Dear Members,
Yesterday,I posted the above articles to the list.One of the authors
(Brother Sanusi)has kindly asked me to forward the additional information
enclosed to the list which I am now doing.There are three attachments which
I have cheched for viruses,I can certify that they are free of viruses when
they left my computer.The Shariah debate is going to drag on,so it is better
to be well-informed aboutit,especially the enormous implications for the
vast continent of Africa.
Have a nice weekend.
brother Musa.

>From: "Sanusi Lamido" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: In the eye of the storm:Critiquing the Critics of The
>Adulteress' Diary.
>Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 11:34:54 +0000
>
>
>
>Salam alaikum,
>
>Thank you for copying this to me I hope you will forward the following
>additional info to your readers.
>
>"The Diary" received a number of responses. What I see in this mail is
>actually Brother Bashir's- not my response to him.
>I am attaching for you "In the eye of the storm", "The refutation of
>Rushdification" and "The "True Believers".
>
>These exemplify my response to critics from  epistemological,
>jurisprudential and ideological perspectives.
>
>On the problematic issue of rajm please note the following.
>
>The arguments put up by the Khawarij have been fully articulated by Fakhrul
>Din Razi in his tafsir-even though he critiqued them.
>In short they based their argument on 3 key points.
>
>First, Allah SWT in the Qur'an took more time discussing and specifying
>rules around adultery and fornication than any other sin-including sorcery,
>riba, murder and even unbelief.
>
>First He declared it haram, second He promised a grievous punishment in the
>hereafter for it like other sins, third He stated a punishment of 100
>lashes for its convicts, fourth He specifies that a group of believers must
>be in witness, fifth He commands us not to show pity to the whipped,sixth
>he specifies 4  witnesses to the act for conviction, seventh He prescribes
>80 lashes for any one who slanders a Muslim by alleging adultery( but no
>lashes for alleging unbelief or sorcery which a more serious), eighth,He
>prescribes a tough oath that results in His anger or curse for a husband
>alleging his wife committed adultery etc.
>
>They say: In view of Allah's attention to the minutest details of zina in
>the Qur'an is it conceivable that the most outstanding element, stoning to
>death can be left out?
>It is to be noted here that as far back as the days of Umar-Before the
>emergence of Kharijites, some Muslims had raised this question which is why
>in some reports Umar said : "Some people have started saying rajm is not in
>the Qur'an. Were it not for fear of ppl saying Umar added to the Qur'an I
>would have reinstated the verses".
>As for all the reports on the verse of rajm being in the Qur'an but
>abrogated, the problematic nature is known to all students of usul. The key
>question is whether the Qur'an can be established based on individual
>reports (ahad). Since the Qur'an is accepted based on tawatur (a very large
>number of reports) and the claims of the verse of rajm are from maybe three
>companions or so, the certainty of the verse is not established. Whence
>comes abrogation of that whose existence is unestablished by the standards
>set for establishment? Also is it possible for a text to be abrogated while
>its verdict remains? This is a known matter of dispute among usuliyyun.
>
>The second argument of the khawarij dealt with the internal inconsistency
>of rajm with the instruction  to give a slave guilty of zina "half the
>punishment of the muhsanat". This is what I referred to in the Diary and
>Bashir's response is entirely based on Ibn Qutaiba's arguments in "ta'weel
>mukhtalif al-Hadith". I read the book and the arguments and I admire Ibn
>Qutaiba's linguistic turns but the arguments are not too convincing. Indeed
>a better argument is the one which simply says this was BEFORE rajm. Since
>in usul sunni schools allow for takhsees (exceptions) and naskh
>(abrogation) of the qur'an by authentic sunnah, rajm is established as the
>law based on the actions of the Prophet where muhsanat are concerned. This
>is why I said that the Sunni and Shhite schools affirm rajm based on
>sunnah.
>
>The third argument of the khawarij is a matter of dispute in usul. Can the
>Qur'an or Sunnah mutawatira be abrogated by something weaker, like ahad
>hadiths? Most sunni Islam accepts that is sunnah is authentic a single
>hadith can abrogate or amend a Verse of the Qur'an. The khawarij reject
>this. However, on this third point the khawarij have a weak position. This
>is because there is a case for arguing that the hadiths on the sunnah of
>rajm (as opposed to the claims of an ayah on rajm) have come down from so
>many sahabah that rajm can be considered a sunnah mutawatirah. If they
>accept that the sunnah mutawatirah can amend a Verse then they have no
>case, unless they argue that the sunnah preceded the revelation on
>whipping.
>
>Why have I gone into this? Because Muslims these days do not read. If you
>read Fazlur Rahman's "Islam and Modernity"(p 30) you will find that he says
>that Izzuddeen Ibn Abdulsalam (who was a great Sunni jurist known for his
>knowledge as Sultanul Ulama) "rejected stoning to death as punishment for
>adultery and roundly declared the entire traditional material on the issue
>to be utterly unreliable".
>My purpose is not to reopen this debate. I was more interested in the
>matter of convicting a woman for zina based on pregnancy as you will see in
>"the refutation", a matter which my brother Bashir did not address.
>
>Have a happy reading of the articles.
>Incidentally Bashir Aliyu is a good friend and brother so the disagreement
>notwithstanding pls note that I have nothing but love and respect for him.
>
>Your brother
>Sanusi
>>From: "Musa Amadu Pembo" <[log in to unmask]>
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>CC: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
>>[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
>>[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
>>[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
>>[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
>>[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
>>[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask],
>>[log in to unmask]
>>Subject: In the eye of the storm:Critiquing the Critics of The Adulteress'
>>Diary.
>>Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 09:49:27 +0000
>>
>>Dear Brothers & Sisters -In-Islam,
>>Al-salaamu alaykum wa rahmat-Allaahi wa barakaatuhu (Peace be upon you,
>>and the mercy of Allaah and His blessings).
>>Last weekend I forwarded to the list,the "Adulteress Diary" by
>>S.L.Sanusi,today,In the interest of fairplay,I am forwarding a critical
>>essay on the diary by Bahir Aliyu Umar for you to get both sides of the
>>argument/debate on Sharia Law,and then a right of reply by the author of
>>the diary.The implications are enormous for the whole continent as the old
>>saying goes when America sneezes,the rest of the world catches
>>pneumonia,the same can be said of Nigeria.So be my guest and read on. No
>>matter what side of the argument win your vote you will end up wiser and
>>better informed. Have a nice weekend.
>>
>>Still on that “Adulteress’ Diary”
>>
>>By
>>
>>Bashir Aliyu Umar
>>
>>[Islamic University of Madina, Saudi Arabia]
>>
>>Although it may appear belated, I feel it is essential to still go ahead
>>and make this contribution, even if to assist clearing possible confusion
>>that might have been caused by the ‘Adulteress’ diary’ written by Sanusi
>>Lamido.
>>
>>The original article, even if given the benefit of the doubt that it was
>>not an attempt to ridicule the Islamic Shari’ah, it has nevertheless
>>succeeded in ridiculing the fuqaha, the expounders of the Islamic
>>Shari’ah, and the torch-bearers and repositories of the Islamic
>>intellectual, moral and spiritual tradition throughout the history of the
>>Islamic nation. Lamido himself has conceded that he wrote the article to
>>ridicule the implementation of the Shari’ah in Nigeria. There is no doubt
>>that the implementation of the Shari’ah, being the actions of mortals
>>lends itself t o criticism; but its connection to Allah and His Messenger,
>>peace be on him does not allow a Muslim to ridicule it. As Muslims who
>>believe that we will be held to account by Allah for our deeds, we have to
>>observe an ethical code in our writings. If a person is bent on showing a
>>literary prowess by his ability to use satire, then let him look for
>>themes other than those connected with the religion of Allah or Muslims as
>>individuals if indeed he believes in Allah and the Hereafter. This is the
>>secret behind many verses of the Qur’an ending with the phrase: ‘if indeed
>>you believe in Allah and the Last Day’. It shows that as Muslims we are
>>constrained to observe a code of behaviour in our words and actions, by
>>virtue of our Iman in Allah and the Last Day. Ibn Qutaibah, himself an
>>outstanding literati, when refuting the works of the famous literary
>>Mu’tazili Al-Jahiz, who in his literary acrobatics and exploits would
>>among other things mention a saying of the Prophet, peace be o n him, side
>>by side with the vulgar statements of such godless people as Al-Jammaz and
>>Isma’il bin Ghazwan; and who would mention the arguments of the Christian
>>polemics against the Muslims, and when he comes to refute them the
>>refutation would be so mild and empty that it is as though he was only out
>>to point out to the Christians what they did not know, and create doubts
>>in the hearts of feeble-minded Muslims; Ibn Qutaibah said to him: if a
>>person knew that his statements are indeed counted among his actions, he
>>would only say what will be of benefit to him…and then he mentioned the
>>famous ode of Al-Rayyashi: do not put into writing anything except what
>>you will be happy to see in the Hereafter. See Ta’wil Mukhtafil Hadith (p
>>58). Mockery is in itself haram, but ridiculing the Ulama (the malamai as
>>he calls them) and portraying them as being insincere in their narrations
>>of the Prophet’s sayings, making a picture of them as people out to
>>administer doses of the people’s opium to the oppressed in order to sedate
>>them from reacting against the oppression of the powerful and the
>>bourgeoisie and the male chauvinists (this itself is a remnant of a
>>Marxist influence whose ghost has been pursuing Lamido, and it is high
>>time for him to shake it off as a Muslim especially one who writes about
>>issues pertaining to Islam), that is more serious, let alone using terms
>>as ‘fanatics’ and what have you to describe people engaged in a work
>>commanded by Allah and His Messenger, peace be on him, as he did for the
>>people of the Hisba corps. A person would be everything the kuffar wanted
>>him to be when he starts using these appellations on Muslims, or is at
>>pains to create by all means a ‘Brother Jero’ theme out of the Ulama (i.e.
>>Scholars) or institutions of Islam. Allah says in the Qur’an: “O you who
>>believe Let not some men among you mock others; it may be that the
>>(latter) are better than the (former); nor let some women mock others: it
>>may be that the (latter) are better than the (former). Do not defame, nor
>>be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames.
>>How bad it is to use a name connoting evil on one after he has believed
>>And those who do not desist are indeed the wrong-doers, the unjust”
>>(Suratul Hujurat 49:11). And the Prophet, peace be on him, said: ‘A Muslim
>>is sanctified and inviolable to another Muslim in terms of his life,
>>property and honour’. The Ulama are especially inviolable as Ibn Asakir, a
>>famous hadith scholar of the sixth Hijra century said: ‘Know that the
>>flesh of the Ulama is deadly poison, and the custom of Allah in debasing
>>the one who seeks to degrade them is well-known…’
>>
>>Secondly there are a number of themes that recur consistently in several
>>of Lamido’s articles on issues pertaining to Islam. The first is what I
>>observed to be a very negative attitude towards the early Ulama, the Imams
>>of Ijtihad, especially when they take judicial positions contrary to what
>>he feels are the right ones. They are at once in his sight concocting a
>>law and saying that it is a law of Allah, or they are to him men living in
>>some foreign land, and their statements are so undemocratic and so male
>>chauvinistic as not to include the voice of women, or that they are so
>>bourgeoisie as to carefully extricate their fellow bourgeois from the
>>crime of theft and let only the unfortunate poor and oppressed bear the
>>brunt of the law, or  ‘they are men, who hide behind the lie of being
>>loyal to the past to perpetuate the crimes of our present and escape’ this
>>last he says regarding our scholars, whoever he means by that. First of
>>all, we are all agreed on the fact that there is no theocracy in Islam;
>>there is no clergy that holds ecumenical councils to decide what the law
>>of Allah is. In Islam the law of Allah is not made by men, contrary to
>>what obtains in Christianity, as the Qur’an itself clearly asserts
>>regarding the people of the Book: ‘they take their rabbis and their
>>priests as lords beside Allah, and the Messiah son of Mary; while they
>>were commanded to worship Allah alone, there is no deity worthy of being
>>worshipped but He’. When Adiy bin Hatim on hearing this verse protested to
>>the Prophet, peace be on him, that the Christians do not worship their
>>priests as asserted by the Qur’an, he, the Prophet, peace be on him said:
>>‘do they not make permissible for them what is prohibited, and prohibit
>>for them what is permissible?’ Adiy replied in the affirmative, and the
>>Prophet, peace be on him, said: ‘this is their worship to them’. In Islam
>>the law of Allah is preserved in the Book of Allah (The Qur’an) and the
>>life practice and sayings of His Prophet, peace be on him (The Hadith).
>>The Ulama simply expound the law of Allah as contained in the Qur’an and
>>the Sunnah, and apply it to situations on the basis of analogical
>>reasoning and other patterns of reasoning firmly established in the
>>principles of Islamic jurisprudence, and in this exercise, they are most
>>worthy of holding to the admonishment of Allah: ‘And do not say concerning
>>what your tongues falsely put forth: ‘this is lawful and this is unlawful’
>>so as to invent lies against Allah. Surely, those who invent lies against
>>Allah will never prosper’.
>>
>>The Ulama nor matter their position of knowledge and fear of God are not
>>infallible, and we do not sanctify them from errors in their judgements,
>>contrary to the twelver Shi’ites. But the Ulama, the Imams of Ijtihad are
>>certainly sanctified from following their vain desires in expounding the
>>law of Allah, because that is the very basis of Ijtihad. Ijtihad is
>>exerting one’s utmost in knowing the judgements of the law of Allah, and
>>among its most important pre-requisites is justice that precludes
>>following one’s desires. Another is knowledge of the fundamental
>>objectives of the law of Allah, the Maqasid al Shari’ah. These fundamental
>>objectives, which the law of Allah is always set to achieve are:
>>protection of the deen, life, wealth, intellect and progeny. These are
>>absolute necessities, and whatever will establish them firmly and procure
>>them is regarded as benefit that must be procured, and whatever will
>>negate them or impair them is regarded as harm that must be removed. The
>>other aspects of these objectives are what are regarded as the removal of
>>difficulty and bringing about ease, the so-called Hajiyyaat; and what are
>>regarded as the attainment of excellent patterns of behaviour, and leaving
>>what all sound intellects regard as improper behaviour, the so-called
>>Tahsiniyyat or Kamaliyyat. There are several other details regarding the
>>fundamental objectives of the Shari’ah that constitute a whole field of
>>study to which several books have been devoted.  The legal positions of
>>the outstanding scholars of the various schools of Islamic fiqh must be
>>seen within this context in order to understand the law of Allah within
>>its proper context. Lamido is well aware of some of these fundamental
>>objectives; he even made mention of them in some of his writings. However
>>he has refused to see the legal positions of the early fuqaha within that
>>context. Instead he chose to see their positions sometimes from a leftist
>>perspective, in which case they are to him what would tantamount to be
>>bourgeoisie or their agents; and sometimes from a feminist perspective, in
>>which case they are to him male chauvinists oppressing the feeble women
>>folk as his statements in this recent article show. This is what is called
>>zulm, injustice: putting things in their wrong positions. Among the fuqaha
>>there were some who took a position that was absolutely wrong. That
>>position despite the fact that it was not regarded as a different opinion,
>>thereby giving it the sanction of being worthy of being followed,
>>nevertheless the said scholar was not attributed to following his desires,
>>he was simply said to have erred. As an example I can think of none other
>>than that of Ibn Abbas, the Prophet’s paternal cousin and a scholar with
>>an encyclopaedic knowledge of the deen to the extent that he was
>>nicknamed: the ocean, because of his vast knowledge. It is well known that
>>he alone among the companions of the Prophet, peace be on him, regarded
>>temporary marriage as being lawful, in contrast to the position held by
>>the rest of the companions that its lawfulness was abrogated. The position
>>of Ibn Abbas is not cited as a different opinion in the matter, because it
>>was wrong; as the Prophet, peace be on him, is confirmed to have abrogated
>>the lawfulness of temporary marriage in several confirmed traditions.
>>However, no one described Ibn Abbas as being subscribing to a view that
>>regarded women as mere chattels. Another example is that of the same Ibn
>>Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, regarding ribal fadl, a form of
>>usury prohibited by the Prophet, peace be on him. Ibn Abbas regarded it as
>>lawful. The opinion of Ibn Abbas is not counted as a different opinion,
>>but rather a wrong one, because it went against a confirmed saying of the
>>Prophet, peace be on him.  Nevertheless, who but a die-hard Marxist would
>>regard Ibn Abbas as one striving to protect the interest of the
>>economically powerful class by this juristic position of his .
>>
>>The argument that Lamido has launched on the position of the Maliki school
>>of fiqh, which regards pregnancy in a woman who does not have a husband as
>>a reason for inflicting the punishment of zina on her unless she
>>establishes the basis of the pregnancy not being from zina, or proof of
>>rape, is so clouded by feminist sensationalism as to render it to say the
>>least non-scholarly. This same type of feminist sensationalism was used to
>>reject a confirmed Prophetic hadith reported in the two Sahih collections.
>>Writings of such eminent ‘Muslim’ female feminists were cited; I mean by
>>that Fatima Mernissi, who as a Moroccan could be claimed to have some
>>knowledge of the deen. But the reality is that going by what the review of
>>one of her books which I read in the internet says, she is no doubt an
>>apostate if what was said in the said review was indeed her statement,
>>because of the terrible and derogatory remarks she made concerning the
>>very person of the Prophet, peace be on him, which I cannot permit myself
>>to quote under any circumstances.
>>
>>I wonder why these feminists only find an arena of their activism in
>>freeing women from what they regard as oppression in the name of Islam.
>>Where are they from the oppression of women by the sex industry? I read an
>>interview in the website of CNN with a porno star, and it was pathetic how
>>these poor women are oppressed and virtually enslaved by the gurus of this
>>terrible industry. The American economy spent 14 billion dollars in 1997
>>on pornography. I bet going by that interview the total of what these
>>unfortunate sluts made did not amount to a millionth of that amount. Where
>>are these feminists from the plight of young girls in our universities
>>that are being constantly harassed sexually by their lecturers? I heard
>>the plight of one young fresh year girl who would not flirt around with
>>her lecturers, and was bent on maintaining her chastity. She was so
>>frustrated that she considered dropping out of the university, till she
>>was guided to a trick of giving the irresponsible lecturers gifts in order
>>to leave her alone to pursue her studies successfully. I remember a bunch
>>of rogues in Samaru campus (ABU Zaria) in the early eighties, who were
>>always present during the summer term when new intakes into the SBS were
>>coming into the universities. They were purported to be engaged in
>>targeting innocent young female freshers to beguile them into a life of
>>sexual pleasures and loss of their chastity. May be the protection of the
>>chastity of women is not in the agenda of feminist activism.
>>
>>The second theme that consistently recurs in Lamido’s writings is what I
>>see as an attempt to obscure the fact that there is an absolute and
>>transcendental truth in Islam. The western world view which out of its
>>fanatical and fundamentalist belief in relativity extends it to all
>>spheres of universal phenomena, both physical and non-physical, do not see
>>anything as absolute, and regards everything as relative. This has
>>influenced Lamido, and as such you see him when faced with texts from the
>>Qur’an and Sunnah, at once citing the issue of contextualization, to
>>pounce against the absolute proofs contained in those texts. At other
>>times, he cites the differences of opinions to show that the whole matter
>>is relative to the way one sees it as though he is saying: well, others
>>have differed before, so since there are differences of opinions every one
>>is thus entitled to his own opinion. He does this even where the contrary
>>opinion cited is a wrong opinion and not a different one, because there is
>>a lot of difference in Usul from an opinion that is wrong and one that is
>>a different point of view as I will soon point out. The most surprising of
>>these tendencies is when he discriminates between the proofs cited in the
>>Qur’an and those cited in the Sunnah, as though there are things that
>>could only be established by the Qur’an and not the Sunnah.
>>
>>Before examining these tendencies, let me first briefly make this
>>preamble. There is truth and it is for real, and the realisation of its
>>existence is an innate human quality. That is why even without revelation
>>human beings quest after the truth as is evident from the quest of the
>>philosophers of Jahiliyya to reach it. This is as far as human experience
>>is concerned. In the Qur’an Allah says: “Mankind was one single nation
>>(then they differed), and Allah sent Messengers as bearers of glad tidings
>>and warners; and with them He sent The Book in truth to judge between
>>people in matters wherein they differed…” (Baqarah 2:213). This shows that
>>mankind throughout their history differ in their quest after the truth,
>>and the thing that would take them to the truth is the Book that Allah
>>revealed to the Messengers. If the Book were to lead them to further
>>difference’s, we would have ended up with a vicious circle.
>>
>>Also Allah says: “In whatsoever you differ, the judgement thereof is with
>>Allah”(42:10). And He says: “And if you differ in anything among
>>yourselves, refer it to Allah and His Messenger, if you do believe in
>>Allah and the Last Day”(4:59). These verses show that the truth is one,
>>and whenever there are differences, referring them to the Book of Allah
>>and the Sunnah of His Prophet, peace be on him, which is the meaning of
>>referring to Allah and His Messenger, will lead to the truth and end
>>differences. If the truth were relative, this would not be the case.
>>Therefore, the existence of different opinions in a matter does not show
>>that there is no absolute truth in the matter; it only shows that people
>>do differ and will differ in their efforts to arrive at the truth. Neither
>>does it give a follower the choice of following whatever opinion he likes
>>based on his desires, because that will negate the essence of religion,
>>which is to prevent the individual from following mere whims and desires.
>>What is obligatory on a person is to strive to arrive at the truth based
>>on established evidence, and if he is not able to do that, to ask whom in
>>his opinion is most knowledgeable and God-fearing. When Malik and Laith
>>bin Sa’ad were asked about the differences of opinions of the Prophet’s
>>companions they both said: ‘It is not as people say: there is ease in this
>>or that and one could follow whichever one likes; but in fact there is a
>>right opinion and there is a wrong one, therefore one has to strive to
>>arrive at what is right’. In another narration Malik said: ‘A person would
>>not be safe until he conforms to the right judgement: two opposite
>>opinions cannot both be correct; Truth can only be one’. The ease that is
>>there in the differences of opinions of the great scholars is that there
>>is ease in striving one’s utmost to use his opinion in order to arrive at
>>the truth based on evidence from the Book, the Sunnah, the Concensus of
>>the Muslim scholars and correct analogical reasoning based on facts, if he
>>can do ijtihad. If the truth is not clear to him, then he should abstain
>>from telling people what the judgement of Allah is based on mere
>>conjecture or choice without reason. He could on his own follow what he
>>feels is the truth because as the Prophet, peace be on him said: ‘the
>>right action is what puts your heart at rest, and a wrong action is what
>>worries you in your heart’ and he said: ‘leave what you are in doubt, and
>>act with what you are not in doubt’.
>>
>>So it can be seen that simply citing the existence of differences of
>>opinions is no licence for a person to do what he likes. This is the case
>>for those opinions that are based on proper ijtihad. But opinions that are
>>not based on proper ijtihad are not even worthy of mention, let alone
>>worthy of consideration as different opinions, because they are wrong from
>>the onset. This is the case for all opinions that go against a manifest
>>ruling of the Qur’an or Sunnah, or the consensus of the Muslim scholars,
>>as the famous adage of the Fuqaha says: there is no ijtihad when there is
>>a manifest ruling from a text of the Qur’an or Sunnah, and another that
>>says: any analogical reasoning that contradicts a text from the Qur’an or
>>Sunnah is unworthy of consideration. Based on this, there is no scholarly
>>basis of Lamido’s citation of what he called the view of some early
>>jurists particularly among the Kharijites who reject the ruling of stoning
>>an adulterer, and see the distinction between fornication and adultery as
>>baseless innovation, although he failed to mention even one among those
>>jurists. This is nothing but sensationalism. It is as though he is saying:
>>you see, there are dissident views, by no less than the politically
>>radical Kharijites who reject the mainstream ‘orthodox’ view subscribed to
>>by the majority. This type of assertion and argument would have some
>>basis, if there were orthodoxy in Islam. It would have some basis if the
>>truth in Islam were decided by ecumenical councils that convene to decide
>>what orthodoxy is and what heresy is, as is done in Christianity or other
>>religions. Then it would be quite possible to say that this being the
>>decision of mere mortals, it is possible that the dissenters are the ones
>>on the right path, just as we do postulate that it is quite possible that
>>the gospels of the Arians and Donatists or other Unitarian Christians that
>>are lumped together among the apocrypha are the real and true gospels,
>>rather than the canonical ones accepted by the Nicene Council. In Islam
>>the truth is not decided by men, it is the record of what was brought and
>>practiced by the Prophet, peace be on him, and what he left his community
>>on. You do not have to gather men to decide what that is. That is why you
>>find a scholar following the Sunnah in the eastern-most part of Khorasan
>>saying the same thing regarding Islamic belief and practice as another in
>>the western-most part of Andalusia, and they may never have met, or they
>>may even be separated by centuries. This is what Abul Muzaffar Al-Sam’ani
>>said describing the Ahl Al Sunnah. This is why our scholars speak of those
>>that deviate (I do not want to use the word ‘sect’ because of its peculiar
>>Christian connotation), that is they deviate from the Prophetic legacy,
>>and the Prophet, peace be on him informed us about them. The Kharijites
>>are one of those because they deviated from the Prophetic legacy by
>>regarding anyone who commits a wrong action that does not amount to
>>rejecting the faith as an apostate, and they see it as perfectly justified
>>to wage war on the Muslim community, because according to them they are
>>guilty of apostasy. As a result of this they rejected a large amount of
>>the Prophetic Sunnah because they regarded its narrators as apostates, and
>>in its place they put in authority their opinions without any
>>illuminations from revelation. Therefore, citing the position of the
>>Kharijites as a different opinion worthy of consideration on a matter in
>>which it goes clearly against what is established by the Prophetic Sunnah
>>is telling us to accept deviation as something worthy of consideration.
>>This is despite the fact that when the Prophet, peace be on him, issued a
>>verdict of stoning on an adulteress he said clearly: By Allah I will judge
>>between you by the Book of Allah. This was reported in the two Sahih
>>collections.  When a young hired shepherd committed zina with the wife of
>>his employer, and the father of the boy reached an agreement with the
>>employer that the boy was to pay the sum of a hundred heads of sheep to
>>the employer, people of knowledge told him that that was not the judgement
>>of Allah, so he went to the Prophet, peace be on him and asked him to
>>judge between them with the Book of Allah. The Prophet, peace be on him
>>said: By Allah! I will surely judge between you by the Book of Allah: the
>>heads of sheep are to be returned to you, and the boy is to be given a
>>hundred lashes and banished away from home for one year, and then he said
>>to a man named Unais: go to the wife of this man (the employer) if she
>>confesses (to committing adultery) stone her to death. So you can see that
>>the Prophet, peace be on him has declared that stoning to death is a
>>judgement by the Book of Allah. If it is said: how come this is a
>>judgement by the Book of Allah, while we recite the Book of Allah and this
>>is not mentioned in it? The answer is one of two things or both: this
>>judgement is in the Book of Allah in reality, but its recitation has been
>>abrogated with the ruling entailed by it still maintained, as was reported
>>on the authority of Umar, and there is nothing problematic in it to entail
>>its being discounted as Lamido inferred, because this type of thing has
>>its authority from the Qur’an. The second thing is that it is in the Book
>>of Allah by inference, because the Prophet, peace be on him judged by it,
>>and there is no distinction between the Prophet’s judgement as recorded in
>>the Sunnah, and a judgement pronounced by the Qur’an. A similar thing is
>>when Abdullah bin Mas’ud cursed the women who joined their hair with
>>artificial hair for beauty, and he was asked why, he said: why should I
>>not curse the one cursed by the Messenger of Allah peace and blessings of
>>Allah be on him, while he is at the same time accursed in the Book of
>>Allah? His wife said: I have read the Qur’an from cover to cover, and this
>>is something I cannot find in it. He said to her: If indeed you have read
>>the Qur’an then you have found it, and he recited the verse: ‘whatever the
>>Prophet gives you take it, and whatever he forbids you, refrain from
>>it’(59:7). This shows that the companions of the Prophet, peace be on him,
>>never made any distinction between what is established in the Book of
>>Allah and what is established by the practice of the Prophet, peace be on
>>him, and they regard both to be from Allah. In fact the Prophet, peace be
>>on him warned against making such a distinction in a prophecy he
>>prophesised, which we are now seeing its realisation: he said: “let not
>>one of you, lying down after filling his belly, be informed of an affair
>>with which I have commanded or prohibited, say: I do not know this, what
>>we find in the Book of Allah that is what we will follow”. This is the
>>hadith of Abu Rafi. In the hadith of Miqdam, the Prophet, peace be on him
>>said: “Soon will one of you be informed of a hadith from me, while he is
>>lying down relaxing, and he will say: the Book of Allah is between us and
>>you, whatever we find in it lawful that is what we will regard as lawful,
>>and whatever we find in it unlawful, that is what we will regard as
>>unlawful. But listen! Whatever the Messenger of Allah makes unlawful is
>>just like what Allah makes unlawful”. Tirmizi and some other narrators
>>narrated both hadiths, and they are both confirmed hadiths. He, peace and
>>blessings of Allah be on him, also said: “I have been given the Qur’an and
>>with it a similar authority”.
>>
>>So we can see from this that the argument that stoning to death is not
>>mentioned in the Qur’an is no proof against this ruling, since it is
>>mentioned in the Sunnah, and any one who makes a distinction between what
>>is in the Qur’an and what is in the Sunnah has gone against the above
>>mentioned hadith, and has followed a way that is typical only of the
>>erring and deviated groups.
>>
>>Now coming to the ayah of Suratul Nisa which says: “When they are taken in
>>wedlock (slave women who are believers), if they commit indecency their
>>punishment is half that for ‘Muhsanat” (4:25). The Khawarij as Lamido
>>claims say that ‘Muhsanat’ are married women, and if their punishment were
>>stoning to death, how could stoning be halved for slave women? This is
>>what Lamido believes gave our scholars a lot of trouble, and as he claims
>>even one of our best brains raised more questions than answers in his
>>attempt to redress the problem. But far from it; all that it did was to
>>show the Khawarij and their likes that deviated from the Prophetic way in
>>their true colours. The impeccable ninth-Hijra century scholar Al-Shatibi
>>has shown that one of the principal reasons for the deviation of the
>>innovators in the Islamic community is their ignorance of the Arabic
>>language. This particular case is a glaring illustration of Shatibi’s
>>point. In fact were it not for Lamido’s insinuations of a cover-up and
>>rejection of a view that he regards as substantial, I would not go into
>>any details regarding the meaning of this verse, and it would have
>>sufficed me to simply mention that this erstwhile substantial view goes
>>against a confirmed Prophetic hadith as well as the ijma (consensus) of
>>the Prophet’s companions, and that is enough to discredit it. But his
>>hinting that our scholars take a unilateral position and make it on their
>>own the law of Allah, in utter disregard of dissenting opinions which they
>>castigate as opinions of a lost sect that carries no weight, makes it
>>imperative to show that he has indeed misunderstood the basic principles
>>of Islamic law, and that the debate that he claims could not be revived,
>>could indeed be revived, and when it is revived it will only demonstrate
>>vividly why the views of the so-called lost sects carry no weight with our
>>scholars.
>>
>>The root of the problem in this case for this people is in the meaning of
>>‘Muhsanat’, which they take as meaning ‘married women’, failing to realise
>>that this word is ‘mushtarak’ that is having several different meanings.
>>There are three different meanings to this word, and they are all in the
>>Qur’an, but the woeful failure of this people to know this simple secret
>>of the Arabic language, and their zealousness to prove the invalidity of
>>the concept of the ijma (consensus) of Muslim scholars, led them to make
>>this awful blunder. As I said there are three meanings to this word, and
>>they are all in the Qur’an: the first is ‘married women’ which is the
>>meaning in the verse that says: “(Also unlawful to you in marriage) are
>>those women that are already married (muhsanat minan nisa) except what
>>your right hands possess” (Nisa: 4:24). The second meaning is free women
>>as opposed to slaves, and it is what is referred to in the verse: “If any
>>of you have not the means to marry free women (muhsanat) who are
>>believers, they may marry believing girls from among those whom your right
>>hands possess” (Nisa, 4:25). The fact that it is mentioned as a direct
>>opposite of female slaves shows that its meaning here is free women. If
>>the meaning of ‘muhsanat’ in this verse were the same as in the previous
>>verse, there would be obvious contradiction, and those who are bent on
>>showing the existence of contradictions in the Qur’an could quickly jump
>>to such a conclusion because it will be as though the first is saying:
>>‘marrying women that are already married is unlawful to you’ and this one
>>would seem to be saying: ‘if any of you have not the means to marry women
>>that are already married”, so how could it be unlawful to marry this class
>>of women and another reference is made to show that marrying them is
>>permissible? This type of understanding is borne out of ignorance of the
>>Arabic language. However, those who know the language of the Qur’an and at
>>the same time refer to the opinions of those who witnessed the revelation
>>of the Qur’an in order to understand it, give every verse its proper
>>meaning. Another verse with this meaning in the Qur’an is: “This day are
>>all things good and pure made lawful unto you. The food of the people of
>>the Book is lawful unto you, and yours is lawful unto them. And lawful
>>unto you in marriage are the free women (Muhsanat) who are believers, and
>>free women (Muhsanat) among the people of the Book revealed before you…”.
>>(Ma’idah, 5:5) This is according to the opinion of the majority of
>>scholars. Some hold that the meaning of muhsanat here is chaste women.
>>
>>The third meaning is chaste women, and it is the meaning referred to in
>>Suratun Nur: “And those who launch a charge against chaste women
>>(Muhsanat) and do not produce four witnesses flog them with eighty
>>stripes” (Nur, 24:4). Going by the unilateral definition of the Kharijites
>>who define ‘Muhsanat’ as married women, the one who slanders an unmarried
>>woman will not be flogged with eighty strokes of the cane in utter
>>contradiction to the consensus of the Muslims. But there is nothing wrong
>>with that, because they have a right to dissent, so Lamido will say.
>>Except that he will not agree with them, because their opinion seems to be
>>anti-feminist. On a more serious tone: I am not saying this is what the
>>Kharijites say regarding slandering unmarried women. All I am saying is
>>that it is the logical inference to the unilateral meaning they give to
>>‘Muhsanat’. If I am properly understood you will see to whom the word
>>‘Muhsanat’ has given a lot of trouble: our scholars or the so-called
>>dissenters?
>>
>>The root meaning of ‘Ihsan’ from which ‘Muhsanat’ was derived is guarding
>>of chastity. Allah said: “And Mary the daughter of Imran who guarded her
>>chastity” (Tahreem, 66:12). Therefore the third meaning of ‘Muhsanat’ –
>>chaste women – is the nearest to this root meaning. The two other meanings
>>are borrowed meanings. A free woman is called ‘Muhsanah’, because normally
>>in the Arab society of Jahiliyya, slaves were the ones known to commit
>>indecency not free women. That is why when Hind the wife of Abu Sufyan
>>came to accept Islam, and the Prophet, peace be on him was giving the oath
>>of fealty to her which was mentioned in the second to the last verse of
>>Mumtahana (chapter 60: verse 12), when he said: that they will not commit
>>adultery (or fornication), Hind said: ‘O Messenger of Allah! Does a free
>>woman commit adultery (or fornication)?’ A married woman is called a
>>‘Muhsanah’ because marriage by its nature will make her chaste, it is as
>>though she is named ‘one who will be chaste’ just as a cow is named ‘a
>>tiller of the soil’ because tilling the soil is done by cows, and not by
>>other animals. Also camels are called ‘Hady’ because sacrifice to the
>>Ka’aba, (i.e. Hady), is with camels not with other animals. This is the
>>point behind Ibn Qutaibah’s mention of a cow and she-camel, if only Lamido
>>reflected carefully on it.
>>
>>So going back to the verse in question, the meaning of ‘Muhsanat’ in that
>>verse is free women, that is the second meaning, and the verse will be
>>paraphrased thus: ‘When they are taken in wedlock (slave women who are
>>believers), if they commit indecency their punishment is half that for
>>free women’. The punishment for free women is 100 lashes if they have not
>>experienced a proper consummated marriage, otherwise it is stoning to
>>death, as clearly explained by the Sunnah. The Qur’an cannot speak of
>>half-stoning to death, because that is senseless. The Qur’an is the Word
>>of Allah; it is not for jest. Therefore the punishment that is to be
>>halved is that of unmarried free women, which is 100 lashes.
>>
>>With particular reference to the case of Safiya, I deliberately choose not
>>to delve into it for two reasons: one, Lamido has by his statements and
>>insinuations raised issues that are potentially misleading regarding some
>>fundamental aspects of Islamic law and jurisprudence, especially to a lay
>>audience to which his writing was originally directed, therefore I saw it
>>more pertinent to concentrate on addressing those issues. Secondly, the
>>issue of Safiya is in an Islamic court of law, and in Islamic
>>jurisprudence the verdict of a judge is not annulled except where it goes
>>against a manifest ruling of the Qur’an or the Sunnah, or the ijma
>>(consensus of the scholars), or a manifest analogy of the first order
>>(qiyas jaliy), so it is pointless and a lack of adab (etiquette) to open
>>up discussion on the matter.
>>
>>Having said this it is very important to point especially to the people in
>>the Hisba corps, that the Prophet, peace be on him has encouraged us to
>>conceal the evil actions of Muslims, as long as they do not go public with
>>them. Ibn Umar reported that the Prophet, peace be on him said: “whoever
>>conceals the faults and evil actions of a Muslim, Allah will conceal his
>>faults and evil actions on the day of Judgement”. (See what Imam Al-Nawawi
>>says regarding this in his commentary on Sahih Muslim 16/135). Imam Ahmad
>>reported on the authority of Thawban, from the Prophet, peace be on him:
>>“Do not pursue the concealed wrong actions of the slaves of Allah (in
>>order to expose them), because whoever is after exposing the wrong actions
>>of his Muslim brother, Allah will surely go after his own wrong actions
>>till He exposes him in the midst of his home”. Allah says: “Those who love
>>to see indecency circulate among the believers will have a grievous
>>chastisement in this life and in the Hereafter” (Nur: 23). And when a
>>slave girl was brought to Umar and accused of pregnancy from zina, he
>>reproved the man who brought her and said to him: you are a man that does
>>not bring good. (see Musannaf of Abdurrazzaq 7/404). Certainly this does
>>not include witnessing a person engaged in evil action and then leaving
>>him alone, while one is in a position to prevent him from doing that. This
>>is only speaking of an evil action that has already been committed, and
>>this also regards people that are not known to be open sinners and/or
>>mischief-makers. Such a people do not deserve having their secrets
>>guarded.
>>
>>On a final note, we do acknowledge that the situation of women in our
>>society needs redress. But the sorry situation of our womenfolk is part of
>>the symptoms of our drifting away from the teachings of Islam. Whenever
>>the life of the Muslims degenerates, every one will taste the terrible
>>brunt of that degeneration, but the weak among them will have a taste of
>>that more severely. And certainly women are by their natural disposition
>>weaker than men, so we see them having an averagely severer taste of the
>>evil brunt of our degeneration. The remedy is in returning to Islam, in
>>strengthening our knowledge of Islam and our abidance by it. The remedy is
>>not found in the agenda of feminism. Feminism will only lead us to further
>>degeneration. Simply reflecting on the situations of those societies where
>>feminism has made record achievements is enough proof to convince us that
>>it is impossible for it to provide a remedy for us.  Readers of this
>>article may be more aware than I am of the terrible social and
>>psychological disasters that the recipe of feminist activism has
>>prescribed on the western societies, among which are breakdown of the
>>family, the basic unit of a healthy human social existence, increased
>>marriage breakdowns and rates of divorce, increased number of single
>>parent families, increased number of children born out of wedlock and
>>deprived of parental love, increased number of home alone children
>>(door-key children I think they call them), increased exploitation of
>>women by the pornographic, fashion and entertainment industries, exposing
>>women without any help or protection to an unequal and unfair struggle in
>>a merciless and ruthless society of economic wolves and vultures, and
>>several other ills that you are more aware of. If the western societies
>>are fighting a losing battle to redress the problems caused by this
>>illness, why should we purchase it for ourselves? Islam has on record
>>bettered the conditions of women. Even nearer home and not long ago, the
>>Jihad of Shehu Usman Dan Fodio has improved the conditions of women in
>>relation to their pre-Jihad conditions. Women were encouraged to learn
>>their religion, which protected their rights, and they even recorded
>>intellectual and literary achievements. The Prophet, peace be on him has
>>given particular attention to women in his farewell sermon in the greatest
>>Islamic congregation, the Pilgrimage, where he, peace be on him, was
>>reported to have said: ‘I beseech and admonish you to be good to women’ –
>>three times. He commanded men to be especially good to women, because of
>>the weakness of women, and this is the only natural way by which women
>>will be protected. The Prophet, peace be on him, said to them: “they
>>(women) are like captives in your hands’, and he also said: ‘marriage is a
>>form of bondage, therefore one of you should be careful in whose hands he
>>places the woman that is under his charge’. This is a natural description
>>of the state of women. And what a difference between a woman who is
>>‘captive’ in the hands of the father or will-be father of her children,
>>and another who is captive in the hands of an unfaithful and exploitative
>>lover or financial manager.
>>
>>Once again I say the remedy is in Islam, which teaches that goodness to
>>women is a factor of goodness of one’s religion. The Prophet, peace be on
>>him, said: ‘the best of you is the one who is best to his family, and I am
>>the best of you to my family’. If the Prophet, peace be on him, is by
>>virtue of his excellence the best to his family, it shows that true
>>religious excellence in Islam must entail goodness towards women. He,
>>peace be on him, also said: ‘anyone who provides and takes care of two
>>female dependents, will come together with me on the Day of Judgement like
>>these two fingers (the index and the middle finger)’, this shows his
>>nearness to the Prophet, peace be on him. (Muslim reported the Hadith).
>>Therefore when we, both men and women, go back to our religion and learn
>>it and hold fast to it, we will be aware of our rights, and we will
>>respect the rights of others. Individuals are the ones who relate to human
>>beings, in fact to the whole universe, and when they become upright, their
>>relation with one another and with the whole of existence becomes good and
>>healthy. Making them upright is the goal of Islam, and it excels in that.
>>The Prophet, peace be on him, built and trained men and women, who as a
>>result of their uprightness brought into existence the best community
>>raised up for mankind. Allah the Most High said: “Surely this Qur’an
>>guides to that which is most upright, and gives glad tidings to the
>>believers who work deeds of righteousness that they shall have a
>>magnificent reward; and to those who do not believe in the Hereafter (it
>>announces) that We have prepared for them a chastisement grievous indeed”
>>(Isra: 17: 9-10).
>>
>>Peace and Allah’s blessings be on you.
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>In the Eye of the Storm: Critiquing the Critics of The Adulteress' Diary
>>By
>>Sanusi Lamido Sanusi
>>Perhaps the best opening for this piece is an excursion into history.
>>During Jordan's 1989 parliamentary elections, two Islamists asked an
>>Islamic court to bring a female parliamentary candidate, Toujan Faisal, to
>>trial for the crime of apostasy from Islam. Toujan's crime was that she
>>published an article in the Jordanian paper, al-Ra'y (Opinion) dated 21
>>September, 1989 with the title : "Yashtimunana wa nantakhibuhum" (They
>>insult us and we elect them!). In that article Toujan mocked the society
>>she lived in and how in the name of religion women were being reduced to
>>some subhuman level. She criticized the use of the hadith that "women are
>>deficient in intellect and religion" and raised a number of seemingly
>>reasonable questions. She sarcastically remarked that since the Islamists
>>believe that women are limited by their reproductive functions the best
>>women are those who are not mothers. As it had been argued that women were
>>incomplete because they menstruated, then surely barren women were more
>>complete than fertile ones, and women in menopause than those having
>>periods! Toujan complained about how Islamists sugarcoat their views on
>>women's deficiencies with euphemisms praising women's femininity and
>>decency, but when women demand their freedom they are accused of wanting
>>to abandon tradition under the influence of "the West" or "modernism" and
>>"secularism".
>>Her prosecutors wanted Toujan declared an apostate and divorced from her
>>husband. Her articles were to be banned, the media to be prevented from
>>dealing with her. Most blood-curdling of all, the Islamists wanted the
>>court to grant immunity to any one who spilled her blood. She was said to
>>have spoken "against the prophet and his religion". She had mocked the
>>obligation of a woman to be obedient to her husband and not leave his
>>house without his permission and she opposed the requirement that a
>>woman's duty is to "cook, clean, and serve the members of her family with
>>maintenance as compensation".While the case ran, every woman who stood for
>>elections in Jordan was defeated. The Islamists swept into parliament with
>>a clear majority but after four years were unable to deliver anything
>>other than rhetoric. Meanwhile Toujan was acquitted of all charges. Toujan
>>had always insisted that the attacks were political, not religious. "I am
>>a Muslim and I say that God is one and Muhammad is the prophet of God, so
>>they have no ground for their case in Islam, because only God can judge if
>>a person is sincere".
>>Some, though not all, of the reactions to "The Adulteress' Diary" echoed
>>the reactions to Toujan's article. The diary was a satire, not on Islam,
>>but on the manner in which Islam and its symbols are distorted and used in
>>the pursuit of naked secular power and the entrenchment of secular
>>relations of class and gender. In one particularly entertaining vitriol, I
>>was accused of mocking Allah, His Prophet, the religion of Islam, the
>>companions and all the early jurists- all in addition to having lived an
>>apparently blissfully erotic life in which I have "deflowered many
>>virgins". We laugh at these articles but there is a very frightening side
>>to them. The views held by Islamists and, in this particular case, quasi-
>>and pseudo-Islamists, are enough warning of what awaits proponents of free
>>speech and progressive ideologies if we ever allow these elements to be in
>>full control of our politics. Any one of the allegations levelled against
>>me in "The Ushers, Notes" is sufficient, if accepted by a court of law,
>>for a death sentence for apostasy. And all the allegations, without
>>exception, are untrue.
>>Over time, I have learnt not to respond to these types of articles. The
>>writers tend to be exemplars of an intellect whose total domestication is
>>achieved through a constant disarticulation between the reading religion
>>and the reading of the world which religion is expected to transform. The
>>process of religious thought is deliberately arrested in time and space, a
>>certain era is frozen and given eternal fiat over all times while the
>>world marches on through history. By separating the reading of Islam from
>>the reading of the real life of Muslim people (including its tensions, its
>>class conflicts, its needs and its priorities- all of which differ in time
>>and space), Islamists (and would-be Islamists) are able to master what
>>Paulo Freire would call a literacy of stupidification, whose hallmark is
>>the anaesthetization of the mind and the paralysis of intellect. Rather
>>than break free from the self-imposed shackles around their brains, these
>>elements expect the rest of the world to feel guilty for the crime of
>>progress and modernity. The attempt to view religion in light of
>>existential reality, to marry (again borrowing from Freire) our "reading
>>of the word with our reading of the world" is viewed with suspicion and
>>labelled "modernism". Having provided a label, what is left is to provide
>>a definition of "modernist" completely lacking in factual substance as a
>>description of the views or works of those being criticised. The greatest
>>mistake one can make is to fall into the trap of defending the self and
>>abandoning praxis. It is in the nature of a radical reading of all systems
>>of thought, religious and secular, that they elicit such responses. The
>>only tangible outcome of the attacks is to place the radical in a
>>defensive position, making protestations of faith and trying to convince
>>all comers that he is a Muslim. Ultimately, it is the burden of the writer
>>to proceed along the tortuous task of unfolding this "Pedagogy of the
>>Oppressed", and remember, when faced with so much wrath, that what he
>>stands for is in historic and historical confrontation with what his
>>critics stand for. The battle is joined at the level of ideology, not of
>>faith.
>>There have been other rejoinders, more temperate in tone, and perhaps
>>suffering from no more than an honest misunderstanding of the diary. In
>>one case the "rejoinder" read like a commentary on the diary itself,
>>providing the details of all the hadiths, which provided a basis for the
>>views discussed in the diary. In another case, the major thrust was a
>>sense of betrayal, and the concern that unrestricted ventilation of these
>>issues would open the door to the enemies of Islam and Shariah to attack
>>the religion. The concern of course is legitimate, but it pales into
>>insignificance when viewed against the unfounded advertisement of Islam as
>>a crude and unfair religion, which is provided by contemporary northern
>>society. A third critic praised me to high heavens and concluded by
>>labelling me an intellectually arrogant writer who is also like a bird
>>unwilling to sing the praise of its ancestors. He paid the diary the
>>ultimate compliment of ranking it with two of the most notorious works of
>>pornography in classical Arabic- Muallaqat Imru'l Qays and Alfu Laytatin
>>wa Laylah. I did not respond to these pieces because it was clear to me
>>that readers are intelligent enough to see that there no major differences
>>of opinion between us, just as they could see that the real object of the
>>pseudo-fundamentalist's barbs was the writer of the diary, not its
>>contents. My belief was proved right when a few readers wrote in defence
>>of the contents of the diary publicly, and when many more wrote private
>>letters to me and to the critics themselves.
>>I am however compelled to respond to the latest by my friend and
>>brother,Bashir Aliyu Umar. The article in question is a summary of his
>>views already written on a separate network and over which we had an
>>extensive debate. The response is necessary because, in spite of the
>>brilliance (and, I must add, prolixity) of this write-up, it does not
>>address the issues of the diary- and those issues are important to me and
>>need to be discussed if we are to make any progress as a people. What it
>>does, however, is raise a number of pertinent issues of epistemology and
>>ideology, and provide what can best be described as a critique of my
>>thoughts. Bashir discussed what he referred to as "themes running through
>>Lamidos's writings." This point is important because very often this
>>approach, deliberately or otherwise, serves the purpose of obfuscation.
>>The matter is no longer the content of "The Adulteress' Diary" which the
>>critic purports to be addressing, but the "themes running through the
>>writings" of the author of the Diary. These are two separate points of
>>discourse and we must not forget that. However, the arguments presented in
>>the one arena are taken as sufficient for the second. I will show that
>>this is not true. Having said that, I affirm that every writer must accept
>>that his world-view is a legitimate object of critical discourse. I will
>>therefore in this response to Bashir not only defend The Diary, but answer
>>him on the questions he raised on method and theory.
>>Let me begin by stating the following. Bashir Aliyu is my brother and my
>>friend. He is in no way to be confused with those seeking a locus standi
>>in Islamist circles because his record is established as a scholar and
>>activist. Although firmly committed to Islam and Muslim scholarship,
>>Bashir is widely read and broad-minded. There are however areas in which
>>over the years we have been in deep disagreement and which his paper, and
>>this rejoinder, will highlight. Since I have already said that Bashir's
>>excellent posting does not address the contents of The Adulteress' Diary,
>>let me restate what I consider to be the essential themes of the
>>adulteress' Diary.
>>The only way to understand the Diary is to take it, primarily and
>>singularly, for what it is. The Diary is a work of satire. The Chambers
>>English Dictionary defines "satire" as "a literary composition, originally
>>in verse, essentially a criticism of folly or vice, which it holds up to
>>ridicule or scorn-its chief instruments, irony, sarcasm, invective wit,
>>and humour." This is precisely what The Diary was. It was not a
>>pornographic work, in spite of its graphic language. It was also not a
>>work of jurisprudence, even if it marshalled arguments of law. It was a
>>satire on northern society and particularly its hypocrisies and pretences.
>>It criticised in particular the northern Muslim male and how he views and
>>treats women, all the time justifying this treatment using the symbols and
>>authority of religion. It was designed to ridicule, and therefore was
>>bound to generate anger. But expressions of outrage at a satire, born as
>>they are of hurt pride, are not critiques. A proper critique of the diary
>>would focus on the following questions: What are these "follies" and
>>"vices" which the writer claims exist in the north? Do they in fact exist?
>>If they do are they follies or vices? Are they secular or religious? Etc.
>>Not a single critic seems to have zeroed in on this, because they all
>>failed to appreciate the satire as genre. So what are the points Safiya
>>raised, in order of presentation?
>>Safiya made the point, first, that lewdness is rampant, largely because
>>northern men, particularly its elite, are incurable womanizers. In guest
>>houses, hotels, homes and overseas, northern politicians, military
>>officers, traditional rulers, nouveax riches contractors and
>>lumpen-bourgeoisie keep women of easy virtue while pretending to be holier
>>than the next man. However, it seems only women are paying the price for
>>this lewdness as if only they are responsible.
>>Secondly, The Diary ridicules the conception of virtue held by northern
>>men. Every northern man wants to marry a virgin and also wants his
>>daughter to be presented to her husband as a virgin. This is a wonderful
>>thing. Unfortunately, the men do not bother about their sons( or even they
>>themselves) disvirgining other peoples' daughters. So a young girl like
>>Bariya Magazu is convicted for fornication but our outrage at violated
>>chastity does not make us seek by all means proof of the abuser who put
>>her in the family way. Our honour is not defined by our chastity, but by
>>that of our women. We value chastity in our wives and daughters but do not
>>care a hoot about the daughters of others. It is a sickness. It seems we
>>want to marry virgins not because we cherish chastity but because of the
>>carnal pleasures associated with virginity. Who made Safiya and Bariya
>>pregnant? That question will never go away. Linked to this is the penchant
>>for early marriages, often loveless ones, into which girls are forced.
>>Safiya associates this trend not with superior chastity of northern men
>>but their selfishness. Girls are removed from school, married off, turned
>>into young mothers. Sometimes they end up with complications while giving
>>birth (although one of my critics says the problem is midwifery!) The
>>result of these marriages and the impact on our society are well-known.
>>Next Safiya moves to her case and raises pertinent questions of procedure
>>and evidence. The central point in jurisprudence is the following: In
>>Maliki Law if an unmarried woman gets pregnant she is presumed guilty of
>>zina unless she can prove that the conception was not through voluntary
>>illicit intercourse. There is no verse of the Qur'an supporting this.
>>There is no record of the prophet doing this or commanding it. For this
>>reason the other schools of law give her benefit of doubt and only convict
>>her based on voluntary confession which she can retract. Although Malik's
>>position is traced to a saying of 'Umar, we have shown that 'Umar also in
>>practice gave this benefit of doubt. So on one level pregnancy as a sole
>>basis for conviction lacks basis in Qur'an and Hadith and conflicts with
>>the position of Abu Hanifa, Shafii and Ahmad-ie the majority. There is no
>>point saying well, she confessed, because in this case her confession is
>>superficial. The pregnancy convicts her-which is why even if she were to
>>retract the confession today she would still need to prove her innocence
>>even if she claimed rape. The proper critique of this section of the diary
>>would be to argue that in fact this law is just and that Malik's position
>>is closer to the rulings of Allah and His Messenger than the position of
>>the majority. Given the option of assuming her innocent or guilty, we
>>chose the latter option in spite of its horrendous implications. It is
>>most surprising that a call to ulama to accept the ruling of the clear
>>majority of early jurists is viewed as a negative attitude toward the
>>mujtahids whose views may differ from what I "feel are the right ones".
>>The final point she makes is a simple one. If I am guilty of zina because
>>I am pregnant then the man who made me pregnant is guilty of zina. I have
>>named the man and there are avenues of verifying the claim. Why is he not
>>guilty? Nothing said by the critics detracts from the validity of this
>>question. It is clear from the Diary that I believe the early ulama have
>>an excuse in that they had no way of verifying these claims. The whole
>>issue of reading the Law in accordance with what prevails in the modern
>>world was therefore not directed at the "early jurists and mujtahids" but
>>the contemporary ulama or, more specifically, the political leaders who
>>are instituting the penal code.
>>As for the issue of muhsanat, all that Bashir has done is to provide the
>>arguments Ibn Qutaiba offered as a refutation of the position of the
>>Kharijites on stoning. I did mention that there were many questions
>>unanswered.However as a Sunni Muslim I accept the ruling of the hadith and
>>that was clear from the Diary. The point was to draw attention to the
>>controversy on the matter, which would only arise anyway, if we accepted
>>the conviction. A final point worthy of note is that no Islamic country in
>>the world today stones a convicted adulteress. Not Saudi Arabia where
>>Bashir is studying hadith, not Iran, not Sudan, not Afghanistan. It is
>>possible that they are all suffering from the virus of modernism.
>>I will now reproduce, in brief, my response to Bashir on matters of theory
>>and method. I will focus on two key areas of disagreement and my response
>>to them. The first is the tendency to draw an organic link between fiqh,
>>as we have come to know it, and the Word of Allah, if you like the eternal
>>nomos. So for instance Bashir advises that because the Ijtihad of scholars
>>is aimed at interpreting Allah's law I should keep my satires away from
>>the implementation of Shariah. But this is precisely where I differ from
>>him! I make a clear distinction between that which is confirmed to be from
>>Allah and His Messenger-in the Qur'an and established a hadith (especially
>>the mutawatira and mashhura)- and the interpolations, extrapolations,
>>interpretations, embellishments, legends, myths and conclusions of human
>>beings over historical time. It is true that in making this distinction I
>>have been influenced by the traditions of Western Scholarship, starting
>>from Goldziher but mainly articulated in three Classics: Joseph Schacht's
>>"The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence", Noel Coulson's "History of
>>Islamic Law" and Montgomery Watt's "Formative period of Islamic Thought".
>>In a few cases, notably schacht's, there are certainly questions about the
>>extent to which reality was forced into a hypothesis( as in the
>>exaggerated roles of Imam Muhammad in the founding of the Hanafi School or
>>Ibn Qasim in the Maliki school at the expense of the founding fathers, or
>>the very limited role to which Ibrahim An-Nakha'i was reduced) but by and
>>large by applying a generic methodology applicable to all brands of
>>knowledge these scholars, capable of detachment from mythology, were able
>>to trace the evolution of Shariah over time and the stages in its
>>development and the contribution of persons and generations and histories
>>and experiences not just to the crystallization of a methodology but to
>>the law itself. It is therefore clear to me that if I ridicule the manner
>>in which Nigerian Muslim politicians have defined their shariah project
>>and approached the "Islamization" of the polity I do not mock Allah or His
>>Messenger but the use to which their names or words are put. None of this
>>is to say I accept everything that the orientalists have to say on this
>>matter. But on this particular point I agree with them.
>>The second point I will pick up is this allegation: That I believe in some
>>form of relativism of truth. I believe it is a fair deduction but an
>>incorrect one. What is correct is that I recognise all revelation as
>>eternal truth. However I view the human interpretation of revelation as a
>>contingent historically conditioned understanding which may or may not
>>hold permanent validity. In this sense the existence of several views does
>>not, as Bashir says, mean to me that all views are equally correct (which
>>is the true sense of relativism). To do so is to accept some of the less
>>secure dimensions of post-modernist epistemology. What it does is to
>>establish the essential multivocality of Muslim discourse and thus
>>question the attempt to present the law as a univocal monolithic code to
>>which all citizens are bound. The history of Islam proves this. Muslim
>>Spain was ruled by Maliki Law. The Kharijite states of Oman and the
>>Maghrib were based on Ibadhi jurisprudence. Greater Persia was converted
>>to twelver shiism by the Ismali Shahs. The legal code of the ottoman
>>Empire, the Mujallah, was based on Hanafi fiqh. In every epoch and in
>>every place the ruling version of shariah has never been selected based on
>>some platonic, eternal truth but on the exigencies of power and power
>>relations. Indeed what was in ascendancy in one dispensation-such as
>>Mu'tazili Thought- was soon to become the new heresy and apostasy. No one
>>in Saudi Arabia will propagate an interpretation of shariah that questions
>>the legitimacy of tribal/lineage oligarchies. No one in Iran can question
>>clerical despotism. No one in Libya can dispute military dictatorship. The
>>discursive arena is so defined as to ensure that its boundaries are not
>>drawn in a manner capable of upsetting the apple cart.
>>The multivocality of Islam is reduced to univocality under the direct
>>influence of politics and secular relations-be they internal political
>>jostling or external threats. This is why any call to a "return to Islamic
>>Law" may on one level be a purely religious commitment to an eternal
>>truth. On a different and fundamental level, especially where the
>>advocates are in politics, the call is also a political slogan,
>>intricately linked to the social and political power calculations of the
>>dominant classes. This is why the "ghost of Marxism" will not be entirely
>>abandoned. It gives one a healthy scepticism and protects one from
>>idealism that can be taken advantage of. May I also note here that the
>>whole point raised on there being a universal truth that is not relative
>>is the subject of profound discussion in Western Philosophy. The
>>discussion of absolutism was anticipated by Plato. It is not correct to
>>affirm, as Bashir did, that western thought is based on a belief in
>>relativism of truth. This belief was held by the Sophists, and is in some
>>form present in certain strands of post-modernist discourses where the
>>liberal desire to respect other peoples, other cultures and other
>>civilizations has sometimes degenerated into moral ambivalence. But this
>>is not the place to discuss this issue. The point is to say to Bashir that
>>in his assertion of the absolutism of truth he is being a Platonist. When
>>Bashir says "there is a truth and it is for real, and the realisation of
>>its existence is an innate human quality" he speaks in the language of
>>Plato. Truth is a universal form. It is that which Kant calls a
>>Categorical Imperative. It exists in an objective form, independent of
>>time and space. As we "discover" it, we merely undergo a process Plato
>>referred to as anamnesis, we remember that which we always knew without
>>knowing that we did. Perhaps if Bashir read philosophy with a little more
>>openness, he would be a little less suspicious of the subject. Perhaps he
>>should read Aristotle's concept of the "golden mean" and see how it fits
>>into the concept of wasatiyyah in Islamic theology and ethics- a classical
>>case of which is Ibn Qayyim's definitions of states in Madarijul Salikin.
>>Even Bashir's analysis of the effect of education on one's ability to
>>recognize this eternal truth- the qualities of the mujtahid- is mirrored
>>in Plato's trained philosopher.
>>One final note. I am fully conscious of the dangers of outright secular
>>ideologies-like feminism, liberalism etc. The experience of the USSR is
>>sufficient proof that sometimes when people fight for emancipation, they
>>emancipate people from one despotism into another. This is equally the
>>case with Islamist, as well as so-called liberal regimes. Before our eyes
>>today, America has "liberated" Afghan women from the burqah imposed by the
>>Taliban by force into a new dictatorship of "unveiling" which is forced
>>upon them with incentives of food and essential life-saving items. I,
>>therefore, do not believe that an argument is right simply because it is
>>placed in the context of a perspective of liberation, otherwise I would be
>>a true modernist and feminist-instead of talking about interpretations of
>>the Law of hadd I would be talking about the right of woman over her body,
>>to sleep with whosoever she pleases, which those who speak of modernists
>>ought to know is the real modernism. What is true however is that the
>>reality of our experience and the structure of our society are contingent
>>and Islam, understood in its multivocality is capable of being applied and
>>interpreted to suit these structures. So long as the final choice is left
>>to political actors it will only serve to entrench their secular interests
>>and cloak them in a religious garb. By exposing the link between that
>>choice and those interests one is able to expose a hidden political
>>violence and engage the project as both textual discourse and ideology. I
>>do not deny that I am taking sides in a social contest. What I do is deny
>>the establishment the right of pretence, the right to argue that their
>>commitment has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with a
>>fixed, unchanging Divine truth.
>>
>>With the very best of good wishes,
>>Musa Amadu Pembo
>>Glasgow,
>>Scotland
>>UK.
>>[log in to unmask]
>>Da’wah is to convey the message with wisdom and with good words. We should
>>give the noble and positive message of Islam. We should try to emphasize
>>more commonalities and explain the difference without getting into
>>theological arguments and without claiming the superiority of one position
>>over the other. There is a great interest among the people to know about
>>Islam and we should do our best to give the right message.
>>May Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,guide us all to His Sirat Al-Mustaqim
>>(Righteous Path).May He protect us from the evils of this life and the
>>hereafter.May Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,grant us entrance to paradise .
>>We ask Allaah the Most High, the All-Powerful, to teach us that which will
>>benefit us, and to benefit us by that which we learn. May Allaah Subhanahu
>>Wa Ta'ala grant blessings and peace to our Prophet Muhammad and his family
>>and
>>companions..Amen.
>>


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