It behooves us, before commencing on the commentary of the hadiths on the emancipation of slaves, to produce here a short essay in which we discuss the reality of slavery and its place in Islam, because a lot of commotion has been caused amongst the Muslims by the westerners and their devotees for allowing slavery, and the people of this age claim it is a blemish on the forehead of religion and a reason to doubt Islam. And there is no power, nor might,...
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I say: The hadiths of the chapter explicitly prove the impermissibility of prostrating to other than Allah, and they prove that it has been specified for the Everlasting God and it is not suitable for a mortal, whether a prophet or a saint, whether living or dead. The distinction between worship (ta‘abbud), reverence (ta‘zim) and greeting (tahiyyah) is a baseless distinction invented by extremists, because Mu‘adh did not prostrate to the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) due to...
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This humble servant offers the greeting of Islam before this esteemed audience. Allah – Exalted is He – preserve you. We have sensed from you signs of nobility and interest in our condition. We feel an Islamic uprising turning towards us and you, and indeed we are needier of you than you are of us.
These are my teachers, my elders and my treasures before Allah in my day and my morrow. They asked me to extend gratitude to you for your generosity and for...
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The Islamic Ummah is united that Imam A‘zam Abu Hanifah Nu‘man ibn Thabit (may Allah mercy him) is one of the four followed imams -- Malik, al-Shafi‘i, Ahmad and Abu Hanifah (may Allah mercy them all and be pleased with them).
Among those issues upon which all of the people of knowledge from both the early and latter times are agreed is that these four jurists, and their likes from among the mujtahid imams whose followers have gradually died out, only derived fiqh issues (masa’il)...
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Be informed that there it no way for us to knowledge of the divine laws and the rulings except through the report of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), in contrast to the case of the beneficial purposes, for these may be understood through experience, true reflection, surmisal, and so on. There is also no way for us to have knowledge of the sayings of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) except by receiving reports which go...
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Know that the fuqaha and the muhaddithun in their entirety have clarified in their books that it is prohibited to narrate, cite and transmit fabricated (mawdu') , and act upon its purport while believing it to be established, except with a warning that it is fabricated. Leniency (tasahul) in this is prohibited, whether in regards to laws (ahkam), stories (qisas), inducing hope and fear (al-targhib wa l-tarhib) or anything else. Imitating (taqlid) in mentioning and transmitting it is...
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The one whose only manual work is the acquisition of sins, and only profession is the perpetuation of misdeeds, the one hopeful of the pardon of his Lord, Possessor of Grace and Bestowals, Abu 'l-Hasanat Muhammad 'Abd al-Hayy, the Lucknawi by homeland, the Hanafi by madhhab, the Ansari and Ayyubi by lineage, the son of the ocean, full of treasures, and the rain, pouring forth, Mawlana Hafiz Muhammad 'Abd al-Halim (Allah admit him into the Abode of Bliss), says:
This is a beneficial treatise and...
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If jarh (narrator criticism) is issued due to partisanship, enmity, loathing, or the likes, then it is rejected, and only he who is rejected relies on it. In light of this, the statement of Imam Malik regarding Muhammad ibn Ishaq, the author of Al-Maghazi, that he is a dajjal from amongst the dajjals, was not accepted, since it is known that it stemmed from clear animosity. Rather, they (the imams of jarh wa ta'dil) affirmed that he was hasan al-hadith (an acceptable narrator),...
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As regards to the ruling of entertainment and sports in general, my teacher and my father 'Allamah Mufti Muhammad Shafi' (may Allah have mercy on him) compiled an independent treatise on it, published in his book Ahkam al-Qur'an. I will summarise in what follows the conclusions that he reached after enumerating the texts narrated on the subject, by quoting certain of his different statements:
Know that the pure and magnanimous Shari'ah of the Chosen One does not prohibit gains and benefits which the human nature...
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Writings on the topic of the veiling and unveiling of women have proliferated in our time. The best that I have seen on this subject is a treatise by my late father Shaykh Mufti Muhammad Shafi' (Allah have mercy on him) which he called Tafsil al-Khitab fi Tafsir Ayat al-Hijab, which is a section from his Ahkam al-Qur'an (3:393-483), in which he examined the verses and hadiths cited on the subject and exhausted the positions of the fuqaha (jurists) and the statements of the...
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