How Easily Some Traditions Get Entrenched

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