ISLAM AS EXPOUNDED IS MERE WINDOW DRESSING BY PROPHET RULES THE ROOST

The Place of Sunnah in Islam

People who have not studied the theology of Islam as expounded in orthodox treatises, believe that Islam stands for obedience to the commandments of Allãh as revealed in the Qur’ãn. They do not know that Allãh is no more than mere window-dressing and that for all practical purposes the Prophet rules the roost.

Muhammad had made Allãh into his private preserve when he proclaimed that no one except him knew the will of Allãh first-hand, and that he alone will intercede on the Day of Judgment for deciding who will enter paradise and who will sink into hell. Going further, he made Allãh helplessly dependent on the Muslim millat when he prayed on the eve of the battle of Badr, “O God, if this band perishes today, Thou will be worshipped no more.”⁹³ This became a refrain in every Muslim prayer offered on the eve of every battle fought in the history of Islam against the infidels. Allãma Iqbal was not innovating when he addressed Allãh in his Shikwah and asked, “Did anyone before us bother about you?” Shikwah or complaint is a long poem written by the “great poet of Islam” in the first decade of this century, and expresses the anguish of Islam vis-a-vis the rise of Christians in the West and Hindus in India.

Muslims have a popular saying in Persian language, “bã Khudã dîwãnã bãsh wa bã Muhammad hoshiyãr,” that is, one may become wild about Allãh but one should beware when it comes to Muhammad. Khudã is the Persian word for Allãh. Islam is, therefore, spelled out more correctly when it is called Muhammadanism. For, it is not Allãh but Muhammad who sits at the heart of Islam and controls its head as well.

The process of deifying the life-style of the Prophet had started in his own life-time. Margoliouth observes, “He inherited the devotion and adulation which had hitherto been bestowed on the idols; and though he never permitted the word worship to be used of the ceremonies of which he was the object, he ere long became hedged in with a state which differed little form that which surrounded a god…”⁹⁴ The concept of the Sunnah, that is, the practices of the Prophet, had also developed towards the end of his days.⁹⁵

The rightly-guided Caliphs who followed the Prophet regarded the Sunnah as a sure key to success. Quirks of history, which gave many victories to the Muslim arms in the first century AH, convinced the theologians of Islam that the Sunnah was divine in its inspiration. They became busy in collecting and collating every detail of the Prophet’s practices, from the act of coughing to that of waging holy wars and administrating what had become his exclusive kingdom. The Sunnah was soon placed on par with the Qur’ãn. “In the Qur’an,” they propounded, “Allah speaks through Muhammad; in the Sunnah, He acts through him. Thus Muhammad’s life is a visible expression of Allãh’s utterances in the Qur’ãn. God provides the divine principle, Muhammad the living pattem.”⁹⁶

While the ulamã expounded the Sunnah to the sultãns, it was the sûfîs who practised it most meticulously. The very first sûfî illustrated what the Sunnah stood for. Farîdu’d-Dîn Attãr gives the story of Uwaysh Qarnî who lived in the days of the Prophet but had never met or seen him. ‘Umar and ‘Alî were on a visit to Kufa when they learnt that Qarnî lived in the valley of ‘Urfa, grazing cattle and eating dry bread. They went to see him. “The honourable Uwaysh said, ‘You are Companions of the Prophet. Could you tell me which one of his sacred teeth was martyred in the battle of Uhud? Why have you not broken all your teeth out of reverence for the Prophet?’ This said, he opened his mouth and showed that all his teeth were gone. He explained, ‘When I learnt that a tooth of the Prophet had been martyred, I broke one of mine. Then I thought that perhaps some other tooth of his had been martyred. So I broke all my teeth, one after another. It is only after that that I felt at peace’. Having heard him the two Companions got awestruck, and felt convinced that this was the correct conduct…”⁹⁷

The Sunnah has been the prison-house in which the world of Islam has lived ever since. Every pious Muslim aspires to do things exactly as the Prophet did. Aping the Prophet in the matter of destroying other peoples places of worship, and building mosques with their materials is no exception. A Muslim who can do this pious deed but does not do it, disobeys the Prophet.

There are very few historical mosques, particularly Jãma‘ Masjids, in the world of Islam which do not stand on sites occupied earlier by other people’s places of worship. Many Christian churches yielded place to mosques all over West Asia, North Africa, Spain and South-eastern Europe, even though Christians were People of the Book whose places of worship were to be protected once they agreed to become zimmîs. Fire-temples of the Zoroastrians suffered the same fate all over what constituted the empire of Iran on the eve of the Muslim conquest. The greatest havoc, however, was wrought in the vast cradle of Hindu culture where hundreds of thousands of Buddhist Brahmanical, Jain and other Hindu temples disappeared or yielded place to mosques and other Muslim monuments.

Today there are no Hindu temples in the Central Asian republics of Russia, Sinkiang province of China, Makran and Seistan provinces of Iran, and the whole of Afghanistan, all of which were honeycombed with them before the advent of Islam. Whatever Hindu temples had come up during the Sikh and British rule in what are now known as Pakistan and Bangladesh, are fast disappearing. The same has been happening in the valley of Kashmir.

The Archaeological Survey of India, which included Pakistan and Bangladesh till 1947, has identified many mosques and other Muslim monuments which stand on the sites of Hindu temples and/or have temple materials embedded in their masonry. Many inscriptions in Arabic and Persian bear testimony that Hindu temples were destroyed for constructing mosques. Local traditions can point out many more mosques which have replaced Hindu temples. Cartloads of Hindu idols are known to have been brought and placed on the steps of the Jãmi‘ Masjids in several cities which were Muslim capitals at one time. Some of those idols may still be buried under the stairs of the same mosques. In short, the study of Islamic iconoclasm in this country, not to speak of the whole cradle of Hindu culture, has yet to make a meaningful start.

What we have proved beyond doubt is that destroying other people’s places of worship and converting them into Muslim monuments is not only sanctioned but also prescribed by the tenents of Islam, the same way as reciting the kalima, doing namãz, paying zakãt, keeping rozah, and going on hajj. Anyone who says that Islam does not permit this practice is either ignorant of the creed, or has been deceived by Islamic apologetics developed in recent time. If a Muslim scholar or politician makes this statement, he is talking tongue-in-cheek, and stands exposed as a knave.
 

Footnotes:
¹ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit, pp. 10- 11. The pagan Gods are supposed to be dead matter in the lore of the prophetic creeds. But, as we have seen and shall see, these Gods not only speak but also produce live beings, animal as well as human, whenever they are threatened with destruction. ² Ibid., pp. 15-16.
³ The Rauzat-us-Safa, op. cit., p. 33.
⁴ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 22.
⁵ D.S. Margoliouth. op. cit., p. 37.
⁶ Ibid., p. 104.
⁷ Ibid., pp. 69-70.
⁸ The Rauzal-us-Safa, op. cit., P. 85.
⁹ Ibid., pp. 89-90.
¹⁰ Ibid., p. 92.
¹¹ Translated from ‘Alãma Abdullãh al-Ahmdî’s Urdu version of Tabqãt-i-ibn Sa‘d, Part I: Akhbãr an-Nabî, Karachi, (n.d.), p. 233.
¹² The Rauzat-us-Safa, op. cit., Vol. I, pt. II, p. 115.
¹³ Tabqãt-i-Ibn Sa‘d, op. cit., pp. 245-46.
¹⁴ Ibid., p. 250. Idols can speak when it concerns prophets.
¹⁵ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 80.
¹⁶ The Rauzat-us-Safa, op. cit., p. 127.
¹⁷ Ibid., p. 128.
¹⁸ Insert from Ibn Khallikãn in Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 115.
¹⁹ First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. VII, p. 562.
²⁰ See The Rauzat-us-Safa, op. cit, Vol. II, pt. II, pp. 599-600. Also Saiyid Safdar Hosain. The Early History of Islam, Lucknow 1933, Delhi Reprint 1985, Vol. I, pp. 193-94.
²¹ The Rauzat-us-Safa. op. cit., p. 179.
²² Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., pp. 207.
²³ Ibid., pp. 227-28.
²⁴ Translated from the Urdu version of SaHîh Bukhãrî Sharîf, New Delhi, 1984, Vol. I, p. 240. See also the Urdu version of Sunn Nasãî Sharîf, New Delhi, 1986, Vol. I, p. 240, and Tãrîkh-i-Tabarî, Vol. I, Sîrat an-Nabî, Karachi (n.d), p. 145.
²⁵ Ibn Hishãm’s notes in Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 775. “Marked men” means men carrying military colours or standards signifying various formations.
²⁶ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 546.
²⁷ The verse was cited whenever Muslim invaders destroyed Hindu temples.
²⁸ Ibid., op. cit., p. 552.
²⁹ The Rauzat-us-Safa, op. cit., Vol. II, pt. II, p. 599.
³⁰ First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. VII, p. 147.
³¹ Cyril Glasse op. cit., p. 179.
³² Ibid., p. 160.
³³ First Encyclopaedia of Islam. op. cit., Vol. VII, pp. 147-48.
³⁴ Translated from the Urdu version of Mishkãt Sharîf, Delhi (n.d.), Vol. I, P. 572.
³⁵ Ibid., p. 574.
³⁶ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 552.
³⁷ First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 587.
³⁸ Margoliouth, op. cit., p. 387.
³⁹ First Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. IV, p. 587
⁴⁰ Translated from the Urdu version of Jãmi‘ Tirmizi, New Delhi, 1983, Vol. I, p. 330.
⁴¹ The Rauzat-us-Safa, op. cit., Vol. I, pt. II, p. 133.
⁴² First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 591.
⁴³ Ibid., Vol., III, p. 200. We shag deal with this subject further in Appendix 2.
⁴⁴ The Rauzat us-Safa, op. cit., Vol. II, pt. II, P. 599.
⁴⁵ Tabqãt-i-Ibn Sa‘d, op. cit., p. 478. See also Martin Ling, Muhammad, Rochester, (Vermont, USA), 1983, p. 301.
⁴⁶ Ibid.
⁴⁷ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 565.
⁴⁸ Tãrîkh-i-Tabarî, op. cit., pp. 404-05.
⁴⁹ Tabãt-i-Ibn Sa‘d, op. cit, p. 488.
⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 85.
⁵¹ Ibid., pp. 485-86.
⁵² First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. V, pp. 231-32.
⁵³ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., pp. 568-69.
⁵⁴ Tãrîkh-i-Tabarî, op. cit., p. 413.
⁵⁵ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 572.
⁵⁶ Tabqãt-i-Ibn Sa‘d, op. cit., p. 496.
⁵⁷ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit. p. 588.
⁵⁸ D.S. Margoliouth, op. cit., p. 404.
⁵⁹ The Rauzal-us-Safa, op. cit, Vol. II, pt. II, pp. 630-31. Takbîr is the Muslim war-cry, Allãhu Akbar.
⁶⁰ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 609.
⁶¹ Qur’ãn, Sûra 9. This is the last Sûra of Qur’ãn, speaking chronologically. It shows the frustration of Muhammad at the failure of his mission. Allãh says that most people who had converted to Islam were hypocrites, that is, pagans at heart.
⁶² D.S. Margoliouth, op. cit., pp. 424-45.
⁶³ Qur’ãn, 9.109.
⁶⁴ Ibid., Sûra 110.
⁶⁵ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit, p. 628. Reference to Abraham and Ishmeal may be ignored as concoctions.
⁶⁶ Tabãt-i-Ibn Sa‘d, op.cit, Part II, pp. 29-64.
⁶⁷ Ibid., p. 35.
⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 53.
⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 62.
⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 67.
⁷¹ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 627.
⁷² Tabqãt-i-Ibn Sa‘d, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 64-136.
⁷³ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit, p. 614.
⁷⁴ Ibid., 615.
⁷⁵ Al-Mughîra belonged to Tã’if and was an earlier convert.
⁷⁶ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., pp. 615-17.
⁷⁷ Ibid., p. 635.
⁷⁸ Tabqãt-i-Ibn-Sa‘d, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 73.
⁷⁹ Ibid., p. 81.
⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 90-91.
⁸¹ Ibid., p. 97.
⁸² Tãrîkh-i-Tabarî, op. cit., p. 445.
⁸³ First Encyclopaedia of Islam, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 624.
⁸⁴ Tabqãt-i-Ibn Sa‘d, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 100.
⁸⁵ Ibid., p. 107.
⁸⁶ Ibid., p. 109.
⁸⁷ Ibid., p. 118.
⁸⁸ Ibid., pp. 123-24.
⁸⁹ The Rauzat-us-Safa, op. cit., Vol.  II, pt. II, pp. 677-79.
⁹⁰ First Encyclopaedia Islam, op. cit., Vol. VII, p. 147.
⁹¹ Ibn Ishãq, op. cit., p. 39.
⁹² D.S. Margoliouth, op. cit., pp. 431-32.
⁹³ Sîrat Rasûl Allãh, op. cit., p. 300.
⁹⁴ D.S. Margoliouth, op. cit., p. 216.
⁹⁵ Sirat Rasûl Allãh, op. cit., p. 645-46.
⁹⁶ Ram Swarup, Understanding Islam through Hadis: Religious Faith or Fanaticism?, Voice of India, New Delhi, Second Reprint, 1987, p. vii.
⁹⁷ Shaykh Farîdu’d-Dîn Attãr, Tadhkirãt al-Awliyã‘ translated into Urdu by Maulãna Zubayr Afzal Usmãnî, Delhi n.d., p. 16.