Contrasting Turkey with Qatar

So during Eid I went on vacation to Turkey, a country I typically visit at least once a year. Spent some time in Bodrum before heading to Bursa. It's a lot easier visiting places in Turkey now that Qatar Airways has opened more routes to the country, I think they now fly direct from Doha to seven different places.

The timing of my trip coincided with the Turkish currency crisis, where the lira dropped something like 40% in value. Not great for Turkey but it sure made my trip cheaper. Did a lot of shopping while I was there because my friends and I found that prices were around half of what we would pay in Doha. Some news articles noted that in Istanbul luxury goods shops were packed with tourists taking advantage of the currency to get top-end goods at great prices. I doubt it's like that anymore, the shops would have had to reorder stock from Europe so would have to factor in the currency difference in the retail price. I did note that at the Duty-Free at the airport all of the prices were in Euro, not lira. If the currency crisis does not abate soon I'm betting most tourist places will switch to Euro for pricing.

But what I wanted to discuss was some differences between Turks and Qataris. While Turkey is a secular State the population is still pretty much all Muslim, so it's interesting to see how their lives are different from an Arab living in the Gulf. Some people in the West think that all Muslims live their lives the same way but in truth countries with Muslim populations can be very different from one another. Travelling between Turkey and Qatar it always strikes me how different the two countries can be.

Turk society as a whole is more relaxed about privacy. In Qatar for example homes have walls around them and when designing a home there is always concern around where windows are and whether a neighbour can see your property through a window or see into your house. I've seen homes that put up screens on top of walls specifically to block a neighbour's view of the house. In Turkey cities are more densely populated and most people live in apartment blocks. Qatar-levels of privacy would be simply impractical in Turkey.

I suppose a lot of it stems from how much gender segregation occurs. In Arab society there is more emphasis on gender segregation. Saudi Arabia is always pointed out in Western Media as an extreme of this and while Qatar is not as strict as Saudi there are some similar cultural practices amongst Qataris.

Local schools are gender-segregated (though many foreign-run ones aren't) up until university, in Turkey I saw a number of mixed elementary and high schools.

In Qatar men will usually not approach friends if they see their friend with their wives and family. This is a faux pas in Qatar society. While mixed workplaces are now common the tradition about meeting in a personal setting prevails. This is why a man's majlis is separate from the house, so other men have no need to enter the home. One of my friends commented that he won't enter his own home if his wife has friends over, he'll stay in his majlis until the ladies leave. In Turkey is a lot more similar to the West and you meet couples all the time.

Continuing on this I have mentioned many times how wedding celebrations are separate for men and women. I've never seen a ladies wedding, nor would I ever be invited to one. I have yet to meet or see a picture of any of my friend's wives. I remember one time after a friend got married he was at the office one day with his wedding photo album -- it was all photos of him and his male relatives, there were no pictures of the bride or other ladies. Those photos were in a private photo album that only relatives would see. I have not been to a wedding in Turkey but I've seen pictures of brides and I'm guessing the level of segregation found in Qatar does not occur in Turkey.


In Qatar mixed workplaces are more and more the norm but it can be a surprise to some Qataris. Workplaces will accomodate where possible, keeping ladies together in rooms so that they can keep the door closed and have privacy, but sometimes in a office that isn't feasible. I have worked with ladies who just started in the office and you could tell they were uncomfortable working alongside men. It would take a while but in time they would get used to it. In Turkey men and women are not as segregated so everyone is used to mixed-gender offices.

Clothing is also quite different, with Qatari men wearing a white thobe while ladies wear a black abaya (usually without a veil or 'niqab' though some ladies still wear it). When travelling in places like Europe Qataris will usually wear Western-clothing but ladies will keep their hair covered. In Turkey clothes for men are typical to what you find in the West, although older men tend to dress in suits and collared shirts in cooler weather (I once saw a beggar in Bursa who was dressed more upscale than I was). With Turkish ladies it varied widely, ranging from Western clothing and not covering their hair, to long dresses and covered hair. Turkey is a large country so clothing style can vary based on the region. Outside of Istanbul, Ankara and the coastal cities ladies tend to dress more conservatively, and I was in one village an hour's drive from Ankara where ladies clothing was more similar to an Iranian chador than clothing worn in other places in Turkey. Turkish ladies also wear a lot more colour instead of the all-black of the Qatari abaya.

Attitudes towards alcohol also vary. In Qatar it is much more strict, and alcohol is not as widely available. Many of my Qatari friends will not even go near a bar as they do not want people thinking that they drink. Qataris are more understanding when travelling abroad, there's pretty much no way to avoid restaurants that serve alcohol, but in Qatar they try to distance themselves from it. None of my friends drink. In Turkey alcohol is more available and while it might be frowned upon people openly drink alcohol without much stigma, especially beer or raki (a spirit similar to ouzo or sambuca). It does vary by region, it is much easier to find alcohol in places like Istanbul or the coastal tourist cities than it is in more conservative areas. In the coastal tourist cities drinking might even be encouraged, with party boats and festivals, something that Qatar NEVER does (when the World Cup comes in 2022 it'll probably be the first time a huge event with alcohol is held in the country. Yes, Qatar is well aware that there will need to be areas where World Cup fans can access alcohol, they accepted that when they made the bid.)


Anyway, the takeaway from all of this is that there are a lot of Muslim societies in this world and their cultures vary widely from area to area. One can't take a place like Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, or Morocco and just assume every other Muslim-majority country is like that.

Lunar Eclipse

Last night there was a lunar eclipse visible from Australia and most of Asia, including Qatar. In Qatar the timing of it was great, it started around 9:30 PM, so you didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to see it. I happened to be at a friend's majlis with a bunch of other guys at the time. We followed it on TV but also went outside to take a look. Doha has a lot of light pollution and dust which obscures the sky (you rarely see stars) but the Moon was easily visible.

Here's a picture of it from the majlis.

By the way that bright dot that you see below the Moon is actually Mars. Many people don't realize that, depending on the location of the planet, the nearby planets can look brighter than stars. In fact after the Sun and the Moon the next brightest object in the night sky is Venus. So when I saw a star-like light near the Moon I knew it would be a planet, either Mars or Jupiter. The light pollution and dust covered the actual stars. Thanks to the Star Walk app that I have on my phone I was able to identify it as Mars. (If you like looking at the night sky I recommend downloading Star Walk 2. Great app.)


But my friends had to do one other thing, pray. In Islam you have to do a special prayer whenever there is an eclipse. It's in the Sunnah, both the Bukhari hadiths and the Al-Muslim hadiths, that the Prophet Mohammed performed a prayer during an eclipse and instructed his followers to do likewise whenever there is an eclipse. The prayer is different for lunar and solar eclipses, and my friends looked up online what they had to do for the prayer. Different schools of Islam may have minor differences in how to do the prayer but all agree that one should be done. Here's a link that discusses it.

The prayer only took a couple of minutes and then everyone was back watching the eclipse and chatting. At its darkest the Moon was difficult to spot, I wound up looking for Mars as it was easier to see at which point you found the Moon.

Here's a composite from the local Gulf Times newspaper showing the neat red colour.

I was glad I had the chance to see the eclipse.

Ramadan 2016, Day 24 – Hajj and Umrah Hadiths

(Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian readers! I’m going to eat something with maple syrup tonight.)



The pilgrimage to Mecca is very important to a Muslim. Performing the Hajj is one of the Five Pillars of Islam and requires a Muslim, if able, to perform the Hajj pilgrimage once in his life. Before the advent of air travel going all the way to Mecca was a big journey, one that most Muslims could not afford. Now, on the other hand, it is much easier to get to Mecca so the Saudi Government has to limit the number of Muslims attending Hajj each year by restricting how many Hajj visas they provide, “only” a few million or so.

Hajj has to be performed at a specific time so all of those millions of pilgrims do all the same rituals together, and unfortunately because of the large crowds there sometimes problems with crushing or stampeding, leading to dozens or even hundreds of deaths. The Saudi Government has spent a lot of money over the decades expanding, and expanding, and expanding the facilities to be able to accommodate more pilgrims and prevent problems. It’s a delicate balance, they have to let Muslims perform the Hajj because of how important it is that the same time they have to put some limits in to try to minimize crowding deaths (I’m sure if there were no restrictions more than 10 million would show up to try to perform the Hajj).

Umrah, a mini-pilgrimage, is a smaller event (takes less than a day) and can be performed at any time other than the Hajj. While it is not required for a Muslim to perform Umrah it is certainly encouraged.

Given the importance of the rituals little surprise that there are a lot of hadiths regarding them. My book of hadiths has “The Book of the Rites of Hajj and Umrah” and it’s over 160 pages.


While it is common in some Muslim societies for women to cover their faces with a veil or niqab, during Hajj a woman is not allowed to cover her face. She can cover her hair though.


A woman cannot perform Hajj without being accompanied by her husband or a close male relative, known as a mahram. This hadith restriction on not being able to perform the Hajj without a mahram I think reverberates through many other aspects of some Islamic societies. If a woman cannot perform Hajj without a mahram then, by extension, a woman should not be going anywhere without a mahram (an extremist position best exemplified by the Taliban when they controlled Afghanistan).

Interestingly, on this webpage from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, women over the age of 45 can apply for a Hajj visa without a mahram, provided they are traveling in a group, and provide a letter from their husband or other male relative that it is okay for them to travel.


Children can also accompany their parents or guardians and perform the rites of Hajj but this will not relieve them from the obligation to perform Hajj when they are an adult. The obligation for a Muslim to perform Hajj applies to adults so performing it as a child does not mean you never have to perform Hajj again. The Saudi Government will issue Hajj visas to minors if accompanied by their family, though I don’t think it is common (due to the expense and the crowded conditions) for pilgrims to bring children to Hajj.



Now to conduct a pilgrimage one has to ritually purify themselves before they enter the city. This state of purification is known as Ihram. There's a great wiki page discussing it. Because one has to remain in a state of Ihram during Hajj or Umrah actually there are a lot of hadiths surrounding what is and isn't permissible when in Ihram.


It is fine to conduct trade while in Ihram, there were five hadiths specifically discussing this.

You should not apply perfume or other scents once you are in Ihram. You can apply perfume before you become Ihram though, as the Prophet was known to do so. In modern times this also applies to make-up, scented soaps, and even deodorants. However, you can apply products to your hair, such as gel, that helps keep it together and helps reduce it from getting dirty with dust and sand. One hadith mentions that the Prophet would apply a paste of honey to his hair.



Another key aspect of the Hajj is a requirement for a pilgrim to sacrifice an animal on the third day of the Hajj so there are a number of hadiths around that (how to transport them, what animals are accepted with a sacrifice, what if the animal dies en route to Mecca etc.). Nowadays, thanks to millions of pilgrims being able to reach Mecca for Hajj each year, they don't bring their own animals but there's still the issue of how to deal with the slaughter of so many animals at once, creating far more meat than the pilgrims could possibly eat. Saudi Arabia has started putting things in place to deal with the problem, including flash-freezing meat so that it can be shipped to other countries, and allowing pilgrims to purchase ‘sacrifice vouchers’ after which at an appointed time an animal will be slaughtered in their name, saving the pilgrim from having to find and slaughter their own animal.

http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/flash-freezing-takes-care-of-surplus-meat-from-haj-sacrifice


More hadiths to come, still 4-5 days to go for Ramadan.

Ramadan 2016, Day 21 – Qur’an Discussions

Last night I was out at a sohour dinner with some friends and given that it was Ramadan the topic soon moved to Islam. One of my friends discussed some of the complications regarding interpreting the Qur’an and Sunnah given things such as nuskh (abrogation, some verses supersede other verses), and that some passages in the Qur’an were meant to apply to the specific situation at the time they were revealed whereas others had a more general application, and that scholars sometimes disagree as to whether the verse was specific or general.

So I asked a question that any Westerner who has read through the Qur’an probably had, why are the verses ordered in the way they are?

The Qur’an is ordered into a number of chapters, called surahs, and their order is not by chronology but by length. Aside from the first surah, which is short but not the shortest surah, thereafter they are organized from the longest to the shortest (so the second surah is the longest surah in the Qur’an, the third surah is the second-longest, etc). As for the verses in the surahs, at first glance they would appear disorganized. Topics can have verses spread out over many surahs, and the text seems to jump from one thing to another usually without any smooth transitions. For example there are four verses in the Qur’an on alcohol and they appear over (I think) three different surahs. Given that some supersede the others you would need to know all of the verses to make sense of the restrictions.

My friends weren't entirely sure why it was ordered the way it was. They knew that the Prophet Mohammed had determined the order of the verses but none of them were sure why it was in that order. After Internet searching I guess that is the correct answer. The Prophet Mohammed ordered the verses during his lifetime and there seems to be a consensus that he was consistent in how the verses were ordered. During his lifetime most people were illiterate and to preserve the revelations they memorized the Qur’an (a significant feat) and the order of the verses was consistent. I believe the official written version was finalized after the Prophet's death, around the time of Caliph Omar or Caliph Uthman. As for why, I believe that the Prophet claimed it was due to divine revelation that they had to be ordered that way and, in the end, never said why they were ordered that way.

I recall an article by an Islamic scholar that I read long ago that speculated the verses were “jumbled” to force the reader to know and be familiar with the entire Qur’an, rather than focus on just a section or a few chapters. If someone wanted to know what the Qur’an had to say about a specific topic you could not just be aware of one verse, you had to be familiar with potential verses that could be in other chapters of the Qur’an. This was even more important given that some verses superseded others, and some were considered to be for a specific event that was happening at the time it was revealed rather than to be applied generally. When I mentioned this to my friends they thought that was a reasonable explanation but given that there was no official reason given as to why the verses are in the order they're in it could only be, at most, speculation.

And with that we concluded sohour. It was almost 1am y’know.

Ramadan 2016, Day 20 – Hadiths continued . . .

Man, there’s hadiths for almost everything. The Prophet Mohammed lived a long life, he died in his early 60s, and had started to receive the Revelations around 20 years prior, so there was plenty of time for followers to ask him questions and to take note of the things he said and did. Sometimes I feel that maybe people took note of a few too many things (do you want to know how many stones he used to wipe with after going to the bathroom? There’s hadiths discussing that) but thanks to the diligence of his followers there are tens of thousands of hadiths, providing detailed insight into how a Muslim should live his life. There are issues regarding authenticity of hadiths, even during the time of the Prophet people were starting to falsely attribute things to him, and many fake hadiths started to spread. Scholars have spent centuries studying hadiths to verify their authenticity and hadith collections, such as the Sunan Abu Dawud, contain ones that have been reasonably verified as authentic.

I've now come across a small book in the Sunan Abu Dawud, the Book of Lost Items, with hadiths covering what to do when you find things that belong to someone else. Let’s see…


If you find something that belongs to someone else but you don't know who the owner is you should announce it for at least a year that you have the item and the owner can come claim it. Scholarship disagrees a bit with the timeframe, one hadith notes that the Prophet told someone to announce it for a year but that when he returned after the time the Prophet told him to announce it for another year (and a third time after that). All agree that one year is the minimum though. If no one claims it then you can benefit from whatever it was you found, but even then if the owner shows up you still have to give it back.


There are hadiths that indicate you do not need to do this for small amounts. There was a case where someone found a dinar at the souq and they were able to use it immediately after they went to the Prophet to ask what to do. The owner did show up later though so the person gave him a dinar back.


With livestock the general rule is you should leave it alone if it is capable of surviving on its own (for example, camels) but if it is not then you should take it with you and make announcements for a year for its owner to claim it, “ . . . it is either for you, or your brother, or the wolf.”, meaning that for smaller animals such as sheep or goats if you don't take it with you it will likely die on its own and be eaten by wolves.


What about fruits/dates on trees? A hadith states that it is okay, if you are in need, to eat from the tree, but you cannot “gather any in your garments”. So it is not theft if you eat from the tree but it is theft if you gather some up to take with you.


Finally, if you think the item belongs to a Hajj pilgrim then it is better if you leave it where you found it. Hajj pilgrims do not stay for a year so they would have a better chance of finding their lost property it was left where it was.



This segues nicely into the next Book in the hadith collection, the Book of Hajj and Umrah. It’s long though so it’ll take a while to read. I’ll post about it in a few days.

Ramadan 2016, Day 18 – Zakat continued . . .

In my previous blog post I discussed Zakat without mentioning what it was for. I remember calling it a religious tax but the money collected for Zakat can only go to specific causes.

The uses of Zakat are outlined in Surah 9:60 of the Qur’an (items in brackets are clarifications from the translator):


(Zakat is) only for the poor, and those employed to collect (the Zakat); and to attract the hearts of those who have been inclined (towards Islam); and to free the captives; and for those in debt; and for Allah’s Cause (those fighting in a holy battle), and for the wayfarer (a traveler who is cut off from everything); a duty imposed by Allah. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.


So Zakat is not a general tax that can be spent on things like road maintenance or government upkeep.


My Zakat post timed well with a news article that I saw in the paper yesterday. The Sheikh Thani Bin Abdullah Foundation for Humanitarian Services had a radio fundraiser to help Qataris who are in jail because of defaulting on debt (in Qatar there is no such thing as personal bankruptcy, if you cannot pay your debts you go to essentially a debtor prison). As it is the season for generosity they were able to raise around QR 4 million (~$1.35 million) from the community.

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/news/qatar/385788/qr4m-raised-to-free-seven-loan-defaulters

To some Westerners a radio appeal to help people with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of consumer or business debt would seem a bit odd but for Muslims it is one of the Five Pillars of Islam to give Zakat, and one of its uses is specifically to help people in debt.

What about others, especially non-Muslims, who might be in prison due to debt? There are differences of interpretation between the various Islamic Schools but in general Zakat cannot be given to a non-Muslim, while a minority are of the view that it can be given to non-Muslims after all Muslims have been assisted. I believe the Hanbali scholars (Hanbali is the main school of Islam in places such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia) abide by the “Muslims-only” interpretation. Internet searches, such as this website, indicate that as well.


As the Holy Month continues there will be further charity appeals to help the poor and people in debt.

Ramadan 2016, Day 16 – Zakat

One of the Five Pillars of Islam is for a Muslim to give Zakat, essentially a religious tax. It is roughly 2.5% (one-fortieth) of your assets. Unlike taxes in most Western countries it is not based on income but how much you own. Because it would be a burden for the poor to pay this there is a minimum threshold, called a nisab, any amounts you own above the nisab is subject to Zakat. Zakat is then distributed to the poor, to pilgrims, or for other charitable purposes.

Naturally this led to many questions about how it is determined, how one should pay it etc, so there are many hadiths related to Zakat. In my Sunan Abu Dawud there are around 90 pages of hadiths discussing Zakat. Here’s some of the interesting things I’ve learned from reading those chapters:


I didn’t realize at first but many hadiths use a different word, Sadaqah, instead of Zakat. That got confusing for a while until I realized it was referring to the same thing.


If parents have children who possess wealth then it is the responsibility of the parents to either pay the Zakat on behalf of their children or make their children pay the Zakat.


Jewelry worn by ladies is subject to Zakat. There were a few Hadiths about this so it was clearly an important point. For many ladies of the time jewelry was a means of savings, it could be sold during hard times or could provide some financial security for a woman if her husband died.


There were a lot of Hadiths regarding Zakat on animals. Back in the day for many people herd animals (goats, sheep, cows, camels) were the majority of a person’s wealth. How do you value the animals? How do you provide 2.5%? Round up or down? Can you give an old, sick or injured animal as Zakat? Do pregnant animals count as double? What if you only have one or two camels? There are some hadiths, in some cases very long hadiths, that deal with these issues.


Another hadith specifically exempts horses and slaves from Zakat calculations, so you do not have to pay Zakat on that.


What about crops? The 2.5% is not universal, crops and produce have different percentages applied. Apparently it matters if the crops were irrigated by rain or a river (10% Zakat) or if the crops were irrigated artificially (5% Zakat). For fruit trees like dates there is a more complex calculation based on estimates of how much fruit you would have when the fruit is fully ripened.


Honey has a Zakat of 10%, even though back then many people did not ‘own’ the beehives and were collecting honey from the wild, so if you own stored honey you should pay Zakat on it.


As for the nisab (the minimum wealth one should have before you pay Zakat) there are many Hadiths around what the minimum should be. The Hadiths make it clear you should not be paying Zakat if doing so would just make you poor yourself. I think nowadays it is based on a certain amount of gold and how much that is worth.


More Hadiths to come over the next couple of weeks . . .

Ramadan 2016, Day 15 – Souvenirs from Mecca

During Ramadan most Qataris do not travel, preferring to remain in Qatar during the month. There is one exception to this, performing Umrah in Mecca. The Umrah is a pilgrimage to the Kaaba in Mecca and can be undertaken at any time of the year, unlike Hajj which occurs at a specific time. An Umrah is not as involved as Hajj (it doesn’t span many days unlike Hajj) and unlike the Hajj is not mandatory, while it would be preferable for a Muslim to perform Umrah sometime in their life it is not a requirement. Because Ramadan is a Holy Month it is one of the most popular times for Muslims to perform Umrah.

One of my friends just returned from performing Umrah and he generously bought some souvenirs for me.

First, there's a small jar of perfume, a mixture or aoud, anbar (ambergris in English) and other fragrances. Traditional Arab perfumes are an oil rather than a spray. You take a little bit of it, just a little because these types of perfumes are quite strong, and put it on your wrists and then rub it on to your neck, the back of your hands or wherever.


The next thing is a set of prayer beads, called a misbaha. Some of them are 33 beads but in this case it’s a long one of 99 beads. They can be made of various materials, this one is made of wood but I also have one made of amber (see here), which is a popular material for misbaha.

One of the main uses for a misbaha is to recite a tasbih, a type of prayer. The tasbih requires a Muslim to say, 33 times each:
Subhan’allah (Glory be to Allah)
Alhamdulallah (Praise be to Allah)
Allahu Akbar (Allah is the Greatest)

So the misbaha can be used to keep count, moving your finger to the next bead as you recite the prayer. Misbaha will typically have a smaller bead between every 11 or 33 beads so that the person will have a better idea where he is in the count.


Finally, do you have any idea what this is?

I had never seen one before either. It’s a vintage souvenir that was quite popular in Mecca back in the day. There is a small lens that you can look through and see a picture, by pressing the bottom of the “TV” it then rotates to another picture, very similar to the ViewMasters that were popular in North America in the 70s.

I managed to get a couple of pictures through the view lens.

In it are eight pictures of Mecca, including the mosque, the Kaaba, the Black Stone, and worshipers performing pilgrimage. My friend loves vintage things and when he saw a shop that sold these he immediately picked one up for me.

It was kind of my friend to buy these things for me, given I can’t go to Mecca myself.

Ramadan 2016, Day 12 – Hadiths

I have now moved on to volume 2 of the Sunan Abu Dawud. I figured I had moved on from the chapters surrounding prayer only to find that continues in volume 2, for over 200 pages. The intricacies of when and how to pray are clearly a significant issue in Islam.

Some of the sections dealt with very specific types of prayer. The first chapter in volume 2 listed hadiths about prayers for rain. Praying for rain is one of the few instances outside of the regular daily prayers where groups of Muslims will get together to pray to Allah, and in this case for a specific thing. There are numerous hadiths discussing the Prophet Mohammed doing this type of prayer and in the Gulf organized prayers for rain still occur. In Qatar they are usually led by the Emir himself.

http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/news/qatar/359441/emir-performs-rain-prayer


Next were hadiths discussing prayers that should occur during eclipses. A Muslim should pray during an eclipse (either lunar or solar), and the hadiths discuss how many Rakas etc are required. Other hadiths also mention that a Muslim should donate to charity when there is an eclipse, or free some slaves. Mosques in the Gulf will be open for prayer when an eclipse occurs.



Next was a short chapter (around 30 pages) of hadiths related to praying while traveling. There are a number of exceptions and modifications that Muslims can make to the obligatory prayers while they are traveling, such as shortening the prayer. If the Muslim is at war, in enemy territory, or in battle, there can be further exemptions. Not surprisingly, one is not expected to stop in the middle of a dangerous situation to perform prayer.


Finally, I came across a commentary on a hadith that I found interesting. It states:

There are only three Masjids (mosques) in the world for which one may make a journey with the intent to worship there for a higher reward. These are: Masjid Al-Haram in Mecca, the Prophet’s Masjid in Al-Medina, and the Masjid Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem.

Upon reflection I don't recall any of my Muslim friends mentioning making religious visits to anywhere else. Mecca is of course the most important place, but many Muslims who traveled to Mecca on a pilgrimage typically will then go onward to Medina to visit the Prophet’s Mosque. Visiting Jerusalem is a lot more difficult so I'm not sure how many non-Palestinian Muslims can make the journey. It is not a problem if they can’t, unlike performing the Hajj in Mecca there is no particular requirement for a Muslim to visit Jerusalem.

Note that this is a Sunni interpretation. Shi’a Muslims definitely hold those three mosques as holy but Shi’a Muslims also do pilgrimages to other holy sites, such as the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, Iraq, or the Imam Hussain Shrine in Karbala, Iraq.



More hadith reading to come . . .

Ramadan 2016, Day 8 – More Hadiths on Prayer

This will be my last post covering the Book of Prayer, is such a long section of the Sunan Abu Dawud, covering hundreds of pages, but there's no way I'd be able to adequately summarize it all. So I've just been reading it and picking out the parts that I find interesting or unusual. I've still got four more volumes of the Sunan to go though and I do want to read some of the other sections.

There are a couple of hadiths that state there was a lady named Umm Waraqah bint Nawfal, who had memorized the Qur’an, and asked the Prophet if she could have a Muadhdhin (one who makes the call to prayer) in her house, and she was given permission to do so. This means that it is permissible for a woman to lead the prayer. The commentary to the Sunan says it is permissible for a woman to lead other women in prayer (but not men). I'm assuming that it is implied through the hadith that women can lead prayers with other women only as the hadiths themselves do not explicitly state that, just that Umm Waraqah “(was commended) to lead the people of her house in prayer”.

Sure enough when I went to a wiki page about female imams, this hadith was one of the ones cited as support that a woman should be able to lead a mixed-gender congregation, taking a broader interpretation of “lead the people of her house in prayer” to mean the men and women of the house. The person who compiled my translation of the Sunan Abu Dawud disagrees with that view, and that view appears to be shared by people in this region -- I don’t think there are female imams in the Gulf. On the other hand, according to the wiki page, Turkey does allow it.



So what should men wear when praying? There's a number of hadiths about this but it appears that the recommendation is you should be wearing at least two garments, and if you are only wearing one (such as a thobe) it must cover both shoulders. So a man shouldn’t be shirtless when praying, if possible.


Speaking of wearing things, here’s an interesting hadith:

Amr bin Shu’aib reported from his father, from his grandfather, that he said: "I saw the Messenger of Allah pray barefooted and (also saw him praying) while wearing sandals."

This one surprised me. The hadith must be referring to if you're praying outdoors because you should never wear shoes when entering a mosque. Anyone who's visited a mosque will see that before the door there will be an area where you store your shoes and sandals. Outside of a mosque Muslims (at least Sunnis) tend to use carpets and prayer rugs, so you wouldn't wear your sandals on that either. I also assume given the bowing and kneeling required for prayer it would be easier to not wear sandals while praying. So while the hadith indicates that might be permissible to wear sandals I doubt many do.

Other hadiths stressed the importance of not praying directly behind people who are sleeping or talking. One must also take care to not walk right in front of people who are praying (or, in one hadith, ride a camel in front of people who are praying) and the hadiths note that you should actually try to stop a person from walking in front of you. So if you are a non-Muslim please bear in mind it would be considered rude to walk directly in front of Muslims while they’re praying. It’s fine to walk in front if you are some distance away but you should not be too close during prayer. In the open a Muslim might use any large object (called a sutrah) to help prevent people from walking too close in front of them. According to hadith a person's prayer is broken if they do not use a sutrah and someone passes in front of them. Different hadiths mention different things passing in front of you could break the prayer: men, women, donkeys, dogs or people riding animals.


One interesting side note is that one hadith is more specific about a dog crossing your path breaking the prayer -- a black dog. The Prophet was asked why a black dog and not dogs of other colors and he said: “The black dog is a Shaitan (devil)”.

Finally, during prayer you should not look up to the ceiling/sky. Again I didn’t expect that one, it is common in Christianity to look upward towards heaven but in Islam when you are praying don’t do that.


Now I'll start looking at volume two of the hadiths to see what it has to say . . .

Ramadan 2016, Day 6 – Hadiths, part three

As an aside, I have updated my post "Varieties of Dates" for two more varieties – Majdool and Khenaizi.


More hadiths about praying. I learned two things today:

Firstly, children should start trying to do the prayers starting from age 7. By age 10 they should be doing all five prayers properly. If they are younger than 10 they should not be punished for missing prayers or making mistakes.

Secondly, there were many hadiths regarding the origin of the call to prayer, the lengthy call that is announced from every mosque to inform Muslims that it is time to come to the mosque for prayer. It is known as the Adhan.

According to the hadiths in the Sunan Abu Dawud there was discussion with the Prophet about how it would be best to inform everyone it was time for prayer. A few ideas were put forth: using a flag (no), using a horn, using bells (no, that would be confusing as Christian churches use bells). So the matter was left undecided and people went home. That night a man by the name of Abdullah bin Zaid bin Abd Rabbih had a vivid dream where the Adhan was revealed to him. The next day he went and reported his dream to the Prophet and the people around him. This was later confirmed by Omar, who said that he had a similar dream a couple of weeks ago (maybe 20 days) but had not reported it. The Prophet concluded that these dreams may have been messages and so asked Bilal, a follower known for his strong and powerful voice, to learn the words from Abdullah bin Zaid and recite them.

Bilal is henceforth famous as the first person to call the Adhan, and would be the one to call the Adhan for the followers thereafter.

If you ever listened to the Adhan (if not you should search it on youtube) the hadiths in the Sunan Abu Dawud repeat the Adhan many times, though with slight variations from hadith to hadith. I believe the Adhan was finalized in its current form shortly afterwards. I listened to it last night with my book in hand to follow the words, and I believe it goes like this:

Allahu Akbaru
Allahu Akbaru
Allahu Akbaru
Allahu Akbaru
Ashhadu anla ilaha illallah
Ashhadu anla ilaha illallah
Ashhadu anla Muhammadan rasulullah
Ashhadu anla Muhammadan rasulullah
Ashhadu anla ilaha illallah
Ashhadu anla ilaha illallah
Ashhadu anla Muhammadan rasulullah
Ashhadu anla Muhammadan rasulullah
Hayya alas-salat
Hayya alas-salat
Hayya alal-falah
Hayya alal-falah
[if the morning prayer then say: As-salatu khairun minan-nawm, As-salatu khairun minan-nawm]
Allahu Akbaru
Allahu Akbaru
La ilaha illallah


Now the story I given above is apparently the Sunni-accepted version. Shi’a believe that the Prophet had the dream, not Abdullah bin Zaid or Omar, and the Adhan is slightly different from the one I listed above. Both groups agree that Bilal was the first to conduct the call to prayer.


More hadiths to come . . .

Ramadan 2016, Day 4 – Hadiths, part two

Moving to the next book of the Sunan Abu Dawud is the Book of Prayer, the hadiths regarding the five daily prayers. This Book runs over 400 pages, 1000 hadiths, and on its own is probably about half the size of the Qur’an. That's a lot of information for a Muslim to know, which gives you an idea of why it takes many years of study to become an Islamic Scholar. Islamic scholarship is not just about knowing the Qur’an, you have to be very familiar with the thousands of hadiths and learn how to assess or interpret them in light of what the Qur’an says.

While reading the Book I came across a hadith that at first might appear to be a little innocuous:

Jabir bin Abdullah said, “I would pray Zuhr with the Messenger of Allah, and would take a handful of pebbles in my hand in order to cool them. I would place them for my forehead, and prostrate on them due to the severe heat."

It doesn't seem like much but I wondered if this was one of the key hadiths for Shi’a Muslims. I’ve noticed in my travels that, unlike Sunnis, when Shi’a Muslims pray they place a small clay disc on the ground and their foreheads touch that when they bow on the ground. A little googling later and my assumption was incorrect. The disc is called a turbah and there's a number of other rulings and hadiths that Shi’a use to support praying with a turbah. This hadith maybe provides additional support to the concept but it’s not the main reason. Sunnis do not use turbah but rather I think they take the interpretation that it's fine to pray with your head touching dirt or pebbles, but it’s not mandatory and you can pray on a carpet if you wish, and nowadays prayer rugs are a standard item for prayers.

Many hadiths relate to the timing of prayers. While nowadays people just use prayer timetables developed by scholars & astronomers, recall that back in the time of the Prophet your average Muslim would not have had access to such detailed information. Thus being able to tell the position of the Sun was important, but it would not have been an exact science for most people. Hadiths cover this in-depth, with discussions of the size of shadows or how to time the prayer based on the Sun rising/setting.

The hadiths to give some leeway to followers, noting that it is okay if the prayer is delayed by a little bit, and specifically says if the mid-day prayer will be in the extreme heat of the day then it is permissible to delay it for a little bit until a cooler time (I think this was referring to if you're doing prayers outdoors, I don't think it would apply if you were indoors). Even if you miss a prayer, such as because you overslept, it's fine to do the prayer late. However, a few hadiths warn that deliberately delaying the prayer is a sin, so followers should not be using the previous hadiths to justify delaying prayers to whenever they feel like it or when it is convenient.

I later found an interesting hadith, something that I was not aware of:

Abu Hurairah narrated that he heard the Messenger of Allah say: "Whoever hears a man announcing his lost animal in the masjid (mosque), then let him say, ’May Allah not return it to you,’ for the masjids have not been built for this purpose.”

So you're not allowed to make announcements in a mosque regarding lost items. My copy of the Sunan Abu Dawud has an aside that notes that scholars differed on whether you can make an announcement about lost children, some say you can and others say you should not. I’ll ask my Muslim friends about this one and see what the Hanbali interpretation is.

Next up was about a dozen or so hadiths regarding spitting in a mosque or during prayer. No surprise, you shouldn’t spit in a mosque, if need be spit into your garment and carry the spit out. If praying, and not in a mosque, never spit forward (the direction of Mecca) nor to your right side. Two hadiths state that preferably you should spit under your left foot and use your foot to rub it into the dirt, three different hadiths reported witnessing the Prophet Mohammed do this.

Finally, I read an interesting hadith that noted the Prophet said: “All of the earth is a place of prostration, except a hammam (bathroom), and a graveyard.”

I hadn't really thought about it before but in Qatar and other parts of the Gulf I haven't seen any graveyards or graves next to or surrounding a mosque. Graveyards in Qatar tend to be secluded places well out view, the main one is close to the Industrial Area and I haven't visited it yet. Contrast that with many European churches where there is a graveyard next to the church (or even have graves in the church). I'm not sure whether this hadith is universally applied in the Islamic world, I have seen mosques in Turkey and Damascus that were near, or contained, grave(s) of notable leaders or religious individuals.

(The next hadith added an additional location you shouldn't pray in, camel pens, but I'm sure people wouldn't be too inclined to do that anyway.)


As I read more hadiths through the month I’ll summarize them in later blog posts.

Ramadan 2016, Day 2 - Hadiths, part one

As I mentioned earlier my Ramadan reading is the Sunan Abu Dawud, a collection of hadiths compiled by Abu Dawud. The five volumes might be the complete work, there are over five thousand hadiths in the set. It will take a while to get through but the first section was pretty interesting - The Book of Purification, a series of hadiths regarding bathroom habits and how to purify yourself for prayers.

If you're not familiar with the Qur'an and the hadiths you'd be surprised at how much of the day-to-day rules are found not in the Qur'an but in the tens of thousands of hadiths. The Qur'an itself is not as big as the Bible, it's roughly 1/11th the length, but the sayings and doing of the Prophet (hadiths) add a lot more context on how a Muslim should live their life. In the Abu Dawud hadiths the Book of Purification is probably the same length as a third of the Qur'an. It's a lot to go through.

So what did I learn today? There are a lot of hadiths regarding going to the bathroom, such as:

-- you should be secluded or hidden from view

-- there is an Arabic phrase you should say when entering the bathroom. The hadiths list a few variants but essentially you seek Allah's protection.
-- but never say it while urinating/defecating because you should not use Allah's name at that time.

-- you should not face or have your back to the Qibla (the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca) when going to the bathroom (I never thought about this, are any toilets in Qatar in line with the Qibla? I'll keep an eye out for that.)

-- wipe with at least three stones, and never with bones or dung (remember, paper and leaves were hard to come by back then)

-- never use your right hand when going to the bathroom (this is why Arabs will traditionally not hand you something with their left hand, nor use their left hand to touch communal food such as a platter of lamb and rice)

-- don't chat with people while using the toilet/urinating
-- even if someone says "Assalamu Alaykum", don't respond until after you're finished

-- do not carry something with Allah's name into the bathroom with you

-- do not relive yourself in waterways, paths, and under shade where people may congregate

-- do not urinate into burrows or other holes made by animals


Like I said there's a lot of rules, this was only a sample. It must take a while to learn them all.

There'll be more reading over the course of the month.

Ramadan 2015, Day 8 - A Holy Month Interrupted by Terrorism

So what was supposed to be a quiet, lazy Ramadan Friday was interrupted by breaking news report after breaking news report of terrorist attacks in Kuwait, Tunisia, and France.

In Kuwait a suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shi’a mosque during the Friday prayer. To attack a mosque during Friday prayer during Ramadan is pretty shocking and was clearly done in the knowledge that the mosque would be filled to overflowing with people. Attacking a mosque during Ramadan Friday prayer would, in my opinion, be analogous to attacking a church congregation during Christmas Mass. Islam states that it is preferable for Muslim men to do their five prayers a day at a mosque but it is not a requirement. But if there is one prayer a week that everyone shows up at it is the noon prayer on Friday. During Ramadan even moreso.

Isn't Ramadan supposed to be the month of peace and spiritual reflection? The BBC had a commentator on who noted that Islamic extremist groups embrace the example of one of the earliest great battles of Islam, which took place during the month of Ramadan. I wasn't sure which battle he was referring to but a quick Internet search lead me to think it was the Battle of Badr, the first large battle between the Islamic army (led by the Prophet Mohammed) and non-believers from other parts of the Arabic peninsula.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Badr

So sectarian violence appears to be spreading across the region. There were some mosque bombings in Saudi Arabia not too long ago, the Syrian War drags on, ISIL is still fighting in Iraq, and now Yemen has descended into fighting split along religious lines.

As for Qatar I suppose there is a risk of something happening though hopefully the risk will be small. While the vast majority of Qataris are Sunni one must remember that Qataris are only maybe 15% of the population of the country. There are numerous immigrants here from Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain and other countries with sizable Shi’a populations so there is risk that a Shi’a mosque in Qatar could be targeted (ISIL is a radical Sunni group who I think consider Shi’a Muslims to be something like heretics.)

I asked a Qatari friend of mine if there are any Shi’a mosques in Qatar, and how one could tell? He only knew of one in Qatar and told me there’s no easy way to tell if a mosque is Sunni or Shi’a as they will “look the same”. I take that to mean there’s no difference in architecture, I assume you’ll only know when you get closer. I’m sure there are differences that a Muslim would pick up on immediately.

Hopefully nothing will happen in Qatar. Heck, hopefully nothing more happens anywhere.

Talking about Islam

A lot of times I see on the Internet, or when I have discussions with people, this notion that Islam is some kind of monolithic religious entity and that all Muslims are more or less the same in how they practice and interpret the religion. With attacks by groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabab and Boko Haram getting more frequent and receiving a lot of attention many in the West conclude that is how Islam works, and Muslims are somehow inherently violent. When I explain I've lived in an Islamic country for almost 9 years without incident some people don’t want to hear it, it challenges their notions that Islamic countries are fundamentally dangerous places. Instead a quick read of some passages in the Qur’an supports their view (“See, the Qur’an says X, therefore Muslims must do X”). Such analysis is simplistic and misleading, not only does it not explain why the vast majority of the billion+ Muslims are not conducting their lives like members of terrorist groups, it leads Westerners to sweeping conclusions about the religion and could be a stepping-stone to outright Islamophobia.

Last Ramadan I spent a lot of time reading a book on Islamic Jurisprudence, and discovered that, not surprisingly, interpreting Islamic scripture is complicated. One can't simply just read a passage in the Qur’an and figure they’ve understood what's going on. There’s a lot more to it than that, which is why becoming an Islamic scholar takes many years of study. But it was a concept I really struggled to explain, given I’ve only scratched the surface myself.

Well someone pointed me to a recent article in Salon by Dr. H.A. Hellyer that does a great explanation of this when discussing how ISIS in the context of Islam. It really is worth reading to get a basic idea of how Islamic scholarship works and why it is dangerous to interpret things yourself (both by Muslims and non-Muslims).

Here’s some excerpts but really, read the whole article.

[There are around 1.5 billion Muslims around the world. The vast, overwhelming majority of them, needless to say, are not members of ISIS — and, in fact, Muslims actually make up the majority of ISIS’s victims, its most active enemies on the battlefield, and its most prominent detractors.]

[. . . if the Islamic credentials of ISIS were so widely considered as valid, even if most chose not to actually follow them, surely there would be a large numbers of Muslim jurists and theologians that would vouch for as much. In reality, the vast majority declares in no uncertain terms that, indeed, those credentials are void and invalid . . .]

[These are rather complex systems of establishing religious authority via processes akin to academic peer review. Indeed, parts of these systems of transmission, especially with relation to jurisprudence, have become crystalized in various curricula and schools of law (madhahib) . . . . . Modern radical tendencies within the Muslim community do away with such systems. For them, the Muslim community has gone awfully wrong – and they’re going to put it right. In short, they create a do-it-yourself kit of interpretation.]

[When ISIS claims book “A” written by author “B” says “C,” any Muslim can find that book, and see if it does. If this new interpretation appears credible, then readers are often stumped — because they, like ISIS, have generally not been through a seminary education that would put such books into context, according to the systems of transmission mentioned above. While it is welcome for all sorts of reasons that religious authorities stand up and say “ISIS is not Islamic and these actions are forbidden” and the like, that doesn’t address the basic issue.]

[Religious authorities need to do far more than simply say “this is un-Islamic” when faced with a crime ISIS or others carry out. Fully comprehensive refutations of why these things are un-Islamic need to be forthcoming – and put into terms that are comprehensible to the layman.]


I hope Salon keeps the article online, I think in the future I will use it when trying to discuss with Westerners the complexities surrounding Islam.

A Muslim Doesn’t Want to Sell Pork or Alcohol – and Apparently Civilization is Now Doomed

About a week or so ago the London newspaper the Daily Mail had a big story about a hotel that was no longer going to serve pork or alcohol. You can read the article and the comments for yourself but here's a quick (humorous) summary:


Muslim: I just bought this hotel. Because I am a devout Muslim I don’t want the hotel selling pork or alcohol.

Daily Mail: “WELCOME TO HOTEL SHARIA”

Many Daily Mail readers: OMG!! Muslims are going to turn Britain into an Islamic country! Soon there’ll be Sharia courts everywhere!! *runs to grab torches and pitchforks*

Muslim: uhhhhhhhhhhh, what?


It's both funny yet disturbing that such an innocuous thing would cause such Islamophobic mayhem. The Daily Mail wasn’t the only one to run this story, if you search Google News a number of newspapers and websites reported it. Some of the comments posted under the Mail article, and there were more than 2000, were really quite shocking but I won’t reprint them here. Instead here’s some of the “worst rated” comments, the comments that readers flagged down [sic].

• Do not believe what is written, this is not a sharia hotel. For example, unrelated men and women can still sit and eat together. The owner has made many suuch compromises to ensure westerners can visit it. We should applaud such a compassioate approach not criticise it. One day all hotels will be like this.

• Good on him, sticking to his beliefs, going to cost him a lot of money though

• His hotel. His law. Calm it people, this will not change Britain.

• If there is a call for it then let it be.. I am sure it would do well.. I not in favour of Sharia Law but running a restaurant the way the owner wants is no ones business but theirs.. We don't go to a woman clothes store and complain it does not sell men's trousers?

• As somebody who has no interest in booze or bacon, I have no problem with this. If these two things rule your life - then just stay in a different hotel, it's simple. Variety is the spice of life. But you can't expect everything you like to be available everywhere you go. That's just silly. lol


Apparently saying that it’s no big deal did not go over well with many Daily Mail readers.


I can’t help but think that this furor is mostly due to the current tide of Islamophobia spreading in many Western societies. What’s important here is not that the menu is changing but that it is a Muslim doing it. Change Muslim to something else and you can see how ridiculous this gets. Would newspapers even be bothering to write an article about:

-- a hotel purchased by a Hindu who doesn’t want the hotel selling beef?
-- a hotel purchased by a vegetarian who doesn’t want the hotel selling meat?
-- a hotel purchased by a Jew who only wants the hotel to sell kosher food?
-- a hotel purchased by a Seventh Day Adventist who doesn’t want the hotel selling alcohol?


Highly unlikely. I don’t think most people would actually care. WELCOME TO HOTEL BROCCOLI just doesn’t have the same ring to it. (I’d probably go to it though, I love broccoli.)


When I told my friend Murat he laughed, as I told him a story years ago about a similar issue. An incident in 2010 where making concessions to Muslims caused a wave of nationalistic fury . . .


Kraft Foods decided to make halal Vegemite! (OMG!)


A blogger responded with a great post titled, “Vegemite is now certified as halal. Apparently, this is the end of civilisation as we know it.” I liked his title so much I did a similar thing for this post. Yep, halal vegemite resulted in OMG from many Australians.


Well apparently four years on the outrage never entirely died down. In 2014 there was a resurgence and some online petitions and social media wanted the halal certification stripped. Paying for a halal certification apparently supports terrorism (huh?!)
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/hysteria-fails-to-match-the-facts/2400062/


I sure hope Kraft sticks to its guns and keeps vegemite halal, a Qatari friend of mine loves the stuff (not me though, ick).

Listen up everyone, you all need to calm down and not freak out when a Muslim wants halal food or to not sell alcohol. It’s not hurting anyone. If you are the type to get upset about these things I think you should cut back watching and reading reactionary news articles. Maybe go to a nearby mosque or Islamic Cultural Centre and spend a bit of time learning about Islam, you’ll find most Muslims are moderates who just want to live normal lives.

Ramadan 2014, Day 25 – Eid is Approaching

You know you’re not in North America when the Government has to remind you . . .

I’m seeing notices like these on some of the main streets in Doha. It would seem amusing to a non-Muslim Westerner but there is a good reason for the reminder. The first Eid (Eid al-Fitr) is the breaking of the fast so it is likely there will be a high demand for meat. The Qatar Government has passed laws restricting slaughtering animals to official abattoirs, in some other Muslim countries it would not be unusual to bring an animal home and have it slaughtered in the yard. As Eid is maybe three or four days from now the Government clearly wanted to remind people of the law.

But there is another holiday where this message is most important -- the second Eid (Eid al-Adha), which this year will be in early October. During Eid al-Adha Muslims who can afford it should slaughter a goat/sheep/camal/cow (and if they own a herd preferably their best animal) and at least a third of the meat must be shared with the poor. In Qatar this results in thousands of animals butchered during the second Eid. Many would simply purchase a goat, take it home, and have it slaughtered there but the Government has forbidden the practice. One time I was in Turkey during Eid al-Adha and I saw many animal carcasses in yards being carved up to give out the meat.

So no home-butchering everyone, leave it to professionals.

Ramadan 2014 -- Day 24, Learning About Shari'a Part 4

(This is the fourth installment of my read through "Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence" by Mohammed Hasim Kamali, you can find part three here)


Okay, so I’ve covered the Qur’an and how Islamic Scholars analyze the authenticity of hadiths in determining Islamic Law. Yet there is still more work to be done on just those two sources. The book I’m reading dedicates a full two chapters (around 70 pages) to interpreting the words in the sources to determine their intended meaning. 70 pages! As you could imagine it gets complicated. While with most words the meaning is clear there are some where the precise meaning could be open to interpretation and even a few instances where it is not entirely clear what the intended meaning of a word is. Much like English, words can have multiple meanings and usually the context lets the reader understand which meaning was intended. Occasionally though more than one meaning could work and the context does not provide enough to be able to distinguish which meaning was intended. This is another area where scholarly opinion can differ.

An example given was a passage that states a dowry for marriage can be waived by one “in whose hands is the marriage tie”. Scholars differ in opinion as to whether it refers to the spouse (Shafi’i interpretation) or the guardian (Maliki interpretation). The interpretation can impact the Law. Even things such as whether a command has to be obeyed once or on every single occurrence during someone’s lifetime has been debated on some passages. How that is interpreted will make a huge difference.

The chapters go on to discuss things like determining implied meaning in words, and how to judge varying meanings of words to determine which meaning should take precedence when comparing its usage across multiple examples. I won’t go into more detail than that, it would require someone fluent in Arabic to be able to do that kind of analysis anyway, something I won’t be tackling anytime soon.

Finally there’s the issue of Naskh (abrogation) in the Qur’an and Sunnah. A declaration in those works could have been superseded at a later date by another declaration. All scholars appear to be in agreement that naskh can only have occurred during the lifetime of the Prophet Mohammed, when the Qur’an was revealed and the actions that formed the hadiths occurred. Nothing that occurred after the death of the Prophet could be naskh to the Qur’an or Sunnah.
Like everything, naskh can be complicated. Does the abrogation only occur in specific circumstances (partial abrogation) or was in meant to completely supersede the previous text (total abrogation)? Can a sunnah be naskh to the Qur’an? Scholars differ on their opinion but most disagree.

Naskh can be contentious, scholars have disagreed on just how often naskh occurs in the Qur’an itself, let alone in all of the Sunnahs. Issues trying to determine the exact timing of revelations or hadiths, combined with debates over whether a naskh is partial or total, leads to a huge variance in how naskh is applied by scholars.

Still only half-way through the book, more to come on Shari'a Law.

Ramadan 2014 - Day 15-16, Learning about Shari’a Part 3

(This is the third installment of my read through "Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence" by Mohammed Hasim Kamali, you can find part two here)

My last blog post on shari’a law discussed all sorts of factors that scholars look at when reviewing hadiths to determine whether they are credible or not. One of those criteria was seeing if the hadith should have been known to many people but is only reported from one source then its authenticity might be questioned. But what if the hadith came only from a single source and in the circumstances would only have been recorded by either one or a few people? These are entire category of hadith called “ahad” hadiths (‘ahad’ means solitary).

Many (most?) hadiths are actually ahad hadiths. Rather than hadiths that were announcements made at mosques or in front of large groups of people, most were simply recordings of conversations or events one person or a group of individuals had with the Prophet Mohammed. Here’s an example:

Narrated A’isha that she was asked about the bath of the Prophet. She brought a pot containing about a Sa of water and took a bath and poured it over her head and at that time there was a screen between her and the questioner. (Al-Bhukari, Book of Ghusl, chapter 3, hadith 188)

Needless to say I doubt there were a lot of people around when this occurred. We don't even know who the original questioner was.

Because ahad hadiths cannot be confirmed through multiple sources Islamic scholars are even stricter about the scrutiny they put these types of hadiths through. Most schools of Islam are careful about how they consider ahad hadiths and are reluctant to incorporate them into overall Shari’a Law without a lot of corroborative evidence, but again the level of acceptance amongst the various schools differs from one another. It was noted that the Four Caliphs had been known to act on teachings from ahad hadiths so such types of the hadiths cannot be discounted completely.

So most Islamic schools have established numerous criteria for when the lessons in ahad hadiths should be considered obligatory for Muslims to follow. Character of the transmitter and narrators is key since there is little other evidence to determine whether the ahad hadith is authentic. My book lists the following:

 The transmitter is a competent person (so cannot be a child or mentally ill). Gender, status and non-mental disabilities are not considered so women, slaves, blind people, are all considered competent persons.
 The transmitter must be a Muslim. I'm assuming this is due to the lack of corroborative evidence to support ahad hadiths so the narrator has to be someone who would, as a pious Muslim, be highly unlikely to lie about the Prophet Mohammed (and see the next bullet). If the narrator was a convert to Islam it's fine as long as he narrated the hadith when he was a Muslim, even if the event occurred before his conversion.
 Similar to the above, the transmitter must be an upright person at the time of reporting the hadith. This means the person has not committed any major sins and does not persist in committing minor ones that they know is wrong. There must be positive evidence of the transmitters’ pious and upright character, whether through narratives by others or perhaps testimony at a court or similar legal hearing.
 The narrator (or chain of narrators) must be known to have possessed an excellent memory, and similar narrations by those people rarely have any mistakes or errors. If a narrator is known for having errors in memory it is unlikely scholars will trust an ahad hadith from that narrator.
 The narrator must not have a reputation for distorting or embellishing hadiths or stories.
 And the transmitter of the hadith must have met with and heard the hadith from the source.

So again we see how it can be a fine line between determining whether a hadith is authentic or not, especially an ahad hadith. If one school of Islam considers the transmitter to be trustworthy while another is less convinced then numerous hadiths could be either accepted or discounted, and as a result of followers of the different schools will follow different Shari’a.

Next Chapter: turning sources into Laws.

(Part 4 of this series can be found here)

Ramadan 2014 -- Day 12, Learning About Shari'a, Part 2

(This is part two of my overview of Islamic Jurisprudence, you can find part 1 here)


I’m now reading the lengthy chapters in my book of Islamic Jurisprudence dedicated to the Sunnah (the way a Muslim should live his life) and hadiths.

Hadiths are the sayings and doings of the Prophet Mohammed, narrated by witnesses, and are the primary source for Sunnah after the Qur’an. Most hadiths either reiterate principles in the Qur’an or add additional clarifications to the Qur’an. For example the Qur’an approves selling things but forbids charging interest (riba), while the Sunnah/hadiths further clarifies where certain types of transactions might be considered riba.

That said a minority of hadiths involve matters not mentioned in the Qur’an and these are generally considered an independent source of law in their own right. Scholars still look to see if there are overarching principles in the Qur’an which may modify the hadith or provide context in how to interpret it.

The book then goes on to discuss a serious issue in interpreting Sunnah – fake hadiths. There are tens of thousands of hadiths and while some where written down during the time of the Prophet most were written down after his death. There are some stories that state in the early days of Islam the Prophet did not want hadiths written down lest there be confusion between Qur’anic revelations and hadiths, causing people to inadvertently consider hadiths as the word of Allah, but there are hadiths that note that later in life the Prophet did not object to hadiths being recorded. Many hadiths were kept orally, with people committing them to memory and transmitting them through the generations. Hadith scholarship and research was taking place since the time of the Prophet but some of the most significant efforts to record and collect the authentic hadiths in books, such as the Sahih Al-Bukhari, occurred two to three centuries after the Prophet’s death.

It was well known that shortly after the Prophet died that some people were deliberately propagating fake hadiths, either for fame, political purposes, to discredit Islam or what have you. In other cases people were inadvertently misremembering them or there were errors in recording them. Many were created during the Sunni-Shi’a schism or other wars, supporting one side’s views while discrediting the other. Because of this a lot of scholarly effort goes into researching hadiths to see if they are authentic or forgeries. Such was the extent of forged or questionable hadiths it is said that books such as the Sahih Al-Bukhari and Sahih Al-Muslim, despite containing thousands of hadiths, only contain a small percentage of the total hadiths that were reviewed when compiling the collections.

So what do scholars do when analyzing a hadith for authenticity? A lot is involved.


First you analyze who the source is for the hadith as well as the people narrating it:

o Trustworthiness of the sources is vital. Have there been instances in the past of those people lying or falsifying hadiths? Apparently there is a lot of literature in the Muslim world discussing the many people who are the sources for hadiths and to what extent they can be trusted.

o You also need to examine the timeframe and location that the hadith was narrated. Many hadiths have been proven false by identifying that the narrator and the person recording it were unlikely to have met at the time or even been in the same area.

o Does the hadith appear to contain things that are beneficial to the narrator or recorder, thus indicating possible personal motives for creating the hadith? It could indicate it is a false hadith or should at least call it into question and further confirmation would be required before declaring it authentic. The book gives an example where a man claimed the Prophet said that always eating a certain food improves your health -- a food that the man just happened to sell as a merchant.


After that a scholar examines the text of the hadith itself for things that might call into question the authenticity:

• Style of language – hadiths are typically in an elegant and sophisticated wording. Crude language, slang, or words inconsistent with other hadiths could indicate it might be fake.

• Inconsistencies in historical fact, such as a hadith narrated by someone who met the Prophet at a public bath, when historical evidence showed there were no public baths in the city at that time.

• Statements that are in opposition to what is in the Qur’an. This can be subtle, the book gives an example of a hadith that states you will go to Heaven for naming one of your children Mohammed, which is in opposition to Qur’anic teachings that Heaven is for those who do good work and live a just life.

• Hadiths that indicate extreme or fanatic viewpoints, likely falsified by someone pushing an extremist view.

• Hadiths that were claimed to have been known to many people yet only one source has reported it. If a hadith says the Prophet said xyz at the crowded mosque then more than one source should have noted it. Islamic scholars usually try to get multiple examples of the hadith from many sources as a way to verify its authenticity.

• When hadiths use disproportionate or exaggerated language for rewards or punishments. An example was given of a dubious hadith which stated if you say a certain phrase Allah will create a bird with 70,000 tongues that speaks 70,000 languages praying for you.


Surprisingly (to me anyway) hadith scholarship appears to be an exercise in critical thinking and historical research. A lot of effort goes into assessing hadiths to determine if they are authentic.
This also provides more insight into how the various schools of Islam could diverge in their views. Say there was a hadith that was borderline as to whether it was authentic or not, meeting almost all the criteria while there was something about it that cast a bit of doubt:

• If one group concluded the hadith was not authentic then they would be more inclined to be skeptical of other hadiths by that source, which means more hadiths could be deemed false.

• If another group concluded the hadith was authentic then they would be more likely to accept other hadiths from that same source since.


And you immediately have divergence between the two groups. While this has in part created the differences between the various Sunni schools (such as Hanbali and Hanafi) I believe acceptance of certain sources and hadiths is a significant factor in the differences between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, though I’ll find out more about that when I read that book about the schism.

And I’m still not done the chapters on hadiths! There’s more work and analysis scholars do, as well as how to analyze hadiths from a single source. I’ll get to that in a later post. [Part 3 is now finished and you can find it here].