Obeying the Messenger

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Extract from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I:

31. Qul in kuntum tuhibboona Allaha faittabiAAoonee yuhbibkumu Allahu wayaghfir lakum thunoobakum waAllahu ghafoorun raheemun

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3:31. Say, "If you do love Allah, obey me. Allah will then love you and forgive you your sins.^{35 to 37} And Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."

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35. Allah loving us and forgiving our sins is apparently made conditional to our obeying His Messenger (peace upon him). At the time when the Messenger was living among mankind here in this world, this divine directive obviously meant that all directions of the Messenger, whether in matters of religion or of administration, were to be obeyed scrupulously. But what should the position be now when the Messenger is no longer living among mankind? Many Muslims believe that obeying the Messenger means following his Sunnah as described in authentic ahaadeeth. But who decides whether any hadeeth is authentic or not?

36. Allah has guaranteed the protection of the Qur'aan (Verse 15:9). There is, however, no such divine protection guaranteed for the ahaadeeth. And the ahaadeeth were floating from mouth to mouth for generations till some of them were recorded in writing, for the first time, at least 150 years after the death the Prophet (peace be upon him). There is likelihood, therefore, of the ahaadeeth having been contaminated and interpolated with the personal opinions and words of the narrators. The Allah-perfected Religion of Islam could not therefore be based on such an unreliable source. It is based solely on the Qur'aan now. This does not mean that the ahaadeeth are to be completely discarded. They are invaluable in the sense that they give us the historical perspective of the era in which our Prophet lived. But any hadeeth, that is basically contradictory to the teachings of the Qur'aan, must be rejected outright. The Qur'aan is, and ought to be, the criterion.

37. Obeying the Messenger ought now, therefore, to mean following the Qur'aan.

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 25^th of October 2019.

Fundamental Article

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Fundamental Article of Islamic Faith

Extract from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I:

18. Shahida Allahu annahu la ilaha illa huwa waalmala-ikatu waoloo alAAilmi qa-iman bialqisti la ilaha illa huwa alAAazeezu alhakeemu

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3:18. Allah bears witness that there indeed is none worthy of worship but He; and so, do the angels and those with right knowledge, based on truth and justice. There is none worthy of worship but He, the Omnipotent, the Wise.¹⁶

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16. This fundamental article of Islamic Faith is witnessed and certified by Allah Almighty Himself and by the angels who are the first amongst His creations to know the absolute Truth of the article of Faith. And among mankind, only those endorse the fundamental article, whose acquisition of knowledge is the result of their quest and enquiry based on truth and justice. Their knowledge is not based on unverified guesswork like Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Had his theory been true, we ought to have seen at least some signs of monkeys/chimpanzees evolving into humans, during this historical period of well over a thousand years. Protagonists of the theory try to hide behind the anonymity and haziness of the pre-historic ages. There too they encounter their 'missing links'.

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 18^th of October 2019.

Dreadful Warning

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Below is an extract from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I. The Qur’aanic Verse extracted follows One wherein Allah admonishes Believers to give up Ar-Riba accruing to their accounts, but not received by them till the promulgation of total prohibition against taking Ar-Riba vide Verse 2:275. ‘And if you do it not’ in the extract signifies, ‘And if you do not give up Ar-Riba so accrued’.

279. Fa-in lam tafAAaloo fa/thanoo biharbin mina Allahi warasoolihi wa-in tubtum falakum ruoosu amwalikum la tathlimoona wala tuthlamoona

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2:279. And if you do it not, take notice of war from Allah and His Messenger.^{520, 521} And if you return penitently to Allah, you are entitled to all that comes under heads of account of your property and/or dues, so that you do no wrong, nor are you wronged.⁵²²

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520. "Take notice of war from Allah and His Messenger"! What warning could be more dreadful than this divine one? It clearly shows that the All-knowing Allah has given a very great importance to eradication of economic ills from human societies. Ar-Riba is an economic ill that corrupts human society and eats into its body polity, like cancer. It deprives people of their dues to fill the coffers of the rich, thus creating a great economic divide between the rich and the poor. On a mega scale, we have examples in history wherein the divine notice of war was put to dreadful effect in such cases. In the French Revolution, the numerically vast poor populace, for long subjected to deprivation and oppression by the obscenely rich, took to violence, took control over the land and put every rich person, they could lay their hands on, to the guillotine. A similar thing happened when the Communists, under Lenin, overthrew the Czars in Russia. On the micro individual scale also, Allah punishes most of those indulging in Ar-Riba in this life itself first, after giving them a long rope. A genuine believer cannot but take heed of this dreadful divine warning. But what is the ground reality? Most Muslims are unaware of what Ar-Riba means. I've already given earlier in these Studies the example of a factory owner cheating his employees in their salaries to fatten his profit. The factory owner may apparently be a very pious Muslim, sporting a flowing beard and offering prayers regularly. With the fat profit he is getting from the sale of goods produced in his factory, he may be buying car after car for every member of his family, and he won't touch the haraam interest money by putting his money in a commercial bank. But he is blissfully unaware that by paying his employees less than their rightful dues, he is guilty of committing the real Ar-Riba.

521. And there are examples galore of Ar-Riba being indulged in, in every other walk of life. Employees cheat their employers by attending to their own private affairs, during office hours, but get their full salaries. Traders hoard goods to create an artificial scarcity to sell them at higher prices and get fatter margins of profit. Taxi drivers compel passengers to pay more than what the meters indicate. Tax-payers cheat the Government by hiding part of their income. But none of our religious leaders apprise us of Ar-Riba masquerading in any of the forms mentioned here. They are content with declaring again and again from their housetops that interest is 'haraam' 'haraam', and they remain blissfully ignorant of the real Ar-Riba growing luxuriantly in their own backyards.

522. If A lends B $1000, and B repays after a year, A is entitled to get his amwaal back, as this Verse clearly indicates. But money, per se, is not amwaal. It's only the present transitory value of amwaal. As such, if the cost of living has appreciated by 5% during the year, A is entitled to get $1050 from B. Otherwise A stands wronged. In addition, A is also entitled to a just, mutually agreed compensation for his being deprived of using $1000 for his personal purposes, for a year. It's another matter if A & B are friends, and A waives all the additions lawfully due to him.

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Please refer the preceding blog post ‘Prohibited Ar-Riba’ in this context.

Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 11^th of October 2019.

Prohibited Ar-Riba

In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful

Prohibited Ar-Riba

Extract from QUR’AANIC STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I:

275. Allatheena ya/kuloona alrriba la yaqoomoona illa kama yaqoomu allathee yatakhabbatuhu alshshaytanu mina almassi thalika bi-annahum qaloo innama albayAAu mithlu alrriba waahalla Allahu albayAAa waharrama alrriba faman jaahu mawAAithatun min rabbihi faintaha falahu ma salafa waamruhu ila Allahi waman AAada faola-ika as-habu alnnari hum feeha khalidoona

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2:275. Those who consume Ar-Riba⁵¹⁴ live not but like those whom Satan makes to stumble on in life, under his spell⁵¹⁵. That is because they assert, "Business is just like Ar-Riba.⁵¹⁶" And Allah has made business lawful and Ar-Riba unlawful. He, then, to whom admonition has come from his Lord and has since abstained from Ar-Riba – to him belongs what happened in the past. And to Allah returns his deed.⁵¹⁷ And those who rebel – they shall be inhabitants of the hellfire, therein to remain forever.

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514. In Verse 30:39, Allah declares, "That which you give at a premium, so that the gain accrued is on account of other people's properties, possessions or dues, such a gain has no approval of Allah ...." In that Verse, Allah has clearly expressed his disapproval of gains that are rightfully due to others, but manoeuvred to be usurped from them in day-to-day human dealings. An example can be given of a factory owner cheating the workers employed, in their salaries, to have a fatter profit for himself. Such gains, wrongfully usurped from others and disapproved of by Allah in Verse 30:39, are here in this Verse, 2:275, made totally unlawful. And such gains are termed as Ar-Riba, literally meaning the gain/increase, to distinguish it from lawfully obtained gains as through trading, giving services etc. It is unfortunate that most Muslim scholars have given a wrongly restrictive meaning of 'interest on money lent or borrowed' to the Qur'aanic term.

515. Under the satanic spell, people become reluctant to believe in any life after death. They therefore tend to believe that this worldly life is the be-all and end-all of human existence. And they try to get the most out of it. With no fear of any divine punishment, they stumble on from one wrongdoing to another and consume Ar-Riba to get rich quickly and enjoy all that money can buy. But the happiness and enjoyment, that they seek, ever eludes them like a mirage.

516. I have no knowledge of the people who said this at the time of revelation of this Verse. But I know people who say this now in this 21st Century (15th Century Hijri). I know people who say, 'Banking business is Ar-Riba', whereas Allah has categorically made business lawful and Ar-Riba unlawful. Business is an activity by a person or by a group of persons to make things or services conveniently available to the public. Manufacturing and trading businesses make goods conveniently available and there are firms, like those of solicitors, who provide services to the public. Likewise, banking business provides money for needful projects that an individual or a group of individuals undertake, but for which the individual, or the group, doesn't have all the necessary finance. Banking is therefore a legitimate business fulfilling a social need. Like other businesses, banking business too is legitimately entitled to a reasonable profit for itself. It is also entitled to recover expenses incurred like staff salaries, building rentals etc., on pro rata basis from its clientele. And a bank does recover its expenses plus profit and calls this recovery as interest. Such interest gets divinely sanctioned when this Verse 2:275 declares that Allah has made business lawful. But the Satan has succeeded in inducing many Muslim scholars in declaring such legitimate interest collected as Ar-Riba! Ar-Riba, I repeat, is wrongful usurpation, during transactions, of other people's properties, possessions or dues, in terms of Verse 30:39. Ar-Riba is not interest, as such.

517. Whatever Ar-Riba gains people had made before they became aware of the divine prohibition against it, could be retained with those people, provided they abided by the prohibition thereafter. Their matter is left for Allah Himself to deal with as He wished. Allah, in His mercy, may forgive them – but not those who consciously act against the divine prohibition.

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Mohammad Shafi

Friday, the 4^th of October 2019.