How Easily Some Traditions Get Entrenched
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
18July 2022
Muhammad,
Foreseeing the Harm That Could Be Done Falsely In His Name, Pronounced That No
Hadees Attributed To Him Is To Be Deemed Valid If It Runs Counter To the Spirit
of Al-Furqan
Main
Points:
1. Islam, at no
juncture, ever approved of stoning to death.
2. The Hadees
claiming that Muhammad sentenced adulterous women to be stoned to death have
been discredited by serious scholars.
3. How easily
some traditions can be established and how difficult it's to uproot them once
they've acquired ' legitimacy'.
-----
Currently,
I'm reading a very interesting and immensely readable book, “The Comic
Teachings of Mulla Nasruddin and Other Treasures “written by Imam Jamal
Rahman. The author has beautifully explained how easily some traditions can be
established and how difficult it's to uproot them once they've acquired '
legitimacy' with the passage of time.
The best
example being the most barbaric practice of Sangsaar or stoning to death
for adulterous women though there's no verse in the Qur'an that sanctions this
barbaric practice. It's enough for some Muslims that Muhammad is said to have
authorized it, and they believe the lie with all their hearts. Muhammad,
foreseeing the harm that could be done falsely in his name, pronounced that no
Hadees attributed to him is to be deemed valid if it runs counter to the spirit
of Al-Furqan.
The Hadees
claiming that Muhammad sentenced adulterous women to be stoned to death have
been discredited by serious scholars, but some imams draw attention to a
mind-boggling story related by an otherwise respected Hadees compiler, Sunan
Ibn Majah. According to this cock and bull story, Muhammad received a verse on
stoning and entrusted it to his wife, Aisha, who kept the paper on which it was
written under her pillow. Why the paper was never found and published? Because
Muhammad fell ill, and in the ensuing chaos, a goat entered the room and ate
the paper!
Yet,
Taliban and ISIS resort to stoning to death to set a precedent (Ibrat in
Arabic) and I've come across Muslim scholars (belonging to Sunni sect)
justifying Sangsaar (Sang is stone/Hajar in Arabic). William Chittick, a
specialist of Ibn Arabi, concluded with irrefutable proofs that Islam, at no
juncture, ever approved of stoning to death. It was a Pre-Semitic tribal
practice that existed in early Judaism and Pre-Islamic tribes of the Arab
Peninsula.
In fact,
according to Talmuds, there were two modes of punishment in nascent Judaism:
Stoning to death (Elzaaf /Elz: verb form of hurling stones in Yiddish;
precursor to Hebrew) and Crucifixion. Jesus was crucified, though Islam doesn't
believe that this ever happened. Since Islam borrowed many practices from
Judaism and it also had a tribal past, many unislamic practices sneaked into
the corpus of Islam, so much so that at least three 'venerable' compilers of
Muhammad's teachings (Hadees) ascribed 'stoning to death' Hadees to him.
The point
is: When there's a wholesale market of such interpolations and dubious Hadees,
why on earth do Muslims believe in them? There's even a pretty violent sect in
Islam. It's known as Ahle-Hadees! You can jolly well imagine the mind-set of
the followers of this Islamic sect. Bukhari, considered to be the most diligent
and honest compiler of Hadees, collected at least 1,000 teachings of Muhammad
which were plain proverbs and sayings already prevalent in the dialects of West
Asia. Read Sir Hamilton Gibb's ' Ancient Arab Wisdom.' So, either Muhammad was
fooling around or Bukhari laboured under the misnotion that the sayings
belonged to Muhammad. In Nupur Sharma's case, she quoted Bukhari and the whole
Islamic world issued edicts against her. It's, therefore, time for all Muslim
scholars to purge their liturgical and scriptural literature of these anomalies
and aberrations.
----
A
regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative
religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to
world's premier publications in several languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/traditions-hadees-stoning-/d/127505
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