YUSUF AL-QARADAWI

For All Self made and Self Proclaimed Mujtahids , those who do not follow the Ahlus sunnah and and are ruled not by Shariah , by their Desire .

Hadith
Inna al-shaytana dhaybun ka dhayb al-ghanam ya'khudh al-shat al-qasiya wal-najiya fa iyyakum wal-shu`aab wa `alaykum bil-jama`ati wal-`aammati wal-masjid

"Shaytan is a wolf like the wolf that preys on sheep, taking the isolated and the stray among them; therefore, avoid factionalism and keep to the congregation and the collective and the masjid."

Hadith

Volume 3, Book 48, Number 819:( Sahih Bukhari)

Narrated Zahdam bin Mudrab:I heard Imran bin Husain saying, "The Prophet said, 'The best people are those living in my generation, then those coming after them, and then those coming after (the second generation)." Imran said "I do not know whether the Prophet mentioned two or three generations after your present generation. The Prophet added, 'There will be some people after you, who will be dishonest and will not be trustworthy and will give witness (evidences) without being asked to give witness, and will vow but will not fulfill their vows, and fatness will appear among them.



From Shaykh GF Haddad ( Hafizullah, May Allah preserve him ). Ameen.



The media-savvy "West-appointed Pope of the Muslims" according to the Syrian scholars, "standard-bearer of corrupt scholarship and guide to deviancy" according to the Saudis, Azhar-trained Yusuf al-Qaradawi, although initially a Hanafi, doffed the strictures of the juridical Schools and adopted the high-exposure pulpits of satellite television (al-Jazira in Qatar), the Internet (islamonline.com, qaradawi.net), and mass print (150+ publications) to purvey, unique among televangelists, a blend of free-wheeling liberation theology, populist jihadism, and salafism shot through with colloquial Egyptian which keeps TV viewers East and West spellbound, boggled, delighted, and deluded at the same time.Al-Qaradawi struck gold as the foremost vulgarizer of the "Do-It-Yourself Islam" initiated by the Egyptian-founded Ikhwan al-Muslimin, of which he is the most influential figure in our times, though ostensibly unaffiliated. The media scholar par excellence, he passes among the masses for a mujtahid and reformist thinker, although the silent majority of the Sunni Ulema refuse him any such title, a handful of them warning against his blatant distortions of the Law and irreligious verbiage, while the Wahhabis (al-`Udayni, Sulayman al-Kharashi, Muqbil al-Wadi`i, `Abd al-Karim Humayd, Salih al-Fawzan, and Abu Basir al-Tartusi) and the Habashis (Usama al-Sayyid and the anonymous al-Kawi li-Kabid al-Qaradawi) all wrote books against him.This survey is based on the directives of our teachers as well as textual citations from some of the above-mentioned sources. It was prompted by two needs: the preparation of a second edition of Albani and His Friends and the need to warn about al-Qaradawi, particularly his non-madhhabi, anti-Ash`ari, yet supposedly non-Salafi book-imitators presently hard at work misleading the English-speaking Umma. It comprises the following sections:

I. Al-Qaradawi's blasphemies
II. His two greatest innovations: misappropriation of zakat and legalization of carrion
III. "Qutbian Qaradawi" versus "Accommodation Qaradawi"
IV. His praise of Sayyid Qutb, al-Afghani, `Abduh, and Rida
V. His praise of Hizb al-Tahrir
VI. He praises the Ikhwan and defends criminal jihadism
VII. Qaradawi's unrequited "salafism"
VIII. His assimilation of Ash`arism to "Aristotle's doctrine"
IX. His denial that consensus exists
X. Qaradawi's specious fiqh
XI. He permits income from the the sale of alcohol and pork

XII. He permits the consumption of carrion
XIII. He declares celibacy categorically forbidden for all

XIV. His weakness in HadithXV. His disparagement of the Ulema

XVI. His propensity for takfir of the Muslims
XVII. His over-the-top laxism toward non-Muslims
XVIII. His Qadarism

I. HIS BLASPHEMIES AGAINST ALLAH MOST HIGH AND THE PROPHETS, upon them blessings and peace

In one infamous and particularly offensive example of verbiage al-Qaradawi congratulated Israel on its election results the year Netanyahu won and quipped that "In our countries we only know 'the four or five nines' in our election result percentages, such as winning by 99.99%. What is this? If God Himself was running for elections He would not win such a percentage! So I congratulate Israel for its action." After this blasphemy, Ibn `Uthaymin issued the fatwa that al-Qaradawi was an apostate passible of death and called upon him to repent as did Muqbil al-Wadi`i in his book Iskat al-Kalb al-`Awi fil-Radd `ala Yusuf al-Qaradawi ("Silencing the Baying Dog: Refutation of Yusuf al-Qaradawi").In his book al-Islam wal-Gharb he states, in defense of interfaith dialogue at any cost: "Allah asked Iblis to dialogue with him!"He said on al-Jazira TV on September 12, 1999 that the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace "sometimes made mistakes even in law-giving matters," citing as an example the hadith where the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace replied to a questioner: "Yes, every sin of the shahid is forgiven," after which he called back the questioner and added, "except debt" Al-Qaradawi called this very proof that the Prophet never spoke out of whim "a mistake which the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace made and which Gibril corrected" The rector of al-Azhar University at the time, Dr. Ahmad `Umar Hashim, excoriated this attack on the Prophet's, upon him blessings and peace immunity from error in lawgiving matters in his Jumu`a khutba on October 7, 1999. The Qur'an-centered doctrine of Ahl al-Sunna on the Sunna's probative character refutes it as stated by the Azhari savant Dr. `Abd al-Ghani `Abd al-Khaliq in his Hujjiyyat al-Sunna: "By Consensus.. the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace is immune (ma`sum) from the deliberate commission of anything that might compromise his Message. In addition, the most correct position is that he is also immune from error in that regard."(1)On the same evening al-Qaradawi also called our liegelord Musa "rebellious by nature" (`anid bi-tabi`atihi), a term Allah Most High applied to the disbelievers saying, {and every rebellious tyrant (kullu jabbarin `anid) was brought to nought} (14:15). Similarly, in al-Khasa'is al-`Amma il-Islam (p. 19) he writes that "Adam's disobedience was caused by weakness and forgetfulness" In al-Sabru fil-Qur'an al-Karim (p. 110) he writes of our liegelord Yunus, "He quickly ran out of patience, his chest was constricted, and he left them in a rage (tha'iran)" In al-Sahwat al-Islamiyya bayn al-Ikhtilaf al-Mashru` wal-Tafarruq al-Madhmum (p. 30) he says of our liegelord Harun, "he did not speak out against the greatest shirk and the worship of the calf so that he would preserve the unity of the ranks" when Allah Most High Himself said that Harun said he was almost killed for speaking out {He said: Son of my mother! Lo! the folk did judge me weak and almost killed me. Oh, make not mine enemies to triumph over me and place me not among the evil doers!} (7:150), and in another verse He relates Harun's command to his people to shun false worship and turn to the Most Merciful: {And Harun indeed had told them beforehand: O my people! You are but being seduced therewith, for lo! your Lord is the Beneficent, so follow me and obey my order} (20:90)! The ruling regarding disrespect for Prophets can be gleaned from the last part of Qadi `Iyad's al-Shifa.In the first part of his two-part 1997 essay "Mabadi' Asasiyya Fikriyya wa-`Amaliyya fil-Taqrib bayn al-Madhahib" reprinted in volume 13 of the Iranian quarterly Risalat al-Taqrib (p. 143), an inter-School endeavor which is available online in full at www.taghrib.org, al-Qaradawi mentions the hadith "My Umma shall separate into seventy-three sects" and states: "This hadith might muddle the unity [of the Umma] which is incumbant and to which we are exhorted... We have to research this hadith objectively and neutrally regarding its authenticity and, if established to be authentic, regarding its probative meaning."(2) What is most disturbing in these words is al-Qaradawi's positing that, if proven authentic, the hadith will be a problem for the Umma. Note also the barbs at the Ulema of Ahl al-Sunna who, al-Qaradawi implies, have not, heretofore, shown objectivity, neutrality, or knowledge concerning the authenticity and probative meaning of this hadithAl-Qaradawi's ignoble view of the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace shows in the words he used in the following comments he made on a live broadcast of his program al-Shari`atu wal-Hayat on March 4, 2001: "Allah did not make the day of his Mawlid a `Id, because his birth was an ordinary birth The Christ was born without a father and so there was a commotion around it, in which the Qur'an showed interest as it mentioned it in Surat Maryam and Al `Imran. As for the birth of Muhammad, it was the birth of an ordinary orphaned child (kana mawlid tifl yatim `adi).

This is why the story of his birth was never mentioned in the Qur'an anywhere, contrary to its mention of the Emigration, the Night Journey and Ascent, the battles, and those things"The very next month he contradicted himself regarding the Mawlid and said: "We all know that the Companions of the Prophet , did not celebrate the Prophet's birthday, Hijrah or the Battle of Badr, because they witnessed such events during the lifetime of the Prophet who always remained in their hearts and minds... However, the following generations began to forget such a glorious history and its significance. So such celebrations were held as a means of reviving great events and the values that we can learn from them. Unfortunately, such celebrations include some innovations when they should actually be made to remind people of the Prophet's life and his call. Actually, celebrating the Prophet's birthday means celebrating the birth of Islam. Such an occasion is meant to remind people of how the Prophet lived... We need all these lessons and such celebrations are a revival of these lessons and values I think that these celebrations, if done in the proper way, will serve a great purpose, getting Muslims closer to the teachings of Islam and to the Prophet's Sunnah and life."(3)

II. HIS TWO GREATEST INNOVATIONS: MISAPPROPRIATION OF ZAKAT AND LEGALIZATION OF CARRION


Al-Qaradawi prefaced the work that launched him and his most successful book worldwide, al-Halal wal-Haram fil-Islam ("The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam", first English edition 1994), with an espousal of la-madhhabiyya that is both pompous and tendentious: "I did not consent that my mind should imitate a specific School in all the issues and questions, right or wrong." In practicality, like countless modern pseudo-mujtahids before and after him, al-Qaradawi is only positioning himself to imitate anything whenever it suits him even the most aberrant, obscure, strange and unusual excursus he can find in a living or defunct School, or on the lips of a scholar with or without chain of transmission. Thanks to this non-method posing as independent scholarship, he was able to successfully purvey to the Umma two of his most Law-destructive fatwas to date: the redefinition of the verse on the categories of zakat recipients and the redefinition of what constitutes carrion.In 1994 in a pamphlet distributed in the US by the American-based Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) and in subsequent publications, al-Qaradawi gave a deviant interpretation of the Qur'anic zakat category {wa-fi sabilillah} (9:60) allowing for zakat monies from Muslims in the West to be spent "for any act of charity" (`amal khayri)" including "thought, culture, education, and awareness campaigns" as well as building mosques, schools, cultural centers, hospitals, and other projects such as student financial aid, "whatever qualifies as Islamic jihad,"(4) all of which the Four Schools explicitly excluded both from eligibility for zakat funds generally speaking, and from the meaning of {wa-fi sabilillah} specifically as it applies exclusively to military jihad and those who wage it This fatwa was instrumental in promoting the Ikhwan al-Muslimin's influence in the West as they are its primary beneficiaries, specifically MAYA, which al-Qaradawi actually named Conversely, since then, the proper categories of recipiency for zakat were deprived in the same proportion if not more because communities, as a result, have rested on this new, fluid understanding of {fi sabilillah} to reorient themselves toward the funding of mosque buildings and all sorts of "Islamic projects" including "da`wa" at the exclusion, in practical terms, of supporting the people and causes Allah Most High commanded to supportHe also reinterpreted the zakat category of "new Muslims" (al-mu'allafatu qulubuhum) to include all da`wa projects by analogy with missionaries: "It is possible that that portion be spent, in our times, for Islamic missionarism (al-tabshir bil-islam) as do those who oppose the Muslims."(5)

III. QUTBIAN QARADAWI VERSUS ACCOMMODATION QARADAWI

Al-Qaradawi's lingering success in Europe and Australia (while he was banned from entry to the US since 1999) is also partly due to a "post-terror" tactic of the Ikhwan, Hizb al-Tahrir, Muhajirun, and other modernist offshoots, consisting in hiding the Qutbian face in the West under the mask of ultra-moderation, inter-faith hobnobbing, and amorphous flexibility in order to pass for neutral, pacific, modern, and progressive by Western standardsAccordingly, the Ikhwan-dominated, Dublin-based European Council for Fatwa and Research which "Accommodation Qaradawi" presides has declared: "It is obligatory for Muslims to respect the laws of the countries in which they reside." In July 2006 he clamored that "The Muslim world needs democracy, it wants democracy." But in the Arab press "Qutbian Qaradawi" writes: "Some people think they can be Muslims as long as they perform their worship according to Islamic rules while they fulfill worldly duties according to another method which they did not receive from Allah but from another god who legislates for them, over their daily life, all that Allah did not allow."(6)

IV. HIS PRAISE OF SAYYID QUTB, AL-AFGHANI, `ABDUH, AND RIDA

In his book al-Sahwat al-Islamiyya wa-Humum al-Watan al-`Arabi Qutbian Qaradawi praises the ex-Marxist journalist Sayyid Qutb turned neo-Kharijite, undoubtedly the foremost apostatizer of Muslims in the 20th century (Qutb considered humanity apostate one and all, the Muslim Umma no longer existed, and the tawhid of present-day Muslims meaningless)(7) and rationalist of mass revolutionary violence in the name of religion,(8) as "the great man of letters, Islamic missionary, and shahid who sacrificed his life on behalf of his thought" Qutb called the Prophet Musa "the archetype of the impulsive leader who has a hotheaded personality, let us leave him there and meet him again ten years later, has he become a calm, soft-spoken person? Not at all," accuses the Prophet Yusuf of almost faltering before the King's wife, and accuses Ibrahim, upon our Prophet and all of them blessings and peace, of literally mistaking the stars, moon and sun for his gods(9). Like Qutb, the foremost Lebanese Ikhwan ideologue Fathi Yakan unambiguously says in his book Kayfa Nad`u ila al-Islam: "Today the entire world witnesses apostasy from belief in Allah, and unprecedented collective and global kufr." His countryman Faysal Mawlawi (vice president of the European Fatwa Council) states the same.(10)Qaradawi also considers Qutb a mujtahid, and in his Sahwa as well as in Thaqafat al-Da`iya and al-Thaqafat al-`Arabiyya al-Islamiyya he expresses his admiration for al-Afghani, Muhammad `Abduh, and Rashid Rida whom he calls a mujaddid, and his followers in our time "Mujaddid 'Salafis' without question"! This is the same Darwinist Rida who in his Tafsir al-Manar bowdlerized the angels as consisting in "natural forces" while the jinn in his view are "microbes," allowed the consumption of pork as long as it is "sufficiently boiled, and thus purified," and dismissed the Prophetic hadith of the sun's prostration before the Throne, narrated from Abu Dharr by al-Bukhari and Muslim with the words: "Prophets do not know these sciences" His own contemporaries such as Yusuf al-Dijwi, al-Kawthari, and Yusuf al-Nabhani all denounced him and his teachers as dangerous innovators or worse.

V. HIS PRAISE OF HIZB AL-TAHRIR

In the Sahwa al-Qaradawi also praises the power-hungry Hizb al-Tahrir movement, who consider the entire world dar al-kufr, call the scholars "priests," and misconstrue the hadiths in which the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace spoke about those who rebel against the caliph, to mean all the bay`a-less Muslims in our times (as does the Murabitun sect of Abdulqadir al-Sufi). The Tahrir founder Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani was an overt Mu`tazili who stated in his books al-Shakhsiyya al-Islamiyya and Nizam al-Islam that "human acts are not part of qada' but are a matter of human free will" and that "guidance and misguidance are from the acts of creatures and not from Allah." Al-Qaradawi also criticizes Hizb al-Tahrir for virtually considering this Taqi al-Din infallible, although he shares his Qadari doctrine as we see below.

VI. HE PRAISES THE IKHWAN AND DEFENDS CRIMINAL JIHADISM

Qaradawi in the Sahwa also praises the Ikhwan al-Muslimin and "the jihad movement," among whom he includes the lawless Algerian Islamists whose acts al-Buti in his book Jihad in Islam denounced as the antithesis of jihad, although Accommodation Qaradawi acknowledges they are "Kharijites or worse" in his book on extremism, Zahirat al-Ghuluw fil-Takfir, but also says they acted "out of sincere concern for the Religion!" Then, in Shari`at al-Islam Qutbian Qaradawi defends the Khawarij as "an opposition which `Ali ibn Abi Talib accepted as legitimate" (on the grounds that our liegelord `Ali did not declare them apostate, however, he certainly considered them the "very worst of the Umma" just as the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace had named them).In al-Thaqafat al-`Arabiyya al-Islamiyya, Qutbian Qaradawi blasts the control of mosque preaching and teaching in Arab countries by Muslim Awqaf ministries and their ostracizing of agitators (al-`anasir al-mutaharrika al-muharrika), and he predicts that "in that case, the entire Umma will then become a 'Jama`a Islamiyya!" By the latter is meant no other than the Ikhwan al-Muslimin themselves, represented in Lebanon by Fathi Yakan and general secretary Faysal Mawlawi who wrote that it was forbidden for a Muslim to be a civil judge, but permissible for Ikhwanis to accept haram money on the basis that "illicitness is non-transferable" (al-haram la yatajawazu dhimmatayn), which the Ikhwan deliberately misconstrue to claim that what is illicit for the giver is licit for the receiver.(11) In reality, if the receiver is aware that the giver's income income is tainted then it is illicit for both indifferently, likewise for whoever else is made aware.

VII. QARADAWI'S UNREQUITED "SALAFISM"

Al-Qaradawi's publisher, al-Maktab al-Islami's Zuhayr al-Shawish, asked his sometime friend al-Albani to document the hadiths mentioned in al-Halal wal-Haram, which al-Albani proceeded to do in a book entitled Ghayat al-Maram fi Takhrij Ahadith al-Halal wal-Haram which al-Maktab al-Islami published and in which Albani restrains his tongue considerably against al-Qaradawi, whom he calls "the distinguished doctor" even as he points out his "glaring errors" Then al-Shawish rewrote a thoroughly abridged and bowdlerized version of Albani's documentation and, in a typical Mideast publisher coup, put it in the footnotes of his reprint of al-Qaradawi's bestseller with al-Albani's name on the cover as the muhaqqiq and al-Qaradawi's clever encomium of al-Albani as "the great Muhaddith" in the introduction. The book made a killing but Albani went on record as saying: "I did not write a single letter of that supposed tahqiq of mine!"In a recorded lesson, al-Albani warns against al-Qaradawi's "very dangerous anti-Shari`a fatwa philosophy which consists in making the haram halal by saying 'there is no categorical text on prohibition'.... whereas the Consensus of the Ulema is that legal rulings are not necessarily based on categorical texts since they said (and among them al-Qaradawi himself) that the proofs are the Book, the Sunna, Consensus, and Analogy.... But he came up with this tune, 'there is no categorical text on it,' to rid himself [of strictures] and permit many legal rulings For example, the Messenger, upon him blessings and peace says: 'Allah Most High curses the profiteer from usury, its agent, its scribe, and its two witnesses,' so it is not ever permissible for a Muslim to profit from illicit money on the basis that he is not consuming usury [a reference to al-Qaradawi's allowance of income and donations from the sale of alcohol and pork, the Ikhwan's allowance of donations from prohibited income, and the European Council for Fatwa and Research's allowance of donations from bank interest to Islamic centers]. As for the building of mosques from usurious funds, he is refuted by the Prophetic hadith: 'Truly, Allah is pure and He accepts only the pure.' These hadiths all refute al-Qaradawi and his likes."(12)The Saudi Wahhabi Salih al-Fawzan wrote a book against al-Halal wal-Haram while al-Albani wrote several on or against al-Qaradawi, among them documentations of the hadiths mentioned in al-Halal wal-Haram and others, Hukm al-Islam fil-Taswir ("Islam's position regarding photography") against al-Qaradawi's stance that photography and pictures were indifferently lawful, and Tahrim Alat al-Tarab against al-Qaradawi's opinion of the lawfulness of instrumental and vocal music in al-Islam wal-Fann, which was also refuted by another Wahhabi, `Abd al-Karim al-`Ubayd in his book al-Haqq al-Damigh lil-Da`awi fi Dahdi Maza`im al-Qaradawi.

VIII. HIS ASSIMILATION OF ASH`ARISM TO "ARISTOTLE'S DOCTRINE"


Although al-Qaradawi wrote a book on Imam al-Ghazzali and often quotes his Ihya' as well as clobbers "Salafis" with the Ash`ari School as a whole ("The entire Umma is Ash`ari even if it displeases our 'Salafi' brothers") in his biography of his teacher the contemporary Muhammad al-Ghazali, nevertheless, against all reason, he describes Ash`ari doctrine as "Aristotle's doctrine" and embraces several positions that reek of modern "Salafism" such as calling the donation of the Fatiha to the deceased an innovation (although it is a desirable act according to all Four Schools to donate Qur'an recitation to the dead) and suggesting that the derivation of blessings through persons, sites, or relics (tabarruk) is shirk, although the Companions themselves practiced it in the very presence of the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace!In al-Iman wal-Hayat, al-Qaradawi gives the most astounding display of compound ignorance of Islamic doctrine when he writes: "Aristotle's God has no connection to this world and no care for it He does not even dispose of a single matter in it because He does not know what takes place in it such as what enters the earth or comes out of it or what descends from the heavewn or ascends up to it All that Aristotle and his followers say about the Deity is that 'he is neither a substance (laysa bi-jawhar) nor an accident (wa-la `arad), He has no beginning and no end, He is neither a compound (murakkab) nor part of a compound (juz' min murakkab), He is neither inside the world nor outside of it, and He is neither connected to it nor disconnected from it' All these negations do not represent an existent God Who is supplicated and feared, and they do not tie people to their Lord with an unbreakable bond set up on vigilance, godwariness, trust, reliance, humility and love! This God isolated from the existent world, Whom Greek thought knows and from which was transposed to modern Western thought, is unknown to Islam."To the contrary, our liegelord `Ali ibn Abi Talib said to the Jews who asked him about the nature of Allah Most High and "His description": "How can even the most eloquent tongues describe Him Who did not exist among things so that He could be said to be 'separate from them' (ba'in)? Rather, He is described without modality, and He is {nearer to [man] than his jugular vein} (50:16)."(13)Furthermore, Imam Abu Ja`far al-Tabari wrote in his Tafsir: "Allah Almighty was, before He created things, in contact with nothing and separate from nothing. Then He created things and brought them into existence through His power, remaining exactly as He ever was before He created things, in contact with nothing, separate (ba'in) from nothing."(14)Al-Bayhaqi reports the Ash`ari position on the issue from Ibn Mahdi al-Tabari: The Pre-eternal One (al-Qadim) is elevated over His Throne but neither sitting on (qa`id) nor standing on (qa'im) nor in contact with (mumass), nor separate from (mubayin) the Throne - meaning separate in His Essence in the sense of physical separation or distance. For 'contact' and its opposite 'separation,' 'standing' and its opposite 'sitting' are all the characteristics of bodies (ajsam), whereas {Allah is One, Everlasting, neither begetting nor begotten, and there is none like Him} (112:1-4). Therefore what is allowed for bodies is impermissible for Him."(15)Furthermore, Imam al-Ghazzali said in his doctrine: "Allah is not a body possessing form, nor a substance restricted and limited, He does not resemble bodies either in limitation or in accepting division, He is not a substance and substances do not reside in Him; He is not a quality of substance, nor does a quality of substance occur in Him. Rather, He resembles no existent and no existent resembles Him. Nothing is like Him and He is not like anything. Measure does not bind Him and boundaries do not contain Him. Directions do not surround Him and neither the earth nor the heavens are on different sides of Him. He established Himself over the Throne in the sense which He said and the meaning which He willed - in a state of Transcendence that is removed from touch, settledness, fixity of location, stability, indwelling, and movement The Throne does not support Him, but the Throne and those who carry it are supported by the Subtleness of His Power and are subdued by His grip. He is above the Throne and the Heavens and above everything to the limits of the earth with an aboveness which does not bring Him nearer to the Throne and the Heavens, just as it does not make Him further from the earth Rather, He is Highly Exalted above the Throne and the Heavens, just as He is Highly Exalted above the earth Nevertheless, He is near to every entity and is {nearer to [man] than his jugular vein} and He witnesses everything(16) since His nearness does not resemble the nearness of bodies, just as His Essence does not resemble the essence of bodies."(17)


IX. HIS DENIAL THAT CONSENSUS EXISTS


In one of his television broadcasts al-Qaradawi rejected the notion of Consensus with the words: "There is no ijma`. Ibn al-Qayyim narrated from Ahmad the denial of ijma`." In his book Shari`at al-Islam he has a chapter entitled "The claim of Consensus when there is no Consensus" in which he says: "Among the legal rulings there are those rulings which are supported by Consensus, but when we go back to the sayings of the Salaf or their books which address juristic variance and the positions of the Schools, we find that this ijma` is a figment of the imagination. This is why the two Imams al-Shafi`i and Ahmad disapproved of claiming much ijma` and they restricted it, al-Shafi`i confining it to the religious matters which are known with certitude such as zuhr being four rak`as and the like."The denial of Consensus is a Mu`tazili principle and the claim that Imam al-Shafi`i or Imam Ahmad denied the existence of Consensus is a corruption of their specific statement that "if no objection is known, it does not amount to a consensus, and whoever claims consensus [in such a case] is lying," particularly that claimed by non-Sunnis such as Bishr al-Marrisi and al-Asamm.(18) Among the affirmations of consensus related from al-Shafi`i and Ahmad:- "{And when the Quran is recited, give ear to it and pay heed, that you may obtain mercy} (7:204). Ahmad said: 'People [i.e. the Scholars of clout] agree by consensus (ajma`a al-nas) that this verse concerns the prayer.'"(19)- "Ahmad said.. 'the Muslims agree by consensus (ajma`a al-muslimun) without objection that whenever they see earthquakes and torrential rains they say: This is the qudra of Allah Most High.'"(20)- Imam Ahmad said: "Ihram from the starting-points (al-mawaqit) is better as it is the agreed-upon Sunna by Consensus."(21)- In his letter to Muhammad ibn Musarhad al-Basri Imam Ahmad states: "The scholars we met all agree by Consensus..."(22)- Concerning the hadith that the Messenger of Allah, upon him blessings and peace forbade the usurious rollover of debt to a new term (naha `an bay` al-kali' bil-kali') Imam Ahmad said: "Nothing sound is related to this effect, however, the consensus of the people is that it is impermissible to sell a debt for a debt."(23) Similarly he made Consensus the decisive factor in putting into practice the hadith "Arabs among themselves and clients (mawali) among themselves are all adequate marriage matches (akfa') except a weaver (ha'ik) and a cupper (hajjam)." When it was objected that the himself had weakened it he simply replied: "Al-`amalu `alayh."(24)- In reply to the question which Companion should be followed if there is variance among their opinions on a single issue, al-Shafi`i said: "One of them can be followed if I do not find a Qur'anic proof, nor a Sunna, nor Consensus, nor anything tantamount to the above, or inferable by analogy."(25)- Al-Shafi`i said: "People agree by Consensus (ajma`a al-nas) that whoever is sure of a sunna as coming from the Messenger of Allah, upon him blessings and peace, he has no option to leave it in exchange for anyone's saying."(26)- Concerning Abu Hanifa's ruling that a Muslim be executed for the death of a disbeliever: "Al-Shafi`i said there is consensus to the opposite of the position of the Hanafis."(27)- "Al-Shafi`i reported that there was Consensus to the fact that the ruler's decision does not make the haram halal."(28)- Al-Shafi`i said: "The Ulema agree by Consensus that Allah Most High will not inflict punishment over a matter concerning which there was disagreement."(29) "I hear no one saying other than that the repudiation made Law by Allah is the man's statement to his wife: 'You are to me like my mother's back.' Thus did it come to us from the past scholars; and there is no disagreement among their unanimity that whoever says this to his wife is repudiating her and he must be so considered by the Law."(30)- Al-Shafi`i also cited consensus on the fact that if someone buys fruit that is sprouting, the seller is obligated to leave it on its stalks until the time to clip it whether the buyer stipulates it or not.(31)- In his Risala al-Shafi`i declares numerous additional rulings of consensus: on the fact that the political imam of the Muslims is one, the caliph is one, the emir is one, and the qadi is one (§1154); on the invalidity of the prayer of someone in a major state of impurity; on the lack of blood money and "compensation for wounds inflicted" against someone who mutilates the dead (§1643); blood money for manslaughter of a free Muslim by a Muslim as 100 camels payable by the culprit's clan (§1536); and that these camels be of specific ages and paid in installments of three thirds over three years (§1536); but, for deliberate murder or despoliation, payable by the individual (§1538) while the clan must furnish up to one third of the blood money for wounds up to murder (§1539), and from one third or more for manslaughter (§1548).(32) He mentions consensus in additional issues as well.The denial of Consensus typifies modernist la-madhhabis and stems from two lusts: the itch to speak despite ignorance and the itch to break the strictures of the Law and make halal every haram possible. Thus, in his never-ending quest for the oddest, most bizarre, and most immoral fatwa, al-Qaradawi is even on record as allowing income from the proceeds of usury and gambling, and he has the gall to attribute this to al-Hasan and Ibn Sirin,(33) and he specifies that one or two percent of interest is allowed as long as it is called "administrative fees" (khadamat idariyya).(34)

X. QARADAWI'S SPECIOUS FIQH

Dr. Nur al-Din `Itr narrated respectively in his class and in a private communication to this author that al-Qaradawi once caused consternation in Turkey during a stay when he shortened prayers for forty consecutive days in full knowledge that he would reside in that place for that length of time, and that Dr. Abu al-Hasan al-Nadwi would warn his students prior to visits by al-Qaradawi to India: "Take his da`wa skills but steer clear of his fiqh," although they paid each other courtesies in their respective booksAmong the examples of al-Qaradawi's newfangled understanding of fiqh and hadith:Qutbian Qaradawi said: "I requested the Emir of Qatar to wash his hands seven times, one of them with earth, after he shook hands with [Israeli minister] Peres"(35) (a ludicrous ruling), while Accommodation Qaradawi claimed that the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace stood up for the funeral bier of a Jew out of respect for the latter.(36) However, the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace himself added: "You are not getting up for the funeral bier but you are only getting up for him who seizes the souls," meaning the angel of death, as narrated in Ahmad, `Abd ibn Humayd, Ibn Hibban, al-Hakim, al-Bayhaqi, and elsewhere. Qutbian Qaradawi forbade Muslims from getting up for the Messenger of Allah, upon him blessings and peace.(37)Accommodation Qaradawi urged the Taliban not to destroy the Buddha statues in Afghanistan in 2001. Upon meeting with leaders from the Taliban, Qutbian Qaradawi reversed this position and condoned the act of the destruction of the statues although averring that the Taliban "were living in the past."(38)Accommodation Qaradawi said that jihad was purely and exclusively defensive, adducing that this was the position of "the likes of Shaykh Abu Zahra, Shaykh Rashid Rida, Shaykh Mahmud Shaltut, Shaykh `Abd Allah Daraz, and Shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazali.(39) He abolished the jizya on the grounds that equal military service for both Christians and Muslims renders it moot,(40) called the Copts of Egypt who were killed in the Israeli wars "shuhada'"(41) and said "our enmity with Israel is because of land, not religion,"(42) considers lapidation (rajm) not a hadd or fixed penalty which must be applied upon conviction (as per the Consensus reported by Ibn Hazm and Ibn `Abidin among others) but a ta`zir or discretionary penalty which is up to the Muslim ruler to apply or abolish,(43) called for blood donations for the survivors of September 11, and in al-Islam wal-Gharb protested vehemently, in reply to an American periodical, that "There is leeway, in life, for more than one religion.... the diversity of religions is for the welfare of humankind" while Qutbian Qaradawi in Fiqh al-Awwaliyyat (p. 44) stated "There is no leeway in life except for the Godfearing" and he recounted in al-`Ibada fil-Islam (p. 309-310) that he mocked and corrected an Egyptian Shaykh who had suggested it would have been better, instead of talking about battles, to teach people something about the necessary fiqh of purity and prayer during Ramadan by telling him: "It makes no sense that we should leave all these Suras and verses that mention jihad for only one Qur'anic verse which mentions purity!" In a July 2006 fatwa, he urged the Sunnis and Shi`is of Iraq to unite but in a January 2007 fatwa he urged the Iraqi Kurds to join the Sunnis of Iraq in their war against Iraq's Shi`is.Qutbian Qaradawi on television and in print declared it categorically forbidden (haram) for a woman to leave her house perfumed(44) although the default ruling is mere preferential dislike, and becomes categorically prohibited only with the intention to be noticed by foreign men. It is established that the Mothers of the Believers perfumed themselves heavily before leaving their homes for pilgrimage. Then Accommodation Qaradawi clamored: "I am against the niqab"(45) although, in the beginning of al-Sahwa al-Islamiyya, he states: "What is it that worries our contemporary brethren if the Muslim girl dons a hijab or even a niqab?" The question includes him. He is also known as taking pride in shaking hands with women ("ana usafih!") and he scoffs at those who disallow it in his Madkhal li-Dirasat al-Sunnat al-Nabawiyya (p. 202). He shares this view with Hasan al-Turabi, Muhammad Habash, permissive Sufis, and Hizb al-Tahrir, who also add the permissibility of kissing. Time after time al-Qaradawi on TV and in his books such as Awlawiyyat al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, Malamih al-Mujtama` al-Muslim, and Markaz al-Mar'a deplores the fact that Western Muslims segregate between men and women in their social and scholarly functions!- To support his declaration of the licitness of stage, television and movie acting for women in the periodicals al-Mujtama` (p. 1319), Akhbar al-Usbu` (no. 401, 5 March 1994), and Sayyidatuhum (no. 678 on 10 March 1994) he said: "Our proof for this is that the Qur'anic narrative since Adam until the Seal of Prophets features women." - He advocates complete reliance on astronomical calculation for the determination of the new months on the grounds that it unites the Umma although there is Consensus in the Four Schools that calculation never replaces actual sighting but is used only to confirm or invalidate it as stated in Shaykh Muhammad Afifi's definitive Moonrises fatwa and elsewhere.(46)

XI. HE PERMITS INCOME FROM THE THE SALE OF ALCOHOL AND PORK

At first, Qutbian Qaradawi in the beginning of his book Ghayr al-Muslimin affirmed that "it is impermissible for the Muslim to own alcohol or swine, whether for himself or to sell it to others," and this is indeed the gist of the explicit hadith in the Six Books: "Truly, Allah and His Prophet have declared illicit the sale of alcohol, carrion, swine, and idols." The Prophet also said, upon him blessings and peace: "Truly when Allah makes something prohibited, He makes its value prohibited as well." (Ibn Abi Shayba from Ibn `Abbas) But Accommodation Qaradawi later allowed for Muslim shop owners to sell alcoholic beverages "as long as most of the wares being sold are non-alcoholic" and "preferably through the handling of non-Muslim employees so the Muslims' consciences will be clear" according to the second conference of the Dublin-based European Council for Fatwa and Research which he presides He explicitly gave the same permission "as long as the good [being sold] is more than the evil" and "let him get a Christian to sell it for him."(47) The Mufti of Egypt, Shaykh `Ali Jumu`a, gave the same fatwa (no. 4189) toward the end of 2005. These are all innovated provisions which make light of the Law and the Prophetic prohibition which explicitly curses, among ten types, "whoever sells alcohol" or "profits from its sale"(48) in any way or proportion, as mentioned by all of the condemnations the fatwas drew. The same Council also declared it licit to eat food which contained pork "in a proportion less than 1%."(49)In a mid-1999 al-Jazira channel broadcast al-Qaradawi declared licit the sales of alcohol and pork by Muslims through non-Muslim employees He adduced a report in which our liegelord `Umar said: "Let the covenantees (ahl al-dhimma) sell it to one another." In reality, this report in no way refers to Muslim property but to non-Muslim property. Furthermore, al-Qasim ibn Sallam explained in al-Amwal that the context was the payment of the dhimmi tithes known as jizya and kharaj concerning which our liegelord `Umar said for the tithe-collector (al-`ashir) not to collect the tenth of swine or alcohol property in kind and then task the Muslims with selling it, but to collect its currency value after its sale (thaman) by the dhimmis themselves, as is the position of Masruq, Ibrahim al-Nakha`i, Abu Hanifa, Muhammad, and Ahmad according to one of two positions related from him.(50)More than that, there is full Consensus (ijma`):1. That the sale and purchase of alcohol is categorically prohibited.(51)2. That the sale and purchase of swine is categorically prohibited.(52) Even more, the Hanafi Mufti of Zaytuna University Shaykh Muhammad al-Hattab Bushnaq wrote 70 years ago: "The jurists reached consensus that the sale of swine is invalid and that it does not take place at all, whether in its substance or in its description, because it is impure in itself (najis al-`ayn) and it is not permitted to profit from it in any way whatsoever."(53)

XII. HE PERMITS THE CONSUMPTION OF CARRION

Al-Qaradawi said in al-Halal wal-Haram(54) that it was licit to eat chicken that had been suffocated by wringing its neck as well as beef from livestock stunned to death as long as they had been killed by a Christian or a Jew who "consider it licit in their law to slaughter animals that way." He based himself on an extremely controverted passage of Ibn al-`Arabi's Ahkam al-Qur'an which interprets in absolute and unconditional terms the verse {The food of those who have received the Scripture is lawful for you, and your food is lawful for them} (5:5), although on the preceding page Ibn al-`Arabi himself explicitly declared: "If it is asked what about what they eat without dhakat, such as suffocation or shattering the skull? The answer is that such is carrion and categorically prohibited as stipulated by the text of the Law. Even if they eat it, we do not eat it with them, the same as swine: it is licit to them and part of their food and it is categorically prohibited for us."(55)In the beginning of his discussion al-Qaradawi attributes Ibn al-`Arabi's shadhdh statement to "a group of the Malikis," an unadulterated fabrication according to Sayyid `Abd al-Hayy al-Ghumari in his refutation (see below).In the process of his discussion, al-Qaradawi asserted that "the common understanding of dhakat is the process of terminating the animal's life with the intention of making its consumption licit," and he once again falsely attributes this outlandish definition to the Maliki School. This definition is unheard of, as dhakat of birds and livestock is understood in Islam and in Arabic to obligatorily entail cutting and/or bloodletting as explicitly stated in the fatwas of our liegelords `Umar (in Sufyan al-Thawri's Jami`, `Abd al-Razzaq's Musannaf, and al-Bayhaqi) and Ibn `Abbas (in al-Bukhari, `Abd al-Razzaq, and al-Bayhaqi): "Dhakat is either in the gullet (al-halq) or in the upper torso (al-labba)"(56) and as stipulated in the Four Schools,(57) hence Ibn Qudama in the Mughni said it is synonymous with slitting the throat (al-dhabh). In cases the gullet and torso are unreachable or impractical, the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace allowed hamstringing, as in the sound hadith of Malik ibn Qahtam al-Darimi in the Sunan and Musnad: "Messenger of Allah, does the dhakat have to be only in the gullet and upper torso?" He replied: "If you stabbed it in the thigh it would fulfill your obligation." Yazid ibn Harun commented, as narrated by al-Tirmidhi: "That is, in case of absolute necessity."Against Consensus(58) and against every norm of the Law and the Four Schools, al-Qaradawi even included Zoroastrians among those whose slaughters are licit, although the Prophetic hadith in `Abd al-Razzaq, Ibn Abi Shayba, and elsewhere concerning them explicitly states: "Give them the status of Ahl al-Kitab but neither marry them nor eat their food!" He claims that the latter half of the hadith was declared inauthentic by the Scholars without providing a single example or source to that effect In reality, it is independently confirmed by our liegelord `Ali's explicit statement that the slaughtered meats and wedlock of the Magians were illicit and this is the ruling of the Four Schools as spelled out in the entirety of the hadith, which al-Bayhaqi in his Ma`rifat al-Sunan wal-Athar declared authentic.(59) The latter also cited al-Shafi`i's reference to Malik's narration in the Muwatta' which simply states: "Give them the status of Ahl al-Kitab" with a broken chain, but Ibn `Abd al-Barr said: "Its meaning is connected through various fair chains."(60) Al-Shafi`i said: "If authentic, it means: except for marriage and slaughtered meats."Critics such as al-Ghumari and al-Fawzan have noted that, although ostensibly quoting Ibn al-`Arabi's text in quotation marks with a sourcing, al-Qaradawi was careful to rephrase it for two purposes: first, to make it more palatable to a non-Muslim reader; thus Ibn al-`Arabi's sentence "they [treaty non-Muslims] give us their children and women as chattel in peace treaties" becomes, in al-Qaradawi's quotation, "they give us their women as wives," without mention of children, chattel, or peace treaties; second, to make it more pliable to his desired fatwa that animals that are electrically stunned to death are licit for consumption; thus, he "disappears" Ibn al-`Arabi's entire passage "as stipulated by the text of the Law. Even if they eat it, we do not eat it with them, the same as swine: it is licit to them and part of their food and it is categorically prohibited for us"In 1985 Sayyid `Abd al-Hayy al-Ghumari published a scathing refutation of al-Qaradawi on this specific issue which he entitled Hukm al-Lahm al-Mustawrad min Urubba al-Nasraniyya ("The Status of Meat Imported from Christian Europe"), prefaced by Shaykh `Ali Jumu`a, and in which he demonstrated in over a hundred pages al-Qaradawi's violations of the canons of usul, fiqh, tafsir, and the Arabic language.
XIII. HE DECLARES CELIBACY CATEGORICALLY FORBIDDEN FOR

ALLIn al-Halal wal-Haram al-Qaradawi said, "It is illicit for a Muslim to avoid marriage, when he's able to marry, on the pretext of devotion to Allah or dedication to worship and monkery and renouncing the world.. one of the Ulema said marriage is a categorical obligation upon every Muslim (faridatun `ala kulli Muslimin) which it is not licit for him to leave as long as he's able to do it" This is lawmaking, no more and no less The Four Schools agree that marriage is not a universal categorical obligation but a desirable Sunna and that a person who leaves it, although able to marry, does not commit a sin if celibacy does not cause him to disobey Allah Most High.(61) Al-Qari said: "Some Ulema exaggerated and claimed that marriage is better than isolation for the worship of Allah Most High... but if there is in someone a craving which disrupts concentration then it becomes imperative to bear with dependents and trust in Allah Most High for the rest" but, he states, "on condition that he has licit income, a good character, and earnestness in religion so that marriage will not distract him from Allah, and while he is young and in need to allay his lust and by himself and in need to run a household and livelihood."(62)

XIV. HIS WEAKNESS IN HADITH

In his "Mabadi' Asasiyya Fikriyya wa-`Amaliyya fil-Taqrib bayn al-Madhahib" which we already mentioned, al-Qaradawi disputes the authenticity of the hadith "My Umma shall separate into seventy-three sects," saying: "An indication that it is inauthentic is that it is found neither in al-Bukhari nor in Muslim." In fact, the Ulema of hadith concurred that al-Bukhari and Muslim did not include into their respective collections everything that was authentic. Then he said: "Therefore, it is inauthentic according to the criterion of each of them."(63) In fact, al-Bukhari and Muslim both excluded much that was authentic according to their respective criteria as shown by al-Daraqutni and others. These two blunders are among the leitmotiv of those who have no familiarity with hadith and try to poke holes into the Sunna and its sciences.In his book Kayfa Nata`amalu ma`a al-Sunna (which al-`Alwani's International Institute of Islamic Thought translated and published in 2007) he perpetuates the false claim that "there are some scholars who do not accept the weak hadiths even in the encouragement to good and the discouragement against evil, heart-softening matters, and simple living, among them Muslim, al-Bukhari, Yahya ibn Ma`in, Ibn Hazm al-Zahiri, Qadi Ibn `Arabi, and Abu Shama." He is not correct about a single one of those scholars but this is a diehard misrepresentation by "Salafis" stemming from mutual blind imitation as we demonstrated in our treatment of the issue in Sunna Notes I and The Four Imams and Their Schools.In his Thaqafat al-Da`iya (p. 111) al-Qaradawi disparages a major Imam of the Salaf in a statement dripping with modernism and revisionism: "May Allah forgive Imam al-Tabari, for his carelessness has disfigured the history of the dawn of Islam and harmed the first bearers of the message." That such impertinence be disseminated about the father of Islamic history and one of the greatest early authorities in Hadith and the Law without a peep of condemnation is a sign of the times. Similarly, one of al-Qaradawi's junior book-imitators called Ibn Hajar al-Haytami "a flat-out bigot" on a Sunni website without compunction. As Imam al-Qurtubi said: "They shall show up at the end of time, curse the scholars, and insult the jurists."(64)

XV. HIS DISPARAGEMENT OF THE ULEMA

Qutbian Qaradawi takes care to varnish the books he intends for mass dissemination with an appeal to the modern public's egalitarian infatuations In familiar Ikhwani style, he mocks the science of `aqida in the opening pages of his book Wujud Allah ("Those who forward the Prime Mover argument (dalil al-huduth) with all its aridity and short-sightedness") while he mocks the attention of fiqh to details in his book al-`Ibada fil-Islam where he says: "Knowledge of the prayer is the dry acquaintance with its conditions, pillars, requirements, and desirable acts. Let us leave aside this prolixity and these subdivisions and complications which have made our fiqh books rotund and pot-bellied, what with 'pillars' and 'conditions' and 'obligations' and 'requirements' and 'desirable acts' and 'nullifications' and 'dislikes!' A specialist is allowed to study the modalities of worship in this fashion as long as it is for himself; but to teach this to everyone else is a manifest error."(65) A few pages down he mocks a scholar for teaching the fiqh of purity during the month of Ramadan, saying: "The month is finishing and the miskin is not out of the toilet yet!"This discourse is straight from Sayyid Qutb, who said that "short of establishing this society [i.e. the Qutbian State], activity in the field of Islamic fiqh and its rulings and regulations is pure self-deceit and sowing seeds in the wind This is not working for Islam. It is part neither of the methodology of this religion nor its nature. It would be better to busy oneself with literature, art, or commerce instead of this waste of time and reward."(66) No wonder, al-Qaradawi violates the Consensus of the Ulema on numerous issues, including their Consensus that the divorce of a woman in her menses takes effect while he says it does not.(67)Yet, Accommodation Qaradawi said in his book al-Rasul wal-`Ilm: "It is imperative for the Muslim to learn that by which he knows his doctrine with certitude and soundness, free of shirk and superstitions, and that by which he corrects his worship of his Lord outwardly so that it will conform to the lawful form, as well as inwardly so that he will have sincere intention for Allah Most High, etc." Why then does he mock the people of learning who help the Muslim do just that? And are his claims that the nature-loving believers "see the face of Allah in Nature" (yarawna wajha Allahi fi hadhihi al-tabi`a),(68) calling Him "a Higher Force" (quwwatun `ulya)(69) or that "worshippers at prayer address the Force with Undying Energy (al-quwwatu al-lati la yafna nashatuha) that it ties us, when we pray, with the Major Force (al-quwwat al-`uzma) which has full hegemony over the universe, asking and supplicating It to grant us a firebrand from Itself (qabasan minha) with which we can help ourselves to deal with life"(70) examples of sound doctrine? Or his statement that "Allah is a unit (wahdatun) not only in His substance (la fijawharihi fa-hasb) but also in the goal to Him (bal fil-ghayati ilayhi aydan)."(71)

XVI. HIS PROPENSITY FOR TAKFIR OF THE MUSLIMS

Among al-Qaradawi's ultra-Qutbian and "Salafi" innovations is his Khariji leaning for takfir and inability to stop where the Law stops. Instead of simply saying: "This is haram," or "this is a sin," al-Qaradawi maximizes the anathema of minor and major sins in contexts which Qutb himself did not necessarily envisage, and he goes to extremities which the Salafis themselves did not reach. Worse, he blindly lambasts even virtues as antithetical to Islam, and sometimes sounds like a law-making Prophet. He says:- "For every believer not to emphasize the feeding of the poor is among the necessary causes of kufr."(72) However, the verses condemning those who do not feed the poor clarify that these are disbelievers to start with.- "Whoever fears other than Allah is a mushrik,"(73) although the Blessed Qur'an explicitly mentions such fear concerning some of the Prophets as well as the Muhajirun and Ansar.- "He is not a worshipper of Allah, who outwardly completes the pilgrimage but does not observe the etiquette of Islam and its traditions in himself or his family, such as the man who wears pure silk, wears gold, or imitates women; or the women who wears revealing apparel."(74) This is unprecedented Khariji ijtihad while Ahl al-Sunna say that the above transgressions constitute sins and such a pilgrimage is precluded from being mabrur, however, the transgressors remain Muslims.- "Whoever pronounces a triple divorce in a single sitting has contested Allah in His Law and has deviated from the straight path of Islam."(75) The Ulema one and all have said this is an innovation and an act of disobedience, not kufr.- "Idleness on the part of the able-bodied is categorically forbidden (haram), nor is it licit for a Muslim to be lazy with regard to the pursuit of his livelihood in the name of dedication to worship or reliance on Allah Most High, for the heaven does not rain gold or silver, just as it is illicit to rely on charity."(76) "A human being who does not work does not deserve to live."(77) "Neglect of this world and the devaluation of its importance in the estimation of the seeker of the hereafter can only be a blameworthy matter which is out of the pale of the primordial Sunna and the path of Religion both."(78) Such talk is itself outside the pale since the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace feared the overvaluation of the world for his Umma, not its undervaluation. Modernists promote materialism with unparalleled zeal while the Salaf's compiled report after report devaluating this world and promoting dedication to worship and reliance on Allah Most High, as shown by the early Imams' books entitled al-Zuhd by Sufyan al-Thawri, Hannad ibn Sari, Ibn al-Mubarak, Waki` ibn al-Jarrah, Ibn Abi `Asim, Ibn al-A`rabi (several works), Abu Hatim al-Razi, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, his son, and al-Bayhaqi among others.- He cites the very weak hadith, 'Poverty borders on kufr'"(79) then, elsewhere, claims "There is not a single verse in the Book of Allah and not a single sound Prophetic hadith praising poverty."(80) However, Allah Most High praised {the poor among the emigrants who have been driven out from their homes and their belongings, who seek bounty from Allah and help Allah and His messenger. They are the loyal}, and {Those who entered the city and the faith before them love these who flee unto them for refuge, and find in their breasts no need for that which hath been given them, but prefer (the emigrants) above themselves though poverty become their lot And whoso is saved from his own avarice such are they who are successful} (59:8-9). Al-Bukhari in his Sahih included the "chapter-title on the immense merits of poverty" while the Sunan abound with authentic hadiths exalting poverty and the poor here and hereafter!- "The new Muslim does not part with the polytheists if he does not adduce the zakat."(81) Yet the Umma concurs that Abu Bakr fought the Arabian tribes over zakat not because they had reverted to disbelief, but because they had broken the Law.- "People, even the Muslims themselves, have wronged worship, corrupted its original form, reality, and place in understanding, style, theory, and practice.... and among latter-day Muslim we have even seen... those who obey in absolute terms other than Allah."(82) And he says, "When the Muslims were Muslims."(83) This is classic Qutb fare.

XVII. HIS OVER-THE-TOP LAXISM TOWARD NON-MUSLIMS

In al-Halal wal-Haram al-Qaradawi says of non-Muslims: "To love them (mawaddatuhum) was made law for us" then he dismisses the Qur'anic verses which contradict him thus: "How do we implement piety (birr), love (mawadda), and excellent companionship (husn al-`ushra) with non-Muslims when the Qur'an Itself prohibits from loving the disbelievers and taking them as patrons and allies? The answer is that the verses to that effect only refer to those who actively show enmity to Islam and fight the Muslims."(84) However, Ibn Hajar in Fath al-Bari said: "Piety (birr), family links (sila) and excellent behavior (ihsan) do not presuppose mutual love and affection (al-tahabub wal-tawadud), which are both forbidden by the verse {You will not find a people believing in Allah and the Last Day who at the same time love (yuwaddun) those who defy Allah and the Prophet}, which includes both those who fight [against Muslims] and those who do not."(85)Al-Qaradawi ever so often applies to all non-Muslims the juridical phrase "They have the rights we have and are subject to the same liabilities" (lahum ma lana wa-`alayhim ma `alayna).(86) But there is firm Consensus that this can only be said about a jizya-paying covenantee from Ahl al-Kitab, not all non-Muslims indifferently. In the same vein he keeps sounding the term "heavenly religions,"(87) a Western term disowned by sound Islamic doctrine which affirms the oneness of heavenly religions although the dispensations and scriptures are more than one. Similarly, al-Qaradawi's Western book-imitators drip with sheepish courtesy with Orientalists and missionaries but, when it comes to Sunni Muslims and their scholars, they snarl and growl.In his book al-Islam wal-Gharb he states: "Allah asked Iblis to dialogue with him: {He said: O Iblis! What hinders you from falling prostrate before that which I have created with both My hands? Are you too proud or are you of the high?} (38:75). This tells us that there is vast leeway for dialogue in Islamic thought." However, the commentaries agree that such address does not constitute a query, even less dialogue, but "scoff and condemnation in the guise of query" (istifham tawbikh wa-inkar). However, the perverting of the Qur'anic meanings through unheard-of interpretations is no object to those who push the agenda of what Sayyid Muhammad al-Ya`qubi called a campaign of neutralization through co-option posing as interfaith activity.In his book al-Sahwat al-Islamiyya bayna al-Ikhtilaf al-Mashru` wal-Tafarruq al-Madhmum he states: "Even the idolatrous polytheists were not addressed by the Qur'an as ya ayyuha al-mushrikun, but It addressed them as ayyuha al-nas. There is not a single address to the polytheists with the title shirk or kufr except in Surat al-Kafirun, and that for a special circumstance." It is as if he never heard Surat al-Tahrim {O disbelievers! (ya ayyuha al-ladhina kafaru) Make no excuses for yourselves this day} (66:7) or al-Waqi`a {Then lo! you, the erring, the deniers (ayyuha al-dallun al-mukadhdhibun)} (56:51) or al-Zumar {Say: Do you bid me serve other than Allah? O you fools! (ayyuha al-jahilun)} (39:64).

XVIII. HIS QADARISM

In yet another astonishing misinterpretation of the Qur'an, he states in his book Ghayr al-Muslimin that "a Muslim believes that people's differences in religion took place by the will of Allah Who has granted this species of His creatures freedom and the ability to choose whatever he does and whatever he leaves, {So whoever wishes, let them believe, and whoever wishes, let them disbelieve} (28:18)." However, the commentaries said that this statement is not a proposal of choice at all but, as related from our liegelords Ibn `Abbas and `Ali, a threat of dire punishment (tahdid wa-wa`id) and sarcasm (tahakkum)!(88)The doctrine of qadarism which lurk in al-Qaradawi's words cited in the preceding paragraph is explicit in his statements elsewhere: "Those who worshipped certain things and turned man from the master of the universe into a puny slave who prostrates to a star or to something else, whatever history has recorded among the delusions and misguidances of mankind when they deviated from the Divine guidance, contrary to what Allah willed for human beings and contrary to what He willed from human beings"(89); "Truly, the staunch Qur'anic law is that peoples and societies do not change according to a heavenly, Divinely decreed command, but according to an earthly, human effort!"(90)Mashhur Hasan Salman said in his unpublished lessons on Sahih Muslim: "Refuting al-Qaradawi is a collective categorical obligation which I hope to fulfill, for corruption at his hands is not only in the branches of the Law. Long sections on the prohibition of singing and this and that will not do. The matter is not just that but requires that we clearly show the crookedness of his foundations (usul). For the multitude of errors in the branches signals crookedness in the foundations, even if he does not show it explicitly. Therefore, to shed light on the latter necessitates someone who knows the foundation on which every single issue is constructed and elaborated... We need an excellent comprehensive and definitive reference-book."WAllahu a`lam.NOTES
1. See on this our Sunna Notes III: The Binding Proof of the Sunna (p. 45).
2. http://www.taghrib.org/arabic.
3. Islamonline Fatwa Committee, 19 April 2001.
4. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibadatu fil-Islam (p. 252) and Fiqh al-Zakat. His friend Faysal Mawlawi said the same fatwa was given before him by Siddiq Hasan Khan, Rashid Rida, Mahmud Shaltut, and Muhammad Hasanayn Makhluf cf. http://www.mawlawi.net as of August, 2007

.5. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibadatu fil-Islam (p. 249).
6. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibada fil-Islam (p. 71). He repeats this declaration of apostasy in Limadha al-Islam (p. 10-14) and the periodical al-Aman no. 236 (1996).
7. Cf. Fi Zilal al-Qur'an (2:972, 2:1018, 2:1075, 3:1198, 3:1257, 4:1945, 4:2122...) and Ma`alim fil-Tariq ("Milestones") toward the beginning.
8. Cf. Fi Zilal al-Qur'an (3:1449-1451).
9. Sayyid Qutb, al-Taswir al-Fanni fil-Qur'an (p. 133, 162, 166).
10. In the Lebanese periodical al-Shihab (Year 6 no. 1).
11. In the Lebanese periodical al-Shihab (Year 4 no. 10 and Year 7 no. 2).
12. Al-Albani in al-Wadi`i, Iskat (p. 176).
13. Narrated by Abu Nu`aym in Hilyat al-Awliya' (1997 ed 1:114 §227).
14. Al-Tabari, Tafsir (8:97-100).
15. Al-Bayhaqi, al-Asma' wal-Sifat (Kawthari ed p. 410-411=Hashidi ed 2:308-309).
16. The passage beginning with the words "He established Himself over the Throne" and ending with the words "and he witnesses everything" is an exact quotation from al-Ash`ari's al-Ibana (Mahmud ed 2:21= Sabbagh ed p. 35) except for the phrase "just as it does not make Him further from the earth."
17. Al-Ghazzali, "Foundations of Islamic Belief" (Qawa`id al-`Aqa'id) in his Rasa'il and Ihya' `Ulum al-Din cf. al-Zabidi's commentary entitled Ithaf al-Sadat al-Muttaqin (2:19-33).
18. In Ibn al-Qayyim, I`lam al-Muwaqqi`in (1:30). As for the statement "whoever claims the existence of consensus is lying," al-Shawkani alone relates it thus in his Irshad al-Fuhul cf. `Abd Allah al-Ghumari, al-Sayf al-Battar (p. 40).
19. Ibn Muflih, al-Mubdi` (2:52).Ibn Duyan, Manar al-Sabil (1:118-119), al-Tahtawi, Hashiya `ala Maraqi al-Falah (p. 152).
20. `Aqida of Imam Ahmad as narrated from Abu al-Fadl al-Tamimi by Ibn Abi Ya`la in Tabaqat al-Hanabila.
21. In Ibn `Abd al-Barr, al-Istidhkar (11:82) cf. Ibn al-Qattan, Iqna` (2:772 §1392).
22. In Ibn Abi Ya`la, Tabaqat al-Hanabila (1:342-343).
23. Ibn Hajar, Talkhis al-Habir (3:26-27).
24. Miswaddat Al Taymiyya (p. 246-247).
25. Al-Shafi`i, Risala (§1805).
26. Narrated by al-Bayhaqi in his Madkhal as cited by Ibn al-Qayyim in I`lam al-Muwaqqi`in (2:282), al-San`ani in Irshad al-Nuqqad (p. 143), and Salih al-Fullani in Iqaz Himam Uli al-Absar (p. 103, p. 114).
27. Ibn Kathir, Tafsir (2:63), al-Zurqani, Sharh al-Muwatta' (4:251).
28. Al-Shawkani, al-Darari al-Mudiyya (1:417) and Nayl al-Awtar (9:188).
29. Sa`id Hawwa, Jawlat fil-Fiqhayn wa-Usulihima (p. 119).
30. Al-Shafi`i as quoted in Ibn al-Mughallis al-Zahiri's al-Mudih cf. Ibn al-Qattan, Iqna` (3:1343 §2472-2473).
31. Ibn Dawud al-Zahiri's al-Ijaz as cited by Ibn al-Qattan in his Iqna` (4:1744 §3403).
32. Cf. Ibn al-Qattan, Iqna` (1:113 §182; 1:254 §398; 4:1970-1971 §3820-3824).
33. Al-Qaradawi, Fiqh al-Awwaliyyat (p. 171).
34. In the episode entitled Shurut al-Fatwa of the TV program al-Muntada on 10 February 1998 and in the episode entitled As'ilatun lil-Mushahidin of the TV program al-Shari`atu wal-Hayat on 12 April 1998.
35. Al-Qaradawi in the Egyptian periodical al-Ahram no. 95.
36. Al-Qaradawi, Ghayr al-Muslimin fil-Mujtama` al-Islami (p. 46).
37. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibada fil-Islam (10th ed p. 98).
38. See http://www.themodernreligion.com/jihad.
39. In Ghayr al-Muslimin fil-Mujtama` al-Islami (p. 17) and al-Islam wal-Gharb (p. 19).
40. Al-Qaradawi, Ghayr al-Muslimin fil-Mujtama` al-Islami (p. 22) and in the TV program Ghayr al-Muslimin fi Zill al-Shari`at al-Islamiyya.
41. Al-Shari`atu wal-Hayat broadcast on al-Jazira channel, episode entitled Ghayr al-Muslimin fi Daw' al-Shari`a (12 October 1997).
42. In the periodical al-Raya no. 4696 (24 Sha`ban 1995).
43. Al-Qaradawi, al-Halal wal-Haram (p. 91), al-Marja`iyyat al-`Ulya (p. 243), Madkhal li-Dirasat al-Shari`a (p. 85), and on his program al-Shari`a wal-Hayat, episodes entitled al-Sunnatu Masdarun lil-Tashri` and al-Zawaj min Ghayr al-Muslimat.
44. Usama al-Sayyid, al-Qaradawi fil-`Ara' (p. 249).
45. In the newspaper al-Hayat (23 May 1998).
46. Cf. Shaykh al-Islam's Sharh Rawd al-Talib (1:410), Ibn Hajar's Fath al-Bari (4:121-127), Ibn `Abidin's Hashiya (2:100), al-Dardir's al-Sharh al-Kabir (1:469) and its marginalia by al-Dusuqi, the Hashiya (1:469), and al-Buhuti's Kashshaf al-Qina` (2:302).
47. In al-Wadi`i, Iskat (p. 174-175).
48. Narrated from Ibn `Umar by Ahmad, Ibn Majah, and Abu Dawud.
49. Cf. al-Wadi`i, Iskat (p. 174-175).
50. Narrated by `Abd al-Razzaq in his Musannaf (8:195 §14853, 10:369) and Abu `Ubayd in al-Amwal (p. 126-128) cf. Ibn Hajar, Diraya (2:162) and al-Zayla`i, Nasb al-Raya (4:549=4:55), also Ahmad with his chain as cited by Ibn Qudama in al-Mughni (9:279-280)
.51. Cf. Ibn `Abd al-Barr, Istidhkar (24:317), al-Qurtubi, Mufhim (4:456), Ibn al-Mundhir, Ijma` (p. 76 §473), al-Nawawi, Majmu` (9:227), Ibn Qudama, al-Sharh al-Kabir (4:41), Ibn al-Qattan, Iqna` (4:1774-1775 §3463-3464), and Ibn Hajar, Fath (4:415).
52. Cf. Ibn al-Mundhir, Ijma` (p. 77 §475), al-Shirazi, Muhadhdhab (1:268), al-Nawawi, Majmu` (9:230), and Ibn al-Qattan, Iqna` (4:1774 §3462).
53. In al-Majallat al-Zaytuniyya, vol. 4 (Ramadan 1359 / October 1940) p. 208.
54. Al-Maktab al-Islami edition (p. 48=p. 56).
55. Ibn al-`Arabi, Ahkam al-Qur'an (Sa`ada ed 1:229 = `Ilmiyya ed 2:43).
56. Al-Daraqutni also narrates it from Abu Hurayra, from the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace in his Sunan as stated by al-Zayla`i in Nasb al-Raya but both he and Ibn Hajar in the Fath and Diraya stated its chain was extremely flimsy as a Prophetic saying, as indicated also by Ibn Kathir in his Tafsir.
57. Ibn Nujaym, al-Bahr al-Ra'iq (dhaba'ih, beginning); Ibn Abi Zayd, Risala (dahaya) and Khalil's Mukhtasar; al-Shafi`i, al-Umm (dhakat, beginning); Ibn Qudama, `Umdat al-Fiqh (dhakat, beginning).
58. Ibn `Abd al-Barr, Tamhid (2:116, 2:128)
.59. Contrary to al-Albani's claim in Ghayat al-Maram (p. 46) and Irwa' al-Ghalil (§1248).
60. Narrated by Malik from Ja`far ibn Muhammad ibn `Ali ibn al-Husayn, from his father, from `Umar and `Abd al-Rahman ibn `Awf, and also narrated from Ja`far, from his father, from his grandfather, from `Umar and `Abd al-Rahman ibn `Awf. However, neither Ja`far's father nor his grandfather met `Umar and `Abd al-Rahman ibn`Awf cf. Ibn `Abd al-Barr, Tamhid (2:114-129).
61. Cf. al-Sarakhsi, Mabsut (4:193), Mukhtasar Khalil (p. 112), al-Shirazi, al-Muhadhdhab (2:35), al-Buhuti, Kashshaf (5:6)....
62. Al-Qari, Sharh `Ayn al-`Ilm (1:160, 1:166).
63. Cf. http://www.taghrib.org/arabic.
64. Al-Qurtubi, Tafsir (7:191).
65. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibada fil-Islam (p. 302-303).
66. Sayyid Qutb, Fi Zilal al-Qur'an (Dar al-Shuruq ed 4:2012).
67. Al-Qaradawi, al-Halal wal-Haram (p. 198). "The divorce of the woman in her menses does take effect as agreed by the consensus of the Imams of fatwa." Al-Zabidi, Ithaf al-Sadat al-Muttaqin (5:396).
68. Al-Qaradawi, al-Iman wal-Hayat (p. 149).
69. Al-Qaradawi, al-Iman wal-Hayat (p. 20-21).
70. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibadatu fil-Islam (p. 220-221).
71. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibadatu fil-Islam (p. 68).
72. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibada fil-Islam (p. 254).73. Al-Qaradawi, al-Iman wal-Hayat (p. 238)
.74. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibada fil-Islam (p. 54).
75. Al-Qaradawi, al-Halal wal-Haram (p. 200).
76. Al-Qaradawi, al-Halal wal-Haram (p. 119).
77. Al-Qaradawi, al-Waqt fi Hayat al-Muslim (p. 67).
78. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibada fil-Islam (p. 182).
79. Al-Qaradawi, Mushkilat al-Faqr (p. 15).
80. Al-Qaradawi in the newspaper al-Liwa' (3 July 1996 p. 15).
81. Al-Qaradawi, Mushkilat al-Faqr (p. 69-71).
82. Al-Qaradawi, al-`Ibada fil-Islam (p. 8).
83. Al-Qaradawi in the newspaper al-Liwa' on 26 October 1998.
84. Al-Qaradawi, al-Halal wal-Haram (p. 47, 247).
85. Ibn Hajar, Fath al-Bari (5:233), al-Shawkani, Nayl al-Awtar (6:4).
86. Such as in his book Islam and Secularism (p. 101).
87. Al-Qaradawi, al-Halal wal-Haram (p. 14), al-Khasa'is al-`Ammatu lil-Islam (p. 160).
88. Cf. Ibn Abi Hatim, al-Tabari, al-Nahhas, al-Baghawi, Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Qurtubi, al-Razi, Ibn `Abd al-Salam, Ibn Juzay, al-Mawardi, al-Zamakhshari, Jalalayn, Ibn Kathir, al-Biqa`i, Ibn `Adil, al-Shawkani....
89. Al-Qaradawi, al-Khasa'is al-`Ammatu lil-Islam (p. 77).
90. Al-Qaradawi, al-Sahwatu al-Islamiyya wa-Humum al-Watan al-`Arabi wal-Islami (p. 221).

DEAD HEAR 10

A few Hadith on this topic
1)
Imam Ahmad and Hakim reported Hadrat 'Aisha (radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anha) as saying, "When I used to go in my room after my husband and father were buried there, I would take off my overcoat. I never took it off after Hadrat 'Umar (radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh) was buried. Because, he was not my near kin. I was restrained by my sense of modesty because he was there.

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya (died in 751/1350), who is called "'Allama" (eminent master) and whose writings are used as documents in the Wahhabite book, is quoted elsewhere [Al-basa'ir li-munkiri't tawassuli bi-ahli'l-maqabir, originally edited in Pakistan; Istanbul impression, 1980, p 22.] as having written in his Kitab ar-Ruh: "When someone visit a grave, the dead person in the grave recognizes the visitor and hears his voice. He becomes cheerful and responds to his greeting. This is not peculiar to martyrs; it is the same for other dead people, too. This is not restricted to a certain time, either; it is always as such.

2)
It is written in the Sahihain of al-Bukhari and Muslim: "Allahu ta'ala sent all the prophets to our Prophet on the Miraj night. He became the imam, and they performed two rak'as of salat." The salat includes bowing (ruku') and prostration (sajda). And this shows that they performed salat corporally, with their bodies. Musa's ('alaihi 's-salam) performing salat in his grave also indicates this. It was declared in the hadith ash-Sharif quoted in the book Mishkat [Last volume, section on the Miraj chapter one.] on the authority of Muslim, "Near the Kaba, the disbelievers of the Quraish asked me how the Bait al-muqaddas was. I had not looked at it carefully. I become very stressful. Allahu ta'ala showed me. I saw myself among prophets. Musa ('alaihi 's-salam) was performing salat standing up. He was thin. His hair was not untidy or drooping. He was like a brave young man of the Shan'a tribe [of the Yaman]. 'Isa ('alaihi 's-salam) looked like Urwat ibn Masud as-Saqafi."

These hadiths prove that prophets are alive in Allah's audience. Their bodies have become ethereal like their souls. They are not dense or solid. They may become visible in material and spiritual worlds. It is for this reason that prophets can be seen in soul and body. The hadith ash-Sharif explains that Musa and 'Isa ('alaihima 's-Salam) were performing salat, which involves physical actions that are to be done with the body, not with the soul. Muhammad's ('alaihi 's-salam) description of Musa ('alaihi 's-salam) with medium height, lean and thin, and with tidy hair shows that he saw not his soul bot his body.

3)
Said ibn Musayyab said, "The adhan and iqama were heard being recited in the al-Hujrat an-Nabawiyya when the adhan could not be called and salat could not be performed in Masjid an-Nabi," on the day when the men of Yazid tortured the people of al-Madinat al-munawwara -the 'Harra' event that took place in 61 A.H. Ibn Taymiyya [d. 728 A.H. (1328)], too, quoted this in his book Iqtida' as-sirati 'l-mustaqim.

4)
l-Imam an-Nawawi, in his commentary of the Sahih of Muslim, says, "The dead feel pain and are offended by the loud cry of their relatives." Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari [d. Baghdad, 310 A.H. (923)] said so, too. Qadi 'Iyad al-Maliki (rahmat-Allahi ta'ala 'alaih) [d. Morocco, 544 A.H. (1150)] said that this was the best interpretation and noted that Rasulullah (sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam) prevented a woman from crying loudly over her son's death. "Oh Muslims! Do not offend your brothers in graves by crying loudly," he ordered. This hadith ash-Sharif shows that the dead hear and are offended and feel pain for their relatives' crying. Rasulullah (sall-Allahu ta'ala 'alaihi wa sallam) declared, "Say 'As-salamu 'alaikum' when you greet the ones in graves." This is why Muslims say, "As-salamu 'alaikum! Ya ahla dari 'l-qawmi 'l-Muminin." Obviously, such a greeting can be said to those who can hear and understand.

5)
The dead recognize the people who visit them. Abu Bakr 'Abdullah ibn Abi 'd-dunya [d. Baghdad, 261 A.H. (894)] wrote in Kitab al-qubur: "Hadrat 'Aisha (radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anha) reported the Prophet as saying, 'When a person visits the grave of his brother-in-Islam and sits by the grave, he recognizes him and replies to his greeting.' A hadith ash-Sharif narrated by Abu Huraira (radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh) declares, 'If anyone visits the grave of an acquaintance of his and greets him, the dead person recognizes him and replies to him. If he greets a dead Muslim whom he does not know, the dead person replies to his greeting.' " Yusuf ibn 'Abd al-Barr [d. Shatiba, 463 A.H. (1071)] and 'Abd al-Haqq, the author of the book Ah'kam, said that this hadith ash-Sharif was sahih. Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya quoted this hadith ash-Sharif in Kitab ar-ruh and gave many other khabars and added that there were many more khabars to be written in this subject.

The word 'ziyara' (visit) was used in the hadith ash-Sharif, which would not have been used if the dead had not recognized the person who came to the grave. In all languages and every dictionary, this word is defined as the meeting of people who know and understand one another. And the word "Salamun 'alaikum" is to be said to persons who will understand it.

Note :


Ibn al-Human wrote in Fat'h al-Qadir, his annotation of Al-hidaya: "The Hanafi 'ulama', commenting on 'oath,' said, 'The dead do not hear. If one who has sworn not to talk with somebody talks with that same person when the latter is dead, his oath will not be broken.' " However, it was said, "The words of the Hanafi 'ulama' on 'oath' are based on [linguistic] custom. These words do not show that the dead do not hear. The Hanafi 'ulama', in explaining the knowledge about 'oath,' say, 'If one swears not to eat meat but then eats fish, his oath will not be broken.' However, Allahu ta'ala said 'pleasant meat' for fish. But the flesh of fish is different from meat according to custom. Similarly, if a person swears not to talk with someone and talks to him after he dies, his oath will not be broken. Because 'talking' means 'talking face to face' according to custom. A dead person hears, but since he does not talk in a conventional audible way, the two will have not talked with each other according to custom. This is why his oath will not be broken." It does not mean that it is not broken because the dead person did not hear.

6)

One of the proofs documenting that the dead see the living is the hadith ash-Sharif, "Every dead person is shown his [future] place in the next world every morning and every evening. The one who deserves Paradise is shown his place in Paradise, and the one who deserves Hell is shown his place in Hell," which is related by al-Bukhari. The word 'shown' means that they see. "They" declared Allahu ta'ala, referring to the people of Pharaoh, "are shown the fire every morning and evening!" 'Shown' would mean nothing if the dead did not see. Abu Nuaym related on the authority of 'Amr ibn Dinar, "An angel holds the soul when a person dies. The soul watches the body being washed and shrouded. 'Hear how men praise you,' he is told." A hadith ash-Sharif narrated on the authority of 'Amr ibn Dinar by Ibn Abi 'd-dunya declares: "A person knows what happens to his household after his death. He looks at those who wash and shroud him." The hadith sahih quoted by al-Bukhari declares: "The angels munkar and nakir, after questioning, say, 'look at your place in Hell! Allahu ta'ala changed it and granted you a place in Paradise.' He looks and sees both of them."


7)
hadith ash-Sharif quoted by Ibn Abi 'd-dunya and by al-Baihaki in Shu'ab al-iman on the authority of Abu Huraira (radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anhum) declares, "When a person comes near the grave of an acquaintance of his and greets, the dead person recognizes and greets him. If he comes near the grave of a person he does not know and greets, the dead person answers him." This hadith ash-Sharif, too, indicates that the dead see the person who visits or stands by their graves. If they did not see, it would not have been noted in the hadith ash-Sharif that a dead person answers the greeting of someone whom he did not know before death. The former recognizes and answers; the latter does not know but still answers the greeting.

8)
The hadith ash-Sharif reported by 'Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak and Ibn Abi 'd-dunya on the authority of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari (radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh) declares, "Your deeds are made known to the dead. They become happy when they see your good deeds. They become sad when they see your bad deeds." It was said, "Fear Allahu ta'ala because of your brothers in the graves! Your deeds are shown to them," in a hadith ash-Sharif quoted by al-Hakim at-Tirmidhi, Ibn Abi 'd-dunya and al-Baihaki in his book Shu'ab al-iman on the authority of Numan ibn Bashir. These two hadiths refer to all the dead. Hadrat Abu 'd-darda (radi-Allahu ta'ala 'anh) said, "Your deeds are shown to the dead. They become happy or sad upon seeing them."

9)
Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya quoted, in his book Kitab ar-ruh and on the authority of Ibn Abi 'd-dunya, Sadaqat ibn Sulaiman al-Jafari as saying, "I was a man of bad habits. I repented of them after my father's death. I gave up my impetuosities. Once I committed a fault. Thereupon, I dreamt of my father saying, 'Oh my son! I have been feeling comfortable in my grave with your beautiful deeds. What you do is shown to us. Your deeds have been like those of the sulaha'. But I felt very sad and ashamed of what you did recently. Do not make me feel ashamed among the dead nearby." " This narration reflects that the dead who are not acquaintances can also be aware of the events in the world. Because, his father said, "Do not make me feel ashamed among the dead nearby," referring to the deeds of his son shown to him. He would not say so if the unacquainted dead did not understand that his son's deeds were being shown to the father.

10)


It is narrated by Ibn Al-Mubarak who said : One of the Ansar narrated to us from al-Minhal ibn ‘Amr that the latter hears Sa’id ibn Al-Musayyib say :”Not one day passes except the Prophet’s s.a.w. community is shown to him morning and evening. He knows them by their marks and their actions, thereby giving witness concerning them. Allah said,”But how (will it be with them) when we bring of every people a witness, and we bring you (O Muhammad) as witness against these?”(4:41)

Narrated by Ibn Al-Mubarak in al-Zuhd(pg. 42), Ibn kathir in his Tafsir 1:500, al-Qurtubi in is al-Tadhkira (1:335), Ibn Hajar Al-Asqalani in Fath Al-Bari (9:99) and Al-Mubarakfuri in Tuhfa al-Ahwadhi (8:300).

11)

Ibrahim Ibn Shayban said: “One year I went on a pilgrimage then I came to Madinah and approached the grave of the prophet s.a.w. and said Salam to him. I heard, coming from inside the room, the reply:”Wa’alaikum al-salam.”

Narrated from Muhammad ibn Hibban by Abu Nu’aim in Al-Targhib (#102), Ibn Al-Najjar in Akhbar al-Madinah (pg. 146), Ibn Jawzi al-Qayyim in Muthir al-Gharam (pg. 486-498), Al-Fayruzabadi in Al-Silat wal Bushr (pg. 54) and by Ibn Taimiyya in Iatida’ al-Sirat al-Mustaqim (pg. 373 to 374)

12)

Ibn taimiyya was asked if the dead are aware of the living who visit them. Ibn taimiyya replied : “There is no doubt that they are aware of the living that visit them.” And Ibn Taymiyyah quoted the following Hadith in his support: “The proof of dead awareness comes from two Sahih Books of Bukhari and Muslim in which Rasool Allah(alayhi salaat wa salaam) said that when people have buried a dead person and leave for home, the dead can hear the thumps of sandaled feet of those who leave.”

(Majma al-Fatawa by Ibn Taymiyyah, vol. 24, page 362 )

DEAD 9

Abu Umama said,"When I die, do with me as the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam) ordered us, saying, 'When one of your brothers dies and you have smoothed over the earth upon his grave, let one of you stand at the head of the grave and say, "O So and so Son of So and so" for he will hear, though he cannot reply - and then say, "O So and So, son of So and so," and he will say, "Direct me, Allah have mercy upon you mercy on you," though you will not hear it, but should say, "Remember the creed upon which you departed from this world, the testification that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His slave and messenger, and that you accepted Allah as your Lord, Islam as your religion, Muhammad as your prophet, and the Koran as your exemplar." For then the two angels Munkar and Nakir will take each other's hand and say, "Let us go, what is there to keep us beside someone who has been instructed how to make his plea?"A Man said, "O Messenger of Alllah, what if one does not know the name of his mother?" and he answered, 'Then one should mention his descent from his mother Eve, saying, "O so and so son of Eve"Tabarani related this hadith in his al-Mu'jam al kabir and Ibn Hajar al Asqalani has said that "its transmission is sound"

[Talkhis al-habir fi takhrij ahadith al-Rafi'i al-kabir]

Arabic for the above hadith from Imam Ibn Hajars Talkhis, Vol 2, # 796:عن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم الطبراني عن أبي أمامة إذا أنا مت فاصنعوا بي كما أمرنا رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم أن نصنع بموتانا أمرنا رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم فقال إذا مات أحد من إخوانكم فسويتم التراب على قبره فليقم أحدكم على رأس قبره ثم ليقل يا فلان بن فلانة فإنه يسمعه ولا يجيب ثم يقول يا فلان بن فلانة فإنه يستوي قاعدا ثم يقول يا فلان بن فلانة فإنه يقول أرشدنا يرحمك الله ولكن لا تشعرون فليقل اذكر ما خرجت عليه من الدنيا شهادة أن لا إله إلا الله وأن محمدا عبده ورسوله وأنك رضيت بالله ربا وبالإسلام دينا وبمحمد نبيا وبالقرآن إماما فإن منكرا ونكيرا يأخذ كل واحد منهما بيد صاحبه ويقول انطلق بنا ما يقعدنا عند من لقن حجته قال فقال رجل يا رسول الله فإن لم يعرف أمه قال ينسبه إلى أمه حواء يا فلان بن حواءوإسناده صالح

Sahih Muslim, Book 1, Number 0220:

Narrated Amr ibn al-'As:Ibn Shamasah said: We went to Amr ibn al-'As and he was about to die. He wept for a long time and turned his face towards the wall. His son said: Did the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) not give you tidings of this? Did the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) not give you tidings of this? He (the narrator) said: He turned his face (towards the audience) and said: The best thing which we can count upon is the testimony that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah. Verily I have passed through three phases.

It is mentioned in Ibn Hajars Talkhis (in the same section as the previous hadith):وفي صحيح مسلم عن


عمرو بن العاص أنه قال لهم في حديث عند موته إذا دفنتموني أقيموا حول قبري قدر ما ينحر جزور ويقسم لحمها حتى أستأنس بكم وأعلم ماذا أراجع رسل ربي وقد تقدم حديث واسألوا له التثبت فإنه الآن يسألIn Sahih Muslim itself:‏حدثنا ‏ ‏محمد بن المثنى العنزي ‏ ‏وأبو معن الرقاشي ‏ ‏وإسحق بن منصور ‏ ‏كلهم ‏ ‏عن ‏ ‏أبي عاصم ‏ ‏واللفظ ‏ ‏لابن المثنى ‏ ‏حدثنا ‏ ‏الضحاك يعني أبا عاصم ‏ ‏قال أخبرنا ‏ ‏حيوة بن شريح ‏ ‏قال حدثني ‏ ‏يزيد بن أبي حبيب ‏ ‏عن ‏ ‏ابن شماسة المهري ‏ ‏قال ‏ ‏حضرنا ‏ ‏عمرو بن العاص ‏ ‏وهو ‏ ‏في سياقة ‏ ‏الموت فبكى طويلا وحول وجهه إلى الجدار فجعل ابنه يقول يا أبتاه أما بشرك رسول الله ‏ ‏صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏ ‏بكذا أما بشرك رسول الله ‏ ‏صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏ ‏بكذا قال فأقبل بوجهه فقال إن أفضل ما نعد شهادة أن لا إله إلا الله وأن ‏ ‏محمدا رسول الله ‏ ‏إني كنت على أطباق ثلاث لقد رأيتني وما أحد أشد بغضا لرسول الله ‏ ‏صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏ ‏مني ولا أحب إلي أن أكون قد استمكنت منه فقتلته فلو مت على تلك الحال لكنت من أهل النار فلما جعل الله الإسلام في قلبي أتيت النبي ‏ ‏صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏ ‏فقلت ابسط يمينك فلأبايعك فبسط يمينه قال فقبضت يدي قال ما لك يا ‏ ‏عمرو ‏ ‏قال قلت أردت أن أشترط قال تشترط بماذا قلت أن يغفر لي قال ‏ ‏أما علمت أن الإسلام يهدم ما كان قبله وأن الهجرة تهدم ما كان قبلها وأن الحج يهدم ما كان قبله وما كان أحد أحب إلي من رسول الله ‏ ‏صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏ ‏ولا أجل في عيني منه وما كنت أطيق أن أملأ عيني منه إجلالا له ولو سئلت أن أصفه ما أطقت لأني لم أكن أملأ عيني منه ولو مت على تلك الحال لرجوت أن أكون من أهل الجنة ثم ولينا أشياء ما أدري ما حالي فيها فإذا أنا مت فلا تصحبني نائحة ولا نار فإذا دفنتموني ‏ ‏فشنوا ‏ ‏علي التراب شنا ثم أقيموا حول قبري قدر ما تنحر ‏ ‏جزور ‏ ‏ويقسم لحمها حتى أستأنس بكم وأنظر ماذا أراجع به رسل ربي See: كون الإسلام يهدم ما قبله وكذا الهجرة والحج الإيمان صحيح مسلم


إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُسْمِعُ مَن يَشَآءُ]

(Verily, Allah makes whom He wills to hear,) means. He guides them to listen to the proof and accept it and adhere it.

[وَمَآ أَنتَ بِمُسْمِعٍ مَّن فِى الْقُبُورِ]

(but you cannot make hear those who are in graves.) means, `just as the dead cannot benefit from guidance and the call to truth after they have died as disbelievers and ended up in the graves, so too you cannot help these idolators who are decreed to be doomed, and you cannot guide them

.http://www.tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=35&tid=43033



[فَتَوَكَّلْ عَلَى اللَّهِ]

(So, put your trust in Allah in all your affairs, and convey the Message of your Lord
.[إِنَّكَ عَلَى الْحَقِّ الْمُبِينِ]
(surely, you are on manifest truth.) meaning, you are following manifest truth, even though you are opposed by those who oppose you because they are doomed. The Word of your Lord has been justified against them, so that they will not believe even if all the signs are brought to them.

Allah says:[إِنَّكَ لاَ تُسْمِعُ الْمَوْتَى]

(Verily, you cannot make the dead to hear) meaning, you cannot cause them to hear anything that will benefit them. The same applies to those over whose hearts is a veil and in whose ears is deafness of disbelief. Allah says:

[وَلاَ تُسْمِعُ الصُّمَّ الدُّعَآءَ إِذَا وَلَّوْاْ مُدْبِرِينَ]وَمَآ أَنتَ بِهَادِى الْعُمْىِ عَن ضَلَـلَتِهِمْ إِن تُسْمِعُ إِلاَّ مَن يُؤْمِنُ بِـئَايَـتِنَا فَهُم مُّسْلِمُونَ-]

(nor can you make the deaf to hear the call, when they flee, turning their backs. Nor can you lead the blind out of their error. You can only make to hear those who believe in Our Ayat, so they submit (became Muslims).) meaning, those who have hearing and insight will respond to you, those whose hearing and sight are of benefit to their hearts and who are humble towards Allah and to the Message that comes to them through the mouths of the Messengers, may peace be upon them.



Touching on the issue of whether dead people hear or not, our view is as follows. It is well known that hearing in living people is actually a property of spirit (al-Ruh). The ear is only an organ or rather instrument of hearing, nothing more. Since the spirit of the dead person does not become extinct with the extinction of his body, the belief that the spirit hears is not farfetched. One cannot claim that it does not hear due to loss of the organ of hearing by reason of the body's perishing. For we say that it sometimes hears even without that organ just as in visions. Thus, the spirit talks and hears in its sleep just as it sees in dreams without mediation of an instrument, that is, an organ of sensation. Then, is it too much for the rational person, after experiencing sound and sight in one's sleep by the sole means of the spirit and without the slightest participation of the organs of sound and sight, to believe that after the spirit separates from the body it hears and sees even without the organs of sound and sight?Yet and still, the Wahhabis do not extend their denial that the dead can hear to martyrs because Allah says: "Do not consider those who are slain for Allah's sake dead, but they are alive receiving sustenance with their Lord" (3:169). There is no doubt that the rank of prophets is not beneath the rank of martyrs: they, like them, are alive with their Lord, receiving sustenance. It has been narrated that the Prophet said: "I passed by Musa on the night of my Journey while he was praying in his grave."[79] And on the authority of Anas the Prophet said: "Prophets are alive in their graves [praying]."[80] Abu Ya`la al-Mawsili and al-Bazzar relate this. On the authority of Ibn `Umar the Prophet said: "I saw Jesus, Moses, and Abraham, on them be peace." This is related by Bukhari, Muslim and Imam Malik in his Muwatta'. Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Husayn al-Bayhaqi recorded in Shu`ab al-Iman on the authority of Abu Hurayra that the Prophet said: "Whoever sends blessings on me at my grave, I will hear him, and whoever sends blessings on me from afar, I am informed about it."[81] Therefore, if the premise prophets are alive is affirmed, then, one must also affirm the premise prophets can hear; for hearing is a concomitant property of life.It is incorrect to invoke the fact that since the life of prophets and martyrs in the barzakh or "isthmus life" is different from the life of this world they cannot hear. Even if we grant that the two lives are each of a different kind, nevertheless affirming "They are alive" with any kind of life is sufficient to establish that they hear and that their tawassul and supplication for help follows as a matter of course.Finally, the organ of hearing itself, in prophets, is not voided by death: for their bodies do not suffer the corruption of the grave as we know from the noble hadith: "Allah has forbidden the earth to consume the bodies of Prophets."[82] If we were to slacken the reins and say it is true that the bodies of prophets undergo corruption in their graves as the Wahhabis claim, having already affirmed that they are alive and receiving sustenance (3:169), then, this would simply count as affirmation that they hear even though they lack an organ for this purpose according to the view we expounded above.We have abundant evidence in hadith which provide evidence that other than prophets and martyrs among the dead can hear. Cited by Bukhari and Muslim and the narrators of the Sunan is the hadith transmitted on the authority of Ibn `Umar who said: "The Messenger of Allah spoke to the People (buried) in the Well saying: "Have you found out that what your Lord had promised you is true?" then someone exclaimed: "Are you calling out to the dead!" The Prophet replied: "You do not hear better than they do, except they do not respond."" And in Bukhari and Muslim we find the hadith of Anas on the authority of Abu Talha that the Prophet called to them: "O Abu Jahl Ibn Hisham! O Umayya Ibn Khalaf! O `Utba ibn Rabi`a! Have you not found out that what your Lord promised you is true? for I have found that what he has promised me is true." `Umar said to him: "O Messenger of Allah, how do you address bodies devoid of spirit?" The Prophet replied: "By Him Who holds my life in His Hands! You do not hear what I am saying to them better than they do." Similarly, it has been affirmed in Bukhari and Muslim on the authority of Anas that the Prophet said: "Surely, when the servant of Allah is placed in his grave and his companions in this life turn away from it, he hears the thumps of their sandaled feet."[83]Abu Nu`aym Al-Isbahani has mentioned with his chain of transmission from `Ubayd Ibn Marzuq who said: "A woman of Madina, named Umm Mihjan, used to sweep the mosque, then she died. The Prophet was not told of this event. Thereafter, he passed over her grave and queried: "What is this?" Those present replied: "Umm Mihjan." He said: "The one who swept the mosque?" They answered: "Yes." Thereupon the people lined up and prayed for her. Then he addressed her: "Which work of yours did you find more favored?" They exclaimed: "O Messenger of Allah, can she hear you?" He replied: "You cannot hear better than she does." Then it is mentioned that she answered him: "Sweeping the mosque." The chain of transmission in this hadith is interrupted. There are others more like it.[84]It is narrated concerning `A'isha, may Allah be pleased with her, when she heard the hadith about the dead hearing, she denied it and said: "How does the Prophet say something like that when Allah has said: "You cannot make those to hear who are in the graves" (35:22). While her opinion does not affirm the hearing of the dead as Ibn Taymiyya notes in his Legal Opinions (Fatawa) and in other places, we have no excuse for following it. For the question necessarily concerns a well-known matter of faith which no one has permission to deny. In fact `A'isha has also narrated that the Prophet said, as Ibn Rajab has noted in Ahwal al-Qubur: "Surely they know now that what I said to them is true." This narration of hers supports those which say that the dead hear, for if it is possible for a dead man to know, surely it is possible for him also to hear. Therefore, to affirm that they do know is necessarily also to affirm that they hear.As for the Qur'anic verses: "You cannot make those who are in the graves hear" (35:22) and: "You cannot make the dead hear..." (27:80) there is no evidence in them for the denial of hearing in the case of the dead in the absolute sense, it is only evidence for denying hearing for those who benefit thereof.[85] That is because what is meant by the phrase: "Those in the graves" in the first verse and by "the dead" in the second verse are the unbelievers, who are compared to the dead lying in their graves. Just as the dead do not hear with a beneficial kind of hearing -- that is, with a hearing made complete by the mutual exchange of address between the hearer and the speaker -- in the same way the unbelievers do not hear the warning signs that the Prophet addresses to them in a way that benefits them by guiding them to faith in Allah.What otherwise confirms the above is that unqualified hearing is also an established attribute of the unbelievers: they hear what the Prophet said to them; but they derived no benefit from it. This is confirmed by Allah's saying: "If Allah had recognized in them any good, He would, indeed, have made them hear: if He made them hear (as it stands), they would turn away" (8:23). Hence, what is meant by "hear" when He says "He would indeed have made them hear" is a hearing which brings benefit to the hearer and when He says: "If He made them hear (as it stands)" He means hearing which carries no benefit. If this were otherwise, the sense of the passage would be corrupt inasmuch as the verse would, then, be a syllogism where the middle term (He makes them hear) is reiterated; the end result would be: "If Allah had recognized any good in them, they would have turned away." This conclusion is absurd and contradictory, as you can see, since it would entail that the turning back take place -- which is evil -- despite the fact that Allah recognized good in them. Allah's recognition would be, in that case, a misrecognition with respect to the true state of the unbelievers -- Exalted is Allah high above such a possibility.The above cited two verses point to a further meaning: that what is meant by the hearing negated in both cases is the hearing connected with the faculty of guidance just as the context of the two verses indicate. The meaning then is that you do not guide the unbelievers by yourself, O Muhammad! because they are like dead men and that you cannot cause the dead to hear by yourself. The only agent causing them to hear is Allah as the Qur'an says: "You do not guide whom you like but Allah guides whom he wishes" (28:56).One does not say: "Just as the one making the dead to hear in reality is Allah, likewise, the one making the living to hear is in reality none other than He." For Allah is the Creator of all actions whatsoever, just as the true doctrine on the matter teaches. What, then, is the motivation for illustrating Allah's agency with the hearing of the dead? What we say is this:1- The fact that Allah alone is the one making the dead to hear is a matter admitting of no ambiguity even for a blind man. As for His being the one causing the living to hear in reality, it is not said like that.[86] This is because one might falsely suppose that the Agent causing hearing in the one spoken to is the actual speaker, on the grounds that the hearing of the one spoken to directly follows the external voice issuing from the mouth of the person who addresses him. Hence to exemplify Allah's agency with the hearing of the living is improper. To give an example requires that its content be unambiguously clear; this is not the case in the category of living persons as we have explained.[87]2- Since the unbelievers were alive, to illustrate the fact that the Prophet cannot make them hear by comparing them to the living whom the Prophet cannot cause to hear comes close to fashioning a comparison between a thing and itself, as we find in that given by the poet who said:Surrounded as we are with water,We sit like people encircled by water.The Wahhabis respond, with regard to the hadith of the People of the Well, that the hearing experienced by the dead on the occasion when the Prophet questioned them was a miracle proper only to him. It does not count as evidence, they claim, that these dead were also capable of hearing the speech of someone else. The answer to this is that the miracle is not a miracle unless its manifestation is a phenomenon experienced by other persons like the speaking of pebbles. The Companions were hearing the voice of the pebbles glorifying Allah while they were being held in the palm of the Prophet's hand.[88] But it is impossible that the dead's hearing of the Prophet speaking to them be a miracle since it was not manifest to anyone but himself. Furthermore, the hadith reporting that the dead hear the thumping of sandaled feet (Bukhari and Muslim) contravenes such a phenomenon being a miracle in the case of the People of the Well. For it indicates that dead people also hear the talk of other people besides the Prophet.The Wahhabis further respond that the object intended when the Prophet spoke to the dead was admonition of the living and not to cause an act of understanding on the part of the dead. The answer to this is that if the intended object of his speech was admonition of the living, why did `Umar ask: "How do you speak to bodies devoid of spirit?" out of astonishment at his speaking to them? I do not believe that fatuousness has pushed the Wahhabis to the point of thinking that after almost three-quarters of a millennium they understand what the Prophet meant better than his Companion, `Umar. Besides, the answer the Prophet gave by itself constitutes denial that what he aimed at was admonition because he replied: "You do not hear better than they." This answer is obviously not suitable as an admonition. On the contrary, it is a clear rejection of `Umar's sense of farfetchedness in the Prophet's behavior and astonishment because of it.The Wahhabis, finally, answer that the Prophet only spoke to the dead out of personal conviction that they hear. Thereafter, they claim, the two verses of the Qur'an were revealed to correct his belief. The response to this is that it is unallowable that the Prophet believed anything like that of his own accord. On the contrary, it came about necessarily in virtue of revelation and inspiration from his Lord. Allah said of him: "He does not speak of his own desire" (53:3). This is especially the case since he did not arrive at his knowledge of the matter by merely exercising his faculty of reason. Rather, it came about by way of revelation and inspiration as we have said.One piece of evidence that indicates that Allah quickens the dead in their graves so that they hear is His statement retelling the avowal of those who said: "Our Lord, twice hast Thou put us to death and twice hast Thou quickened us" (40:11). For what is meant by the first putting to death is the putting to death before resting in the grave. What is meant in the case of the other is the putting to death after resting in the grave. If Allah did not give life in the graves a second time, it would be impossible to put to death a second time. The Wahhabis answer this by saying that the first putting to death is the state of nonexistence prior to creation and the second putting to death is after creation. In truth, this is amusing even for children because putting to death can take place only after the occurrence of life and there is no life prior to Allah's creation of life. As for their response that the first putting to death is the putting to death of people after their life in the world of atoms, it is weaker than the first answer. People in the world of atoms were no different than spirits which Allah created and asked: "Am I not your Lord? and they answered, saying: Yes!" (7:172). Moreover, the reader knows that death is defined as a separation of the soul from the body. Hence, there is no death prior to embodiment, although it is possible for Allah to annihilate spirits after creating them. But that has nothing to do with death as we have just defined it.Finally, the Wahhabiyya usher forth evidence for the incapacity of dead people to hear on the basis of a legal ruling of the Shari`a that ulama apply in the case where a man performs certain acts using such words as: "If I address X, my wife is divorced" -- or: "my slave-girl is free." Now, if that man speaks to X after his death, then the divorce is invalid and the act of manumission null. They conclude that the basis of nullity and voidness is the fact that dead person lacks the faculty of hearing.We refuse to grant that the basis of the ruling for the ulama is the absence of hearing on the part of the dead. On the contrary, they base themselves on what they know of custom, namely that it routinely makes the stipulating of oaths like the above, conditional on life. The whole benefit of speaking is the mutual exchange of communication, which does not place when one party of the communication is dead. Conversing with a dead person, therefore, does not qualify as speech only inasmuch as his death renders him powerless to respond -- not because he is powerless to hear.


[79]A sound (sahih) tradition related on the authority of Anas and others by Muslim, Nasa'i, Bayhaqi in the Dala'il al-nubuwwa and the Hayat al-anbiya, and Suyuti in Anba' al-adhkya' and Sharh al-sudur. Nawawi said in his commentary on this hadith: "The work of the next world is all dhikr and du`a" (Sharh Sahih Muslim 1/73/267).


[80]A sound (sahih) tradition related on the authority of Anas ibn Malik (r) by al-Bazzar in his Musnad, Abu Ya`la in his Musnad, Ibn `Adi in al-Kamil fi al-du`afa', Tammam al-Razi in al-Fawa'id, al-Bayhaqi in Hayat al-anbiya' fi quburihim, Abu Nu`aym in Akhbar Asbahan, Ibn `Asakir in Tarikh Dimashq, al-Haythami in Majma` al-zawa'id (8:211), al-Suyuti in Anba' al-adhkiya' bi-hayat al-anbiya' (#5), and al-Albani, in Silsilat al-ahadith al-sahihah (#621). Suyuti adds: "The life of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, in his grave, and [also] that of the rest of the prophets is known to us as definitive knowledge (`ilman qat`iyyan)." Sakhawi, Ibn Hajar al-`Asqalani's student, said: "As for us (Muslims) we believe and we confirm that he (s) is alive and provided for in his grave" (al-Qawl al-badi` p. 161). Ibn al-Qayyim said in Kitab al-Ruh p. 58: "It is obligatory knowledge to know that his body (s) is in the earth tender and humid (i.e. as in life), and when the Companions asked him: 'How is our greeting presented to you after you have turned to dust' he replied: 'Allah has defended the earth from consuming the flesh of Prophets,' and if his body were not in his grave he would not have given this answer."

[81]Abu al-Shaykh cites it in Kitab al-Salat `ala al-nabi ("Jala' al-afham" p. 22), and Ibn Hajar says in Fath al-Bari (6:379): "Abu al-Shaykh cites it with a good chain (sanad jayyid)." Bayhaqi mentions it in Hayat al-anbiya and Shu`ab al-iman (2:218 #1583).

[82]A sound (sahih) tradition related on the authority of Aws ibn Aws al-Thaqafi by: Ahmad in his Musnad, Ibn Abi Shaybah in the Musannaf, Abu Dawud in the Sunan, Nisa'i in his Sunan, Ibn Majah in his Sunan, Darimi in his Musnad, Ibn Khuzaymah in his Sahih, Ibn Hibban in his Sahih, Hakim in the Mustadrak, Tabarani in his Kabir, Bayhaqi in Hayat al-anbiya', Suyuti in Anba' al-adkhiya, Dhahabi who confirmed al-Hakim's grading, and Nawawi in the Adhkar. Another version in Ibn Majah has this addition: "And the Prophet of Allah is alive and provided for (fa nabiyyullahi hayyun yurzaq)." Bayhaqi mentions it also in the Sunan al-kubra.

[83]See also the "Chapter on the Proofs Used to Establish the Knowledge that the Dead Hear in the Graves" in Ibn al-Qayyim's al-Ruh and similar chapters in Suyuti's Sharh al-sudur, Ibn al-Kharrat's al-`Aqiba, Ibn Rajab's Ahwal al-qubur, Subki's Shifa' al-siqam and others.

[84]Ibn Hajar says in al-Isaba (8:187): "Mihjana, also named Umm Mihjan: a black woman who used to sweep the mosque [in Madina]. She is mentioned in the books of sound (sahih) hadith but without being named."

[85]See Ibn Qayyim's section "That the Hearing of the Dead is Real" in Al-Ruh (Madani ed. 1984) p. 59: "The actual meaning of these verses (35:22 and 27:80) is: You cannot make those hear whom Allah does not wish to hear, for you are only a Warner. That is: Allah has only given you the ability to warn, for which he has made you responsible; not that of making those to hear whom Allah does not wish to hear."

[86]I.e. it is inappropriate to use such terms.

[87]Zahawi's point is that Allah highlighted the power to make the dead hear in the Qur'an as an example of His agency, because in the case of the dead, His agency is more evident to the mind than in the case of the living, although He equally effects the hearing of both the living and the dead.[88]Hadith of Abu Dharr related by Haythami in "Majma` al-zawa'id" with a sound (sahih) chain, chapter entitled `Alamat al-nubuwwa (Signs of Prophethood): "The Prophet took pebbles and they glorified Allah in his hand; he put them down and they became silent..."