Friday Articles
What the Qur'an teaches: Rain bringing life
By Sayyid Qutb
Islam, Women and Islamic Feminism
By Maulana Waris Mazhari
Zakah: When and to Whom?
By Adil Salahi
What the Qur'an teaches: Rain bringing life
By SSayyid Qutb
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
How about one on whom God's sentence of punishment has been passed? Can you rescue those who are already in the fire? (19)
As against this, those who are God-fearing will have lofty mansions raised upon mansions high, beneath which running waters flow. This is God's promise. Never does God fail to fulfill His promise. (20)
Have you not considered how God sends down water from the skies, and then causes it to travel through the earth to form springs? He then brings with it vegetation of different colors; and then it withers and you can see it turning yellow. In the end He causes it to crumble to dust. In all this there is indeed a reminder for those endowed with insight.
(The Throngs; Al-Zumar: 19-21)
The surah is going to tell us shortly about the reward God's true servants shall have. However, before showing us the blessings these people enjoy in the life to come, it states that those who worshipped false deities have already reached hell. Who can save them from its fire, then? "How about one on whom God's sentence of punishment has been passed? Can you rescue those who are already in the fire?" This address is made to the Prophet (peace be upon him). If he cannot save them from the fire, who else can?
They are pictured here as if they are already in the fire, since the sentence of punishment has been passed on them. Juxtaposed with this is the image of those who truly feared God: "As against this, those who are God-fearing will have lofty mansions raised upon mansions high, beneath which running waters flow. This is God's promise. Never does God fail to fulfill His promise."
The scene depicts mansions raised upon high mansions, with streams flowing below. All this contrasts with the image of layers of fire engulfing the other group from above and below. Drawing such contrasts is a characteristic of the Qur'anic style. Such is God's promise, which will always come true.
Those Muslims who were the first to receive the Qur'an interacted with these scenes in their practical lives. To them, they were not mere promises or threats issued from afar, speaking about a distant future; they were a reality they saw and felt. Hence, they were truly influenced by them. Their lives on earth reflected the reality of the Hereafter which they felt and almost experienced while still extant in this life. It is in this way that a Muslim should receive God's promise.
The surah then draws attention to the life of plants after rainfall, and tells us how the water courses to its end. The Qur'an often draws a comparison between the life of plants and this present life of ours, highlighting the fact that it is of short duration. It urges people with insight to reflect on this comparison. In connection with the water being poured from the skies, the surah also refers to the Qur'an, the book sent down from heaven to breathe life into people's hearts and souls. It gives an inspiring description of the response of those whose hearts are open to it, and how they experience a mixture of awe, fear, comfort and reassurance. It then describes the respective fates of those who respond to God's message and those whose hearts are hardened. At the end of the passage, the surah cites examples of one who worships the One God, and the one who worships multiple deities. The two cannot be equal and cannot hold the same position, in the same way as two slaves one serving one master and the other having several masters, who are in dispute with one another cannot be considered the same.
"Have you not considered how God sends down water from the skies, and then causes it to travel through the earth to form springs? He then brings with it vegetation of different colors; and then it withers and you can see it turning yellow. In the end He causes it to crumble to dust. In all this there is indeed a reminder for those endowed with insight."
The Qur'an draws attention to a phenomenon that takes place everywhere on earth. Its familiarity, however, tends to make people overlook it. Yet it is remarkable in every step. The Qur'an directs us to look at how God's hand directs it step by step to produce its desired effects. The water that comes down from the sky: what is it, and how does it descend? This is a remarkable phenomenon, but we tend not to reflect on it because it is so familiar. The very creation of water is indeed a miracle. We know that it comes into existence when two hydrogen atoms combine with one oxygen atom under certain conditions. Our knowledge, however, should alert us to the fact that it is God's hand that made the universe, allowing the hydrogen and the oxygen to be available and to provide the conditions that allow them to combine and produce water, which is essential for life to emerge. In fact, without water, no life could have emerged. Thus we see how a series of measures culminated in the existence of water and the emergence of life. All this is of God's own making. Moreover, the very fall of rain, after the creation of water, is in itself a miraculous phenomenon, brought about by the system that operates the universe and the earth, allowing the formation of water and its fall by God's will.
Islam, Women and Islamic Feminism
By Maulana Waris Mazhari
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
If Muslim women were themselves to study Islam and contemporary social demands and challenges, it would be much more difficult for men to exploit them in the name of Islam.
In recent years, scores of books, mainly in English, have been published on what is termed by its proponents as 'Islamic Feminism'. A number of NGOs, almost wholly funded by Western organizations, have also cropped up in various countries that see themselves as engaged in promoting 'Islamic Feminism'. I would be the last to deny the reality that vast numbers of Muslim women continue to be denied their rights, and I readily admit to the fact that patriarchy, which I deem as un-Islamic, is deeply entrenched in most Muslim societies. Yet, as a Muslim, and as someone who is concerned about Muslim women's access to justice, I have serious reservations about some basic aspects of the 'Islamic feminism' project.
Based on my limited reading on the subject of 'Islamic Feminism', I think that many-though I cannot say all-advocates of this project have no independent world-view of their own, and that they simply follow the dominant Western feminist discourse, which they seek to propagate in an 'Islamic' guise. They appear to want Muslim women to go the way of Western women, and, for this, seek to interpret Islam in a particular way to promote this agenda. The Western feminist model, rather than Islam per se, is their criterion to decide what is 'just' and 'proper'. This is the model that they want Muslim women to emulate, seeing, as the dominant West does, Muslim women as 'backward' and, consequently, as in desperate need of 'liberation'.
At the same time, I would also stress that Muslim scholars, including the male ulema, must recognize the reality of deep-rooted gender biases in Muslim societies. We have to accept that Muslims have handicapped half our population-Muslim women-by all sorts of unwarranted restrictions. We have to admit the urgent need to allow and enable Muslim women to develop their suppressed potentials. The solution to this must be evolved from within the broad paradigm provided by the Quran and authentic Hadith, rather than on the basis of Feminism, even in a so-called 'Islamic' guise.
In a sense, several issues that 'Islamic Feminists', particularly those who are heavily funded by Western organizations, take up are geared, intentionally or otherwise, to set Muslim women and men against each other. So, for instance, you have huge funds being poured in for such purposes as setting up women's mosques or enormous Western media hype about a woman Imam leading a mixed congregation. Personally, I am against such sensationalism, but I also recognize that it is our own weakness that has caused or led some Muslim women to take to this path. If Muslim women had been allowed by Muslim men their Islamic right to worship in mosques there would have been no grounds for such unnecessary controversies. In this regard, I think a major share of the blame lies on the shoulders of the traditionalist ulema. They will not utter a word about women roaming in markets and shopping malls but, at the same time, will readily claim that if women were allowed to pray in mosques, which they did at the time of the Prophet, society would be corrupted! This unfortunate attitude of theirs has definitely led to considerable alienation among many Muslim women from the ulema, because they regard these ulema as complicit in their marginalization.
In this regard, the traditionalist Hanafi ulema argue that although in the Prophet's (Pbuh) time women did pray in mosques, this practice was later abrogated by the Caliph Umar. Hence, they argue, we must stick to the Caliph's decision. It is strange that even as they cite this as an argument to justify banning women from praying in mosques they do not advocate that thieves' hands should not be cut off, which is what the Caliph Umar once ordered, against the Quranic commandment to the contrary, during a severe drought. The point, then, is that several prescriptions of Islamic jurisprudence, including some dealing with women, are related to their spatio-temporal contexts, and that, as the contexts change, these rules must, too. In other words, in seeking to apply the rules of the shariah one also has to take into account what the demands of the situation or context are. This applies to women's issues as much as to other such matters.
Unfortunately, our traditionalist ulema, who continue to rigidly adhere to medieval fiqh formulations, do not generally see things in this way. They do not appreciate the inherent flexibility provided by the principles of Islamic jurisprudence to generate contextually relevant responses to new issues.
Today, we are faced with a situation where we are confronted with two extremes. On the one hand is the dominant Western culture that has commodified women and that seeks to destroy all differences between men and women on the specious grounds that difference automatically means inequality. It insists that just because a man does something or behaves in a certain way, a woman must do so, too. In other words, despite its protestations of radical equality between the sexes, this approach is based on the notion of the male as the criterion for deciding what is good for women and what is not. Lamentably, in India, too, we are fast falling prey to this mentality, blindly imitating the West.
On the other hand, are our traditionalist ulema. In a sense, some of their very conservative, even reactionary, positions on women are a response to what they see as the potent challenge of dominant Western views about women. They want to keep Muslim women locked up in their homes and fully veiled, quite in contrast, I must add, to the position that they enjoyed at the time of the Prophet. Some of them even go so far as to insist that a woman's very voice is awrah or that it should be 'veiled', or, in other words, that even her voice must not be heard by any 'strange' male.
I think that it is crucial for Muslim women to start studying Islam for themselves, for, undoubtedly, they can better understand the Islamic notion of gender justice than many men. It was essentially due to Muslim women's educational backwardness, particularly in the realm of religious scholarship, that it became easy for them to be exploited by Muslim men, including the religious class, the reason being that if you do not know your rights, others will naturally exploit you. By becoming Islamic scholars, including muftis and faqihas, in their own right, Muslim women will be able to challenge the deeply-rooted notion that a husband is his wife's lord and he can treat his wife the way he wants, that a wife must be forever subservient to her husband, regard him as her lord or hakim, consider her the dust of her husband's feet as the path to heaven for her and even treat him almost like a demi-god, or majazi Khuda as it is said in Urdu-these being widely-held conceptions in Muslim society which, however, have no Islamic basis at all.
Obviously, if Muslim women were themselves to study Islam and contemporary social demands and challenges it would be much more difficult for men to exploit them in the name of Islam. In this way, it is likely that the Quranic mandate of gender justice would be more prominently highlighted, just as in the early Muslim period, when numerous Muslim women excelled in the field of Islamic scholarship, some even challenging well-known male scholars and exemplifying, through their own lives, the rights of women in Islam.
In other words, while I do not agree with many basic aspects of the approach, methodology and agenda of 'Islamic Feminists', I readily admit that one basic demand and concern of theirs-gender justice-can no longer be ignored by the ulema and Muslim males. In my humble opinion, gender justice is something that is intrinsic to Islam itself. Denying it obviously leads to a denial of a basic Islamic mandate.
Zakah: When and to Whom?
By Adil Salahi
If a person has some savings in the bank, how and when should he pay zakah? To whom he should pay it? If he holds his savings for a number of years, is one payment of zakah enough or he should pay it every year? S. Hussaini
Zakah is payable every year by every Muslim, male or female, provided that the person concerned has more than the threshold of zakah, and he has held that for a year. This means that there is a threshold of zakah, i.e. nisab, which means a minimum amount. If you have less than that threshold, then you are not required to pay annual zakah. If you are a zakah payer for a number of years, then you encounter adverse circumstances that bring your assets to below the threshold of zakah, then you do not pay zakah for the current year when you have less than the threshold. The threshold is equivalent to the value of 85 grams of gold over and above what you need to maintain yourself and your dependents.
Everyone of us should mark the day when he or she begins to own the threshold of zakah, because this is their zakah date. Every year, on the same day, they should check what they own. If it is over and above the threshold of zakah, they should pay zakah on all they have, over and above what they need for their living expenses. The rate of zakah is in most cases 2.5 percent of the total amount. Certain types of property carry a higher rate, such as agricultural produce that is irrigated by rainwater only. The zakah rate for this type of produce is 10 percent. On your zakah date, you calculate your zakah liability and put it aside.
Zakah is unlike income tax, which is levied on earnings. Zakah is due on both capital and income. Hence, it is low rate.
Zakah is paid to eight groups of people. They are mentioned in verse 60 or surah 9, which is translated as follows: "Charitable donations are only for the poor and the needy, and those who work in the administration of such donations, and those whose hearts are to be won over, for the freeing of people in bondage and debtors, and to further God's cause, and for the traveler in need. This is a duty ordained by God, and God is All-knowing, Wise."
It is clear that bank savings are zakahable, every year, as long as the saver is a zakah payer, i.e. owning more than the threshold of zakah.
Paying zakah for God's cause
Could you please explain the category 'to serve God's cause' as one for which zakah funds may be utilized? This seems to be a rather undefined category. How do we spend such allocated zakah funds? A.R.
The Quranic verse that defines the beneficiaries of zakah is verse 60 in surah 9. It translates as follows: "Charitable donations are only for the poor and the needy, and those who work in the administration of such donations, and those whose hearts are to be won over, for the freeing of people in bondage and debtors, and to further God's cause, and for the traveler in need. This is a duty ordained by God, and God is All-knowing, Wise." Whereas the first four categories are preceded by the preposition 'to', the other four are preceded by 'for'. There is a clear difference between the two. In the case of the first four, you have to give zakah to them so that they own it, while in the other four categories, you can take action to relieve the situation. Thus, in the case of an insolvent debtor, you may pay zakah directly to his creditor, so that the burden of debt is reduced or removed. In the case of a stranded traveller, you can buy his train or plane ticket, or pay his travel expenses in some other way, to enable him to reach his home.
Scholars of olden days defined "fi sabeel Allah", or 'furthering God's cause', as "Jihad and Haj". This means that one can pay someone to meet the expenses of pilgrimage, or to assist in a campaign of Jihad. Contemporary scholars widen the definition further so as to include whatever improves the conditions of the Muslim community in general, helping people to be able to stand on their feet or to achieve excellence in their fields. One area mentioned in particular is education. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable to pay a student his school or university fees, or to buy his books, or his living expenses during his education. He may not be poor, but he may be unable to meet all the expenses of his education.
There is no doubt that enabling the community to have enough scholars, scientists, doctors, engineers, etc. contributes well to furthering God's cause. The Muslim community should have enough of these to meet all its needs so that it becomes self-sufficient in all areas, able to protect itself against its enemies and to ensure steady progress and prosperity for all its citizens.
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