax protects from kufr, then why does it not protect for small incidental mistakes?[xxiv]

Of course, the same people who were insisting on admitting late scholars from the 18^thcentury and rival schools as evidence will now be furious that we have admitted one from the same period who doesn’t want to kill non-Muslims for blasphemy, but pot/kettle etc.

Jarir ibn Atiyah, a Maliki scholar from the sixth century narrates:

‘The Dhimmi who critiques our religion, the relied upon position is that he must be killed. The weak opinion in the Maliki School is that some said that if he makes a statement of blasphemy which conforms with his own religion then he will be disciplined for publicising it, but if he makes a statement of blasphemy which cannot be found in his own religion then he will be killed. But Imam Abu Hanifa states that he will be requested to repent, which means that he will be told to stop making these statements. But there is disagreement if a Dhimmi insults the Prophet (ﷺ) and then accepts Islam to avoid a death penalty and the relied upon opinion of the Malikis is that he will left alone. But in Athbiyah it is stated that he has to be killed, so he will be killed and will not get priority over Muslims’.[xxv]

Ilkia, a Shafi scholar from the fifth century, states:

‘’This verse [Surah Tawbah: verse 12] proves if Dhimmi publicly insults the Prophet (ﷺ) or criticises the religion it becomes permissible to kill him and fight against him. But Imam Abu Hanifa said just critiquing the religion does not nullify the contract with him. But no doubt this verse is strongly supporting the position of Imam Shafi.[xxvi]

Ibn Nujaim a Hanafi scholar from the sixteenth century narrates in ‘Bahr al-Raiq’, that in the following cases a non – Muslim’s protection as ‘Dhimmi’ will not be nullified:

• If he doesn’t pay the tax – him paying is not a condition because protection he is given is by agreeing to pay and not by actually paying. So not paying will not nullify his contract or status.

• If he commits adultery with a Muslim woman

• If he kills a Muslim person,

• Or he insults the Prophet (ﷺ).

• In terms of adultery and killing we apply the just punishment as we apply on Muslims but in terms of insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) that is kufr (disbelief) which he already commits anyway so by renewing his disbelief he is not going to get anything extra as he already has that disbelief. That initial permanent kufr did not nullify the transaction so renewing the kufr also will also not nullify the transaction.

Badr al-Din al-Aini , a Hanafi scholar from the fifteenth century mentions ‘Waqiyat’ of Husami, a twelfth century Hanafi scholar as saying, if a Dhimmi refuses to pay the tax, the contract will be nullified and we will fight against him – that is the opinion of Imam Malik, Imam Shafi and Imam Ahmad. Ibn Nujaim comments:

‘It is obvious that it is weak in terms of its textual proof and its meaning. What Aini said is also weak as he said ‘I choose’, (meaning that it is his personal opinion), this opinion has no basis in terms of narration from our Hanafi sources. Also in terms of what Ibn Hummam said, he opposed the Hanafi School. Qasim Ibn Qatlubgah, the student of Ibn Hummam, in his fatwaconfirmed that the research of his teacher when he opposes our School will not be accepted.

Ibn Nujaim continues:

‘I do find that inside (our heart) we may have inclination in the issue of insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) but for us following the [Hanafi] School is compulsory.

It is stated In Hawi al-Qudsi if a Dhimmi insults the Prophet (ﷺ), Islam or the Quran, then we will discipline him and he will be punished’.[xxvii]

We see here the inspiring academic and moral rigour of the genuine scholars of the past: he admits that insults to the Prophet (ﷺ) cause him and all Muslims anger and the feeling to lash out – but he insists that the rule of law and Islamic principles are more important than emotion. If only we had a single such scholar today, who understands that religion is there to control our urges and to moderate our impulses, not to unleash them. But today’s scholars are militant when it comes to restraining our urges to talk to a member of the opposite sex and accommodating when it comes to our urge to kill people. They are more than happy to pervert the earliest and most widespread school of Sunnism for this end.

Zailae, a Hanafi scholar from the fourteenth century states:

‘He has to be killed according to Shafi. But our proof is that some Jewish person insulted the Prophet (ﷺ), he said ‘damn you oh Muhammad’. The Sahabah said ‘shall we kill him?’ and the Prophet (ﷺ) replied ‘no’. The Prophet (ﷺ) did not nullify contract of the Jew and nor did he kill him. This is our proof against Imam Shafi and Imam Ahmad, as well as against Imam Malik who believed that Dhimmis insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) have to be killed.

The insult of the Prophet (ﷺ) is disbelief, but he is already a disbeliever so renewing the disbelief does not cause anything extra which permanent disbelief did not already cause’.[xxviii] 

Imam Abdul Hakeem Afghani, a Hanafi scholar from the nineteenth century, in his commentary of ‘Kanzul Daqaiq’ stated:

‘In terms of insulting Prophet (ﷺ), this does not nullify their [non-Muslims] agreement with us as he has got permanent kufr. So if permanent kufr does not nullify the contract then the ‘refreshing’ of the kufr also does not nullify it. The proof of this that Aisha narrated that a group Jews came and said ‘damn you!’ to the Prophet (ﷺ) and there is no doubt that this is an insult and if this is nullifying the covenant of citizenship then the Prophet (ﷺ) would kill them as they became non-Dhimmis’[xxix]

Imam Abdullah Ibn Ahmad Ibn Mahmoud Al-Nasafi in ‘Kanz Daqaiq’ writes,

‘…the contract will not be nullified by them not paying tax, adultery with a Muslim lady, them killing someone or even insulting the Prophet (ﷺ). But it will only be nullified if he joins a war against us or they will commit treason and overtake the state and then they will be challenging us. Only in that scenario will it will be nullified’.[xxx]

In ‘Bidayat al-Mubtadi’ Imam al-Marghinani a Hanafi scholar from the twelfth century narrates:

‘The Contract of citizenship for non-Muslims will not be nullified by them not paying tax, adultery with a Muslim lady, them killing someone or even insulting the Prophet (ﷺ). But it will only be nullified if he joins a party at war with us or they will commit treason and overtake a state; and then they will be challenging us and only in that scenario will it be nullified’’[xxxi]

As one can see all the Hanafi scholars are relaying the same position: that a Dhimmi cannot be killed for blasphemy as a contract can only be invalidated in one instance.

In ‘Hidayah’, which is a commentary of ‘Bidayat al–Mubtadi’ also written by Al- Marghinani, he states:

‘Shafi said insulting Prophet (ﷺ) is classed as nullifying the contract of citizenship for non-Muslims but our proof is that insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) is kufr and permanent kufr did not nullify the contract so renewing the kufr also doesn’t’.[xxxii]

Kamal ibn Humam is the hadith orientated scholar we met above, who supports the anti-Hanafi position of killing non-Muslim citizens for blasphemy says in his commentary on ‘Hidayah’, he states:

[He mentions our Hanafi proof about the Hadith of the Jews]. Aisha replied, ‘Damn you and may curse be upon you!’ The Prophet (ﷺ), ‘Oh Aisha take it easy, because God loves gentleness in everything’, and then she said “Oh Prophet (ﷺ) are you not listening that they are insulting you?’ And the Prophet (ﷺ) said “I know and I replied to you too”.

‘No doubt it is insulting from them. If it were to nullify the transaction then the Prophet (ﷺ)would kill them but he did not kill them’… So he is giving the Hanafi proof.[xxxiii]

Then Ibn Hummam continues on and states ‘but according to me,’ (clearly expressing it is his own personal opinion), ‘insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) and attributing to God what they don’t already believe as part of their religion makes it permissible to kill them.[xxxiv]

Shibili, a sixteenth century Hanafi scholar, in his hashia (brief commentary) of the commentary of Zailae on ‘Kanzul Daqaiq’ of Imam Nasafi stated:

‘Abu Yusuf [the student of Abu Hanifa] said, [regarding] someone who commits kufr multiple times he will not be asked to repent but will be killed. In the ‘Hashiyyah’ however it says we ask him to repent indefinitely’.

Shibli confirmed we carry on asking him to repent infinitely, so he would not be killed, if he does not accept we will continue asking him. He narrated that Imam Abul Hasan al-Karkhi, a Hanafi scholar from the tenth century said that it is the opinion of all of our scholars; they also said the apostate will not be killed. But there was a narration from Ali and Ibn Umar that after the third apostasy his repentance will not be accepted, as he is demeaning the religion.[xxxv]So our scholars confirm that the apostate will not be killed and a dhimmi insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) regularly will not be killed according to Shibili and Kharkhi.

Thus Shibili is using the statement of Kharkhi to show that a person insulting the Prophet (ﷺ) regularly will not be killed, as it is one of the two conditions mentioned by the other schools which will result in breaking of the contract of citizenship – but not according to Hanafis.

Conclusion

For those who support killing and oppression, this blog post will upset them. Of course, they will never say that they support these things, nor authoritarianism or despotism or legal laxity or anarchy (which they will call ‘theocracy’ or ‘sharia’ or ‘legislating by God’ – evil people have always used God to justify their desires and oppressions, because deep down they think, ‘well, he can’t really speak for himself can he?’) or any of the other pejorative terms. They will try to make themselves sound like heroic warrior monks standing for ‘authentic Islam’ in the face of weak and lily livered people succumbing to ‘liberalism’, ‘secularism’ and ‘the West’. People who want to oppress the masses usually cannot do it openly at the start. Even the Nazis had to ‘start slow’ (just as Islamophobes are doing) and get people to sympathise with them. What the public has to do is to see whether these people are consistent: do the really respect and adhere to Islam or the scholars or the Salaf or the hadith as they so vociferously claim, or is it only when it favours their temperaments and proclivities? I think we can see clear examples that answer that question: Jassas and Abu Hanifa can go in the ideological dustbin when they say something ‘inconvenient’, and there is a remarkable and suspicious ‘unity’ of Salafists, Brelwis and Deobandis – groups who claim to hate one another – behind the issue of killing non-Muslim blasphemers. They want to take Ibn Abideen and Ibn Taymiyyah come what may, even when they admit they are deviating from the Hanafi School.

Ask yourself if this is consistent.

We can clearly see the position of the Hanafi School from nearly all of the great scholars, who stated in multiple places that a Dhimmi living in Muslim land cannot be killed for blasphemy and the reason for this is that he has a contract for protection. We have seen Hanafis hold that this person is already a disbeliever and as such any further statements of blasphemy that are made by this person will not increase his disbelief. Therefore, as per what is mentioned in the Quran, a person will only be fought if he breaks the contract and insults your religion. And insulting the religion of Prophet (ﷺ) in and of itself does not break the contract.

What does nullify the contract of dhimmis is that the person joins people with whom you are at war or they commit treason and attempt to overtake the state. It is only in this scenario the contract will be nullified, not just blasphemy, vile though it is.

This is the relied upon opinion of the Hanafi School and this opinion is relayed by a huge proportion of Hanafi Scholars.

There are three Hanafi Scholars who left the Hanafi position. If we look at a fourteen hundred year history of anything, any subject, we will find individuals who held virtually every imaginable opinion. So we can see that at one time, senior physicists such as Isaac Newton had a penchant for alchemy or spiritualism and so on. It does not mean that this ‘proves’ that alchemy is a part of physics but rather than any discipline practiced by enough people over enough time will have nearly every conceivable tendency. This is why we look at a ‘normal distribution’, in statistical terms, and not at the extremes of the Bell Curve when we look at any group. Some Americans are racist or teachers or astronauts for example. But what aremost Americans? Lamentably, today, what is called ‘mainstream Islam’ is frequently occupied by those who are in fact at these fringes of a ‘normal distribution’. Those who support killing will look for these isolated opinions to help support their bloodlust, and they will find them here and there, just as I can find a famous physicist who believes in alchemy or fairies or whatever. But this does not mean that this is then main position of the discipline known as ‘physics’. So it is with the Islamic legal schools.

But if this deviation from the norm and following isolated opinions is permissible as these people in general and Salafis in particular would like (for their whole sect is based on isolated and aberrant trends in both creed and law), then why not follow the same procedure for otherissues too? For example we have many weak opinions in all four schools which will make the lives of people much ‘easier’. There is a weak opinion in the Hanafi School that temporary marriage is permissible, but people will not propagate this as this a position held by ShiaMuslims, and apparently we are meant to hate them. There is also a weak opinion within the Hanafi School that if you participate in adultery and you then pay the woman, then you are not liable for any punishment, basically modern day prostitution. I am guessing that modern ‘Hanafis’ who are so eager to follow the minorities within and without the Hanafi school in matters of killing, will not be encouraging their followers to participate in this weak opinion. Anyone who has studied the Islamic sciences to a basic level knows that it is impermissible to follow the weak or minority opinion within a given school anyway. We have been at pains to state many times, by referring to classical scholars, that following the weak opinion is like following an invalid opinion.[xxxvi]

As for these three aforementioned scholars, Aini and Ibn Hummam are Hanafi scholars whose methodology is that of an over-reliance on hadith. What you find is that they leave the position of the Hanafi School on many occasions and instead follow the position of the Shafi, Maliki and Hanbali Schools. Both of them are connected to the famous Shafi scholar Ibn Hajar Asqalani, a pioneer within their school. He placed a huge emphasis on hadith and his commentary of ‘Sahih Bukhari’ is considered the most reliable. Aini is his brother in law and Ibn Hummam is his student. In this instance both of them are very honest unlike the modern day crypto-Salafists masquerading as ‘Hanafis’, and make it clear that it is their personalopinion and not the opinion of their school. In the case of Ibn Hummam his student, another Hanafi Scholar called Ibn Qatlubgah stated that it is not permissible to follow the position of his teacher as he has gone against the position of the Hanafi School.

Their position is not accepted in this issue as they clearly left the position of the School, most likely due to their affiliation to Ibn Hajar and the emphasis they place on the non-Hanafi methodology of Hadith.

You are free to accept it nonetheless – we are happy to grant those freedoms which Salafis, Deobandis and Brelwis would violently remove, but just don’t pretend that this is the opinion of the Hanafi school. Stand or fall on your own arguments as opposed to prostituting the name of Hanafism to get you a ‘free ride’ with the South Asian public and others who have an affection for it. This is actually the perverted strategy of nationalism adapted here for religion.

Now, most of the joy that occurs in this issue amongst Salafists and extremists who think they have found ‘support’ from the Hanfis is coming from the statement of Ibn Abideen. There are many problematic issues with the position of Ibn Abideen as stated, but he again was honest that he was leaving the position of the Hanafis but then bizarrely insisted that an anti-Hanafite anthropomorphist must be admitted as an ‘Imam’ of the Hanafis. I wonder is Salafis would be as happy to have an anti – anthropomorphist, someone who said that Salafi beliefs are in fact heretical disbelief, such as Al Ghazzali or Imam Razi, admitted as an ‘Imam’ of Salafism. I suspect not, especially given that Ibn Taymiyyah gleefully labelled these two as disbelievers.

The main reason for Ibn Abideen stating his position as he did was probably due to the political pressure placed on him by the rulers who in this case were the Ottomans. He was most likely forced due to fear of death or incarceration. Another clear example of how politics shaped the laws of the Muslims perhaps, but who knows – what is inescapable is that in this issue he not only makes statements which are demonstrably inaccurate (as above) but much worse than this, the basis of his opinion is ‘Shaykh ul-Islam’ Ibn Taymiyyahh – the grandfather of modern day Salafism and ISIS type ideology. ‘Kill first and ask questions later’ is the prime position of his methodology. All you need is ‘kill’, right?

Ibn Abideen also said that there was no disagreement between the Hanafis and the Malikis about insulting publicly, but we have seen many proofs from Jassas, Alusi, Malikis and Shafis where they quote that the disagreement between the schools was only about public insults. He also said that there is no disagreement between us and the Malikis when a Dhimmi insults continuously. This is also incorrect as Imam Abu Hanifa stated that we will ask him to repent…infinitely.

Of course, Deobandis and their ilk want to whip people up into an emotional frenzy, that’s the whole point and problem. So they will dramatise, wail, gnash teeth and claim that we have rejected Ibn Abideen and impugned a giant of Hanafism, fill whole blog posts of scholars singing his praises etc. But apart from the fact that Ibn Abideen is a late, though admittedly senior scholar, he is no more or less fallible than anyone else of his rank. Furthermore, why were these same people not kicking up an equal stink when Ibn Abideen was neglecting and ignoring Imams Jassas, Tahawi and even Abu Hanifa? Because kicking up a stink is only when you reject positions they like and scholars they like. It isn’t applied uniformly. Ibn Abideen is expedient to their cause, so they will defend him to the hilt come what may. Abu Hanifa is extraneous and even opposing their desires, so they callously cast him aside. Don’t fall for it.

Therefore the correct and authentic position of the Hanafi School is that a Dhimmi living in a Muslim land cannot be killed. They are protected through their contract of residence. Therefore even if Aasia Noreen had made those statements she should not have been given the death penalty. It would also permissible for the governor to release her because according to the Hanafi School ta’dheer punishment can be as little as giving the individual a stern look. However when reading the statements made in court, it seems like there was a personal grudge, with the Muslim girls screaming blasphemy to receive support from the courts with their ongoing vendetta. In Pakistan, the current law needs to be re-assessed and the classical position of the Hanafi School should be implemented. And no, asking for this law to be reassessed is not blasphemy as I believe that the position of the Hanafis is in line with the Quran: No killing of non-Muslims is prescribed for blasphemy and the punishment must not go beyond ta’dheer.

Some sincere people will of course feel aggrieved that there is not a more harsh punishment for the crime of insulting the Prophet (ﷺ). Though the opponents will tell you otherwise, I feel just as furious as the next man when I hear these vile remarks – including the idiotic pronouncements of Muslims who claim the Prophet (ﷺ) was affected by black magic, became impotent, lost his mind or compromised on monotheism due to the ‘Satanic Verses’. All of this disgusts me, not only the vile garbage of Islam haters. But ask yourself: are we to be emotional and driven by our urge for revenge or to be rational and controlled as the Quran asks? Do we want to reflect the Quran or the caricature of Muslims and believers that our enemies without and within would like? Do we let hatred of a people, just or unjust, deviate us from justice and the law of God?

Do you want to kill and avenge on behalf of the Prophet (ﷺ) or do you want to be like him and forbear and teach? Does religion control or unleash our hatred?

Or is it really as these people would have it, that ‘all we need is ‘kill’?

_________________________________________________________________

[i] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4703515.ece,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/12181905/We-must-not-tolerate-British-imams-who-applaud-barbarism-in-Pakistan.html

[ii] http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2104050-aasia-noreen-testimony.html

[iii] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2104048-prosecution-witnesses.htmlvillagers.

[iv] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11930849,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Bibi_blasphemy_case#cite_note-kazim-1

[v] http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2104046-complete-court-document.html

[vi] http://icraa.org/hanafi-blasphemer-non-muslim-dhimmi

[vii] Shaykh Atabek Shukurov and Sulaiman Ahmed, ‘Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith’, (Avicenna Publishing, UK, 2015), p. 4

[viii] Abu Bakr Ahmad bin Ali Al-Razi Al-Jassas, “Mukhtasar Ikhtilaf’ (Dar al-Bashair, Beirut, Lebanon, first edition year 1995), Volume 2, p. 504

[ix] Ibid, p. 505

[x] Ibid, p.506

[xi] Abu Jafar al-Tahawi, ‘Mukhtasar Tahawi’, (Dar al – Bashair, first edition year 2010, Beirut, Lebanon), Volume 6, p. 142

[xii] Abu ‘Abdullah Al-Qurtubi, ‘Tafseer Qurtubi’, (Mussasah Risala, first edition, Beirut, 2006), Volume 10, p. 124

[xiii] Ibid p. 125

[xiv] Muhammad Amin Ibn Abidin, ‘Fatawa Shaamia’, (Dar Aalam al-Kutub, Riad, KSA, special edition year 2003), Volume 6, p. 344

[xv] ibid, p. 345

[xvi] Ibid, p. 346

[xvii] Abu Jafar al-Tahawi, ‘Mukhtasar Tahawi’, (Dar al-Bashair, first edition year 2010, Beirut, Lebanon), Volume 6, p. 142

[xviii] Abu Bakr Ahmad bin Ali Al-Razi Al-Jassas, “Tafseer Jassas (Ihya al-Turath al-Arabi, Beirut, Lebanon, 1992), Volume 4 , p. 275

[xix] Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Abi Sahl Abu Bakr al-Sarakhsi, Sharh Al-Siyaar Al-Kabir, Volume 4, p. 188

[xx] Shams al-Aimmah al-Sarakhsi, Mabsut, (Dar al-Ma’rifah, Beirut Lebanon, 1989), Volume 9

[xxi] Muhammad ash-Shawkani, al-Badr at-Tali, (Dar al-Wafa, , year 1994), Volume 2, p. 489

[xxii] Abu Muḥammad Ali ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿid ibn Ḥazm, al-Muhalla, p. 415

[xxiii] Ibid, p. 416

[xxiv] Mahmud al-Alusi, Ruh al-Ma`ani, Mahmud al-Alusi, Ruh al-Ma`ani (Ihya al-Turath al-Arabi, Beirut, Lebanon), Volume 10

[xxv] Jarir ibn Atiyah, ‘Tafseer ibn Atiyyah al-Muharrar al-Wajeez fee Tafseer al-Kitab al-Azeez’, Dar ibn Hazm, Beirut, p.829

[xxvi] Imam Imad al-deen bin Muhammad al-Tabari Ilkia, ‘Tafseer ”Ahkaam al-Quran’ (Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, beirut, lebanon, first edition, 1983), Volume 3-4, p. 183.

[xxvii] Ibn Nujaym, ‘Al-Bahr al-Raiq’, (Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, Beirut, Lebanon, first edition 1997), Volume 5, p. 194-195

[xxviii] Fakhr al-Deen Zailae, Hashiyat al-Shibli, by Shihab al-Deen Ahmad al-Shalabi, ‘Zaile Tabyeen al-Haqaiq’ (Dar al-Amiriyyah, Bulaq, Egypt, 1313 Hijri), Volume 3

[xxix] Abdul Hakeem Afghani Kashf al-Haqair, ‘Matba’a al-Adabiyyah’, (Egypt’, first edition year 1318 Hijri), Volume 1, P. 333

[xxx] Abdullah Ibn Ahmad Ibn Mahmoud Al-Nasafi, ‘Kanz daqaiq’ (Dar al bashair, beirut, first edition year 2011) , p. 385

[xxxi] Qasim ibn Qutlubgha, ‘al-Tarjeeh wal-Tas’heeh’, (Dar al-Kutub al-ilmiyyah, Beirut, first edition 2002)

[xxxii] Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani, ‘Al-Hidayah fi Sharh Bidayat al-Mubtadi’, (Idarat al-Quran wal-uloom al-Islamiyyah, Karachi, Pakistan, first edition, 1417 hijri), Volume 4, p. 138

[xxxiii] Kamal Ibn Hummam, ‘Fat’h al-Qadeer’, Kamal ibn al-Humam, , (Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, first edition 2002, Volume 6, p. 58

[xxxiv] Ibid, p. 59

[xxxv] Shibili, Tabeen Haqaiq, p. 249

[xxxvi] Muhammad Amin Ibn Abidin, ‘Fatawa Shaamia’, (Dar Aalam al-Kutub, Riad, KSA, special edition year 2003)

Another marvellous broadside from the increasingly outspoken Sheikh Atabek Shukurov. Could it be that Muslim scholars in the West are growing a conscience?!

Here he addresses some of the inevitable errors by ‘The Study Quran‘ team – but uses this as a platform to really shine a light into those aspects of Classical Islam which modern ‘practising’ and ‘Salafi’ schools find inconvenient and would rather just disappeared. And they are more than happy to help in getting rid of them…

Read the brilliant part one here: https://asharisassemble.com/2016/05/08/the-truth-about-the-study-quran-part-1-the-quransploitation-industry/

I just want to say: thank God for sequels. Unless it’s ‘Batman vs Superman’. 

Shaykh Atabek Shukurov 

It has become necessary to embark on this article and others like it because under ideological and financial pressure from Salafis and other fringe elements, most Muslim groups purporting to follow ‘Classical Islam’ have instead falsified and fabricated astonishing amounts in its name.

A prominent example is pretending that those hadiths, fatwas and narrations emphasised and accepted by puritanical groups such as Salafis and their fellow travellers (sadly very often Brelwis and Deobandis) are in fact accepted by everyone through Islamic history. This exercise in revisionism means that the unsuspecting layman is lead to believe that, for example, every narration of Bukhari or some controversial hadith were accepted ‘unanimously’ and that ‘no one disagreed’. The names of the famous scholars of Islam are frequently wheeled out for this purpose – their reputations merely a stepping stone and a sacrifice to fabricating evidence for an a prior fringe position.

Having undertaken the first ever English critical edition of Imam Maturidi’s Magnum Opus ‘Kitab ut Tawhid‘ (a task whose omission by many others despite calls for it even by Orientalists speaks volumes about the intentions of many of his ‘followers’. Please notice the surfeit of editions and translations of the works of latter day salafist favourites like Ibn Taymiyya and the latter day founders of other ‘sects’ from the Deobandis to the Ikhwaanis to ‘Hizb Ut Tahrir‘), I had been asked repeatedly about Imam Maturidi’s authoritative yet untranslated positions and fatwas. Add to this that Maturidi’s Arabic, of the Central Asian style, is uniquely complex and Muslims are subjected to deliberately poor translations and ‘commentary’ by puritans of even the Quran itself. My fear is that having tried their best to ignore Maturidi and not translate him at all, his ‘followers’ will now do their best to censor and mistranslate him.

Thus I have endeavoured to mention those excerpts of Maturidi’s which are most intellectually and practically relevant and helpful to Muslims (and others) today (as we did here:https://sulaimanahmed.com/2016/01/20/black-magic-and-the-perfection-of-the-prophet/). And make no mistake – relevant and stimulating they most certainly are, which is why they are so carefully kept from the Muslim laity today.

As the most widely followed doctor of Islamic creed, Maturidi’s scope, influence and authority is astonishing. It is my intention to show that this original and fearless thinker is relevant today – and is much more than the caricature that many who ‘follow’ his school claim him to be.

Here I just want to post an example for readers on hadith as we did previously on Black Magic. 

Prophet Moses Naked?

We all know of the Hadeeth which is narrated by Imam Bukhari and other authors of Hadeeth collections about Prophet Musa/Moses PBUH.

The general story they relate has variations but says that Moses was a very shy person – so he used to hide his body from peoples gaze. When he would bathe with his nation, they would do it communally but Moses would go far away from then and bathe in a different part of the river.

Some people from his nation allegedly used to use this to make up insults against him. They said; ‘He has cut off his genitals, that’s why he is ashamed to show himself to us naked‘ or; ‘He has big testicles, [or a scrotal hernia] that’s why he doesn’t take off his clothes‘.

And many other insults.

God wanted to prove them wrong. Prophet Moses was taking a ‘shower’ (unclothed) in the river far from the people, and he left his clothes on a rock. This rock suddenly came to life and took his clothes and ran towards the people who insulted him. Moses in turn took his staff and ran after the clothes. When rock stopped, he started beating the rock and cursing it. People who were sitting there saw that the naked body of Prophet Moses didn’t have any of what they used to insult him with.

This is the story which is narrated with some differences (we mentioned it here by meaning –  incidentally as most hadith are) in a number of collections and is repeated as an ‘explanation’ for Surah Al Azab verse 69 onwards by numerous classical commentators of the Quran and even by the recent ‘Study Quran‘ by Nasr et al: Here is the ayat in, perhaps appropriately, the translation of Muhammad Asad, himself a Jew who lost his parents in the Holocaust:

33:69 

O YOU who have attained to faith! Be not like those [children of Israel] who gave offence to
Moses, and [remember that] God showed him to be innocent of whatever they alleged [against
him or demanded of him]: for of great honour was he in the sight of God.

The ‘Study Quran‘ actually follows the methodology of most today and attributes the accusations against Moses in this part of the Quran to his alleged ‘physical defect’. Although the authors avoid relating the hadith and details of the story in full (they do not mention the animate rock or the naked running etc, perhaps out of embarrassment), they use the explanation of Quranic exegetes Ibn Kathir and Qurtubi, both beloved of Salafists for their alleged anthropomorphism.

Despite this towing of the ‘party line’ (so to speak), the authors of the ‘Study Quran’ were subjected to a sustained campaign of attack and anathematisation from a strange coalition of Salafi and other scholars and interests. (of relevance here, Asad, attributes the reason for the revelation of this part of the Quran to the issues in the beginning of Numbers 12 as opposed to the story related by ‘The Study Quran‘ and Co.)

Here is the actual text of Bukhari;

(Bukhari narrated this hadeeth Number 3404 from Abu Huraira);

‘Prophet PBUH said; ‘Moses was a shy and reserved man. None of his skin would be seen due to his shyness. Some people from Sons of Israel insulted him and said; He doesn’t hide himself except for some defect in his skin, either vitiligo or scrotal hernia or some other defect. Then God wanted to defend Moses from this insult. Once Moses was alone and took off his clothes and put them on a rock. Then he went for a bath. Once he finished, he came to take his clothes, but rock started running with his clothes on it. Moses took his staff and went looking for the rock. He started calling; ”O rock, my clothes! O rock, my clothes!”

He kept on walking until he reached the place where group of Sons of Israel were sat. They saw his body as most perfect shape that God created. That is how God defended him from what they used to accuse him of. Then the rock stood, and Moses took his clothes and put them on. Then he beat the rock with his staff. I swear by God that rock has three or four or five scars on it from striking by the staff.

That what is the meaning of the verse; ”O believers! don’t be as those who have hurt Moses, then God freed him from their accusation. Indeed he [Moses] was very glorious in front of God”‘.

However, Abu Mansur Maturidi flatly rejected it in his Tafseer (Quranic exegesis)  Volume 4, Page 138:

Abu Mansur gives the following reasons to reject this hadeeth;

1. Prophet Moses used to order them to cover their private parts as a matter of religious observance (still followed by Jews today), that is why it is not possible that they will hope or try to bathe with him in the very first place.
2. It is not possible that they would wish to look at his private parts
3. It is not possible that a rock will be able to run away with the clothes of the Prophet Moses

Maturidi doesn’t even look at its chain and narrators, doesn’t even look at which collection is it narrated in, doesn’t consider that it is in the collection of Bukhari, neither does he try to show his excuses to Bukhari. But he does very frankly show only the above three rational reasons and comments on the narration using two very harsh names;

1. ‘Outlandish interpretation’
2. ‘Bizarre or strange statement’

Based on this we can see that Abu Mansur makes his analysis to reject this hadeeth based on intellect with the support of general accepted principles based on The Quran…

It also looks as if Abu Mansur holds the rank of Prophets in very high regard, and shows a lot of respect towards them.

No doubt that Abu Mansur Maturidi is the highest ranked Hanafi scholar, other than the eponymous founder of the school. And were we to respect his authority and reasoning, even if we were to disagree, then that would be that. However, this opinion and methodology employed by Maturidi, as with so many of the luminaries of Islamic scholarship, is an inconvenient truth for the partisans that the Muslim laity find themselves surrounded by today. They will not and cannot allow a scholar, regardless of his rank and authority, to disregard any of the hadith they wish to be accepted, in particular those of their canonical collections such as Bukhari etc.

The reason is not any insistence by Imam Bukhari himself (who never stated that he intended each and every one of his hadith to be accepted into faith nor acted upon, and often included hadith for documentary as opposed to theological or juristic reasons) but rather due to the self interested, partisan and inclusive criteria these groups and individuals have towards (certain) hadith narrations. If it becomes widely known that some narrations later canonised by these interests were in fact rejected by luminaries of the past, then the game is, as they say, up.

So the evasions, misdirections, fudges and outright lies begin. Since the easiest course of action, namely to disown and discredit Imam Maturidi himself, is inexpedient due to his authority and following for the past thousand years or so (although this does not stop Salafis openly denouncing him) and as well as this, Maturidi has a ‘built in fan base’, which it would be useful to retain and divert to these groups own, frankly, nefarious ends. Therefore the next line of concealing the truth (that Maturidi and others rejected narrations these groups are fond of) is:

1. Mistranslating
2. Fabricating an absurd ‘context’ for the rejection
3. Claiming that said scholar was idiosyncratic or a lone wolf and naming others who disagreed with him to subtly discredit him – regardless of his or their relative authoritativeness
4. Claiming that, well, he might have rejected it but that we have to follow ‘the majority’, by which they mean them or their group
5. As above but with ‘ijma‘ (consensus) substituted for ‘majority’

Number three can be most confusing for the layman.

In the case of this hadith – and many others, we see a game by groups like Salafis and Deobandis of trying to play off the early group of scholars with a more recent cohort that agrees with their preferred, usually ‘gotta’ accept them all’ methodology. The classic example is to claim that well, maybe some early Hanafis believed that this hadith is false but later on other Hanafis fell into line with the hadith collectors. This is a kind of ‘modernism’ and a strangely secular idea that the latest version of the truth is the truth, an idea alien to Islam and for which these same groups anathematise others. The game usually consists of not telling the audience that the ‘later’ scholars were in fact following a methodology, be that in hadith or anything else, that these groups would like you to follow (usually more puritanical or more inclusive of certain hadith) and the earlier scholars were following a methodology (easier and more rationalist) that these groups would not want you to follow.

This is in no way as far as I know the methodology of the ‘Study Quran‘, they are merely repeating the claims of some past commentators, but even this did not save them from the ire of those they agreed with. it isn’t enough to agree with ideological extremists it seems unless you agree with them in everything.

So in the above case, the stance of Maturidi was supported by other Hanafi giants such as Isa Ibn Abban (in fact Imam Jassas also narrated this hadith from him), Imam Bazdawi, Imam Sarakhsi, Imam Qadhikhan – and big list of other Hanafi theologians supported the opinion of Isa bin Abban…but Kamal ibn Humam, Lakhnawi and group of other latest Hanafi scholars have rejected the opinion of Ibn Abban.

Thus layman and scholar alike will be unilaterally blackmailed by saying ‘how dare you go against the opinion of the latter (i.e more hadith oriented) group!’- without telling you that these scholars were in fact themselves going against the opinion of the earlier and more authoritative group. The poor Muslim layman is taught ‘earlier is better’ and the merits of the Salaf. But then these same people jettison the opinions of the early and authoritative scholars for their own favourites, later scholars and even scholars with deviant views such as Ibn Taymiyya when it suits them (a good example is the shocking adoption of Ibn Taymiyya by Shah Wali Allah, who is venerated by both of the puritanical and Salafi oriented faux Hanafi groups in the Indian Subcontinent, the Deobandis and their arch rivals the Brelwis).

What is really lamentable is that if anyone today rejects a hadith from ‘Sahih Bukhari‘,  a lynch mob composed of Salafists, Deobandis, Brelwis and even Sufis is rapidly assembled, but rejecting the teachings of senior Imams and theologians such as Imam Maturidi is considered of no consequence – even by his self proclaimed ‘followers’. What makes this even more egregious is that Imam Bukhari, as stated, seems to have never himself insisted that all his hadith be accepted. In fact, in an ironic twist, Imam Bukhari died alone and isolated,  hounded by Hanbali mob for being a ‘heretic’ and a ‘Mu’tazilite’ – he was persecuted by the ideological ancestors of the very people who today insist that not single one of his narrations be rejected. Perhaps it is their way of redeeming for what was done to him, but it nevertheless doesn’t change the fact that Bukhari himself neither insisted his collection was complete nor to be completely followed (for the record, there was friction between Bukhari and some of his local Hanafis too).

In this rush to rewrite Islamic intellectual history to agree with their partisan views, these groups destroy the diversity and heritage that is the right of believers of all faiths. In trying to make everything equally true, or rather the same, they in fact introduce weakness, incoherence and make everything equally false.

Unlike many of these groups, I believe that people are free to believe what they wish and that people can believe that Maturidi and the other Haanfi giants were wrong in their decision and that the hadith is reliable after all. I personally consider the glosses and explanations offered for this hadith by scholars past and present to be outlandish, but the academic tradition in Islam mandates that I hear them out and not shout them down with accusations of heresy, hadith rejection and modernism as these sectarians are wont to do.

 

You can find the original articles here:

https://asharisassemble.com/2015/10/13/how-to-prevent-salafist-mind-rape-muslims-display-academic-standards-again/

https://asharisassemble.com/2015/10/25/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-salafism/

I didn’t hold my breath for a reply, and indeed, despite their loud lamentations about the pressing need to save Muslims from ‘misguidance’, ‘modernism’ and ‘heresy’ (ironically, mostly spread in our time by Salafis), none was forthcoming. This is because, despite the lengthy nature of my articles, I could simply summarise them as follows: ‘Salafis know you can’t read Arabic so they just lie to you’. 

So imagine my surprise when I was recently made aware by students that the individuals in question, Wakar Akbar Cheema (a student of ‘knowledge’ who runs an apologetics website and acts as a liaison between Saudi Wahhabis and Deobandis in the Subcontinent) and Bassam Zawadi (I can’t work out what he does apart from trolling people on the internet, but I am told he is a defunct ‘debater’), had not only carried on as if their bald lies and empty rhetoric had not been publicly aired, but had in fact engaged in a new campaign of internet harassment of the authors of ‘Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith‘, the book whose sham review I had debunked.

A little more digging revealed that they were in fact pretending that they had replied to my articles when confronted:

So Baseeba is actually waiting for an apology from me? Or rather some poor girl called ‘Aisha’ (could this be the start of a beautiful friendship)? It seems Baseeba considers himself a bargain basement ‘Sherlock Holmes’ for tracking me down on the internet and ‘reaching out to me’. Quite apart from the ‘free-mixing’ (as Salafis would call it) with random girls on the internet under the pretext of ‘contacting’ me, at which point did it become clear that, y’know, it’s not me? And would not a response to the article as opposed to a misguided attempt at cyber-stalking have been more constructive? Fortunately, Shukurov, who has clearly read my article, doesn’t fall for it (it’s also funny that Cheewadi is complaining of bad manners while calling a Muslims Scholar by his first name repeatedly. If someone did that to Uthaymeen they would literally have a seizure):

Here poor Chaseeba complains of being insulted:

Ahhh…he wants to respond in ‘private’ but attack in public. Strange.

I also like how he decided to contact ‘Aisha’s’ (conveniently the most common Muslim name – lots of excuses to fire off Private Messages to girls eh lads?) to ‘respond’ and ‘reach out’ without ever verifying if I was an ‘Aisha’. Or even better, forgetting about who I am and what I look like and simply responding to the points. Which Chaweema still hasn’t done. Because he can’t.

We can see that those offended by poor English have a very strange idiom themselves…

Thus, saying that Ibn Hajar is ‘not necessarily a heretic’ is not calling him a heretic according to the Cheezaadi dialect of English. One dreads to think of how Baseeba would defend himself in court:

‘Are you a supporter of ISIS Mr Zawadi?’

‘Not necessarily!’

Are you and Mr Cheeba lovers?

‘Not necesarily!’

We see that Mr Zaweeba has a very strange way of employing the English language – where a simple ‘no’ will suffice he substitutes ‘not necessarily’ (which means ‘I’m not answering the question on the grounds that it may incriminate me’). When they are accused of impugning the great scholars of the past as heretics, Chaweeba respond by saying ‘not necessarily’ (*but they are offended at other peoples English being ‘bad’). Thus, Baseeba will have no problem if I assert that they are ‘not necessarily’ Sunnis, because in their language that is an affirmation of their Sunnism.

This illustrates a very typical Salafi game: simply never state your position, ‘kufaar‘ politician style: they are especially keen to keep any discussion away from their embarrassing positions and ‘policies’, again just like a politician. I mean, he could just say: ‘I don’t think Ibn Hajar is a heretic’or ‘Asharis are not heretics’. That would clear things up nicely. Instead he is telling you that he didn’t necessarily blah or didn’t call him blah. Salafis are excellent at never stating their position about anything or demanding that you bring the proof of their position, conversely, they love telling everyone else what Sufis, Sunnis or Shia ‘believe’. We often find this kind of inversion amongst those with a fascist mindset that nonetheless wish to conceal it out of expediency (sorry, I should have said ‘Salafis don’t necessarily have a fascist mindset’ or ‘I’ve never called a Salafi a fascist’).

Salafis also have a bizarre idiom when it comes to things like ‘killing’ ‘takfir‘ or ‘anthropomorphism’, as we shall see shortly. Take for example, Basseema’s bizarre stance on anthropomorphism, which is like that of all Salafis, they will tell you till they are blue in the face that they are not ‘anthropomorphists’ – but when you finally (or rather if you finally) get their definition of ‘anthropomorphists’ out of them, they mean that they don’t say God is ‘human’ or has a body ‘like humans’ or ‘like creatures’. But to the rest of the Sunnia and Shia (and even Mu’tazzila) world, ‘anthropomorphist’ means anyone who asserts that God has a body of any kind – it being ‘unique’ is of no consequence, any more than Adam was unique and thus ‘Godlike’ when he was the only one of his kind.

Chaseeba is also easily offended by sarcasm and ad hominem. We saw just how ‘assiduously’ he avoids these himself above but take this bizarre refutation of myself sent to me by the same student:

It is not allowed for scholars or teachers to be called ‘Nikita’ now?! That excludes literally much of Russia, Latvia, Ukraine and God knows where else…what’s really funny is that while whining about being attacked ‘personally’, he attacks someone’s knowledge based on their (real) name!

If you have time, you can witness most of the exchange this nonsense seems to have come from here: I don’t go on ‘Wastebook’ precisely because of the kinds of idiots infecting it:https://www.facebook.com/atabek.shukurov/posts/1069717896404619?comment_id=1070808212962254&reply_comment_id=1074307105945698

It’s also very illustrative for readers to see a extreme salafist (‘Madkhalis’ as they are called amongst Salafis themselves) such as Chessama complain about ‘sectarians’. This is standard operating procedure for Salafis when they want to either infiltrate Sunnis or to garner sympathy. The most glaring thing in this case is that Bassam, a Saudi citizen and employee of its government seems to have resolutely failed to ever advise his own employer/government on its ‘sectarianism’, unless he thinks that having Wahhabism as an official state ideology lends itself to teaching a diverse set of Islamic theologies in schools of mosques? Perhaps he is trying to persuade Saudi to fund Sufi groups as well as Salafist ones to avoid ‘vile sectarianism’ as he calls it? (as the saviour of manners and the English language, Cheewaadi has forgotten what it means to call someone ‘vile’ in his beloved ‘English’). We hold our breath for this, but in the meantime, it is hilarious that taking Ibn Taymiyya to task for being a genocidal maniac and insisting people are killed for trivial infarctions such as saying intention to pray out loud or passing wind (yes!) should be killed is ‘sectarian’.

This Dear Reader is how Salafis are and will be destroying Islam, in both the West and East: they put the reputation and sanctity of their scholars and opinions above the faith and reputation of Muslims, and if anyone tries to absolve Islam from the extremism of Salafis fatwas and scholars, they cry ‘unity’ and ‘sectarianism’ (they don’t believe in the former and have blind faith in the latter), thereby emotionally blackmailing lay Muslims into prostituting their public image to defend the idiosyncrasies of Salafism by claiming that ‘the kufaar hate us’.

We can see this dreadfully suicidal tendency in Basseema itself: along with the wildly inaccurate comments I deal with here, I found a whole bunch of ‘papers’ (I don’t think anyone explained to him about academic papers either…) where he attempts to defend Salafism…by taking out the rest of Islam too. So when he is thrashed about Salafi’s icon Ibn Taymiyya being so violent that he wants to kill people for breaking wind in prayer (yes, it’s real, I almost broke wind when I found out!), he goes into a violent rage and starts attacking any and all targets, and ‘refutes’ ‘Modernist Hanafis’ (aka ‘Sunnis’) by showing that Hanafis allow people to be imprisoned for publicly refusing to pray:

I love how detailed this is! And is there really a need to put ‘by’ when you haven’t included anything other than a (poor) translation?

Obviously, killing and imprisonment is identical in Salafi’s eyes and so Hanafis or other Sunnis imprisoning people for not praying is the same as killing someone for farting. Okay…

Baseema is similarly incandescent with rage and unable to think straight when his favourite Ibn Taymiyya is accused, absolutely correctly as Cheewaadi admits, of believing in the ‘Satanic Verses‘ incident (where the Prophet is alleged to have committed Shirk (polytheism) – Allah forbid!) and demanding that this be the main position of Muslims, Baseewaadi ‘refutes’ this by claiming, utterly without any semblance of shame, that any scholar who didn’t say that he doesn’t believe it…must in fact believe it.

We already saw how he errr…’employs’ the English language where ‘not necessarily’ means ‘I didn’t’ and ‘I haven’t’ means ‘I refuse to state my position on the grounds that it may make me look bad in front of the Sunnis I am trying to groom on the internet’, so I guess we should not be too surprised at this logic of any time you don’t deny that you are say, a rapist or any time you don’t claim that the Prophet committed Polytheism, you in fact accept it.

However, surely even someone as lost in space as Zaweeba must see the folly of telling Muslims and non-Muslims alike about all of the people who he (falsely) claims believed in the ‘Satanic Verses‘ incident to defend his favourite scholar Ibn Taymiyya as opposed to simply admitting that Ibn Taymiyya was (once again) horribly wrong (something he never does in the article – or anywhere else we can find). This is all the worse as Cheesaama’s hated target Shukurov already did a talk on ‘The Satanic Verses‘ several years ago (Chewaadi is too busy trolling him to actually look at his material) where he explains the other scholars who narrated it and whether ‘narration’ is ‘acceptance’ in Islamic scholarship – much more on that below though. Fortunately, Islamophobes have evidential standards it seems that are at least in excess of what Baseema considers licit, so his articles would hopefully not be of much benefit to them. You can amuse/depress yourself by reading the rest of his cyber – stalking’ of ‘modernist Hanafis’ (he means Shukurov, whose name he cannot bring himself to write any longer presumably) in his other ‘papers’ (I think he doesn’t realise that a ‘paper’ can be longer than, y’ know, one page or sheet. But we know Salafis like to take things literally). It is most frightening that Salafis actually consider a page or two of such bile to be deserving of being uploaded onto a site for academic papers and drafts, but then again, we have searched in vain for Basseba’s academic credentials previously.

Other hilarious examples of ‘Baseemish’ logic include the assertion that giving a fatwa that you don’t require the face and hands of a woman to be covered is the same as accepting that you in fact do endorse it and that any difference of opinion means all of the opinions are accepted, along with other hilarious abuses of the English language and general common sense found here:https://www.academia.edu/25185055/Do_Hanafis_Reject_the_Face_Veil_Niqab_(I must say, the profusion of short and hilarious ‘papers’ here gave me an afternoon’s pleasure – please enjoy!).

I personally never understood this site admins profuse use of Shukurov’s work until I saw the kind of opposition and bile he seems to illicit from others. Then I immediately thought ‘could it be that these Hanafis are on to something?’ Although I did not perhaps appreciate Shukurov’s comments about Qadi Iyad and some other Maliki scholars, it made me take the Hanafis seriously for the first time outside of their books. Until then, the main ‘Hanafis’ who I came across were Deobandi and Brelwi sectarians, who as far as my knowledge goes, are very hard to tell apart from Salafis (despite their loud protestations). Indeed, Shukurov has been subjected to a veritable campaign of internet terror by Salafis and their familiars as well as anyone else- here is the kind of comment that keeps me away from Facebook:

And this was from some of the ‘Sufi scholars’. What makes this very sad is that Shukurov gets exactly what I got above: people make extravagant claims, and when you refute these they merely run away and start a new front elsewhere. When I took the time to demonstrate and demolish the multifarious errors in the sham review by Zaweeba, they merely ran away and some eight months later re-emerge and claim that they already replied, blah blah blah, bad manners, why reply to someone called Nikita, yadda yadda yadda.

They also have a hilarious propensity, which you would have observed in my last two articles, of attacking and crying ‘heretic!’ in public, but when you dismember their arguments, they then want to have a ‘private’ dialogue. But sadly for Chaweeba, the way of the world is public chastisements for public indiscretions.

This would merely be pathetic and kind of funny if these individuals did not have such a high tolerance for embarrassment, because they invariably open a new front and keep posting nonsense as if the previous buttock clenchingly shameful take-downs had never happened. So it would seem that in the past few years, Atabek Shukurov’s ordeal makes mine pale into insignificance, for despite now opening a new front, it appears CheebaZawadi/Legion and their followers have:

-Claimed that Shukurov lied on the issue of the age of Aisha – when he debunked their claims he received…no response.

-Claimed that Shukurov was wrong about the ‘Waseeya of Abu Hanifa’ (a foundational text in creed studied by everyone except Salafis) being authentic. When he made a lengthy video describing the authentic chain he received…no response.

-When they published a fake review of Shukurov’s book, it appears Shukurov wisely ignored them…but muggins was left with, you guessed it, no response.

You know, I must admit to a begrudging respect for Cheewaadi and his ilk: anyone, who even after a beating like that, can carry on undeterred really deserves respect. One often finds though that the reason for this is merely a hollow life: most of the worst internet trolls are Salafist Muslims and ISIS does much of its recruiting online. One even struggles to find such committed trolls amongst Islamophobes or militant atheists. I think the reason for this is that even those vile groups such as militant atheists and Islamophobes have limited time to spend online, their hate is bounded by their hobbies. I guess they can’t be on the internet trolling Muslims all day because they have to read comics or watch movies or listen to death metal or whatever they do. For Salafis however, virtually all hobbies are haraam or ‘bad’ or time wasting or whatever. This leaves them with only one outlet for their frustrations and egos – The Internet.

Now the scourges of logic and factual accuracy are back again, undaunted, claiming that Shukurov and Co. are heretics, modernists and other things ending in ‘-ists‘ as well as possibly cannibals and The Boogeyman.

We should also, before beginning this latest and lengthy debunking, which you can rest assured will go similarly unanswered, mention the likely reasons Chaweeba will furnish for not replying this time. These may include but not be limited to:

• I have black hair. No one with black hair is worth replying to
• I included pictures in my article
• It’s too long, they can’t be bothered (*but they can be botherwed setting up whole websites trolling Shukurov)
• It was already replied to…’Back to the Future’ style
• Bad manners is only what other people do, so they don’t need to reply
• They chatted up some random girls on Facebook and asked for their private emails, so that’s the same as an academic reply
• My name contains ‘Suede’ and most suede is made from pigskin, therefore, they are not replying

I’m sure Cheseeba will not disappoint me and will come up with even more drug induced reasons than they did last time or the ones I can come up with.

Also, at the outset of the article, I would like to add ‘not necessarily’ to everything I say, which by Baseeba’s logic means I can just deny any mistakes I make no matter how egregious, up to an including takfir or anathematisation of senior scholars (Salafis always say that  ‘ordinary’ people have an ‘excuse’ if they are heretics so are not killed – but is Ibn Hajar an ‘ordinary’ person who doesn’t know the Salafi’s proofs and will still be excused for being a heretic? Let me guess: ‘not necessarily’, right!?).

Okay, I know, you’re thinking ‘get on with it you waffling mare’.

The subject of Cheezadi’s latest ‘trigger warning’ against Shukurov (who they can’t bear to mention by name any longer since it presumably cause them to have a seizure) is the issue of hadith and narrators rejected by Hanafis but accepted by ‘sunnis’ (and by this they mean Salafis, who are by no stretch of the imagination or lubrication with petro-dollars ‘Sunni’) – specifically those narrated by the Tabi (generation coming after the companions of the Prophet) Ikrima – the slave of the companion of the Prophet Ibn Abbas (RA).

Basically, there is a huge disagreement about Ikrima: many of the earlier scholars rejected him for being a violent Kharijite (the early sect of Islam that declared everyone who disagreed with them, including the sahabah, to be disbelievers) amongst other things. However, he was included as ‘reliable’ or ‘righteous’ by some later scholars including Bukhari. He also narrated some hadiths which are most expedient for Salafis, such as one about killing or rather burning apostates, and we all know that Salafis have a serious Freudian obsession with the issue of killing apostates (presumably because Salafis cause so many people to apostate so thus maybe they think killing them is ‘cleaning’ up their mess). Ikrima is also very important to them since single chain narrations provide many of the bizarre creedal and juristic positions of the various Salafi groups with support. So it is very important for them that no hadith be rejected by anyone (other than them) and that they exersize a monopoly over which hadith are accepted or authentic, which narrators are authentic and thus who is and is not a ‘modernist’ (it’s them in case you are wondering).

Most sensible proponents of Islam (so, not Salafis), avoid the issue of Ikrima, because it arms and is used by both Shia and non-Muslim antagonists of Islam. No such caution about airing potentially damaging things can be expected from Salafis though, who believe that if you ‘challenge’ people’s faith with difficult to believe things and morally difficult problems, you will see who the ‘real’ Muslims are. Basically, they are willing to make Islam look bad because they think that if you are worried about looking bad in front of the ‘kufaar‘ or Shia (these two groups are largely identical for Wahhabis), then you must have ‘weak faith’. Therefore they are constantly embarrassing Islam by proferring bizarre and laughable ‘arguments’ for all of the things Muslims are embarrassed about, nearly always rightly, since they are not part of Islam. So you will hear them defend the killing of apostates, stoning of adulterers and marrying nine year old’s as if their life depended on it, and getting kudos for not backing down in front of ‘modernists’. The fact that these positions may not be the correct ones in the first place would never occur to a puritan. The result is that Salafis get bragging rights, their opponents are labelled and anathematised and non-Muslims and reasonable Muslims are left appalled.

Therefore let’s examine the issue of Ikrima, since Baseeba has insisted on airing the dirty laundry others have put into Islam’s basket in public. Before we being, remember the NEW and REVISED ‘Seven Deadly Sins of Salafism’. We will be labelling each of their arguments with the relevant sin as we go – it’s like a Treasure Hunt! 

1- Mis-translate these everything  at will – Allah will reward you, it’s for a good cause!

2- Decry anyone who disagrees as a modernist, heretic or better still a Mu’tazzilite or Shi’ite – but never under any circumstances admit your Wahhabi affiliation. Say you are just representing ‘Islam’

In his new attempt at hiding the truth, Basseema is trying to convince everyone that Ikrima ‘the liar’ is one of the ‘beloved’ and great ‘teachers’ of Abu Hanifa. Note how he puts this article under the section ‘refuting heresies‘. Here we see the vile modernism and disrespect of Salafis for Muslim scholars at its most potent – according to this non entity Zaweeba, all of the scholars of the past who rejected Ikrima the slave of Ibn Abbas, often in the most flagrant terms – scholars of the rank of Imam Malik and too many other Sunni authorities to mention (*but I will below) are all heretics.

Notice the other bizarre list of ‘heresies’ that are ‘answered’ on this page. However, it is sufficient here to know that according to Bassema, thinking that Abu Hanifa rejects Ikrima is a ‘heresy’ and needs refuting in public. So one assumes that Malik, Shafi and Ibn Sireen (amongst numerous others) calling Ikrima a liar must be kufr or disbelief for Chaweeba.

http://icraa.org/abu-hanifas-opinion-of-ikrimah/

Cheewaadi wants to prove Abu Hanifa’s ‘love’ of Ikrima, a member of the Khawarij, a sect that believes that Ali (RA) and most of the other companions of the Prophet are kaafirs or disbelievers – which is why people avoid talking about Ikrima and leave it alone, but of course, Baseeba, who cares not for the faith of Muslims nor the image of Islam, has to ‘go there’. In fact by forcing Abu Hanifa to accept Ikrmia as a reliable narrator they are opening a can of worms, because the next logical question in the minds of most will be ‘hang on, if guys who declare Sahabah of the level of Ali, Umar etc to be kaafir are reliable then who isn’t reliable!? And what is the difference between us and Shias‘?!) Cheezadi has written two articles in fact. If you can’t be bothered to read his article (and I advise that you do inflict it on yourself as a learning exercise), Baseeba brought four proofs; but Hanafis (*as opposed to Salafis like Chesaama) have already debunked this astonishingly banal effort:

https://shaykhatabekshukurov.com/2016/06/13/ikrima-as-imam-of-modern-hanafis/

Well, I don’t think we need to look into the issue more. But I’ll do it anyway. Because these people are an embarrassment not only to Islam but to truth and religion in toto. Of course they will be offended with their gentle sensibilities at being called liars, but what else can we call it? ‘Fantastical religious thought’? ‘Imaginative theology’?

Remember Dear Readers, learn this once and save yourself a lifetimes trolling by salafis: they always try to fool you by claiming that since a scholar is narrating from someone, this means he considers him ‘reliable’ of this is an endorsement of that narrators beliefs or narrations. To Western Educated people, this is as obviously false as some adducing a quote from Hitler to prove a point being then accused of being a Nazi. But of course, most Salafis care not for academia as we have seen. 

”Al-Qawaid fee uloom al-hadeeth” page 220” .

Abu Hanifa narrating from someone doesn’t prove that he is reliable…according to Abu Hanifa himself. We will examine why they would narrate from unreliable people below. For now let us note that they had a very modern and recognisable academic technique – collect sources even from deviants and antagonists.

 

We saw that the top fuqaha of Madeenah who saw Ikrima in the flesh, such as Saeed and Qasim two of the seven Fuqaha of Madeena, and Imam Malik confirmed that Ikrima is liar.

 

 

Ibn Jawzi mentioned Ikrima in his collection of ”Weak and Rejected” narrators volume 3 page 182

 

In the red box Ibn Jawzi listed the Tabein who confirmed that Ikrima is liar;  Mujahid, Muhammad bin Sireen, Yahya bin Sa’eed, Malik bin Anas.

 

In the following page it confirms that Ikrima used to beg the royal family for money.