OUR DIALOGUE

Q.1 - Hundreds of Muslims are killed every now and then in many countries. Many of the victims are women and children. What have the Muslims, particularly the inno­cent women and children, done to deserve such a fate?

Q.2 - Is slavry allowed in Islam? If so, how can we justify it in modern times?

A.1 - We all go through this first life of ours which is a passage to another life which is ever-lasting in the sense that it is not ter­minable by another death. The term appoint­ed to each one of us in this life varies. Some attain the old age while others die in infancy. A poor person may live one hundred years, while another who is reared in affluence and receives the best care and enjoys the most pleasant comforts dies a young man. We meet our deaths in a variety of ways. Some are subdued by old age while others are over­powered by illness. Some die as a result of a variety of accidents while a few are mur­dered. How long we live in this life and how we meet our deaths are matters that Allah in His wisdom determines. What matters much more than this simple issue is what sort of life we will have in the hereafter. According to Islam, this is determined by how we fare in this test which we go through namely, this life. Allah has given us guidance on what we should do and what we must avoid. He has sent us prophets and messengers to teach us the sort of behavior we have to follow and the nature of values we must uphold in order to pass our test with success. The last of these was Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) whose guidance is guaranteed by Allah to remain available to all mankind through­out the ages. When we bear all that in mind, we do not ask the question you have raised in the way you have done. We do not say: "What have those innocent people done to deserve such a fate?" It is not a matter of "deserving", because a person who meets his death in this way may have the blessing of moving to a much happier life where he or she enjoys Allah's grace in heaven, the place of happiness, pure and permanent.

In the history of divine faith, there has been numerous incidents of believers who were subjected to hardship and torture as wicked and brutal as evil could devise. Long is the list of martyrs who died as a result of persecution. Allah tells us in the Qur'an that the only "crime" that such people committed was to believe in the Oneness of Allah and call on others to follow suit. In modern his­tory, there are numerous examples of these.

Can anybody suggest that these martyrs de-served” the persecution to which they were subjected? The Islamic point of view is that this life is a test which may take a variety of forms and shapes. A person with strong faith passes this test and is, in consequence, ad­mitted into heaven. The massacres you have mentioned and the troubles Muslims may have to face are simply aspects of this test. To pass the test is me greatest blessing a servant of Allah may have.

From another point of view, it is appropriate to ask why the Muslims are at the receiving end of atrocities perpetrated by their enemies. Why have the Palestinians lost their land and why were they forced to endure their conditions for a very long time? Why were the people of Afghanistan the victims of a long and ghastly series of Communist conspiracies which have left much of their land and devastated a high percentage of its population killed or wounded? Why has the Muslim world lost to communism those are­as which form the southern republics of the Soviet Union and the western provinces of China? Why has the Arab world been divid­ed in order to create artificial states which ensure that the Arabs remain weaker than other nations? I believe mat the Muslims should look for the answer to such questions within themselves.

They have been placed by Allah in a posi­tion of trust The terms of their covenant with Allah make it clear mat He will help them when they implement His message and defend it against His and their enemies. If they do not discharge their duties under their covenant and do not fulfill the pledges they , have made to Allah, then He abandons them so that they wffl face their enemies on their own without His help. In such a situation, the arithmatic of forces, soldiers and equipment, courage and dedication become the determi­nant factors. It should be, remembered that when the Muslims went back on their cove­nant with Allah, they were in a state of weak­ness and ignorance. Losing Allah's help made it inevitable that they would lose also their honor, power and sovereignty.
Yet Allah has made it easy for His ser­vants to win back His help and support. To start with, they should purge their beliefs to anything that contradicts Islam.

They must pledge themselves to the fulfill­ment of their duties to Allah. That will set them on the road to recovery. Since Islam re­quires them to pursue knowledge, then they will take the road to advancement, they will soon regain their dignity and become re­spected and feared by other nations. This is enough to ensure that the future of the Mus­lim nation will be better than its present and its recent past.


A.2 - There is a short answer to the question of slavery which is all we need to have, since slavery is no longer practiced anywhere in the world.
Islam allowed slavery because it was a worldwide system and it could not be stopped in one area when, it remained prac­ticed in another. Islam, however, provided all the incentives and means to reduce slav­ery and gradually eradicate it. It forbade all sources of slavery except the one which was beyond the control of the Muslim state, namely, enslaving captives of war. This re­mained allowed but not obligatory or even recommended. Now that slavery is no longer an institution in the world, does not allow it.

Q.1 - If one is reciting the Qur'an in a mosque and someone enters and greets the people in the mosque, should the person who is reciting the Qur'an interrupt his recitation to answer him?

Q.2 - Is there any authentic Hadith to sup­port the view that covering one's head in prayer is necessary, while covering one's toes is unacceptable in prayer?

A.1 - It is essential to reply to a person's greeting by a similar greeting or a better one. This applies in all situations. However, if one is offering prayers and someone greets him with salam, he ansers with a signal by his hand. Otherwise replying to a greeting by word of mouth is necessary, if one is reciting the Qur'an when he is greeted by a person who passes by or drops in his room or office or in­deed anywhere else, then the reciter stops at an appropriate place and answers his greeting, he then resumes his reading, if he wishes.

A.2 - There is no Hadith which requires or recommends Muslim men to cover their heads when they offer their prayers whether obligato­ry or voluntary. It should be remembered that the Prophet and his companions used to cover their heads when they were in the- mosque or in the marketplace or indeed anywhere else. So did the rest of the Arabs. In other words, this was the customary dress in Arabia which con­tinued after Islam. As such, wearing a cap or covering one's head by a man for prayers is neither recommended nor obligatory. It is cer­tainly not a Sunnah.
As for uncovering one's toes, again there is no Hadith which makes that necessary or rec­ommended. Having said that, I should perhaps explain that in the early days of Islam, it was socially considered a sign of arrogance for any person to wear a dress lower than the middle part of his leg. That meant that the proper dress of a man reached down midway between one's knees and one's ankles. To show any sign of arrogance or to demonstrate conceit is for­bidden hi Islam. Hence, the insistence of some scholars on the need to wear what is modest and far from suggesting conceit. Nowadays, most Muslim societies have a different view of appropriate dress for men. Many are the Mus­lim communities where the normal dress is that of a suit, socks and shoes. This means that covering all one's legs including one's feet. If this is the normal type of dress, it follows it follows that it is perfectly acceptable to wear during prayer. Otherwise, if we were to insist on the same length of dress which used to be worn in early Islamic days, we would require anyone who wears a suit to take off his shoes and fold up his trousers. This is totally unnecessary because it neither follows a Sunnah nor gives a decent appearance.

Al-Ghazali writes that knowledge can either be innate or acquired. He divides acquired knowledge into phenomenal (material world) and spiritual (related to God and soul), and divides acquired knowledge into imitation, logical reasoning, contemplation and intuition. He also argues that there are four elements in human nature: the sage (intellect and reason), the pig (lust and gluttony), the dog (anger), and the devil (brutality). He argues that the latter three elements are in conflict with the former element and that "different people have such powers in different proportions.”