Ikram Hawramani's Blog, page 25

Why do Muslims follow different madhhabs?

Do people follow certain mazhabs just because it is simply what their previous generation have done? Do they follow not because there is mentioned of benefits found in the Quran and authentic hadith but merely as a way to preserve their identity considering what mazhab could define them?

The different madhhabs spread in different places largely due to historical accidents. Many Maliki scholars ended up in North Africa and Spain, so these places become firmly Maliki to the present day. People follow the madhhab that is followed by most of the scholars and imams around them.

Things are changing nowadays due to the increase in communication between different parts of the Islamic world so that madhhabs are becoming less relevant. Check out the following answer on how Muslims today can follow Islam beyond the madhhabs: On deciding which madhhab to follow and the multi-madhhab approach

Why are there different versions of tashahhud?

Recently I noticed that some muslims have somewhat different version of tashahhud recitation. Most of it is the same but some use different ending or so. Why is that so. Thanks

The reason is that different versions are transmitted in different hadiths and different scholars and schools (madhhabs) prefer different ones.

Answers about Islam and misogyny

Hey assalamu alaikum I’ll forward some messages here from previous conversations with someone who gave me worse explanations

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

I broken up your question to address them individually.

there’s something called child support he pays money to support his family not to pay his supposed to be wife I feel worse about myself now so it’s true my actual purpose in life is to be my husband’s maid and sex slave?

Marriage is a contract between two equal partners. Your purpose in life is to do what is good for you and your family. You are not your husband’s property, maid or sex slave.

What about women’s shahadah(testimony) is half of men’s?

For this issue please see: Why men and women have different gender roles in Islam

Ok what about inheritance I know why is the man worth of 2 women’s value I know the reason but can it be applied in today’s world? And why does a daughter get only a part of her share if she doesn’t have a brother her share is taken by her fellow male family members ?

In the Islamic legal system, which still applies today, it is a man’s legal duty to take care of his wife and children. His larger share of inheritance is meant to help him with this duty. A woman has no such duty and her inheritance is entirely her own, while a man’s inheritance is divided between himself and his wife and children.

Ok how do I obey someone who’s not as smart as me?

It is your duty as a free person to choose a man who treats you the way you like to be treated. Islam does not force you to get married, and it does not force a certain type of man on you. If your husband makes unfair demands, you have the right to divorce.

The 4 wives thing isn’t really encouraged I know that but I heard that certain people are allowed to have sex with whoever they want like sultans.

Islamic law works to eradicate slavery and concubinage while tolerating it in societies that already practice it. For more on this see: Understanding Islam’s Sophisticated Approach to Slavery: Why Muslims Practiced Slavery in the Past, and Why They Reject it Today

And in surah al talaq there’s an ayah that proves pedophilia is halal I didn’t know that at all I thought they were referring to the pregnant al talaq verse4.

In colder countries women may not start menstruating until the ages of 16-18. Such women can still marry (including in Western countries) and they need this verse to tell them how to calculate their idda.

What about the eddah after the husbands death or after divorce why do I have to sit at home for 4 months and 10 days whereas he can marry the same day I died or the same day we divorce.. just think about it is having such authority possible in a mutual relationship?

One reason is to deal with the possibility that she may be pregnant. Islam does not want a pregnant woman to engage in sexual intimacy with a man other than the man who impregnated her. There may also be social reasons; society may function best when women do not immediately remarry after the death of their husbands.

Ok why is only him allowed to marry nonmuslim women and I not?

Because children are more likely to follow the religion of their fathers rather than their mothers. Muslim women married to non-Muslims are more likely to fail at passing Islam down to their children.

What about many and multiple hadiths that curse women who take care of their eyebrows, not wear hijab, the camel way of hijab.

Many of those hadiths are either fabricated or come to us from a single Companion, which means that they do not impart certain knowledge. You can ignore any single-Companion hadith that seems to conflict with Islamic ideals.

And tattoos are prohibited both for men and women yet only women with tattoos are the cursed ones.

The reason may simply be that only women used to practice tattooing at that time.

Men are still allowed to have 70 hoor al ain and not me. There me no equality there?

The 70-virgins hadith is not a reliable hadith. See Misquoting Muhammad by Jonathan Brown. As for women’s relationships in Paradise, we simply have no knowledge, and the vast majority of Muslim women are fine with the way things are. If you live piously you can trust God to give what makes you happy in the afterlife.

Also the same ayah that talks about the husband’s disobedience Allah says that we have to forgive him but if it’s us they have the right to degrade us it’s kind of degrading think about it it’s your spouse not your parent I searched about it and found some people saying that the verse doesn’t mean strike (hit) it means just ignore

God does not say to forgive such a husband, He says that the husband and wife should get arbitrators from their families to judge the issue. Regarding the wife-beating issue please see my essay: A new approach to the Quran’s “Wife-Beating Verse” (al-Nisa 4:34)

One last question ? If the husband doesn’t afford to pay his wife the obedience rule falls down right ? If I pay my own bills so we can be equal? I’ve always thought women are equal to men in Islam until I started arguing with many Islamophobes that sorted many of these things out to me I read about it I found they were true.I kept telling myself ofc there’s a hikma behind them and I just need to ask the right person.And I never had the courage to but now I did Look I really love my religion , I pray 5 times a day I’m a hafiz and I’m going to hajj this year so I really want to clear this up before I go.Look first I thought it’s just temporary thoughts and questions and I ignored them and now I realized they’re not just temporary as time goes, I feel worse about myself and I feel that women in Islam are less than men so that’s why I decided to seek answers

I think you are misunderstanding the issue of obedience. Your husband is not some lord over you who commands you. If he does that then you have married the wrong type of person. Your husband is your equal spiritually, and “obeying” him simply means that you do not do anything that would be a deal-breaker. You can make demands of him, if he demands something unfair you can tell him that, you can enlist the help of his family or your family, and you can threaten divorce. No Muslim woman should ever have to obey unfair demands from their husband or act like slaves for their husbands’ whims.

I live in Saudi Arabia and religious people there don’t believe in different mazhabs and they believe they have the right to continuously force me to wear niqbab or they’ll kick me out of tahfeez I really love memorizing the Quran it was my decision too but I just never read the verses regarding women in depth I’m sure there’s justice behind them that I don’t know about..I mean I rarely wore niqab there anyways look they’re not bad but they keep on talking about women in a really stupid way as if our purpose in life is to cover up from men because they’re some monsters or either please them after marriage .. other than that they’re really kind and good people

That’s entirely a problem with Saudi culture. If you go to the middle class of Iran, Turkey, Egypt or Malaysia, you will find that men and women are treated as equals and there is little of the problems you describe.

But there’s no Hadith that curses men it’s always women there’s even a Hadith حديث أبي هريرة  قال: قال رسول الله ﷺ: إذا دعا الرجل امرأته إلى فراشه فأبتْ فبات غضبان عليها لعنتها الملائكة حتى تصبح[1]، متفق عل that curses women who do not consent to sex .. can you please explain it? Because many people said Islam encourages marital rape what if it’s the opposite??

That’s a single-Companion hadith; such hadiths do not impart certain knowledge and can be safely ignored.

What’s the hikma behind this verse الرِّجَالُ قَوَّامُونَ عَلَى النِّسَاءِ بِمَا فَضَّلَ اللَّهُ بَعْضَهُمْ عَلَى بَعْضٍ وَبِمَا أَنْفَقُوا مِنْ أَمْوَالِهِمْ فَالصَّالِحَاتُ قَانِتَاتٌ حَافِظَاتٌ لِلْغَيْبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ اللَّهُ وَاللَّاتِي تَخَافُونَ نُشُوزَهُنَّ فَعِظُوهُنَّ وَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ فَإِنْ أَطَعْنَكُمْ فَلَا تَبْغُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ سَبِيلًا إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيًّا كَبِيرًا Please a non misogynistic explanation.. do women have to hit slightly their disobedient husbands ?? And if no as expected why? He’s doing his responsibilities as a father he did nothing for his born baby other than child support so why does the woman have to obey them to the extent that he can hit her? I’ve even read hadiths that if women were to chose to prostrate to the sun or their husbands they should prostrate to their husbands? What’s so good about husbands and why are they that superior in this life and the hereafter?

Please see my essay: A new approach to the Quran’s “Wife-Beating Verse” (al-Nisa 4:34)

Why do humans always need to believe in something?

Why do humans always need to believe in something and why do humans incline to do good even it is not always easy?

I believe the answer to both questions might be that our souls recognize God’s presence, so they need to either accept Him or accept something else that helps them oppose Him. Humans incline toward good because God inspires us in that way, just as Satan inspires us to the opposite.

On the use of pseudoscience to defend Islam

What are you views on people using anecdotes with a lot of mistakes and also pseudoscience to give dakwah or reminders. They will then say that their main point is to remind to do good deeds.

I believe that it is unacceptable to use any kind of falsehood for the sake of Islam. The first allegiance of every Muslim should be to the truth and nothing but the truth. So I completely opposed to that sort of thing and consider it not just morally wrong but harmful to Islam since it causes people to lose their respect for the religion when its leaders are willing to speak falsehoods and inaccuracies for the sake of some supposed greater good.

Is there a dua for getting married?

Salam Brother Ikram, I really want to get married, is there a dua or anything? How do I go about asking for a companion through god? Is there any advice you could give me?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

I hope you get your wish fulfilled inshaAllah. Duas are not like magic spells where speaking it a certain way will ensure good results. Speak to God however you want. The only way to ensure that God will make your wishes come true, protect you and bless you is to truly submit to Him and always work to please Him. Therefore I recommend that you pray to God for your wishes while also doing what is necessary to stay close to Him and remain within His good graces, such as dedicating a certain amount of time everyday to reading the Quran.

Does smiling or laughter break wudu?

Does smiling or laughter break wudu? Lets say one laughed once and realize it would that break wudu?

No, they do not have an influence on wudu. There was a difference of opinion on whether laughter during the prayer would nullify both the prayer and the wudu, but the stronger opinion is that it only nullifies the prayer without affecting the wudu.

References:

Fatwa from the Qatari Fatwa Authority (Arabic PDF)

Why are there multiple methods for moving the finger during tashahhud?

Why are 2 method of moving up our finger in swalaat? Some lift their finger up and then put in down. But some repeatedly lift it up and down till swalaat end

There are more than two methods. The reason is that we have many hadiths on this issue and they contain conflicting accounts of how the Prophet PBUH moved his fingers during the tashahhud. Different scholars preferred different narrations, so they came up with different views of how it should be done.

An algorithmic cheat sheet for Arabic diptotes (mamnūʿ min al-ṣarf)

In order to make sense of the immense complexity of Arabic diptotes I decided to turn all of the rules into an algorithm written in the PHP language. Diptotes (mamnūʿ min al-ṣarf) are Arabic words that do not acquire tanwīn like normal words do and have fatḥa instead of kasra in the jarr position, as in marartu bi-Aḥmada , which would normally be marartu bi-Aḥmadin if it was not a diptote).

Turning the diptote rules into an algorithm means that a grammatical discussion that normally takes about 10 pages of a grammar book is turned into a very small “function” that can be reviewed at a glance.

function is_diptote($word) {
if(is_not_muḍāf ($word) && does_not_have_definite_al($word)) { // masājid is normally diptotate, but in masājidi l-muslimīn it is NOT diptote due to iḍāfa, likewise afḍal is normally diptote, but in marirtu bi-l-afḍal it is not due to having definite article "al"
if(sounds_like_mafāʿil($word) || sounds_like_mafāʿīl($word)) { // masājid, ṣaḥāʾif, maṣabīḥ
return true; // "return true" means it is a diptote
}
if(sounds_like_a_verb($word) && (is_proper_noun($word) || is_ṣifa($word))) { // Āhmad, Yashkur, aḥmar, ākhḍar
return true;
}
if(is_maʿdūl($word)) { // maʿdūl = a word that "deviates" from its normal form, as in ʿUmar, a deviation from ʿĀmir
if(is_proper_noun($word)) { // ʿUmar, Zuḥal, Zufar
return true;
}
if(is_ṣifa($word)) { // ukhar, mathnā, thulātha, rubāʿa, khumāsa, sudāsa, subāʿa, tusāʿa, ʿushāra
return true;
}
}
if(is_feminine($word)) {
if(is_feminine_only_in_the_way_it_sounds($word) && is_proper_noun($word)) { // Ṭalḥa, Ḥamza, Qatāda, Muʿāwiya, Khalīfa
return true;
}
if(is_feminine_in_sound_and_meaning($word) && is_proper_noun($word)) { // Faṭima, ʿAʾisha, Khadīja, Munīra, Luʾluʾa, Mājida
return true;
}
if(is_feminine_in_meaning_alone($word) && is_proper_noun($word)) { // Zaynab, Suʿād, Hind
return true;
}
if(has_alif_taʾnīth_mamdūda($word) || has_alif_taʾnīth_maqṣūra($word)) { // ḥamrāʾ, khaḍrāʾ, ṣafrāʾ, sawdāʾ, asmāʾ, ʿuzzā, salmā, salwā, hayā, laylā, ḥublā
return true;
}
}
if(has_tarkīb_mazjī($word) && is_proper_noun($word)) { // Baʿlabak, Maʿdīkarb, Ḥaḍramawt
return true;
}
if(has_added_alif_and_nūn_at_the_end($word) && (is_proper_noun($word) || is_ṣifa($word)) { // Salmān, Sulaymān, sakrān, ʿaṭshān, ghaḍbān, rayyān
return true;
}
if(is_non_arabic($word) && is_proper_noun($word)) { // Jibrīl, Mīkāl, Isrāʾīl, Ibrāhīm, Ismāʿīl, Isḥāq
return true;
}
}
return false; // if above conditions are not met, it is not a diptote
}

Why men and women have different gender roles in Islam

Salam, I have question about equality between men and women. Islam acknowledges equality when it comes to spirituality, sins etc. but then in marriage wife has to obey her husband despite the fact that it's supposed to be equal companionship, not superior and inferior relationship since men and women have equal intellectual capability to think and solve problems. Also what about a one man's testimony equals two women's testimony?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

Men and women, despite their spiritual equality, have very different personalities determined by genetics, so scientifically there is no surprise in men and women functioning best when they have different roles in the family.

Islam’s view is that a family functions best when the man is the head of the household. Everyone is happier in such an arrangement; the man, the woman, and the children. If such an arrangement makes everyone happier, what right do we have to break it down? If someone believes in the ideology that men and women should have exactly the same roles in the family, and if that arrangement makes everyone less happy, then forcing such an arrangement on people does not make the world a better place, it makes it worse.

Marriage in Islam is consensual. The woman herself wants to be in a relationship where the man is the head of the household. This is her choice and she has the right to make the choice. Before marriage she can speak with the man to find out whether his ideas about how she should be treated fit with her needs and wants. And if afterwards the man turns out to be an unfit husband, she has the right to divorce.

The vast majority of well-educated Muslim women I have met have no problem with the gender role that Islam gives them. They like it and they do not ask for an alternative. Women, being free humans, have the right to be taken seriously and to be respected when they choose to be in such relationships. A very small minority of Muslim women think that Islam’s traditional gender roles are unfair to them. But these are just a minority who happen to be very prominent in media and academia. They do not have the right to speak for all Muslim women, and they are free to marry men who share their views on gender equality. But when it comes to the vast majority of Muslims, men and women, they are happy with the way things are.

As for a man’s testimony being equal to two women’s, that is a very controversial issue and there are many different opinions on it. The verse of the Quran that mentions it is related to financial transactions and may not apply to all situations. This question can only be settled with scientific studies that show how men and women differ in their functioning as witnesses. If we discover that there are significant differences in the functioning of men versus women witnesses, then the interests of society as a whole are best served when these differences are taken into account. If we discover that a woman’s inheritance or marriage contract is better protected when she uses two male witnesses instead of two female witnesses, then it only makes for her to choose male witnesses in such cases. But if we discover that the sex of the witnesses does not make a difference, then we can use that to re-analyse the Quranic verse in question to find out why God asked for two female witnesses instead of one in that particular situation.