Opinion divided on Syria conflict, but consensus US should not attack



Syria, a country in ruins. Courtesy: www.theatlantic.com

NO issue has more horrified, confused and divided the community than the Syrian crisis – in many ways a re-visiting of the dirty tricks era of the 1970’s Cold War due to US, Russian, Saudi Arabian, Chinese and Iranian interference.

It has horrified with its ferocity and violence. Assaults on non-combatants have been its most abhorrent hallmark, the chemical weapon attack in Ghouta, Damascus, (which killed just over a thousand people) the latest example.

And whilst the US pins blame on Bashar al-Asad – described as a “murderer and oppressor” by the non-ikhwan scholar Shaikh Muhammad Yaqoubi – doubts do ring as to who exactly perpetrated the atrocity.

A Syrian media source told me that Maher al-Asad, brother of Bashar, had ordered the strike as retaliation to Alawite villages being hit by the Free Syrian Army. There was much disgruntlement in the Asad camp, he said.

On the other hand, an AP story claimed that rebels had “mishandled” Saudi-supplied chemical weapons. However, media reports on Syria are often diluted with propaganda, so the proverbial jury is still out – especially with the UN chemical weapons inspectors having to sift through a forensically contaminated site in Ghouta.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin told the Channel 1 network that he had “plans” if the US struck at Damascus. Other reports had him allegedly saying that he would send missiles against Saudi Arabia, this after Saudi Arabia’s intelligence minister, Prince Bandar Sultan, had tried to wheel-and-deal with him on standing by when the US intervened.

 

Later Putin was reported as saying that whilst he cautioned about a "one-sided" attack on Syria, he did not rule out supporting a UN resolution on air strikes  if Asad was found guilty of the chemical weapons attack.

What is reliable, though, is that since March 2011 over 100, 000 Syrians have died, 2 million have fled, 5 million have been displaced internally and the country now lies in ruins – the UNCHR and international NGO’s warning of the Middle East’s worst humanitarian disaster in modern history.

On the political stage it has confused because it has become a toxic scrum of confusing agendas: Gulf States throwing money at Wahhabi brigands to curb the “Shi’ah-Alawite crescent”; the Iranians desperately protecting the Tehran-Damascus-Lebanon corridor; Russia hanging on to its last Mediterranean naval base; China sticking it to the US and the US being the ignored policeman.

In fact, the Syrian conflict has become so convoluted that The Independent’s Robert Fisk has drily observed that if President Obama does press his missile button, it will see the US fighting on the same side as Al-Qaeda.

In between all of this, disparate elements of the Free Syrian Army – consisting of armed civilians with little or no military training – try to hold their shattered lives together. And, meanwhile, the jets fly from Damascus.

Back home in South Africa, the Syrian crisis has divided the community on sectarian lines, and kindled the embers of a Shi’ah-Sunni conflict, a conflict embodied in whether you support Asad, Iran or the FSA. No middle ground here: those attempting to traverse it have been shot at from all sides.

Indeed, no modern crisis has struck as deep into Muslim psyche as the Syrian one. ‘Ulama, academics and the man in the street have all felt the pain, no matter what side, and there has been much public comment on the matter.

Mostly, organisations have confined themselves to relief work based on scouting missions to refugee camps and sorties over the Syrian border from Turkey or Jordan.

The Jami’at ul-‘Ulama in KZN, one of the local organisations involved in Syrian relief work, described the Syrian situation as an “intractable divide”. The Cape-based Muslim Judicial Council, which sent a delegation of specialists to Syria, issued an extensive report, as did the humanitarian organisation, Gift of the Givers.

The detractors have operated mostly in the social media space. One individual levelling the charge of “hypocrisy”, due to the Al-Qaeda-sympathetic Jabhat an-Nusra fighting on the side of the FSA, has demanded almost daily condemnations from organisations such as the MJC and Gift of the Givers of alleged FSA atrocities.

However, on the issue of military intervention, there is universal consensus – Syria should not be attacked by the US.

MJC president Maulana Igshan Hendricks said he supported government’s statement that further war in Syria would only worsen the situation.  Stating that “violence does not beget peace”, he called on the UN to be allowed to perform its mandate in protecting all Syrian citizens.

Ebrahim Vawda of the Media Review Network said that whilst the chemical weapons attack had to be condemned unequivocally, one could not forget the greater geo-political game being played out in Syria .

Naeem Jeenah of the Gauteng-based Afro Middle East Centre told the media that Syria had put the global powers on a “knife edge”.

A representative of Cape Town’s Shi’ah community, who did not want to be named, said that if Obama attacked Syria it would unleash “dark forces” and great instability in the region from which only Israel and the IMF would benefit.

 

Egypt: re-erecting the wall of fear

Cairo - where Islam and military secularism currently clash.

© Shafiq Morton

WHEN General Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s military commander-in-chief, appeared on national television on 25 July, I knew that something was brewing. Wearing dark glasses, a heavily braided cap and a full-dress uniform, Sisi had urged mass action to end what he called “terrorism and violence”.

It was the first time in modern Egyptian history that a general – as opposed to a sitting president – had ever made such an extraordinary call. So what was he up to?

Muslim Brotherhood supporters, demanding a re-instatement of President Muhammad Morsi, had refused to disperse from their post-coup sit-ins. Sisi, riding a wave of street populism after Morsi’s ousting, was clearly setting the stage for a showdown with the Islamic Brotherhood.

Citing the bombing of a police station in Mansoura, Egypt’s “deep state” had evidently been given the excuse it needed – the Brotherhood was a “terrorist” organisation in need of censure.

The subsequent crackdown on the Brotherhood, resulting in a civilian massacre and the killing of journalists, shocked the world and compromised the US – whose biggest Mid-East client (next to Israel) is the Egyptian military, which receives nearly R12 billion from Capitol Hill annually.

For Sisi, what at stake in Egypt right now is the survival of the “deep state”, a core of Mubarak supporters and thugs in the security services and the economic ruling class. It has deep roots in the military, whose stake in the economy is estimated at over 30%.

Flush with over R100 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait – collectively fearing Tahrir-style “Arab Springs” and Shi’ah inroads via Syria – US influence is no longer priority number one. 

Professor Abdallah Schleiffer, an associate journalism professor at the American University in Cairo, and Dr Anas Al-Tikriti of the Cordoba Foundation, both concur that the Egyptian military establishment represents a “state-within-state” and is, by far, the most influential player.

There is also a view – shared by Professor Tariq Ramadan of Oxford University – that the Egyptian “deep state” allowed Mubarak to fall, and then cynically bided its time after Tahrir. Bolstered by its Gulf aid package (one that mysteriously appeared as soon as Morsi fell) the generals could act with brutal impunity.

A measure of this is that many of the protestors encamped at Nahda Square and Raba’a al-Adawiya were killed by bullets to the head and the chest. Some were also burnt in their tents, Dutch journalist Rena Netjes confirming to me she’d seen 10 charred corpses in Raba’a al-Adawiya mosque.

Certainly in the general’s favour would have been secular distaste for the Brotherhood and the socio-economic challenges that Morsi inherited: corruption, unemployment, poverty, and a raft of expectations – all needing solutions that could not be addressed in a year.

And whilst Morsi was seen by Egyptians not to perform (Gallup clearly indicated this) some of his executive ineptness was perhaps more the instrumentation of  circumstance. Al-Jazeera editor Ramzy Baroud comments that Morsi was “damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t”. Dr Anas al-Tikriti argues that Morsi was “shackled by the deep state”.

The record does show that Morsi – the only democratically elected civilian president in Egypt’s history – did try. His majority was a slender one, and the country was split on historical Islamist and secular lines from the start, something that immediately engendered distrust.

On paper, Morsi’s attempts to harness the disparate forces in Egyptian politics looked good, but did not translate into the substance needed to transform Egypt into a viable democracy.

I also think that the extent of his powers was exaggerated. His 35-strong cabinet, for instance, had only 11 Brotherhood members and of the 27 provincial governates, only 10 governors were from his Freedom and Justice party. He also appointed 12 Copts into government, as opposed to the three during the Mubarak era.

The judiciary was left almost intact, and the powerful Interior Ministry was still staffed with Mubarak-era officials due to a shortage of technocrats. Morsi did fire some of the generals, but his attempts to draw in opposition leaders were largely spurned.

But whatever the maths, the stark reality is that the military enjoyed the support of millions of Egyptians when it ousted Morsi from power. Why would this be so?

Egypt’s army is the 11th largest in the world and relies upon conscripts from a population of 90 million to fill its ranks. The military has half a million active personnel and nearly half a million reserve forces. The American University’s Professor Schleiffer says that the military reaches every Egyptian family, and is a respected institution.

The other factor is that the Islamic Brotherhood, founded in 1928 as a pan-Islamic movement in response to colonialism, has been demonised by Egypt’s ruling-class and liberal secularists for decades. It did enjoy a brief honeymoon with General Nasser in 1952, but this did not endure.

As it was still officially banned under Mubarak, the Brotherhood used the Freedom and Justice Party platform to contest the 2011 elections. Of curious interest is the ultra-conservative Islamist An-Nour party, a breakaway from the Brotherhood, throwing its weight behind the military.

According to Professor Ebrahim Moosa, a former South African political journalist and academic at Duke University, the Egyptian military (representing the old status-quo) has sought to restore authoritarian secular rule, and to re-erect the wall of fear surrounding the state that disappeared during Tahrir.

The snubbing of an appeal in the Washington Post by Moosa and the US ambassador, Ebrahim Rasool, for figures with “moral authority” such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu to broker inclusive talks to take Egypt back from the brink, is sadly indicative of the current situation.

Their fear, and the fear of many – that young Egyptians now disillusioned by the ballot box could prove to be the next generation of extremists –  has now become a dreadfully real one. Indeed, the generals may have won the battle, but it remains doubtful in the long run whether they’ve actually won the war of the hearts and minds of the Egyptian people, a people who will not be satisfied with the old ways once they begin to fail again.

The missing link: from flying saucers to divine destiny

Who are we? How long have we been on earth? And when did we, as a human species, “evolve”?

These are the questions that fascinate, niggle and afflict many a thinker, “evolve” often being a dirty word in the Darwinian sense.

The scientific hypothesis that species developed through natural selection, as opposed to divine intervention, has plagued creational debate since Charles Darwin published his Origin of the Species in 1859.

For Muslims, the creational discourse is given much Qur’anic detail in Surat ul-Rum. Many verses preface themselves by saying “amongst His Signs” with verse 30 talking specifically about mankind being shaped in conformity with a primordial nature, or a divinely sanctified fitrah.

The English language struggles to grasp the gist of this word, which is in itself a universe of significance. It is best explained by the tradition that men’s souls existed before conception; that they existed in the unseen, and unimaginable, domains of a pre-worldly existence.

In this state, our fitrah, our souls would have been innocent in nature. This is the state of a baby when it enters the material world from the warmth of the womb – confused, crying and seeking the comfort of the mother’s nipple.

The first soul to be created was that of Muhammad (SAW). Adam – the father of our species – admits in the Qisas al-Anbiya to seeing Muhammad’s blessed name inscribed on the Holy Throne.

The great 18^th century scholar, Imam ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Alawi al-Haddad, notes that Allah, the Great Shaper, drew mankind out of the loins of Adam to make a covenant (a meethaaq) at Nu’man, a valley near ‘Arafah in Makkah.

This covenant, which is recorded in the Qur’an (7:172), has Allah addressing mankind and asking the question “am I not your Lord”, and mankind responding with the resounding affirmative “yes”.

Imam al-Haddad adds that Allah, the Highest, accepted this covenant, recorded it in heavenly writing and fed it to the Black Stone, the Hajr ul-Aswad, which resides in a corner of the Ka’bah.

This is significant as the Hajr ul-Aswad marks the beginning of the circumambulation (or tawaaf) around the Holy House, whose spiritual domains stretch unseen into the Seven Heavens.

These pre-creational events, and their links to the present, are extraordinary. No other species in our dimension has been blessed with such knowledge. Ancient algae, dinosaurs and other life forms – whilst obeying divine decree – did not know this.

We have to guardedly say “our dimension” because the jinn, plasma beings constituting “smokeless fire”, were created over a 1,000 years before man. However the jinn, who exist on a parallel plane and who know Allah, are not our concern here.

What is interesting is that Aboriginal societies – indigenous peoples close to their fitrah – provide fascinating metaphorical insights into creation, some seeming to accord with our own beliefs of pre-existence.

For example, the French anthropologist, Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, says the Yagua Indians of the Peruvian Amazon told him that before the birth of this earth, our distant ancestors had lived on “another earth”. To us as Muslims, the reference is obvious. To Graham Hancock (who quoted Chaumeil) the focus is more a flying saucer notion of man’s creation.

The earth is said to be 4.5 billion years old. In the Qur’an heaven and earth (20: 31) are described as “one” until they’re “rent asunder”. And in the same verse, “water” is described as the building block of Creation. In some verses, planets are said to “swim” in their orbits, and in others that they’ll “run their courses”.

This is a most convincing argument for the hypothesis of an expanding universe, a universe that is dynamic in movement “all governed by His laws” (7: 54) from its stars right down to the last microscopic particle.

Science claims that the first forms of earthly life developed about 4 billion years ago and that the first man, Homo erectus, emerged over one million years before the modern era. The most prominent theory is that early hominids moved from Africa across the then bridged continents into Europe and Asia.

The first so-called human species, Homo Heidelbergensis, is said to have had two branches – the Neanderthal line and the Homo sapiens line. The Neanderthal, the beetle-browed, ape-like figure, had primitive notions of socialisation, the use of fire and hunting.

Archaeologists speculate that Homo sapiens, a distinct species, did not mix with the Neanderthals, who mysteriously disappeared about 35,000 years ago. Ancient Nguni traditions contain some tantalising allusions to a parallel, inferior species inhabiting the earth.

So when did prophetic awareness enter the hominid realm? Were the Neanderthals aware of a greater being? The Qur’an states that Allah gave man speech (55: 33). And we have to bear in mind that every speaking nation on earth has, without fail, left behind a mythological legacy – be it oral or inscribed.

Symbolism is the lingua franca of consciousness, and it appears as if the Neanderthals left us a sterile silence. However, Homo sapiens – who anatomically resemble today’s man – did express a self-consciousness that transcended basic instinct.

His cave drawings – expressing divine or unearthly symbolisms – date back to 30,000 years. Decorative beads and implements (also indicating a symbolic understanding) date back to about 77,000 years, as excavations at the Blombos cave near Mossel Bay reveal.

But were these people the tribe of Adam? This indeed becomes the critical question, for Adam descended to earth from the paradisiacal realms with Eve. What we can safely say is that Adam (as) represents the moment that Allah, as He says, wanted to be known. But exactly when was that moment?

Conventionally, it appears as if Adam (as) descended to earth about 15,000 years ago. The chain of prophetic lineage, and its relation to parallel historic events such as in Babylon and in Egypt with Nimrod and the Pharaoh, appears to indicate this. There are, of course, still many, many questions.

It is my view that Adam (as) is the proverbial “missing link’, the bridge between Neanderthal-type primitivism and true God-consciousness. In fact, the “missing link” is the prophetic message of Divine Unity, a message that would be carried through the loins of Adam to Muhammad (SAW).

Moonsighting, Ramadan 2013, Cape Town

About 2,000 people gathered at Three Anchor Bay in Sea Point, Cape Town, in chilly weather to sight the new moon to signify the end of the lunar month of Ramadan. The inclement conditions saw a much smaller crowd than the usual 10,000 that congregates annually on the Sea Point lawns to look for new crescent that sets over the Atlantic Ocean after sunset. The moon was not sighted and 'Eid, marking the end of the fast.

 

Photos © Shafiq Morton

 

Hajji Omar Gabier, President of the Crescent Observer's Society,
makes the adhan - the call to prayer - that marks the end
of a days fasting after sunset.



                               

 

 

 

 

Qur'an and Riba: the unfinished business

One of the miracles of the Qur’an is that it means so many different things to so many different people. We all read it with intention, and Allah – the Highest ­ – grants us His blessings accordingly.  

It is said that not one Qur’anic sound will pass our lips without an Angel carrying it to the foot of the Throne. Every letter, we are told, carries reward. Every ayah is a world; every Surah a universe and every Juz a galaxy. In fact, so blessed is the Qur’an that it will testify for us on the Day of Judgement.

In this respect, chapters such as Surat ul-Mulk are imbued with special properties for the reciter. Surat ul-Yasin offers solace to the dead or dying, Ayat ul-Kursi (the verse of the Throne) protects us from danger.

The Qur’an glitters with strings of meaning and metaphor. We are warned that it is not poetry, yet it still soars. We are told that it is not prose, yet it still captivates. We are taught that it is not music, yet it is still a symphony.

And, tellingly, we are informed that even if our creative pens were to be filled with the oceans (which cover 70% of earth) they would still not be able to create its like. Yet the Qur’an humbles itself to us so that we can read it, its words transmitted from a Divine Source.

Every Ramadan, millions of us bury ourselves in the pages of the Holy Book’s 114 chapters and over 6,000 verses. Imam Abu Hanifah, the great 8th century imam, could recite the Qur’an in the standing of one prayer. Imam Shafi’i, his student, would complete at least one reading a day.

Whilst most of us lesser mortals will finish just one recitation of the Qur’an during the 29-30 days of Ramadan, it has never been my outcome. My approach – and it’s just a personal thing – has been to try and read the Qur’an for its meaning.

I like to understand what I’ve read. I’ve never rushed and a complete reading can take me years. The Qur’an is sublime in expression, so that when you slow down it often leaves you gasping with amazement.

One thing I’ve learnt is that every time I read Qur’an I discover new things. No reading is ever the same. It’s like walking through a valley and seeing new plants and animals every time you pass through. And when you stop to examine the scenery, the hike begins to take longer and longer.

This year I found myself still deep in Surat ul-Baqarah, the first chapter of the Qur’an, after 18 days. It made me wonder if Allah grants me more Ramadans I might just find myself stuck on the opening Basmallah!

 
What caught my attention was verse 276 in Surat ul-Baqarah that deals with usury, or riba, best defined as “excessive, or exploitative interest”. Allah declares usury deprived of all blessing, and warns the pre-Islamic Arabs that He will declare “war” on those who don’t take heed.

The next verse demands that debtors be treated with compassion, not tyranny, and then goes on to deal with the basics of tijarah, or business transactions. This, I think, is significant. Allah mentioning riba before the lengthy section on tijarah clearly indicates that exploitative interest cannot be the foundation of economic principle.

It made me realise that the issue of riba even features in the accounts of Nabi ‘Isa, or Jesus, who overturned the money-changers’ tables on the Temple Mount. Four of the gospels mention this incident, the only time ‘Isa (as) ever used physical force.

What’s significant here are two things. Firstly, ‘Isa (as) would have been enraged by the crass materialism of the priests in a sacred place – every step in the Temple cost the believer money. And, as Ibn Kathir observes in the Qisas al-Anbiya, Temple worship had become about money.

Secondly, he would have been disturbed at the money-changers. They would charge exorbitant commission and proffer inferior coins for sacrificial animals, further exploiting the poor – people who’d become outsiders.

This story has resonance with riba being the devil’s curse since time immemorial. Riba represents the worst of human nature. In the 21^st century it has become an ugly blight on society. It doesn’t take much imagination to link the Temple Mount priests and money-changers to modern-day bankers.

It’s no exaggeration to say that they have enslaved almost all of mankind with oppressive debt, and brought the world’s economic system to its knees from excessive hoarding, speculation and interest-based profit. Their greed and lack of compassion needs no further elaboration.

Bearing in mind that Nabi ‘Isa (whom we don’t believe was crucified) is due to appear back on earth, I think the Temple Mount encounter will have left him well-equipped to understand our modern-day sicknesses.

I have always felt that the biggest opponents of the end-time Imam Mahdi and ‘Isa (as) will be this very banking class, a ruling class whose interest-based systems will be dismantled in the name of social justice. They will not take kindly to their wealth being redistributed.

Over a thousand years ago the pre-Islamic Arabs, particularly the Quraish in Makkah, would have understood the Qur’anic verses only too well. Their business, not unlike the Pharisees and Sadducees in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, revolved around the lucrative pilgrimage.

The one-eyed, end-time dictator – the Dajjal – whom ‘Isa (as) will slay at the gates of Lud (now Tel Aviv airport) will more than likely be a product of the usurious elite, a faceless kleptocracy who have so ruthlessly plundered humanity in the name of materialism.  

This is where Surat ul-Baqarah comes in again. “Deal not unjustly and you will not be dealt with unjustly,” it says after Allah’s declaration of “war” on riba-mongers. War, or “harb”, is a very strong term. And although ostensibly directed at the Quraish , it is curiously open-ended, almost – I would say – as if there’s unfinished business.  

In other words, the war against riba has already been declared but – the big question – when the final battle?

The pitfalls of cut-and-paste da'wah

The legacy of Ibn Abd ul-Wahhab, destroyed well and
garden of Companion Salam al-Farsi. A school
built over site where Prophet
Muhammad (SAW) planted date
trees to liberate him from slavery.
© Shafiq Morton

Shaikh Bin Baz calls Imam
Shafi’i (ra) an innovator



One of the truly annoying things about social media is what I call “cut-and-paste da’wah”, so-called propagation by the sweep and click of a mouse.

These cyber missionaries – no doubt of good intent – take great umbrage when their unedited pastings, usually of Wahhabi origin, are challenged. Attempts at debate can often result in chat-room tantrums.

What irks me is that behind all this verbiage is a lingering dogmatic haughtiness – bred of ignorance unfortunately – that arrogantly claims a theological superiority over everyone else. Of particular significance here are the obsessive-compulsive theological inventions of the discredited 18th century Najdi cleric, Ibn Abd ul-Wahhab, that are continually posted on the net.

Shunned by his village and condemned by even his own brother, he decided that we were idolaters on the brink of unbelief and that Sufis and all scholars (except for Ibn Taimiyya) were deviants.

As a result, there is an evangelical crudity, a reproachful fury and a crass disdain for classical tradition and orthodox tawheed in his pseudo reformation of Islam. Wahhabi proclamations of “bida’h”, “shirk” and “kufr”, and their takfir on scholars such as Ibn ‘Arabi, are legend.

However, curiously, ibn Abd ul-Wahhab’s acolytes always ignore the fully attributable and sound Hadith of A’ishah (ra) that the Prophet (SAW) did not fear polytheism after his demise.

In his heyday with Ibn Saud – an ambitious Bedouin chieftain whose daughter he married for political reasons – Ibn Abd ul-Wahhab declared death on all those who disagreed with his flaky canons. His legacy, which is modern-day Salafism or Wahhabism – call it what you will – was historically founded in the blood of the Shi’ah and the Sunni who dared to differ with him.

The slaughter of Taif – where the covers of Hadith and Qur’an mushaf were used to make sandals – is a notable example, as is Karbala. Its hapless inhabitants were killed in the thousands by Ibn Sa’ud’s so-called “ikhwan” on the path of a “purifying” jihad that terrorised the Middle East, and caused the Ottomans to send an army.

It’s often forgotten that the red chequered scarf of Al-Sa’ud’s royal house is a symbol of so-called infidel blood, and that the Sa’ud dynasty’s claim to being a guardian of Islam is as spurious as the idea that all Muslims are Arab.

These are just some of the things that our Salafi/Wahhabi cut-and-paste orators need to understand. The legacy they’ve imbibed is, unfortunately, steeped in terror, slaughter and slander.

So when I saw a Facebook cut-and-paste of the late Shaikh Bin Baz on the Shafi’i qunoot (invocation) during the dawn prayer, I was reminded of the above. Stupefyingly, Bin Baz – a former Saudi mufti – had bypassed over 1,000 years of legal opinion to claim that Imam Shafi’i’s view was an “innovation”.

Bearing in mind that in classical texts there are five categories of bida’h – from necessary and permissible to reprehensible – I still couldn’t help getting the impression that Bin Baz’s view was not complimentary, and that he tended more to the reprehensible.

I really do wish Bin Baz – a direct descendant of ibn Abd ul-Wahhab – peace in his grave. But I can’t let his legal opinion on Imam Shafi’i pass by unchallenged. For what took my breath away was his total avoidance of opposing views, which would be the time-old Sunni method of presenting a legal opinion.

I was dumbfounded that a man who called himself Hanbali (the Saudi Wahhabis claim to be Hanbali) could make such an utterance – or even draw such an outrageous conclusion. Ibn Hanbal had studied under Imam Shafi’i, and is reported to have said that no-one adhered more strictly to Hadith than his master.

I could only see Ibn Hanbal, may Allah bless him, squirming in his grave at the suggestion by Bin Baz that his Shaikh, one of history’s most celebrated legal minds, was a dubious “innovator” on the question of qunoot in the Fajr prayer.

Of course, the other schools of legal thought – Maliki, Hanafi and Hanbali – have differing views, but none of their mujtahids (legal authorities) have ever entertained the bizarre notion that Imam Shafi’i would embrace an undesirable innovation.

Bin Baz also forgets that people such as Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, Imam al-Ghazali, Imam Muzani, Imam Haitami, Imam Nawawi, Imam Rafi’i and Imam Jalal ud-Din Suyuti (ra) were all Shafi’i, and performed the qunoot.

For information’s sake, the Shafi’i madh-hab performs the standing invocation of the qunoot in the second cycle of the Fajr prayer; this is based on a narration by Anas ibn Malik (ra) that the Prophet (SAW) made the qunoot at Fajr “until he left the world”.

Shafi’i scholars provide five solid proofs for the above opinion. The Hadith is regarded as sound by imams Al-Hakim, Dhahabi, Haitami and Daraqutni. Imam Shafi’i regards the qunoot as a Sunnah, its inadvertent omission not invalidating the salah if one performs a special prostration of forgetfulness at the conclusion of the prayer.

Imam Jalal ud-Din Suyuti differs from Imam Shafi’i in that he reasons that the prostration, the sujud ul-sahw, is not necessary. The opposing Hadith, used exclusively by Bin Baz, quotes Sa’ad ibn Tariq as saying that his father never observed the Prophet (SAW) performing the Fajr qunoot.

Space does not allow further discussion, but it is a long-standing tradition that the four schools of thought have always treated each other’s widely varying interpretations and ijtihad with the utmost respect, and that whilst there are indeed many academic differences – there has never been any conflict.

This is well underlined by an axiom of the Prophet (SAW) – an axiom accepted by the tongues of scholars that, indeed, differences of opinion are a blessing for the ummah and not a curse. I would contend that the cut-and-paste fraternity need to understand this, and that the unscholarly utterances of Bin Baz need to be seen for what they are.

 

Egypt protest: Cape Town, Wednesday, 17 July

About 2,000 pro-Mursi protestors marched to parliament in Cape Town to hand over a memorandum expressing concern about the situation in Egypt. The organisers, the Muslim Judicial Council, were disappointed to discover that no state official was present at parliament (which is in recess) to receive the document, which was accepted a day later by the government. The MJC was supporting the SA government and the African Union position that Egypt had experienced a coup, and that Egypt had to put its house in constitutional order.

 

 

© Photos Shafiq Morton