Ikram Hawramani's Blog, page 43
April 18, 2019
What do jinns in dreams mean?
assalamu aleikum, does having nightmares with djinns have a particular meaning that we should take into consideration? or are they just like any other bad nightmares?
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
My attitude toward dreams, good or bad, is that they are just natural phenomena caused by the way the brain works. I consider it a waste of time to try to read too much into our dreams or try to interpret them, unless we have the same dream many times.
I have seen no hadith that mentions jinns have a special significance in dreams.
Is Allah a moon god?
Salaam Aleyckum, do you ever heard about Allah is a moon god ( استغفر الله) ? I read articles and watch on YouTube some videos who talk about that .
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
That is just a theory promoted by some Christians and rejected by better scholars. From Wikipedia:
On the basis that the Kaaba was Allah’s house, but the most important idol within it was that of Hubal, Julius Wellhausen considered Hubal to be an ancient name for Allah.
The claim that Hubal is a moon god derives from the early twentieth century German scholar Hugo Winckler. David Leeming describes him as a warrior and rain god, as does Mircea Eliade.
More recent authors emphasise the Nabataean origins of Hubal as a figure imported into the shrine, which may have already been associated with Allah. Patricia Crone argues that “If Hubal and Allah had been one and the same deity, Hubal ought to have survived as an epithet of Allah, which he did not. And moreover there would not have been traditions in which people are asked to renounce the one for the other.”
Allah was never represented by an idol.
The theory is promoted by Christians who like to suggest that Muslims are really pagans who worship a false God different from the God of Judaism/Christianity. There is really nothing to say to such people. They are not respectable scholars trying to find the truth. They start with the conclusion that Muslims must be pagans, then try to find evidence to support that claim and ignore that vast literature of Islamic theology that defends God’s oneness and transcendence.
Islam and downloading cracked software (piracy)
Assalamu alaikum. What is the rule for using a free-downloaded software from the internet? Do we have to buy the original software from the publisher so that we don't violate the copyright?
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
I have seen no intelligent juristic voice on digital piracy, so I decided to do my own research on the matter. The result is my essay Why Digital Piracy is Ethical and Necessary.
My conclusion is that pirating a product when a person cannot easily afford it is morally justified until copyright laws are reformed and publishers abandon the pretense that digital products can only be hired rather than sold. My reasoning relies on the following:
Digital products are zero-reproduction-cost goods (it costs nothing to copy them), therefore the concept of stealing does not apply to them.Creators of these products have a moral duty to share them for free with those who cannot afford them, since this costs them nothing while benefiting others.Creators should support libraries that offer their products for free to those who cannot afford them. But instead they are immorally fighting such libraries and preventing them from being created.The digital piracy scene is simply a library for using digital products for those who cannot afford them. Therefore this library and its use are both morally justified even if creators dislike it.
Muslims should therefore try to support the original creators whenever possible. If they can easily pay $500 for a software product then they should do so. And if they cannot, their piracy is excused. When it comes to things like books, it can actually be the superior moral choice to get the pirated version then pay the creator (for example by making a donation). In this way we can bypass the immoral system that publishers have created while supporting creators.
April 17, 2019
Who does “Woe to those who pray” refer to?
Assalamualaikum brother. In this verse "So woe to those who pray. [But] are heedless of their prayer – Those who make show [of their deeds]. And withhold [simple] assistance." [Quran 107: 1-7] is it only referring to those who pray just for 'show' or also those who struggle to concentrate during prayer? / sometimes I become overwhelmed with emotion during prayer and I'm not sure why and It affects it do you have any advice for this? May Allah bless you.
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
It is referring to those who pray for show without their heart being in it. The context makes it clear that all the verses together refer to the same type of person.
As for having difficulty paying attention when you sincerely want to, that is a different matter. Please see this previous answer on how to focus better when praying: How to focus better when praying (performing salah)
Best wishes.
Why a Muslim should read or listen to the Quran for an hour everyday

Assalamualaikum, from my readings I noticed that you consistently reminded us readers to at least allocate one hour a day to listen to the Quran. So, with regards to that how long have you practiced this and what changes have you felt ever since you started practising it.
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
I started seriously practicing this since last Ramadan when I promised God to spend an hour every day in extra worship.
Since I started doing that, everything in my life has seemed to go more smoothly and I have enjoyed numerous new blessings that I never expected.
The greatest benefit has been the fact that it makes sinning almost impossible. It feels like God is always with me and I cannot engage in any sinful idea without feeling His strong presence. So it is a way of ensuring true submission to Him.
Another benefit is that it feels like my life is on a course managed by God. I do not care what happens tomorrow, next month or next year. God is in charge and He will ensure my good. So it has completely removed all anxiety I have had about the future.
To me therefore it seems like a Muslim who wishes to be extraordinary and who wishes to achieve the peak of spirituality should make this a daily practice that they plan to do for all of their lifetime. There is nothing better than always being in God’s presence; it takes life’s problems away, it takes away all sins, it makes life meaningful and it brings constant new blessings. Problems that seemed unsolvable to me in the past have disappeared.
April 16, 2019
A village imam was found in a brothel
Assalamualaikum. My friend told me about an imam in her village who was found passing away in a brothel. After an investigation on how he could end up there, it was found that the imam actually frequented the brothel to use the service. This really troubles me, how can someone who's in worship more frequent than others do such illicit behavior in parallel. I'm starting to fear that my worship won't guarantee me to stay out of major evil deeds. What's your opinion? Thank you very much
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
An imam is just an ordinary person chosen by the community to give sermons and lead prayers. It is quite possible for such a person to go through these motions without their heart being in it.
The lesson from that imam is that doing “Islamic” work is no guarantee of having a high Islamic character. In order to maintain a high character we need to do constant, daily work, for example listening to the Quran for an hour every day. Without this work our natural human instincts take over and we start to act by them whether we are an imam or other Islamic leader. We shouldn’t put our trust in imams or scholars as if their status automatically ensures their high character. They are just humans and they can suffer all human weaknesses.
Solving the Problem of the Codification of the Sharia

Abstract
I argue that the existence of an inherent contradiction between the Islamic Sharia and codification is imaginary and caused by paying insufficient attention to the nature of the workings of the Sharia and how it relates to the state. So far codification has meant the imposition of the hegemony of the state over the Islamic legal process. It is possible to create a legitimate and authoritative Sharia code by reversing this process: imbibing the ideals of the Sharia into the legislature and making its principles the governing doctrines on how the process of codification should be carried out.
In law, codification is the process of collecting legal rulings into a legal code or book of law that is then made the official source of law for a jurisdiction, for example for a town or country. Traditional Islamic law until the 19th century was alien to codification because codification was a bureaucratic need that was only recognized in that century after the influence of Western legal systems. The first important attempt at the codification of Islamic law was made in British-controlled India.1 The British considered the Islamic practice of law as “as an uncontrollable and corrupted mass of individual juristic opinion” according to Wael Hallaq.2 Hallaq considers the British attempt at codification as an outgrowth of colonialism. Islamic law was severed from its roots in order to fit in with British ideals of how the law should function.
The Ottoman Mecelle of 1876 was the first attempt by a sovereign Islamic state to codify Islamic law.3 Samy Ayoub considers the Mecella a legitimate outgrowth of the Hanafi legal system of the Ottoman Empire,4 while Wael Hallaq considers it a state imposition that by steps almost totally replaced the Sharia.5
The essence of Islamic jurisprudence was the constant re-analysis of the sources of Islamic law in order derive new rulings (fatwās) based on the individual and autonomous research of a jurist (muftī). According to George Makdisi, a jurist could not even rely on his previous rulings to create new rulings; this would have been considered an unacceptable breach of the jurist’s duty to constantly re-analyze the sources of Islamic law (the Quran, the sunna, the consensus of past scholars, and Medinan ʿamal in the case of the Mālikī school).6
Islam gave rise to the concepts of academic freedom and the doctoral dissertation, only adopted by the West after centuries of conflict between the Church and the universities. Since Islam has no official ecclesiastical hierarchy, each professor of the law (jurist or muftī) had to be an independent authority who could profess independent, autonomous opinions on matters of law. The very term “professor” comes from Islam: a professor is someone who has studied the law sufficiently with a master and who has produced a taʿlīqa (doctoral dissertation), an original thesis that proves his competence as an independent thinker.
Islam’s muftīs were the world’s first professors. Islam, however, never extended the concept of the professor beyond the field of Islamic law. It was Western civilization that took this step and created the concept of “professor” as an independent authority on any field of knowledge.
Since Islam lacks an ecclesiastical hierarchy that can decide issues of orthodoxy, the only way to ensure arrival at consensus in a legitimate way was to adopt academic freedom. A legitimate fatwā in Islam is one that is given by a professor who enjoys perfect academic freedom to agree or disagree with anyone else. The West had no need for academic freedom because the true authorities on matters of religious doctrine were the bishops in unity with the pope. Islam, lacking such authorities, was forced to adopt a rational way of arriving at authoritative religious rulings in their absence. And the solution was the academic freedom of the professor or muftī. When all the professors, in perfect freedom and autonomy, agreed on a particular ruling, that meant that the ruling was authoritative.
Orthodoxy in Christianity was determined by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Orthodoxy in Islam was determined by the autonomous consensus of the professors, just as in modern science. In science a particular theory can only become “orthodox” when all eligible scientists study it and arrive at a consensus about its reasonableness and likelihood of correctness. Islam was forced to create this “scientific method” of arriving at consensus due to suffering the same situation that science suffers: there is no higher authority than the scholars, researchers and professors themselves to help them come to legitimate conclusions on the issues under question.
From the 19th century onward, many Muslim states adopted Western legal codes as part of their process of modernization. While many of these codes purport to respect the Sharia or to consider it a primary source of law, the reality is that they are forced to break the very foundation of the Sharia in their efforts to codify it.
The Sharia functions, like science, on the basis of the autonomous consensus of the professors. Governments, however, want stable legal codes that they can control. The call for the Islamization of the law in various Muslim countries has always ran into the contradiction between the Sharia’s system of autonomous consensus and the Western legal practice of creating legal codes.7 A Pakistani court adopted the punishment of a hundred lashes for married individuals found guilty of zinā (fornication). Traditional religious scholars found this an unacceptable breach of Islamic law since the traditional punishment for such individuals is stoning to death.8 The government of President Zia ul Haq, in order to maintain the support of the scholars, called for a rehearing of the case and changed the composition of the court to include traditionalist scholars. The result was that the court arrived at the traditional ruling of stoning to death.9
From the Sharia perspective, the artificial creation of a new ruling such as this that becomes the authoritative law of the land is a miscarriage of jurisprudence, since it destroys the Sharia’s reliance on the autonomous consensus of the professors of the law and replaces it with a government-elected clerical regime. The new legal code abolishes the academic freedom of the professors of the law and replaces it with the government’s monopoly power over the courts.
Professor Ann Elizabeth Mayer, in relation to the conflict between the Sharia and codification, proposes the establishment of a new doctrine toward it that somehow makes it accommodate codification, while admitting that it will be a delicate and painful process. But rather than seeking to abolish the Sharia’s autonomous foundations in favor of rigid codification, a synthesis is possible that embraces both modern democratic ideals of legislation and the Sharia’s autonomous nature.
The synthesis of the Sharia and legal codification
By understanding the workings of the Sharia, translating its ideals to the realm of modern legislation becomes a somewhat simple exercise. The “Islamization” problem of the modern Islamic state is not with Islam or secularism, but with the way the state attempts to enforce its hegemony over the communities it governs, as Noah Salomon argues.10 Anver M. Emon argues that critiques of the codification of Islamic law are often based on an ideology of the way the state functions or should function, rather than on an inherent contradiction between Islamic law and codification.11 I believe that it is possible to envision a state legislature that can fully represent the ideals of the Sharia while working within a codified system of law.
Authoritative Sharia rulings demand that the lawmaking authority should be made up of professors of the law that enjoy the following characteristics:
The attainment of formal education under the masters of the law and the presentation of an original doctoral thesis that proves their competence to profess independent rulings.The academic freedom to profess opinions arrived at through personal, independent research that is not in any way influenced or controlled by a higher authority.
What an Islamic state can do is to bring together all willing professors of the law into a legislative council, for a example a house of parliament, where they can debate aspects of the law and pass rulings. Such a council, rather than being made up of elected professors, should automatically admit all professors who have proven their competence in their field (for example by getting their doctoral degree). This allows for the creation of a lawmaking body that is made up of all eligible professors in the land, just as in the traditional practice of Sharia lawmaking where every professor had the right to participate in lawmaking. Government interference with the admission process of professors into the legislative body will naturally corrupt its essential essence of autonomy, since the government will be able to support the laws it desires by choosing to admit only the professors that support the state.
In many Arab countries top religious officials are selected by the state. George Washington University Professor Nathan J. Brown describes this type of control over religious institutions as both imposing and clumsy.12 The control of the Egyptian military regime over al-Azhar University has lead to renowned scholars like Yusuf al-Qaradawi describing government-elected jurists like Dr. Ali Gomaa as “the jurist of the soldiers.”13 It is clear that state interference with Islamic lawmaking is self-defeating: A state-controlled process cannot achieve the all-important aspect of legitimacy that traditional Islamic law enjoys. In this way state laws enjoy neither legitimacy nor the widespread support of the Muslim populace.
Speaking of our imagined “council of the professors of the law”: When disagreements arise, the lawmaking body can decide matters based on the votes cast by the professors. The ruling that gets the most votes is the one that is integrated into the legal code. Dissenting opinions will also be integrated into the code, so that citizens can be given the choice to act by the dissenting opinion where this is feasible, similar to the way that the four-school courts of the Mamlūks functioned.14
It would be logistically unfeasible to convene all of the law professors, who may number in the many thousands, into a single legislative house. Instead, the legislative body can work by issuing calls for fatwās from all of the professors without requiring them to convene. The legislative body can then collate all of the fatwās and determine which ruling has the most support.
And in order to protect the integrity of the process, a legislative council can be elected by the professors themselves that oversees the process of issuing fatwā calls, collating fatwās and integrating them into the legal code.
Each professor should have the right to propose a change to the legal code. Whenever a change to the legal code is proposed, a new fatwā call can be issued and the professors can either stand by their previous fatwās or issue new ones.
In this way a stable legal code can be created that enjoys the widespread support of the professors of the law and that satisfies the principles of the Sharia: academic freedom, non-exclusivity and changeability (the ability to always go back to the sources and reach new rulings). In this way a living and constantly up-to-date legal code can be created. Since some aspects of the law are highly specialized, each specialization can have its own council and professors.
April 15, 2019
They cannot stop sinning despite their worship and feel like a hypocrite
Salamalaikum Brother Ikram, I hope all is well. I tried to implement what you mentioned in your essays into my life. But I still feel guilty, shameful, and lonely. It's a part of life now. I have been patient and I have sought therapy for a long time as well, but nothing seems to work. I keep going back to committing sins that I should not because of these feelings. It's a cycle: I pray, I read the Quran, then I feel guilty, and then I sin, and then I go back to praying. It feels like its never-ending. I feel like a hypocrite. I pray every day and ask for forgiveness but then I return to the sin. Is there something you would like to recommend me?
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
I am very happy that you tried to implement what I say in my essays. I believe your course of action should now be patience and perseverance. You should be prepared for this state of things to continue for months and even years as disheartening as this sounds. Even if you fail a thousand times, always get back up and go back to God. Consider this a test of your patience and loyalty.
If you understand Arabic, I recommend listening to the Quran for an hour every day. If not perhaps reading it English will also help, get a good translation (such as Abdel Haleem’s) and spend an hour with it every day. Keeping doing this for months and see where that takes you.
Additionally you could try learning more about Islam. As your knowledge increases you will be better able to understand yourself and find the best path forward. You can check out our curriculum page and start reading the books on there.
I would greatly appreciate it if you report back your progress. Thank you for staying in touch and may Allah bless you and make things easy for you.
Loving someone but sexually desiring another person
Asalam Walikum, I have an issue. I feel that I can't stop having these intimate desires for this person, I can't stop feeling hormonal about it. I do like someone else but I like that person romantically not sexually. I do fear that if I end up with that someone else I'll still have sexual desires for this person. How can I stop?
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
Developing sexual desire for a person is something that our brains do automatically if we do not repress it from the beginning. We have instincts to always keep a lookout for eligible attractive mates regardless of our wishes.
For now you may not be able to do much about it. When you are married to your intended, you can work to make them the sole locus of your romantic and erotic attention. This is something that will require active work on your part. Whenever you find yourself thinking erotically of someone else, you can actively bring your spouse to mind. In this way you can train your brain not to sexualize others.
Another and maybe more important way is to develop a close relationship with God. My way of doing it is to listen to the Quran for an hour every single day. If I ever find myself trying to think erotically of someone, or trying to appreciate a woman’s exposed body, God immediately comes to my mind. Since I do not wish God’s respect to decrease for me, I automatically abandon the thought. God is always present in the back of my mind and knowing that He is there makes me want to act in a way that pleases Him and gains His admiration. This means that I never feel that I have the privacy to think inappropriate thoughts about others in my mind.
Please check out the page Guides on Getting Closer to God for more information on achieving closeness with Him.
Best wishes.
Is studying hard science a form of worship (ibada)?
Assalamualaikum, is studying STEM topics considered an ibadah, and if so, how do we make sure that the things we study may benefit us in the akhirah. Thank you.
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
My own thinking is that if we do the minimum of daily worship necessary to maintain a high character, and if our life is focused on achieving true stewardship (acting as an agent of God on earth), then everything we do can be considered worship.
Personally I listen to the Quran for an hour every day. I consider this the minimum worship required of me and plan to continue doing it for the rest of my life. Everything else I do is also geared toward satisfying the purpose of God’s creation of me here and now. So I consider all of my studies and projects a form of worship.
But that minimum amount of worship is extremely important. We should never delude ourselves into thinking that the project we are working on is so important that we can neglect our duty of God’s remembrance. If you find yourself sinning (even if it is a very minor sin) then that is a sign that the minimum amount of worship has not been achieved. God has no need of our works if we first do not act as purely submissive servants of Him. He does not like us to think that we are serving Him while betraying Him in other ways.
So the civilized Muslim should first create a foundation of impeccably high character and work toward maintaining it. From then on they can work on other things in their attempt to achieve true stewardship on earth.
Best wishes.