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An Exegesis of a Hadith: Part-4
By Mohammad Asghar
The extent of loss in human lives, sufferings and destruction of valuables caused by one of the Islamic lies shall remain unparalleled in the annals of religious history. Led to believe by the untruthful story that Muhammad had sanctified the precincts of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem on his way to the celestial world, Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, refused to accept the terms offered to him in the year 2000 at Camp David by the Prime Minister of Israel that would have given the Palestinians sovereignty over almost 93 percent of their land that is now under the Israelis’ occupation. As a result of that refusal, not only the ordinary Israelis, but also the Palestinians continue to face death and hardships due, mainly, to the latter’s unwillingness to leave the ownership and the management of Jerusalem in the hands of the former.
Muslims have suffered in the past and they would continue to suffer in future, until they decide to severe their relationship with lies and falsehoods of their faith. Their sufferings are also likely to keep the rest of humanity on the edge of fear and suspicion; both of them being the elements that can trigger tension and conflict anytime between them and the people of other religious denominations.
I hope that in the common interest of all the people of the world, Muslims would listen to saner voices, and refrain themselves from acting on false and harmful hope and instructions given to them by their Quran and religious leaders. In this way, not only they and their posterity would prosper and live happily, the entire earth would also become a safe place for other religious people to cohabit with them in peace and tranquility.
For the purpose of enlightening ourselves with one of the major falsehoods of the Quran, let us go back in history and consider the following promise Allah made to the Pagans:
It is a fact that contrary to how the Muslims present the Pagans of Muhammad’s time, they were a decent people. They lived by certain standards of morality together with believing in a large number of gods. The harsh environments of the deserts and the constant struggles for survival had forced them into developing a belief that was good for their spiritual needs and circumstances.
Among all the gods they worshipped, there was one by the name Allah who played an important role in their daily lives. They believed that this Allah gave them life and then sustained it with means of livelihood. With this belief in their mind, they assigned a number of attributes to Him. Some of the attributes were: al-Rahman, al-Rahim and al-Razzaq etc. The inscription of Abrahah dealing with the break of the Ma’rib Dam begins with the following words: “In the power and grace and mercy of the Merciful {Rahman-an--- it being the title of the Christian God, found in a fifth-century South Arabic inscription} and His Messiah and of the Holy Spirit. The word “Rahman-an” is especially significant because its Northern Arabian equivalent, al-Rahman, became later a prominent attribute of the Muslim Allah.
At the beginning when Muhammad began preaching Islam, with him as the Prophet of Allah, the Pagans did not see much difference in the beliefs they held and the ones he was propagating. But the problem arose when he asked them to abandon their gods and to believe in his lone Allah who, he claimed, possessed all the qualities of their remaining gods. The other major difference they had with Muhammad was the concept of resurrection on the Day of Judgment. The Pagans did not believe in it and were not willing to accept it, despite his best efforts.
When the Pagans refused to budge from the stand on the question of resurrection, Muhammad threatened them with the fire of hell. Undaunted, they repeatedly asked him to beseech his Allah to hasten the Day of Judgment. Every time, he ducked their demand by turning away from them (Quran; 32:30).
But the Pagans remained steadfast with their demand. Pestered by their insistence, one day Muhammad declared that the Hour (of Judgment) is near, as it had been indicated to him by Allah through cleaving the moon asunder (cf. Quran; 54:1). Naturally, the Pagans had thought that the fateful Hour was on its way, since it was not possible for the universe to continue to exist with a divided moon.
Year after year passed by, but the Pagans never saw the Hour turning the earth, sun, moon, stars and humans into dust. Nor did they find themselves before Allah to answer His questions on what they had done during their sojourn on earth.
On the accountability of each human being, the Quran tells us the following: As soon as a person is buried, angels appear in his grave. They ask him various questions to find out how he lived on earth. Unsatisfactory answers mean that he lived a sinful life. This determination makes him liable for all tortures they order the hell to inflict upon him.
Correct answers from the respondent prove that he lived on earth strictly in accordance with Allah’s prescriptions. Angels reward him by hooking the interior of his resting place with heaven, thereby enabling him to pass his days in it, until the Day of his Resurrection, in comfort and luxury.
Martyrs, who die in the cause of Allah, are not required either to face the questioning of the angels, nor do they remain in their graves, for, their bodies get transported to heaven immediately after their burial. They will not face judgment on the Day of Resurrection, either.
On the day, when Allah will decide to cause the Day of Judgment to come, He will ask angel Israfil to blow his horn. With its sound, everything will turn into dust. Then Allah will bring them back to their original forms. All dead persons will emerge from their graves, and assemble in Allah’s court to face their trail (cf. Quran; 3:185).
What would happen to those persons whose bodies had been cremated or dumped in rivers and seas is not mentioned in the Quran. Perhaps, they would go scot free on the Day of Judgment!
Allah will judge each human and jinn on the basis of their performance on earth. Those He would find clean would enter heaven. Others found guilty, would find their place in hell, to burn in its fire eternally.
How much the jinns, made of fire, would suffer from the fire of hell is not clear. Perhaps, they would not be affected at all; rather, they are likely to prove as an instrument of succour for those of the humans, who followed them during their activities on earth, by bringing them into the circle of their (jinns’) own neutralized fire. It is a possibility we should not discount at all, for, jinns have proved elusive and unmanageable even to Allah before; they might try to defy Him again in the world hereafter as well!
From the above Quranic facts, it should not be difficult for us to conclude that heaven or Paradise has been having inhabitants in it from the time humans and jinns began sacrificing their lives in the cause of Allah. Opposed to it, hell should not have any occupant in it, as sinful humans and jinns have not yet been judged by Allah, without which process, both of them must still be lying in their graves, waiting for resurrection on the Day of Judgment, which is yet come.
In the light of our above understanding, let us read the following Sahih or authentic hadith of Ismail Bukhari.
Volume 4,
Book 54, Number 464.
Narrated 'Imran bin Husain:
The Prophet said, "I looked at Paradise and found poor people forming the majority of its inhabitants; and I looked at Hell and saw that the majority of its inhabitants were women.”
This hadith supports the nocturnal journey that Muhammad had allegedly made to heaven via Jerusalem. During his tour of the celestial world, Allah was pleased to let him see who was living in Paradise and hell in 620 A.D.
Muhammad, the Prophet of mankind and jinns, did not ask Allah why He filled up the hell with women, as he already knew the reason. Women are deficient in intelligence (cf. Quran; 2:282); and they also become impure during their periods (cf. Quran; 2:222), which turns them into a sub-human species.
Allah punished women for two, among many, of their above stated shortcomings, without realizing that He Himself was responsible for their deficiencies. If He had not programmed women to have periods, none of us would be walking the earth today. If we were not here, who Allah would have been lording over is very easy for us to understand. But this is not the case with Allah; being dimwitted, He hardly ever knew what He was talking about in His Holy Book!
Allah gave Muslims some spiritual teachings that alienate half of mankind from its ambit. He consigned women to a position of disgrace and disrespect. He told them, through men, the following:
2:234: “If any of you die and leave widows behind, they shall wait concerning themselves four months and ten days: When they have fulfilled their term there is no blame on you if they dispose of themselves in a just and reasonable manner. And Allah is well acquainted with what ye do.”
Allah told men, and not the women themselves, to force widows not to ‘dispose themselves of’ for four months and ten days after the death of their husbands in order to make sure that they were not carrying in their wombs the seeds of their dead husbands, whereas this can be ascertained today in five minutes’ time.
Are my good Muslim women going to abide by the above requirement of their Holy Quran?
Being kind, Allah has not subjected men to any restriction that they needed to follow after their wives death, with the result that they can take on, if they liked, new wives minutes after burying them (their deceased wives). Why so, and why Allah has subjected women to all kinds of unreasonable restrictions?
Good Muslim women of our time need to think over the stipulations of the Quran, which, if applied, can turn their lives into hell. The sooner they do it the better it would be for them, and their daughters’ future.
While evaluating the position Islam has granted them, Muslim women must keep this fact in their minds: Any spiritual teaching that divides men and women in two diametrically opposite categories is not a spiritual teaching at all. Such teachings ought to be rejected outright, and with contempt.
Muhammad saw, during his celestial visit, poor people forming the majority of the Paradise’s inhabitants. It was in keeping with the Islamic concept and practices of life: It is mostly the poor Muslims who are supposed to fight and die in the cause of Allah. Consequently, they are also supposed to enjoy the felicities of Paradise, as it is they who sacrifice the pleasures of their worldly life in the hope of entering Paradise on the Day of Judgment.
But how about those women whom Muhammad saw, with his own eyes, during his tour of all the seven skies, inhabiting the hell?
Who were those women? Where they came from? Did those women enter hell without facing Allah on the Day of Judgment? Or, was it possible that Muhammad was telling a lie to convince his Companions with the story of his journey to heaven?
Above questions have only two answers, and those are:
1. The Day of Judgment has already taken place, while Muhammad was still alive, without the Pagans’ knowledge. Those women he saw in the hell were adjudged guilty by Allah and He consigned them to its fire on that Day. This is the only explanation one can give for the women’s presence in hell at the time it was being inspected by Muhammad in 620 A.D. Or,
2. Muhammad lied. He did not visit Allah nor did he see the Paradise and hell. He deliberately lied to his Companions and followers in order to hide his illicit relationship with his cousin.
Which one of the above two answers will Muslims chose to believe in is up to them. If they believe that the Judgment Day has already come and gone, in that event, they should forsake the fear of hell that inhibits all of them, and start living a normal and human life. If they believe that Muhammad had lied about seeing the hell being occupied mostly by women, in that case, they should not only stop believing in a lying Prophet, they should also discard all the teachings he gave them through the Quran.
Chose whichever answer you like. Decision is yours. Only through the right decision are you going to transform yourself into a living and breathing human being. Wrong decision is going to keep you shackled to a belief, the foundation of which was laid on falsehood and deception.
Are you still willing to remain blind, even after being told of some of the lies that are hiding behind your religion?
December 30, 2004